“You have returned within me my soul with compassion; abundant is your faithfulness.”

Because it’s not a given.

At times the dream blazes, and I can’t turn away.

But for most of the night, I shrink and withdraw, go off to hibernate in some wrinkle, or deep down near the thalamus.  The last of me.

Now the heartbeat dominates and breathing emerges.  This is the time of the body.  Of cells that can work in peace, like the great upwelling of plankton each night.

I was not at my best today–lashed out, was a bully.  And on the worst days of my life, when I crossed the line—still you restored my soul in the morning.

If there was punishment, it took other forms.

Each night, I’m reduced to a single spark, and you watch over me and keep me alive.

And you do this for billions of us.  Shelter us.  Till the sun gets closer, then rises; the light spreads…

And you guide the return of personality across the brain.

You do this for my wife.  She sleeps, wrapped in the comforter, with one hand protecting her face.  You’ve always seen fit to continue her in all her details and give her the gift of the day. Thank you.

With someone else, the exception proves the rule.

One morning you did not restore my mother to her bed-ridden body, to that jewel box of dissolving skin.  There was no transition, no opening of the eyes, no separation.  Just warmth and enclosure, her cheek against your hand.

It’s early days.  The First Temple is still new. YHWH is only one god among many.  The Torah has not yet been compiled.

There are several scrolls in circulation—poems, stories, laws.  The priests have started to read a few on Shabbat:  the song of gratitude after crossing the Red Sea.  The Ten Commandments…

Jerusalem is still a small town.  People sacrifice to YHWH on altars in high places throughout the land, further north in Shiloh and Bethel, even in clearings with standing stones. 

But lately, more villagers have led an ox or lamb to the Temple, for a priest to oversee the rites.  And families from the countryside are leaving before dawn and walking into Jerusalem on Saturday mornings.

For the last year, the High Priest has read the scrolls to the congregation.

This morning he passes the yad, the small silver pointer, to his disciple, who looks down.  No paragraphs, no chapters.  Just letters and white spaces on papyrus.

The disciple starts to sing the Song of Miriam.  “The horse and its rider He has thrown into the Sea!”  His voice is different than the High Priest’s.

Pure, strong, flexible.  Somehow both unique and generic.  Carrying the words into the heart.

He finishes, and in the silence the High Priest places another scroll before him.  Again his voice rises and falls, toward God and toward the people, up Sinai and down to the Golden Calf.  Without realizing it, he is singing the Ten Commandments.  An innovation!