The Vision of Meribah
I Meribah,
granddaughter of Amenemhat,
beloved of Ishmael,
recite my ancestors’ lessons
so that you, my child, may teach them to your own.
It is through our mothers
that we enliven our people’s stories,
and teach the generations
from Vulture to Basin.
Our grandfathers’ names are precious
they reveal the deepest truths.
Abram, father of Ishamel,
whose name meant “turn around”,
was elevated to Abraham
“The Father of the Feminine”
whose seed was sown about the world
for he sowed the words of God
in the mouths of his children and grandchildren.
His son,
your father,
was named “He Who Hears God”
his legacy pronounced to Heaven.
My mother’s father,
Amenemhat,
whose name means
“Who Believed in Her,”
planted within our family the mother’s task.
We are the grandchildren of Eden.
Ours is the legacy of the unbroken word
of the Heavenly Chorus–
deities sprung from the Endless Beginning.
They that constructed all that you see,
hear, smell, taste, touch, and perceive.
They are the building blocks
communicated to you and to me
as we sat at our grandfathers’ knees.
In the Beginning,
as the End and the Infinity
swirled within the Void,
A Ha! A universe burst forth,
struck as lightning,
illuminating effervesces of iteration.
Down a manifold path this force erupted,
through Severity and Mercy,
awakening each universal paradigm.
Constructs echoed across the
chasms of aquatic nothingness,
vibrations formed the undercurrent of our universe.
These cosmic bounces birthed logic,
constructed the very matter of our heavens
Swirling, pulling, pulsating,
contracting into the very stuff of planets
whose reverberations and tremors
awakened the fabric of our existence.
We are an emergence of this Divine reverberance,
a mere microcosm of the Infinite Endless logic
blazing across the two-score paths
that unite us with our Creator.
We are, each of us, breathing
the very breath of this cosmic logic,
We exist for a single multifaceted purpose
To reenact love that brings peace to all things.
As the breath of Everything rippled across the inky vastness
animating us in Its image; therefore
to oscillate our creations into perfection.
But how?
This is the secret of all creation:
the love each of us must radiate
should be as a weighted blanket,
a swaddling cloth for our precious children.
Our love must be the warm,
tender and unfailing arms
of a mother holding her most beloved.
All things long for peace,
contentment and equilibrium
a weighted blanket and loving embrace.
As instruments of the Infinite
our task is to exemplify
the very feeling that started
this whole wild experiment.
When we can love as perfectly
as that perfection which formed us,
we will have finally mastered
our reason for being.
Rabbi Matthew Ratz is the Executive Director of Passion for Learning, Inc., a nonprofit focused on closing opportunity gaps for low-income students in STEM and college readiness. He also teaches English at Montgomery College, has authored several books, and has appeared in poetry anthologies. A recognized speaker and poet, his TEDx talk is available on YouTube and TED.com. Matthew channels his extensive experience and unwavering commitment to inclusivity and equity to make a positive impact on the world.
Image: Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
