Thursday, February 28, 2013

The Holiness of Broken Things: a poem for parashat Ki Tisa

I carry my brokenness with me
It is holy--
as holy as my breath,
my heart,
my wholeness.

It is a part of me, these
scattered pieces
of shattered longing
and battered dreams.
My sins.
All of them.
I carry them--
all of them;
All these broken things
that bend me and bow me,
together with my wholeness,
these holy things.
Idols to my shame,
wrapped in gold and
adorned in abandon.
I fed the fires of that sacred forge
with fear and guilt,
and the altars ran slick with salted tears.
I offered--
offer--
the broken pieces as
my sin offering,
for they are holy,
and I carry them with me,
together with my wholeness.

I carry my brokenness with me--
all my sins
and shame
and salted tears,
and I place them
together with my wholeness
on the sacred altars
holy, holy, holy.
They twine together in red and gold flames,
Broken
and Whole
offered together
and returned to me ,
Whole
and Broken--
Holy still,
carried together
until I reach the next altar.







2 comments:

Laura said...

This is exquisite… thank you.

Lea D. said...

In Berkeley, California, yesterday, February 23, 2019, at Shabbat at a Conservative synagogue, I attended a beautiful and moving Bat Mitzvah. The mother of the Bat Mitzvah talked about the broken and the whole tablets, and about how we can be both broken and yet whole, and more on this topic. She talked about carrying the broken tablets along with the whole ones. So a similar interpretation to yours, I think.