God’s Descendants, and That Funny Galilean Accent

1 November 2009

This morning I went to a 7 a.m. AA meeting. On Sundays they do an “11th Step” (seeking a closer relationship to one’s Higher Power through prayer and meditation) meeting that even involves ten minutes of meditation. There is no better “church” for me on a Sunday (or any other) morning), and no better way for me to begin a fasting day. The whole thing made me stupid-happy.

A few days ago, I was thinking again about the people in AA and how it is that they, more than anyone I’ve ever met, are so in touch (or have so much potential to be in touch) with God and God’s will, with love, with all the things that I’ve been so painstakingly taught about in “private lessons” over the past couple of years. Many of them have already been in hell, have been completely broken down by life and left with absolutely nothing, have been despised and scorned and cast out, have never felt comfortable either “in their own skins” or in the world, among people who seem to have no trouble navigating the day-to-day tasks of living and social graces that terrify these “lost” ones.

And it seemed to me, again, that they are the ones most blessed and loved by God, because their lives have led them to expect nothing, to ask for nothing but a day’s peace, God’s love and guidance, and, perhaps, a feeling that there is, somewhere, a place for them. Their hearts are wide open, and they–regardless of how they might conceive of their “higher power”–have the capacity to be enlightened much more easily than do most of the people who have always felt at home in this world.

But I wanted to know if it was by design that certain people are born into lives that lead them to that point where they are bruised, shunned, homeless, tormented by addiction, abused, terrified, and able to trust in nothing except, finally, the possibility that God loves them in a way the world has never offered. They are, I thought, God’s true lambs, hated by and hating this world, empty, and–whether they know it or not–loved completely. They are also capable of loving and caring for each other in ways that most people will never begin to approach because they are too preoccupied with the distractions of the world, with religious dogma, with striving for things, with a kind of blindness.

As I thought about it, I thought I saw, “leb”–meaning (in Hebrew) that I understood–but I asked to be told more clearly so that I could be sure. I also wanted to know why.

Yesterday he started to do as I’d asked, and explain. He started by saying, “Elohiym sasa sibal” which seems to mean that God is happy and satisfied (I gather with my understanding about the above).

Then he said, “Tolda Elos”–”descendants (towl@dah) of God.” Then, “Lat billos” (la’at=covered; b@low=rags), and “bakas (baqa=to seek) sos (happiness). So–”God’s descendants (I guess that could be “children”, but I think that there may be significance in the use of the word “descendants”, although I’m not sure what it is), covered in rags, seek happiness (through God, I think).” Next, he said “algarim”, which I take to mean, possibly, that the “rags” are not punishment (al=not; ga’ar=rebuke/reproof).

Then he said what looked like, “Garasab alsar”, which seems to mean something like the “crushed/broken” (garac) God makes joyful (alats/alaz).”

Hence Yeshua’s words in Luke 4:18 and in the Sermon on the Mount about the poor, the brokenhearted, the captives, the sick, the bruised, those who mourn, etc. They are actually God’s most beloved souls, although among the “worldly” they are considered worthless, and often “sinners.”

Speaking of Luke 4:18, I asked him last night if that scene had actually occurred, as I’ve often enjoyed picturing him doing that in my mind. He said, “Taste…not exact.” A little while later, when I’d pretty much forgotten about that little exchange, he said, “Glalaw dal malam.” “Glalaw” sounded like a weird word; I was amazed when I found that “G@liylah” is a way of saying “Galilee” in Hebrew. “Dal” means “one who is low/poor/weak/thin,” and “malal” means “to speak/say.” I believe that he meant he was spoken of poorly in Galilee (or that the Galileans spoke poorly of him), from an early age (based on things he’s said before). He, too, was poor, bruised, and ragged, and never felt that he fit in (he would, perhaps, be considered a juvenile delinquent in this time).

(I also just happened, while I was trying to understand the pronunciation of “Galilee” or “Galilean” in Hebrew or Aramaic, to come across a book online where I read that Galileans were considered by many more “sophisticated” people of the time to have funny accents–which would explain a lot. After I read that, he said, “Galar abal”–meaning, I think, that his accent gave him away (galah=expose oneself; abal=truly).

Messages in King James-Speak

10/24/2009

A while ago, I woke up hearing the words, “Who has created you in the sun?” I had no idea who said it or what it meant; the only thing I’ve been able to figure out is that it sounds like (but isn’t) something out of Ecclesiastes–one really weird book.

Lately I’ve been hearing similar things fairly often–”things” meaning phrases/sentences in English (as opposed to Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and–for a while–Lakota), spoken is some kind of King James lingo. I don’t know what the deal is with that; no one has a reason to speak to me like that unless they’re actually quoting the K.J. version of the Bible. I’m not quite sure why some people seem to think that God, or Yeshua, or anyone else other than King James and his people ever spoke like that.

In any case, a few nights ago I heard something like, “Where is thy God if thou art bereft?” A couple of mornings ago, just as I woke up, I also seemed to be hearing something that I took it Yeshua was saying–something that seemed to infer that he would be gone, but that, “He hath blessed and anointed another…Mary…”

As for the “bereft” remark…Yesterday as I woke up I heard what sounded like, “Yinnouri sacred.” I figured out that it was actually, “Ayin owr sacred”–basically, that those who are BEREFT (“ayin”) of light (owr) are sacred.

Both remarks, again, reminded me of the people at AA, many of whom have been left utterly bereft of just about anything but the ability to breathe. And I’m coming to understand that they are the people who are God’s (and Yeshua’s) priority, and that they are the most likely to be able to re-establish a real relationship with a God who loves them, because they have been through hell, and yet their hearts are still open. They reach out to each other, because they understand that love, given or received, is the only thing that can save them. Their state of being “bereft” is a kind of blessing, if they can be made to see that. It would no doubt do us all good to be so lost and so empty at some point, so that it would become utterly clear what really matters, and our hearts, minds, and souls could be open places for God to fill.

Gematria/Comfort

10/21/2009

One of the (usually) fun “side-effects” of everything that’s been happening is that I learn about things that I had no knowlededge of whatsoever before, and that in all likelihood I never would have encountered except, perhaps, in passing. Yesterday, I learned what “gematria” is (see my previous post, “Numbers, Hebrews (Not as in, ‘Books of’”), as a result of what he’d said to me in the middle of the night before: “I am your missing number…553.” I’d come across some things in passing about numbers being assigned to Hebrew and Greek words in the Bible in order to ferret out some kind of secret code (I still have my doubts about those kinds of things, but what do I know?), but hadn’t paid much attention.

Scratch my “revelation” about Mary Magdalene’s “number” (153) according to Margaret Starbird (I did find out how she came up with that, at least); in spite of the odd coincidence that the last two digits were the same, it probably has nothing to do with what he said to me.

I kept trying to figure it out all day yesterday, and came to nothing. I begged him to just explain it to me, otherwise I’d drive myself nuts trying to understand something about which I know absolutely nothing.

I did look up the number 553 on a site called Biblewheel.com. There were only two words listed under that number that jumped out at me: Satan (ruh-roh…) and “parakaleo” (Greek for “comfort/entreat/teach/call to one’s side/encourage”).

Of course the “Satan” part was mildly disturbing, but I did remember that one of the words I “heard” in the middle of the night, months ago and out of the blue, was “parakaleos.” At that point I thought that it must have meant “paraclete” (a word I’d recently learned which basically means “comforter” or “Holy Spirit” in the context of the N.T.), but I looked it up and found that it’s the verb. I figured that maybe that wasn’t a coincidence either.

Anyway, this morning he finally helped me out. “Parakaleo,” he said. “Lamad (“teach/learn” in Hebrew) somas (that turned out to be “body”–either of the living, or as a corpse–in Greek… he does tend to mix it up with the languages). Then he said, “Parakaleo somas”–”Comfort bodies.” I took that to mean “bodies” of the living (I don’t think I’d be much help to corpses), perhaps as opposed to the “lost souls” I speak to and pray for sometimes. I’m still not sure about what the “missing number” part meant, but I’ll get to it.

Of course, that made me think of my new “church”–AA meetings–where I get filled with so much love and hope for the broken people there that I can barely stand it, and I pray for them as they speak about their lives and struggles, and applaud their sobriety (whether it’s that nearly impossible one day or 25 years) with the enthusiasm most people reserve for something like their favorite Super Bowl team.

My “Church”, Cont’d.

10/20/2009

I’ve been going to the AA meetings with my friend almost every day; it just makes me so happy to be, as I said in my earlier post about it, in a place where I can feel God’s presence so strongly (more so than I ever felt it in church), and where Yeshua’s lessons are being learned and practiced as they were meant to be, in their purest, most unadulterated form.

