Nishmah, Shma: Let us be a listening people

Shma, listen

for how we might be

holy bodies,

a holy people.

 

Nili, my friend, has woven a mezuzah

she wears over her heart

her body a threshold for Oneness,

She, like you is a

Shma, her heart an ancestral

drum, echoing

the nishmah

of old, spoken

from the foot of

the mountain

 

Our ears strain

against the cacophony

of bombs, noisy towers

of Babel, roiling seas of death, rebirth.

We struggle to once again

hear Oneness

as the sapphire wings

of sky underneath

the feet of Shechinah

inviting us to the earthen

altar where we

take our shoes off

for the ground we stand

on is sacred and Oneness

is calling, celebrating

our naked, vulnerable

approach

 

Help us hear this as our covenant,

to cleanse our laws, our bodies

of oppression, of violence,

to re-weave ourselves into

community constructed and upheld

by compassion, kindness,

equity, justice

so that each of us can take our

place at the open door

as mezuzot, welcoming

all strangers, all

who have been pushed

to the margins,

for we were once slaves in Egypt

and we can be a holy people

in our doing, in our listening

 

we who are wandering blessings

falling asleep and waking

 

remember and affirm

alone and together

we shall do

we shall hear