Archive for the ‘Healing’ Category

 

A Human Journey

Posted on: December 4th, 2016 by Alden

img_0727Something about this human journey elevates our souls: discovering deep resilience and healing in the face of our suffering, especially when unexpected tragedy or trauma hit. This is new a prayer of surrender, acknowledging that understanding G-d’s plans is beyond our reach, but that suffering has a purpose and that it is holy.

A Human Journey
My soul needs a human journey.
Sometimes, I wish it weren’t so.
Sometimes I wish that pain and suffering
Had no purpose and no meaning.
Or – if nothing else – G-d would
Share that purpose with me.
But, no, I must find that meaning
Myself.
Sickness and heath.
Disaster and trauma.
The steady drumbeat of death
From the moment of birth.

My soul needs a human journey.
I embrace my fear
With an open heart.
I embrace my hope and my yearning
Never knowing G-d’s answers,
Releasing the vain notion that
G-d will show up to explain
How the foundations of earth were built.

My soul needs a human journey.
Here is where love resides.
Here is where holiness and the mundane dance.
Here is where I encounter you, my friends.
Here is where I encounter You, my G-d.

Yah, Shecinah, Makor Hayiim,
Source of All,
Fountain of mystery,
Bless the hidden and the revealed.
Bless our moments and our years.
Bless this human journey of souls.

© 2016 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.

Postscript: Note the reference to Job 38:4: “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast the understanding.” See also: “G-d’s Plan” and “Witnessing: A Meditation.” Please take a look at my books Jewish Prayers of Hope and Healing and “This Grateful Heart: Psalms and Mediations for a New Day.”

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: Tatcha

After a Living Organ Donor’s Surgery

Posted on: November 20th, 2016 by Alden

logoCMYK2I wrote this prayer today while sitting in a surgical waiting room as my friend Rivkah Moriah became a living kidney donor, literally giving a piece of herself to a heretofore stranger, Nurit. It’s based on my prayer “For Organ Donation.” Here’s a prayer to be said “On Waiting for An Organ Transplant.” Alternative language, based on whether or not the recipient’s name is known, appears in [brackets]. Many of my organ donation prayers appear in my book, Jewish Prayers of Hope and Healing.

After a Living Organ Donor’s Surgery
G-d of righteousness,
Bless _________ with a full and speedy recovery
After surgery to donate her/his ________ (organ)
To [another / or, if name is known, add name ________].
Let this act of selfless loving-kindness be a blessing
For them both and the world.
May they heal in fullness of body and spirit,
A complete refuah sheleimah for each of them.

Bless their doctors and nurses
And all of the professionals and volunteers
Who participate in this life-giving endeavor,
This sacred task of choosing and fostering life,
Dedicating their days to this sacred calling.
May the works of their hands never falter.

Bless those who’ve given so generously of themselves
Both in life and death.
Let their actions be a source of pride
For friends and family,
Resounding in the high heavens
As testimony to human kindess.

Remember _______ [donor’s name]
[And ______ (recipient’s name, if known)]
With Your abundance and Your kindness,
For health and long life.

Blessed are You, G-d of miracles,
Who heals, blesses and sustains life.

© 2016 Alden Solovy and www.tobendlight.com. All rights reserved.

Postscript: Here’s an alternative prayer called: “For Organ and Tissue Donation.” My other prayers for healing include: “For Surgery,” “Upon Recovery from Surgery,” “For Healing the Spirit” and “For a Critically Ill Child.” They appear in  my 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: Fairtransplant.org

After Matthew: Safety after Violent Weather

Posted on: October 7th, 2016 by Alden

img_0709This is a prayer for safety and healing after Hurricane Matthew. Even as the storm moves up the Florida coast, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas have begun the tasks of clean-up, mourning and rebuilding. The perspective is gratitude for survival. It’s difficult to capture in one prayer the range of outcomes and individual experiences from weather events. Here’s a prayer “For the People of Haiti.” For those who have yet to experience the storm, please see “Safety During a Hurricane.” Here’s a prayer “For First Responders” who put thier own lives at risk to save others. Optional language is shown in [brackets].

After Matthew: Safety after Violent Weather
G-d of heaven and earth,
Source of All,
The storm has passed.
Earth, sea and sky are quiet.
The tempest moved on.

Thank you for the kinship of neighbors and friends
As we work together to clean up after violent weather.
Bless those who were injured with healing and recovery.
Bless those who lost family or friends with comfort and hope.
Provide food and clothing, warmth and comfort, to all in need.
Thank you for providing safety and shelter
To my [family][friends][neighbors][parents][children].
Thank you for the emergency and rescue workers
Who kept watch and risked their lives for our community.
As we return to our daily lives,
We pray for the victims of any disaster,
Any violence, suffering or despair.

Blessed are You, our Rock and our Shelter.

© 2016 Alden Solovy and tobendlight.com. All rights reserved.

Postscript: This prayer first appeared here as “After Irene: A Prayer after Violent Weather” on August 27, 2011. Another example of a prayer after violent weather: “After the Tornadoes.” Other weather and disaster related prayers include: “In Devastation (For the People of Haiti),” which I then rewrote as “In Devastation (For the People of New Zealand)” and used as part of a prayer “For Japan.” I used the prayer “For First Responders (to the Earthquake in Haiti)” as the inspiration for a prayer called “Memorial Prayer for 9-11 First Responders.”

