Torah for now

Posts tagged ‘bible’

Tetzaveh: will you still love me tomorrow?

One of the most beautiful Jewish traditions, is the canopy which covers a couple during their wedding ceremony this gauzy, open canopy, a chuppah, a symbol of a couple of things. Firstly, it is a symbol of the home the couple will now share. Chuppah is also a symbol of the Mishkan, or portable sanctuary that was built to take the inspiration of Sinai with us. Two weeks ago, we read of revelation at Sinai. According to the legends/ midrash, Revelation at Sinai was actually a wedding between The Holy One of Blessing and the people. In fact the entire erotic song of songs is taken to be the love song between Israel and the Holy One!

One week ago, we read of the instructions for making the portable sanctuary, the mishkah, which will allow G8d to dwell amongst the people. Folks give lots of beautiful gifts, a starburst of color, and materials from gold to wool. This week’s reading begins with a flame that must be continually renewed. now you, command the chilldren of Israel that they may take for you oil of olives, clear, beaten for the light,, draw up a lampwick regularly.

Every morning, every night. This is the container to shine back a light to the one who freed us from slavery, like saying “I love you” to your partner, spouse, child, and showing that light is going back and forth. Starlight, moonlight,Fire on Sinai, and that pillar of light are answered by our humble olives, who get their energy from sunlight, and contain oil / light hidden within them if you clarify them.

This week is Mardi gras, and next week is the Jewish equivalent in Purim, a bawdy tale of lust, power and palace intrigue. This holiday always comes as the winter turns to spring. We hide our identity in masks, as the king’s wife Esther (whose name means hidden) hides her identity as a Jewess. The book of Esther does not mention the name of G8d, not even once, as this week’s Torah reading does not mention Moses. The only portion in the final 4 books of Torah – Moses is hidden in the “and you” in the commands quoted above.

It is so interesting given the season of early spring that is arriving with  Purim. Seeds are hidden within the ground, within their seed cases, and there is magic in them. That’s why we say in the blessing for bread, not that G8d makes bread, but hamotzi, the one who sends the wheat out of hiding. Life is hidden when a woman is pregnant. Esther’s Jewishness, is of course hidden, but so is her courage. And of course if Shechinah’s (The feminine, immanent facet of G8d) presence fills the earth, (The whole earth is filled with G8d’s kavod)! it is the encouragement of the blessed Holy one who pushes the truth hidden from the earth into view, and to nourish us and other creatures, as it says in psalm 85: Truth with spring up from the earth, and righteousness will gaze down from the sky, and G8d will provide the good, and the earth will nourish body and soul” My Setting of Psalm 85 inked here

I think joy comes, not just in the morning (psalm 30) but in springtime and its anticipation! As the words in this Jerome Kern song “You are the promised kiss of springtime, that makes the lonely winter seem long – what if that song were about Sh’chinah, the presence of the Holy One?!

Sometimes ugliness is brought out of hiding, which seems to be the state of the world today. This is the story of Purim too. An advisor to the king seems innocuous enough, until his ego is challenged by the one guy in the kingdom who wouldn’t bow to him. The king’s advisor proposes genocide, and, lied to, the king, hiding in a glass of alcohol agrees. The advisor’s name is Haman, and he is a descendant of Amalek, a warfaring tribe who attacks the most vulnerable of the wandering Israelites.

Kedushat Levi interprets Amalek as being a hidden part of each of us deep within ourself! A colleague, Josh Jeffries writes in his capstone on how we need an Amalek in order to make the hidden destructive powers within and without visible, to take it out of hiding!

So this week we light a lamp, and show our loved ones and creation that we love them. May it help us find what is hidden in ourselves.

Adelina ’and Josh’s beautiful wedding ceremony at St Lucia, captured by Alex Dali Weddings

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Bring a little awe and love down! Terumah

