I Was At Sinai

SONG
Your nearer than my head is to my pillow.
Nearer than the wind is to the willow.
Dearer than the rain is to the earth below,
Precious as the sun to the things that grow.

As I found my space at the foot of the mountain, slipping easily in place within my tribe, there was no jockeying for position. There was room for all and we seemed, instinctively, to know that there was room for all. I noticed that the ache in my feet that had followed me throughout the weeks and weeks of desert travel, endless days of walking, setting up camp, taking down camp and walking some more, had turned my body into a container for pain. Now, as I stood there I was strong. I could actually feel the muscles in my back lengthen as they held my body straight, so different than the caved shoulders and protected heart that housed my soul under the rule of Pharoah.

One phrase kept going through my mind, a phrase as close as I could get to prayer, “And now the work of freedom truly begins.” I didn’t know if it was a call from the wind, a deep knowing that had been learned throughout my life in bondage, or a teaching, something perhaps, I had heard from Moses. I didn’t yet know God.

SONG
Your nearer than the ivy to the wall is,
Nearer than the winter to the fall is.

A great miracle was about to happen to us: a great expression of breath, and sound, deep movement of the earth. We, who had known only the work that had fulfilled the lives of our masters, we who had witnessed the worst of the plagues in Egypt, unable to reach out to ease the suffering of our neighbors, we who had seen the magnitude of our captors melt away as they let us go, we were now being asked to continue to open ourselves to impossible events, surrender to imagination, awaken wonder, that we might travel beyond the rational paths of life as we knew them, and come to believe what we were experiencing through our senses.

Many people had died on the journey already. Many would die afterwards. Eventually, as in Egypt, we would all die. But for now, we were being given hints of all that life can offer. Glimpses into our unity, tastes of what our emancipation might inspire, the unending beauty of the natural world, the mystery of creation, all this and more were being laid out for us at the foot of this mountain. And through it all, stirrings of the notion of how, how to receive this freedom and how to maintain it when the miracles that had focused our attention, finally subsided?

And we listened, and we heard, and we felt, and we smelled, and we saw, and we tasted wisdom, and for that moment, we knew God. As the Utterances were expressed, we inspired freedom.

Now the words were in us, for all time. We would forget. We would ignore. We would abandon. But we would also remember, for that is the work of freedom.

SONG
Leave me but when you’re away, you’ll know
Your nearer for I love you so.

THE END

“Nearer,” by Richard Rogers and Lawrence Hart