Today’s Readings: Is 49:8-15 Jn 5:17-30
‘I require a You to become.
In becoming I,
I say You.
All actual life is encounter.’
‘The Thou encounters me by grace — it cannot be found by seeking. But that I speak the basic word to it is a deed of my whole being, is my essential deed.’
P O E T W R I T E R T H E O L O G I A N S C H O L A R
P H I L O S O P H E R
MARTIN BUBER
I wish to introduce new footholds for the spiritual journey. Whilst we may feel the spiritual defies our attempts to express our inner sensing, or grasp the ineffable; Martin Buber’s life works exhort us to embrace our relationship with the spirit, as the essence of the journey.
“When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.”
His many works give us a new dialogue of inclusive relationship between human and other … Most particularly he speaks of the sacred relationship of “I and Thou”.
“Spirit is not in the I but between I and You. It is not like the blood that circulates in you but like the air in which you breathe. Man lives in the spirit when he is able to respond to his You. He is able to do that when he enters into this relation with his whole being. It is solely by virtue of his power to relate that man is able to live in the spirit.”
Being consciously engaged with our spiritual life centres us in our full humanity.
Extract from:
“Power and Love” by Martin Buber
‘Every morning
I shall concern myself anew about the boundary
Between the love-deed-Yes, and the power-deed-No
And pressing forward honour reality.We cannot avoid
Using power,
Cannot escape the compulsion
To afflict the world,
So let us, cautious in diction
And might in contradiction,
Love powerfully.’
‘As we live, we grow and our beliefs change. They must change. So I think we should live with this constant discovery. We should be open to this adventure in heightened awareness of living. We should stake our whole existence on our willingness to explore and experience.’
These quotes by Martin Buber were retrieved on 8.3.2016 from https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/539106-ich-und-du http://www.azquotes.com/author/2101https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/I_and_Thou ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS REFERENCED ARE: " I & Thou" by Martin Buber Walter Kaufmann translator) NY: Charles Scribner 1970 "Martin Buber : An Intimate Portrait" by Aubrey Hodes, Viking Press 1971
Creative Spiritual Directions 