Today’s Life-Line is:

”Even in the pit of hell, it’s a mitzvah to be joyful.” So said Rabbi Nachman of Bretslov, a mystic in the Hasidic tradition. A mitzvah is an act that honors the Divine. Even in hell, it is possible to be joyful, because both heaven and hell are here on earth, created by our minds and actions. Transformation is always possible. We can transform pain to joy by keeping our heart’s open.

Keeping an open heart in hell, we learn the art of vulnerability, the power of no protection. This is a spiritual power, not an egoic conquest. To learn its secret alchemy, we must be willing to accept suffering and vulnerability as a normal part of life. Because we are vulnerable, life hurts. We are not here to be free of pain. We are here to have our hearts broken by life. To learn to live with vulnerability and to turn pain into love.

“There is nothing so whole as a broken heart,” said Rabbi Mendl of Kotzk, another Hasidic sage. The world breaks our hearts wide open; and it is the openness itself that makes us whole. The open heart is the doorway, inviting the angels in, revealing that the world—even in the pit of hell—is charged with the sacred.

~ Miriam Greenspan