We met today for a service built around exploring images/metaphors/theologies of the Divine, launching from the opening of today's parsha. Our liturgy put forward many different ideas and images, then in our torah discussion we learned just a bit about alternative images of divinity that have existed across Jewish history and live on in our … Continue reading Fringes January 2024: if God is energy, I sit in God’s hand
from Cove Jane Mead If you’ve got something that stands for prayer, roll it on down the road in my direction—I’ll be standing at the rim of the patient and organized forest, to the left of a quaking aspen. I’ll be scanning the horizon for a smudge of myself. Roll it on down— I like … Continue reading Praying with Fringes 12/08/2016 – roll it on down the road
Sabbaths 2001, VI Wendell Berry Sit and be still until in the time of no rain you hear beneath the dry wind's commotion in the trees the sound of flowing water among the rocks, a stream unheard before, and you are where breathing is prayer.
Prayer Marie Howe Every day I want to speak with you. And every day something more important calls for my attention—the drugstore, the beauty products, the luggage I need to buy for the trip. Even now I can hardly sit here among the falling piles of paper and clothing, the garbage trucks outside already screeching … Continue reading Praying with Fringes 9/15/2015 – My days and nights pour through me like complaints
Prayer is the time we take to do it. The time is the gift, the sacrifice, the strength. Time, not the words we say nor how nor where we say them. Prayer is the space we allow it in our lives, the moments when we focus so intently beyond time that time flows differently, it … Continue reading Praying with Fringes 11/05/2014 – the gift, the sacrifice, the strength
Walking Ellie Schoenfeld A Tibetan prayer wheel turns and turns, sends prayers to the universe with every revolution. And now it is my feet, all our feet, walking, one foot then another, over and over, every step a prayer to stave off the horror at the edges of our stomachs. Every step a prayer. One … Continue reading Praying with Fringes 12/12/2013 – One year since Newtown, and still the guns
Where Expression Ends Abraham Joshua Heschel Prayer begins where expression ends. The words that reach our lips are often but waves of an overflowing stream touching the shore. We often seek and miss, struggle and fail to adjust our unique feelings to the patterns of texts. Where is the tree that can utter fully the … Continue reading Prayer begins where expression ends