Omer, Day One

Tonight is One.

First steps are hard for me. It is so much easier to stay stuck in one place, unmoving. Even the pain of that - the pain of stuckness, the pain of sameness and stasis - all that seems so much easier than change.

I see infinity with every step, and it terrifies me, overwhelms until I can't move. I wait. I watch. I fear.

You get the picture.

Here's the thing that saved my life, heard at a time I needed it, when I was so mired in my infinity that I was drowning in it and I could barely breathe - I am not responsible for infinity. I am not even responsible for the Whole Picture, the Everythingness of my actions, the sum total of all the rest of my life, here at the starting line of whatever journey of change or discovery or unknown leap of fucking faith: Pray to God, and row towards shore.

One step. That's all I need do. One. The infinity, the everythingness that I hold so tightly - so that my back is bent and my fingers cramp with the strain of seeing that first step turn into that first mile into that first day into that first misstep into that muddy quagmire of mistakes and the unknown - 

All of that is (as a dear friend once told with, with all the love in her heart) is none of my damned business. All I have, all I can ever do, is take one step, the one that is right in front of me.

What happens from there? No idea. That's the deal - one step, whether I am inching along or racing by in my seven league boots - that One is filled with my faith (and my fear) - faith that I will be able to face whatever it is that stares me down in hat moment, faith that I know I will be ok - not that everything will magically go my way whenever I take that one step, but that I will survive it, with as much grace as I allow.

Some days I am more graceful than others. But it only happens when I put one foot in front of the other.

So tonight begins the Counting of the Omer. Whatever the ancients did with it, I choose to honor this mitzvah, this commandment, by taking a spiritual journey through these next 49 days, to discover what it is that I carry and hold on to as we all move from the Narrow Places of our slavery to the wide open spaces of the Wilderness and freedom - and binding, and grace, and community and revelation.

It's an awesome journey - literally - but however awesome, however rich and difficult and energizing this journey may be, it all begins with 

One. 

Tonight we count One of the Omer.

#countingthe omer #passover #journeytofreedom

Forever of Us

Maimonides and Rashi;

Spinoza, too,
and Buber.

I saw them,

just over there,

talking the deep talk

of this and that,
while the Partisans
sang drinking songs
and laughed at
the rumbling,
booming gravitas
of God's own mountain song.

Miriam tapped her timbrels,
in time to the thunder,
calling us all to dance -
Sarah led it,
and Deborah
and Ruth
and Yetta, my grandmother,
who could not go to school
because she had no shoes,
but she danced
that wild and weary
dance, holding hands
with Esther
and Golda.
We all danced,
and trembled.
I could barely hear
that tinny counterpoint
that threaded itself
just beneath the
deep and blaring bass
that shivered the air under
the deep bones of the Mountain.

Let Aaron and the
others play with
their tinker toy gold!
The rest of us -
the long chain of us
that stretched into
the forever of us -
we could feel it:
the fierce and jubilant
joy of it,
the not-yet-but-
almost of it.

And then the words came.
Oh! they came
like rain, like riddles,
Like ropes of silk,
And caught some inner light -
Some spark left over from creation -
And flowed like water over rocks;
All those words of binding and gift and grace,
They carried us,
And caught us,
And led us,
The long forever line of us,
The words that created
the All of us,
led us
Home.

the Light of It

Roots so deep

Grasping and gripping
Tightly
Drinking deeply
Spreading widely
Down and down
Back farther than imagination
Deeper and Deeper
Into the heart of it
The soul of it
And farther still
Across oceans
And deserts
And mountains
A mountain
Yes: that mountain
That trembled and quaked
And stood over us
Through thunder and darkness
Wind-whipped darkness
Through parched and sere darkness
Waiting
Under that mountain
Yes: that mountain
That holy, lonely mountain
With the multitudes under it
And the one upon it
And the gift
The obligation
and commandment
And in that darkness
Light
A gift
(An obligation)
(A commandment)
Light
Our light
Life
Our lives
From one to another
To another and
Another still
Deeper than mountains
Stronger than trees
Farther than imagination
To the heart of it
The soul of it
The light of it