Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Mordecai Kaplan's diaries


Jan. 15, 1931

I know very well what I mean by God. God to me is the process that makes for creativity, integration, love and justice. The function of prayer is to render us conscious to that process. I can react with a sense of holiness and momentousness to existence because it is continually being worked upon by this divine process.

I am not troubled in the least by the fact that God is not an identifiable being; for that matter neither is my ego an identifiable being. Nor am I troubled by the fact that God is not perfect. He [sic] would have to be static to be perfect. Nothing dynamic can be perfect since to be dynamic implies to be in the state of becoming.

-- Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

A lovely statement, and very relevant to us artists. I am sure someone somewhere said that creating something is akin to prayer, too....Reminds me of one of my favorite phrases I picked up at art school:

"I believe in God, only I spell it 'Nature'." –Frank Lloyd Wright