Today’s Life-Life is:
Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy. And yet being alive is no answer to the problems of living. To be or not to be is not the question. The vital question is: how to be and how not to be?
The tendency to forget this vital question is the tragic disease of contemporary [humankind], a disease that may prove fatal, that may end in disaster. To pray is to recollect passionately the perpetual urgency of this vital question.
~ Abraham Joshua Heschel
COMMENTARY: When it comes to quotability, Rabbi Heschel is right up there with other spiritual writers like Jelaluddin Rumi, Thomas Merton, C.S. Lewis, and Frederick Buechner.
I’ve seen the first two lines of Heschel’s quote above for years. They’ve been widely posterized, disseminated on social networks, printed on cards, framed and hung in homes, offices, and classrooms, and taped to the computers of writers, pastors, youth ministers, spiritual practitioners and seekers, and others. And well they should be.
The problem with a good line or two, however, unlike jeans that people love the more worn they become—is that often when words and sayings are overused they can be devalued and consigned to certain mockery, derision, and even contempt, especially by the constitutionally correct, cynical, and pretentious. But it is not merely the frequency with which words or sayings are used that makes them trite or cheap. Sometimes words are too small for the moment. Sometimes they are too “big” for the person using them. Other times, they are incommensurate with the moment or the mood or used in a way that does not fit the occasion or the context.
What prevents the first two lines of this quote from being trite or cheap is that, first, it is Heschel who is saying them. Anyone who knows anything about Rabbi Heschel knows that his character, life story (e.g. most of his family and friends were killed in the Holocaust, a fate he narrowly escaped), witness, and wisdom give them a particular context, gravitas, and a profundity commensurate with the author.
Second, what prevents them from being trivialized or misconstrued is what he says next. He connects them to our daily lived reality. It’s not just being—that can sound too abstract, too airy-fairy. It is how being is enacted. It is what we do with our being here and being alive. He uses the bard’s familiar question—to be or not to be—to emphasize that our challenge and vocation, if we actually believe in the blessing of being and the holiness of living, is what we will do with our aliveness. If the first two sentences are true, and if we believe them and then match our gratefulness to their truth, what will we invest our aliveness in here on earth, in this place, and in this time? If the blessing of being and the holiness of living are not incarnated, then “Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy” becomes little more than two catchy or charming platitudes and their truthfulness and poignancy are deflated.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT AND ACTION: I believe the first two lines of Heschel’s statement are true. In fact, for someone committed to cultivating a life of spiritual depth, I believe they are fundamental and evocative truths. I think they beg for enactment. What will we do with our aliveness? Used personally, they lend themselves to a simple practice to prevent lethargy and taking life for granted. Each morning when you wake, perhaps even before you open your eyes, but when you first realize you have crossed the threshold of night and lived not only to see another day but to consecrate it with how you tangibly give and live your life, then it is a powerful reminder, a practice of gratefulness, and an opportunity to set your intention for the day to live out the implications of the words, “Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.”
ARTWORK: (Top) Abraham Heschel, Iconographer Mark Duke, Photographer David Anger http://www.allsaintscompany.org/dancing-saints-icon-project
(Bottom) The Good Samaritan by Jacopo Bassamo.
© Dan Miller, 2023. All rights reserved.
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