A Quote by Abraham Joshua Heschel
Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one's actions.
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People of our time are losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating we seek to be amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation. To be entertained is a passive state--it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or a spectacle.... Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one's actions. Source: The Wisdom of Heschel
In the Old Testament, the God of the Prophets never was completely on Israel's side. There was a primitive national religion, but it was always a transcendent God who had judgment first in the House of God. This is the true religion. It has a sense of a transcendent majesty and a transcendent meaning so that that puts myself and the foe under the same judgment.
Life is not inherently meaningful. We make meaning happen through the attention and care we express through our actions.
Truth carries with it confrontation. Truth demands confrontation; loving confrontation, but confrontation nevertheless.
In fact, entertainment has taken the place of celebration in the present world. But entertainment is quite different from celebration; entertainment and celebration are never the same. In celebration you are a participant; in entertainment you are only a spectator. In entertainment you watch others playing for you. So while celebration is active, entertainment is passive. In celebration you dance, while in entertainment you watch someone dancing, for which you pay him.
Art doesn't have the stench of a community program. It's transcendent. It is transcendent of morality and transcendent of political position. It is absolutely free. It is the community center.
The preceding criticism justifies the following definition of the entire human: human existence as the life of "unmotivated" celebration, celebration in all meaning of the word: laughter, dancing, orgy, the rejection of subordination, and sacrifice that scornfully puts aside any consideration of ends, property, and morality.
I early learned that it is a hard matter to convert an individual by abusing him, and that this is more often accomplished by giving credit for all the praiseworthy actions performed than by calling attention alone to all the evil done.
Celebration is without any cause. Celebration is simply because we are. We are made out of the stuff called celebration.That's our natural state - to celebrate - as natural as it is for the trees to bloom, for birds to sing, for rivers to flow to the ocean. Celebration is a natural state.
Behind the hieroglyphic streets there would either be a transcendent meaning, or only the earth.
Truth demands confrontation. It must be loving confrontation, but there must be confrontation nonetheless.
Truth always carries with it confrontation. Truth demands confrontation; loving confrontation nevertheless. If our reflex action is always accommodation regardless of the centrality of the truth involved, there is something wrong.
It's like wine and food, or coffee and a pastry - coffee's awesome and a chocolate croissant is awesome, and together, they're transcendent. To me, music is the same way. Chris Stapleton is transcendent. Julien Baker is transcendent. Together, they're going to be euphoria.
By giving too much importance to fine actions one may end by paying an indirect but powerful tribute to evil, because in so doing one implies that such fine actions are only valuable because they are rare, and that malice or indifference are far more common motives in the actions of men.
Most humans feel the transcendent temptation, the emotional drive to festoon the universe with large-scale meaning.
The land is like poetry: it is inexplicably coherent, it is transcendent in its meaning, and it has the power to elevate a consideration of human life.
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