He’s been urging me to speak there. “Lamad (teach) love,” he said. And today I was able to see what he was saying as I sat in the group–that hasn’t happened much for a long time.

“Not today,” I said. “They’re discussing something else. I’ll start tomorrow.”

“Talk today,” he said.

“But I’m a terrible speaker!” I told him yet again. “I’ll just sound like an idiot!”

“Milla Ab,” he said. God’s words.

“OK, but tomorrow.”

As it “turned out,” they went around the room in a way that led to me. Clearly, I wasn’t getting off the hook (I could have passed on speaking, but I figured that his will was going to win out anyway). So I introduced myself. My heart was pounding, and I was shaking uncontrollably. I babbled a little about myself, and then said there what I just said here about God’s presence and Jesus’ work.

When I was finished, a man sitting near me (who had earlier said something about not knowing how to read) looked at me and said that what I’d said had sent shivers through him. And I could barely remember what I’d said because of the nervousness. Someone else said, “Keep coming back,” and others came up and introduced themselves and told me that they’d liked what I’d said afterwards. Milla Ab. My own words don’t tend to have that kind of effect on people.

In other news…last year, when, for a time, I used to go to church (there are more posts here about that experience). He started a kind of game with me; I assumed at the time it was just to keep me going (although his reasons for wanting me to go had more to do with showing me where things had gone wrong; I just didn’t realize that at first). Just before I’d leave for church, he’d make some seemingly out-of-the-blue remark. I’d go off to church wondering what the hell he was talking about, and then at some point during the mass the phrase he’d used, or something very much like it, would come up. For example, one day he said, “Walk with God.” It was a nice sentiment, I thought, but not related to anything we’d been talking about. Near the end of the mass a hymn was sung. It took me a minute to look down at the lyrics…”walk with God.” It happened many times.

Yesterday, he kept saying seemingly random words in Hebrew that, when I looked them up, all turned out to have something to do with wages/pay/labour. Just before the meeting, he said something about pay for a day’s work. Huh? I kept asking what he was trying to get at, but couldn’t get an answer (he did say something about reading Luke).

So, based on my experiences with him at church, I thought that MAYBE he was playing the “church game” (as I used to call it, like a kid) with me again. I listened at the meeting for something having to do with wages, but nothing came up. Oh, well, I thought. Perhaps I’d misunderstood.

But today at the meeting they were reading something about the second tradition. When they got to the Bible quote, “the labourer is worth his hire.” I almost laughed out loud, which would have been seriously inappropriate, I think.

When I got home, I was trying to remember the context of the quote. I knew damn well that if I just let the Gospels fall open that I’d end up on the right page–that’s just the way everything happens these days. Sure enough, there it was–Luke 10:7. (Some might consider it inappropriate to call him a smart-ass, but I called him a smart-ass, and a show-off. I mean really.)

I say it every day these days, and I’ll say it again–I love my life.

Numbers, Hebrews (Not as in “Books of”)

10/20/2009

I’ve never been into numerology or any of those kinds of “mystic arts” (or whatever you’d like to call them). But last night, in the middle of the night, he said very clearly (I think it was him, anyway), “I am your missing number—553.” I don’t even know where to start to try to figure that one out; if anyone has a clue, please let me know.

He also said, “Gave Ibros last mowbal” this morning. I figured out that Ibros, as I suspected, was “Hebrews”–in Hebrew, “Hebrew” is “Ibriy”, according to the lexicon. “Mowba” is another form of the word that means “entrance/coming in”; he used it many times to describe something like the Holy Spirit (or any other term you wish, depending on your spiritual background–the “religion” is irrelevant”) entering someone so that God can do God’s work through that person.

LATER
So, without much confidence in the concept of numerology (but with a lot of confidence in him), I started Googling things about ancient Hebrew numerology. I learned the word “gematria”, and when I looked that up I immediately found Maragaret Starbird’s site about Mary Magdalene. My mouth dropped open when I came to this passage:

One further argument supports Mary Magdalene as Bride of the Archetypal Bridegroom. In Hebrew and in Greek, each alphabet letter has a numeric value. In coining the Greek phrase “H Magdalhnh,” the architects of the New Testament gave this “other Mary” a title whose numeric value (153) reflects powerful associations with the Feminine principle and the Goddesses of the ancient world. The subject of symbolic numbers encoded by gematria into the Christian Gospels is discussed at length in my 2003 book Magdalene’s Lost Legacy. Magdalene’s sacred number 153 is associated with the vesica piscis — () or yoni–a symbol universally associated with the Feminine. Ancient Greeks called the vesica piscis the “matrix,” the “doorway to life,” the “bridal chamber” and even the “Holy of Holies.” There is no mistaking the sexual associations of this shape and its feminine nature, deliberately coined into the significant epithet of the Mary called “the Magdalene.”

