For אֱלוּל

Tonight is Rosh Chodesh. The new luna, the fingernail of G-d, the Shiva Moon. It is also Erev Elul once again; my but how fast a year goes.

Elul אֱלוּל is the last month of the Jewish Calendar. It is the time of preparation that leads up to the high-holy days. In Aramaic, the word “Elul” means “search.” The Talmud writes that the Hebrew word “Elul” can be expanded as an acronym for “Ani L’dodi V’dodi Li” which reads:  “I am to my Beloved and my Beloved is to me.”

Elul is seen as a time to search one’s heart and draw close to G-d in preparation for the coming Day of Judgment (also known as the Jewish New Year), Rosh Hashanah, and Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur.

I know a lot of people hear the word judgment and immediately become defensive or perceptively guilty. “Judgment.” It’s been a heavy word, but it has also been highly abused by the many more *ahem, zealous and religious persons dotting our spiritual landscape. But whenever I see it, I look at it more from the perspective of the doer vs. the receiver and what is it that I do when I am making a judgment? … and I don’t mean an assumption or gossipy kind of observation… but the true action that underlies it, and the quality of integrity it requires. To me, judgment has gotten a bad rap. I tend to understand it more in terms of “discernment.”

It is an ability to decipher what is true from that which is false. So whenever I look at the spiritual undertones to a month of preparation for “judgment” it is a time of deciphering the parts of me that I already AM and what I want to be, from that which has leached on like barnacles weighing the anchor deeper into the unconscious muck that hides the egoic leviathan, the tentacles of Jules Verne’s 20,000 leagues giant squid. As Tennyson wrote: “the Kraken sleepeth…”

I have always shirked from describing myself as a “religious” or ritualistic person. But I also know that engaging in either can be very powerful and of course transformational. It really is about finding meaning in places that you find meaning, and being disciplined and open and devoted to what makes you reach, search, keep one foot in front of the other on … well whatever path you choose, whether that’s moment to moment or for a lifetime.

Last year was my first year with any knowledge of this time whatsoever. And I almost forgot about it till I read it somewhere else, “Elul is coming.”

I wonder if this is what I felt approaching last Sunday; I smelled a very perceptible shift in the seasonal air. It smelled like #2 pencils, and a retraction. Summer is ending. Amazing how it does that, when you pay attention.

Have you ever read Rachel Barenblat’s Velveteen Rabbi blog? She writes the most beautiful poetry…but here is one of mine for the occasion:

I: Morning

Like you diminished him,
the earthy and puff-chested golem
after the breath: of heaven
and terrestrial means both, so none
would be outnumbered, a blob
of human potential, without
a full heart or mouth, without
the ability to acquiesce,
before the rib (where
before I stretched
across cosmological meadows,
pearly and nebulous distances):
I can say now, in old
and expected meters how
you have hemmed me in
behind and before,
so that you are now able
to lay your hand upon my head
and sketch the psalms
like braille into mindful chambers,
some hang from my eyes, my lips
from tendrils of hair or
by my teeth. I pray by the skin.
I gave myself up willingly, I asked
for the lesson and you saw it
all from the beginning
alighting over the waters.

II: Evening

These are days we work for
to start over, gratefully falling short
we come with all our burden
to be lifted off our shoulders
like the first winter snows
dusted from our boots,
watching the geometric meaning melt
under out breath.
To fast out all our murky madnesses
Ready and red cheeked
when we return home
through the door. These are days
when books will open;
and they will close.
Another birthing, another brit,
another promise untied
and good news tethered black
and wound about my reverent arms.
I carry the blood without
the stamp, I feel the passage
of manna and deserts
I hear the opportunity for connection
offered like thunder in my ears
I know that everything that obscures
my light from your eyes
will be made to fall and perish,
I welcome the judgment
that reminds me: I Am
growth-seeking; I am
unlimited.

AwakeClosedOpen

Art by Jeanie Tomanek

Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does – Allen Ginsberg

I am like that crocus in the corner
a gooey center
a light that spills
lip to lip and
petal to petal. I open
like an e.e. cummings poem,
a Whitman blade of grass,
a Spenserian literary wood.
I am made of words you see,
unending phrases which
with their own weight, stand
quivering. I can hear the world
thinking, dreaming, gripping, sinking
into mystery. Into virginal snow blackening
and melted winters penetrated by spring.
You see, I hear singing
when you speak, and you read me like a book;
what a pear we would make, but
I fear the breaking, the heart you
offer. The palms already open; the look in your eyes
when they are  closed, already
sleeping. Awake.
Awake. Awake. Slip that bright light
into the rear pocket of yours
that my hand likes. Such
sweet speaking:
I am new.

