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Please God
Let me light More than flame tonight. |
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More than wax and wick
and sliver stick of wood. More than shallow stream of words recited from a pocket book. |
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But rather with this touch of torch
and spell of prayer let me light a way towards You let me dare to radiate a rapt request that with this lamp the world will rest a stilling hand on pounding heart and take a breath – a pause – to start to appreciate the state of things …just as they are |
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And spill this light
to stain the sheets so feverishly inscribed with what the future will bring. |
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Washed away in what’s today
– present, patient, allowing space. |
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The ache for arrival laid to rest
our wreck un-rectified…as of yet. |
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Yet rest us well
in humbling fact that we are made replete with lacks The future’s but an ornament on bounding limbs of present tense. |
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All force and foist
of fists and fights flooded out by candle-light incandescent with acceptance – allowance made for imperfections. |
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We offer up our Sabbath rest
Forbearance on our table set. |
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A chance for us to savor food
to honor all to prize, to prove that there’s matter higher than a week of labor than lofty goals and courting favor. |
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For a match-box and a bit of wax
can top and tumble all of that. |
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So as sun sets
we raise a blaze. Resplendently We offer praise. |
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As light leans in
and grips go lax our ache for future slips into the past. |
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Arrival, a candle.
Impatience, in vain. The World to Come has come and come undone by flame. |
We are grateful to Chaya Kaplan-Lester for graciously sharing her prayer for candle-lighting with a CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported license, along with her d’var torah for the parsha Ki Tissa.
“A Prayer before Candle-lighting, by Chaya Kaplan-Lester” is shared by the contributors with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.
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The Open Siddur Project is a volunteer-driven, non-profit, non-denominational, non-prescriptive, gratis & libré Open Access archive of contemplative praxes, liturgical readings, and Jewish prayer literature (historic and contemporary, familiar and obscure) composed in every era, region, and language Jews have ever prayed. Our goal is to provide a platform for sharing open-source resources, tools, and content for individuals and communities crafting their own prayerbook (siddur). Through this we hope to empower personal autonomy, preserve customs, and foster creativity in religious culture. If you like what you've found here, please help keep our project alive and online with your financial contribution.
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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 90:17PDF (or Print) |
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Dear Chaya,
Your poem is beautiful.
So are you.
Thank you for sharing the light of your being.
~ Marcy