Tag Archive for "prayer of yearning"

Posts Tagged ‘prayer of yearning’

The Language of Your Soul

Posted on: May 5th, 2021 by Alden

A short meditation inspired by Rav Abraham Isaac Ha-Cohen Kook‘s idea of the constant prayer of the soul, that our souls have a deep longing to be in constant prayer and that we can cultivate that yearning.

The Language of Your Soul
The language of your soul,
That fountain of blessings inside you,
Pouring forth in a river of love,
From you to G-d,
And G-d to you,
Sustaining life and creation itself,
Always seeking to sing goodness,
And beauty,
And truth,
Can only be summoned
From the secret chambers
Of your heart.

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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.

Photo Source: iBelieve.com

You without Peace

Posted on: April 20th, 2018 by Alden

Here’s a meditation for those who yearn to find G-d’s blessings, but cannot let them in. I’m reminded of a comment at Limmud Vancouver 2018: “We fear that we won’t find G-d. But what we fear, even more, is that we will.”

You without Peace
Oh you without peace,
Who yearn for G-d’s blessings
But push them away,
Feeling their presence
And blocking their arrival,
Hoping for grace
Without gracing the hope
Of holy communion,
Of blessings and wonder,
Know this:

Your heart is beautiful.
Your love is pure.
Your longing sings with truth.
Your journey is righteous,
Your path is lonely,
And G-d yearns for you
To keep searching
For the holiness and light
That surround us all.

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: NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS) Collection

How’s Your Prayer Life?

Posted on: April 15th, 2017 by Alden

How’s your prayer life? That was the opening question from Rabbi Marc Soloway in our conversation on prayer and new liturgy for his podcast “A Dash of Drash,” which you can hear here. We recorded it after a morning hike in Colorado’s Flatirons. My prayer life is uneven, at times strong, at times floundering, always strengthened by a regular prayer practice, which is the topic of my ELItalk, “Falling in Love with Prayer.” Here’s a prayer about our prayers lifting each other when we struggle.

Rise on Wings: A Prayer of Borrowing
Let my soul rise
On the wings of your prayer.
My heart, heavy.
My voice, tired.
My strength, fleeting.
My breath, shallow.
My sight, obscured.

Your voice dazzles,
Filling the space with radiance and majesty.
A sacred melody.
A call of the ages.
An echo of eternity.
A pulse of holiness.
A harmony of light.

Let my yearning ascend
On the rhythm of your song.
Let my hope soar
On the music of your words.
Lend me your courage and your thunder.
And when we reach the gates of heaven,
I will be witness to your mercy and love.

Postscript: This prayer first appeared on this site on October 11, 2015. Prayers about prayer is a recurring theme in my work, including: “Invitations,” “Prayers of My Heart,” “Whispered Prayer,” “Prayer for You, Prayer for Me” and “Prayer with Wings.”

Please check out my Meet the Author video 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: Rabbi Marc Soloway and Alden Solovy in the Flatirons

Faith to Pray

Posted on: December 15th, 2015 by Alden

What does it mean to pray, knowing that our prayers may not be answered? People fall ill. Friends die. Bad things happen to good people. This new prayer about prayer is part of my answer. Careful readers will note that, taken together, the three stanzas allude to the V’havta paragraph of the Shema: “And thou shalt love Adonai your G-d with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might.” (Deut. 6:5)

Faith to Pray
Grant me willingness,
G-d of old,
To pray with my whole heart,
Knowing that You will not
Grant my every hope,
Nor change the nature of the universe
To fulfill my deepest desires.

Grant me faith,
G-d of compassion,
To pray with my entire soul,
Understanding Your promise
To hear our songs and prayers,
Trusting that those prayers
Bring a measure of holiness into the world,
Whether or not I see it or feel it,
As surely as hatred and violence
Pushes holiness away.

Grant me courage,
G-d of mercy,
To pray with all of my might,
Turning those prayers into actions,
Using my strength in service to tikun olam,
To work with dedication on repairing the world,
So that my prayers become blessings,
And my days become a beacon of light and love.

Postscript: Thanks to my friend Cantor Sheri Allen, Congregation Beth Shalom, Arlington, Texas, for the conversation that led to this prayer. It is one of several prayers about prayer, including: “For Prayer,” “Prayer Released,” “Prayers of My Heart,” “Whispered Prayer,” “To Pray” and “All Returns to Prayer.” I’ve also written a prayer “Before Writing a Prayer” and one for “After Writing a Prayer.”

Tweetable! Click here to tweet this: “Grant me faith, G-d of compassion, to pray with my entire soul…” From “Faith to Pray” from @ToBendLight https://tobendlight.com/?p=13912

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Photo Source: Church of the Living G-d

Rise on Wings: A Prayer of Borrowing

Posted on: October 11th, 2015 by Alden

Your prayer lifts mine. My prayer lifts yours. But what happens when there’s no “lift” left in my own prayer? Does my prayer weigh your prayer down? Does my prayer become a burden? Not if you lend me your prayer with mercy and love. This piece appears in This Precious Life: Encountering the Divine with Poetry and Prayer from CCAR Press.

Rise on Wings: A Prayer of Borrowing
Let my soul rise
On the wings of your prayer.
My heart, heavy.
My voice, tired.
My strength, fleeting.
My breath, shallow.
My sight, obscured.

