I think part of being Jewish is that innate desire to question things. Rabbis sit around all day and question the Torah. Giving yourself the room to question things, in a religion, just breeds thinking.
Mainstream rabbis essentially closed the book on dreams by the sixth century, and Church fathers established that only certain saints have the discernment to determine which dreams are from God. The dream is exiled.
I chose to embrace the spirit of my mother, who, though she had too many of her own dreams denied, deferred, and destroyed, she still instilled in me, her child, that I could have dreams and that I did have a responsibility and the power.
Though my mom had too many of her own dreams denied, deferred and destroyed, she instilled in me that I could have dreams. And not just have dreams but had a responsibility to make them reality. My mom taught me from a very early age that I could do anything I wanted to do.
She denied none of it aloud, and agreed to none of it in private.
Balanced' is a code for 'denied': a right to free speech that must be 'balanced' against so exhaustive a list of other supposed values means a right that can be exercised only when those in power judge that the speech in question is innocuous to them.
Dreams die hard and we watch them erode, but we cannot be denied the fire inside.
And our dreams,
with what frivolity we have pared them
like toenails, clipped them like ends of
split hair.
Rabbis throughout the ages, from Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Hacohen Kook onward, strictly prohibited going up on the Temple Mount. And now there is a minority group of rabbis encouraging Jews to go.
People who are denied access to power are also denied the opportunity to make or influence decisions to live a better life out of poverty and claim their rights.
Free people can treat each other justly, but they can't make life fair. To get rid of the unfairness among individuals, you have to exercise power over them. The more fairness you want, the more power you need. Thus, all dreams of fairness become dreams of tyranny in the end.
None of the modern machines, none of the modern paraphernalia. . . have any power except over the people who choose to use them.
I had lived all of my youthful dreams, but I couldn't think of many adult ones. I finally realized that we don't have many dreams for adults because, historically, people have always died much younger than they do today.
Twentieth-century welfare state capitalism was historically unique in that national income was split between wages and profits, labour and capital.
Are you able to restore to those people the time when their freedom was denied them? If you have evidence for goodness sake produce it in a court of law. People with power have an incredible capacity for wanting to be able to retain that power and don't like scrutiny.
Question your thoughts.
Question your stories.
Question your assumptions.
Question your opinions.
Question your conclusions.
Question them all into utter emptiness, stillness and joy.
The keys to freedom are in your hands.
Use them.