BE SAFE: A Prayer For Those Facing Disaster

Be safe,

Be warm,

Be dry,

Be alive.

Be useful,

Be attentive,

Be mindful,

Be whole.

Blessed Fierce Mystery,

Aware of the danger

And fear

And the possibilities of hope and succor,

We give thanks for all those who respond

And pray for all those who need rescue.

We pray that we will not be ashamed to ask for help when it is needed

And we pray that we will know what to do when it is our turn to assist.

Be safe.

Meat and Feathers: We Confess (For Rosh HaShanah LaBehama/Rosh Chodesh Elul)

(leader)

I feel the Presence

Of what today I call God

Tomorrow I may call nature--

The Fierce Mystery

All around us,

This connection that must know everything because it is everything.

During Elul we must confess to people before we confess to God

And perhaps on Rosh HaShana LaBehama we must confess to animals before we confess to people.

So let us begin.

We acknowledge our debts to and our transgressions against

The domesticated beasts, 

Our food, our clothes, our decoration.

They are

Our property, our friends, our victims.

And we ask that they hear our confessions and our blessings: 

(together)

Cattle

Sheep

Pigs

Goats

Chickens

Ducks

Geese

Peacocks

Horses

We celebrate the many gifts you give us, willingly and unwillingly.

(leader)

We eat you,

We eat your bodies and reminisce over the best parts,

We share recipes.

We eat your children,

We drink the milk and the honey you make to feed those children,

We eat your eggs before they can even  be children.

We keep ourselves warm with your skin

And steal your beauty to enhance our own.

We cultivate you for your fur and feathers and kill you whenever we need them.

We like the way you look.

We make art and poetry to celebrate you in the fields and farms

Just before we slaughter you.

For thousands of years

We have used your bodies to plow our fields and mill our grain,

We have used your bodies to ride from place to place

And now that we don't need you quite as as much

We use you for sport or dog food.

We bless your memory.

(together)

Cattle

Sheep

Pigs

Goats

Chickens

Ducks

Geese

Peacocks

Horses

We acknowledge how we have abused you.

(leader)

We imprison you.

We torture you.

We test our make up and drugs on you.

We ride you.

We train you.

And we discard you when you're old.

We enclose herd animals alone in stalls instead of with their own kind,

We cram  you into metal enclosures that won't allow any movement,

We raise thousands in spaces fit only for hundreds.

We murder you.

We wring your necks.

We behead you.

We bang you on the head.

We shoot you.

We pluck you.

We skin you.

We chop and grind you up.

We acknowledge our cruelty and ask for your forgiveness. 

(together)

Cattle

Sheep

Pigs

Goats

Chickens

Ducks

Geese

Ostriches

Peacocks

Horses

We confess how we have lied to ourselves about what we do to you.

(leader)

We call you

  Porterhouse Steak

  Buffalo Wings

  Venison

  Mutton

  Camembert

  Yogurt

  Leather

  Feathers

  Down

  Sunny Side up.
  Shofar

Anything but what you really are.

We buy slabs of meat in transparent packages that don't look like you

So we don't have to think about how you were raised and slaughtered.

You are a breast or a leg or a steak,

You are a hamburger, a wing or a bucket.

We tool and dye your skin and call it leather

So we don't have to acknowledge we're wearing your skin.

We arrange your feathers artfully

And admire the beautiful colors,

Ignoring why you have them in the first place.

We put your feathers in our pillows

And we sleep well.

We give thanks for denial, without which we could not get through the day.

(together)

Cattle

Sheep

Pigs

Goats

Chickens

Ducks

Geese

Peacocks

Horses

Forgive those of us who cannot give you up.

(leader)

You domestic beasts are all vegetarians, why is that?

Why don't we eat predators? 

Is it because you are docile and easy to domesticate?

Or is it because predators remind us of ourselves?

Maybe some of us here don't eat you

Maybe some of us here don't wear you.

Maybe none of us should.

But many of us do.

(optional)

I do.

I eat meat.  I love meat.

I love eggs, honey, yogurt, chicken, steak.

I wear leather.  I'm wearing it on my feet right now.

My pillow is filled with down.  I slept okay.

I know all about how you suffer and still I partake of it all.

I don't eat veal.  That's it.  Not much.

I think about helping you.
I guess I wrote this.

But really, I don't.

So I can't ask for forgiveness

because I'm not going to change.

