Where Holy Meets Human

Ever since becoming a Benedictine Oblate, 20 years ago last month, I’ve been reading the Psalms daily. It’s what’s done. Too often I look up after my reading and realize not a word has registered. All feels false, remarkably remote.

Recently I’ve come across the writing and poetry of Joy Ladin. Her book, Psalms, are full of poems that rage, wrangle, sparkle, flare. You don’t need a deference to that biblical text by the same name, to appreciate this penetrating exploration of  human/divine geography.

Written through a trans queer Jewish lens, these are deeply personal poems that make resonating universal connections. For me, they’ve reignited those ancient Hebrew poems.

The following, is a “found poem,” from her introduction to that book; and it’s my simple thank you to this poet.

Here in the lightning-shot space,
where holy meets human,
where time splits, shatters and rages
like rapids,
I wait.

I wait
in envy of those old mad poets,
their “Deliver me” fluency,
their “O Lord” intimacy.

I wait in whirlwinds of love and pain,
now hunting, now hunted,
recoiling in confusion,
crushed by versions of heaven.

And I languish,
my feral soul barely breathing.

I ached to create a corollary
to that psalmist space;
design a trap — as narrow as my life —
a single unfurnished room
where God had no choice
but to face me:

me and God, choosing weapons, squaring off
in the bitter flux of human existence
and the hollow rumours of loving
transformational presence.

And I wrote.
Hopeless, desperate, lonely.
Angry at this vacant, vacationing God.

And as I rose to holster
my fledging psalms,
there, sitting silent at the centre of the room,
was God.
And God said, “I’ve been waiting a long time.”