In the reading from the Torah this week are the detailed instructions Moses receives to make the portable sanctuary by which the community who stood at Sinai can take inspiration with them, and to have the Holy One of blessing living in their midst. Most of the rest of Exodus is concerned with this, with one notable exception: the sin of the golden calf. Perhaps the sin of greed and insecurity which led to the golden calf. But how can the Holy One convey this to Moses, and why the detail? A midrash/legend from Bamidbar Rabba ” Moses said before the Holy One blessed be He: ‘My God, am I able to craft like these?’ He said to him: ‘Like the form “that I [am showining you]”’ (Exodus 25:9), “with the sky-blue, the purple, and the crimson wool, and with the fine linen” (Exodus 38:23). And G8d inscribes the pattern in fire on Moses’ palm.
The Midrash goes on to say, if you do this I will dwell in your midst, constricting/ focusing energy in this place you build. The same source places the reason for those colors of the sanctuary to reflect places on earth rather the heavens: “Its cushioning of gold” (Song of Songs 3:10) – this is the earth, which produces the fruit of the land and the fruit of the trees, which are similar to gold. Just as gold, there are different types and different shades, so too the fruits of the land; some of them are green and some of them are red.
“Its seat [merkavo] of purple wool [argaman]” (Song of Songs 3:10) – this is the sun, which is placed above, rides on a chariot [bemerkava], and illuminates the world, just as it says: “It is like a bridegroom leaving his bridal chamber…” (Psalms 19:6). By the power of the sun rain falls, and by the power of the sun the land produces fruit.

Finally, ““Its interior is inlaid with love” (Song of Songs 3:10) – as after all the act of Creation, He created Adam and Eve…”

In other words the travelling artwork/ sanctuary is the inspiration of the fire in the sky and the miracles of earth created in architecture and art.

We look to the heavens and the forests and fields for inspiration, they have a design which is far beyond our capacity to understand and imagine. If we can open our hearts to the awe and love they inspire, and bring the awe via music and art into our midst, gratitude and humility and joy can happen

It is written in psalm 16: 8 “I have set G8d before me continually” This can become a powerful practice, in Hebrew “Shiviti Adonai L’negd tamid”

SHIVITI (Miryam Margo Wolfson)

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The Most often repeated command: Do Not Oppress the Sojourner!

This week’s Torah portion is Mishpatim, meaning “laws”. The narrative of Revelation is interrupted to give a whole bunch of laws, although Moses is still up on Sinai! These laws include some troubling ones, as well as some beautiful laws (Source page Here )There is a flashback to before Revelation as well, where Moshe reads everything that came before Sinai to the Israelite people, and they answer as one All “na-aseh v’nishma” We will do and we will hear. How can you agree to do if you haven’t heard what the deal is. Rashbam explained it means we will do all we’ve been commanded so far and listen to upcoming ones. But the Me’or Einayim hints that the doing will open your heart, and bring so much joy and love, that you will simply be attuned to the Holy One. A voice from Heaven (bat kol) hearing the Israelites say “naaseh v’nishmah, asked “who told you this secret?” for this is how the angels serve the Blessed Holy One. It is a beautiful thing! So what is it we must do? The single most oft repeated command in the Torah stems from our experiences leaving Egyptian slavery. It is this: Do not oppress the stranger, for you know his nefesh soul, for you were strangers/sojourners in the land of Egypt. According to the Talmud, Rabbi Eliezer stated that “the Torah warns 36 times, and some say 46 times, not to oppress the stranger” (Babylonian Talmud, Bava M’tzia 59b) Twice in this Torah portion alone. By the time we get to Leviticus, it has morphed into a command to actually love the stranger as we love ourselves! Leviticus 19:33–34 and Deuteronomy 10:19

Once again, our neighbors and friends are being rounded up in churches and schools without any regard to being deserving or not. They are undocumented, they are vulnerable and sojourners. Our command is clear

HEAR THEIR CRIES, by Miryam Margo Wolfson December 30, 2018

You already know how it goes 

To be so far from safety, from home

To be alone, to be a stranger in a narrow zone

Love the stranger, you were strangers too

Love the stranger, you know their soul

Hear their cries and know

You can be part of the healing, 

make things whole

A little girl cries in the nlght

Though they hear her no one comes to hold her tight

No one makes it right, or reunites

The world seems far too big and too cold

Without Momma beside her to hold  

Bridge

Naaseh v’nishma, We will help and then truly hear

When we comfort and dry the tears 

It can open pathway so we

Can be free, to live in dignity

Naaseh v’nishma,  

Let us open our hearts and our ears

Cause there will always be mountains to climb

We can truly be there,*

even gather a glimpse of Divine

if we..

Love the stranger, we were strangers too

Love the stranger, we know their soul

We Hear their cries and know

we  must be part of the healing, 

make ourselves whole

* Moses is told to climb the mounain and be there!

