Tag Archive for "love" | To Bend Light

Posts Tagged ‘love’

Sacred Silly

Posted on: June 20th, 2017 by Alden

This playful and unexpected prayer/poem makes fun of my own seriousness about writing prayers and liturgy. And I need a break from the intensity of affairs in both my allegiances, Israel and the U.S. This prayer appears in This Joyous Soul: A New Voice for Ancient Yearnings and includes a line from Psalm 100: “Serve Adonai with gladness…”

Sacred Silly
Wouldn’t it be fun,
Just one time,
To secretly slip a goofy prayer
Inside the siddur,
Say, in the middle of the Amidah,
Where an unsuspecting Yid
Like you or me
Might just crack up
In sacred silliness,
Holy happiness,
Loving laughter,
As a testimony
To the juicy joy
Of Jewish jubilation?

So serious
These liturgists,
These poets and paytanim.
Let’s g’faw for God.
Let’s laugh out loud in praise.
Let’s giggle in thanksgiving.

.עבדו את-ה’ בשׂמחה, בֹאו לפניו ברננה
Iv’du et Adonai b’shimcah, bo-u le’fanav birnanah.
Serve Adonai with gladness, come before G-d’s presence with singing.

Let joy rise up to the gates of prayer.
Let laughter shake the highest heavens.

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: David Goehring on Flicker

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

Falling in Love with Prayer

Posted on: April 4th, 2017 by Alden

What is prayer? Perhaps an invitation to holiness and healing, bending the light from heaven toward tikkun olam. Have you ever fallen in love with a prayer? That’s the theme of my ELItalk, “Falling in Love with Prayer.” Please check it out. Loving prayer is a favorite topic of my work, including “Rise on Wings,” “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.

Postscript: Other prayers about prayer include: “For Prayer,” “Prayer Released” and “To Pray.” And here are four related prayers: “For Devotion,” “For Humility,”“For Joy” and “For Service.” This prayer first appeared here on October 24, 2012.

Photo Credit: ELItalks

Bind Our Hearts

Posted on: January 8th, 2017 by Alden

Mazal Tov to my daughter Nikki Braziel-Solovy and her man Prometheus Kevin Trotsky on their engagement. This wedding day prayer alludes to the sheva brachot – the set of seven prayers said under the chuppah, the wedding canopy. Each of the stanzas contains seven lines. The middle stanza is an interpretation of the sheva brachot, borrowing hints and ideas from each of the seven prayers. This piece appears in This Grateful Heart: Psalms and Prayers for a New Day from CCAR Press.

Bind Our Hearts
Hope and love,
Love and promise,
Promise and commitment,
Commitment and action,
A sacred pairing,
A holy union,
A celebration of life.

Let this cup of sweetness overflow
Into G-d’s glorious handiwork,
As we delight in creation,
Seeing the divine in each other,
Sharing this abundance with the generations
As loving companions and dedicated friends,
Rejoicing together, now and forever.

Bind our hearts with awe,
Bind our hearts with wonder,
Grant us wisdom and understanding,
Patience and forgiveness,
Days of radiance and light,
Nights of comfort and peace,
Lives of blessing, together.

Postscript: See also “A Moment of Love,” “For an Open Heart” and “Blessing for a Spouse/Partner.”

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: Family Snaps on iCloud

For Jewish Unity

Posted on: December 11th, 2016 by Alden

This prayer, by design, is naïve, which is the source of its simplicity and optimism. Contrast it with a prayer with a similar theme, “Jew against Jew,” which begins from a more realistic assessment of the animosities that exist – especially here in Israel – among the various branches of Jewish practice and halachic observance. Here’s a prayer clebrating Jewish diversity, “Be’chol Lashon: In every Tounge.”

For Jewish Unity
May it be Your will,
Adonai our G-d,
G-d of our mothers and fathers,
To restore the Jewish people to each other
In wholeness and love.
May our differences in understanding and practice
Never be a source of sinat chinam, chas v’shalom,
Nor physical violence, chas v’shalom.
May our love for Torah and each other shine forth
From Jerusalem to the four corners of the earth,
Speedily, in our days.

Postscript: See also “Cornerstone” and “Messengers among Us,” two prayers that celebrate the expanding roles of women in Jewish life.

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: Ottawa Jewish Bulletin

The Preacher Said

Posted on: November 9th, 2016 by Alden

Here’s a prayer for use in celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day and written for my book, “This Grateful Heart.”

