Death is the end of every worldly pain.
Imagine how happy, how holy, life would be if we ever really learn to see beauty.
Life always comes out of death. The present rises from the ashes of the past. The future is always possible for those who are willing to re-create it.
Judaism calls for us to honor the rhythm of human life, the demands of the human community around us, the call of the divine order as the filter and scale for the decisions that drive our own small lives. We do not rule the universe, Judaism reminds us. God does. We are not its standard or its norms. We are only its keepers, its agents, its stewards. To do right by the universe at large is the measure of a happiness framed with the entire cosmos in mind but lived in microcosms across time.
Life is a series of lessons, some of them obvious, some of them not. We learn as we go that dreams end, that plans get changed, that promises get broken, that our idols disappoint us.
Mystery is what happens to us when we allow life to evolve rather than having to make it happen all the time. It is the strange knock at the door, the sudden sight of an unceremoniously blooming flower, an afternoon in the yard, a day of riding the midtown bus. Just to see. Just to notice. Just to be there.
But we are here to depart from this world as finished as we can possibly become.
I don't love it. I write better than I used to write, I think better than I used to think, and I've got enough experience to balance things up. But I don't like the physical side of getting older and I don't like forgetting things. If I had a choice, I'd take Peter Pan pills and stay young forever.
THERE ARE SOME MEN who enter a woman’s life and screw it up forever. Joseph Morelli did this to me—not forever, but periodically.
We wish to learn all the curious, outlandish ways of all the different countries, so that we can "show off" and astonish people when we get home. We wish to excite the envy of our untraveled friends with our strange foreign fashions which we can't shake off.
We must never forget that today's legendary achievements-awesome as they may seem-were yesterday's risky adventures. Courage is not the capacity never to be afraid; as Karl Barth reminds us, "Courage is fear that has said its prayers. "