Sunday Prayer

I have been enjoying God in Search of Man by Heschel ever since Krista Tippett referenced it. Here's a quote from the first couple of pages, on the relationship between critical philosophy and religion:

The growing inward-ness of man that reaches and curves toward the light of God can hardly be transplanted into the shallowness of mere reflection. Torn out of its medium in human life, it wilts like a rose pressed between the pages of a book.

Religion is, indeed, little more than a desiccated remnant of a once living reality when reduced to terms and definitions, to codes and catechisms. It can only be studied in its natural habitat of faith and piety, in a soul where the divine is within reach of all thoughts.