Book One
This morning at 5 a.m., when I opened my eyes, God said: 'Go read the Torah now. Begin at the beginning'. And I knew what was coming. God hovering over the deep, the first day. And I went into the alcove between my husband’s office and the stairs where he keeps all the books that are, for one reason or another, sacred to him - books about business and architecture; books about meditation and education; and a selection labeled Jewish Books, that includes two copies of the Torah, which our children received, one each, from different rabbis.
To get the book, I had to peel back the layer of green wire mesh that my husband had, for reasons of his own, bent into a protective veil over the shelf.
I took hold of the spine and I pulled.
And down came the Torah,
which, though it fit comfortably into my hand,
was heavier than I expected.
I carried it from the back of the house to the front.
I placed it on the kitchen island, and
I circled it several times,
as I made tea and put four organic, free-range brown eggs up to boil.
And I sat with the Torah as I ate my breakfast,
considering it: bound in burgundy leather, ripe as a berry on a living vine.
What I mean is, I stared at it,
the waiting wet pond of my people,
a sponge soaked in wine and tears and blood.
Tradition.
Eventually,
I picked it up.
I threw back the cover
- wildly, but at the same time, I did it casually,
as if I didn’t really care,
as if I hadn’t been paddling around its circumference for years.
There was a note, handwritten, in the front cover: something about curses, having to do with the Torah portion that my son had pretended to study but which he had really just memorized from an audiotape, which my friend, Marla, had recorded for him.
The important thing here,
at least to me,
was the signature of the 34-year old rabbi
who had introduced me
— during a weekly Torah study circle,
to the dueling stories of creation in the first pages.
The rabbi who tended, for several weeks, the tender root of my connection to the soil of my people. The rabbi who, as soon as our bible study class was complete, left the rabbinate to become a psychotherapist. (I'm sure it had nothing to do with me. I'm sure that, it's just a coincidence that this happened a month after I entered his office and closed the door and handed him my spiritual heart-- all shot through and bleeding--and said, "Please." I'm sure he was already thinking about it.)
How DID the world begin? We pondered.
Adam and Eve in the garden
or God hovering over the mud-hive and the swirling, leech infested brew?
Who could say?
And even if we could say, does it matter
exactly when or where or how it happened?
It’s all God.
It’s all here, being and doing and becoming
And every bit of it juicy and dripping with meaning.
Begin at the beginning, God said,
and each day we do.
Book Two
As I write this, at a cafe,
I stop, from time to time, to look out the window - an activity which, once, in a writing group, someone told me a poet must never do. She said we'd lose our thread. We’d lose our way. Poets, she explained (as we all looked out the window) are easily distracted.
Book Three
I come to the page to talk about the broken place. I come to capture the rush, of the words, that willy-nilly come tumbling and crashing over rocks that will not move. I come to quiet the beehive of busy babble in my mind. I come to find the silence, though nothing terrifies me more.
Book Four
Outside, a little black dog who looks exactly like TOTO is barking. He is running back and forth in little stripes along the lawn, just playing with life, unaware that up above, a poet is looking out the window.
He reminds me of my son, who used to run like that, circling the edge of the playground, his little chin eagerly up, wagging the tail that all human children keep hidden in their underpants lest anyone notice how in love they so easily fall with everything.
Book Five
This morning, when I mentioned, on Twitter, that I believe that God is in everything, someone sent me this message: @AmyOscar Only 1 true God. The God of Abraham... And all eyes are on Israel..Read What in the world is going on by Dr. jerimah good read.
I closed my laptop.
I opened it.
I stared at the tweet.
Seriously?
No one is listening. We are all just waiting our turn to bleat out something we heard someone else say.
I do it, too.
I fall in love with a line of poetry
a snippet of scripture
or the conversation at the next table.
I want to write it down.
I want to pretend that it’s mine.
I don't. But I want to.
And this is Book Six
where I confess that I’m afraid
that I’ll forget
what I was going to say,
afraid that some bright word opportunity will flit by and I will be looking out the window.
