Posts Tagged ‘living’

 

Recipe for a Life, Redux

Posted on: April 8th, 2020 by Alden

I made sweet and sour meatballs today for the first time. And chicken soup. The kitchen smells lovely, like our family Seders of long ago. Underneath, a familiar shock, brought back by this odd intersection between Passover and modern plague. The jolt to the system of the sudden end of Ami’s z”l shiva — after only two days — to make Seder. That feeling of doing the Seder anyway, because that’s what we do, and dammit how could it ever, ever, ever be the same. So this is post-trauma, I suppose. Or just plain trauma. I dunno. It doesn’t matter. We’re all in this moment of doing the best we can with the world we’ve been given. I made chicken soup and sweet and sour meatballs for the first time today. But here’s the recipe for a life (the text follows a video recitation):

Recipe for a Life
1 cup gratitude
2 tablespoons humility
½ teaspoon pride
5 cloves love, 2 crushed
4 seeds forgiveness
2 tall stalks strength
1 tablespoon surrender
2 sprigs awe
3 sprigs wonder
½ cup hard knocks, melted
1 cup fresh squeezed joy
½ cup pounded sorrow
1 cup wisdom, sifted
1 gleaming ray of light
Two cubes compassion
Dash of fleeting time
Pinch of coarse suffering
Zest of music
Zest of prayer

Combine ingredients
Stir with abandon
Invite friends
Sing

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

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Postscript: This prayer/poem was first published on this site on Dec. 25, 2016.

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.

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For Creating a Home

Posted on: February 1st, 2018 by Alden

This is a prayer about the spiritual aspects of creating a home. It can be used from the moment one conceives of the idea of creating a new home until the feeling arrives that the home space is complete. It can also be used as a meditation before affixing a mezuzah to the front door — or any door — of the home.

For Creating a Home
G-d of our mothers and fathers,
Look with kindness on me/us as I/we
Create a new home,
An expression of love.
Let me/us build a place of laughter and delight,
Where Torah guides me/us
And acts of righteousness and charity begin.
Let this be a refuge and a shelter,
An oasis of joy and celebration,
Where friends and family
Are drawn together by a deep sense of welcome,
And a haven of generations
Where we gather to honor each other.

Bless this home,
And all who enter,
With love, contentment and peace.

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

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Postscript: Here’s a prayer to be said “Before Moving” and a prayer for “Quiet.”

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.

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