Pulitzer prize winning photo by John Moore

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Advice from a Father in Law: no kings

This week’s Biblical reading is called “Yitro” it is named after Moses father-in-law Jethro, who we meet for the second time in chapter 18 of Exodus. The first time is in the Wilderness. This great song in the Prince of Egypt gives Yitro a voice (the stunning voice of Brian Stokes Mitchell!) This part of the Torah is famous for the 10 Commandments and revelation at Sinai in Exodus 20. Even though Jethro is heard two chapters prior, the medieval commentator Rashi convincingly argues that his encounter with Moses comes after revelation at Sinai. (Number 5 on the source page) Jethro has heard about the redemption at the Sea And revelation at the mountain top and seeks out his son-in-law with Moses’s wife and two sons in tow. He then gives up any status that he had a Midianite priest and reunites this broken family, as he joins the Israelite faith.

The advice that Jethro gives Moses is excellent. Jethro says that people are standing in long lines to see Moses and ask him questions. He tells his son-in-law Moses to delegate, and to appoint leaders over the thousands, the hundreds and the tens of people. This is supposedly so that Moses doesn’t get tired out. But I suggest that it is a redistribution of purpose, authority and power down to the level of families rather than a concentration of purpose, authority, and power in one man. The Israelites were so frightened after receiving the 10 Commandments, that they told Moses to go up for them, or they would die. Thus, they removed their own honor, authority, purpose In fear. My first Jewish teacher as an adult was Rabbi Henry Weiner of Blessed memory. He explained that every person who was present at Sinai and all of us from future generations, each have a place on the slope of the mountain. Each has a place that is unique and contributes to the whole In a way that no one else can. As Jethro restores Moses’ family, So he restores our place. Israelite people are standing in lines all day long waiting to talk to the great Moses, as if to the Wizard of Oz or some billionaire politician. They are not being honored physically, emotionally or intellectually. The Bible subversively warns against setting kings over themselves (Deuteromy 17:15-20) and if they insist God will choose for them, but “he must not keep many horses or send people back to Egypt and not have many wives. He should not let his heart go, astray or amass silver, and gold to excess… So that he may not raise his heart over his brothers” Even the great Moses was not meant to be king. Perhaps it is why his brother Aaron was chosen rather than he to be the spiritual leader, and he was not permitted into the Promised land. Jethro returns, whether of his own volition or fate, or the hand of God, to bring Moshe down to earth where God’s kavod dwells, after Sinai. Returning the feminine in the guise of Moses’ wife and the feminine aspect of God in the Earth herself. 

(*God’s kavod is the honor, or glory, indwelling immanent feminine aspect in mystical teachings)

King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba in the palace. You shall not set a king above you. (from ‘Hutchinson’s History of the Nations’, early 1900s ) Painting by Edward John Poynter

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Singing at the Shores of Release & Black History month (and psalm 13)

Sometimes things feel so bleak, you feel squeezed on all sides between a “Rock and a hard place”. But you are here today you made it: the baby was born, you recovered from that breakup, disease, accident: you were redeemed, and life felt suddenly new and shiny again. (I ‘m a big fan of the Pixar movie Soul, which acts out such a scenario!) Remember that feeling, the inspiration? One of the names for G8d is Rock, “tzur” in Hebrew. And the word for Egypt, “Mitzrayim” has the same root as Tsures – squeezed, troubles all around. (Funny, I never noticed the homonym there!) This week’s Torah reading, named Beshalach, referring to Pharoah sending the Israelites out of Egypt. This is the first climactic moment of the Passover story, of the Exodus. What is the response of the Israelites to freedom after 400 years of slavery? It is to sing! Does that seem likely to you? One day this past year, after I had been holding in frustrations, I rode my bike to an abandoned field. I tried to scream, but what actually emerged from my body was song. Maybe not so weird! This beautiful poem, the Singing by Rick Barot speaks of the power of a woman’s song. I wonder what the black woman in the poem saw on her phone that brought on the song? Announcement of a birth? a death? the daily news? a memory? A woman’s voice, in mourning, in lullaby, in despair, it seems like her song has all of these. She sings. she sings. she sings. she sings.

