To Bend Light

Here’s the scene: ulpan students from the Overseas Student Program of Ben-Gurion University – about 15 college and grad school students, a couple from Albany, NY, and me, plus staff from Kibbutz Ketura and BGU – are together on the sand dunes of the Arava, a rift valley in the southern Negev. After a hike and some time to “dune dive,” we got an assignment: go off in silence to think about the desert and what it evokes. Then, after 20 minutes, write about it. Here’s what I wrote. To listen along, click on the triangle in the bar below (website only). The text follows.

Oh You Hills, Oh You Sands
Speak to me
Oh you hills.
Did my father pass this way?
Did my mother draw water
From some secret well?
Did I dream of angels and blessings?
Or will the man I am
Wrestle all night
With the man
I am yet to be?

Speak to me
Oh you sands.
What ancient beauty have you captured?
What silent yearning springs up
To water my heart?
What treasures do you
Still hold dear?

Let me know the music of your valleys.
Let me hear the heart beat
Beneath your thousand stones.
Let me remember
The ancient promise of home.

Speak to me
From the place where
Desert and sky meet
In perfect silence,
In perfect wisdom,
In perfect love.

© 2011 Alden Solovy and www.tobendlight.com. All rights reserved.

Postscript: Here are additional prayers about Israel.

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~ by tobendlight on January 8, 2012.

Posted in Israel
Tags: Arava, home, Israel, Negev, prayer of yearning