My Next Great Adventure

As some or all of you may know, Jane Goodall recently passed on. Here is something I lifted from somewhere on the internet I felt quite worthy to pass on.

My Next Great Adventure

“My next great adventure, aged 90, is going to be dying.

There’s either nothing or something.

If there’s nothing, there’s nothing, that’s it.

If there’s something, I can’t think of a greater adventure than finding out what it is.

I happen to think there is something because of the experiences I’ve had, because of experiences other people have had. Very powerful ones.”

--Jane Goodall

Now she knows.

And here's one of her experiences, in her own beautiful words:

"Lost in awe at the beauty around me, I must have slipped into a state of heightened awareness. It is hard – impossible really – to put into words the moment of truth that suddenly came upon me then. Even the mystics are unable to describe their brief flashes of spiritual ecstasy. It seemed to me, as I struggled afterward to recall the experience, the self was utterly absent: I and the chimpanzees, the earth and trees and air, seemed to merge, to become one with the spirit power of life itself.

That afternoon, it had been as though an unseen hand had drawn back a curtain and, for the briefest moment, I had seen through such a window. In a flash of “outsight” I had known timelessness and quiet ecstasy, sensed a truth of which mainstream science is merely a small fraction. And I knew that the revelation would be with me for the rest of my life, imperfectly remembered yet always within. A source of strength on which I could draw when life seemed harsh or cruel or desperate.

All the time, I was getting closer to animals and nature, and as a result, closer to myself and more in tune with the spiritual power that I felt all around. For those who have experienced the joy of being alone with nature, there is really little need to say more; for those who have not, no words of mine can ever describe the powerful, almost mystical knowledge of beauty and eternity that come, suddenly, and all unexpected."

(Quoted from her book Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey)

What Comes and What Goes

In the wake of the end of this year’s Days of Awe marking the Jewish New Year and Day of Atonement, I provide a useful perspective from a venerable Chinese sage to bring into the New Year.

What Comes and What Goes

Mysteriously, wonderfully, I bid farewell to what goes.

I greet what comes; for what comes cannot be denied.

And what goes cannot be detained.

--Chuang Tzu

Timely Guidance from Ancient Jewish Sources

DO NOT BE DAUNTED

BY THE ENORMITY OF

THE WORLD’S GRIEF.

DO JUSTLY, NOW.

LOVE MERCY, NOW.

WALK HUMBLY, NOW.

YOU ARE NOT OBLIGATED TO

COMPLETE THE WORK, BUT

NEITHER ARE YOU FREE TO

ABANDON IT.

Moment magazine is an opened-ended Jewish periodical co-founded by Elie Wiesel celebrating its 50^th Anniversary. The above is a rough replica of its most recent cover, starkly and forcefully sandwiching in paraphrases of Micah (in the yellow print) in between Ethics of the Fathers from the Talmud (in black print).