The important thing is not the finding, it is the seeking, it is the devotion with which one spins the wheel of prayer and scripture, discovering the truth little by little. If this machine gave you the truth immediately, you would not recognize it. If this machine gave you the truth immediately, you would not recognize it, because your heart would not have been purified by the long quest…No, the Book must be murmured day after day in a little ghetto hovel where you learn to lean forward and keep your arms tight against your hips so there will be as little space as possible between the hand that holds the Book and the hand that turns the pages. And if you moisten your fingers, you must raise them vertically to your lips, as if nibbling unleavened bread, and drop no crumb. The word must be eaten very slowly. It must melt on the tongue before you can dissolve it and reorder it. And take care not to slobber it onto your caftan. If even a single letter is lost, the thread that is about to link you with the higher sefirot is broken.
~ Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Mar 5, 2007)
Notes: Post inspiration from Beth @ Alive on All Channels. Photo: Patty Maher, The Storm.
Live & Learn 
The slow, purposeful path forward – towards…whatever one needs
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Yes…..
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beautiful
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Brilliant, Beautiful, and Holy…
LOVE this 🙂
Wishing you a divine sunday. Knowing you, it is all divine unless you have to go to a holiday party.
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Yes. Sacred.
And no, thankfully, no holiday parties. 🙂
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So in love with this had to come back to it. Reminds me of one other person, the way he feels things. Yehuda Amichai.
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I too have read it several times. I’ve never heard of Amichai. Share a favorite?
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“And it is written in the book
that we shall not fear.
And it is written
that we too shall change,
like the words,
in future and in past,
in plural and in loneliness.”
Yehuda Amichai, from “From Summer or Its End.”
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Hmmmmm
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Fantastic. Remember reading this book years ago and finding myself mesmerized. You sink into Eco’s prose…
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Sink into prose. That’s it!
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Savouring…
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Reading this it did give me this feeling oh Déjà Vu… then I realised that it was a book which/that (help….English?!) left me deeply affected – many yrs ago – but also somehow present still, just hidden in the vast labyrinth of my grey matter. Beautiful pairing, as always.
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I haven’t read the book but it is on my reading list…
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You know you are into something particularly beautiful and awe-inspiring when you take the time to savour like this… This was so yummy…
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Exactly. Exactly what I felt when I read this. Something beautiful and awe-inspiring. Exactly.
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💖
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So much can be lost…”even a single letter” …
if, for lack of better imagery, one chooses to slurp the soup. For the soul sensitive that wouldn’t even be an option. Thank you for that. We become the better part of it. Thank you because of that.
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Thank you Raye.
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