(Art by Mike Cockrill )
As some of you may know, I have been doing prayer writing workshops for some years now. Recently, after conversations with a couple of rabbis and a spiritual director about the differences between poetry, kavannot and liturgy, I offered to do a workshop with them in which we would look at the traditional tropes of Jewish liturgy and what differentiates liturgy from personal prayer and poetry and then, using those discussions, guide them in writing their own liturgy in English.
This workshop is for clergy, prayer leaders and spiritual guides only.
I know many of you already write blessings, at which i’m sure you’re already wonderful. This workshop is about writing liturgy, sacred art that might be poetry or monologues or kavannot that are, i hope, potentially very interesting and meaningful and complicated and moving and even beautiful.
I know most of you will have studied liturgy in school, but this is a practical and not an academic class and it will not be in Hebrew.
We scheduled this workshop for Monday, January 10 at 2:30 PM EST, and I would like to invite you to participate. (if it goes well and there is continuing interest, i can see making this an ongoing monthly workshop but for now, it’s just this one time.)
The fee is $40, payable via Paypal (preferred) or Venmo.
(check is okay but not preferred)
Contact me at Trisha.arlin@gmail.com or via Facebook DM.
The workshop:
1) Discussion on difference between poetry and liturgy. What are structural elements that make something a piece of Jewish liturgy?
2) What do you want to accomplish in your liturgy? Who are you writing for, the whole congregation or targeted groups or individuals? Will it be read out loud? Do you have any artistic or spiritual goals? Do you want to teach, comfort, exalt?
3) Some guided meditation to provide ideas and imagery.
4) Writing prompts.
5) sharing after writing. If a small class, we will share in one body, if large we will go into small breakout rooms.
6) Feedback. Unlike my personal prayer writing classes, we will give kind, friendly and useful feedback based on your goals (see #2). There will be no feedback on the quality of your writing, though if you want to work on that privately with me we can arrange something after the session.
At this point i don’t know if it would work better to write something new for a life cycle event or a new version of a pre-existing prayer, I lean to the former but I’m open to suggestion on this one.
I look forward to hearing from you. Trisha.arlin@gmail.com
