Let me share with you a text which is actually a transcription from one of the tracks in Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg's marvelous Jewish Meditation CD, "Preparing The Heart: Meditations For Jewish Spiritual Practice." She asks,

What is the most basic call to us as Israel? Shema Yisrael! Moses is calling us, 'Hear, O Israel!' What does he mean, 'Hear?' I think he means, 'Pay attention!' Shema means, 'Listen deeply. Open to the underlying truth of reality.' And what is that truth? The truth is that all the forces and energies in the world that seem to be divided and separated are really connected and united. This means that we are all part of one great reality. And our task is to see that. Respect that. Pay attention to the ways we are connected to life, to each other. The way that thoughts, words and actions are connected. The ways that this moment is connected to the next...And as we pay close attention, moment by moment, we also see that nothing stands alone and apart. Everything really is One...We also can't help noticing that nothing lasts forever. Everything is changing and moving all the time, like the clouds in the skies. My moods change. My thoughts come and go. Memories arise and fade. Even things that seem so stable and lasting are in motion, like the mountains and the oceans. Certainly my body is moving through time as I am born, grow and age. All of us in nature are part of this flow of time and change. So when I pay attention, 'Shema Yisrael,' I also hear that no one part is fixed or steady. But the whole, the flowing pattern of birth and death, is one unified and united, supreme existence, we call by four letters of breath: Yud, Hay, Vav, Hay...

What is the Beauty in Eternity?

Rabbi Steve Folberg