"If our hearts are filled with love, our minds with accurate planning, our hands with steadiness and strength, our souls with openness, then any act we do will be a mitzvah, will strengthen the great Web of all connections, will make God more fully God. And any act of connection-making that we do will enliven life.
"It is a mitzvah for each of us to face the dark and terrible shadows within her/his own heart, and make sure they do not harm and terrify another being; it is a m'chayeh to search out the sacred root of their fearfulness, integrate it into our whole self, and so to clarify our hearts that they can serve the One in truthfulness.
"It is a mitzvah for us to live in peace with all our brothers and sisters, and a m'chayeh to weave their stories and our own into a great Torah of wisdom.
"It is a mitzvah to tolerate the different strands of Jewish peoplehood, and a m'chayeh to draw from each its own deep mitzvah to enhance the new life-giving pattern of the Jewish people.
"It is a mitzvah to make sure the poor and the outcast get fed, and a m'chayeh to make sure that all have the power to help shape the future and make their own prosperity.
"It is a mitzvah to protect each living species and each pattern of the chemistry of earth, and a m'chayeh to understand their intertwining and celebrate the wholeness of all life.
"It is a mitzvah to dedicate our lives to shaping integrity within our selves, or to nurturing love within a family, or to making peace and justice in society, or to protecting the planetary life-web; it is a m'chayeh to shape our lives so that we do all these.
"It is a mitzvah to expect messiah in our own lifetimes, to wait with utter faithfulness, and a m'chayeh not just to wait but to walk each present moment in a path of life that comes ever closer to the Messianic pattern.
"To experience Anokhi, I, in Its/My fullness, is to shatter all expectations and assumptions, to connect us with the All and with the Whole, and to fill all the deadly, deadening places in the world with life.
"We have lived long enough in the era when we understood the process of Creation as Division: Dividing light from darkness, land from sea, plant from animal, human from earth, man from woman. In that world, every relationship between the separated beings has been a wrestle — close, intimate, and yet a struggle.
"Let us enter the era when we can affirm these distinctions — and yet Create a world by Connecting. The era when across each separation, our beings can see more clearly what connects us, can take our differences as part of the delightful music of the universe.
"Let us move from the Wrestle to a Dance."