Find the Lily, a prayer-poem by Trisha Arlin

Contributor(s): Trisha Arlin

Shared on: 30 January 2025 under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft license

Categories: Congregation & Community

Tags: 21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., American Jewry of the United States, civic prayers, Donald Trump, English vernacular prayer, Prayers as poems

Find the Lily

First we will listen to our Fear.

Today I am told to look to God for company
In my fear but
I am afraid of our new leaders.
I fear the danger pointed at anyone who is not them.
I am afraid for myself, I am afraid for you, I am afraid for everybody.
I am afraid for the future.
And I am afraid for the people who oppose our leaders.
And now we must be strong
And I am not strong.

Then we will only feel our Despair.

The enemy is so strong
And we are divided.
We keep losing
And this is no game.
Lives are ruined,
Animals are going extinct,
The planet is on fire,
Cruelty enjoys itself
And we can’t get away from it.
No distractions work for long.
The grief won’t go away
I think I must say the Ḳaddish
And properly mourn.

Then…what?

There is a parable in the Sefer Ha-Aggadah,^[1] An anthology of aggadot from the known corpus of midrash aggadah organized by Hayyim Nahman Bialik and Yehoshua Ravnitzky and published in Hebrew 1908-1911
The Book of Legends,
About a king who had a beautiful orchard
Which, when he had to leave for a year,
He left in the hands of a keeper.
And when the king returned,
The orchard had been terribly neglected,
Overgrown with thorns and thistles.
He was going to tear the orchard down
But looking down at the thorns
He noticed among them
A rose-colored lily.
And the king said
“Because of this lily, let the entire orchard be spared.”^[2] For the source of this story, find Leviticus Rabba 23:3 and Song of Songs Rabba 2:2, 3.

Listen to the fear and despair and then
Look for all the lilies among the thorns.

Amen

“Find the Lily” is a prayer-poem written in first person by Trisha Arlin. It was first shared via their website, Trisha Arlin: Words of Prayer and Intention, on 6 November 2024.

Notes

Notes
1	An anthology of aggadot from the known corpus of midrash aggadah organized by Hayyim Nahman Bialik and Yehoshua Ravnitzky and published in Hebrew 1908-1911
2	For the source of this story, find Leviticus Rabba 23:3 and Song of Songs Rabba 2:2, 3.

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“Find the Lily, a prayer-poem by Trisha Arlin” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.

Trisha Arlin

Trisha Arlin is a liturgist, teacher, performer and student of prayer in Brooklyn, NY and was a part-time rabbinic student at the Academy of Jewish Religion (AJR), 2012-18. Trisha was the Liturgist-In-Residence during the National Havurah Committee’s 2014 Summer Institute, has served as Scholar or Artist In Residence at many synagogues where she has read, led services and taught her class, Writing Prayer. since the pandemic began, Trisha has been on Zoom teaching prayer writing, sharing her liturgy and doing readings with Ritualwell, Haggadot.com, for synagogues around the country as well as small freelance groups. She is a founding builder of Bayit’s Liturgical Arts project. Trisha received a BA in Theater from Antioch College in 1975 and MFA in Film (Screenwriting) in 1997 from Columbia University. In 2009/2010, Trisha was an Arts Fellow at the Drisha Institute. In 2011, she graduated from the sixth cohort of the Davennen Leadership Training Institute (DLTI). A longtime member of Kolot Chayeinu/Voices of our Lives, a progressive unaffiliated congregation in Brooklyn NY, Trisha’s liturgy has been used at services and ritual occasions and in newsletter there and at venues of many denominations around the world. Her work has been published in her book, Place Yourself: Words of Poetry and Intention (a collection of liturgy and kavannot. Foreword by Rabbi Jill Hammer, Artwork by Mike Cockrill. 2019 Dimus Parrhesia Press); the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion; Seder Tefillot, Forms of Prayer: Prayers for the High Holydays (Movement for Reform Judaism); B’chol Levavecha (CCAR Press); Beside Still Waters: A Journey of Comfort and Renewal (Bayit & Ben Yehuda Press); A Poet’s Siddur (Ain’t Got No Press); Studies in Judaism and Pluralism (Ben Yehuda Press) and can be found online at TrishaArlin.com, at RitualWell, and of course, the Open Siddur Project. You can support her work by buying her book, making a one time donation through PayPal @trishaarlin or monthly support via Patreon.

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The Undergrowth in the Forest of Saint-Germain (Claude Monet 1882)

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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

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