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Everything Is A Relationship

August 19, 2013 by Patrick Beaulier

intimacy-online-relationships1

The universe is pretty boring. One look at the periodic table and you’ll know everything. These elements make up the whole show. You and I are a stew of those elements. So is a chair, an asteroid, the fossil of an extinct dinosaur and your breakfast cereal.

The reason we have something instead of nothing is a complex tale, but the bottom line is that the laws of nature began to form right after the Big Bang: a moment of intense pressure release where all the stuff in the periodic table, the stuff that makes you, me and everything in between, came bursting forth. What we see today is the result of that chaotic ballet.

Everything in the universe is the same, and yet, we have incredible diversity. Solids, liquids, gases, plasmas, life, inanimate objects, forces of nature, poets, artists, madmen and everything else comes from the same old boring junk that hangs on a chemistry teacher’s wall. What makes it all different is not what it’s made of, but what is done with it.

Why are things the way they are? It’s not the stuff, but it’s the forces behind the stuff that gives it substance. An apple appears harder than water because of the way gravity plays with the molecules which make up the juicy fruit. And a person is more complex than a butterfly because millions of years of evolution have taken that butterfly and that human in two different directions.

But all of this, in the end, is about relationships.

What we think of as an atom is held together by a relationship of forces to protons, electrons and neutrons. What holds all that together are subatomic particles called quarks. And what we think holds all that together is a bunch of strings, or perhaps multiverses. We don’t know the answer to that yet, but a lot of people smarter than me are working on it.

What we do know is that everything in the universe is held together by relationships of stuff to one another.

If everything is held together through relationships, and we as people are made of the same “everything”, then what about our relationships? What holds us together? We know what the laws of nature are. So what are the laws of human nature? And is it really all that different? Could the same stuff that binds the universe together bind us together as well? And what do we call that?

Let’s talk more about this Friday night, August 23rd at 5PM EDT at OneShul.org. For more info, check us out on Facebook.

Rabbi Patrick is the director of PunkTorah and OneShul. When he’s not waxing poetic here at PunkTorah, he can be found playing in rock bands, officiating weddings and searching for the best cappuccino on the planet.

Filed Under: Rants Tagged With: convert to judaism, convert to judaism online, darshan yeshiva, Judaism, online conversion, online synagogue, patrick "aleph" beaulier, patrick aleph, punktorah, rabbi beaulier, rabbi patrick aleph beaulier, relationships, science and religion, spirituality

Cheshvan: Shinui Ma’aseh Challenge

October 17, 2012 by Ketzirah

Cheshvan, which starts at sundown October 16, 2012, is a month free of holidays. Because of this, Judaism often sees this as a sad or barren month. However, there is another school of thought that I want to embrace and share with the PunkTorah community. This school of thought says that Cheshvan is a month to take on new practices because there are no holidays to do.

I propose that we, the PunkTorah community, take on a Cheshvan challenge. What if we, together, use this month to make our lives and the world a better place? What if we pull forward a concept from the Days of Awe: Shinui Ma’aseh (שי

Filed Under: Community Member Blogs, Judaism & Belief Tagged With: challenge, Cheshvan, convert to judaism, convert to judaism online, darshan yeshiva, Jewish, Judaism, online conversion, patrick "aleph" beaulier, patrick aleph, punktorah, rabbi beaulier, rabbi patrick aleph beaulier, spirituality

Lili Kalish Gersch: Traditionally Jewish vs. Being Affiliated

July 25, 2012 by Patrick Beaulier

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6l6_3SNjS8

Lili Kalish Gersch, Director of Literary, Music, and Dance Programming at Washington DC JCC, talks about how she identifies as a Jew and what Jewish affiliations mean to her.

Visit us at www.theg-dproject.org

Filed Under: Judaism & Belief, Podcasts & Videos, The G-d Project Videos Tagged With: affliated, belief, creation, faith, god project, hashem, Jewish, jewish culture, jewish god, jewish identity, jewish learning, Judaism, Lili Kalish Gersch, orthodox, punk torah, punktorah, spirituality, the g-d project, the god project, theg-dproject, traditional, Washington DC JCC

Julie Meredith: Passing on Belief in God

June 27, 2012 by Patrick Beaulier

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ms7BkTo_b0

Julie Meredith talks about her interfaith marriage and how she and her husband will bring God into the lives of their children.

Visit us at www.theg-dproject.org

Filed Under: Podcasts & Videos, The G-d Project Videos Tagged With: belief, children and judaism, faith, god project, hashem, interfaith marriage, Jewish, jewish children, jewish culture, jewish god, jewish identity, jewish learning, Judaism, Julie Meredith, punk torah, punktorah, raising interfaith children, spirituality, the g-d project, the god project, theg-dproject, Washington DC JCC

Julie Meredith: Coming Together Interfaith

May 30, 2012 by Patrick Beaulier

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lll7Kr67MxE

Julie Meredith talks about her interfaith marriage, and that fact that if two people believe strongly in God, it brings them together.

Visit us at www.theg-dproject.org

Filed Under: Judaism & Belief, Podcasts & Videos, The G-d Project Videos Tagged With: belief, faith, god project, hashem, interfaith marriage, Jewish, jewish culture, jewish god, jewish identity, jewish learning, Judaism, Julie Meredith, punk torah, punktorah, spirituality, the g-d project, the god project, theg-dproject, Washington DC JCC

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