Mindfulness, Poetry, Prayer and Song to Open Hearts

At our beautiful all-day retreat last Shabbat, “A Mindful Journey Through Shabbat” we did a morning of chant/kavannah/music/silence.  As leaders, we chose several key prayers (only a few) from the morning Shabbat service and went deeper into each one.  For example, we started with Modah/Modeh Ani, which means “Grateful/Thankful am I” and offered a brief reflection on the meaning of that prayer, followed by a suggested kavannah (intention).  We chose specific music that was soulful and simple to follow, usually using one verse only.  Also, every bit of Hebrew we used was transliterated and translated so that people could easily join in and yet, everything we prayed in Hebrew was also written in Hebrew script so that those who read Hebrew could also do so.  After we sang the music selection together, we sat in silence for around 3-5 minutes, just absorbing the reverberations of sound and melody with the words from the kavannah also resonating.  Our primary goal was that the two hours we spent in prayer be heart-opening.

The design of the service was absolutely deliberate in its simplicity and intention.  We felt that “less was more” and that “deeper was more important than breadth.”  We wanted the experience to feel spacious and unrushed.  We wanted people to feel welcome no matter their level of Jewish practice and experience. We wanted the music to open people’s hearts and we wanted the words we created for the kavannot to be easily related to and so we wove in stories from our own lives.  We knew that poetry was another way “in” for many people as it speaks to the non-linear part of our brains and so we selected meaningful poetry as well.  We wanted to talk about the “G” word (God) in a way that was expansive as that word is only a metaphor pointing to something that is difficult to describe in words for many of us.

The philosophy behind this kind of prayer experience represents a radical shift in what most people experience at synagogue.  Too many times people feel left out, or overwhelmed or not sure how to enter in.  Too many people sit there thinking that “everyone else gets ‘it’ and I don’t.”  Too many of us leave feeling alienated and that is a shame.

The truth is that there is enormous depth and meaning in most of our prayers – and as someone who became Jewishly “literate” as an adult – I did not grow up knowing that.   I didn’t even know the questions to ask.  I did not connect to services.  It did not help me to be told “just keep going and you’ll find it meaningful.”  I wasn’t going to recite prayers if I didn’t know what they meant.  I wanted singable music so I that I could participate.

Meeting people where they are at is a core value of the Jewish Mindfulness work we do.  Thanks go to Rabbis Wendy Spears, Sheila Weinberg and Myriam Klotz and to Cantor Linda Kates for being on the same page with me as we created this experience.  More to come – perhaps more about the yoga, the silent lunch, the stories about spiritual journey….  Would love to know your thoughts.  For more photos of the retreat, see our facebook page.)

POETRY FROM THE RETREAT

There were three poems that we read during the day.  People asked for the poems, so here they are:

 

Fall to Your Knees and Thank God for Your Eyesight

by Billy Collins

was my mother’s usual response
to my bouts of childhood whining.

I can’t find my other sneaker.
Fall to your knees and thank God for your eyesight
There’s no one to play with this early.
Fall to your knees and thank God for your eyesight
My bicycle only has three gears.
Fall to your knees and thank God for your eyesight

It’s a line best delivered in a rural Irish accent,
but my mother didn’t have one of those
growing up on a farm in Ontario, Canada.
Nor did she have much Canada in her voice.
Fall to your knees and thank God for your eyesight, aye?
was not heard in the hallways of our house.

Needless to say, I never fell for it,
though it did create pauses in my trickle of complaints
and maybe cleared some room in my room
strewn with toys—small tanks and smaller soldiers—
a little space to think about God and eyesight
but not for long, of course, the demands of childhood

being what they are.  And the repeated words
sometimes made me think twice before
whimpering about a bruise on my knee,
or foolishly I would say the line just when she did,
the two of us chanting Fall to your knees…
which is as far as I got before she appeared

in the doorway and pinned me to the floor with that look.
No surprise to know that nowadays
I say it every chance I get:
to everyone under this roof including the dog
and under my breath to people on the street—
this one grousing about the price of eggs or gasoline,

that one furious that the bus is late,
especially when I realize those voices are mine—
me peevish in the bedroom, me bitching about the rain,
me and my broken shoelace, me in the sand trap,
me forgetting to fall to my knees to thank her
for giving me the eyes to see the world, to regard these words.

 

The Dead

by Billy Collins

The dead are always looking down on us, they say.
while we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich,
they are looking down through the glass bottom boats of heaven
as they row themselves slowly through eternity.

They watch the tops of our heads moving below on earth,
and when we lie down in a field or on a couch,
drugged perhaps by the hum of a long afternoon,
they think we are looking back at them,
which makes them lift their oars and fall silent
and wait, like parents, for us to close our eyes.

 

The Journey 

by Mary Oliver (from Dreamwork)

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.