Your voice dazzles,
Filling the space with radiance and majesty.
A sacred melody.
A call of the ages.
An echo of eternity.
A pulse of holiness.
A harmony of light.

Postscript: Prayers about prayer is a recurring theme in my work, including: “Invitations,” “Prayers of My Heart,” “Whispered Prayer,” “Prayer for You, Prayer for Me” and “Prayer with Wings.”

Photo Source: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service National Digital Library

Every Beginning

Posted on: December 9th, 2012 by tobendlight

Here’s prayer/poem that celebrates both love and loss as essential elements of our lives. This piece appears in This Joyous Soul: A New Voice for Ancient Yearnings from CCAR Press.

Every Beginning
Every beginning brings an ending.
Every ending brings a beginning.

Ancient One,
This is the joy and the grief,
The plenty and the famine,
The dance and the dirge
Of life
Alive and awake
In Your world.

How wonderful is this living?
How glorious the light from heaven?
How stunning the radiance that surrounds you
My beloved,
Holy and new, luminous with wonder?
How marvelous this place where earth and sky touch?

How strange is this dying?
How melancholy that one day we will
No longer hear sweet voices,
See sweet faces,
Share whispers and secrets,
Laughter and heartbreak?
How much more, my darlings,
Should we love today?
How much more, my children,
Should we savor and rejoice?

Every beginning brings an ending.
Every ending brings a beginning.
Blessed is G-d’s Holy Name.

Postscript: Here are two of my favorite prayers about the spiritual journey: “Messengers” and “On the Trail.” Click here for more meditations in the voice of the Spiritual Traveler.

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Photo Credit: Hasseblad

Prayers for and About Israel

Posted on: April 25th, 2012 by tobendlight

Here are meditations and prayers for and about Israel. They are divided into two categories: Israel, Our Home; and, For Safety and Peace.

Israel, Our Home

Israel: A Meditation – We yearn for the land of our people
Jerusalem: A Meditation – For peace to reign in the City of Gold
A Song that Holds My Heart – Hatikvah, of course
שיר בלב שלי – “A Song that Holds My Heart,” translated
The Road Out – The land itself cries whenever we leave
Oh You Hills, Oh You Sands – An ode to the Negev
Gathering: A Dream of Reunion – A vision of an end to exile
Bechol Lashon (In Every Tongue) – For unity of our people

For Safety and Peace

For Soldiers of the IDF – For the safety of our soldiers
When My Child Enlists in the IDF – For a child entering the IDF
Lone Soldier in the IDF – Honoring the chiyal boded
For Peace in the Middle East – A prayer for peace
To the Terrorist – For terrorists to choose a new path

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Photo Credit: אורן פלס, via PikiWikiIsrael and WikiMedia Commons

Oh You Hills, Oh You Sands

Posted on: January 8th, 2012 by tobendlight

I wrote this after meditating on the sand dunes of the Arava, a rift valley in the southern Negev. The meditation was led by staff from Kibbutz Ketura and Ben Gurion University. The assignment: go off in silence to think about the desert and what it evokes. Then, after 20 minutes, write about it. To listen along, click on the triangle in the bar below. The text follows.

Oh You Hills, Oh You Sands
Speak to me
Oh you hills.
Did my father pass this way?
Did my mother draw water
From some secret well?
Did I dream of angels and blessings?
Or will the man I am
Wrestle all night
With the man
I am yet to be?

Speak to me
Oh you sands.
What ancient beauty have you captured?
What silent yearning springs up
To water my heart?
What treasures do you
Still hold dear?

Let me know the music of your valleys.
Let me hear the heart beat
Beneath your thousand stones.
Let me remember
The ancient promise of home.

Speak to me
From the place where
Desert and sky meet
In perfect silence,
In perfect wisdom,
In perfect love.

Postscript: Here are additional prayers about Israel. For the sticklers among you, this photo was taken in Nachal Peres in the Negev near Masada, not in the Arava.

Photo credit: Alden Solovy

Shall I Cry?

Posted on: January 4th, 2012 by tobendlight

This is a prayer about the vastness of joy, love, friendship and care. I’ve selected this for day 36 of Counting the Omer, the Lovingkindness in Bonding, the Chesed of Yesod, because it’s about the dedication to finding deep and lasting love. It appears in my book, Jewish Prayers of Hope and Healing, as well as Mishkan Aveilut from CCAR Press.

Shall I Cry?
Shall I cry at the last withered leaf of fall?
Or the lonely swallow?
Or my grieving heart?

Shall I mourn the past?
Protest the future?
Bury myself in these losses?
The leaving. The death.

Oh you sea of clouds.
Oh you curtain of rain.
Oh you silent yearning.
You arrive as messenger and guide,
Sent from the Source of healing,
The Source of radiance and wonder.

This soul cannot learn to love
In heaven, where only
The vast blue glory
Of light
Resides.

Postscript: See also: “Unlock Your Heart,” “This Stubborn Heart,” “Every Heart,” “My Heart Knows What it Needs,” “A Heart of Vision” and “A Heart that Hears.”

Photo Credit: Just Walk Away

Posts Tagged ‘prayer of yearning’

The Language of Your Soul

You without Peace

How’s Your Prayer Life?

Faith to Pray

Rise on Wings: A Prayer of Borrowing

Every Beginning

Prayers for and About Israel

Oh You Hills, Oh You Sands

Shall I Cry?

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