listen . . . hear . . . know
Everyone must have two pockets, so that he can reach into the one or the other, according to his needs. In his right pocket are to be the words: “for my sake was the world created,” and in his left: ” I am dust and ashes.”
From Ten Rungs, Hasidic Sayings Collected and Edited by Martin Buber
I find this quote from Buber interesting. It’s compelling in its immediacy and seems to me despairing but true. Of course it all depends on who you think God is and whether you ignore (or take issue with) the masculine pronouns used for God.
Let Everyone Cry Out to God
“Let everyone cry out to God and lift his heart up to him, as if he were hanging by a hair, and a tempest were raging to the very heart of heaven, and he were at a loss for what to do, and there were hardly time to cry out. It is a time when no counsel, indeed, can help a man and he has no refuge save to remain in his loneliness and lift his eyes and his heart up to God, and cry out to him. And this should be done at all times, for in the world a man is in great danger.”
From Ten Rungs, Hasidic Sayings Collected and Edited by Martin Buber
“In every man there is something precious, which is in no one else. And so we should honor each for what is hidden within him, for what only he has, and none of his comrades.”
Ten Rungs, Hasidic Sayings - Collected and Edited by Martin Buber