A God That Roars

A mother dove looks for her nest,

Asking where, ku? Where, ku?

Where the lion lies down

Where any man or woman goes to cry.

Rumi

The night sky drapes the earth with silence.

Mortal man sleeps as if in death,

A graveyard hush hovers over the deep.

Above, in heaven’s realms,

Infinity’s blackness is riddled

By a roar, like that of a lion, the king of beasts,

Bursting through branches of wooded forests.

It is the roar of God,

The King of Kings,

Sitting on His throne , raising His majestic roar above

The muffled and mournful moaning of a broken heart,

“Woe to the children , on account of whose sins I destroyed my House…”

Below there is silence, His children hear not a single

Syllable of rageful pain. God roars alone.

A ruin, a place of hidden dangers, real and imagined,

A rabbi there dares to pray-it is Jerusalem after all, a place of

Sacred security.

As he prays a divine voice is heard-“Woe to the children on account of whose sins I destroyed My house…”

Not a roar reserved for the angels of silent Emptiness

But a cooing like a dove, gentle and sweet, soothing the breast of a shattered people in ruins.

In the desolation of my heart, give me, I pray, a God who coos,

And keep the God who roars far away from us.