The Preacher Said
Let us pray,
The preacher said,
Let us pray in the name of hope,
In the name of justice,
In the name of truth.

Let us commit to each other,
The preacher said,
Commit in the name of equality,
In the name of righteousness,
And in the name of our children.

Let us take to the streets,
The preacher said,
Let us take to the streets
To make our space,
To claim a place,
For no one race
Can live in grace,
Until we face,
Together,
Oppression and hate.

Let us walk,
The preacher said,
Let us walk from Selma to Montgomery,
From oppression to the Promised Land,
From fear to courage,
From silence to action,
From today to the future,
To a place where all people
Will be judged by the content
Of their character,
The humanity of their words,
And the compassion of their deeds.

Stick with love,
The preacher said,
Stick with love
Because love is the only answer.

Stick with love.
Stick with love.

Let us pray,
The preacher said,
Let us pray in the name of hope,
In the name of justice,
In the name of truth.

Postscript: Here’s a link to a prayer “In Thanks for U.S. Democracy.”

Photo Source: Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub

In Memoriam, Orlando — “Love Wins: A Pride Prayer”

Posted on: June 15th, 2016 by Alden

Our vocal response to hate: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:18), in Hebrew pronounced “ve’ahavta lere’acha kamocha” and written ואהבת לרעך כמוך! This slightly-revised version of this prayer is in memoriam to the victims of racist terror and massacre of LGBT persons in Orlando on Sunday. See: “For Orlando, For the USA” and “Pride Wins: A Prayer after Homophobic Brutality.” In the end, love wins.

Love Wins: A Pride Prayer
One day, the words ‘coming out’ will sound strange,
Oppression based on gender or orientation will be a memory,
History to honor and remember,
The pain of hiding, repressing, denying,
Honoring the triumphs of those who fought to be free,
Remembering the violence and vitriol that cost lives.

When love wins,
When love wins at long last,
ואהבת לרעך כמוך,
Ve’ahavta lere’acha kamocha,
‘Love your neighbor as yourself’
Will be as natural as breathing.
ואהבת לרעך כמוך!

One day, love will win every heart,
Love will win every soul,
Fear will vanish like smoke,
And tenderness for all will fill our hearts.
ואהבת לרעך כמוך!
Ve’ahavta lere’acha kamocha!

Love wins. In the end,
Love wins.
All genders,
All orientations,
All people,
All true expressions of heart.
ואהבת לרעך כמוך!
Ve’ahavta lere’acha kamocha!

Let this come speedily,
In our day,
A tribute to the many
And the diverse
Gifts from heaven.
A tribute to love deep and true,
Each of us for one another.
ואהבת לרעך כמוך!
Ve’ahavta lere’acha kamocha!

[ctt template=”8″ link=”N74X7″ via=”yes” ]”When love wins, when love wins at long last, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ will be as natural as breathing….”[/ctt]

Postscript: In this version, I’ve replaced four lines in the second to last stanza with the line ‘all people,’ removing the lines ‘man for man, woman for woman, woman for man, man for women.’ The change is the result of a comment on the URJ site to “For Orlando, For the USA:” “This is a beautiful prayer, but I wonder if ‘men and women’ should be changed to ‘people’ because it was a queer nightclub and there is a high probability that nonbinary people where also victims of this hate crime.” Thank you to my friend Cantor Evan Kent for his suggestions on an earlier draft of this prayer.

This prayer was written after anti-semetic vitriol was hurled at LGBT Jews at the Creating Change 2016 Conference. To read the full background, go to the original post, which first appeared on this site on January 22, 2016.

Photo Source: Tufts Hillel, JQUEST (Jewish Queer Students at Tufts)

Prayer with Wings

Posted on: March 20th, 2016 by Alden

This is another prayer of yearning, yearning for the impossible, to know that my prayers have been heard. This is an important theme in my writing. Other prayers with similar intentions include “Rise on Wings: A Prayer of Borrowing” and “Prayer Released.”

Prayer with Wings
Just once, Holy One,
Just once before I die
Let me feel my prayers with my entire being,
The radiance and the glory of my heart
Rising to meet You,
My soul reaching toward the unreachable,
My eyes blazing toward the unseeable,
My mind open to the unknowable,
My blood flowing gracefully through Your river of light.
Let me become a prayer with wings,
Gliding on the currents of faith,
Soaring into beams from heaven
Bursting forth from the moment of creation.

