Poetry Corner: Listen
Timeless poetry for quieting
How do the lines in First Kings speak to us today? We are still distracted by the big and the flashy. Sometimes we are wounded by disaster. But how do we respond? How do we find a calm center from which to move forward? Perhaps we must learn to listen to that gentle murmuring to find the center and, then, the strength to move forward.
Listen
Rabbi Seth F. Oppenheimer
Shhhhhh.
Listen.
Listen.
The storm is raging around you,
Wind uprooting trees,
Crushing houses,
Flooding the world,
Taking lives.
For all its power,
The storm is not G-D.
Listen,
If you can listen,
If you can pick out the silent murmuring,
You can withstand the wind,
The storm,
The sorrow
The anguish.
Listen.
The ground shivers.
The firm certainty on which we have built our foundations,
Shifts,
Cracks,
Thrusts upward and destroys that which rests upon it.
The earthquake
Shatters mountains,
Shatters lives,
The world is a wreck of fallen structures
Choking dust.
For all its power,
The earthquake is not G-D.
Listen.
If you can listen,
If you can distinguish the still small voice,
You will know
The earthquake will pass.
The ground will be still
You will rebuild what can be rebuilt and mourn what cannot.
Listen.
The fire roars,
Consumes.
All becomes ash:
The most ancient of trees
The home of many years
The memories imprinted on photographs.
Gone,
Ashes in the maelstrom of fire.
For all its power,
The fire is not G-D.
Listen.
If you can listen,
If you can strive to hear with your blistered heart,
The quiet hush of infinite sound,
You will be able to move on,
To remember but not dwell,
To be the green shoot climbing through the blowing grey ash.
Praise the quiet voice that drives us to find meaning.
Thank the enfolding presence that somehow comforts.
Listen
And in listening
Find hope and strength.Rabbi Seth is a member of Yerusha’s Institute for Deep Ecumenism, which is producing our Threshold series. The first Threshold gathering is Thursday, June 25th, discussing Jesus and the Disinherited by Rev. Howard Thurman. Get the book today and register to join us!
Crossing the Threshold Together
We’re nearly at the end of the Omer period and our spring fundraiser. Thank you so much to all who’ve made it such a rousing success! If you haven’t yet given, it’s not too late to add your voice to the chorus of support for Yerusha’s work. And check out additional programs at the end of this post. -Reb David
June Threshold offering: Jesus and the Disinherited
Last year, the Deep Ecumenism group Reb Nadya and I have been running for twelve years took up Howard Thurman’s Jesus and the Disinherited. This book changed everything for us.
 |
|