Stuck in the Mud

On earth and sky and metaphor

There’s a popular, fun, upbeat Jewish song that invites us to ground ourselves in the elements of nature. It is sung at summer camps and retreats, often while standing or walking outside. I was reminded of it at a recent gathering of rabbis and cantors, when “Adamah v’Shamayim” was included as part of our early morning outdoor prayer service.

Here’s a rough-cut recording of the words in both Hebrew and English, with the lyrics printed below:

אדמה ושמים חום האש צליל המיים אני מרגיש זאת בגופי ברוחי בנשמתי
	
Adama Veshamayim,
Chom ha'esh,
Tzlil hamayim

Ani margish zot begufi,
beruchi, v’nishmati.	

Earth and sky,
Heat of fire
Sound of water

I feel it in my body,
in my spirit, in my soul.

The song is usually sung just in Hebrew, with a lively “heya heya ho” refrain - I added the English here for the sake of context and understanding. A clip of the actual song, with Hebrew and the refrain, is found at the bottom of this post.

It was a beautiful experience as we sang together on that bright, cold windy morning, wandering through a field with trees and looking out over a stream of water – being in connection with nature. Full disclosure: this was the weekend following the presidential election, and for many of us the opportunity to connect with something greater than the current political picture felt comforting and necessary.

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And then - (cue the rumble of thunder) -

About a week later, as I was humming the song to myself, my formal musical training took the reins of my oft-runaway mind, and threw proverbial mud into the clear waters of the experience.

We’ll get back to Adamah v’Shamayim in a moment; first let me explain about the musical training part.

There is a concept known as “word painting”, whereby vocal music is composed in such a way as to reflect the meaning of the words. For example, when we sing words that suggest upward movement or direction, the musical phrase reflects this with an upward motion of the notes.

Listen to the opening phrase of composer Ben Steinberg’s sublime musical composition of Psalm 121, and you’ll see what I mean. The opening words are “Esa enai el heharim” / “I lift my eyes unto the mountains”

Can you hear how the musical direction is upwards, to reflect the upward motion of lifting one’s eyes to the mountains?

And now listen to the end of the next phrase

“Oseh shamayim, shamayim, va’ aretz / “Maker of heaven, heaven and the earth”.

Can you hear how lowest musical part of the phrase is on the word “aretz/earth”? The mountains are sung with an upward flow, the earth/ground is sung in downward motion. That’s word painting.

It’s a beautiful composition, and if you’d like to hear the whole thing I invite you to google it; there are recordings online. Look for “Esa Enai Steinberg”.

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So now we come back to “Adamah v’Shamayim” / “Earth and Sky”. Based on the ideals of word painting, one would expect the singing of the first word adamah/earth to be lower at the start of an ascending phrase, so that shamayim/sky (also “heaven” by the way) would be the highest musical part. But no! Listen:

Can you hear how the word shamayim/sky is the LOWEST part of the musical phrase? AARGH! I want the word for sky to be musically higher, not lower than the earth!

Once I locked into this musical inconsistency according to the theory of word painting, I was stuck. How could I get into the spirit of this chant ever again?! How can I sing Shamayim/ Sky as lower than Adamah/Earth? It just didn’t feel right.

OK so then I said to myself, “Self, let’s pause and reflect for a moment. Perhaps it’s time to seek a hidden meaning, something deeper than initially-perceived reality".

So I did. And here’s what emerged:

When we are feeling low, when we are metaphorically stuck in the mud (earth / adamah) of sadness or despair, and our gaze is downward, that’s when we most need to experience the presence of shamayim, the sky, heaven, the greater cosmos. That’s when we are called upon to feel — in our body, our spirit, our soul — a sense of hope, a yet-unformed sense of possibility. Sky comes down to meet the earth.

An unseen shining reflection. As unseen and shining, perhaps, as the Divine Presence was for our biblical ancestors, when they dared to declare Oneness among the clay idols of the time. Theirs was the language of faith and miracles. Ours is the language of hope and possibility.

Out of the narrow strait of musical training, metaphor has lifted me up.

And now the song has taken on a whole new meaning.

Here’s the complete recording with Hebrew and the heya-ho refrain: