I love taking pictures from
planes, but they never turn out. Perhaps it is the atmospheric film on the
windows, or the smudgy fingerprints illuminated by the strongest of sunbeams.
Perhaps it is merely the angle of the porthole that I can see farther out and
winder than my camera can capture. Yet, I think it is something more. Some
things just cant be pictured.
In San Francisco I walked up to a shoebox sized
lunch place with a line stretching out the door and upon reaching the entrance
I knew why there was a wait. I wished I could transport scent, send it like a
picture, full of curries and thai chilis, and peanut sauce, couple with warmth
and echoing order numbers and instructions, mixed with the customers tech talk
of phones and companies. I wished I could capture it not as a look at me, but
as a sharing a smell beyond words, and certainly beyond sight.
Last night, tired and
reading, listening to the catacombs of Spotify, a music website. I discovered
Hildegard of Bingen and like concert goers in a middvil cathedral I became
silent, and the sound lifted and moved me. I remembered as a youth singing
similar melodic climbing and descending lines in equally ancient cathedrals
around Europe and seeing old women weep and
once my fellow second soprano and I grabbing hands as our voices to floated
reaching a note that it seemed we could not have produced alone.
These are those cleft of the
rock places. Places that are beyond seeing, beyond smelling, beyond touching,
beyond capturing, when all you know is that the divine is passing by, and
afterward, you recognize that you have seen God’s back like the iridescent
silage of a snail, or the lengthening and thinning of a shadow almost
gone.
These cleft of rock places
are always a surprise, never expected, never planned, but always to come
eventually. I know this because I felt enough of them and have no reason to
believe they will cease, but Moses and his people believe they have done
something so grave as to make the divine presence disappear. They have
complained, and created golden calves, and angered God and broke the covenant.
They first asked God not to retaliate, and now Moses is asking God to go with
them. Moses knows that their journey to the promised land of milk and honey
will be unfruitful without the presence of God leading them. I cannot imagine
the fear of being destroyed by God, but I do believe, far greater, would be the
fear that the divine presence would not exist, would not be present, that there
would no longer be those moments in which manna was showered down from the
skies, or that those skies would always remain empty and gone would be the view
of a thunderstorm crossing the desert - its giant clouds equally ominous as
wondrous - and the feeling of being smaller than the whole, or that I would no
longer overhear someone behind me in line for coffee remark what great laugh a
woman across the room had released, and my turning, smiling, and nodding my
head, taking that extra moment from the cleft in the rock to watch the back of
the divine as it passed. I too would be eternally scared if I ever thought I
would have to say goodbye to these things. I too, like Moses, even after being
reassured, would beg, “Show me your glory, I pray.” I would fall to my knees; I
would hope that the most cunning among my people had been sent - to
convince, to plead our case with the humility that knows that those cleft in
the rock places are not an expectation but a gift. I too would want to hear
God’s reassurance twice. But I cannot imagine not knowing the omnipresence of
those cleft in the rock places. I have seen them my whole life, I have expected
them and called them a gift. Even when I did not believe they were the back of
God, I did know there was a presence beyond, and knew that it this presence
beyond myself would always be. Today, scripturally, I know the end of the
Exodus story, I know God remains present. I know the people will build a
tabernacle to carry with them so as not to loose those moments where by the
fireside your back warms and tingles with heat and you later awake having gone
so deeply beyond the domiviglia to a place where all is rest. I do not have to
be reassured when God says, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you
rest.” It is something I already know, and I have faith you know too.
I have no doubt we each have
experienced those cleft of the rock moments. I wonder, as you sit here, which
come to your mind? I wonder what was the most recent, the strongest, the first
of your memory, the one you’ve told, the one your afraid to tell, the one your
unsure of, the one of which you are certain, the one that came when you needed,
the one that came out of the clear blue sky. I wonder where have you seen the
presence of the divine as it passes. I wonder where you will see it next,
because there always is a next; God has promised, the Lord
continued,
“See, there is a place by me
where you shall stand on the rock;
and while my glory passes by
I will put you in a cleft of the rock,
and I will cover you with my
hand until I have passed by;
then I will take away my
hand,
and you shall see my
back;
but my face shall not be
seen.”
