Timeless: Rav Kook on Currents of Teshuva

The currents of particular and general penitence rush along. They are like the streams of flame on the surface of the sun, which is in an unceasing struggle to break out and ascend, and endow life to countless worlds and numberless creatures.

One is powerless to absorb the multitude of varying colors that emanate from this great sun that shines on all the worlds, the sun of penitence. They are so many, they come with such mighty sweep, with such wondrous speed.

They come from the Source of life itself, for Whom time is only a limited expression of His providential design.

The individual and the collective soul, the world soul, the soul of all realms of being, cries out like a fierce lioness in anguish for total perfection, for an ideal form of existence, and we feel the pain, and it purges us.

Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, Translated by Ben Zion Bokser, Paulist Press 1978