Please consider making a contribution to support this site and my writing. 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 use or like this prayer, please post a link to Facebook, your blog or mention it in a tweet.

Photo Source: WikiMedia Commons, Hurricane Fran 1996

For a Critically-Ill Pet

Posted on: August 9th, 2016 by Alden

pets cat dogMy daughter’s pet cat may be critically-ill. It could be cancer, but the tests aren’t back yet. In thinking about it now, it seems strange that it’s taken me this long to write a prayer for an ill pet. Pets are dear and offer much love and comfort. Optional language appears in [brackets]. Blanks are for the pet’s name and the type of pet. Other choices are shown with a slash (“/”).

For a Critically-Ill Pet
Holy One,
G-d of health and healing,
My beloved __________ (type of pet: dog, cat, etc.)
Is critically-ill.
Bless him/her with a full and speedy recovery.
Relieve her/his suffering.
Remove her/his pain.
Return her/him to health.
Restore her/him to life.

You ______________ (pet’s name) are more than a pet to me/us,
You are a member of my/our family,
Providing [years of] companionship and endless joy,
Laughter and delight
Consolation in times of loss,
And a sense of well-being.

Rock and Redeemer,
Comfort and Shelter,
You know the path ahead.
You know the journey.
You hear our prayers.
Even as I/we pray for ______________ (pet’s name) healing,
I/we pray for all who are ill and who suffer.
Bring Your healing power to all in need,
So that they may know life and health,
Joy and peace.

© 2016 Alden Solovy and tobendlight.com. All rights reserved.

Postscript: Two years ago I wrote a prayer for the Passing of a Beloved Pet. Here’s praying that my daughter won’t need it for a long, long time.

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

Photo Source: Partners for Healthy Pets

Prayers for Jerusalem

Posted on: June 5th, 2016 by Alden

IMG_0662On Friday night in my synagogue here in Jerusalem, we expressed our love for this city by singing Lecha Dodi to the tune of Yerushalayim Shel Zahav, Jerusalem of Gold. Sunday is Yom Yerushalayim, Jerusalem Day, commemorating Jerusalem’s reunification in 1967. Sunday marks 49 years. Here are five prayers and meditations for and about Jerusalem, as well as some essays about my life here.

Prayers and Meditations

Essays

© 2016 Alden Solovy and tobendlight.com. All rights reserved.

Postscript: Here’s a link to more prayers for Israel.

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

Photo Source: Alden Solovy

Wild Broken Heart

Posted on: April 18th, 2016 by Alden

5356376053_50d5577f0a_bThis is meditation on the healing that comes from a certain wildness in each of us. It was inspired at the April 2016 New Warrior Training Adventure hosted by ManKind Project Chicago. I was honored to serve on staff. Thanks to Warrior brothers Jeff Robins and George Rounds for your influence on this piece. Special thanks to Warrior brother Mark Davids who said the words that inspired it, “wild broken heart.” This piece appears in This Precious Life: Encountering the Divine with Poetry and Prayer from CCAR Press.

Wild Broken Heart
My heart is free,
Cracked open by fire,
Pouring radiance and music into the night,
Lifting prayers to the heavens.

This wild broken heart fears nothing,
Embracing stars and secrets.
What more can be done
To rubble and ash?
To dust and whispers?
My feet touch the hot core of the earth.
My hands reach the cold edge of the universe.
I am the hollow bone
That brings medicine and light
From the Soul of Eternity
To this world, to this life.

Take this wild broken heart,
Place it next to yours,
The wildness of your dreams,
The wildness of your laughter,
The wildness of your joy and love,
The truth that pulses through your veins,
And we will shine
Magnificent visions into the darkness,
Summoning the battered, the bruised, the wounded,
Summoning hearts split and torn,
Calling out to the thirst for healing
And the hunger to heal,
Calling wild broken hearts to the center,
To the place within where we all dwell.

Our wild broken hearts sing.
Our wild broken hearts bless.
Our wild broken hearts sparkle and shine.
Together,
Our wild broken hearts
Are whole.

© 2021 CCAR Press from This Precious Life: Encountering the Divine with Poetry and Prayer

Postscript: Other prayers and meditations inspired by MKP and NWTA weekends include: “My Work Remains,” “For the Lost,” “The Descent” and “Fire Within.”

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: Youth Worker Movement

Metzora 5776: Take Me Apart

Posted on: April 14th, 2016 by Alden

Cleaning House - Scrubbing TileParashat Metzora details a particular form of leprosy that afflicts the mortar of a home (Leviticus 14:33-53). The home itself gets a spiritual sickness. This home-leprosy must be diagnosed by a priest. In extreme cases the mortar is removed, the stones scraped and some discarded. This meditation imagines a human being as “the house,” that we can be afflicted with an internal spiritual sickness that can only be cured with an inner dismantling and, even then, only with the help of G-d. Word choices are designated with a slash (“/”). This piece appears in This Precious Life: Encountering the Divine with Poetry and Prayer from CCAR Press.

