Permission Slip

A Few Words on Prayer

Tomorrow night begins Yom Kippur, the Jews’ Day of Atonement, as it’s called. As such, I’m sharing something I wrote last year on Twitter/FB about prayer, since for many Jews and their families, it’s a time of intensive time in services, and it can sometimes feel hard to plug in, or like a particularly heavy time. If you saw it (whether or not you’re Jewish, whether or not you’d be spending Yom Kippur in services even if you are, -or as a non-Jewish family member maybe you’ll be there- etc etc etc), maybe you’re one of the people who wouldn’t mind a reminder? And if you didn’t see, well, maybe this could be useful or interesting to you?

Oh, also: I published this piece in Lithub on Friday: something of a very personal personal essay, as I’m calling it— On Making Amends to Someone Who Can’t Hear Your Apology. Also very Yom Kippur ~vibes~ and addressing one part of the Laws of Repentance I didn’t fully get into in the book. Have been told it’s a “three hanky” essay so, uh, plan accordingly?

Anyway, here’s the one about prayer:

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Today's a good day to talk about prayer, no?

I know it's a thing that feels hard and uncomfortable to lots of folks, so let's spend some time unpacking some of what it can be.

For starters, let me make this clear, as I have said many times on Twitter:

I don't believe in vending machine theology.

Like, there is no version of any understanding of the divine that I have that involves me praying for a pony and getting a pony. Or a fast car or that gig that I want or a parking spot or whatever.

Courage, patience, compassion? That's different. Those are inside you. When you pray for those, you are actually summoning great, gorgeous sleeping aspects of yourself from the deep, inviting them to rise to where you can see them, find them. You’re asking the divine to be your partner in finding them, asking for the capacity to access what is already available to you

"But rabbi, the traditional Jewish liturgy includes prayers for livelihood, for healing, for all sorts of things! We ask for external stuff!"

Yes, and the traditional Jewish liturgy is written in the first person plural.

Not I. We.

So again: we'll get there.

But first, I want to say a few things about the act of prayer.

The Book of Samuel talks about a woman named Hannah who's stuck in a dark place; she finally breaks, starts crying, and then, the book tells us, she "increased her prayers before God…. Hannah spoke on her heart."

She's considered the paragon of prayer in Judaism; she didn't recite formal liturgy. She teaches us, though, that prayer is about speaking on your heart.

It's a means to express something of our deepest selves, and not only naming it, but offering it up to the great beyond.

Whether or not you think of yourself as someone who believes in whatever might be called God, I'd like to suggest that there is power to this. I don't think you need to know to whom or what you're praying in order to pray. Sometimes, you can just... pray. And see how it feels.

If meditation can get us centered in the present moment, prayer can engage that presence, draw from or offer it up, or do both at the same time. Meditation is the work of the breath, of the stillness of the mind. Prayer is, as the Jewish tradition puts it, "work of the heart."

This work of the heart often emerges from the hardest spaces. Sometimes it comes out of that moment when you're at the edge of your ability to cope, or grief, despair, fear, anger, disassociated numbness, or overwhelm. Or from a bunch of those things, all at once.

Perhaps our prayers are open expressions of resentment, desperation, hope, gratitude, wonder, frustration, questions, or many of the other things a person might feel when we're up to the ears in it. Perhaps something else. I don't know.

I can tell you that if you spend all of the High Holy Days (if you’re Jewish, or all day any day no matter who you are) yelling at God until you get to the place where the tears are, or yelling until you find a new truth that you hadn’t uncovered, that will be time well spent.

Yes, you can yell at God, you can be angry at God, you can yell at I-don't-know-if-there's-God-or-what-but-I'm-gonna-yell.

The God in which I believe can take it.

Jews, anyway, have a long, proud tradition of yelling at God. It's... kind of how we roll.

But real prayer doesn’t push aside hard feelings. Nor will it magically fix everything. It can help us to name what's happening, & to pour it out to the great transcendent beyond—to turn your isolated feeling into something that connects you, that binds you to something bigger.

It is this outward offering that turns "feeling feelings" into prayer: we don't just experience them, we offer them up, to someone, something.

We say, “here, can you hold on to at least a tiny piece of this anger, frustration and despair for just a second?”

We connect our heart to the great infinite everythingness, the gushing, pulsing stream of life within and around us. We reach out.

It's about tuning into that which interlinks us all, that which is present within and between us.

Try lifting up the things in the deepest places of your heart and try to release them like you're letting the wind take a balloon.

You don't have to even know whether anyone's taking them or what, just try to pull the words up and out.

So then, to get back to the words in the prayerbook.

First of all, permission:

If you're in services and what's happening with the prayerbook and the service isn't where your head is at, let me be hopefully not the first person to give you permission to just be where you are, tune out of the service and tune in to your heart, tune in to whatever's happening there, do that. If you do some real work there, you've done good.

The point is not to recite every word of the liturgy while your heart cries for attention. No.

And as for crying in services? Feel free to ask anyone from any of the synagogues I've attended regularly in the last 25ish years (that is, from when I started showing up regularly) if I have ever been seen sobbing hysterically during prayer services. Uh.

Yes, hi, here is your permission slip to cry if you need to.

Sometimes in the process of prayer you move stuff around and find true things and clear out some things and the true things come out through tears. That's OK.

Sometimes life is so full and the only time you have time to be a certain kind of present is during prayer and so it turns out that's when you cry. That's OK.

So, then, back to the words in the prayerbook. For Jews: Whether you're more comfortable in the Hebrew (and occasionally Aramaic) or English, or a bit of both--consider this your permission slip to pray from whichever side works best for you--the prayerbook is meant to be your guide through a process.

The liturgy has been crafted very intentionally. It's the trail for your hike. It's meant to take you on a series of risings & fallings, openings & closings, peaks & valleys. The blessings before & after the S'hma, before & after the Amidah, where the Kaddishes or the special parts of the holiday liturgy are, etc.

We talk about keva (fixed form) and kavvanah (intention) as the heart of Jewish prayer. Taking the intention, the heart stuff I've been talking about and binding it to the form, the words in the prayerbook, and offering it up.

It takes practice, sure, but if you're in services a bunch over the next little while, why not practice?

Find some of the words that catch you in particular and really... pray them?

See what it feels like to find some words that you wouldn't think to just write yourself and pray those?

And then we get around to the genius of Jewish prayer. The ways it shapes you, like water gently shaping a rock.

The number of times I have, in prayer, had to find the ways and meanings around words I wouldn't have, in my tiny, finite, ego-driven self, thought to write.

The ways that we--not I, we--has worked itself into me. It's not about my own love or sorrow. My own fate or concern.

The hike has taken me to vistas more profound and beautiful than I possibly could have imagined on my own.

And it's forced me to tap into pain and suffering greater than I wanted to, because that's part of the work, too. That's OK. We. Us.

In any case, I want to bless you with the opportunity to do some of the work of the heart--tonight, tomorrow, and any time after that.

In services, or just walking down the street, when you're with a cranky child, at any moment when you need to offer something up.

Formal prayer--yes. And spontaneous prayer is valid, too.

It was for Hannah, it is for you, too.

Offer something up.

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