The website speakingoffaith.org is offering up discussions surrounding the life, work, and teachings of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Today I listened to one of their podcasts, which is available here. I highly recommend giving it a listen if you have any interest in God, spirituality, mysticism, humanity, etc. Which is to say, if you have any interest in a relevant God, a God who transcends the petty bounds of human religious concepts, check it out.

I can't explain what it means to me to listen to interviews like the one in this podcast. The feeling of relief and solace in knowing that the way I view these kinds of topics is in line with the thinking of somebody else, well… I guess that partial sentence only makes sense if I admit that when I listen to this type of interview I am at once reminded that in the circles I inhabit in life, in the religious tradition I have grown up with, I am all but alone. And so to be presented with Heschel's work, to hear it talked about and valued, is at once to receive a sort of validation—encouragement is a much better word—and to concurrently recognize all over and anew again that I need that encouragement because nowhere else, in human-to-human contact, do I find it. This is not self pity. But it is indeed a deep, incumbent loneliness and sorrow.

At any rate, please. Check out the podcast. Download it and listen to it as you can. It is not the most profound thing you'll ever here, but Heschel's view of God is quite wonderful.