Posts Tagged ‘holiness’

 

Shabbat Blessing for Children Who Have Left Home

Posted on: November 30th, 2012 by tobendlight

Shabbat-Candles-640x425One of my great joys of parenthood is putting my hands on my daughters’ heads and blessing them. As they went off to college and to see the world, those opportunities diminished. Now we are an ocean apart. And still, every Shabbat, when I light my candles, I remember them in prayer, in blessing. Optional lines appear in [brackets].

Shabbat Blessing for Children Who Have Left Home
My children,
Dear ones,
You are light before my eyes.
I miss your laugh, your smile, your hug,
Your hand in mine.

Bless you on your journey.
Bless you in your home and on your travels.
May you be surrounded with
Joy and beauty,
Adventure and wonder,
Hope and love.
Let Torah and mitzvot guide your steps.
[Bless your family.]
[Heal your body and spirit.]
Let G-d’s goodness rain down upon you
From this Shabbat until the next,
And all the days of your life.

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

Postscript: My other prayers for children include: “On the Birth of a Child,” “Father’s Meditation,” “Meditation for a Child’s First Torah Reading,” “For My Child’s Surgery,” “For a Critically-Ill Child,” “My Child Leaves Home,” “On the Birth of Grandchildren” and “For Bereaved Children.”

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!” For notices of new prayers, please subscribe. You can also connect on Facebook and Twitter.

Photo Credit: The Shiksa in the Kitchen

Before Writing a Prayer

Posted on: November 14th, 2012 by tobendlight

Writing with InkHere’s a prayer to be said before writing a prayer. The intention is to achieve the kavanah, the spiritual mindset, necessary to serve G-d by writing a prayer.

Before Writing a Prayer
Ancient One,
Rock of Israel,
With joy and with gratitude,
With humility and love,
I approach the sacred work
Of putting voice to Your people’s prayers.

Only You know the depth of our love,
The sound of our yearning,
The music of longing,
The song of our hope,
And the thunder in our grief.

G-d of Old,
Give me the words that will open
Your People’s hearts to You,
The words that will open
Our hearts to each other,
The words that will open
Our hearts to healing the world.
And give me the words,
Holy One,
That will open Your heart
To us.

© 2012 Alden Solovy and www.tobendlight.com. All rights reserved.

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,” “For Prayer,” “Prayer Released” and “To Pray.” And here are four related prayers: “For Devotion,” “For Humility,”“For Joy” and “For Service.”

If you use this prayer, please click “like” on this page and subscribe. Please take a moment to post a link to your Facebook page, your blog or mention it in a tweet. Thanks. For usage guidelines and reprint permissions, see “Share the Prayer!

Photo credit: Living a Life of Writing

 

Invitations

Posted on: October 24th, 2012 by tobendlight

Listen ChineseWhat is prayer? Perhaps it’s an invitation to holiness and healing, bending the light from heaven toward tikkun olam. This is a meditation on prayer, a favorite topic of my work, including: “Prayers of My Heart,” “Whispered Prayer” and “Prayer for You, Prayer for Me.”

Invitations
Quiet now.
Listen.
Breathe.
And listen.
Blessings float gently around you.
Your prayers set them free.

Oh, you hidden delight of heaven.
Oh, you secret gift of G-d.
Welcome you majesty and splendor.

Prayers are invitations,
Beckoning holiness and awe,
Radiance and wonder,
To join in this moment,
Summoning compassion and grace,
Healing and hope,
To spread their wings.

Quiet now.
Listen to the blessings from the earth
And the prayers in the wind.
They yearn for you,
Calling out
To join in the chorus.
Breathe and sing out
With your spirit and your voice.

Oh, you hidden delight of heaven.
Oh, you secret gift of G-d.
Welcome you majesty and splendor.

© 2012 Alden Solovy and tobendlight.com. All rights reserved.

Postscript: Other prayers about prayer include: “For Prayer,” “Prayer Released” and “To Pray.”

