At The End of The Standing Prayer

 

Art by Mike Cockrill

Standing, tired, knees hurting,

Listening to the room of silent prayer,

Hidden in my tallit, mumbling to

The old white man on a throne in the white clouds, 

Privilege incarnate,

A God for children of another era. Nah. 

Who or what listens to me now?

Talking to myself, I guess, 

Until I can sit down. But then

I imagine my ideal Listener—

All antiquity, quirks and holy one-ness,

I hear them in the whispers of the liturgy. 

I love the mystery 

And the boredom 

And the hope

In our loud quiet. 

Praying to an idea I don’t believe in,

I can’t shut up.

Help us!

We’re scared. 

We’re in danger. 

We’re in shock. 

Yet here we are, eyes closed and swaying,

Still holding ourselves to

Dreams of logic and compassion

And conversations with the divine. 

We must be brave. 

Standing in noisy silent prayer 

I step back in ritual 

I step back in jest

I step back in grief

I bow in awe. 

Blessed Holy Wholeness!

Amen. 

Now, my Listener,

May I sit? 

Guard My Tongue From Evil

  

Guard my tongue from evil but

Do not guard my tongue from teaching

Especially the hard facts

That no one wants to hear,

Grant me patience and talent 

For my students 

And truth in my information.  

Education is life.  

Guard my tongue from evil but

Do not guard my tongue from argument 

Which is how we study our sacred texts

Asking the next logical question 

And the one after that

And the one after that,

All for the sake of Heaven. 

Arguing is fun.  

Guard my tongue from evil but

Do not guard my tongue from gossip,

The blood of a community 

Circulating useful information 

Warning us against predators 

Alerting us to impending joys

And looming disasters. 

Gossip is love.  

Guard my tongue from evil but

Do not guard my tongue from speaking up, 

Especially in these fierce days

Of threats and indifferent cruelty

When actual monsters roam.

Humanity must be defended

And liars defied!

Speech is safety. 

Blessed Holy Wholeness,

I give thanks for words and the freedom to use them

However long that lasts. 

Amen

A Prayer For Endurance

Blessed Wholeness,

It is an ancient evil:

Limited power seeking absolute power,

Destroying truth and compassion 

As it grows. 

It is upon us to resist if we can

And survive somehow

Until it goes. 

And it will go

But oh the suffering until it does. 

Blessed One-ness,

We pray for strength,

Intelligence and endurance 

For the targeted and outspoken and

For those who resist.

And we pray for safety

For the vulnerable and weak

And the preyed upon.

May we all find ways to help

And may we outlast the horrors. 

Amen

Here We Are (a High Holyday Invocation)

Baruch HaShleimut/Blessed Holy Completion 

Giving us this time of Beyn Adam LaChavereh 

To remember our obligations to each other:

 

During Elul we apologize for our sins against people

Then on Yom Kippur we beat our chest for our sins against God.

The former is personal, the latter  more cosmic

But the cosmic affects us deeply 

And the personal ripples into the universe.

Insult your cousin on Thanksgiving or

Dig oil wells in the Alaskan wilderness, these are

Different in scale but similar in intent, and 

Both break connection to the One-ness. 

 

So this year instead of sin

Let’s speak of responsibility to each other

And our connections to all life. 

The hurts and horrors we impose on people

Hurt and horrify God

And anything that breaks the Holy Wholeness 

Alienates us from our history,

The world as it really is and

The world as it might become. 

 

To do teshuvah is to return to our true selves as

We review our neglected obligations of kindness and service.

Blessing all who are in pain and who cause pain,

Invoking compassion for ourselves and others,

We acknowledge our mistakes and apologize, and

Vow to make reparations and never do them again. 

Thus teshuvah turns our doubts 

About our capacity for change

Into possibilities for hope.

  

Blessed Holy Wholeness,

Together this sacred community declares,

Hinenu! We are here!  

Where all hands are needed

And doubt can be an act of faith.

May this world know all our voices

On our holy days

In our holy conversations as we call out,

We shall do and we shall hear.  

 

Amen

The Time For Truth

 

It is the time of our year

To admit truth

To see the pain we cause

To take responsibility 

To stop what we can stop

To repair what can be repaired 

To promise to change

To change. 

Truth is often unpleasant but

We must give thanks for this difficult gift. 

Amen

The Silver

There is a silver plated pitcher next to my laptop.

I dug it out of the bottom of a cabinet

It’s at least 77 years old,

Part of the silver service my mother got for her wedding,

At least I think it is, it has a big F engraved on it,

Her maiden name was Fisher but

Her married name started with an A.

I played with this silver service when I was a kid

I particularly loved the top of the sugar bowl,

It looked like a big busty lady with a voluminous skirt,

I called her Cinderella.

My sister wants us to collect the set and sell it.

Outside on the front stoop,

Neighbors are threatening to beat up my crazy landlord

But I’m thinking of Cinderella

While the world burns.

Dance, Cinderella, dance!

It’s almost midnight.

 

A Prayer for the Troops

 

If the troops are sent to my town

I will pray

That the soldiers declare,

“This is our city

This is our state

And we say

No to bullies

No to liars

No to racists

No to corruption 

No to billionaires 

No to fascism

We are not yours to order!

We belong to our communities,

They are us and

We will not herd them

We will not arrest them 

We will not shoot them. 

We are free

And we say NO. “

This will be my prayer ,

May we all be safe. 

May it be so. 

Amen

My Trees

Trees are wonderful!

I love trees!

When I was a kid and had a birthday

Or did well in Hebrew School,

What did get?  A tree!

A tree was planted in Israel in my name,

What could be better?

What could be more ecological?

In the empty Negev,

They planted your Jewish tree. 

Screw the Nazis and plant a tree!

And you got a certificate

And imagined that someday when you went to Israel

You would look up your tree

And it would have your name on it.

But I grew up and

God forbid any of these trees

Planted on top of stolen Bedouin villages

In the not at all empty Negev

Have my name on them. 

These killer trees,

Planted in an ecology 

Where they don't belong,

Stealing water they shouldn't have

On land that isn't theirs.

I want my trees back!

I want to sell them

To buy some food for Gaza. 

And don’t shoot anyone 

When they try to pick it up.  

Amen