chai there

Chai.

Say it like a guttural “hi.”
In fact, “guttural high” isn’t a bad definition for life.

The letter chet is the agony of a soul torn apart from itself pronounced by a violent gargling at the back of your throat. This is how life starts and how it rolls, this violent gargle of a word. We’d much prefer the smooth, flowing “L” at the beginning of our English equivalent. Our worship tends to be filled with liquid consonants that roll right off the tongue, which is understandable. The violent gargling sounds are barred from our language and our liturgy, typically. We save them for the misery of illness in private. Which leads to a truncated, edited, only partially shared life.

The fully shared life is always a chai life.

And if life in this world is a chai life, then what must eternal life be but an even more deep, more profound violent gargling?

Evangelical culture can be so coy with chai. Just a simple, easy-peasy decision made in a comfortable worshipping womb. Conception, maybe, but not chai.

There’s not nearly enough gargling and gurgling. Not nearly enough mess and blood and cords to be cut.

We must through many tribulations enter the kingdom, says the Apostle. Many pressings. Depressings. Compressings. This, in fact, was his fundamental message to newly conceived souls.

Ah, but that sells so poorly. That’s far too violently guttural for us.

Just give us the easy conception and that liquid “L” that flows ever so effortlessly…

“chaimazing.” found this at teamofmonkeys.com. hoping it’s okay to use, for in picture form it catches what I’m seeing in chai. 

 

from wail to wall

I’ve fallen in love again.
With the Hebrew letter Chet (say “hate” with a guttural “ch”).

One of my favs, Lawrence Kushner, observes in his Book of Letters about the letter Chet:

In the Torah, the Chet is written with a sharp jagged notch on its forehead.

It is almost as if there were two separate letters barely joined together.
They need each other to stand.
But they wish they did not.
So they barely
touch.

Chet is the agony of a soul torn apart from itself.

The top of your throat and the bottom of your throat fighting against one another (pronouncing Chet is like violently gargling at the back of your throat.)

Create the sound of the Chet. This is the reason why the Chet yields so many strange and conflicted word pairs.

___________

To this I would add that Chet was originally the picture of a wall. It pictures division, separation, someone on the outside and someone on the inside.

And so, this week some of those strange and conflicted words – the first being the most foundational. Chai (not chai as in chai tea; gargle it. Get all you can out of that guttural Chet). Life.

Yes, life starts with a letter filled with violent gargling. Turbulent vocal chords clashing at the back of the throat, a sound struggling to get out. Life starts with a wail and leads to a wall. But on the other side of it is a hand reaching out. Yes. This is life. Something I can chet to say with guttural passion at times. But there is always a hand reaching out. Reaching forward.

From the wall.

 

viewing death through a banister rail

Juxtaposed.

That’s how it felt.
Feels.
Viewing death through a banister rail,
hovering around it like an invisible presence.

Enclosed,
cold,
yet hot
anticipation like
standing on the verge
of beginnings yet untold.

An intersection of reality where
breath ceases
time stops
and it’s we who live whose hearts
are flat lined
as, unbidden,
the windows of heaven
are opened.

And then, with movement forced,
the walking dead step out
into sunlight
into bracing, frigid air,
into the great swooshing world
and the ceaseless second hand.

How surreal, how utterly odd thus to stand
like Aaron,
between the living and the dead
only this plague won’t stop.
Like Phinehas I look for something to stab
to halt the spread.

But the dead keep dying
and the living keep
moving.

As I gaze upon the moving I wonder
“how many truly live?”
as in remembered gaze
I look upon the motionless
and know how much he did.

And does.