This is also Black History month in the US. There are many powerful songs that emerged from African slavery here in America, including “Swing low, sweet Chariot” The Chariot is code for the Underground Railroad! Many of these songs are still sung in churches today. They help deal with being overwhelmed and oppressed: squeezed with tzurus.

The first sound the Biblical slaves made in Exodus was groaning or crying out. They had been silenced, to repressed to make any sound until now, taking their condition as “the way it was” It was this primal cry that brought G8d into their midst. But their second was song. When did they sing and what did their song sound like? The answer in the text is that there were two times of singing: First Moses and the sons of Israel sang aspirationally: I will sing. Then Miryam, whose name I share, sang with the instruments brought along for just such a miracle and sang, dancing a circle dance. Many commentators put the women second, but the chasidic S’fat Emet explains that Moses song is aspirational in the world of our dreams, but Miryam sings for all both men and women in the now, dancing the circle, in which all are equal in their relationship to G8d who is in the center.

Miryam my biblical namesake, is derived from Mar (bitter) and yam, meaning sea. From the bitterness of slavery her song brought sweetness to the Israelites. Directly after freedom the Israelites become bitter again, concluding that G8d hates them. A living well of water follows them through the wilderness, which according to midrash is Miryam’s well – a rock that yields water! Connecting all those places and stories in the wilderness, creating a song which lasts all of Miryam’s life. The Israelite people now read the song of songs as an emotional description of the Exodus, and of G8d’s love. Perhaps the song was a love song. There is disagreement on whether the song began while crossing or after, but according to Chizkuni, Miryam began her song while the Israelites were still crossing! (source 7) This song is the moment of awareness of the immanent presence of the Holy one – the moment of falling in love. Song is the most appropriate sound!

Remembering: a postscript

For a long time the stories of enslaved people were not told. Here in Florida, it recently became illegal to teach those stories again in the public schools, and a young professor who happens to share my last name lost her post from a public college because she taught the history of slavery. As Isabel Wilkerson teaches so powerfully in her Pulitzer prize winning book Caste to deny this history is like denying your family history of disease when you go to the doctor, or to deny old damage in a house. It doesn’t work. The Biblical psalms are a study in Crying out to G8d, Here is a setting of psalm 13. In this psalm the poet despairs of G8d forgetting them – lets go all those emotions. But then remembers: Oh yeah, remember that time I was redeemed, you were there G8d and can be there again for me in love.

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Just Breathe for Qohelet/ Ecclesiastes

I  spent a day last week with one who was dying, body failing, spirit hovering. The hospital machines whirring and spinning, some would soon be removed. “Breathe” urged the loved one to the dying one, when every breath was painful effort. “Breathe” and for him she did for a few more days.

“Hevel, merest breath”, is our life, says Qohelet, (Q1:2) Biblical book of wisdom. Yet merest breath is a Divine gift, and cannot be forced.    “It sucks, said the loved one” “Yes” I replied, validating his sorrow and anger.  “Only love is as strong as death,” (shir ha’shirim 8:6 )I suggested, but his need/desire was too great to let go.

  We seek insights on what it means to be alive and in relationship with others. In the ancient Biblical words of Qohelet we find  wisdom to help us gain perspective and understanding of the enormous issues of where G8d is in the passage of time and mortality, and why bad things happen to good people in the presence of a loving G8d. This gift of wisdom is not unique to Jewish literature and also appears in the ancient Chinese wisdom of Lau Tzu’s Tao te Ching. Of the beloved’s strong need for his wife’s breath “…free from desire, you realize the mystery, caught in desire, you see only the manifestations, Yet mystery and manifestations arise from the same source. This source is called darkness. Darkness within darkness, gateway to all understanding” (TTC 1).

The fact that we are here, as unlikely as that is, is a miracle, as are love, and beauty and goodness. These we attribute to a loving G8d.  However, coming to terms with mortality, the inhumanity of some human behavior, illness and suffering can powerfully challenge us. “no amount of effort can make right something truly perverse, and things that are lacking almost never manage to come into existence in a real enough way to count” (Q1:15) says Kohelot, in the gorgeous melody of a trope that paradoxically lifts our spirits. These words validate our fears, acknowledging their weight and their shared human concerns. All people in various cultures who have sought wisdom must deal with such questions. We perhaps reject, as I do, a G8d that micromanages, and can make our team win with supplications or animal sacrifices. Just having lived to pursue goodness may have to be enough. In trying to control and fix the world, we have separated ourselves from it, and created ecological ruin. The technology that protects us, uses resources, creates waste, destroying the natural environment, which we are meant to be a part of, Just as the technology that prolongs death destroys dignity, and we must let go in the end.

