Kotel hours
israel | June 23, 2004
bs"d
It's four a.m. I've just walked from the Old City to Katamon, and I'm perched on a guest bed. I've been taken in (for the three days in between my sublets) by new friends who are like family; the taste of their homemade peach pie is still in my mouth.
Sunday evening I went to pray at the Kotel Hakatan and left four hours later, my mind blown and generally blown away. "Unprecedented" is a word crossing my thoughts often these past few weeks, and the quantity and quality for prayer was certainly new territory for me.
I stayed up that night until Monday morning processing the experience with a friend and bringing the energy down into a concrete, beautiful, tangible reality. After a short sleep, I recorded two of the niggunim that had come through me the night before, and four other songs that were waiting to be shared.
Last night, I couldn't ignore the pull to return. After shiur (on Doubt and Wonder) and a quick vegetarian meal, I sung my way back down to the Old City streets.
I sat in my makom kavu'a (fixed place) and had trouble connecting in at first (I think this was because of the food I had recently eaten). After a while the flow began, a trickle, then gushing, then sloshing, then whitewater, then placid....
I was asked to join a Sefard minyan for selichot (I guess this is their version of tikkun chatzot -- anyone?). Powerful, deep; the ceiling started crumbling and falling off on the bima, my siddur, a times, mamash. The shofar surged through me, and the cavnerous walls.
It's amazing to be at the Kotel when there are only ~20 other people there -- you realize how huge it is, how holy it is, how tamei it is, how devoted people are to the Place.
So I've now read Psalms 1 through 90 this week, and With Help I'd like to finish the book this week. I've never read through the entire book and I'm into the idea that I'll be tying each and every word to one space.
I really should just stay up for another hour and davven shacharit, but I think I'm going to slip into dream. Love.
Posted June 23, 2004 02:56 PM
©1996-2005 sixthirteen.org All Rights Reserved.