Kum La'asot Retzon Borei/HaMelech BeSadeh

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For a parsha piece on Shoftim that I'm fond of, written all in haiku, click here. For another short Shoftim thought- on what it means to be tamim and another about judges - see here.

Did you ever notice how people into very spiritual stuff like Yoga or - lehavdil - Carlebach can be very uptight? Maybe that's why they're into what they're into, and yet it's a long long road.

Have you noticed that I use "and yet" more and more as of late?

The way I am for

My beloved is how she

May be there for me

Inside out water

Reverses its self again

Purification

I'm not keeping score

At least I don't plan to be

Is that seventeen?

Some say that they smoke

Because they like the breathing

Like warring for peace

It's like pulling teeth

Getting him to share with me

And he's my dentist

A sigh says so much

Feeling at home, feeling scared

Or neither, or both

Lincoln said we are

Happy as we want to be

Those words eat me up

Everything above was written very last late night or very early this morning (potato, patahto). Now it is pre-minyan and I am trying to focus just on davening related matters. In a post on August 5th I asked Ellul related questions. If I receive requests to post the answers then I'll - please G-d - post them (also there was a contest announced in that post which is not yet closed). Some of those questions and answers were based on the wonderful sefer Nitei Gavriel. Last night I posted my notes on a shiur presented by Dr. Shnayer Leiman about why we say LeDovid. Some of his information came from and/or overlaps with information from that sefer, although I saw it in Nitei Gavriel before hearing the shiur.

To me why saying LeDovid was established as a practice is less pressing than the fact that we say it, which with hindsight feels right. I often recall when Dylan won his honorary Grammy in the very early nineties. He quoted his father as saying that a man can reach a point in his life where even his own father and mother abandon him, but if that time comes then G-d himself will gather the person in. The second I saw and heard his words it struck me that they sounded like his rendition of a line from LeDovid Hashem Ohri. Since then a book called Bob Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet confirmed my hunch. That book's author proves that not only did Dylan's words echo this perek of Tehilim, but that they are a parallel to the phrasing in the Metzudah linear translation!

LeDovid is a beautiful prayer with lines about our connection to G-d that are poetic and profound. Time to go say it!