Morning Meditation, by Grace Aguilar (ca. 1830s)

Contributor(s):

Aharon N. Varady (editing/transcription) and Grace Aguilar

Shared on:

18 May 2023 under the Creative Commons Zero (CC 0) Universal license a Public Domain dedication

Categories:

Birkhot haShaḥar

Tags:

19th century C.E., תחינות teḥinot, 56th century A.M., English vernacular prayer, teḥinot in English

TOGGLE COLUMNS (on/off):

ADJUST COLUMN POSITIONS: select the column header cell and drag it where you want. show me!

COPY INDIVIDUAL COLUMN(S): use CopyTables, a browser extension.

TABLE HELP

Contribute a translation	Source (English)
	Morning meditation.
	With a glowing and a grateful heart do I hail the return of the sunny morn. The Lord in His mercy hath held me up during the dark and fearful night, and hath permitted me once more to hail the glad and glorious approach of day.
	I will seek the Lord in the early morning when all is silent around me, when there is a holy calm in the stillness of nature, that softens every tumultuous feeling and calms the weary spirit, and fills the soul with adoration, then will I seek the Almighty, ere the cares, thoughts, and desires of this world have entered my heart; and He will bend His gracious ear to the prayers and praises of a child of sin, if offered up in love, in reverence, and in adoration.
	I will awake from sleep, and arise early to seek my Creator, and offer Him the homage of a sinful, yet contrite heart, and in His infinite mercy He will deign to listen to my prayers. O how I love the Lord for all his mercies towards me!
	In sorrow have I sought Him, and He hath answered me, for the prayers of the young are acceptable to our Beneficent Creator, if offered up in lowliness and humbleness of heart.
	Think then, O my soul, how can I repay the manifold blessings I receive from the hand of my God; in what way dare I hope to evince the gratitude that gloweth in my heart.
	Think of all thy imperfections, thy follies, and thy sins. How difficult I sometimes find it, to give up the inclinations of my heart.
	Think on all this, O my soul, and know that fervent prayer alone can obtain pardon for my sins, and strength to guard against them.
	And what good do I do? Satisfy not thyself, my soul, with the thought, that thou hast no opportunities of doing good: many there are, but, careless and impatient, they are overlooked.
	Be on thy guard then, my soul, and let this day be passed in a manner acceptable to the Almighty, and pleasing to thyself. Beware, not to fall into the snares of temper and impatience.
	Lord, give me strength that I may walk in Thy ways, and become a good and faithful servant of Thy law. Amen.

“Morning meditation” by Grace Aguilar was published posthumously by her mother Sarah Aguilar in the UK edition of Sacred Communings, pp. 69-70. It is not found in the US edition.

Source(s)

. Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication . 1.0 . Universal .

“Morning Meditation, by Grace Aguilar (ca. 1830s)” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication 1.0 Universal license.

Aharon N. Varady (editing/transcription)

Aharon Varady (M.A.J.Ed./JTSA Davidson) is a volunteer transcriber for the Open Siddur Project. If you find any mistakes in his transcriptions, please let him know. Shgiyot mi yavin; Ministarot naqeni שְׁגִיאוֹת מִי־יָבִין; מִנִּסְתָּרוֹת נַקֵּנִי "Who can know all one's flaws? From hidden errors, correct me" (Psalms 19:13). If you'd like to directly support his work, please consider donating via his Patreon account. (Varady also translates prayers and contributes his own original work besides serving as the primary shammes of the Open Siddur Project and its website, opensiddur.org.)

