Earth Etude for 26 Elul

Hashem's "Gaslands"*
by Judith Feldstein

My Lord, You sent us not a burning bush, but Your flaming water;
a fire that lives in gas and is not drowned in H2O,
with flames that are not quenched, and danger not consumed until we
hear and live your will and love Your home as part of You.

Last year You gave us Elul with the kiss and aftermath of Your Irene's
with all the might of ordained winds and rains and floods.
You offered us tsunamis to remember as the earth was shaken,
and our towers crashed and crumbled while our people fled or died.
Our forests burned, our wildlife trapped in Your inferno met a scorching death.
All this as icy continents with lands of snow and glaciers melted by Your will
and slipped into adjoining seas, becoming salty tears of grief in witness of neglect
as polar bears, Your beasts of white bewildered watched and waited
as we watched and waited and did nothing and did not enough.

Our forms of peor and asherah with our golden calves were once Your gifts
which we in recklessness and without thought have turned to idols as we did in Sinai,
while we burn Your treasures in our homes and use Your wealth to run our cars
without regard to You while we feed our bellies irresponsibly.

It seems we have amnesia for the memory of Mt. Sinai held on high and overhead by You.
It seems that we have missed or disregarded, then blocked out Your signals now and then
so that perhaps in our denial we are now awaiting Purim.

This month in retrospect and prophecy, we hear Your will for us through Moses
and review the stories of his life and ours,
from burning bush as invitation and Your call to us;
through mizraim with its plagues and detox;
Death and outstretched arm at midnight;
Your splitting seas and closing them;
Your sustenance as manna, dew,and springs, and fowl;
Your clouds of glory and Your pillar of fiery light;
and so much more.
Do we recognize our gallus now or have we chosen to remain in Egypt?
Are we here to choose the blessing or the curse and will we cross the Jordan
to the Promised Lands our earth as healed and living as Your home?

When we turn our faucets on tonight will we ignite the flame from our ignited match?
And when will we remember all this comes from You?
We are friend or foe of earth, Your dwelling place and ours, but are not both.
Today, tonight and from now on may we all hear Your shofar call us to Your burning bush,
Your will and love and care to help us repair earth so that Your rivers, seas and lakes

are fired by Your love alone and nothing more.

*Gasland is the name of a documentary on fracking.

Judith Feldstein is a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology, a Certified Hypnotherapist, a Neurolinguistic Programmer, an Eriksonian Hypnosis practitioner, a Sacred Plant Medicine apprentice, and practices Sacred Circle Dance. She is also an Appalachian Mt. Club trail adopter, an Appalachian Mt. Club trail information volunteer, and enrolled in Rabbinical Seminary International. She is a hiker, walker, runner, student and teacher of A Course in Miracles, a student of Buddhism, a student of Gnosticism and mystic paths, an eldercare provider, a wife and a “mother” of several canine rescues (currently Shepherd and Neufy).