Av
Month of love
Month of mourning
A cycle of the moon that contains both
Tisha b’Av - the fast of temple-era affliction
and Tu b’Av - Jewish Valentine’s Day
A cycle of the moon that casts dappled light
upon the bright buds of renewed commitments
and the broken shards of shattered dedications
A month
that reminds us what it is to be in depth of relationship to every part of our heart
Her ecstasies. Her anguishes. Her promises. Her pain.
Ancestral longings
Of flesh towards flesh
Of desire towards body
Of people towards home
A home before the shatter, before the scatter
Before martyr bone replaced cobblestone
On so many streets we’ve called our home
This first evening
The newest moon of this newest moon
We remember why HaShem wraps us, in this time,
in a total darkness that contains it all:
the wail of the fear of the eternal light extinguished
And the pulsating possibility of the lifeforce of the womb
Fresh Blackberry darkness
Bruised-wound, deep-blue darkness
She weaves this velvet night tapestry to remind us that
a broken heart and a beating heart are by definition one and the same
in this human life of imperfection, just an image of Her perfection
A broken heart, a beating heart
A broken bone, beaten
Broken eggs, beaten, kneaded deep, and eaten
Holy definitional overlaps. It’s why God made ‘delicacy’ means what it does
Vulnerable. Delicious. Breakable and precious.
May this moon and this moon hold us in all of our soft flesh treasuredness.
Avinu, Malkeinu. Let Av break us open. And through that broken, fill us pure.