30:30 2013 - 25

Dvar Torah for the Bar Mitzvah of Kal-El Kent

First remember Isaac
was impossible. Sarah laughed
in God's face at the suggestion of him--
perhaps less a gracious chuckle
than the reflexive ha-ha
of the unlucky ticketholder
in Don Rickles' crosshairs--still,
a laugh. A denial. All children,
God willing, come from elsewhere,
but you could smell that elsewhere
on the unlikely boy, long after
the fact of his birth. This was the cause
of Abraham's quickness
to follow the bloody hook
of his Lord's plot: the sense
no cord could bind, no tool
of this world could wound
his son. Call it faith as he lied
to his only child, slumping up
the appointed hill in Moriah.
Faith is believing the impossible
among us belong to better stories
than we can finish.