Posts Tagged ‘hope’

 

For the People of Turkey (After the Earthquake)

Posted on: February 7th, 2023 by Alden

Two prayers for the people of Turkey as the death toll rises after today’s earthquake. I posted these two prayers 12 years ago after an earthquake struck Turkey then. These prayers were first written after an earthquake Haiti in January 2010. I have either revised these prayers or used elements of them in other prayers after other earthquakes around the world.

In Devastation (For the People of Turkey)
G-d beyond my understanding,
The earth has turned violent,
Sweeping our brothers and sisters off their feet,
Crushing homes and lives,
Upending dreams,
Toppling the foundations of hope and sustenance.
A shallow breath beneath the rubble
And wailing in the streets.
The injured and the dead.
The new widow,
The new orphan,
The newly bereft turn to You
Divine Source of abundance and grace.

G-d of justice and mercy,
We pray for the people of Turkey,
And the victims of any disaster,
Any violence, suffering or despair.
Grant them shelter and solace,
Comfort and consolation,
Blessing and renewal.
May a world of justice, righteousness and mercy
Come swiftly to their aid.
Grant them endurance to survive,
Strength to rebuild,
Faith to mourn,
Courage to heal,
And devotion to each other.

Heavenly Guide,
Hand of love and shelter,
Grant the people of Turkey Your protection,
Your radiance,
And Your peace.

Prayer For First Responders (to the Earthquake in Turkey)
Crisis and chaos,
Confusion and loss,
A scene of sweeping destruction,
The first responders arrive
Among the breathless and dazed,
The frenzied, driven wild with fear and grief,
The incapacitated, the dead,
The weary, the lost, the injured,
And survivors forcing themselves
Beyond their limits
To fight devastation.

G-d whose ways are secret,
Bless these first responders with endurance
To be of maximum service in this moment of immeasurable need.
Bless their limbs with strength,
Their eyes with courage,
Their hands with gentleness,
So that they become a source of hope and love.
Give them the tools they need in the days and hours ahead.
Protect them from physical harm,
Shield them from emotional pain,
And guard them from taking this trauma into themselves.

G-d of justice and mercy,
We pray for the people of Turkey.
Let the world rally on their behalf.
May the deeds of the first responders
Find favor in Heaven
And bring healing on earth.

© 2023 Alden Solovy and ToBendLight

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Please check out These Words: Poetic Midrash on the Language of Torah and my other CCAR Press volumes: This Grateful Heart, This Joyous Soul, and This Precious Life, which can also be purchased as the Grateful/Joyous/Precious trilogy. For reprint permissions and usage guidelines, see “Share the Prayer!” To receive my latest prayers via email, please subscribe (on the home page). You can also connect on Facebook and Twitter. For a taste of my teaching, see my ELItalk video, “Falling in Love with Prayer.”

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Photo Source: NPR

The Volcano

Posted on: February 5th, 2023 by Alden

This week we read Parashat Yitro, in which the wandering Israelites receive the 10 Commandments at Mount Sinai. This week also brings the official release of These Words: Poetic Midrash on the Language of Torah from CCAR Press. The book presents seventy discussions of single words of Torah paired with a poetic Midrash based on each word. In celebration of the book release and this week’s parasha, here’s the poem for the word ‘Sinai.’

The Volcano
Sinai was a volcano of Torah,
Explosions of wisdom and love,
The fire of God’s word pouring forth,
Thunder in the air,
Tremors in the ground,
Sending a plume of holy ash
High into the sky,
Fine ash, now invisible,
Still settling slowly on the earth,
Ash that speaks,
Bringing new wisdom,
New insights,
New beauty,
As it arrives
From the heavens
In every generation.

© 2023 CCAR Press from These Words: Poetic Midrash on the Language of Torah

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Postscript: The research on the word that inspired this poem can be found in the book itself.

