10. Hazellelponi

10. Hazellelponi

“A time is coming, and has now come, when the true worshippers will worship the father in Spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks.” John 4:23

I know her first by the sound of her body moving forward. She’s flat footed but walks with a gentleness that makes it more slow dance than strut. Whispering not shouting her presence. Chin down, eyes locked on the left and right of her feet, murmuring a song I can feel vibrate but can’t yet hear.

I didn’t know sorrow could be so holy, but she takes my breath away and I rest all of my senses on her. In this moment she is my teacher.

I’ve been finding my way into the first book of Chronicles, allowing myself to float on sons of and wives of and family after family, name after name. Sometimes I study, sometimes I don’t. Study goes left to right, but floating I can free-read downwards until the Spirit says “wait”. I’m listening to the heart of the Chronicler who sometime around 2500 years ago cast a story-hook into the middle of his people, longing to catch them up in remembering, in worship again.

I pray: show me Chronicler everything you saw and learned so that I might too remember and be caught up in worship more often than not. Right now I’m scanning names: family; family; family, tribe and clan….. then ch4:  appendix. An appendix to a family. I chuckle inside wondering if that means it can be removed without being missed, if it’s a silent appendix or a grumbling one. This is how my free-reading goes.

“Perez, Hezron, Carmi, Hur…….sons of Etam: Jezreel, Ishma, and Idbash. Their sister was named Hazzellelponi.”

Hazzellelponi. Ha-zell-el-po-ny. My mouth wants to say her name over and over and again and again I laugh to myself again wondering why that didn’t catch on like Ruth, Bethany, Deborah, and if she had rainbow hair and a love-heart stamp on her rear like the other poni’s. I flow on:

“Penuel was the father of Gedor, and Ezer the father of Hushah…..”

Then I sense the “wait” and I go back. Hazellelponi. An appendix to a family, a sister to her brothers, an entry in a well-thrown story-hook, a call to worship. Who was she, and why is she named here?

I rest on her name, waiting to see, and as I wait I wonder and this is when she begins to emerge walking more slow-dance than strut. Still her name is singing it’s melody to me, the 5 syllables a scale, so I search for any secrets it might hold.

Hazellelponi : The verb צלל (salal), to ring or be dark, and the verb פנה (pana), to turn or face.

Different scholars lend their knowledge to weave a meaning between these two parts, and paint a word-picture of one who leans or turns in toward the shadow, or who dwells in shadow, or one who leans in toward the ringing of bells. Leaning, dwelling, turning, I feel the weight of the groan and the glory she carries and I hear the bells. They’re not church bells, or alarm bells, they’re more like the distant sound of the bells in Christmas films when the sleigh and the reindeer are coming.

Listen.

Then suddenly I know where these bells are coming from, faint but constant in their jangling, and suddenly I’m in the tent of meeting. I can’t see through the curtain, but the ringing of the bells tells me the priest is somewhere in there before the throne, and that this must be a most holy of days. The priest is in the secret place alone, the bells around his garments ringing as he moves to signal that he is still breathing, still ministering to the Presence.

I see: Her step is more slow dance because she is moving in love and longing, weighed down by the shadow in which she dwells, toward the bells that signal “He is here”.

He Is Here. He Is Here.

And as she moves I smell the incense rising: worship. She moves in the shadow, in the weight and the darkness of sorrow, towards Him. Darkness is no barrier to knowing, no reason to turn away. The bells ring “He is here” and she moves.

Let this be me.

Hazellelponi: Though the name didn’t catch on, there are many like her for whom the journey is more shade than light. Those who know intimately the terrain in the valley of the shadow but who are drawn to Him still. I catch her song on the wind: “Holy Holy Holy” she sings in harmony with the Living Creatures around the throne covered in eyes, who also see everything always and still resonate with joy.

Worship is a mystery that the Chronicler beckons us into, with names and lists of names of those who can be our guides and mentors. This woman, sister, appendix to a family, she reminds me to turn toward the Presence of the One I long to worship. That even immersed in the deepest sorrow and the darkest shadow I still belong before the throne. Meeting her I now know that the song I sing to Him there, in the dissonance, is sweeter for it.

“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”
Kahlil Gibran