November Prayer Writing Classes At Ritualwell!

 

Join me in November for these prayer writing classes at 

Ritualwell!

Enough

We pray 

For our safety and health

But we fear for us all. 

We pray 

That it is not too late

But we fear that it is. 

We pray

For common sense

But we fear the fanatics. 

Blessed Holy Wholeness:

May we not be afraid
To act big
And save the world. 

May we also learn 
To act small
And save each other. 

May we also remember
To transcend despair 

And love ourselves enough. 

Amen

Blessings For Striking Workers

Bless these workers:

The ones who feed us,

The ones who keep us safe,

The ones who heal us,

The ones who sustain us,

The ones who entertain us,

The one who create for us

The ones who do the dirty work for us

The ones who are us!

And the ones who put themselves in danger, 

whether out of choice or out of necessity.

 

Bless you:

May you be paid fairly for your labor,

May you find pleasure in your work,

May you be appreciated for your sacrifices,

May you have room to recover yourselves,

May you not be sickened or injured in your jobs,

May you organize yourselves successfully in unions,

May you have time for spiritual exploration 

And may you all get enough of what you need, 

whatever that looks like for each one of you.  

Amen.

All This Power

All this power

That we have worshipped and obeyed

And prayed to

For thousands of years,

The power to redeem and forgive, 

Create and sustain,

Comfort and heal,

Remember and bless,

All this power is ours to assign 

With fear or with familiarity

And ours to wield,

With greed or with generosity.

Or perhaps it belongs to no one

Like the dew on the fields,

Like the winds that blow

And the rains that fall. 

Amen. 

Moments of Gevurah

 

Every time I step out of mundane time

To be present to what I’m actually doing

Instead of dwelling on what I’ve done before 

Or what I might do next

Or what has or will be done to me or around me,

No matter how content, miserable or stimulated I am,

Every time I am fully inside the depth of a feeling

That is truly of now,

Aware in compassion, truth and presence, then 

I am raised from the dead.  

This is my only super power,

These occasional moments of Holy Wholeness 

Scattered amongst the usual blah

Until I die

And there will be no raising me then,

I’m pretty sure. 

Prayer For Breathing

Photo by Debra Nussbaum Cohen

Blessed Soul of the Universe,

Breathing us in and breathing us out:

May our breaths continue

And our health and the health of all

Be preserved

In this time of haze, fire and climate disaster.

Holy Wholeness,

Each breath is a prayer:

We take note of those

Who are vulnerable due to illness or age

Or those who must work or live outside 

And we pray for their safety.

Fierce Mystery,

Breathing you in and breathing you out:

Under these circumstances

We are especially mindful of

Our obligation to tikkun olam,

To save our planet and ourselves .

Amen

Our History

Bless our inventive ancestors, 

Who gave us 

The Daddy God of the Torah and 

The Lawyer God of the Talmud,

The Dreaming God of immigrants and 

The Pediatric God of children,

The Unlimited God of the mystics and

The Unmoving God of the philosophers, 

The Many Gendered God of community and

The Personal God who is each of ours, alone,

The non-existent god of our skepticism and 

The Holy Whole-ness of our adult searching.

The Loving God of our births and

The Redemptive God of our deaths,

With our imaginations and creations,

With our memories and traumas, 

With awe and concern for those who came before 

And with fear and love for all who will come after,

We stand within the One-ness. 

Blessed Was•Is•Will Be,  

Our shield

Our doubt

Our history. 

To this God we pray. 

Amen

New Ritualwell Class: LITURGY WRITING FOR PRAYER LEADERS

 

Liturgy Writing for Prayer Leaders

May 24 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm EDT

$250

May 24, 31, June 7, 14, 21, 28, 2023

Liturgy may be poetry, but is a poem necessarily liturgy? What turns a piece of writing into liturgy, something you can use during a prayer service? In this immersion, led by liturgist Trisha Arlin, you will learn criteria and techniques to transform your poems and prayers into liturgy. In each session, we will discuss a topic you might need to address during a prayer service or event; then you will be prompted to write your personal take on it, as a first step toward creating your own liturgy. This immersion is for prayer leaders who have some experience writing prayers and want to receive feedback and hone their skills as liturgists in a supportive environment.

https://ritualwell.org/event/liturgy-writing-for-prayer-leaders/2023-05-24/

What I Do Now

 

Art by Carolyn Hall

I didn’t find what I do now

(not remunerative but very satisfying) 

Until my fifties. 

But first I lost interest 

In everything I was doing 

Beforehand. 

Or it lost interest in me.  

I mourned, 

I got bored. 

Then I was surprised 

By the new thing. 

I wish for you that surprise.

Telling The Story

Telling the story

By describing the tellers

But never the hero,

By praising the outcome

But ignoring the plot

Is weird.

So let’s tell the story. 

We were slaves. 

Pharaoh ordered the boy babies killed,

Shifra and Puah saved them. 

Miriam put her brother in a basket on the Nile,

A princess saved him. 

J0chabed his mother nursed him,

The Princess raised him. 

Pharaoh was pharaoh,

The slaves suffered. 

Moses killed an oppressor

And ran. 

He married Zipporah,

He shepherded sheep,

A bush didn’t burn,

It said

I am that I am,

Save the people. 

Our hero went back,

Aaron worked the communications,

God inspired,

Moses organized. 

Plagues. 

Innocents died

But not us. 

Pharaoh said yes then no then yes,

We left. 

Yay!

Nachshon stepped in the sea,

Everyone stepped into the sea,

Pharaoh drowned

And rhe Hebrews were free. 

On the other side of the water

Miriam and the women danced,

Aaron prayed,

Everyone kvetched. 

God fed them in the desert. 

Moses went up the mountain and

Everybody freaked out .

Torah was acquired.

Moses talked with God,

Bezazel created beauty.

A cloud led them through the desert.

Jethro advised them,

Korech agitated them, 

Joshua fought for them and

They walked for forty years

Until

Most everybody died.

But

Their children got to the Promised Land

Which is a whole other story.  

And because we were slaves,

We don’t enslave.

Because we were oppressed, 

We mustn’t oppress. 

Because we fought for freedom,

We are allies. 

Because when you know the story,

You know.