Please check out my CCAR Press Grateful/Joyous/Precious trilogy. The individual books are: This Grateful Heart, This Joyous Soul, and This Precious Life. For reprint permissions and usage guidelines, see “Share the Prayer!” To receive my latest prayers via email, please subscribe (on the home page). You can also connect on Facebook and Twitter. For a taste of my teaching, see my ELItalk video, “Falling in Love with Prayer.”

Please consider making a contribution to support this site and my writing.

How to Find G-d

Posted on: January 6th, 2023 by Alden

A simple meditation on seeking–and finding–G-d. Perhaps it is not as difficult as we might think. Perhaps it is only a matter of our willingness to see. Or perhaps I need to look a bit more closely at myself, others and the world.

How to Find G-d

Look for the image of G-d
In all that is,
In all that was,
In all that will be.
For the image of G-d radiates
From your life
And from your face,
The holiness that infuses us all.
This is the legacy,
The gift forever given,
Passed from mother to child,
From father to babe,
Visible in your countenance
And in your way of being.
Look for the image of G-d
Inside yourself,
And you will see it
In everyone and everything.

© 2023 Alden Solovy and ToBendLight

New here? Subscribe here to get my newest prayers by email.
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Please check out These Words: Poetic Midrash on the Language of Torah and my other CCAR Press volumes: This Grateful Heart, This Joyous Soul, and This Precious Life, which can also be purchased as the Grateful/Joyous/Precious trilogy. For reprint permissions and usage guidelines, see “Share the Prayer!” To receive my latest prayers via email, please subscribe (on the home page). You can also connect on Facebook and Twitter. For a taste of my teaching, see my ELItalk video, “Falling in Love with Prayer.”

Please consider making a contribution to support this site and my writing.

Photo: Taken in Ya’ar Kedoshim by Alden Solovy

After Israeli Elections, 2022

Posted on: November 4th, 2022 by Alden

The rise of far right wing, nationalist, extremist leaders in Israel’s politics and new government is frightening. This prayer, written yesterday for the leadership and Rabbinic cabinet of J Street, is being distributed for clergy use this Shabbat. I’m grateful to be asked to write this ‘rapid response’ prayer expressing fears and hopes for the State of Israel, my home. Along with this piece for J Street, I’ve previously been commissioned to write prayers for Israel by Areznu and the Central Conference of American Rabbis.

After Israeli Elections, 2022

God of history,
Shine the light of wisdom
Upon the State of Israel
And its newly elected leaders
As we stand
At the threshold of darkness.

O fear and warning,
That racists and xenophobes
Have been given voice and power
In a nation that should be, and could be,
A light unto the world.

O danger and despair,
That threatens to dismantle democracy,
To deepen the occupation,
To strip away human rights,
And aspires to theocracy.

God of generations,
We pray that you open the hearts of these leaders
So that the weight of office,
And the voice of chesed,
Changes them for good.
Then, Source and Shelter,
When You bless them to act with inspiration and insight,
Building our nation in Your image,
You will bless us all.

May we never tire in the work of peace.
May we never tire in the work of justice.
May we never give up on this land and this people.

May it be Your will,
God of our ancestors,
To grant safety and security
To all nations and communities,
So that truth and harmony will resound
From the four corners of the earth.

“After Israeli Elections, 2022” by Alden Solovy is © 2022 J-Street
Postscript: Here are some prayers for peace in Israel: “Children of Gaza, Children of Israel,” “For Peace in the Middle East,” “Peace Will Come,” and “When Peace Comes: A Meditation.” Here’s a prayer for the survival of Israel: “Israel: A Meditation.”

New here? Subscribe here to get my newest prayers by email.
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Please check out my CCAR Press Grateful/Joyous/Precious trilogy. The individual books are: This Joyous Soul, This Grateful Heart, and This Precious Life. Here’s a link to my ELItalk, “Falling in Love with Prayer..” For reprint permissions and usage guidelines and reprint permissions, see “Share the Prayer!” To receive my latest prayers via email, please subscribe (on the home page). You can also connect on Facebook and Twitter.

Please consider making a contribution to support this site and my writing.

Why Do You Slumber?

