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2. Many of you, in our private conversations, have spoken of a personal quest for a deeper spirituality. While assuring me that you find our services meaningful and our service to others valuable, you speak of a desire for something more personal, something you yourselves might be doing in quiet moments to add greater depth to your life, to touch the most genuine parts of yourselves.
And, importantly, you tell me that you’d like this spiritual quest to be a Jewish one, something that, if you will, personalizes our Judaism.
So here’s a very practical suggestion, a little booklet entitled Daily Blessings that you can carry with you in your pocket – and pull out somewhere between once and a hundred times a day. For many years I’ve carried these prayers around, photocopied from the Conservative siddur. But they also are available from URJ at www.urjpress.com – or perhaps we can get Faith to order in bulk for us.
What perhaps captivates me most about these blessings, is that they help us to be present in the moment – to live our lives increasingly in the present rather than in the past or future. And they make it much more difficult to take the wonders of our lives for granted. When we step out of our home and see a tree, we have a blessing for it (Hebrew, English or both.) When we pass flowers or herbs, we can offer another blessing. The same for hills, rivers, lightning, or the sky in any of its guises. The same for a joyous occasion and for good news. The same for eating oatmeal, or broccoli or peanuts.
Imagine this friends! Imagine how our lives could be transformed if, rather than rushing through whole chunks of our lives on automatic pilot we were able to be intentional about what we’re seeing and doing! Our lives, by definition, would take on a deeper meaning. Our loved ones would watch in wonder, and, who knows, some of them might choose to follow our example.
Daily Blessings also includes prayers for hearing of a death – offering that prayer was the very first thing I did after learning of the death of dear Jesse Lopata. And there is a prayer on recovering from a serious illness (our joyous prayer last month for Talia), or upon escape from danger.
Deepening our lives in this way does not substitute for our mission of tikkun olam, of healing the world. But the two complement one another in multiple ways. A first step in healing the world may be healing ourselves. More on this at High Holiday time.
B’Shalom,
Jim
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