PREPENT5772/Day Seven: WHATS UP?

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Day 7 Normal.dotm 0 0 1 219 1251 Storahtelling, Inc. 10 2 1536 12.256 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false

Sep 8 2011

 

Whats up

 

Early morning walk to the subway and a stranger smiles at me and says good morning and I greet her back, and then without thinking pass it on to the next person coming up the subway to stairs: good morning, what’s up?

 

Random, casual, lovely communication.

 

 

There’s this Semitic demon called ‘Belial’, referenced in the Bible and usually translated as ‘worthless’ or ‘breaker of yoke’. The Dead Sea Scrolls names Belial: “An angel of hostility. All his dominions are in darkness, and his purpose is to bring about wickedness and guilt. All the spirits that are associated with him are but angels of destruction.”

 

Another way to translate Beli-Al is as ‘none-above’, or ‘the anti-up’. Yesterday’s demons are today’s disorders and moods.

 

The rabbis associated, and frowned upon, belial-like behavior that included the urge to worship idols, but maybe what Belial is about for us today is the situation in which we forget to look up – attempt to see the bigger picture of reality, the complex paradox, gain perspective, trust?

 

What’s up is one of them cool greetings, and I don’t know where its from but today I think about it  - as I use it - and I think about the art of looking up, the vast sky, the size of the universe, and humble and bigger than me.

 

On the subway, take off the headphones, look up and about. Catch people’s eyes. What’s up? Everything.

What’s up? Pause to ask the question and see what comes

Up.