Posted on: September 28th, 2022 by Alden

This new Yom Kippur meditation is inspired by the two Haftorot we read on that day. In the morning, we hear Isaiah’s great call to justice and tikkun olam (Isaiah 57:14-58:14). In the afternoon, we read the book of Jonah. The simple question asked of Jonah, asleep in the ship’s hold as a tempest pummels the boat, is the basis of the moving Sephardi piyut for S’lichot, Ben Adam Ma Lecha Nirdam?, Son of Man, Why Do You Slumber? Why, indeed, do we slumber, when it is time to awaken to our best selves, when the world calls us to action?

Why Do You Slumber?
?מה לך נרדם? / ?מה לך נרדמה
Mah lecha nirdam? / Mah lach nirdama?
Why do you slumber, (Jonah 1:6)
Child of humanity?
When your brothers die?
While your sisters cry?
While anger shakes us?
When terror breaks us?
!קום קרא אל־אלהיך
Qum kra el elohecha!
Get up, cry out to your god (Jonah 1:6),
Cry out for justice and for peace.

?מה לך נרדם? / מה לך נרדמה
Mah lecha nirdam? / Mah lach nirdama?
Why do you slumber, (Jonah 1:6)
Child of God?
Your heart is noble,
The need is global.
This is the hour,
To act with power.
!קום קרא אל־אלהיך
Qum kra el elohecha!
Get up, cry out to your god (Jonah 1:6),
Cry out for justice and for peace.

?מה לך נרדם? / מה לך נרדמה
Mah lecha nirdam? / Mah lach nirdama?
Why do you slumber, (Jonah 1:6)
Child of love?
The call is urgent,
The cry resurgent,
To embrace each other,
And bless one another.
To rise from slumber.
To live in wonder.
!קום קרא אל־אלהיך
Qum kra el elohecha!
Get up, cry out to your god (Jonah 1:6),
Cry out for justice and for peace.

© 2022 Alden Solovy and ToBendLight

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Postscript: Here’s one of many renditions of Ma Lecha Nirdam on You Tube.

Please check out my CCAR Press Grateful/Joyous/Precious trilogy. The individual books are: This Joyous Soul, This Grateful Heart, and This Precious Life. Here’s a link to my ELItalk, “Falling in Love with Prayer..” For reprint permissions and usage guidelines and reprint permissions, see “Share the Prayer!” To receive my latest prayers via email, please subscribe (on the home page). You can also connect on Facebook and Twitter.

Please consider making a contribution to support this site and my writing.

Illustration Source: American Jewish World Service

Bees

Posted on: July 6th, 2022 by Alden

An observation, wrapped in a yearning. A prayer. A poem of bees and guns. See also: “Against Gun Violence” and “After a Deadly Rampage”

Bees
The bees
Do not stop
Collecting pollen
When humans
Murder each other
With guns.

The bees think:
How strange,
How low
On the evolutionary scale
Must those humans be,
That they haven’t yet
Figured out
How to make honey
Or peace.

© 2022 Alden Solovy and ToBendLight

New here? Subscribe here to get my newest prayers by email.
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Postscript: See also: “Against Gun Violence” and “After a Deadly Rampage”

Please check out my CCAR Press Grateful/Joyous/Precious trilogy. The individual books are: This Joyous Soul , This Grateful Heart, and This Precious Life. Here’s a link to my ELItalk, “Falling in Love with Prayer..” For reprint permissions and usage guidelines and reprint permissions, see “Share the Prayer!” To receive my latest prayers via email, please subscribe (on the home page). You can also connect on Facebook and Twitter.

Please consider making a contribution to support this site and my writing.

Photo by Alden Solovy

I Want to Die on the Trail

Posted on: June 22nd, 2022 by Alden

This is a prayer fantasy envisioning my death. G-d willing, it will be some time from now. I’m not ill, but of the age to begin preparing for the journey. I hadn’t envisioned this as a song, until I heard Michael Miller singing during a Jewish Songwriting Cooperative Retreat led by Sue Radner Horowitz, my collaborator on “Hallel in a Minor Key.” As soon as I heard him, this poem-now-a-song seemed written for his voice and composing skills. Listen to his album “Shelter” on Spotify. Here are the lyrics and an unfinished cut of Michael singing and playing piano for his music to “I Want to Die on the Trail.”

