Entering the stream on the words of Torah

היום אחד עשר יום שהם שבוע אחד וארבעה ימים בעמר
Today is eleven days, which is one week and four days of the omer
נצח שבגבורה
A day of perseverance in a week of strength

There is a power one feels when chanting Torah. The words and the tones resonate in and then cycle out. The exact comprehension is often not there for the listeners, yet the words and the tones resonate for them as well. We all get to enter the timeless stream of our people---connecting past, present, future. The covenant, the bond we have with God and with each other. Even for those who need to take God out of the equation, the ties remain strong. It is in that stream that we find the strength to persevere as a people.

Meditation before reading Torah
by Marge Piercy

We are the people of the word
and the breath of the word fills our minds with light.
We are the people of the word
and the breath of life sings through us
playing on the pipes of our bones
and the the strings of our sinews
an ancient song carved in the Laurentian granite
and new as a spring azure butterfly just drying her wings
in a moment's splash of sun.
We must live the word and make it real.

We are the people  of the book
and the letters march busy as ants
carrying the work of the ages through our minds.

We are the people of the book.
Through fire and mud and dust we have borne
our scrolls tenderly as a baby swaddled in a blanket,
traveling with our words sewn in our clothes
and carried on our backs.

Let us take up the scroll of Torah
and dance with it and touch it
and read it out, for the mind
touches the word and makes it light.
So does light enter us, and we shine.

Blessing, Breathing, Moving through

היום ששה עשר יום שהם שני שבועת ושני ימים לעמר

Today is sixteen days, which is two weeks and two days, of the omer

גבורה שבתפארת

A day of strength in a week of compassion

The Jewish prayer of "Kaddish" is a prayer of transition. In one form, it moves us through the different section of our services; in another, it moves us through our rituals of mourning. It is a prayer of praise.

I see it as a prayer of pause, like the holds, the spaces between the in-breath and out; the out-breath and in. A moment when the past and future converge in the present. It is no wonder that the following Marge Piercy poem, from her book The Art of Blessing the Day, speaks to me.

Kaddish

Look around us, search above us, below, behind.

We stand in a great web of being joined together.

Let us praise, let us love the life we are lent

passing through us in the body of Israel

and our own bodies, let's say amein.

Time flows through us like water.

The past and the dead speak through us.

We breathe out our children's children, blessing.

Blessed is the earth from which we grow,

blessed the life we are lent,

blessed the ones who teach us,

blessed the ones we teach,

blessed is the word that cannot say the glory

that shines through us and remains to shine

flowing past distant suns on the way to forever.

Let's say amein.

blessed is light, blessed is darkness,

but blessed above all else is peace

which bears the fruits of knowledge

on strong branches, let's say amein.

Peace that bears joy into the world,

peace that enables love, peace over Israel

everywhere, blessed and holy is peace, let's say amein.

Chodesh Tov on this first day of Iyar

Blessing the day . . .

היום שמונה עשר יום שהם שני שבועות וארבעה יומים בעמר
Today is the eighteenth day, making two weeks and four days of the omer
נצח שבתפארת
A day of perseverance in a week of compassion

The words needed to express my thoughts are not coming easily these days. But this practice is about writing and noting each day, irregardless of the origins of the words. Like using the siddur when in prayer, I can feel my thoughts reflected in the beautiful reflections of others.

On this Shabbat, I share with you a poem from Marge Piercy, "The art of blessing the day," the title poem of a collection containing "Poems with a Jewish Theme." As I have been spending time looking at my Jewish practice, this poem reminds me what the practice brings to my life.

This is the blessing for rain after drought:
Come down, wash the air so it shimmers,
a perfumed shawl of lavender chiffon.
Let the parched leaves suckle and swell.
Enter my skin, wash me for the little
chrysalis of sleep rocked in your plashing.
In the morning the word is peeled to shining.

This is the blessing for sun after long rain:
Now everything shakes itself free and rises.
The trees are bright as pushcart ices.
Every last lily opens its satin thighs.
The bees dance and roll in pollen
and the cardinal at the top of the pine
sings at full throttle, fountaining.

This is the blessing for a ripe peach:
This is luck made round. Frost can nip
the blossom, kill the bee. It can drop,
a hard green useless nut. Brown fungus,
the burrowing worm that coils in rot can
blemish it and wind crush it on the ground.
Yet this peach fills my mouth with juicy sun.

this is the blessing for the first garden tomato:
Those green boxes of tasteless acid the store
sells in January; those red things with the savor
of wet chalk, they mock your fragrant name.
How far and sweet you are weighing down my palm,
warm as the flank of a cow in the sun.
Your are the savor of summer in a thin red skin.

This is the blessing for a political victory:
Although I shall not forget that t hings
work in increments and epicycles and sometime
leaps that half the time fall back down,
let's not relinquish dancing while the music
fits into our hips and bounces our heels.
We must never forget, pleasure is real as pain.

The blessing for the return of a favorite cat,
the blessing for love returned, for friends'
return, for money received and unexpected,
the blessing for the rising of the bread,
the sun, the oppressed. I am not sentimental
about old men mumbling hte Hebrew by rote
with no more feeling that one says gesundheit.

But the discipline of blessings is to taste
each moment, the bitter, the sour, the sweet
and the salty, and be glad for what does not
hurt. The art is in compressing attention
to each little and big blossom of the tree
of life, to let the tongue sing each fruit,
its savor, its aroma, and its use.

Attention is love, what we must give
children, mothers, fathers, pets,
our friends, the news, the woes of others.
What we want to change we curse and then
pick up a tool. Bless whatever you can
with eyes and hands and tongue. If you
Can't bless it, get ready to make it new.