© 2009 Lindsay Young

Early Spring

art by Julie Haskell

Harshness vanished. A sudden softness
has replaced the meadows' wintry grey.
Little rivulets of water changed
their singing accents. Tendernesses,

hesitantly, reach toward the earth
from space, and country lanes are showing
these unexpected subtle risings
that find expression in the empty trees.

-- by Rainer Maria Rilke

More Stories for Scheherazad

Renowned author and scholar Dr. Mohja Kahf recently visited the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS), reading poems and other selections from her literary works and speaking about the stereotype of the oppressed Muslim woman. Born in Damascus, Dr. Kahf is an associate professor of comparative literature at the University of Arkansas. Her books include a novel, The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf (Perseus, 2006), a book of poetry, E-mails from Scheherazad (University Press of Florida, 2003), and a scholarly work, Western Representations of the Muslim Woman (University of Texas Press, 1999). Dr. Kahf’s poems have appeared in Mizna, Banipal, the Paris Review, and the Atlanta Review. She has finished a poetry manuscript about Hajar, Sarah, and Abraham, from which CCAS featured a poem, (partially displayed) below.

All Good

They see it as far-off
but We see it as near.

Quran, The Ways of Ascent 70:6-7

Out in the blue infinitude
that reaches and touches us
sometimes, Hajar and Sarah
and Abraham work together
to dismantle the house of fear, brick
by back-breaking brick.
With a broom of their own weaving,
they sweep the last remains
away. They sit down for a meal
under the naked stars.

Ismaïl and Isaac come around shyly,
new and unlikely companions.
Hajar introduces them
to her second and third husbands
and a man from her pottery class
who is just a friend.
Hajar’s twelve grandchildren
pick up Sarah’s twelve at the airport.
The great-grandchildren appear,
set down their backpacks,
and tussle to put up the sleeping tents,
knowing there will be no more rams,
no more blood sacrifice.

Sorrows furrow every face.
This, in the firelight, no one denies.
No one tries to brush it all away
or rushes into glib forgiveness.
First, out of the woods, shadows emerge:
the dead of Deir Yassin,
killed by Zionist terror squads,
the Kiryat Menachim bus riders
killed by Palestinian suicide bomber.
They face each other, tense up.
Some of them still do not have gravestones.
The ghosts of Mahmoud Darwish
and Yehuda Amichai begin to teach them
how to pronounce each other’s names
in Hebrew and Arabic. The poets
will have a long night. Meanwhile,
a Hamas sniper, a Mosad assassin fall
to their knees, rocking; each one cries,
“I was only defending my—my—”
Into the arms of each,

Hajar and Sarah place a wailing
orphaned infant. Slow moaning
fills the air: Atone, atone.

The grieving goes on for untold ages,
frenzied and rageful in the immature years,
slowly becoming penitent and wise.
When an orange grove is given back
to its rightful owner, the old family drama
finally loses its power, withers, dies. A telling time
for new stories begins. Housekeys
digging bloody stigmata into the palms
of Palestinians cast from their homes
turn into hammers and nails for the rebuilding.

Despite the abject pain
each person here has known, no family
that has not lost a child,
no one wishes they could change the past
because of which we have arrived
at this transforming time.
Hajar pours water that becomes
a subtle, sweet, and heretofore unheard of wine.
Sarah laughs again, more deeply.
Abraham is radiant. Everyone, this time
around, can recognize
in the eyes of every other,
the flickering light of the Divine.

read the whole thing here: wow.

30 in 30

Julie Wilson over at Seen Reading has put up a wonderfully creative and inspiring pod-cast project in honor of April, our National Poetry Month (“celebrated” in both Canada and the US apparently), called 30 in 30. Julie writes:

April is National Poetry Month. To celebrate, I’ve created a project called 30 in 30, and miraculously it’s come together in only a matter of weeks. I invited thirty poets to submit two recordings each: one of their own poems, and a cover/tribute poem. Every day in April, my podcast will include one of these poems. To hear the covers, check out the 30 in 30 page where all the audio will live together as an archive.

You too can send me your recordings. If you’re a published poet, let me know where people can buy your books, and I’ll include the URL. (Anyone can submit.)

30 in 30 is a catchy title, but this project goes far beyond thirty poets and thirty days in April. It’s truly as big as we want it to be. So, please do spread the word. Poetry is it’s own word of mouth. Lend us yours.

It’s beyond brilliant. I recommend you check it out.

What I Have Learned So Far

Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I
not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,
looking into the shining world? Because, properly
attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.
Can one be passionate about the just, the
ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit
to no labor in its cause? I don’t think so.

All summations have a beginning, all effect has a
story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.
Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of
light is the crossroads of— indolence, or action.

Be ignited, or be gone.

— Mary Oliver
New and Selected Poems, Volume 2
Beacon Press, Boston, 1992 (Web)