“How is Your Heart?”

I recently read a lovely teaching about the “disease of being busy” by Professor Omid Safi from Duke University. He wrote that when asked “how are you?” so many of us reply with choruses of “I’m so busy…I’m crazy busy…so much going on…”  

He shared that there is a Persian and Islamic custom that instead of asking “how are you” one asks “how is your heart doing at this very moment, at this breath?”* 

As in, “how ARE you?”

This took my breath away.  Really, if we slow down enough to think about it, that’s what we really want to know, right?

How is your heart?  

How are you – inside? 

Have you been breathing? 

Martin Buber, the great Jewish theologian speaks about the I-Thou relationship – that moment in a conversation when we truly see each other as human souls and whole human beings   It is in that meeting of our hearts that we truly can see the Divine in each other.

But we need to slow down.  That’s the thing. It’s simple, but not easy.  For any of us.

What makes it easier to remember to slow down?  Often it is community and learning.

https://jewishmindful.org/events/

Would love to see you.

Many blessings,

Rabbi Jill Zimmerman

* For the full article by Professor Safi: http://www.onbeing.org/blog/the-disease-of-being-busy/7023