At the urging of a harp: a poem for Elul (#blogelul)

I stand here,
ready to begin
again,
to follow this road
of dust, that stretches
before me, but I cannot
see where it bends
and splits and
turns in on itself.
I have walked this
road before,
seven times seven,
and then seven more:
brought here
returned here
again and again
and yet the road is still
mystery.

David's harp urges me
and the horns of Abraham's
dilemma push me,
and Jacob's ladder is crowded
with angels. They move aside,
not without some attitude,
so I may stumble up those
narrow rungs; still -
elevated though I am,
there is only dust
and a blaze of Glory
in the far distance.

I am meant to follow,
with open hands
and open heart,
to feel the quickening
of my blood
that moves in equal time
with my shame
and my joy, my fear and
love, my grief and my ecstasy,
So that i may claim them
all, as they have
claimed me;
so that i may dance
at the gates
and be whole.

Holding in the Name of God

There is a moment
(there is always a moment)
a moment of my breath
taken in great
huge -
   not sobs,
   not gasps -
though it has been that
(surely has been that!)
often has been that,
this breathing of mine;
but this breathing of mine
is not that.

It is wholly,
Completely
Different.

Not gentle,
this breath, but
Full -
Full as life, and
Out to the edges
of me, the wholeness of me
and beyond, just beyond:
full, and just fuller still,
Not gentle -
but full and
still.

And I held it there,
this breath -
this expanding
expansive
outward
inward
held
breath,

Held it for a moment
that was eternal
an infinite moment
of holding  breath -

Only to exhale.
Not gentle,
but out to the edges
and full -
an exhale of
suddenness,
of a moment,
endless and still,
and I was -
in that space of infinite
beginning and endless ending
Complete.

04 Tishrei 5774: Wholeness

I am fascinated by the idea of wholeness. I think this is true because I have felt so broken for so long. It is a desire of my heart-- to feel whole. to be complete.

When I dance among the ladders with the angels, it is my brokenness that I carry with me. Like Luria's Light, I was whole once, and then shattered into an infinity of pieces. I couldn't possibly find all of those myriad pieces, let alone bring them back together, to the center (my center). No healing, no wholeness. Just brokenness. Forever.

It is no surprise that I live a very fragmented life. There are an infinity of boxes cluttering my head, gathering dust.  I stuff my shame and my sins in them, my less-than-ness and my fears. I lock them up tight, with rusty chains and bits of string and hide them into little-used and dusty corridors, where they lie in shadow under the flickering lights. All of them are stacked precariously, haphazardly with seemingly little thought to where they sit.

Trouble is, no matter how well I swear that I seal them, they leak. they seep and ooze and get all sticky and messy. Even my brokenness is broken.

So it was with no small amount of surprise, sitting in morning services last Shabbat, that I realizes that I this may no longer be quite so true. My brokenness may not be beyond repair. The dream of wholeness-- of completion and and connection-- they are meant for me. Even for me. I sat in that service, surrounded by friends and strangers, sound and light, prayer and benediction, I stood in this holy and sacred moment-- and I let go. And in that moment, when I gathered all my brokenness-- the moldy boxes and the jagged-edged slivers of glass, and released them all-- I was made whole.

And here's the thing, as I write this essay at 36,000 feet: I am not broken. I am whole. And this, I think, is always true. I think. I want to believe this.Just as we are always at the Gates, we are always redeemed-- we are always whole. It's all the stuff, all the boxes and frayed rope that we stack and store and carry with us that whispers to us (to me) of brokenness. I carry it with me; it is mine to give back.

For today, for this moment, I choose to put my brokenness aside, to breathe in wholeness and feel complete. For this moment, of lightness and freedom, I will dance in joyous wonder, in the palm of God's hand.

I offer this poem, written last February, in honor of the parasha Ki Tisa. While I know that there is holiness in broken things-- there is holiness and joy and freedom in wholeness, and for that I am grateful. 

The Holiness of Broken Things

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.

There are several other pieces you can find on my blog that explore the topic of Brokenness; you can find them here: What I Brought  and my riff on Luria's midrash, An Early Winter's Tale

27 Elul 5773: Intend

I had intended...

Wait. Let me start again, this time in the present. I intend...

Ugh. I have no idea what I intend, what I had intended, what I will have intended.

What I know is that I love the English pluperfect-- past, present and future, all rolled into one. Even more than the pluperfect tense,  I love that in Hebrew, we consider not necessarily past, present or future, but completed versus not completed. Action over time, complete versus intended.

The holiness of completion and the grammar of intention.

They are intricately-- intimately-- connected, by time, by action, by desire. It is not enough to want. It is not enough, even, to do. The rabbis tell us that in order to satisfy the mitzvah of hearing the shofar on Rosh Hashanah, I must have intended to do so. I must consciously be in a place where I will hear it. If I merely happen to walk by a synagogue and hear the sharp burst of tekiyah, I will not have satisfied this commandment.