I Want to Die on the Trail

(Lyrics by Alden Solovy, Music by Michael Miller)

I want to die on the trail,
Surrounded by everyone I’ve ever loved,
Everyone who has ever loved me.
My body old and frail,
Barely containing what remains,
My soul unbound from the limits of time and space.

We will walk together into the canyon,
Descending to the river,
Strong in love.
The air warm, the breeze cool,
The sky more deeply blue than ever.

The sound of water falling on water
Getting closer as we move toward the stream bed.
Our host of companions multiplying.
Confession and forgiveness irrelevant
In the flow of love and affection.

I want to die on the trail,
Diving off the cliff’s edge into the unknown,
Singing, dancing, celebrating, embracing,
Loving the life that was once mine,
Blessing you for allowing my path,
However briefly,
To be one with yours.

Lyrics © 2022 Alden Solovy, Music © 2022 Michael Miller

New here? Subscribe here to get my newest prayers by email.

Please check out my CCAR Press Grateful/Joyous/Precious trilogy. The individual books are: This Joyous Soul, This Grateful Heart, and This Precious Life. Here’s a link to my ELItalk, “Falling in Love with Prayer..” For reprint permissions and usage guidelines and reprint permissions, see “Share the Prayer!” To receive my latest prayers via email, please subscribe (on the home page). You can also connect on Facebook and Twitter.

Please consider making a contribution to support this site and my writing.

Photo by Alden Solovy

Scroll

Posted on: June 20th, 2022 by Alden

A prayer/poem for divine inspiration.

Scroll
What do you think
Is written
On the other side of the parchment?
A future not yet revealed?
A secret forgotten past?
Ancient prayers waiting to be discovered?

Maybe it’s a giant canvass,
Yearning for charcoals and oils,
Yearning for colored pencils and finger paints,
Yearning for hearts and hands,
To call forth the messages
We’re still unable to hear.

© 2022 Alden Solovy and tobendlight.com.

New here? Subscribe here to get my newest prayers by email.

Please check out my CCAR Press Grateful/Joyous/Precious trilogy. The individual books are: This Joyous Soul, This Grateful Heart, and This Precious Life. Here’s a link to my ELItalk, “Falling in Love with Prayer..” For reprint permissions and usage guidelines and reprint permissions, see “Share the Prayer!” To receive my latest prayers via email, please subscribe (on the home page). You can also connect on Facebook and Twitter.

Please consider making a contribution to support this site and my writing.

For Those Who Endure Chronic Conditions

Posted on: March 28th, 2022 by Alden

This piece began with Georgia and Gary Freedman-Harvey who envisioned a community prayer for those — like their son Ezra — who live the trials and triumphs of chronic conditions. They envisioned a prayer that would uplift the community in support of one another, with the tone of healing for all, a prayer in which we might see ourselves holding each other with care and compassion. As members of Temple Beth El, San Pedro, CA, they approached Rabbi Cassi Kail with the idea, who brought it to me. Here’s what we created.

For Those Who Endure Chronic Conditions
God of our mothers and fathers,
Watch over all who
Live with genetic disorders,
Life-threatening medical conditions,
And chronic or degenerative diseases.
Bless them with endurance and resilience,
Fortitude and hope,
With opportunities to thrive and shine
Even as their conditions
Progress.
Watch over them,
Their families and friends,
Our community,
And all of humankind.

We pray
For the wisdom and insight
To see each member of our community
With clear eyes and an open heart,
As another human being,
A whole person
With hopes and dreams,
Proud of who they are,
Striving to be their best selves,
Struggling with this life,
And loving it, too,
As we all do.

