I ran into one of the prophets at Schnucks. He was looking over the fresh fruit. Someone spotted him and he signed a cantaloupe with this: I love you with all my broken heart.

Then he started to recite poetry. 

Three weeks I sat in sadness, he declaimed, seven weeks I am taking to recover. He was talking about the three weeks prior to the Ninth of Av, the saddest day of the Jewish year, and the seven weeks of consolation messages from Isaiah that follow. 

G-d recovering too, he said, we are into the ascent. Tell G-d in your prayers to lose that loneliness. Then he spoke Sh’ma Yisrael from the parashah this week: Va-et-cha-nan.

Climb up that large ayin, slide down the big dalet, witness seamlessness, he said. Turn it around dyslexic and plow the language like a palindrome. Da’ — know!

The prophet was beginning to gather a group around him. I was able to explain to the couple standing next to me that in the verse Sh’ma Yisraeil (Deut.6:4) the ayin and the dalet are both writ large in the Torah text. Read one way it’s ‘Eid: be a witness. Read the other way it’s Da’: know.

I heard the prophet say, know G-d is one, G-d alone, only G-d, lonely G-d.

Ask G-d in your prayers to lose that loneliness, said the prophet. We are witnessing, at least along for the ride, trying to know something when knowing is not everything. O holy G-d, we are trying to do something right after all.

He chanted as he walked out into the parking lot. By this time he had acquired a following (who is that man?) and as he climbed into a tasty 1968 Mercury Cougar convertible, I heard something like this:

Hear O heavens pay attention O earth, come to me with meaning, purify yourselves, remove the mistakes, learn to do good, be a seeker of justice, strengthen those who need strength. Take up causes.

You are living backwards, said the prophet, in an upside down world. Reason together, become a community. You are overwhelmed by opioids, your mental health unbalanced, become a healing community and make a strategy. Free your stories.

Let us reason together and if our sins are like scarlet they will whiten like snow. If they have reddened like crimson, they will become pure as wool. Turn the darkness into light. The more dark — the more light. 

Find your willingness and don’t blame anyone. All that is impure will burn away in your burn, said the prophet.

By then we were all waving as if we were seeing a train off at the station. 

Who was that man? The girl standing next to me asked. 

As the prophet drove away, I heard:

My name is Isaiah. Like the basketball player. 

Rabbi James Stone Goodman serves Congregation Neve Shalom and is a past president of the St. Louis Rabbinical  Association, which coordinates the weekly d’var Torah for the Light.