Friday, April 14, 2006

304. Stay close

Last year, right after the second seder, I did nothing but pray. I've never prayed so hard in my life. I have no way of knowing if God listened at that moment or had been listening all along and had already written me into that big Book, but do know that I'm still very much here. Everything else, as Hillel said, is commentary. My path is filled with bumps and muddy patches, but so is everyone's; life would be boring otherwise.

There are a total of seven aliyot at the Passover Torah service, and yesterday I read number three as well as the final maftir aliyah. There was a gap of about ten minutes between the two. As I finished the first and turned to leave the bimah, the rabbi leaned over:

"Don't go too far," he whispered, with a smile.

Rabbis are teachers, not conduits to God--but I think he, without knowing it, was delivering a personalized message. I've spent the past few weeks thinking about last year, alternating between gratitude and confusion. I become paralyzed into inaction by the simple, awesome fact of my continued existence, and can't even formulate the questions to which I seek answers. I need to remember not to go too far; what I'm looking for is within myself.

1 comment:

~Jan said...

I love this post. Simply wonderful.