5/21: (Monday) Today marks 5 days along the journey of the three weeks where the crack in everything beckons a polishing the luminal darkness of melancholia of this time. As I had the privilege of finally sitting down for coffee with Benjamin Shevili, the Jerusalemite poet overflowed with his passion for what I would call a “deeply ecumenical” mysticism. His unique poetic language is a mystical texture that is not “magical” but Shevili claims is “abstract”. And melacholia, not depression is the recurring motif that relates to these exercises in particular and we see in his poetry in general. Melancholia is a certain refraction of tenebrae that seeps with doubt in the face of death and longing for life, and despite the deep darkness it does not overpower that inner light.

So how can those places of vulnerability, uncertainty even doubt point towards the light as it refracts inside with this next poem from Shevili’s recent collection, Poems to Yova (2022):

What happens
when there’s nothing
happening
what happens
when everything
happens
by happenstance

Questions for self-reflection:

1. How does embracing the posture of the “happenstance” of life bring a sense of equanimity, even admist those moments where you are “walking through the valley of the shadow of death”?
2. How does an awareness of “What happens/when there’s nothing/happening” echo the embrace of emptiness in Qohelet? If everything is “merest breath” how can this “nothing” rebirth us into “something” that is more equipoised for a more balanced way of being?