Blessing for Rosh Ḥodesh Av, by Kohenet Ilana Joy Streit

Contributor(s):

Kohenet Ilana Joy Streit

Shared on:

22 July 2020 under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft license

Categories:

Rosh Ḥodesh Av (אָב)

Tags:

21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., English vernacular prayer, תחינות teḥinot

Blessing for Rosh Ḥodesh Av

Teach us, Mother Courage,
to weep

Teach us, Brother Honor,
to arrive with open arms

Teach us, sweet inner Wisdom,
         to slow down and see the
         earth crying out
         inside of us

Teach us, Silence,
         not to speak
         not to speak
         not to

Teach us, Love,
         to grow into ourselves
         to grow towards each other
         to do the painful work of unweaving
         so that we may reweave all of it
         all of us
         whole

Teach us too that to weave
we must also be willing to undo
the stitches of pain
to sit with them, tease them open
to sit with them

this year,
   let us look upon the pile of old
gnarled yarn
   that used to be part of us
and not dance around it
   but just sit with it
and listen to it

May our fingers become so tender
and gentle
that we can touch even the most
bruised parts of ourselves
and each other
with love

A blessing for announcing the new moon of Av, for Rosh Ḥodesh Av, and for the whole month. A poem of grieving and gentleness as part of collective liberation.

[Financial contributions are most welcome, and support further creation and sharing of Ilana’s creative work. You can see and hear more of Ilana’s creative work on her Patreon page. Or to make a one-time contribution, Venmo (@Ilana-Streit).]

. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike . 4.0 . International .

“Blessing for Rosh Ḥodesh Av, by Kohenet Ilana Joy Streit” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.

Kohenet Ilana Joy Streit

Based in mid-Hudson Valley, New York, Kohenet Ilana Joy Streit is a working artist, peacemaker, and a weaver of blessings (through poem, prayer, and song).

Thank you for honoring and contributing to her work in any or all of the following ways:

Share her work (with attribution of course) to expand its reach
Let Ilana know how you are using or sharing this work
Make a one-time financial contribution or join her community on Patreon.

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ISS028-E-020073 (31 July 2011) --- Photographed by an Expedition 28 crew member onboard the International Space Station, this image shows the moon at center, with the limb of Earth near the bottom transitioning into the orange-colored troposphere, the lowest and most dense portion of the Earth's atmosphere. The troposphere ends abruptly at the tropopause, which appears in the image as the sharp boundary between the orange- and blue- colored atmosphere. The silvery-blue noctilucent clouds extend far above the Earth's troposphere.

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ויהי נעם אדני אלהינו עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננה עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננהו "May the pleasantness of אדֹני our elo’ah be upon us; may our handiwork be established for us — our handiwork, may it be established." –Psalms 90:17