Sekwi, The Rooster that Sees

Blessed art Thou, o Lord, our God, King of the World, who gives the cock intelligence to distinguish between day and night. – Jewish Prayer

A thunderous reverberation breaks the sky. Vainglorious and ignorant philosophers – tedious men with tedious advice – scatter. They abandon their discourse; they desert their still incomplete theodicy (for all theodicies are incomplete), leaving only a man with his grief and his questions. Rain falls from the cracked ceiling of heaven. Lightning scurries across the sky, “Here I am. Here I go. I am gone.”

Then Sekwi, the Rooster that Sees, lifts his eye, his comb, his beak and speaks, while far away, in the remote place, the sacred Ibis, Thoth, announces the flooding of the Nile. There is wisdom here, I suppose. Wisdom and understanding. But not for me.

(Job 38:36)