How Much We Must Unknow to Understand

By Jane Tawel

September 6, 2021

*

To allude to a fact, is to release it to deeper understanding.

To allude to the past, is to increase its future expanding.

To cling to knowledge is a losing game,

as shallow as a puddle, as fleeting as fame.

Oh, to have faith in what is not known,

is the key to a wisdom that is not blown

by the winds of the time or the waves of the tides,

of humans’ small knowledge and man’s foolish pride.

*

If there is a God, then She must have a splendor

that surpasses religion or nation or gender.

Yes, there is a God, and He rises above,

even our greatest poets’ small odes to great love.

Yes, there is a Being, beyond all our facts,

known not through our creeds, but just by the acts

of the people who yearn for a soul free from self,

and the people who learn less from books on a shelf,

than by doing and proving that the self has to die,

for the Soul of Eternity to be truly alive.

*

How much, how much we must lose to gain.

What fields of faith, in one buried grain.

Embrace the story and the mysteries.

Let the present flow into past histories.

Release the need to understand,

and wholeness and holiness will expand.

Don’t limit today by confines of the mind,

and as all seekers, you may find,

that God is present and God is close,

and God is faith, and love, and hope.

*

How much there is we must un-know,

for the faith of Eternity to be planted, and grow.

For faith is the action that shores-up our belief,

and rescues our odysseys from the sirens’ reefs,

of limited knowledge, which ours always must be,

in a world in which there is just one guarantee –

that as small as I am in life misunderstood—

God is here. God is love. God is peace. God is Good.

**

© Jane Tawel September 6, 2021

Today begins Rosh Hashanah, and this poem was inspired albeit poorly done, in reverence and appreciation for the profound teachings of Abraham Joshua Heschel. Though he would point out that I have read merely his books, Rabbi Heschel, a man of faith for all religions, nations, and peoples, through his books of  profound thoughts and faith has taught me more than I can begin to express in my own small words of gratitude. Shalom to you and yours — Jane