Find the Lily, a prayer-poem by Trisha Arlin

Source Link: https://opensiddur.org/?p=59890

open_content_license: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft license

Date: 2025-01-30

Last Updated: 2025-02-28

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

Excerpt: "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. . . .


Content:
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.

Contributor: Trisha Arlin

Co-authors:

Featured Image:
The Undergrowth in the Forest of Saint-Germain (Claude Monet 1882)
Title: The Undergrowth in the Forest of Saint-Germain (Claude Monet 1882)
Caption: The Undergrowth in the Forest of Saint-Germain (Claude Monet 1882)