Lion-hearted Moses

"If I told you lately I had known despair, would you take my hand and walk with me back there...."

Today, time has slowed down because I've received bad news. Someone I love is dying. I wrote a poem for him while drawing inspiration from an artistic image on a tarot card, the King of Wands. It's a beautiful card; much of the tarot appeal for me is in the art on the cards, not for telling fortunes or anything. Like any other symbol, one of these cards presents an opportunity for reflection. There are many kinds of decks and types of art in them. This card is bright, a lot of yellow and red. The king is dressed in a fiery robe with a lion at the chest, and he seems to be heading off across the desert with a glowing wand.

You can see a different image at the website below, along with associated interpretations of the card.

http://www.keen.com/articles/tarot/king-of-wands-tarot-card

The image I have before me makes me think of Moses, with his rod and staff ---- Moses stretching out his rod to bring the locusts in on the wind, stretching his rod to heaven to bring thunder, hail, and fire, Moses raising his staff and stretching out his hand to part the Red sea so the Israelites could walk across on dry land, Moses smiting the rock and bringing forth water for the thirsty.

So, you see, again I come back to the faith of my youth, to the Bible stories, to those great characters so alive in my mind. Moses, the King of Wands. Swedenborg wrote that the stretched out hand in the Bible "denotes the rule of power, unlimited or infinite." Moses believed God's power, and stretched out his hand. Today, I'm trusting in that same power to deliver my loved one from his suffering --- to heal him or bring him home to Heaven. Either way the healing will be accomplished, but it would be so wonderful to be able to keep him here longer. I didn't spend enough time with him.

This semester, I'm teaching one of my favorite classes: Introduction to Humanities, and Chapter 1 includes the Hebrews, the Hebrew Bible, and Moses and the Ten Commandments in the section called "Mesopotamia: Power and Social Order in the Early Middle East. "The Hebrews (from Habiru, 'outcast' or 'nomad') were a people forced out of their homeland in the Mesopotamian basin in about 2000 BCE. It's nice to be able to put our religious stories into a geographical context.

At one point, of course, Moses was just another baby, loved by his mother, who sent him down the river in a basket to save his life. I know another mother right now who would do anything to save her grown-up baby.