Interestingly enough, she avidly studies the Christian tradition, including my heroes like Merton and the Desert Fathers, weaving together the rich traditions of faiths into her Judaism. Her honesty and commitment come through in her writing and it's a refreshing read.
There are many passages I resonate with, am mulling over. Here are merely a few:
"I would listen to Tchaikovsky on my Walkman and weep at the moon... I was equally moved by the shadows that were cast across the lawns by porch lights and the chunks of paint peeling off the old houses, or the weeds sprouting tenderly between sidewalk cracks. It was all too much for me to take... Colors seemed deeper, corners sharper."
"It seemed that I was always floating... not on absinthe, but on how beautiful and free it felt to be young, alive, twenty-three, and living in San Francisco. Watching my breath was beautiful, the rainbows on the lamps were beautiful, everything felt mystical and light, airy and full of limitless possibility."
"That's the thing with instant change - it's usually not change. Either that, or it's not actually instant. The real story of spiritual awakening tends to live beneath the surface for a long time. It's much more subtle and much less linear than it may appear; many of us absorb small changes in tiny doses over years before they even begin to flit up through the upper layers of consciousness... Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi writes... 'There was a long series of these epiphanies, often unrelated to one another, and the effect was cumulative.'"
"As entranced initially as I was with the fireworks, they cannot and should not be the yardstick by which we gauge spiritual maturity or power. Real power comes from doing painstaking work inside the dark, gnarly corners of the heart."
"The dominant culture depends on our sense of isolation. As long as spirituality remains an individualized, personal experience, chances remain good work will sit forever inert & untapped. That is to say, those who practice their spirituality without community are much less likely to demand change in & upheaval to the status quo, or feel that they have the power to do so."
"A committed religious life is not about chasing the next great high... It's about staying focused & present & connected to God in all the small moments, the hard moments, the drudge moments... It's about learning how not to confuse sugar highs with real, sustaining nourishment."
In talking of her feminism & how much she runs up against that, the holding back of women in faith circles /religion (boy, do I understand!): "When are we speaking out of arrogance or self-righteousness & when out of a strong sense that Divine justice is at stake? The answers aren't always clear. Nor is it always clear when it's time to work within the system & when it's time to operate from the prophetic tradition, to reject religious complacency & to follow the seventeenth-century Quaker exhortation to 'speak truth to power'."
"The thing about this 'being present in the moment' business is that it's infectious. Once you start paying attention to where you are, how your breath moves in and out of your body, what you're eating, and how you feel, it gets harder and harder to turn off awareness. It gets harder to walk past a homeless person and not look her in the eye, see that she is human and, probably hungry. It gets harder not to realize that every purchase you make has a potentially global impact, that it may support a local artisan - or a corporation that trades in sweatshop labor."
"Meeting God is about having our souls ripped away, having everything we may have ever understood about who we are pulled out from under our feet - and having to pick up the pieces afterward. We have to figure out who we are and what to do once the comfortable and the familiar have been taken away." [This is faith exactly!]
"... for every person with a religious resume and an overinflated sense of self-importance, there will be dozens of lay-folk who are slowly learning the opposite... that the hard work of a spiritual practice has an indelible effect, that deep change comes gradually. We find that, little by little, this practice takes us back to our work, back into our relationships, our families, our old hobbies, and our slightly revamped ideas of fun. We find that, through the persistence and the tears and negotiations and the uncertainty and the terrifying moments after something old and familiar has slipped away and before something new and strong has come forward to take its place - through it all, we can feel the sweet presence of Infinity humming below the surface, changing how we see the world and our lives in it... For even as one undergoes the profound transformation inherent in waking up, real life goes on."
Currently listening to: The Definitive Collection By Muddy Waters
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