Saturday Afternoon Request, by Rabbi Rachel Barenblat
Source Link: https://opensiddur.org/?p=7055
open_content_license: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft license Date: 2013-06-21
Last Updated: 2024-06-01
Categories: Minḥah l'Shabbat
Tags: 21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., dreaming, English poetry, English vernacular prayer, eros, Prayers as poems, quiet, Return to Eden, תחינות teḥinot
Excerpt: A prayer-poem supplication for the afternoon of Shabbat. . . .
Content:
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English |
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Help me to silence
my mind’s aggravation alarm,
to quiet the voice which says
the to-do list matters,
to temporarily eschew
continuous partial attention.
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Open me to long slow conversations
on the sunlit grass, to the beat
of the hand-drummers who accompany
the singing of psalms, to a boat
lazily drifting on the glassy surface
of my heart’s own pond.
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You’re waiting for me
like a lover, eager
to embrace me again.
Remind me: this is the way
back to Eden, the bloom
on the thirteen-petaled rose.
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Contributor: Rachel Barenblat
Co-authors:
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Name: Rachel Barenblat
Bio: Rabbi Rachel Barenblat (a/k/a Velveteen Rabbi) serves Congregation Beth Israel in North Adams, MA. She holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and is author of five volumes of poetry, among them 70 faces: Torah poems (Phoenicia, 2011) and Texts to the Holy (Ben Yehuda, 2018). A leader in Jewish Renewal (former co-chair of ALEPH, now a senior builder at Bayit: Your Jewish Home) she resides in western Massachusetts. She has blogged as the Velveteen Rabbi since 2003.
Website: http://velveteenrabbi.blogs.com/blog/
Profile Link: https://opensiddur.org/profile/rbarenblat
Featured Image:
Title: naptime 2 by leetoop (CC-BY-SA)
Caption: "naptime 2" (credit: leetoop, license: CC-BY-SA)