Prayer For The Young And The Old

It is our current inclination to despair:

  For the young

  It is maddening to be left with a future

  Of environmental degradation 

  And fascist cults.  

  And for the old

  It is grievous to see lifelong struggles 

  Take too many backwards steps

  From what were happy endings.

It is our current obligation to hope:

  For the young

  It is exciting to plan the fights ahead,

  The anger and the camaraderie 

  And the eventual celebrations. 

  And for the old 

  It is amusing how life comes in waves—

  Inevitably the bad guys will go too far

  And they will fall, some day. We know this. 

Blessed Holy Wholeness:

  It is true,

  Fear tramples freedom. 

  Rights are won then lost,

  There is oppression. 

  There will be more pain. 

And we give up on dreams. 

Or, young and old,

Don’t. 

Dream together. 

Amen

The Empty Chair

(Inspired by a painting by Mike Cockrill)

Look at this painting 

Of a simple chair,

The only object in a vast open space. 

The watercolor, 

Serene and soothing,

Shows an amber-colored director's chair

Surrounded by summer light. 

And it is something to hang

In your home,

Something to look at every day. 

It is beautiful. 

But this week we notice that

The chair is empty. 

And we are reminded of what we don’t have. 

Poor innocent chair,

Minding its own business

As we think of recent deaths

And anticipated losses,

Of sabotaged goodness

And sure things made uncertain. 

Look, the chair is alone,

In mourning. Like us. 

But look again and breathe. 

One mustn’t forget that, surrounded by light,

Any empty seat anticipates a sitter. 

 

Babes In Toyland (Father’s Day)

 

In the early sixties

My father and I used to go to to the movies 

On Sunday afternoons

To get away from my mother I think.  

Most of the films were his choice,

World War Two stories

And James Bond. 

I’ve seen them all,

Dr. No and The Longest Day, 

The Guns of Navarone and much more. 

For the most part

I had no idea what was going on 

And spent entire movies asking questions.  

My father was not an unusually patient man

And I’m sure it was annoying

But I think i remember  getting answers 

Unless there was gunfire. 

Nevertheless,

D Day remained a mystery to me

And I never quite got Ursula Andress’ raison d’etre

Though Sean Connery permanently implanted himself in my heart.  

Every once in a while we’d go to a kids movie. 

I remember, we went to see Babes In Toyland

with Annette Funicello and Tommy Sands. 

I’ve seen it since, it’s unbearable,

Excruciating even,

But I was seven and I loved it. 

(I aspired to Annette-hood. )

There were some teenage boys sitting in the row behind us. 

They were laughing at the movie and being disruptive. 

My father turned back to them a couple of times to glare at them

But they didn’t care. 

Finally he stood up and leaned over the back of his seat and said, sternly,

You may not like This 

But my daughter is having a good time 

So you need to shut up 

So she can enjoy the movie.  

My father was a physically big man for that era

And they got quiet.

“The Arlins,” he used to say, “Don’t take shit. “

But I became aware of my father’s potential for violence 

And for about five minutes before the movie reclaimed me, 

I got scared. 

Afterwards, outside of the theater, 

The teenagers went up to my father. 

I’m not sure what happened then.  

It’s funny,

I remember everything from that afternoon 

Up until that confrontation but then it’s gone. 

I think they threatened him

And he pushed one of them against a wall 

But sometimes I think they just talked. 

My father grew up in Brownsville, Brooklyn 

And fought in the Pacific during World War II. 

He was a sergeant of a crew that repaired radios

And he liked to tell about 

The young antisemitic lieutenant

Who used to harass him

Until one day, in front of witnesses, 

My father pointed a rifle at the lieutenant’s belly

And told him that if he said one more thing

He was going to stick him with the bayonet.

That was my father,

Stanley Arlin,

Who fought for my right to enjoy a movie in 1962.  

Daddy sang bass in the temple choir

And ran a business 

That installed and operated coin operated laundry machines in apartment buildings. 

The mafia tried to take over the company

(it was a cash business) 

And he went to the feds and fought back 

And it went to trial and everything. 

For two years I wasn’t allowed to get in the car 

Until after a parent had started it. 

He died in 1982 at the age of 61 

From mesothelioma 

From working with asbestos 

in the Brooklyn Navy Yard before the war. 

The Navy 

And the asbestos company, Johns Manville,

Murdered him. 

We Are So Tired

 

We are so tired in our hearts. 

There is too much to mourn,

Too much to regret, all

That anger that poisons everything

And then it kills. 

And then it kills the killers. 

Sometimes 

It takes too much energy to remember 

That we know how to flourish. 

