Posts Tagged ‘joy’

 

Wedding Blessing for Nikki and Pro

Posted on: March 29th, 2019 by Alden

This is the prayer I wrote for my daughter and her husband, reading it at their wedding last weekend. Here’s a link to the prayer that I wrote for their engagement, called “Bind Our Hearts.” Here are three more related prayers: “A Moment of Love,” “For an Open Heart” and “Blessing for a Spouse/Partner.”

Wedding Blessing for Nikki and Pro
Love.
A gift. A blessing.
A legacy. An inheritance.

Eternal One,
Source and Shelter,
Light and Truth,
Bless Nikki and Pro
With the simplicity and the splendor
Of the love that binds
Two together,
The gentleness and the grandeur,
The hope and the faith,
The trust and the forgiveness
They will need as they
Build and grow
Their lives together.
Bless them with abundance,
With health, with joy,
With good fortune,
And with children, healthy and strong,
So that they establish a Jewish home
Filled with the blessings of Torah
And the beauty of mitzvot.

Love.
A gift. A blessing.
A legacy. An inheritance.
Let it shine throughout your days.
Let it radiate throughout your years.
Let it guide you and shelter you
With the brilliance and the blessings
From G-d’s Sukkat Shalom,
G-d’s Tabernacle of Peace,
All the days of your lives.

© 2019 Alden Solovy and tobendlight.com.

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Postscript: Special thanks to our dear friend Rabbi Joe Black for officiating.

Please check out my ELItalk video, “Falling in Love with Prayer,” and This Grateful Heart: Psalms and Prayers for a New Day. 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.

Photo Source: Family photo

This Joyous Soul

Posted on: December 24th, 2018 by Alden

Here’s the title piece from my new book This Joyous Soul: A New Voice for Ancient Yearnings from CCAR Press. The book is a companion volume to This Grateful Heart: Psalms and Prayers for a New Day. This Grateful Heart provides prayers and meditations to address the days and seasons of our lives. This Joyous Soul offers a bridge between the language of traditional prayer and the language of personal experience.

This Joyous Soul
G-d’s love lingers
Where the rainbows hide,
Waiting to burst forth
In radiant glory.

How this joyous soul yearns for You!
Your blessings and Your grace,
Your wisdom and Your compassion,
This joyous voice sings Your praises.

G-d’s love lingers
At the gates of your heart,
Waiting to burst forth
In luminous splendor.

© 2019 CCAR Press from This Joyous Soul: A New Voice for Ancient Yearnings

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Please check out my ELItalk video, “Falling in Love with Prayer,” and This Grateful Heart: Psalms and Prayers for a New Day. 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.

Photo Source: Deep Sky

Farewell Ushpizot, Ushpizin: Meditation Before Taking Down a Sukkah

Posted on: September 26th, 2018 by Alden

Each year, we construct beautiful dwellings for Sukkot. We intentionally create temporary, holy spaces. We invite the presence of honored guests, the ushpizin, seven prophets, patriarchs and kings of old. We invite the ushpizot, seven women prophets named in the Talmud. Some include the matriarchs. Some invite men and women from history.

This meditation for taking down a sukkah is meant to slow down the process, briefly, so that we disassemble it with intention, inviting the holiness of the space that we created into our lives.

Farewell Ushpizot, Ushpizin
Farewell, Ushpizot.
Farewell, Ushpizin.
You have brought blessing and wisdom
To our sukkah – this tabernacle of joy –
As our honored guests.
Watch over us as we journey on.
Stay with us in our hearts.

Farewell, Ushpizot:
Sarah and Miriam,
Devorah and Hannah,
Avigail, Huldah and Esther.

Farewell, Ushpizin:
Abraham and Isaac,
Jacob and Joseph,
Moses, Aaron and David.

Farewell to all who have graced this space
With your warmth and friendship.

.למען אחי ורעי, אדברה-נא שלום בך
Lma-an achai vrei-ai, adab’rah na shalom bach.
For the sake of my companions and friends,
I will speak of peace. (Ps. 122:8)

Taking down this sukkah,
We take the holiness into ourselves,
Dreaming of a time
When G-d’s sukkat shalom
G-d’s tabernacle of peace –
Will cover the earth.

Taking down this sukkah,
We pledge to carry holiness,
Love and light,
Peace and thanksgiving,
Into our lives and into the world.

© 2018 Alden Solovy and tobendlight.com.

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Postscript: In using this meditation, adapt the names mentioned to those you invited into your sukkah. The meditation is my response to the unceremonious way that sukkot seem to be disassembled. What happens to the holiness created? Does it disparate? And what about our honored guests? We invite them in, but don’t have the courtesy to say farewell?

Please check out my ELItalk video, “Falling in Love with Prayer,” and This Grateful Heart: Psalms and Prayers for a New Day. 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.

Photo Source: 6SqFt

Beauty Dances

Posted on: September 23rd, 2018 by Alden

sukkotOn Sukkot, joy and beauty arrive. We are called to bring that beauty into the world. This piece appears in This Grateful Heart: Psalms and Prayers for a New Day from CCAR Press. Here’s a link to more prayers and meditations for Sukkot.

