In the month of Elul the Earth, our world is born. In the following month of Tishrei, we are born, specifically on Rosh Hashanah. It is said in these two months God/Goddess,the Divine(Ha Melech-the King in traditional Jewish liturgy) is very close. The Divine walks in the garden, the same that we walk in.
‘Hineni’ is Hebrew for ‘here I am’. When Abraham and Moses are called by God they answer, ‘Hineni’, “Here I am”.
When Moses is told to go back to Egypt to free his people, he asks this god, what name can he give to this force that has brought him back to his people. The name is “Eh He Yeh”, I am that I am.
But for these two months, God tells us “Hineni” and we tell God “Eh He Yeh”
The Divine Presence
What is the splendor of the royal divine
The hand that offers the beginning of time,
Who’s wind of beauty’s breath,
Fills form with its spirit.
Our hands reach toward,
a grasp tremulous,
Urged by the pulse of earth
And heart of our soul.
This time, when earth has again come into its rebirth,
When the last harvest offers its cool time bounty,
And we begin our own new season,
The holy is in this place and calls to us,
We walk in the garden verdant with the scent of earth’s turning
And hear, “Hineni”.
“I am here”
In a swirl of spirit
Vines wend themselves, with leaves green as hope,
Into a path that leads to life’s vibration.
“Remember,” is whispered to our souls,
“I walk with you at your birth and hold you up.
I tell you I am here when you forget,
I only ask that you tell me who you are when you remember”
Like the light that makes flowers translucent in petal,
We become iridescent in tone
And answer “Eh he yeh”
“I am who I am”,
For this is all we can be.
And so we return and
step forward in our prayers that are woven
with our joy and tears,
with our questions and yearning wrapped around us.
