A Soulful Journey

  “To say the right thing at the right time, keep still most of the time.”     John W. Roper Those who get in trouble most often are those cannot seem to keep still, remain silent.  Life teaches many lessons.  Among the best lessons of life is one my father taught me at an early age was, “If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing.” The contributions we make to life via our mouth are many and varied.  Most of the time, I reckon, they are not contributions at all, but things that diminish the richness of life.    

Later with Rebbe Mendel the Taciturn, we tried to transcend language.  At midnight, our eyes closed our faces turned toward Jerusalem and its fiery sanctuary we listened to the song of its silence – a celestial and yet tangible silence in which both voices and moments attain mortality.”   - Elie Wiesel Silence means turning off all the outer and inner noise.

“And I understood why God created heaven and earth, why he fashioned man in His image by conferring upon him the right and ability to speak his joy, to express his anguish.  God too, God Himself, was afraid of silence.” -Elie Wiesel This is His gift to us.  Use it wisely.

“God is silent…now if we can only get Man to shut up.”  -Woody Allen Speaking is easy.  Listening is an art.

30 spokes share the wheel’s hub It is the center hole that makes it useful. Shape clay into a vessel; It is the space within that makes it useful. Cut doors and windows for a room; It is the holes which we can useful. Therefore profit comes from what is there; Usefulness from what is not there. -Lao Tzu

"The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in a time of great moral crisis maintain their neutrality." -Dante Alighieri

A Dutch missionary returned to Holland on the eve of the Second World War.  His congregants asked him what they should do about the Jews.  Should we help them?  Turn them in?  Should we do nothing?” He answered them, I cannot tell you what to do.  I can only tell you who you are.  Once you know who you are, you will know what to do.” Do you know who you are?

It is a mitzvah to pray every day ….   Said the sages, “What does avodat ha-lev (sacrifices of the heart) mean?”   This is the Amidah.   –Rambam, hilchot tefilah, 1:1

"Who is like you, our God, mighty in silence?"  - Berkovits , Faith After the Holoca ust

"Every deed and every relationship is surrounded by an atmosphere of silence.  Friendship needs no words - it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness."  Dag Hammarskjold

The reaction of silence to the presence of God is behind the old Buddhist proverb, "Those who know do not speak, and those who speak do not know."  Abraham Joshua Heschel taught about Jewish prayer that, "our liturgy is a higher form of silence."

Any one who can stop his family from doing wrong and does not is guilty.  Anyone who can stop the world and does not is guilty. And the Lord said to him, "Go through he midst of the city and set a mark on the foreheads of men that sigh and cry because of the abominations that are done in her midst." (Ezekiel 9:2) The Talmud explains: "The Lord said to Gabriel, "Place a sign of ink on the foreheads of the righteous so that the Angel of Death will spare them.  And a sign of blood on the foreheads of the evil ones so that the Angel of Death will exact punishment." The Attribute of Justice asked the Lord: "Why are these different from the others?" The Lord replied, "One group is righteous while the other is wicked." Replied the Attribute of Justice: "But they could have spoken out and did not.  Even though You know it would have been futile, they did not speak out." Said God, "So begin the punishment of the righteous....

Everybody knocks on the door of the rich man craving to be his friend while to the poor man’s door there is silence.   –Talmud, Shabbat 32a Is this how the thirty-six tzaddikim of the world exist?   No one pays them attentions so they live in as virtual unknowns.

“ Silence is the language God speaks and everything else is a bad translation.”   -Father Thomas Keating “Nothing in all creation is so like God as stillness.”   -Meister Eckhart, 13 th century

A tourist went to Vermont.  He travelled around and found that people and did not speak.  Finally, he asked, "Is talking against the law around here?" One of the natives replied, "No, but no one speaks unless he can improve the silence."

“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere."  Elie Wiesel Now is such time.

“When God proclaimed the Torah at Mt. Sinai there was a perfect stillness that pervaded through the universe.   On earth birds did not chirp.   Animals did not roar.   No sound was heard.   And behold there was no bat kol (thunderous voice from Heaven), no echo, to any of the Words which God uttered.”   -Shmot Rabbah 29:9

I believe in the sun even when it is not shining I believe in love when not feeling it. I believe in God even when He is silent.   -inscription on cellar wall in Cologne, Germany

"If you can't improve on silence, don't try. "  - -Maine saying   Often times the world is much better off with active listening than talking.

There are three ways to mourn: to weep, to be silent, and to sing.  The first way to mourn is to weep: even if our tears are for ourselves, for our ache of loneliness, for our pain of loss, they are still sacred, for they are the tears of love.  But we may  weep only if we do not weep too long, only if the spark of our own spirit is not quenched by a grief too drawn out, only if we do not indulge ourselves in the luxury of grief until it deprives us of courage and even the wish for recovery.  The second way to mourn is to be silent: to behold the mystery of love, to recall a shared moment, to remember a word or a glance, or simply at some unexpected moment, to miss someone very much and wish that he or she could be here.  The twinge lasts but a moment, and  The third way to mourn is to sing: to sing a hymn to life, a life that still abounds in sights and sounds and vivid colors; to sing the song our beloved no ...