Ayecha? Where are you? An Elul Reckoning
30 August 2022
Photo by David Underland on Unsplash
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Ayecha? Where are you?*
I am here.
No. You are not.
Look over there!*
That won’t work.
Where are you?
Ok, I am hiding.
Where?
In the baggage.*
In my baggage.
I heard your cry.*
I hoped you would.
Stand up, speak.
I cannot.
I am cowering.
The world is burning.
The oceans are rising.*
I am paralysed.
There is nothing new under the sun.*
This is new. This is total.
I am hugging my child.
Hear my cry.
You are crying too.
I cannot stop.*
Why aren’t you wearing your kippah?
They keep asking me,
Can a woman wear one?
I am tired.
Of what?
The struggle.
Of not fitting in.
Who said it would be easy?*
I know.
But I want to stay here.
I want order.
I can control everything here.
Out there...
It’s chaos.
I...
Where are you?
Put your phone down.
I got distracted.
They need me.
I need you.
They are angry.
Good.
Change is needed.
The idols need to be broken.
I would rather hide.
All the hate.
We are each made in Your image.
I want that world. Not this.
Fear and grasping are holding you back.*
I try to find divinity in everything.
But I am distracted by the grasping.
If I have, it will be better.
They promised.
They lied.
I know, but the lie is comforting.
The prophetic call is too powerful.
They all say that.
Where are you?
I am here.
Where are you?
I am living in projections and stories
of what they all think.
I am stuck in scarcity.
I know.
Come back.
Return.
Breathe.
I am trying.
But the world is burning.
I know.
I can’t stand up.
You must.
I know.
Ayecha - where are you?
I am here, with you, the lover of the marginalised, the warrior of justice.
Hineni.*
Together we go.
Together we go.
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* ‘Ayecha?’ The question asked of Adam - Genesis/Bereshit 3:9. I am inspired by the work of Rabbi Arthur Green (Radical Judaism), Walter Brueggeman (Prophetic Imagination) and Edmond Jabès’ poem, ‘At the Threshold’.
* ‘Look over there!’ - Drag queen, Jaida Essence Hall.
* ‘In the baggage’. Here I hide with Saul as he is picked out as the first king of Israel. I Samuel 10:22
* ‘I heard your cry’. Again, and again, the Torah recounts God hearing our cries.
* ‘The oceans are rising.’ This article floored me. Where do we go from here?
* ‘There is nothing new under the sun’. Ecclesiastes/Kohelet 1:9. I search for the texts that can answer this age.
* ‘I cannot stop’. God crying with us is nothing new in Judaism. See the midrash - Lamentations/Eichah Rabbah 24th Proem.
* ‘Who said it would be easy?’ Echoing the words of Rabbi Sheila Shulman, z”l.
* ‘Fear and grasping are holding you back’. See Sister Simone Campbell (Nun on a Bus).
* ‘Hineni’ - this prophetic answer of ‘here I am, I surrender, I am ready’ is repeated throughout the Tanach. See Genesis/Bereshit 22:1 and Abraham’s answer - a complicated iconoclast.