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: Sim Global Education

Cry, No More

Posted on: September 26th, 2012 by tobendlight

4give yoselfThis prayer is about having compassion for ourselves while repairing the damage we’ve done to self and others. I wrote it after my first Yom Kippur in Jerusalem, my first in Israel as an oleh chadash. I use it on Yom Kippur and during the Counting the Omer, day 10, “compassion in discipline.” It appears in my book This Grateful Heart: Psalms and Prayers for a New Day from CCAR Press.

Cry, No More
Cry no more for the sins of the past.
Rejoice in your repentance and your return.
For this is the day that G-d made
To lift you up from your sorrow and shame,
To deliver you to the gates of righteousness.

Remember this:
Love is the crown of your life
And wisdom the rock on which you stand.
Charity is your staff
And justice your shield.
Your deeds declare your kindness
And your works declare your devotion.

Cry no more for your fears and your dread.
Rejoice in your blessings and your healing.
For this is the day that G-d made
To raise your countenance and hope,
To deliver you to the gates of holiness.

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

Postscript: “This is the day that G-d made” (Psalms 118:24) is used in our liturgy, including the service of praises, Hallel. Here are links to prayers for Elul, prayers for Rosh Hashana, prayers for Yom Kippur and prayers for Sukkot. Here’s a link to yizkor and memorial prayers.

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 Credit: Gospel Newsroom

Awake You Slumberers!

Posted on: September 22nd, 2012 by tobendlight

“Awake, ye sleepers from your slumber, and rouse you from you from your lethargy. Scrutinize your deeds and return in repentance.”רמב”ם

Are you awake? Are you listening? Are you fully present in this moment? Are you fully present in your life? Are you fully present in G-d’s world? When you hear the call of the Shofar on Yom Kippur, when the great Tekiah sounds, will you be ready to rise up and live a life in service to G-d’s holy word?

Here are links to five meditations about waking up to some of G-d’s gifts – truth, joy, holiness, love and Torah – posted now in anticipation of Yom Kippur. They follow the same rhythm and structure: an introduction of three short stanzas; the assertion that G-d’s gifts are present in the universe; a call to reengage with purpose (“Awake you slumberers!”); a reminder of what we may have forgotten; and a call to action.

Here is a taste of “Let Joy:”

“…joy is in the dawn and the dusk,
The silence and the great expanse,
The flow of light from G-d’s grace,
Divine wonder and awe,
Calling out to you dear sisters and brothers:
‘Awake you slumberers!
Awake you who sleepwalk through…”

Are you ready to “Let Truth,” “Let Joy,” “Let Holiness,” “Let Love” and “Let Torah” guide your life? Each of these meditations is aimed at helping us back to G-d’s gifts. And each of these links also includes audio of the meditation.

© 2012 Alden Solovy and www.tobendlight.com. All rights reserved.

If you like this prayer, post a link to your Facebook page, your blog or as part of a tweet. And don’t forget to click “like” on this page. Thanks. Please subscribe. For usage guidelines and reprint permissions, see Share the Prayer!

Prayer for You, Prayer for Me

Posted on: September 2nd, 2012 by tobendlight

Love Your Neighbor Hebrew TilesThe secret to prayer is no secret at all. To pray for yourself, pray for someone else. And the secret to compassion is no secret, either. Pray for everyone. I use this prayer for the 17th day of counting the Omer. It appears in This Joyous Soul: A New Voice for Ancient Yearnings from CCAR Press.

Prayer for You, Prayer for Me
What brilliance is this?
What divine secret of blessing,
That my prayer for you
Is a prayer for me?

Can love be so simple
Or holiness so close,
Can joy be as near
Or awe and wonder as ready
To blossom in the glow of faith?

May you know peace.
May you know health and healing.
May you know hope.
May you know laughter and delight.

What majestic gift,
G-d of Old,
Have You hidden
Inside our prayers,
That my prayers for others
Resound with joy
And echo in my being?

Ancient One,
Master of Blessings,
You call upon us
To summon
the light of holiness
Into the world with our prayers.