Beauty Dances
Beauty dances
With us
Whenever we build
A tabernacle
To God’s holy Name.

Love sings
With us
Whenever we rejoice
In gladness
On God’s festive days.

Peace cries
With us
Whenever we yearn
In prayer
For God’s holy shelter.

Come,
Let us build this place,
This tabernacle where we praise,
With all of our hearts,
God’s pardon and promise.
Let us build this place,
Where we delight,
With thanksgiving and wonder,
In God’s bounty and gifts.

Come,
Let us build this place,
This sukkat shalom,
This shelter of peace,
Where beauty dances
And love sings.
Where peace cries out:
Build, build,
You Children of Israel,
A tent of holiness,
Strong and true.
Build it in your heart,
In your home,
In your life,
In God’s world.

© 2017 CCAR Press from This Grateful Heart: Psalms and Prayers for a New Day

Postscript: This prayer first appeared on this site on Sept. 10, 2011. Find it in This Grateful Heart: Psalms and Prayers for a New Day from CCAR Press.

New here? Subscribe here to get my newest prayers by email.
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Please check out my ELItalk video, “Falling in Love with Prayer,” and This Grateful Heart: Psalms and Prayers for a New Day. 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.

Photo Source: The Toronto Centre

Dance in the Madness

Posted on: May 27th, 2018 by Alden

A song of the spiritual traveler about the dance between spiritual forces that uplift and those the can crush us. This is one of just a handful of my pieces that rhyme, including “Come Walk,” another song of the spiritual traveler.

Dance in the Madness
Joy is a bird that lifts you in flight.
Prayer is a beacon that pierces the night.
Faith is a prism that opens the light.
G-d is the answer of joy and delight.

Fear comes calling, a poisonous art.
Judgement, a knife that cuts you apart.
Sorrow, a clamp that crushes the heart.
Loneliness threatens to never depart.

On this journey, it’s certain, one thing is true,
Both joy and sorrow sit next to you
So dance in the madness,
There is nothing new,
And love everyone who is dear to you.

© 2018 Alden Solovy and tobendlight.com. All rights reserved.

New here? Subscribe here to get my newest prayers by email.
Share the prayer! Email this to a friend.

Please check out my ELItalk video, “Falling in Love with Prayer,” and This Grateful Heart: Psalms and Prayers for a New Day. 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.

Photo Source: Dale Robbinete/Lionsgate

Looking Back at Our Long Marriage

Posted on: April 23rd, 2018 by Alden

A simple prayer to be said after years and years of marriage. Here’s a related prayer, a “Blessing for a Spouse / Partner.” And for those just starting out, here are two more: “Bind Our Hearts” and “My Life in Yours.”

Looking Back at Our Long Marriage
Where has the time gone?
The days. The memories.
Where will time lead us?

Thank you, my dear,
For the years of devotion,
And the blessing of forgiveness.
For the seasons of laughter,
And the blessing of tears.

It was something, you and me, wasn’t it?
It still is, although most of the seasons are behind us.
We will celebrate and rejoice,
Mourn and love,
As we always have.

Thank you, G-d of love,
For this amazing marriage.
Watch over us
As we grow old together.

© 2018 Alden Solovy and tobendlight.com. All rights reserved.

CELEBRATE MY BIRTHDAY: Thanks to CCAR Press for offering a 30% off sale on This Grateful Heart for my birthday. On Thursday, April 26, 2018, go to grateful.ccarpress.org  and use the code Alden30 at checkout. It’s valid for 24 hours and takes 30% off the retail price, making it $10.46, plus shipping.

Please check out my ELItalk video, “Falling in Love with Prayer,” and This Grateful Heart: Psalms and Prayers for a New Day. 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.

Photo Credit: Caroline’s Journal

Give Love Wings

Posted on: February 14th, 2018 by Alden

A new prayer about the holiness of love.

Give Love Wings
Give your love wings
To soar with the music and the prayers
That dance between us,
That sing around us,
That rise shimmering
To the heavens
In radiance and glory.

Give your heart freedom
To float breathless
In the vastness of the universe,
To become one with the Soul of all Being,
To enter the majesty of light
Pulsing from the ancient yearnings of our hearts.

Give your love wings, to soar.
And when you reach G-d’s holy place,
Opens your hands in blessing.

© 2018 Alden Solovy and tobendlight.com. All rights reserved.

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Postscript: My other prayers about love include:  Groucy: A Love PrayerFor New Love and Quick Blessing for a Past Love.

Please check out my ELItalk video, “Falling in Love with Prayer,” and This Grateful Heart: Psalms and Prayers for a New Day. 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.

Photo Source: Stormhoek.com

My Life in Yours

Posted on: October 23rd, 2017 by Alden

About four years ago I wrote a love song. As I strolled alone along Jerusalem’s old railway walking path, these words simply appeared. Strange. I wasn’t dating anyone, so why would a love song simply appear? Here are two versions of “My Life in Yours,” the first is a song of yearning for love; the second, which follows, is a wedding prayer recited by one partner to the other or said together in unison. The differences in the two are small, but key.