Take Me Apart
Take me apart,
Bone by bone,
Sinew by sinew,
Organ by organ,
To reveal the lesions and strange bumps,
The fungus and the broken glass,
That blacken my veins,
That grind my joints,
That cloud my eyes.

I will take a knife and a wire brush
To scrape out the poison,
I will take rags and bleach
To wipe out the sludge,
Until my heart glows
And my soul shines
With the fruit of my own labor.

Only then,
Holy One,
When my flesh shimmers
And my spirit soars,
Reassemble me into
The man/woman/human
You intended
For me to become,
Clean and ready,
Holy and strong,
A sacred mirror,
Reflecting Your vastness
And Your glory.

© 2021 CCAR Press from This Precious Life: Encountering the Divine with Poetry and Prayer

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.”

Photo Source: SelfTalkSoulTalk

In Sorrow

Posted on: January 31st, 2016 by Alden

Clouds with Bird SilhoueteThis is new a prayer for moments of sorrow, regardless of whether they’re tied to a particular event – such as a loss or trauma – or are more general feelings of depression or despair. Here’s a related prayer called “Seasons of Sorrow.” Both appear in This Grateful Heart: Psalms and Prayers for a New Day.

In Sorrow
Ancient One,
Send light into this darkness
And hope into this despair.
Send music into this emptiness
And healing into this aching heart.

Air.
All I need is air.
A breath to give oxygen
To the anguish within.
A breath to give voice
To the howl in my heart.
A breath to set me free.

I am undone.
Crushed silent by sorrow.
Bereft by loneliness and loss.
Still yearning for healing.
Still yearning for love.
Still yearning for You.

Ancient One,
Send light into this darkness
And hope into this despair.
Send music into this emptiness
And healing into this aching heart.

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

Postscript: This is one of the few prayers in which I use the same language for the opening and closing stanzas.

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

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

For My Children as I Enter Hospice Care

Posted on: January 27th, 2016 by Alden

hospice-handsThis is prayer of contemplation and love for a difficult moment that forces a family to recognize the fragility of life and inevitability of death. It appears in my book, Jewish Prayers of Hope and Healing. Optional inserts appear in [brackets]. Fill in details using the blank lines and following the instructions in (parentheses).

For My Children as I Enter Hospice Care
My G-d,
In the days ahead,
[The weeks and the months,]
I will face challenges as I surrender to _____________ (name of the disease).
My heart and my hopes,
My love and my questions,
Also turn toward my children [and grandchildren].
How will they cope?
How will they continue?
How will their experience of my passing
Shape their lives?

This I pray:
In the time that remains,
Let me be a source of love,
A light of comfort,
A lamp of hope,
A well of blessings.
Grant me the ability to care for my children,
Even as they yearn to provide support and understanding for me.

[Optional insert: Repeat the following paragraph for each child]
Bless my child ___________ (child’s name)
Who _____________ (thoughts about what he/she is feeling now)
With _____________ (specific concerns and prayer for that child).

G-d of health and healing,
Watch over my children
In their hour of need.
Watch over them when I have departed.
Let our love for each other
Shine brightly through the days ahead,
So that it lasts beyond the length of my days,
As a testimony to your Holy Name.

© 2016 Alden Solovy and tobendlight.com. All rights reserved.

Postscript: Here are two additional prayers about entering hospice. Other healing prayers from Jewish Prayers of Hope and Healing include: “For Surgery,” “Upon Recovery from Surgery,” “For a Critically-Ill Child,” “For a Critically-Ill Mother,” “For a Critically Ill Father” and “For Healing the Spirit.”

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

Photo Source: Here Women Talk

After Miscarriage or Stillbirth

Posted on: January 17th, 2016 by Alden

Couple griefThis prayer, to be said by a woman after a miscarriage or stillbirth, attempts to capture the pain and grief following this devastating loss. It asks G-d to witness the sorrow and begin the healing. Since some may not feel the potential for healing, there’s an optional line in [brackets] to honor that sentiment.

After Miscarriage or Stillbirth
Source and Shield,
You have made my body
To be a fountain of life,
A well of strength,
To take seed into the warmth of my womb,
To feed and hold,
To love and shelter,
To awaken new life.

Oh grief,
I am stripped bare,
The cradle of my body empty,
My heart bereft.

Oh sorrow,
My soul yearns, aches, weeps
For the one who will never rest in my arms.

Oh G-d,
Witness my distress,
My suffering and loss.
When will the days bring comfort and rest?
When will the nights bring solace and peace?
Hear my prayer.
Lead me on a path,
G-d of our mothers,
G-d of generations,
[A path that now seems so distant, so remote,]
A path of wholeness and healing.

© 2016 Alden Solovy and tobendlight.com. All rights reserved.

Postscript: Here are other prayers of grief: “Loss of Pregnancy,” “Loss of Pregnancy (Husband/Partner),” “Hard Mournings,” “After Shiva” and “For the Bereaved.” Many of these prayers appear in my book, Jewish Prayers of Hope and Healing.

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

Photo Source: Blunt Moms

“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