Vayakhel Moshe: Moshe Summons Us And We Try Again

 

I hear him calling

from my closed tent -

gather   assemble

come to the fire.

Let’s try again

to retrieve the trust

shattered with the first tablets

and the sights and sounds

of three thousand of our sons,

fathers and brothers dying

by my command, my shaming

and judgment a storm

you could not escape.

Forgive me

whose father was a slave owner

who over and over like all of us

must find the Egypt

he needs to leave.

 

I have another

story for you, waiting

in the pregnant belly

of the word Vayakhel,

     the three letters of the

     four lettered name

      of the One

that can only be spoken

by breathing and being.  Let us

reassemble the letters.  Let us

peel back our masks

listening for the stories that long

for your imagination, your voice,

your version.

 

I want to tell you a tale

about how story can be a medicine

can remake worlds and wounds

as with the ones which make me the hero

and also the fool, the stumbler, the one

who carries a Pharaoh within,

the one who must pull from the fragments

of his own grasp on truth and kindness

and build the sanctuary that might

hold onto holiness -  that empty

endless space in the center,

the blue in the flame.

 

Let us crack open the hard shelled

tales of fear and anger,

bring your deep friendship with your suffering 

and protection, your distrust of love, 

your capacities to once again fill,

     each of us and together,

the cisterns of this desert wandering.

Let us try again

to be a holy people