A Prayer for Praying Before Blowing The Shofar

This was written as a kavanah For the Women of the Wall on Rosh Hashana 5774

From Rabbi Arthur Waskow:  'There are three notes on the shofar-  Tekiah, “Awake!”,  Teruah ,”Open your heart!”,  Shevarim, “Sob with all who suffer!”

Let us blow the shofar

So that everyone can hear:

Awake!
Open Your Heart!
Sob with all who suffer!
We pray for all who thus pray.

However you may gather

Only with your own kind,

Only with your own gender,

Only in mixed company.

After a bowl of cholent,

After a BLT,

In a minyan,

On your own.

In your holy language whatever it may be
Hebrew, Arabic, English, Yiddish, Latin, Russian, Sanskrit, Mandarin, Farsi, Spanish...
all the languages we yearn in.

At your holy sites

In a church,

In a temple,

In a shul,
In a mosque.

In a forest,
In a foxhole,
On a mountain,
At a wall.

However you may be heard
Singing,

Speaking,

Reciting,

Whispering,

Moaning,
Silently,
Blowing a shofar.

However you may hold yourself
Eyes open,
Eyes closed,

Kneeling,

Sitting,

Standing,

Shukeling,

Spinning.

For whatever reason

With your heart, wishing for the health of a loved one,

With your mouth, reciting liturgy within community,

With your body, dancing in spiritual transcendence,

With your feet, acting for a socially just world.

Because when you pray

Whether in obligation to a commandment

Or in mindful awareness of every moment,
Whether in deepest faith or faithful doubt,
When you pray you are  holy, kadosh.

And we honor you

Even if you do not honor us.

Please remember,
You speak to God

But you do not speak FOR God

So let us blow the shofar now

So that everyone can hear

That on this holy day

We pray for all who pray
Even those who would stop us from our prayer.

We pray with a loud joyful noise

So that we may be heard
Through all the walls
Because this is a holy conversation.

Awake!

Open Your Heart!

Sob with all who suffer!

Amen.

Rosh Chodesh

Eternal One-ness, 
Living outside of time
Blessed HaMavdil,
The One Who Divides:

We live our lives in discrete increments
And we imagine that long ago

We might have been afraid

When the moon disappeared.

It was so dark at night

Like the end of the world.

We howled at the empty sky

And then, like a miracle,

A sliver appeared:

We give thanks for the returning moon.

Did you know that in the fifites

The United States Goverment

Considered blowing up the moon

Right out of the sky

Just to freak out the Russians?

But smart people decided it was too dangerous

And the moon was saved:
We give thanks for the sane and the rational.

Over the centuries
We have noticed
The tides of the ocean both high and low,
The seasons of the year that are hot then cold,
The fertility of the earth that flows and rests,
The faces of the moon that wax and wane. 
Whatever arrives, leaves,
Whatever is gone, returns:
We give thanks for the regularity of nature.

Blessed One-ness 
Outside of Time, Eternal.

Blessed HaMavdil
Dividing time into years and months and days
And sharing the skies with us.
For that and so much more, we give thanks.

Amen

New Moon in January: Rosh Chodesh Shevat

Eternal One-ness, 

Living outside of time

Blessed HaMavdil,

The One Who Divides:

We imagine that long ago

We might have been afraid

When the moon disappeared.

It was so dark at night

Like the end of the world.

We howled at the empty sky

And then, like a miracle,

A sliver appeared.

The moon, it's back!

We gave thanks for the new moon.

This new month,

Rosh Chodesh Shevat,

The new month of winter,

Begins as the month of Tevet ends.

Tevet is the month of resting and darkness.

Shevat is the month of days growing longer

But somehow also colder,

January and February.

When the world seems the most devoid of life,

We give thanks for the future.

Yes,

This is the month when we tell the story

Of the escape from the narrow place.

This is the month of Shabbat Shirah,

When we sing the song of liberation

And Martin Luther King.  

We give thanks for the freedoms we have and we work for the ones we do not.   

This is the month when we talk of wine and nuts and fruit,

The New Year of the Trees,

We give thanks to the earth

This is the month of Tu Bishvat

When we eat the gifts of our planet.

And pray that we are doing enough to preserve it.  

Blessed One-ness 

Outside of Time, Eternal,

Blessed HaMavidil

Dividing time into years and days.

And every month,

Sharing the new moon with us, 
Sharing the future.

For that and so much more, we give thanks.

Amen

RETURN: A Prayer for Elul Rosh Chodesh

Return to Elul.
The sky was dark, and the month began.
A special time of starting over;
A month of kindness and clarity;
Of consciousness and knowledge;
Of bravery and strength.
It is said that the truly evil are already condemned
And the truly good are already blessed.
So for the rest of us
There is Elul.

Return to ourselves.
In Genesis the moon is called, “the lesser light.”
And that’s how I feel tonight,
Less than what I should be.
What was I thinking?
I was afraid, I was hurt, I was anxious…
No excuses, I know what I did,
Maybe it wasn’t so bad
But maybe it was.
How can I make it better?
There is Elul.

Return to the people we wronged.
Use the ritual,
Create a context.
It makes it easier to speak:
I am so sorry.
I was wrong.
I lacked compassion in the moment
But I see things clearly now.
You don’t have to accept my apology,
We can do teshuva together
If you want.
There is Elul.

Return to each other.
In community we pray
For the kindness to comfort and care;
And the clarity to see what must be done;
For the consciousness to accept the truth;
And the knowledge to get help if needed;
For the bravery to ask for forgiveness;
And the strength to forgive.
Most of all, we pray for all who are in pain or who cause pain.
All this and more because
There is Elul.

Bless the God of Justice, of Mercy and of Redemption that we may return every year, as new as the moon.
Amen