This month, anyway.

(optional:  are there any other confessions, besides mine?  anyone?)

(together)

Cattle

Sheep

Pigs

Goats

Chickens

Ducks

Geese

Peacocks

Horses

            We could try to make at least small changes.

(leader)

We can eat less meat.

We can wear less leather.

We can refuse to wear real fur.

We can refuse to eat veal.

We can only buy grass fed and pasture raised poultry and meat, if we can afford it.

We can stop wearing feathers.

We can use alternative down feather pillows, though that's plastic and not so good for the environment.
(optional) What else can we do? (wait for suggestions)

Maybe we become vegetarians or vegans,

Maybe we don't.

But we can do a little.

We can start.

(together)

Baruch Atah Adonai

Brucha At Shechinah

Blessed Yah, 

Breath of Life,

Remembering us in Death,

The Fierce Mystery:

We acknowledge, celebrate, and give thanks for all the ways the animals have made our lives possible.

We confess to cruelty and hypocrisy.

We ask your forgiveness for all the wrongs we have done our domestic beasts,

We are blessed by their lives.

May we learn to be a blessing to them.

And we wish them a Happy New Year and a Hodesh Tov

And let us say, 

Amen

For more info check out:  

http://jewishinitiativeforanimals.org/  

and

http://opensiddur.org/shared/prayers-for/special-days/new-years-day/for-domesticated-animals/

Words Fail Me Today

Sometimes
Anything less than a scream
Is inadequate.

A MUTUAL OFFERING

I love it when I hear that someone has used one of these prayers and kavannot in their services, rituals or personal meditations. 

All my work is offered to you free with attribution, under the Creative Commons SA license.  I have posted my work up here and in other venues for years for anyone to read and use and will continue to do so.

BUT, like everyone else, I need money to live.  So I'm trying something new.  If you use anything here and it worked or meant something to you, and you can afford to do so, please, use this PayPal link help me out.

If you are able to, please make an offering.  Any amount is appreciated.  Thank You!!

B'Shalom, Trisha

TRISHA ARLIN/PAYPAL

I'm working on applying for fiscal sponsorship and if I get it you will be able to make your donations tax-deductible, but for now you'll just be making a direct payment to my PayPal account.

Praying, Blessing, Cursing: Balak

At the start of this parsha, the Hebrews are passing through Moab on the way to Canaan and the king of Moab, Balak, sees them and is afraid.  He sends messengers to the pagan priest, Balaam, and they say on behalf of Balak,

There is a people that came out of Egypt; it hides the earth from view, and it is settled next to me.  Come then, put a curse upon this people for me, since they are too numerous for me; perhaps I can thus defeat them and drive them out of the land. For I know that he whom you bless is blessed indeed, and he whom you curse is cursed.”

This parsha is unusual, it reads more like a self-contained story than a logical continuation of the story of the hebrews in the desert that we have been following thus far.   Balak commissions a curse, God tells Balaam to turn it down and he does, Balak insists, Balaam says yes and journeys to the capitol on a donkey, God sends an angel that only the talking donkey can see to block his way, the donkey stops, Balaam beats the donkey, long story short, Balaam gets to the city and prepares to make the big curse but God invades his heart and instead Balaam blesses the Hebrews,  Ma Tovu, how good are your tents, the basis for our morning blessing. 

It's a real full on story with an inciting incident, a recalcitrant hero,  an epic journey, a talking animal sidekick (it's a Disney movie!), an invisible but violent angel, an angry king and the fate of two great peoples at stake.  Great story, but sorry, I'm mostly interested this year in the curse and the blessing, or rather, the need for the curse and the blessing and the belief that a curse or a blessing will make a difference.

Balak believes in the importance and effect of public prayer utterly.  We're here, gathered on a Saturrday morning for services, so we must as well, right?  Well, maybe.  Sort of.  Not at all? But here we are, Shabbat morning, praising, blessing, asking for help, praying for the health of ourselves or others, praying for the dead and their survivors, praying for our country, our world, praying for light, praying for creation, praying in gratitude, praying in fear.

This congregation exists for many reasons:  to find friends and people with whom we share values, to take care of each other, to express the values that we call Jewish to work for social justice and, because we are a shul and not a social justice org, to celebrate life passages and to pray together. Together we curse our enemies and praise our friends.  We work our way through the siddur praying these prayers to a male heirarchical God in a language that we may or may not understand, for goals that May no longer mean anything to us in our modern regular lives or even, if we think about them, we May violently disagree with.  And yet here we are, praying, blessing, cursing.