Grace Aguilar

Grace Aguilar (2 June 1816 – 16 September 1847) was an English novelist, poet and writer on Jewish history and religion. Although she had been writing since childhood, much of her work was published posthumously. Among those are her best known works, the novels Home Influence and A Mother's Recompense. Aguilar was the eldest child of Sephardic Jewish refugees from Portugal who settled in the London Borough of Hackney. An early illness resulted in her being educated by her parents, especially her mother, who taught her the tenets of Judaism. Later, her father taught the history of Spanish and Portuguese Jews during his own bout with tuberculosis which had led the family to move to the English coast. After surviving the measles at the age of 19, she began to embark on a serious writing career, even though her physical health never completely recovered. Aguilar's debut was an anonymous collection of poems, The Magic Wreath of Hidden Flowers. Three years later she translated Isaac Orobio de Castro's Israel Defended into English at her father's behest. Later her The Spirit of Judaism drew interest and sales in both Britain and the United States after being published in Philadelphia by Isaac Leeser. He added a preface to the work elucidating his differences with her, the first of many clashes her work would have with mainstream Jewish thought. In the 1840s her novels began to attract regular readers, and Aguilar moved back to London with her parents. Despite her success, she and her mother still had to operate a boys' Hebrew school to stay solvent, which she resented for the time and energy it took from her writing. In 1847, she became ill again with a spinal paralysis which she did not let prevent her from visiting her brother in Frankfurt. Her health worsened and she died there that September.

Pocket Pinterest Reddit 𝕏 Facebook Telegram WhatsApp SMS Email

Works of related interest:

family morning prayer (Grace Aguilar 1853) - cropped

Family Morning Prayer, by Grace Aguilar (ca. 1830s)

meditation on the works of god (Grace Aguilar 1853) - cropped

Meditation on the Works of God, by Grace Aguilar (ca. 1830s)

Sabbath Thoughts and Sacred Communings (Grace Aguilar 1853) - title

📖 Sabbath Thoughts and Sacred Communings, by Grace Aguilar [ca. late 1830s] (ed. Sarah Aguilar 1852/1853)

Prayer for Grace, by Grace Aguilar (ca. 1830s)

morning hymn (Blessed art Thou) [version 1] (Grace Aguilar 1853) - cropped

Morning Hymn (Blessed art Thou) [version 1], by Grace Aguilar (ca. 1830s)

morning hymn (father of all) [in illness] (Grace Aguilar 1853) - cropped

Morning Hymn [in Illness] (Father of all), by Grace Aguilar (ca. 1830s)

morning hymn (Blessed art Thou) [version 2] (Grace Aguilar 1853) - cropped

Morning Hymn (Blessed art Thou) [version 2], by Grace Aguilar (ca. 1830s)

prev next

Comments, Corrections, and QueriesCancel reply

Stable Link: https://opensiddur.org/?p=51075

Associated Image:

morning meditation (Grace Aguilar 1853) – cropped

(This image is set to automatically show as the "featured image" in shared links on social media.)

Source Data: XML | JSON

Re-formatted: HTML | ODT

Terms of Use: Be a mentsch (a conscientious, considerate person) and adhere to the following guidelines:

Properly attribute the work to Aharon N. Varady (editing/transcription) and Grace Aguilar.
Clearly indicate the date you accessed the work and in what ways, if any, you modified it. (If you have adapted the work, let us know so that the contributor might consider endorsing your revision.)
Provide the stable link to this resource: <https://opensiddur.org/?p=51075>.
Indicate that the original work was shared under the Creative Commons Zero (CC 0) Universal license a Public Domain dedication. (To redistribute or remix this work in any format, modified or unmodified, you must refer to the terms of the license under which the work is shared.)

Additional Notes:

The views expressed in this work represent the views of their creator(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Open Siddur Project's developers, its diverse community of contributors, patrons, or institutional partners.
We strongly advise against printing sacred texts and art containing divine names as these copies must be regarded with reverence, complicating their casual treatment and disposal.
If you must dispose of a printed sacred text (one containing Divine Names), please locate the closest genizah (often established by a synagogue) and contact its custodians for further instructions. We also recommend using Morah Yehudis Fishman's Prayer for Adding a Work to the Genizah.

Support this work: The Open Siddur Project is a volunteer-driven, non-profit, non-denominational, non-prescriptive, gratis & libre 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.

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