there's more to life than books, you know

I just re-discovered this passage from Truth or Dare:

Today, I will name [magic] this: the art of liberation, the act that releases the mysteries, that ruptures the fabric of our beliefs and lets us look into the heart of deep space where dwell the immeasurable, life-generating powers.

Those powers live in us also, as we live in them. The mysteries are what is wild in us, what cannot be quantified or contained. But the mysteries are also what is most common to us all: blood, breath, heartbeat, the sprouting of seed, the waxing and waning of the moon, the turning of the earth around the sun, birth, growth, death, and renewal.

To practice magic is to tap that power, to burrow down through the systems of control like roots that crack concrete to find the living soil below.

We are never apart from the power of the mysteries. Every breath we take encompasses the circle of birth, death, and rebirth. The forces that push the blood cells through our veins are the same forces that spun the universe out of the primal ball of fire. We do not know what those forces are. We can invoke them, but we cannot control them, nor can we disconnect from them. They are our life, and when we die, decay, and decompose, we remain still within their cycle.

An Altar of Earth: Reflections on Jews, Goddesses, and the Zohar, by Rabbi Jill Hammer
http://www.zeek.net/spirit_0407.shtml

Lif’nei b’rei’shit. . .before the beginning,
before the faces of time and space appeared,
before there was even a before,
all that was
was endless mystery, ( Ain Sof )


Our lives can be dedicated
to finding the holiness in every thing and every one,
or we can ignore the sacredness of the reality about us.
Within our hands is the power
to enrich the life of the planet,
and within our hands is the power to destroy.
U’va’char’tem ba’chayim:
Choose life that you and your children may live.


The holiness which we seek and which we find,
we call kadosh.
And our dedication to holiness, our work to enrich the planet,
we call the path of mitzvah.


Ha’me’ir la’aretz u’l’darim ah’leh’ha
Each morning you awake to the very fire
that created all the stars.
Each day is an occasion to dedicate yourself
to a vision of oneness, harmony and beauty
worthy of our fiery origin.
Sh’ma Yisrael: HaVaYaH Eloheinu, YHVH Echad.
In our work, in our relationships,
We can shape this fire as it has shaped us,
aware of the awesome energy which has provided it.
Or we can waste this fire, and we can use it for destruction.
Our most important mitzvah is to cherish this fire,
the source of our existence,
the power we can use for transformation,
the power to manifest holiness
in our planet, in our species,
in our society, in our community,
in our family, in myself.


V'ahavtah et Yod Hey Vav Hey
Elo'he'chah b'chol l'vav'echa
u'v'chol naf'sheh'cha u'v'chol m'o'decha,
"And you shall love HaVaYaH your fiery power
with all your heart, with all your life, with all that is yours."
This is the fire of the entire cosmos:
We must not waste it on triviality nor on enmity.
We cherish HaVaYaH by standing in awe,
by acting with reverence,
by developing conscience as we use it,
by offering our gratitude.
We have the power to forge cosmic fire.
What can compare with such a destiny?

(by Rabbi Burt Jacobson, found it here)

but here's some stuff from the unfortunately-titled jewish with feeling book that clicked with me:

Contradictions we can live with. Nothing we can say about G-d will survive the rigors of logical analysis. But that shouldn't get in the way of our search for the presence we have felt in our most spiritually open-- or spiritually hungry-- moments. If there is a tension between what we know in our minds and what we feel in our hearts, then let's stay with that tension. If there is a contradiction, let us take it upon ourselves. Only let us press on with our desire to experience the numinous and serve the patterns of the universe in a deeper, more meaningful way.

and

Faith is not something we can arrive at by careful, step-by-step process. It is not something we can square with our intellect. Faith does not make sense,nor does it feel safe...The quality, the essence, the whatness of G-d-- that we can only reach with the opening-up, the joyful surrender, that is faith. To experience faith even for a moment we must make a leap beyond intellect, beyond logic.

(pg 27-28, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi)

These passages are really hitting me cos I've been feeling an insistent desire for the old closeness I used to have, the entirely obvious presence of the Goddess, the Gods, G-d Herself that saturated my life, that stirred in the wind or pulsed through the pavement. I think one negative side effect of this philosophy business has been an increased tendency to submit G-d stuff no less than anything else to (albeit not too rigorous) logical analysis that is, to be honest, entirely unfitting the matter at hand.

There's much more to say about this but that's it for now.