Which reminds me of my mother: the shyness, the easy distraction and the brilliance that gets lost when she gropes around inside herself for a word . . . or a rope or a foothold or whatever metaphor she uses to get hold of herself.
And, for reasons I cannot this morning explain, this reminds me of Susan Boyle, the poor tortured, awkward, not ready for prime time singer who, 14 years ago, bravely stepped onto the stage of “Britain’s Got Talent.”
She opened her mouth. She sang. They all stood up.
They will tear her apart. I thought.
And they did.
Months later, on the day when Susan Boyle did not win “Britain’s Got Talent,” 218 people were lost in a plane crash at sea. Also, that day, on the other side of the globe, a man opened fire in the House of God and killed a man who performed abortions.
I was driving to the cafe when I heard,
on the radio, all three stories stirred together in a muddy disaster cocktail.
And then,
at the end
of the broadcast
they played a clip
in which someone said, “I just hope this doesn’t give liberals a way to paint all pro-life activists as terrorists.”
And I shouted at the radio,
“We are ALL terrorists!"
Shouting at the radio is a lot like writing poetry or blogging. You have a great deal to say, and you say it—or shout it—and no one hears.
Poor Susan Boyle. ”It’s unconscionable,” Simon Cowell told her. “What the media have done to you,” as if he wasn’t one of them. She lives with her cats. She’s never been kissed. What did he THINK would happen?
Plain. Frumpy, they called her. Bunch of bullies in a schoolyard, circling the tongue-tied singer from the little village who, through the sheer force of the beauty of that voice (and her compelling and quirky story) got herself 350 million views on YouTube.
“I would hate to be Susan Boyle tonight,” Cowell said, before she went back on that stage and, after not winning, collapsed in her hotel room and was rushed to the hospital with “exhaustion and a nervous breakdown.”
Book Seven
See, I knew I'd get distracted. I knew I'd lose my thread. I get this from my mother who will interrupt even the most important conversation to gasp, “Oh look.” There’s a little yellow bird!"
Sometimes it’s a butterfly, or the kitten’s caught a leaf; and I’m sure that if a lily happened to be bursting through the bracken, this is the moment when my mother, a poet who insists on looking out the window, would notice it.
I found this poym in a file folder while I was looking for something else — which, come to think of it, is also how I wrote it. I was looking for a God and a faith I could relate to.
Just as I have been losing and finding my poyms, I lose and find my faith.
I find my lost faith in nature — and sometimes in poetry.
I found this lost poem while searching for something to submit for a writing class.
The class was long (3.5 hours) and wearying but also deeply satisfying. It was deep time - time enough for every person to speak their story into the circle. Time enough to share the childhood and adult experiences which had been important enough, life-changing enough to bring the writer to the page. Time enough for each writer’s voice to sing out, distinct and specific, shading the work with their unique way of seeing and feeling.
When I read “In the Beginning” I could feel its power and authority. It made me feel witnessed in this shy-proud way, as if I’d been caught being myself — and the part of me who has always been a poet (or, as my mother would have called me, a ‘poyt’) shone a little brighter, stood a little taller. I could feel her inside of me, quietly glowing.
What a gift that class was. (Note to readers who also like to write: We are going to try something like this in 2024. Let me know if you’re interested.)
What to read next?
The Book of Splendor - a work in progress. Watch me write a book. Right before your eyes.
I am not going to finish everything before I die. Neither are you.
Allow me to introduce you to a friend. The Perfectionist and her alter-ego, The One Who Blesses
May your days be restful, joyful and full of discovery.
xxoo
Amy
And aren’t we all so very lucky that you found it. I love it.
When I can't sleep, I quietly watch a series about the development of life on our planet. I had no idea that there had been 4 complete extinctions over 500 million years, the latest being the meteor that annihilated the dinosaurs. Mostly due to greenhouse gasses caused by eruptions. When I read your thoughts about where it all began, my question now is did it? Did it ever begin? Does it matter? It's all God. All of it. I often fall asleep to that thought.