Meditations from the desert: Breathe the world into being.

There are big, tall, powerful walls of rock in the desert. They are towering and strong and yet with the slightest flick of my finger, the wall poofs into dust-- it's not there-- it disappears into the air. It is so fragile. It's existence so dependent. I realize that the rock wall is just a collection of piled up sand and no more, but it's paradoxical because on the one hand, the wall does exist. I can't walk through it. It is there. I'll have to walk around it. But as soon as I brush the surface with my finger, it dissolves into nothingness, into a puff of dust.
Creation is this way. We are this way. We think we're so real, so strong, so invincible, indestructible, and it's true. I can't walk through you. But sometimes we have such egos, we think we're bigger than the towering rock wall. We're even bigger.
For me, it exists, but if I tap it with my finger, it dissolves to dust.
But what about when a person dies?
Flick of a finger. Dust. He dissolves into sand. And maybe that sand turns into a grand rock wall towering towards the desert moon. Or maybe it gets blown onto the street of Yerushalayim and is stepped on by the feet of holy people. Malchus.
My body is a shoe.
A real tower, a real body, dissolves into sand with the flick of a finger.




It went like this: when he dies, he dissolved into sand. In life, he was a pillar. But he saw the flick of a finger, and he heard a deep inhalation not coming from himself, and he saw that he was alone. He heard a heart beating like a drum. When the finger flicked, something sticky caught on to him. For a moment, he was lost in a dark maze. It caught on to him and pulled him out, but the body crumbled into sand.



She sat on top of a pile of sand in the desert. She knew what every grain of sand implied. For her the sand was created. For a tiny particle of sand, she was created.



The ground under your feet looks solid, but it's not. It looks hard, but it crumbles when you step.



A few sticks can make a big fire. A breath can make it grow to higher heights.
Breathe the world into being and inhale it back in.