"Faithful Even In Its Fading From Fullness"
It bothers me when people tell me they skip the poems ("but not yours"). I heard a prominent frum speaker recently quote a prose poem and arrogantly mangle, mock, and misunderstand it.
In her most recent post Anne cites a beauty. For those of you are are going to choose to skip it, let me paraphrase, so you don't miss out. Appreciating the beauty of nature can be a way to seize the moments that will be too soon gone. This can be an experience that sounds unappealing to some, but for you is rapturous; something like having a caterpillar nibble out of your hand. It's moments like these that make you wonder - are most people grabbing on to life before it slips away? It's moments like these that might look like a frivolous, but that can be spiritual big time, even tantamount to prayer.
The Summer Day
by Mary Oliver
ih~
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
j
Here's a poem that feels profoundly Jewish to me. Isn't this so similar to the idea that sanctifying the moon was our first mitzvah? The explanation I like for that is that we wax and wane like the moon... Can anyone out there relate to insecurity? Is it ubiquitous, as I suspect it is? Can we all please try to help ourselves and eachother to believe in ourselves, to fan the spark of faith within us? Can it be that it is a mitzvah to believe in ourselves?
posted by rabbi neil fleischmann @ 11:59 PM
4 Comments:
You must have posted the Amichai poem elsewhere too, b/c I remember commenting on it (perhaps a bit cynically).
I think Whyte's poem is beautiful. Ironic, though - in terms of Jewish tradition - that he ascribes faith to the one heavenly body that is accused of breaking faith. But he got me thinking that the moon's "penalty" - to dwindle every month - is a punishment that perfectly fits the crime: for breaking faith, it is charged with the faithful observance of the cycle of waxing and waning.
Yes, I posted it a couple of other times and you commented that I'd posted it before.
The thought about about the moon medrash is a cool one.
If you want to hear a nice song (sung by Simon and Garfunkel) about the moon - go here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-Zdm1vLpfk )
(I've linked to this before)
I just searched and found my earlier comment. I like it!
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