And the rabbis of the Talmud?  The halakhic schedule of prayer, morning afternoon and evening, substitutes for the schedule of sacrifice in the temple, which was necessary to placate God and expiate the people's sins.  For many Jews, these prayers are, among other things, both an obligation and a constant reminder of who we are and our relationship to God and for them it really matters to us and to God if we do this specific liturgy in the correct way.

But do we, us Jews sitting her this morning, believe that our prayer has any effect?  If I curse you will you be cursed?  If I pray a mishebeirach for you, will you be healed? If I bless you will you flourish?  I don't know.  Rationally, I have to say no, of course not.   Balak's request of Balaam was just a morale booster, nothing more.  I feel better when I pray to heal the sick, it gives me the illusion that I matter.  But in the story, everybody takes this very seriously, as something that can really affect the outcome of the Hebrew people, and no one takes it more seriously than God, who bothers to send down an angel only a donkey can see.  So, are we the perceptive donkey or the stubborn Balaam?

I'm going to now use a word that I never use, don't believe in, disdain utterly...  Faith.   Why do I pray? I think it's faith.  Belief in something without any proof.  Faith. Creeps me out, faith.  So let me see if I can make it a little more palatable.  Faith is perhaps holding more than one thought in my head at the same time:   God doesn't exist and I am in God's presence.  Both true, Ta daa!  So when I pray, I am in conversation with the divine, or maybe just myself, or maybe with the act of praying itself.  It's not about dogma or antiquated ritual or halakhic laws for me. 

Maybe the word isn't even faith.  Maybe it's just something I know, a knowingness.  I have a knowingness sometimes that when I pray there is connection, that I am being listened to.  I fully accept that this is probably wishful thinking or neurological damage, or childhood indoctrination, but still, nevertheless, at the same time I feel a knowledge of being listened to.  Maybe I'm the only one doing the listening and hey if that's true, that's still pretty good, cause most of the time I'm on Facebook or Netflix or NPR  and I wouldn't know myself if I fell over me.  So it's good to take a few minutes out of my day to really listen to what there is to hear.

And when I'm listening, to myself or God or the sound of the lovely people of my community praying,  and when I feel heard and connected I feel loved, and I love.  And  that is powerful and then I think that a prayer might really be able to heal or to ask, with true sincereity and expectation, for good things to happen.  Because why not?  Really, why not?

My brother-in-law, Zdenek, died last September of cancer.  He and my sister fought it off a long time, and in the first year or so of that, the two of them came over to my house for dinner.  I waited until my sister went off to the bathroom and I told Zdenek, an atheist brought up in Communist Czechoslovakia, that I prayed for him at shul every week and that my congregation prayed with me and that we all prayed for his healing together.  I was embarrassed, but I wanted him to know even though I thought he'd sneer or smirk.  But he didn't.  He cried.  And thanked me deeply.  Do I think I helped his health with those prayers?  I don't know.   Probably not.  But I loved him with my prayer. We all did.  And I loved him when I said Kaddish for him. 

And in my best self, as much as I would love to curse our enemies, my prayers are not curses, God won't let me. In this parsha, Balak and Balaam and the donkey and God believe that prayer works.  He who you bless is blessed indeed, and he whom you curse is cursed.

And in that spirit, I want to read you a selection from something beautifully written by Rabbi Shai Held of Mechon Hadar that he posted on Facebook:

                                                                         

Religious thinkers and leaders worth their salt live their lives in constant cognizance of the yawning chasm between what religion could be and what it all too often is.  This awareness is always painful and often excruciating…. Religious thinkers also know that if *they* are disillusioned by religion, it is hard to fathom what God must feel.  But resentment is not the way.  Here is how lives can become truly holy: you take the energy generated by frustration and disappointment and you turn it to a deeper form of Avodat Hashem, service of God.  You see that religion is just as broken as the world in which it finds itself in, and you commit to loving more, not less.   This is hard, the task of a lifetime. ...Give your heart and your mind, give your soul and your life to building something different.   And remember: without love-- passionate, defiant, compassionate, justice-seeking love-- nothing is possible.  With it?  Well, that's what our lives ought to be about finding out.

Ma Tovu, how good. 

Shabbat Shalom

-->