There is Holy Wholeness

There is True Connection 

But we are so tired in our hearts. 

Help us rest, all of us. 

Then, 

Please

Help us wake up. 

Amen.

I Am Learning

  

I am learning 

That I have control 

Over not much more

Than what to have for breakfast 

And even that depends 

On whether I remembered to get yogurt 

Or if that week

I can afford blueberries. 

I am learning that world events

Do not recognize my opinions 

And that cruelty doesn’t care

If I am appalled. 

I am learning 

That I no longer want to march or rally:

My knees want me to stay home

And sometimes I think I may be aging into apathy. 

But enough of that, I’m bored with despair 

And prefer to think of the hopeful young

In cahoots

With the stubborn old

Which makes the act of teaching,

Like blueberries,

Downright optimistic. 

And I am learning.

Counting (the Omer)

It’s time for the Omer count 

That we may begin to wonder, 

What is the point

Of counting?

Why are we doing this?

We make note of the number

In relation to the numbers preceding, 

Aware of the numbers to come

And to what end?

There is no end!

Counting, once begun

Goes on forever, infinity,

Like God,

So why stop at 49?

Some ancient harvest festival,

But what’s that to us?

Maybe it’s more of a mindfulness thing 

Like Shabbat,

When we stop time

And declare it holy.

But this Omer business

Lasts for seven weeks and

Perhaps,

When we're in the middle of it,

We’re feeling very Samuel Beckett:

“I can’t go on, 

I’ll go on.”

And then there’s the counting of the days 

And days and days,

The numbers themselves have no meaning: 

It’s the counting.

And like chanting,

Counting doesn’t work as meditation 

Until after you’ve achieved boredom.

Anyway,

It’s not what you’re counting that matters, 

It’s the counting itself.

It is its own justification,

And every number becomes a prayer,

A chat with God.

First, second, third, fourth, fifth day,

We give thanks that we can fulfill this obligation,

Fourteenth, fifteenth day,

A holy sequence,

Eighteenth, Nineteenth day,

Yeah, yeah, whatever,

Twenty-third, twenty-fourth day...

Have we achieved boredom yet?

And on the twenty-eighth day of the Omer 

With three more weeks to go,

We sigh,

We can’t go on!

We go on. 

Amen.

Prayer For The Hybrid Service

 

Blessed Holy Wholeness,

We give thanks that these days,

On Shabbat,

We can meet together safely,

In person and en masse:

All three dimensional 

And smelly and real,

With actual books,

To sing and pray and learn

And kvell in the back rows.

And we give thanks that still,

On Shabbat,

We may also join in via Zoom 

For the Shabbat service: 

So that those of us who are vulnerable to Covid ,

Those of us with mobility issues,

And those of us who are far away

Can also sing and pray and learn

And kvell in the chat room. 

We give thanks for our innovative leaders

And the masks and vaccines,

And the technical consultants

That make our hybrid Shabbat possible. 

We are here, together,

And it is good. 

Yasher koach!

And let us say,

Amen

Waiting For Those First Lime Green Leaves On The Vernal Equinox

In a time of

The unfair distribution of resources 

And the violent whims of autocrats,

Of the glorification of resentment 

And a disdain for learning,

It is good to recognize 

Balance and renewal

Especially when they happen 

With no reference to us whatsoever. 

Today is the vernal equinox,

When daytime and nighttime are equal. 

Life happens 

And Spring begins. 

Blessed Holy Wholeness,

May we enjoy the growing daytime 

While waiting 

For those first lime green leaves

Of hope. 

Amen 

A Prayer For What We Do

Photo and artwork by Flash Rosenberg 

 Blessed One-ness, 

We give thanks for this Purim festival

 Of costumes and traditional noise, 

Distracting us from the bad guys 

For at least one night. 

We give thanks for the laughs 

As we give thanks for our survival. 

We could do the latter without the former 

But why would we want to? Happy Purim! 

Amen

Prayer for the Cruel Ones

What must it be like

To have had all the empathy 

Squeezed out of you,

To be so sure

Of the rightness of your cause

That you don’t care who you hurt?

What must it be like

To have had all the doubt

Pushed out of you,

To be so convinced

Of the importance of your desire

That war makes sense?

What must it be like

To have had all the love

Burnt out of you,

To be so full of hate

For the objects of your fury

That you can starve children and old people?

Blessed One-ness

It must be very sad and empty

To be so terrible. 

We pray for help to remember that

So we do not 

Lose our own empathy, doubt and love

As we work for their demise.

Easier said than done. 

Amen