Parashat Bshallach: Let it Shine!

The end -- the culmination of the exodus -- is song. A song of spontaneous praise to the Lord. In next week’s parsha, the song will need to be turned into law, into a way of living every day with God’s presence in our actions, but for now, what is captured is the essential religious sentiment, the point of leaving Egypt – to feel the call to praise God rising up in our hearts, to feel the sense of amazement and gratitude at God’s miraculous salvation.

It is on the 7th day since the exodus that the Israelites are at the Sea and sing this Song, and so each year we celebrate this Song on the 7th day of Passover. The Sefat Emet connects this 7th day to our weekly 7th day of Shabbat, and this song to the song of that day each week -- tov lehodot laShem ulazamer leshimkha elyon. It is good to praise God and to sing to Your name, Most High. Like the seventh day of Passover, Shabbat is the telos of creation; its purpose is to pause and notice and appreciate and sing out in praise and amazement at the glories of the Lord in our world. It turns out that such songs of praise are the very purpose of our existence.

But how do we sing? How do we praise? Where is this song of praise inside us? In a discussion with some high school students last week about the phrase, Hashem sefatay Tiftah, ufi yagid tehilatekha, “O God, open my lips, so that my mouth may say Your praise,” what came out was the difficulty we all have with praise. It’s a lie, one girl said. When God opens my lips, what comes out is not praise.

But perhaps it is. Perhaps deep down, if we got rid of the obstacles and the distractions and were really present and allowed ourselves to be open to what is and to feel God’s Presence, perhaps what we would find inside ourselves – as the Israelites did at the Sea – perhaps what we would find at the very core is indeed praise, is a song of light and gratitude and amazement. Passing by the Music Room on my way out of AJA today, what wafted out was the song, “This little light of mine – I’m going to let it shine. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine!” What would happen if we did let it shine? Sometimes I can see clearly that there is inside each and every one of us a song of such light and such brightness, such clarity and brilliance and total praise for what is – that the world would explode if we all sang at once. Perhaps this was the experience at the Sea.

The poet Mary Oliver died yesterday and it seems poignant and fitting that it was on the week of our reading of the Song at the Sea. As she wrote, “When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement.” May we know how to see and sing with amazement as she did and as did the Israelites at the Sea. May God Himself open up the locked places inside us to let the song out. Let it shine! Let it shine! Let it shine!