In this week’s parashah, Yaakov, who has been the heel-grabber, tries to manipulate things to “win” at life, will finally wrestle with his demons and his intense desires to dominate his brother. He will let his family and wealth  cross over to offer them up to his brother, and there see the face of G8d. Perhaps this can only happen wrestling with the Source  in the darkness. In the mystery he will be blessed with disability and re-Named, yet the Tau warns us. …the Name that can be named is not the eternal Name (TTC:1)

  Qohelet, much like the Tao te Ching, says the world can’t be tampered with, or “you’ll ruin it”,  that the Master sees things as they are without trying to control them (TTC 29)…lets them go their own way. Our technology is “shaping clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds what we want.”  (TTC 11)  Qohelet recognizes the  “helvel/emptiness inside”. The river of time and events “flows into the sea, yet the sea is never filled” (Q 1:7). It cannot be stopped, we cannot fight it. The spectre of death is also a(n) hevel/emptiness, but one which gives life infinite meaning. The value of humans is not what we can get out of one other, but is in their bonding. Qohelet says “two are better than one…if the one should fall down, the other one can at least help him up…if someone attacks two can fight (them) off (Q4:9-12).  It is brothers that we need!

 In Jewish tradition, Qohelet is read during Sukkot, our week-long festival spent outside, in a fragile hut, unprotected, and open enough to see the stars, and find our perspective in the larger world. We read Qohelet to know that life is ephemeral, and precious: “Do whatever you can manage to accomplish in this life, because in Sheol you fill find no activity, no reckoning, no knowledge and no wisdom, and that is precisely where you are going!”(Q9:10) 

Similarly, the wisdom of the Tao is reflected in Chinese paintings which offer a different perspective, of human beings as a small part of a much larger creation. We can be liberated by giving up control of things beyond our strength to the heavens, in the words of Qohelet: banish worry from your heart, and regret from your flesh, for childhood (life) lasts as long as a breath. Then when we return to our dwellings, perhaps our roof will be unable to separate us from G8d. Our gratitude will be richer for our blessings, and a full harvest, or even death will not harden our hearts. If he can let her go, their love can survive beyond her body.  Perhaps the harmful dramas will abate as we relinquish control. Rather we can be generous with ourselves and others, to “send our bread out onto the water….(and) sow (all) our seeds and not desist even in evening” And emerge into the day and declare “how sweet the light and how good for the eyes to see the sun!” (Qohelet 11:1,6, 10, 7) .

If I can let you go as trees let go
Their leaves, so casually, one by one;
If I can come to know what they do know,
That fall is the release, the consummation,
Lose what I lose to keep what I can keep,
The strong root still alive under the snow,
Love will endure – if I can let you go.

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ESTHER, A Leap of Faith

A Purim Song:

Utzu Eitza b’tufar

Dabru Davar v’lo yakum  Ki Imanu El

Go ahead and make your evil plans, They will fail, they will not stand, for G8d is with us always

This is a beautiful Purim song, about the book of Esther. An ancient farce, political satire that turns all too frighteningly real sometimes. On Purim We actually have the chutzpah to laugh, the need to laugh, the obligation to laugh.  The interesting thing about this song is that it put the reason for our success, not into the hands of Esther or Mordechai but in the Holy One of Blessing, whose name never appears in the Megillah.  It is hidden, much like Esther herself is in hiding. It requires a leap of faith for us to find G8d in the story!

In the land of Shushan, Persia, many years following was a beautiful Jewish girl named Haddassah. But when the king’s men came to uncle Mordechai’s house looking for the most lovely to be queen, she was silenced, told not to reveal her true identity, and given a new name, Esther, from root as nistar, meaning hidden. After being made queen, she busies herself with queenly stuff. She hadn’t been paying attention to the happenings of the kingdom when she is told of Mordechai in sack cloth and ashes –”send him some new clothes”, she orders. She does not want to hear about trouble: hard to blame her, who wants trouble?!  Mordechai then delivers my favorite line of the whole Megillah

Chapter 4:6 “If you keep silent in this crisis, relief and deliverance will come to the Jews from another place, while you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows, perhaps you have risen royal position for just such a crisis.”

