Posts Tagged ‘healing the spirit’

 

The Broken Sky

Posted on: April 27th, 2019 by Alden

Another song of the Spiritual Traveler, hinting that if we look beyond that which appears to be broken we will see that everything is holy. This piece appears in This Precious Life: Encountering the Divine with Poetry and Prayer from CCAR Press.

The Broken Sky
Look beyond the broken sky,
Cracked by a blaze of sorrow,
To the edge of the universe,
Where stars dance in endless spirals.

There is nothing as small as an angry mind,
And nothing so large as forgiveness.
There is nothing as wild as breathless love,
And nothing as free as your soul.

Look beyond the life you know,
Yearning for signs of truth,
To the shimmering edge of faith itself,
Where holiness sings to the willing heart.

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

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Postscript: If you resonate with this prayer, you will likely enjoy “Come Walk” and “Spiritual Vandals.” Other songs of the Spiritual Traveler include: “Light, Overflowing,” “Dance in the Madness” and “Dance in the Sky.”

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: TrendinTech

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: Take Me Apart

Posted on: April 14th, 2016 by Alden

Parashat 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. The mortar is removed and the stones scraped, with 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. 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

Tazria-Metzora: Take Me Apart

Posted on: April 11th, 2015 by Alden

The combined portion of Tazria-Metzora deals with impurity, with reference to a form of leprosy that afflicts the mortar of a home (Leviticus 14:33-53). The home itself gets a spiritual sickness. 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 (“/”).

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.

© 2015 Alden Solovy and tobendlight.com. All rights reserved.

Postscript: The house-leprosy is a powerful and useful metaphor for family dysfunction.

Please check out my ELItalk “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: SelfTalkSoulTalk

The Open Space

Posted on: March 3rd, 2013 by tobendlight

pillar_03 wwuThis is a meditation about opening the spiritual space for wholeness to enter. It is, of course, in the voice of the spiritual traveler, the one who hints at wisdom and loves the journey for its own sake. This prayer/poem will appear in my forthcoming book, Song of the Spiritual Traveler.

The Open Space

Wholeness is the open space,

The place between,

Where the rhythm of being

Enters, flows through,

In my vision and my courage.

Forgiveness is the open space,

Where yesterday meets tomorrow,

Where the tide waits to shift,

Where holiness blesses the mundane,

In my breath and my celebration.

Wisdom is the open space

Where the echo hears the wind,

Where the silence becomes G-d’s Voice,

Where all that I am meets all that I can be,

In my marrow and in my surrender.

© 2013 Alden Solovy and tobendlight.com. All rights reserved.

 

Postscript: Here’s a link to one of my favorite prayer/poems in the voice of the spiritual traveler, “Come Walk.” Here’s a link to more related meditations.

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Photo Credit: WWU Planetarium

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