Frederick Franck turned to the door of the building, a massive wooden sculpture in the form of the sun and its rays, and pushed it open. I saw that it turned on a central axis, so that only one half of the door was open at any one time. To remind us, he murmured, that we step into this sacred space as we walk into life, alone and silently . . . I looked around me and marveled at this ninety-year-old man from whose hand had sprung everything I could see. He had carved the door, made the stained-glass windows and every other object in sight. Pacem in Terris, I realized, was one man’s act of artistic faith: a work of art outside the parameters of the art world, and also a religious statement unconfined by any religion.
The environment which I feel to be the natural one, the situation which has been assigned to me as my fate, the things that happen to me day after day, the things that claim me day after day -- these contain my essential task and such fulfillment of existence as is open to me... The Baal Shem teaches that no encounter with a being or a thing in the course of our life lacks a hidden significance. The people we live with or meet with, the animals that help us with our farm work, the soil we till, the materials we shape, the tools we use, they all contain a mysterious spiritual substance which depends on us for helping it towards its pure form, its perfection. If we neglect this spiritual substance sent across our path, if we think only in terms of momentary purposes, without developing a genuine relationship to the beings and things in whose life we ought to take part, as they in ours, then we shall ourselves be debarred from true fulfilled existence.
~ from THE WAY OF MAN by Martin Buber, as reprinted in AN ALMANAC FOR THE SOUL by Marv and Nancy Hiles
