Kook and Intention

here's a little diddy from a translation of Abraham Isaac Kook, Lights of Holiness

The Renaissance of Intention

Humanity must go through extensive development before it will recognize the great value of the intention and the will, of the hidden idealism in the depths of the soul, which continually adorns itself in an array of new colors that disclose some of its treasure and majestic greatness.

All the great moral deeds in the world among individuals and societies are only small expressions, tiny sparks of the great torch of intention when it has reached a state of perfection.

Intention is everything. The revival of intention is the revival of the world.

Prayer with intention, the affirmation of God's unity with intention, the commandment and the duty performed with intention, the direction and development of life with intention, and intention in itself, as a rational and moral concept -- it's beauty and majesty, its splendor and holiness, its endless unfolding, its divine aspects -- and intention when it is expressed in letters, words, each letter and dot of which stands fro vast oceans of life, will aspiration, and enlightenment, of potency and courage, spirituality and nobility; and intention when incarnated in hold corporate beings, pure idealistic people, for whom equity and good, in practical affairs and in morals, is the whole joy of life; the living, creative intention -- what a luminous phenomenon this is in the world.

And the divine mystery comes and links the soul stirred by intention with the sources of life's aspirations, with their ultimate roots, and the light of the En Sof, the light of the living God, continues to stream forth, reaching every thinker and man of action.

Intention is where action is conceived. And the higher intention, the intention that is permeated with the divine life, embraces every thought of peace, of the battle for righteousness and equity, every assertion of wisdom, of a good and desirable order of things. Every act that perfects the word is embraced in it.