Rock and Shelter,
Grant us all the ability
To see each other’s humanity clearly,
To cherish each other’s individuality,
To care deeply about one another,
To mourn our losses and
Celebrate our victories together,
So that we live, act, and pray
As one community
Of care and blessing.

.בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה׳ אלהינו מֶֽלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם הַמֵּכִין מִצְעֲדֵי גָֽבֶר
Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech haolam, hameichin mitzadei gaver.
Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Ruler of the Universe, who strengthens our steps.

© 2022 Alden Solovy and tobendlight.com.

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Postscript: Thanks to Georgia and Gary Freedman-Harvey and Rabbi Cassi Kail for your faith in my work.

Please check out my CCAR Press Grateful/Joyous/Precious trilogy. The individual books are: This Joyous Soul, This Grateful Heart, and This Precious Life. Here’s a link to my ELItalk, “Falling in Love with Prayer..” For reprint permissions and usage guidelines and reprint permissions, see “Share the Prayer!” To receive my latest prayers via email, please subscribe (on the home page). You can also connect on Facebook and Twitter.

Please consider making a contribution to support this site and my writing.

Photo Source: Access Health

For Three Leaders, For the World

Posted on: March 15th, 2022 by Alden

A new prayer for Ukraine and the world. The intention of this prayer is flexibility in use. The three middle stanzas can be removed from the prayer as the situation changes, or if a particular individual or congregation does not want to specifically name world leaders in prayer. It seems to me, however, that in this precarious moment prayers for key leaders are critical. They’re offered here as important, but optional as we all yearn for peace. Along with my “Hero of Ukraine,” this could be part of a multi-prayer liturgy for peace in the region and the world.

For Three Leaders, For the World
G-d of compassion,
Put an end to the war in Ukraine
And all wars throughout the world.
Look with favor on the refugees,
The homeless, the wounded,
The suffering, the starving,
And the newly bereaved.
Grant a perfect rest
Under Your canopy of peace
To those who have perished
At the ugly hand of war.
Extend Your canopy of peace
From the highest heavens
To this earth.

Bless Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky
With continued strength and resolve
To defend his people against the onslaught,
Inspiring world sympathy and support.

Bless U.S. President Joe Biden
With wisdom and skill to face the challenge of history
As Europe prepares for a broader conflict
And fears world war.

Bless Russian President Vladimir Putin
With a change of mind,
A change of heart and soul,
To release the tools of war,
To pick up the tools of peace.

G-d of peace,
Release the citizens of Ukraine
From occupation and war.
Grant them resilience and vitality.
Give them comfort and hope.
End this violence and suffering.
For life renewed.
For healing and building.
For a better world.
“Let justice come in waves like water
And righteousness flow like a river” (Amos 5:24),
So that “nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
Neither shall they learn war anymore” (Isaiah 2:4).

© 2022 Alden Solovy and tobendlight.com.

New here? Subscribe here to get my newest prayers by email.

Postscript: See also: “Hero of Ukraine.”

Please check out my CCAR Press Grateful/Joyous/Precious trilogy. The individual books are: This Joyous Soul , This Grateful Heart, and This Precious Life. Here’s a link to my ELItalk, “Falling in Love with Prayer..” For reprint permissions and usage guidelines and reprint permissions, see “Share the Prayer!” To receive my latest prayers via email, please subscribe (on the home page). You can also connect on Facebook and Twitter.

Please consider making a contribution to support this site and my writing.

Photo Source: News Sites

“Alden has become one of Reform Judaism’s master poet-liturgists…" - Religion News Service, Dec. 23, 2020

“Mesmerizing, spiritual, provocative, and thoughtful, Alden was everything you would want in a guest scholar and teacher.” – Rabbi Denise L. Eger, Congregation Kol Ami, Los Angeles, and Past President, CCAR

"Alden Solovy has become one of the most revered liturgists of the last decade…" - Jewish Post & Opinion, March 29, 2023

“Alden left everyone feeling inspired.” – Cantor Jeri Robins, Shabbat Chair, NewCAJE6