Richard McBee - David dancing (2005) — **Richard McBee -** **David dancing** **(2005)**

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Notebooks of life · Poems · 3 min
To write as close as possible to what is surfacing, without always seeking to conclude.

Excerpt from The Silence of the Hours, journal of a spiritual retreat, August 2021.

Today I knew jubilation, and I danced in the infinity of praise!
O You, the Eternal, spread out over the universe,
You who are Life and Love and Presence poured forth in abundance,
I who am but an infinitesimal speck of dust in Your world below,
once more I entered this vessel of stone, a beggar in Your house,
built in Your Name by those men of faith to seek You and sing You,

I the wandering Jew, brother to all men,
the hassid° inhabited by all memories, all tongues, all signs invented by those who seek You from generation to generation,
I inhabited by Your Fire, companion to all those who desire You here below, descended from Heaven, invited by us to inaugurate the great Feast of joy,
a little Franciscan, a little Sufi, a little Buddhist, a little anarchist — but anarchist of love and peace,

and I sang, I sang, I sang…

“Hoïdou l’Adoïnoï ki toïv, ki le’oïlom ‘hasdoï! ( Give thanks to the Eternal, for He is good, for His Love endures for ever! )
Give thanks to the G-d of the heavenly powers, for His Love endures for ever!
Give thanks to the Lord of lords, for His Love endures for ever!
He alone has wrought great wonders, for His Love endures for ever! ...”

I sang this psalm of praise of King David, drunk with that Hebrew which is the language of my soul,
the tongue that healed me like a purifying unguent, the one that alone can open me to the most intimate part of myself…

"Hoïdou l'Adoïnoï ki toïv", and my voice carries my body to one side, as though swept by the exhalation of the song…
"ki le'oïlom 'hasdoï", the voice answers me like an echo and there I am leaning the other way,
the frail skiff of my body ebbs and flows upon the wave,
and the movement amplifies little by little with the phrases
that turn without end and resound through the nave…

I am weightless, perhaps as angels are, all heaviness dissolved,
I am a pure smoke rising in praise,
a dust of infinity within His Infinite Love…

“Halleluya, halleluya, halleluya!”

° hassid: a pious Jew, in reference to Hasidic Judaism, a mystical movement founded in eighteenth-century Poland by the Baal Shem Tov. Centred on the direct and fervent relationship of the individual with the divine, it stood in opposition to the rigid tradition of rabbinic Judaism and constituted a spiritual response to the misery of the persecuted Jewish communities of Eastern Europe. The Hasidim express their communion with G-d above all through song and dance.

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