My Life in Yours – A Love Song
When my heart whispers for you,
When my breath calls your name,
When my eyes sparkle with your grace,
I will plant my life in yours.

When my hands yearn for your healing,
When my ears tune to your voice,
When my pulse beats with your footsteps,
I will plant my life in yours.

The sky, the sea, the horizon,
The moments, the days and the years.
The light, the hope, the glory,
The hours, the seasons, the tears.

When your heart whispers for me,
When your breath calls my name,
When your pulse beats with my footsteps,
I will plant my life in yours…
I will plant this life in yours.

My Life in Yours – A Wedding Prayer
My heart whispers for you,
And my breath calls your name,
As my eyes sparkle with your grace,
I plant my life in yours.

My hands yearn for your healing,
My ears tune to your voice,
As my pulse beats with your footsteps,
I plant my life in yours.

The sky, the sea, the horizon,
The moments, the days and the years.
The light, the hope, the glory,
The hours, the seasons, the tears.

Now your heart whispers for me,
And your breath calls my name,
As your pulse beats with my footsteps,
I plant my life in yours.
I plant this life in yours.

© 2017 Alden Solovy and tobendlight.com. All rights reserved.

Postscript: I recorded myself singing the tune to this piece to share here, but I’m too shy — yes, I said shy — to post it. Here are links to my prayers about love: “Let Love,” “The Cut That Heals,” “For New Love,” “To Seek Your Love,” “A Heart of Love” and “A Moment of Love.” Several of these prayers appear in my new book, Jewish Prayers of Hope and Healing.

For usage guidelines and reprint permissions, see “Share the Prayer!” For notices of new prayers, please subscribe. You can also connect on Facebook and Twitter. If you like this prayer, please post a link to Facebook, your blog or mention it in a tweet.

Photo Source: Alden Solovy

Sacred Silly

Posted on: June 20th, 2017 by Alden

This playful and unexpected prayer/poem makes fun of my own seriousness about writing prayers and liturgy. And I need a break from the intensity of affairs in both my allegiances, Israel and the U.S. This prayer appears in This Joyous Soul: A New Voice for Ancient Yearnings and includes a line from Psalm 100: “Serve Adonai with gladness…”

Sacred Silly
Wouldn’t it be fun,
Just one time,
To secretly slip a goofy prayer
Inside the siddur,
Say, in the middle of the Amidah,
Where an unsuspecting Yid
Like you or me
Might just crack up
In sacred silliness,
Holy happiness,
Loving laughter,
As a testimony
To the juicy joy
Of Jewish jubilation?

So serious
These liturgists,
These poets and paytanim.
Let’s g’faw for God.
Let’s laugh out loud in praise.
Let’s giggle in thanksgiving.

.עבדו את-ה’ בשׂמחה, בֹאו לפניו ברננה
Iv’du et Adonai b’shimcah, bo-u le’fanav birnanah.
Serve Adonai with gladness, come before G-d’s presence with singing.

Let joy rise up to the gates of prayer.
Let laughter shake the highest heavens.

© 2019 CCAR Press from This Joyous Soul: A New Voice for Ancient Yearnings

Please check out my CCAR Press Grateful/Joyous/Precious trilogy. The individual books are: This Joyous Soul , This Grateful Heart, 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.”

Photo Source: David Goehring on Flicker

Bind Our Hearts

Posted on: January 8th, 2017 by Alden

imageMazal Tov to my daughter Nikki Braziel-Solovy and her man Prometheus Kevin Trotsky on their engagement. This wedding day prayer alludes to the sheva brachot – the set of seven prayers said under the chuppah, the wedding canopy. Each of the stanzas contains seven lines. The middle stanza is an interpretation of the sheva brachot, borrowing hints and ideas from each of the seven prayers. This piece appears in This Grateful Heart: Psalms and Prayers for a New Day from CCAR Press.

Bind Our Hearts
Hope and love,
Love and promise,
Promise and commitment,
Commitment and action,
A sacred pairing,
A holy union,
A celebration of life.

Let this cup of sweetness overflow
Into G-d’s glorious handiwork,
As we delight in creation,
Seeing the divine in each other,
Sharing this abundance with the generations
As loving companions and dedicated friends,
Rejoicing together, now and forever.

Bind our hearts with awe,
Bind our hearts with wonder,
Grant us wisdom and understanding,
Patience and forgiveness,
Days of radiance and light,
Nights of comfort and peace,
Lives of blessing, together.

© 2017 CCAR Press from This Grateful Heart: Psalms and Prayers for a New Day

Postscript: See also “A Moment of Love,” “For an Open Heart” and “Blessing for a Spouse/Partner.”

Please check out my ELItalk video, “Falling in Love with Prayer,” and This Grateful Heart: Psalms and Prayers for a New Day. 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.

Photo Source: Family Snaps on iCloud

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