I’m not a mathematician, but what are the chances that the last two digits there, and the number he have me last night (553) would be the same? I closed my eyes to see what he had to say about all of that, and he said, “sacred marriage.”

Look, I’m really not one of those gung-ho mystical, Dan Brown-reading people. But the things he tells me always either make sense, or–even if they don’t seem to make sense right away–make sense when I look into them more on my own. I have no reason at this point (and I HAVE looked for reasons) not to believe the things he tells me, much less believe that the things I see and hear are real.

That said, I now need to understand how “153″ is completed in “553″, if it has something to do with “sacred marriage.”

This is fun.

“Clairvoyance”, Again (Maybe)

10/19/2009

In a recent post entitled “Clairvoyance”, I wrote about a dream I’d had that seemed to predict with some very specific (although not specific enough for me to have been able to do anything to prevent it) details the murder by Mesac Damas of his wife and five children.

As I said in the post, I’ve had quite a few dreams like that; I’ve learned to recognize them by how detailed they are on certain points, and the fact that they seem to have nothing to do with anything that would ordinarily be in my subconscious, dreaming mind. Sometimes they’ve come to nothing, but often they have.

It’s with some hesitation for a number of reasons that I’m going to share the one I had the night before last, but it does seem to fit the criteria for the dreams that seem to be “premonitions.” When it happens, it’s not because of me; I attribute anything like that to God. I’m just the “messenger,” for some reason.

And it may have been just a random dream.

In any case, in the dream I found myself in Ghana. At one point I was at what seemed to be a party of some sort on the beach (OK, Yeshua was there too). There were a lot of flies around.

On another part of the beach, a woman was being arrested or investigated; she seemed to be from Ghana. She had built some kind of model of a city or something (like one of those architectural models, but in the sand, I think), and what I understood was that it was part of a plan to blow up a city or the world (I guess one would call it a terrorist plot). She seemed relatively unperturbed by the investigation/arrest.

After that, Yeshua and I made our way to a bus station to get on a bus that would take us into Manhattan. The people on the bus were none-too-helpful about telling us if we were on the right bus, or if we’d accidentally gotten on a bus to Washington, D.C. (sheesh–I can understand a bunch of NY-types being rude to me, but you’d think that they’d at least help Jesus out, regardless of their religious convictions…).

That was about it (there was also something earlier about talking to God about the possible end of the world, and about “knowledge” and “wisdom”–represented for some reason by a fig and a prune, but that didn’t seem related too much).

A LITTLE LATER
It just occurred to me that maybe “Ghana” was a stand-in name for “Afghanistan” (the details get tricky like that sometimes; hence Mesac Damas escaping across the Golden Gate Bridge in S.F., when in actuality he was near or in a section of Naples known as “Golden Gate”). But as far as I can tell Afghanistan has no beaches, and the beach figured pretty prominently in the dream (of course, the beach itself could be a metaphor for something else, but I kind of don’t think so).

I Found My Church

10/17/2009

I’ve mentioned in earlier posts that I used to be a pretty serious drinker. I usually didn’t start drinking until 5 p.m. (unless it was a weekend or holiday, when all bets were off), but I wasted no time after that, and I’d panic if I thought that I wouldn’t have enough wine, or whatever, to get me to the place I needed to be–or THOUGHT I needed to be. Then, of course, I’d have to smoke. Then, if my ex-husband and I happened to get into an argument (which we did on a fairly regular basis), all hell would break lose; of course he’d generally have been drinking too. It got ugly. But I figured that it was all a part of what I considered my bohemian lifestyle; I didn’t write poetry any more, but I was a poet. Poets drank. No matter if many of the ones I admired most died as a direct or indirect result.

But anyway, that’s an old story, and none too original. What I’m getting to is that it continued long after I started seeing the amazing things I’d started to see, and after I learned for certain that death isn’t at all the end, and that the man I referred as “Sam” in the beginning of this blog (his real name is David, and I figure that I’ll just simplify things from here on out by calling him that) hadn’t left me alone after all. One would think that the joy in all of that would have been enough to allow me to be just fine without drinking, but it was a hell of a habit.

