"It’s
a Friday afternoon. Roughly 5 p.m. The sun hangs low in the sky,
flirting with the horizon, painting the air in hues of gold and rose.
Summer is humming, alive with its own rhythm. And me? I’m shutting
down.
I lie on my bed
in my little bush nook, tucked away in a quiet corner of Pretoria,
Suwanne, the capital of South Africa. Here, surrounded by the
whispers of nature, I feel a stillness—a pause. The birds are
singing to each other, their melodies dancing through the warm air
like old friends catching up after a long week.
As I listen, my
mind drifts to Louis Giglio and his guerrilla-style theatrics. I
can’t help but remember his powerful illustration from 13 years
ago, showing how the whales of the deep and the stars of the heavens
join forces in a cosmic symphony to sing, How
great is our God.
And oh, my
heart can’t help but hum along:
Sing
with me, how great is our God,
Oh, we’ll see how great, how
great is our God.
Or in Hebrew,
because the spirit speaks every language:
Kado,
Adonai, Shiyuki Kado, Adonai,
Awechat Lehi, Ki Kado, Aloai.
And while these
words echo in my mind, my brain becomes its own orchestra. I can feel
it, lovelies. In the right frontal corner, the violinist is busy,
taking in the melodies, the meanings, the magic of the moment. The
information bounces across to the left side—the logical side—asking
questions. Birds chirping...what does it mean? What’s the symbolism
of birds?
To the right
side again, the whispers of the soul: It’s
Shabbat. It’s Shabbat.
To the left
side: What
do we know about Shabbat? What are the traditions, the archives, the
theories?
And the
birds—they keep singing, a conversation unbothered by my internal
chaos.
In that
instant, my mind feels alive, like a child on a trampoline, bouncing
higher and higher. Or better yet, a kid on a jumping castle—idea,
grow, idea, flower, idea, spread. It’s an explosion of color and
sensation. Each thought blooms like a wildflower, releasing its aroma
into the air.
And I don’t
stop it. I don’t analyze it. I don’t try to categorize it. I just
let it swim. I let it all swirl together—memories, melodies,
sensations—until they’re one beautiful, chaotic symphony of
being.
Isn’t that
what life is, my darlings? A tapestry woven of fragments, some
orderly, others wild, all coming together to create something
breathtakingly whole?
In this moment,
lying on my bed, surrounded by the whispers of birds and the hum of
Shabbat, I feel it. I don’t just hear the song of
creation—I am part
of it. The sun, the birds, the stars, the whales, the heartbeat of
the earth—they’re all singing together. And I? I’m singing
too."
"Last
year, 2023, I started my year with the most beautiful visualization
dream. It was vivid, alive, and left me breathless. I was in this
huge tidal pool by the sea. Not just any tidal pool—no, this one
was magical. It was protected yet wild, calm yet vast, with water so
clear it glistened turquoise under the tropical sun.
There was a
deep end, and we dove in, holding our breath as we plunged into the
cool, refreshing depths. Like playful dolphins, we would dive down,
swirl around, and shoot back up, leaping into the air as if gravity
was a suggestion, not a rule. It wasn’t just swimming—it was
dancing. We became ballerinas of the surf, pirouetting through the
waves, soaring up and over each other, only to descend back into the
embrace of the water.
When we had our
fill of the depths, we moved to the shallow end to snorkel. And what
we discovered there—oh, my lovelies—it was otherworldly. An
underwater Atlantis revealed itself, a hidden world teeming with
