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Christopher

Noxon

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Awake the Morning After

I did a dumb thing last night.
I drank whiskey and watched
As the criminal clown rallied his cult.
Whipping up fear
Mangling truth
Whoring the flag.
Drumming up his people to fight the radical mob
(meaning me, meaning us, meaning war).
So galling so shameless so deeply deeply terrifying.

And this morning was Torah study
(virtually, obvi, it’s all virtual now).
To learn about the shofar
From a smart & soulful rabbi.

So the shofar we know is a ram’s horn that sounds a blast a tone a long and holy honk.
In Torah it’s first of all a call to arms.
The sound of vanquishing enemies conquering cities taking slaves.
(Today’s parsha says hey maybe wait 30 days before taking a slave as a wife to give her time to grieve, because you know: ethics. UGH this book sometimes I can’t even.)

We dig deeper in the book and find more meanings (because this is what we Jews do, forever turning things over and over and God I love that so much):
At Mt. Sinai, the shofar blew in smoke and thunder above trembling masses.
It signaled revelation and the awesome power of God Almighty.

And in Isaah there it is again, sounding to the exiles
Bidding them to leave their slavery in Egypt and return to the holy place.

And the soulful rabbi says: also remember Rambam.
Who summed up the shofar as
An alarm clock.
Waking us up.
Reminding us to reject vanity and idleness.
The sound says, care for your soul, improve your ways, get with God.

The soulful rabbi says that’s it:
Let it crack your heart.
Let it wake you let it open you.
At this moment of strife and fear and plague and reckoning
We need awakening.

And the soulful rabbi says:
What’s your shofar? What’s waking you up? What’s calling you to action and revelation and atonement?

And so we offer our answers:
What about the seven shots in Kenosha
That paralyzed Jacob Blake
Setting off another mass spasm of outrage awakening reckoning
That’s a shofar.

Or what about the fireworks over the White House last night
The air thick with smoke and anger and aerosolized virus
Pop go the explosions.
Roar goes the crowd.
That’s a shofar.

Then there are the voices on the family Zoom the faces on the TV the bots on the socials;
A din of shofars, all day all night, a neverending cacophony of alarm.
Everyone sounding the call, announcing the crisis:
“Why is no one talking about this?”
A deafening din of horns of battle cries of declarations of war.
You can’t hear anything through the sound.

And I think
Right now we don’t need a rams horn.
Our fight or flight alarm is blasting nonstop.
The whole goddamn world is blaring shofars.
Maybe this is the year we
Put down the horn.

Maybe this year we need an INVERSE SHOFAR
Not a battle cry but a sweet silence.
An anti-noisemaker that produces a tingle
(Something like that crazy ASMR).
A wave of calm not a roar.
A deeper reverberation.
Something to quiet us.
To tune us to what’s inside.
To that small still voice.

Yes a great conflict awaits us.
And oh yes it’s crucial we win.
But as the polls and trolls and calls for war go out
Let us study Torah and Rambam and also the Hindus and Satyagraha
Which was taken up by Dr. King and the good Rev. James Lawson and Saint Lewis
Which says: the war will never end
If you seek to dominate and subdue.
The only way out
Is to quiet down, calm down, and (yes you know this is how this ends):
Love
Love
Love