This morning I was reading some chapters in the book of Judges. Two of the chapters (Judges 4 and 5) were about the one woman judge, Deborah. I've loved this story for a long time, for Deborah's sake and for the sake of Jael (yah-ALE), another woman in the story. I got to the end of chapter 4 and I began chapter 5, which is the song of Deborah, and Barak, her commander. I glanced briefly at the note at the bottom of the page regarding the song and I read there that this may very well be the oldest part of the Hebrew scriptures. I thought that was nice.
As I read the song, though, I realized something was different in me. I sat with that as I read and it grew on me that I was feeling this song as more genuine than a lot of what I had read so far this year, more immediate, like I was reading something written, or composed, on the spot.
It is nearly impossible to describe this feeling. I was deeply moved.
I then went on to read the psalm I was going to read for today, Psalm 89. When I reached verse 20 that same feeling began to come over me - that immediateness. And I realized a deeper awareness - that I was praying with and for people thousands of years before me. I was praying into the past.
As I finished the psalm and went on the say the Lord's Prayer, with which I end my readings each day, I was overcome by awareness that I was praying with the disciples, the first, so far as we know, who prayed some version of that prayer. And the name of the feeling came to me: connected.
Today I was connected.
2 comments:
My roommate in graduate school ( http://divinity.uchicago.edu/faculty/fishbane.shtml ) was studying the Song of Deborah in one of his classes & told me about its connections to (I think) Mesopotamian inscriptions. It goes _way_ back.
Way cool, Dean. Thank you! I love learning this stuff.
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