I was kind of surprised when David asked me to stop drinking (he had, after all, been a heroin addict for most of his life), and more surprised when he became more and more insistent (always in a gentle way, but always making its importance to him really clear). At that time, I was “hearing” (again, really just seeing the words, very clearly, written out in front of me) from what he called “lost souls”, who made it very obvious from the start that they did NOT like me, to say the least. (And I know that some would immediately think that they were hallucinations brought on by drinking, but I can assure you that, even though I stopped drinking a year and a half ago, they still show up from time to time. They just don’t bother me now. And if you read some of the earliest posts here, you’ll find examples of how I was able to verify the existence as living people of some of them by clues they’d given me–clues that there’s no way I could have come up with on my own. If you do a search for “Joe” and/or “dough” on this blog, you’ll find one good example.)

Long story short–it took a much longer time than it should have, and it really did take a lot of prayers asking for help and finally, truly realizing that I couldn’t do it on my own, and that the consequences for NOT stopping would be even worse than I would have thought, not to mention making it REALLY hard for David to keep me safe–God finally grew exasperated enough with my feeble attempts to kind of deliver my own personal, at-home, AA meetings (because I was too proud to go to one), and I stopped cold on May 15th, 2007.

I now have a friend who has a serious drinking problem (she also has a beautiful, sweet daughter who is in my son’s class), and it’s amazed me how important it is to ME that she get things back under control and get well and happy again. I pray for her every day–”Abba, please let her call me today and say she wants to go to AA, please let her get a good new place to live, please let her be OK, please let her daughter be OK.” As I’ve said many times, my prayers seem to be answered EVERY SINGLE TIME. So my friend now has a great new place to live safely and comfortably with her daughter, and for the past week she’s been going to AA meetings every day except for one (she had a really good reason that day, if there are any really good reasons). And I’ve been going with her. Naturally, it makes her daughter very happy that she’s making the effort to gain back control.

I’d never been to a meeting before; as I said, I was too proud, and too certain that I’d run into someone I knew in this little mile-square town (as if that mattered). But at the first one I attended with my friend, I was almost overcome with awe and happiness. If God’s presence could be tangibly felt anywhere, and if what Yeshua tried to teach was put into practice in any setting, it was at the meeting. I watched people unabashedly looking up into the air during the meeting, obviously speaking to their Higher Powers. And I could almost hear God listening. When someone announced that they hadn’t had a drink in 7 days or in 25 years, I applauded and grinned like a lunatic and almost cried with joy every time.

I recently have been asking God (I do call God “Abba”–not as in “Dancing Queen”, but as in “Father”, or really “Daddy”) to give me some hints as to what I’m supposed to be doing with everything I’ve been given, and how to share all this bliss that is continually oozing out from my pores, it seems. And I realized that, yet again, my prayer had been answered (there have been other things as well).

Lately, when I wake up in the morning, I’ll often randomly open up the Bible (not that I think that that is the only authoritative source by any means–just one of many, but I happen to have one) to the Gospels, to see where I end up. Almost invariable I land somewhere where there is clearly a “message” for me–perhaps an answer to a question, or something that gives me just the direction I’d been seeking just then.

This morning, short while before I was to leave for another AA meeting with my friend, I did it again. “Give me something good,” I asked David, and Abba. I closed my eyes, opened the book, and put my finger down at a random place in the page I landed on. Here is what I found this morning:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.

I’ve gone to church a lot in my life; for a while I was kind of into the rituals and other aspects, but I never left as delighted and full of hope and sense of God’s presence as I do at AA meetings. I’ve found my church.

(And when I came home from the meeting today, I went to talk to David; he wrote out “You make me proud.” Can’t ask for much more than that, especially as I’ve come to clearly understand that the things that please him please God as well.)

Listening to Love

10/13/2009

What I’ve been told–what I’m coming to understand–is that there really has been only one message, and one “messenger” (or “wave”, as he’s put it), one soul at different times at at different places, in different guises in accordance with what people in a certain time, place, and culture could most easily relate to.

But I still have questions. Yesterday, once again, I was trying to come to an understanding, and thinking specifically about what Buddha taught (as opposed to, say, Yeshua, or other manifestations of that one soul/messenger). I was trying to reconcile in my mind the fact that Buddhists have no specific concept of the Divine, or of God. I was also trying to get around the sense I’ve gotten that Buddhists practice love, compassion, and no-harm not because of their intrinsic value, but as ways to try to avoid suffering and samsara (the cycle of death and re-birth) for themselves.