Just once, Holy One,
Just once before I die
Let my prayers enter the gates of heaven,
To plead for peace
And to sing Your praise.

Postscript: Here are several more prayers about prayer: “Invitations,” “Prayers of My Heart,” “Whispered Prayer,” “Prayer for You, Prayer for Me,” “For Prayer” and “To Pray.”

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

Pride Wins: A Prayer after Homophobic Brutality

Posted on: February 21st, 2016 by Alden

Shira Banki

The city of Jerusalem renamed Zion Square in memory of Shira Banki, murdered at 2015’s Pride Parade. An ultra-Orthodox Jewish extremist stabbed six participants, murdering the 16-year-old. The plaza was renamed Tolerance Square.

Addendum, June 13, 2016: In Orlando early Sunday, 50 people died in the deadliest mass shooting is U.S history, domestic hate and terror focused on a popular gay nightclub. Here’s a prayer “For Orlando, For the USA.” And Nov. 19 became another murderous moment for the community in Colorado Springs.

Pride Wins: A Prayer after Homophobic Brutality
Pride will not be crushed by violence.
Pride will not be crushed by hatred.
Pride wins. Love wins.
Beauty and joy win.

G-d of healing,
Bless the LBGTQ community
With Your comfort and care
In the anguish and pain after yet another
Senseless and vicious attack against the innocent,
An act of calculated violence against Your children.
Bless the victims with healing and strength.
Bless their families with solace and support.
Bless the community with resolve and well-being.

Let the day be near when
Gender and sexual orientation
Are no longer used an excuse for brutality or cruelty.
Let the day be near when
Justice and righteousness prevail,
Guiding us all to delight fully in each other,
Our similarities and our differences,
A tribute to the vast wonder of Your creation.

Postscript: Here’s a song written by Julie Silver in Shira’s memory. See also, “Love Wins: A Pride Prayer, Jewish.”

Photo Source: Facebook, via JTA

Love Wins: A Pride Prayer, Jewish

Posted on: January 24th, 2016 by Alden

“This week will go down in history as one of the saddest and most destructive, ever, in the lives of LGBTQ Jews,” declares an article from O-blog-dee-o-blog-da about the anti-semetic vitriol hurled at LGBTQ Jews at the Creating Change 2016 Conference. Pro-Palestinian protesters called for the death of fellow LGBTQ, Jews on their way to a Friday night Shabbat service. Here’s a Jewish response to this twisted hate: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Levit. 19:18), pronounced “ve’ahavta lere’acha kamocha.” In other words, love wins.

Love Wins: A Pride Prayer, Jewish
One day, the words ‘coming out’ will sound strange,
Oppression based on gender or orientation will be a memory,
History to honor and remember,
The pain of hiding, repressing, denying,
Honoring the triumphs of those who fought to be free,
Remembering the violence and vitriol that cost lives.

When love wins,
When love wins at long last,
ואהבת לרעך כמוך,
‘Love your neighbor as yourself’
Will be as natural as breathing.
ואהבת לרעך כמוך!

One day, love will win every heart,
Love will win every soul,
Fear will vanish like smoke,
And tenderness for all will fill our hearts.
ואהבת לרעך כמוך!

Love wins. In the end,
Love wins.
Man for man,
Woman for woman,
Woman for man,
Man for women,
All genders,
All orientations,
All true expressions of heart.
ואהבת לרעך כמוך!

Let this come speedily,
In our day,
A tribute to the many
And the diverse
Gifts from heaven.
A tribute to love deep and true,
Each of us for one another.
ואהבת לרעך כמוך!

Postscript: Thank you to my friend and fellow proud Jerusalem resident Cantor Evan Kent for his suggestions on an earlier draft of this prayer. Creating Change is an annual conference held by the National LGBTQ Task Force. The 2016 conference is still in progress in Chicago. Its purpose: LGBTQ liberation. Its stated intention: to be all inclusive. From the article referenced above: “Ironically the only LGBTQ liberation in the Middle East is fostered by Israel, often serving as a sanctuary for Palestinian LGBT who have been expelled from their homes and hunted by Hamas and Palestinian authority members, who believe gays should die for being gay.” Honor, love and respect to my friends at A Wider Bridge, the host of the Shabbat service and target of ongoing slander.