I strive for completion, for the mindfulness of my intention. I intend to fully engage, in my Judaism, in my continued and continuing conversation with God, in finding a path to wholeness that shelters me and the world entire.

My actions mostly support this. Sigh. My intention, though, can be-- incomplete. I am subject to the laws of unintended consequences. My grammar can be faulty in this. I am less than holy, though I am human; no more, no less. I have hurt others, through my thoughtlessness. I have been unkind in my haste. I am unforgiving in my passion and self-righteousness. I am cruel in my fear. I am cynical in my doubt. I do not intend to be these things. My intentions are (mostly) good. Please God, don't let me be misunderstood-- least of all, by me.

One of my favorite of the midrash is one of creation. There are ten things, the rabbis tell us (except when there are seven) (because the rabbis can spin many plates at the same time)-- there are ten things that were created before God ever created the world. Depending upon the rabbi and the midrash, these included the rainbow, and the burning bush and the ram's horn. There were others, like manna and Miriam's well that sustained in the desert. The greatest of these, though, to my mind, is t'shuvah.

How awesome is God! How great is the Creator of All, to know that there would be a disconnect between intent and result? How breathtakingly, achingly divine, to understand that before creating the heavens and earth, we needed to have a path back, a way to return? We will sin, but we will not be abandoned. The gates of t'shuvah will always be open for us, whenever we approach them, whenever we walk through. 

Be holy, we are told, because God is holy, and we are b'tzelem elohim: in the image of God. But we are human, and so, for all our mindfulness, for all our drive towards completion and wholeness, we will fall short. We will hurt the people we love, we will be indifferent to the needs of others, we will turn away the stranger in our midst. even when we intend otherwise. 

Just as God intends for us to find the way back, to return, to stand, once again at the Gates that are thrown wide (or openned only a small crack)-- we will find forgiveness, we will find God, we will find each other, ever and always, there at the Gates. And in the very instant that we step through, in that breath, that heartbeat, that intention-- there is neither past, nor present nor future. There is only wholeness.

The holiness of completion, the grammar of intention. 

26 Elul 5773: Hope

I knew I would love The John Laroquette show from the very first episode: a cynical, sarcastic, self-deprecating, trying-to-get/stay-sober alcoholic who had bottomed out after losing everything and was desperately trying to piece his life back together without getting too attached to it, without allowing himself to care too much about it.

Not that I identified in any way to this character setting. Not that I appreciated the gallows humor a little too well. At all. Actually, what drew me in, what made me exhale in easy recognition was a sign that hung on the wall of John's office:

This is a dark ride.

Five words that captured my life, framed everything, in perfect context. You must know (by now) that one of my mottoes is "Why use ten words when a hundred will do?" But there, hanging on the (fake) wall of the (fake) bus station's (fake) night manager's (fake) office was this five-word sign. A sign of absolute and immutable truth: this is a dark ride.

Angels could have sung in twenty-severn part harmony, while demons and dybbuks danced a tarantella and God tossed confetti on the lot of them. My Truth, writ in fake Gothic font on signboard and hung in all its pixellated glory, on the walls of a set for a TV show.

Life before hope. Life, when hope was a dirty little secret, an impotent exercise in futility and failure. Pandora would have been better served had she shut the box lid on Hope's tiny gossamer fairy wings when she had the chance.

And, okay, maybe not life without hope. More life with a hope that was misplaced and passive. I hoped for all the wrong things-- that you would save me, that God would heal me, that life would magically work in my favor. That I would be happy. It's not that these were bad hopes. It's how I went about hoping. 

What I did was exactly nothing. I did not ask, nor pray, nor act, nor choose. I sent my hope out into the universe (my tiny universe of one, that shut out light and air and the voice of God), whispered and weightless, and I waited. I waited to be struck whole. I waited to be made happy. I waited to be saved from myself. With every whispered prayer for hope I released, I got sadder and angrier and more self-righteously justified in my pain and loneliness. 

What I didn't understand-- what took me halfway to forever to learn-- was that hope is an action. I am responsible and obligated to participate in my redemption. You will never save me. You can offer me strength and shine a light on my path-- you can even lend me some hope. But you will not save me. You will not make me happy. You don't have that power (of course, it also means you cannot make me sad, or angry). Those are all inside jobs. 

God will not strike me whole, heal by brokenness, relieve me of my despair. I won't even get into the circular and didactic argument of "Well, God could if S/He wanted..." That's not the point, not in my belief set. I can dance in the palm of God's hand, and find respite and release (and I have). My faith and my prayers change me, give me grace to walk forward in my life, face whatever is in front of me-- the good stuff and the bad. 

Pray to God, but row towards shore. Hope is an action. I have to hope with my feet. If I merely watch from the sidelines of my life, waiting for hope to kick in, life will be an eternally dark ride. Hope, as an action, as a prayer, lifts me and fills me and allows me not just to leap, but to soar.