Hallelu Yah, Praise The One Without End

Crisp October Boston morning after a wonderful visit with my beloved cousin Linda.
Blessings of Being Awake: Sometimes being awake is not fun. I wrote this poem after a Sunday of being the only chaplain in a hospital in Greensboro, NC. It was a day full of many challenges. When I reread the words of the poem, visual and visceral memories arise, from the new born in the NICU whose mother sat beside the incubator, very confused as she watched her child struggle to hold onto life to an elderly woman whose husband sat beside her crying as she took her last breath. At the time, I was more easily using the more familiar word for The One Without End, god. Today, this word feels flat and I want a more active word for the Never Ending Love. Also, at the time, I was finding again my identity as a Jew. I was discovering that the word I said in Hebrew, Halleluyah, was also being said by my sister and brother Christians, Praise God! I was living in the in the bible belt where these words rolled of the tongues of the people around me. And I felt those words were their language and if I said them I would be less Jewish. I laugh as I write this thinking that we are such funny people with our small minds. And I felt uncomfortable speaking their language, especially with the same intensity. In writing the words of this poem, I was getting used to their language, trying it on for size, making it mine, learning from them what I did not think that I knew; that The Rachamana, the Compassionate One, the One I desperately wanted to know, had saved my life for some purpose I have yet to understand.

Praise God for creating home
Even when we cannot find it
Praise God for bringing us home
Even when we do not know when we get there
Praise God for spitting us out
Even when we are not ready
Praise God for catching us
Even into awkward hands
Praise God for each breath, tear, sigh
Even when we are embarrassed by the emoting
Praise God for the voice that sings your praise
Even when out of tune
Praise God for every life you take
Even when the anger exacerbates the pain
Praise God for each life you give
Even when we cannot appreciate your miracle
Praise God for the resiliency modeled
Even when we cannot get unstuck
Praise God for the vulnerability we often experience
Even when we are shamed into silence
Praise God, Praise God, Praise God!
Why not praise God
Better than damming the pain in my heart
for all those whose grief I witnessed today.

Blessings of the Vav: AND I will always have another chance to make another decision, to re-look at the decisions I have made. Hebrew Wisdom teaches me that I always have the Right of Return, tshuvah, returning to my true self and to be true to my souls's journey. I want to continue to grow the mochine d'gadlute, the big mind, to gain perspective, to give myself the time to learn what an amazing soul lives within me.