Possible
Topics for Conversation Circles....Suggestions are very welcome!
How to begin
“The question is the beginning of all thinking. In knowing how to
ask the right question lies the only hope of arriving at an answer. In
asking a question we must faintly anticipate something of the nature of
what we ask about. On that account, the question about the ultimate source
of all reality is one we do not know how to ask.” Man is Not Alone,
Abraham Heschel, page 43
Ritual
That’s not to say that a ritual can’t be an occasion for authentic
expression. Maybe life can be breathed into a ritual. But in that case
it’s not the ritual, the re-enactment and outside form, which has
life. The life is what you bring to it, and its origin is elsewhere. [Think
about this: ‘by acting like, one becomes.’][From essay ‘Wishful
Thinking’]
Idealism vs. realism
See ‘The Art of Friendship,’ the chapter on power—Is
it unrealistic to think that friendship can exist in the business world?
Are there two kinds of relationships, which really must be kept separate?
A paragraph or two from the chapter might be good.
Non-violence
What is violence and non-violence? What is violence of speech?
‘Beautiful spirit’
Is the ‘beautiful spirit’ in all, just hidden? Or is it just
a potential we all have?
Mind—matter
How can we deeply challenge our concept-assumptions? Like that of the
mind-matter split?
The ‘Commons’
See Yes! Magazine cover story, Fall, 2002
What is the ultimate source?
George Fox (founder of the Quakers)
“And one morning, as I was sitting by the fire, a great cloud came
over me, and a temptation beset me; but I sat still. And it was said,
‘All things come by nature’; and the elements and starts came
over me so that I was in a manner quite clouded with it. But inasmuch
as I sat, still and silent, the people of the house perceived nothing.
And as I sat still under it and let it alone, a living hope arose in me,
and a true voice, which said, ‘There is a living God who made all
things.’ And immediately the cloud and temptation vanished away,
and life rose over it all, and my heart was glad, and I praised the living
God.” The Quaker Reader, 51-52
Abraham Heschel
“To be implies to stand for, because every being is representative
of something that is more than itself; because the seen, the known, stands
for the unseen, the unknown.” Man is Not Alone, Heschel, 31
“Dazzled by the brilliant achievements of the intellect in science
and technique, we have been deluded into believing that we are the masters
of the earth and our will the ultimate criterion of what is right and
wrong.” Man is Not Alone, Heschel, 40
“All things carry a surplus of meaning over being—they mean
more than what they are in themselves. Even finite facts stand for infinite
meaning. It is as if all things were vibrant with spiritual meaning, and
all we try to do in creative art and in good deeds is to intone the secret
strain, an aspect of that meaning.” Man is Not Alone, Heschel, 40-41
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