Sukkot Chol HaMoed and Shemini Atzeret

Sukkot Chol HaMoed and Shemini Atzeret

for strangers and friends


At The Waterfall

When you visit a waterfall with the thunder and millions of sparks like lightning flying over high rock, this is the question:

Do you stare at it head-on, look it in the face, see it as Distant Other?

Or do you dare to get up close so the drops hit your skin like a downward rush of cold in the hot crazy sun? Do you take on the face of the waterfall and merge with it? See what it sees? Hear the crash a foot away and let your gaze race down the rocky white ravine?

Or do you just stare at it and comment?

Do you realize that the millions of drops crashing down are the cool God-reflection of the fiery sacrifices going up? The Sukkot sacrifices?  And do you know that it’s a continuum, a cycle, our human fire rising, the water-light of God flowing into us. Once we share the vision and see as the waterfall sees we share the Being.  Words disappear. The past gets swallowed like Korach.  The music of the water chimes like the bells of Aaron’s robe in the tiny pools.  The Other disintegrates and we are the Divine merge.

We become the Response of God.

So when we stare at the waterfall and make it an Other and comment and judge it, don’t be surprised if a piece of stray rock tumbles down like angry words and slams us in the head. Don’t be surprised if the Being of the waterfall flails out-of-control for a split second or if the gift of the bump on the head hurts. And don’t be self righteous about it either. It was coming.

The good news is it will only hurt for a moment.  And it doesn’t hurt once we are in the waterfall itself, once we see those Sukkot sacrifices turning in the hands of Divine love, once we become the energy of return in the form of the billions of  sapphire drops. And it doesn’t hurt at all once you feel the water, really feel it, as it soothes and lifts-up all the pain in your heart.