Sunday, May 01, 2005

61. Song of the Sea

The Song of the Sea (Exodus 17: 1-21) was read Saturday morning at seventh day Passover services:

"...Miriam chanted to them:
Sing to God, for He has triumphed, yes, triumphed,
the horse and its charioteer
He flung into the sea!"

This is what God, and a wonderful surgeon, did for me on Wednesday. I wasn't able to hear Miriam's song in person this year, but its exultant, hypnotic tune was with me just the same. In a few weeks, when my stomach stops hurting, I'll be able to sing with gratitude just like she did. In the interim I will enjoy my Tylenol with codeine and wonder when I'll understand what I'm supposed to learn from this gift of being released from fear and of being certain, for just one day, that I am not yet erased from the Book of Life. I feel like I was given a glimpse of forbidden knoweldge; I need to guard that apple very carefully. I'll remember waking up every hour on the hour on Wednesday in a morphine haze, marking the passage of the night by the big clock on the TV screen above my bed and thinking: I love insomnia! I'm so happy that I can't sleep and there's more time until dawn, because that I means I have another hour ahead in which to give thanks.

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