viver uma vida boa e digna de ser vivida

"E hoje, enfraquecido, sem fôlego, com os músculos outrora firmes debilitados pelo cancro, dou por mim a pensar, cada vez mais, não no sobrenatural ou no espiritual, mas no que significa viver uma vida boa e digna de ser vivida, de modo que nos sintamos em paz connosco. Descubro que os meus pensamentos se voltam para o Sabat, o dia de repouso, o sétimo dia da semana, e talvez também o sétimo dia da nossa própria vida, quando sentimos que fizemos o nosso trabalho e que, com a consciência em paz, podemos descansar."

Oliver Sacks, Gratidão, Relógio D'Água, 2016, p.47.

a diferent climate

The seventh day is like a palace in time with a kingdom for all. It is not a date but an atmosphere.

It is not a different state of consciousness but a different climate; it is as if the appearance of all things somehow changed. The primary awareness is one of our being within the Sabbath rather than of the Sabbath being within us. We may not know whether our understanding is correct, or whether our sentiments are noble, but the air of the day surrounds us like spring which spreads over the land without our aid or notice.

 Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath, FSG Classics, 2005, p. 21.  

There was no picture in the mind

Did the rabbis imagine that the Sabbath was an angel? A spiritual person? Religious thought cannot afford to associate closely with the powers of fantasy. Yet the metaphoric concept of the Sabbath held no danger of deification of the seventh day, of conceiving it to be an angel or a spiritual person. Nothing stands between God and man, not even a day.
The idea of the Sabbath as a queen or a bride did not represent a mental image, something that could be imagined.
There was no picture in the mind that corresponded to the metaphor. Nor was it ever cristalized as a definitive concept, from which logical consequences could be drawn, or raised to a dogma, an object of belief. The same Rabbi Hanina who celebrated the Sabbath as a queen preferred or another occasion to compare the Sabbath with a king.

 Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath, FSG Classics, 2005, p. 59. 

The good is the base, the holy is the summit.

There is much that philosophy could learn from the Bible. To the philosopher the idea of the good is the most exalted idea. But to the Bible the idea of the good is penultimate; it cannot exist without the holy. The good is the base, the holy is the summit. Things created in six days He considered good, the seventh day He made holy.

To Jewish piety the ultimate human dichotomy is not of mind and matter but that of the sacred and the profane. We have know profanity too long and have become accustomed to think that the soul is an automaton. The law of the Sabbath tries to direct the body and the mind to the dimension of the holy. It tries to teach us that man stands not only in a relation to nature but in a relation also to the creator of nature.

What is the Sabbath? Spirit in the form of time.

Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath, FSG Classics, 2005, p.75. 

Para uma mente céptica que sentido faz falar do Sabath como a companheira sagrada e da alma que se relaciona com o criador? 

Todavia, o que realmente importa saber é: depois de tudo destruído pela dúvida racional - admitindo que ela é disso capaz - o que resta? O que fica para nos consolar?

our constant problem

Nothing is as hard to supress as the will to be  slave to one´s pettiness. Gallantly, ceaselessly, quietly, man must fight for inner liberty. Inner liberty dependes upon being exempt from domination of things as well as from domination of people. There are many who have acquiered a high degree of political and social liberty, but only very few are not enslaved to things. This is our constant problem - how to live with people and remain free, how to live with things and remain independent.

 Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath, FSG Classics, 2005, p. 89.