So far the only way I can reconcile it is to think that the only point, still, is that “God is love” or “God’s will is love.” God isn’t concerned so much with how people envision God, or even with worship (there probably isn’t even a way in which a mere “mortal” could really have a grasp on “who God is” anyway), as God is with love, plain and simple. How people get there–to practicing love in all possible ways at all times–makes no difference, as long as they do get there. The endless struggle to “own” God and claim exclusive understanding has only led people away from love and toward division and hatred (to the point of torture, war, and murder at times). If, as I’ve been told very clearly, God’s will is love, that proprietary impulse runs in exact opposition to what is asked of us.

Anyway, as I was thinking about it all again yesterday, he got my attention and said simply, “I listened to love.” Wherever he was, in whatever time, that was how he listened to God and understood how to proceed. It pretty much explains everything (not to mention being perfect guidance for all of us), and is all anyone needs to know. Maybe the best thing to do is to think that God is literally love, act on that basis, and leave the rest alone.

The Unwilling Student of Hebrew

10/8/2009

Every so often he has a chance to lighten up and make me laugh.

For a long time, he’s been gently asking me to take some Hebrew lessons (I’m developing a very strange vocabulary of root words just because he keeps using them with me and I keep looking them up, but so far know just about nothing about grammar, etc.), so that we can communicate more easily–it seems to be his preferred language (actually, I think that Aramaic is probably his preferred language, but he knows that I have no way to learn or translate Aramaic as easily as I can Hebrew–there just aren’t as many resources).

So this morning I was looking at an online course, considering taking it, and wondering if I could overcome my general laziness enough to learn Hebrew in depth. Then I thought to ask him if he could actually read and write Hebrew himself (it seemed only fair, if he’s going to make me learn it).

He said, “Practos con.” That sounded more like Greek to me, so to speak (I have learned enough to know that Hebrew isn’t big on putting consonants together like that at the beginning of words), so I looked on the Greek lexicon. I found “prasso”, which means “practice/accomplish/undertake”, and then “akon”, which means “unwilling”. When it hit me what he was trying to say, I started laughing. Then he said, in English, “You know my secret,” and I laughed even harder. I guess it would be bad for PR if people thought that he wasn’t crazy about studying Hebrew, and that he’d apparently done it under some duress.

Then I said, “But what about all the stories about how you knew the Hebrew alphabet without having to be taught, and ended up explaining things to your teachers rather than the other way around?”

I saw him start to write, “kas…”, and I knew that he was about to say, “kasab”–”lie” (that’s one I remember). Just a regular kid with better things to do than study Hebrew, I guess (“Aw, ma, do I have to study Hebrew right now? Can’t I just go outside and play with God?”).

Well, I guess that it’s the least I can do to try to learn it as well.

Dust Around His Neck

9/26/2009

As I mentioned earlier, there seems to be a concerted effort to enable me to be able to more consistently hear (rather than have to try to see) what’s being said to me. The night before last I heard a lot, for a long time, before I fell asleep. It wasn’t upsetting or distracting at all; the only difficulty was trying to learn to determine what’s coming purely from my sleepy mind, and what’s coming from him (or perhaps others).

The first thing that stood out sounded like, “slobeech”. I wrote it on the little notepad I keep next to my bed at night, and then looked it up in the morning. I believe it was “ts@la (Aramaic for “pray”) bitchah (trust, in Hebrew).” “Pray to trust” is something I’ve heard or seen on one or more other occasions. Once it was accompanied by, “Learn to live in spirit.”

A little later, very clearly, I heard a remarkably long sentence. It began, “I wore the adamah around my neck not as a cross but…” I should have written it down immediately, because I can’t now remember the exact wording of the rest, but it had something to do with teaching people how to live and relate to one another.

I looked up “adamah” in the morning, too, and found that it means, “dust/soil.” At first I thought I must have the wrong definition or something, because that didn’t really seem to make sense. But then I thought, a person with dust or dirt on his neck is out among people, and in the world, rather than being in some protected, clean place where he is separated from others. And I remembered that at one point he referred to himself as a “lonely peasant”. I believe he had a choice, and he chose the one that would give him a life of wandering among the towns where the poor lived and struggled, and on the outskirts where the sick and outcast were made to live.