In this silence
I must find You Lord
All I have are the longings and the desire
All I want is the certainty of You
It would make this journey so much easier
After my trauma especially
To help me make sense of why and how
And what is being asked of me now
I feel so inadequate
So ordinary
So unfit to have survived
If only
A message
Something
Yes You do speak to me
Through holy angels such as Dad "Uman is out!"
My sponsor; such judicious timing!!
My holy children; who inspire me
My wife; whose Chesed is unparallelled
Oi those nights she stayed up with me!
Throught the writings of the Tzaddik who understood my
darkest soul
Through the sobs of Bienenstock in the hineni Uman's
musaf
Yes I want more
Of You
In the very void we are asked to cross over and see You
despite...
This "challal hapanui" is so real; an empty void
But I fall short
I fail here
I am no Tzaddik.
I do hear the silence on a summer's day in the corn fields
The wind rustling the tips of the golden sheaves
And the leaves play a symphony of green being conducted
by the breeze
The grass even feels soft to my barefeet
The lapping water on the boat's side in the middle of the
quiet lake
Here I do feel Your Presence
And when a patient says "the pain is gone!" your magic is
delivered
When a good shiur is over and my students connect, the
glow in their eyes
The "aha" of connecting with truth, You are definitely there
In my tears and broken heart when I feel I am alone in this
world and the only one who senses the insanity of "out
there"...
But mostly in the humdrum the routine there is silence
In the silence
In the absence of You
In the suffering of all broken bones
In the senseless violences in Your name
In the pietistic Holier-Than Thou scholarship of your
sacred texts
In the hair-splitting legalisms masquerading as Spirit
I still must see You
Even in the darker side of my own soul
My betrayals and lies
The deceipts and indifference
The sloth and laziness
In all this I must learn to see You.
Help me to see through
The materiality and silence
To hear You
And see the message encoded in reality
Help me feel You in my life
In my ordinariness
In my mediocrity
In my grandiosity
In my brokeness
In my rote-ridden halachic rituals
In the void
The silence of the expanse
Not a sound
Deafening
Please hear the screams