Esther is afraid, bc the punishment for one who approaches the king without being summoned  is death. And although Esther is scared she bravely, and with all her wits about her approaches the king: she takes a leap of faith.

In his book G8d in search of Man, Heschel says
The belief in “the hidden miracles” is the basis for the entire Torah.

What does it mean to take a leap of faith, that G8d/ love/ righteousness is with us when things seem hopeless, for Esther, and for us?

Reb Nahman of Breslov explains about a leap of faith, saying, there is a moment on the spiritual path (on the ladder of Return to the One), where one is suspended in space, caught between the rungs. Even if one stretches to full height, the gap is so large that one cannot both have feet on the rung below and your hands on the rung above. One can only jump into thin air, and hang for a moment between, where there is no Ground or sure hand-hold. Such is the practice of emunah, .. That leap of faith.

And perhaps just as we need faith, the Holy One needs our help, and it is Esther, a woman specifically who is G8d’s partner on earth.

Shechina, a feminine facet, or sphirah of the Divine is the indwelling presence, immanent, and all around us, yet hidden in the natural world, I invite to close your eyes, to breathe in. The oxygen is made by green living creatures: we are breathing one another in to existence. Know as you breathe in that Shechinah dwells in you as well as in every other creature, rock and tree of the natural world, you just must be aware. Perhaps you’ve experienced her presence in the magic of the Florida wetlands, or at the ocean, or on a mountaintop. The awful truth is and she is in trouble. We have treated this sacred garden, not as Divine gift, but as a killing field. We need to once serve the more-than-human world with love and care, to be G8d’s partners. The ancient fossil forests burn in a destructive fire, and their wastes fuel scorching, flooding, storms and extinctions. We need to love with our upper heart, to choose life.

And now you’re all tuning out, saying “we’ve heard all this before” You’re possibly saying , “this problem’s too big, there’s nothing we can do”  As Rabbi Marc says, that’s your lower heart, that wants to keep satifying its egoic desires, and not worry about the consequences.  We need to be Esther,  to take a leap of faith, and respond with love and smarts – a feminist approach. It’s so easy to be discouraged.

For me this song, by David Wilcox, tells of the leap of faith of the Esther story

You say you see no hope, you say you see no reason to believe,,

that the world will ever change, you say that Love is foolish to believe,

Cause there’ll always be some (thug) with their greed or with a knife, To take away your daydream, put the fear back in your life.

Look, if someone wrote a play to glorify what’s stronger than hate,

would they not arrange the stage to look as if the hero came too late.

It’s almost in defeat, feeling like the evil side will win,

on the edge of every seat from the moment this whole play begins,

It has been love that mixed the mortar, and it’s love that stacked these stones,

and it’s love that built the stage here, though it looks like we’re alone

In this world set all in shadows, like the night is here to stay,

there is evil cast around us but it’s love that wrote the play,

and in the darkness, love will show the way.

Now the stage is set
You can feel your own heart beating in your chest
This life’s not over yet
So we get up on our feet and do our best
We play against the fear
We play against the reasons not to try
We’re playing for the tears
Burning in the happy angel’s eyes

… For it’s love who mixed the mortar
And it’s love who stacked these stones
And it’s love who made the stage here
Though it feels like we’re alone
In this scene, set in shadows,
Like the night is here to stay
There is evil cast around us
But it’s love that wrote the play
For in this darkness love will show the way

Love/G8d can be hidden. That leap of faith is needed to see that it’s all G8d, that Shechina surrounds us all.

Dayenu is a Jewish climate change activist group. We’ve had enough.  Tonight we ask you to take a leap of faith, as TAO joins hands with Dayenu. Rebekah has some lit. And next week on Purim join us in Davey, and take the first step, write a postcard to show you care.  we do it all for L’Dor VaDor, for our children, and because as Jews we are commanded to choose life, take a leap of faith like Esther.

Or like Elphabah in Wicked

Something has changed within me
Something is not the same
I’m through with playing by the rules
Of someone else’s game

Too late for second-guessing
Too late to go back to sleep
It’s time to trust my instincts
Close my eyes and leap

It’s time to try defying gravity
I think I’ll try defying gravity
Kiss me goodbye, I’m defying gravity
And you won’t bring me down!

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