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

Postscript: This is another offering in my series of prayers about prayer, including: “For Prayer,” “Prayer Released,” “Prayers of My Heart,” “Whispered Prayer” and “To Pray.”

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 Credit: חאן רוח גלילית

The Temple

Posted on: July 7th, 2012 by tobendlight

IMG_4239This meditation is for use from the 17th of Tammuz to Tisha b’Av, commemorating national calamities, central among them the destruction of the First and Second Temples. Throughout the ages, Jews have prayed for Jerusalem to be rebuilt. For some, that symbolizes a coming age of beauty and holiness, not a return to sacrificial rites. For others, the sacrificial cult is necessary for G-d’s glory to dwell among us.

This may be the most controversial piece I’ve written. It turns mourning for the loss of the Temple into a new metaphor: the Temple mourning for our inability to hear G-d’s Voice, the priests mourning for a divided House of Israel and the sacrifices mourning for those who have forgotten G-d’s call to service.

The Temple (Written 17 Tammuz 5771)
Do not mourn
For the Temple Mount.
The stones mourn for you.
They mourn for you who have forgotten
That G-d’s Voice
Can still be heard in the hills.
The stones mourn for you
Who have forgotten
That G-d’s Voice can still be heard in the valleys,
In the forests and deserts,
In the waters and skies.

Do not mourn
For the lost priests.
The tribes mourn for you.
They mourn for you who have forgotten
That G-d’s people are one.
Ephraim and Judah,
The Levites and the daughters of Zelophehad,
Ask why we still divide the House of Israel,
Why we still cast judgment,
Why we spurn each other with anger.
The tribes mourn for you who have
Forsaken your brothers
And rejected your sisters,
Closing your minds and hardening your hearts.

Do not mourn
For the lost sacrifices.
The yearling without blemish,
The ephah of fine flour and the hin of oil,
Mourn for you.
They mourn for you who have forgotten
That G-d requires your love and your power,
Your hope and your deeds.
The yearling, the flour and the oil mourn for you
Who have forgotten
That G-d wants the blood that flows through you,
The strength of your days,
Your song and your laughter,
Your wisdom and healing.

Tear your clothes
And sit in ashes
If you must.
Then, rise up!
Rise up and listen to G-d’s call:

Love My People Israel,
Love all of My People Israel.
Then, you will know the depth of My righteousness
And will drink from the well of My compassion.
Give them your heart.
Give them your days in service,
With joy and thanksgiving,
So that My Glory will dwell among you,
And that your days are long on this earth.

© 2012 Alden Solovy and tobendlight.com. All rights reserved.

Postscript: Instead of the phrase “Do not mourn for…,” I considered using “When you mourn for…” I ultimately decided to leave the introductory lines to each stanza as originally written, choosing to challenge our relationship to the Temple and to each other head on, without pulling the punch. Here’s a link to another prayer/metaphor that uses preparing to say the Shema as a dream/vision of the ingathering of Jews to our land. And here’s a prayer called “Season of Sorrow.”

Tweetable! Please help share this prayer with this suggested tweet, including the link:
“Do not mourn for the Temple Mount. The stones mourn for you…” The Jewish Temple mourns for the people: https://tobendlight.com/?p=5603

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

To Pray

Posted on: April 24th, 2012 by tobendlight

prayer-conversations-with-god_Why do I want a heart of prayer? So that I can sing G-d’s praises fully, deeply, from my entire being. It’s another prayer about prayer, such as: “For Prayer,” “Prayer Released,” “Prayers of My Heart,” “Whispered Prayer” and “Prayer for You, Prayer for Me.” To listen along, click on the triangle in the bar below. The text follows.

 

To Pray
G-d, bless me with a heart of prayer:
To lift my voice,
To sing Your praise,
To extol Your wisdom,
To recall Your deeds,
To proclaim Your glory,
To declare Your majesty,
To recount Your ways,
To remember Your works,
To delight in Your gifts,
To rejoice in Your Word.

