I say with complete faith
that prayers preceded God.
Prayers fashioned God
God fashioned man
and man fashions prayers
that fashion God who fashions man.

Says the poet, Yehuda Amichai:  Prayers generate the endless cycle of hope and help, of imagination and image, of creator and created.  Amichai’s complete faith satisfies the urge to name a beginning.  But quickly, “endless” becomes more important than “origin.”

The artist, M.C. Escher, does not name in religious language the deep force that sets fashioning in motion.  He challenges us to reflect upon our own point of complete faith from which everything rises.  He moves us to ask:  What causes the hands to rise off the page, each one fashioning the fashioner?

Drawing Hands by M.C. Escher

Click here for poem in Hebrew and English together with the Escher drawing.