Let prayer flow from my lips.
Let me join the song of my people,
Filling the realms above
And the realms below
With joy and wonder,
So that holiness, radiance and awe,
Walk with us
Throughout our days.

© 2012 Alden Solovy and tobendlight.com. All rights reserved.

Postscript: See also: “Quick Meditation for Today,” “Quick Meditation at Noon,” “Your Name: Quick Prayer at Dusk,” and “Quick Meditation at Night.”

For usage guidelines and reprint permissions, see “Share the Prayer!” For notices of new prayers, please subscribe. You can also connect on Facebook and TwitterPlease consider making a contribution to support this site and my writing. 

 

Photo Source: First Baptist Church of Glenns Ferry

Welcome, Sabbath Queen

Posted on: March 2nd, 2012 by tobendlight

Lecha DodiThis is a Hebrew poetry “smash-up,” combining the themes of the Yiddish song כוח with the image of the Sabbath Queen from the liturgical poem לכה דודי. To listen along, click on the triangle in the bar below. The text follows.

 

Welcome, Sabbath Queen
Let go! Let go!
Release your struggle and strife.
Release your work and your toil.

Welcome, Sabbath Queen,
With gifts of joy and light.
With gifts of comfort and peace.

Let go! Let go!
Release your troubles and concerns.
Release your worries and your burdens.

Welcome, Sabbath Queen,
With gifts of gentleness and song.
With gifts of radiance and love.

Enter this holy day
This sacred time
This ancient beauty
That returns to nourish
Body and soul.

Enter this luminous wonder,
The place of Torah and t’fillah,
This moment that touches creation
With celebration and stillness.

Come,
Sing with us in sacred harmony.
Sing of majesty and wonder,
Revelation and redemption.
Sing out G-d’s wisdom and compassion.
G-d’s gift of rest.

Welcome, Sabbath Queen.
Welcome.

© 2012 Alden Solovy and www.tobendlight.com. All rights reserved.

Postscript: Jewish poetry, liturgy, story and song are rich with the deep Jewish love for Shabbat. Here’s a prayer “For the Arrival of Shabbat” and a question to G-d “About Shabbat,” plus two short, short stories – also known as flash fiction – about Shabbat: “Sarah Rivkah: A Challah Baking Story” and “Mendel Baruch: S’hema on Shabbat.” Sarah Rivka is one of my favorites.

IPlease 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 TwitterPlease take a moment to post a link to your Facebook page, your blog or mention it in a tweet. Thanks.

Image Source: Alden Solovy

Whispered Prayer

Posted on: January 31st, 2012 by tobendlight

whisperedprayersThis meditation — a riff off of Psalm 150 — is a reminder that the voice of prayer resounds in the heavens. It ends with a classic chatimah, a closing seal to the prayer, which is taken from Jewish liturgy. It asserts that G-d hears our prayers. This prayer appears in This Joyous Soul: A New Voice for Ancient Yearnings from CCAR Press. It’s also available as a poster. To listen along, click on the triangle in the bar below. The text follows.

Whispered Prayer
Your whispered prayer
Your secret hope
Your quiet yearning
Have holiness and power.
They resound in the heavens
And echo on high.
They are drum and cymbal,
Trumpet and horn,
Proclaiming your faith,
Music of generations,
Proclaiming your hope,
Hymns of the heart,
Proclaiming your dedication
To the G-d of all Being,
Source and Shelter,
Rock and Redeemer,
Light and Truth.

Your whispered prayer
Is the song of the ages.
Your secret hope
Is the light of tomorrow.
Your quiet yearning
Is the voice of eternity.

Blessed are You Adonai,
Who hears prayer.
.ברוך אתה ה שומע חפלה
Baruch atah Adonai, shomei’a t’filah.

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

Postscript: This prayer is available as a downloadable PDF poster and is from my series of prayers about prayer, including: “For Prayer,” “Prayer Released,” “Prayers of My Heart” and “Prayer for You, Prayer for Me.”

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: Whispered Prayer PDF poster

“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

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