USCJ Review - Fall 2002

Writing Our Own Prayers

by Laurie Altman Sunshine

At our convention this past February, poet/author Laurie Sunshine offered a session entitled "Creating Prayer: Our Personal Voice." Laurie began by telling participants that she hoped to impart "a sense of the joy creating personal prayer can bring." She continued...

You can create prayer that's strictly between you and God, or you can create prayer to share with others -- words of comfort at a shivah minyan, words that provide hope at a healing service, even prayer offered as a shaliah tzibor in your congregation.

For my son's bar mitzvah on Sukkot, I wrote and read such a prayer. The liturgy anchored me as I let waves of feeling wash over me: feelings about the Festival, my family, my son, and the event. I listened to what was inside of me. The music I heard is described in: "For Your Sake, For Ours," found at the back of Siddur Sim Shalom for Shabbat & Festivals:

Turning, ever turning
season follows season
and we wave the branches, the willow once again
to hear a faint whisper
of voices from the past
in the rustle of myrtle and soft snap of palm.

Oh, they're there. Can't you tell?
Can't you hear the murmur,
the magic melody of some four thousand years
ever the same
always calling, reaching, tugging
to pull us back, far back in the cycle of time?

Back to the days of kings,
patriarchs and heroes --
to Solomon, Esther, Abraham and Sarah,
Joshua, Deborah --
but still it does not stop.
The rhythm increasing with each swish of the frond,

they come wave after wave
and the ages go by --
yet still we know their names and can't escape the bonds:
Maccabee, Marrano,
shtetl bocher, halutz...

The rumble grows louder and we sway with the swell

of fathers, of mothers, whose names we do not know --
but they know us, oh yes,
and claim us for their own
even as they were chosen
and charged to remember
the commandments for all generations to come.

So it comes down to us.
Though at times it is hard,
like holding the citron with the greatest of care
to preserve the precious point.
Yet that bittersweet tang
of fragrant fruit lingers and the song -- oh, the song!

Can't you hear it? Sense it?
Can't you feel it touch you,
that haunting, familiar, just-out-of-grasp refrain
the one that won't let you go
not this year nor the next?
I am yours, you are mine; we are God's, God is ours.

Dear God, don't let it stop.
Let the music go on
for Your sake if not for ours, for all that's gone before.
Recall Your covenant even as we listen
to our past, our future.
Let it go on and on.

How can you make this happen, the creation of prayer? You must write. You learn how to write by writing. And all you need is pen and paper. Even a napkin in a restaurant. You can write anywhere. Anytime.

Why don't we do it? Reason number one is usually: I don't know what to write. Or how to go about it. Well, what happens when you're in shul and someone begins a nigun? You start to sing. You don't know the words, you may not even know the melody . But you go with the flow. Others join in. It begins slowly, then gathers momentum. And it is as if you have been singing this nigun l'dor v'dor, from generation to generation. There is something inside you, more than you know. Listen for it. Listen for that music.

Reason number two is procrastination. I can't bother with it now. Maybe later. But by the time later comes, if it comes at all, those words are lost. The need or emotion that prompted your initial desire to express yourself is either no longer there or not as strong. And you need that emotion as an energy source. It will fuel your writing, give it an immediacy you simply can't reconstruct after the fact.

Reason number three is fear of failure. As the Nike commercial says: "Just do it." Don't worry about the process because the process usually takes care of itself. Once you commit yourself, a magical thing happens. Your subconscious becomes your partner. It will work for you, with you. Suddenly, out of nowhere, it will send you a gift of a thought. The least you can do then is to write a note of acknowledgment in return.

Acknowledge God. For is it truly our subconscious who is our partner in this act of creation?

Thank God for something good you recently experienced in terms of a biblical image. Were you swept out of harm's way like the Egyptians were swept into the sea? Have you rediscovered a long-lost strength even as Samson toppled the pillars on the Philistines? Thank God without using the words "thank You." As I taught my sons about writing their bar mitzvah thank you notes, make your gratitude inherently apparent in the effort you make to say something special and sincere.

Personal prayer is a pathway to God. It's your pathway, your unique voice.

Yet when you've finished your prayer, do read it out loud, over and over. Listen for words or phrases that make you stumble -- either because they're a mouthful or because they don't ring true. Listen for repetition of words, effective if done on purpose, boring if you already used them and just plain forgot, or for words that seemed to make sense initially, even seemed vastly clever, but now seem to bomb. That doesn't mean your effort is a total dud. It means you need to find a different way of expressing yourself. We don't always find that direct pathway to God right away.

Be aware of what borders that pathway, what surrounds you on your journey. The process is multi-dimensional. It's not flat -- merely words on paper. The process involves all your senses and all your being. Tune in to what works for you to get those words down on paper. If our kids can do their homework to blaring rock music, what might putting on a Debbie Friedman tape do for us?...

Don't worry about the format before you start -- whether it's verse or prose, stanzas or paragraphs, complete sentences or fragments. Just let it happen. Scribble away. You can squoosh it into structure, restructure it, or even structure a highway to heaven later. It's usually another aspect of this process that falls into place by itself...

Once you have written something, ask yourself -- or someone else -- const ructive questions. Although the object is to draw nearer to God, you must now be objective about your writing. Your prayer may be personal, but distancing yourself from it when polishing it up is, literally, critical. Never put anyone on the spot with: Is it good? Is it okay? Such feedback isn't helpful.

A good question you can start out with is: Does anything make you uncomfortable? Words have varied connotations. Someone might be disturbed by an image you never envisioned. How does that affect your reality or vision? Another question: Does anything not make sense? No matter how experienced a writer one may be, our thoughts often race ahead of us and the words may not always reflect our intent. Lastly, it is fair, especially if you are writing for a particular occasion, to ask: Does it work? Does it truly address this occasion?

Trying to find what will make a prayer rise on high requires not only emotion, not only all your being -- but a rational, reasoning mind. Emotional creativity needs to be tempered by intellectual discipline.

Try creating your own meditations. Write your own b'rakhot, prayers that convey your awe upon seeing one of God's wondrous creations. Or, just as the siddur has a prayer for the State of Israel, we, too, especially in these frightening times, can create our own prayers for Eretz Yisra-el...

My own sense of personal prayer and what I can bring to it has evolved and grown over the years. I didn't write my first psalm -- the most intense, most intimate form of personal prayer -- until three years ago. A third psalm burst forth last summer. For one splendid moment in this ongoing journey, process and prayer became one in "A Poet's Psalm":

Where the words come from I do not know,

the thoughts that speed my hand

this gift
that I give back to You.

From the first time it happened
ascending a mountainside when I was twelve
ushered into another sphere
so powerful
it was pointless, impossible to resist,
the word pictures crowding my mind,
dancing to be drawn,

have had their way with me.

I have been pulled
ever upward,
beyond my bedroom window
into an indigo twilight
deepening with wonder,
a dimension of dreams
drawing me away,
distancing me from this world.

It is a moment of time
forever stolen,
sealed
in a Book of Life.
A breathless instance of being.
A bond
so pure
so priceless

I can never repay You,
even as I try to approach You,
for placing Your trust
in me.

I can only pray
You will never forsake me,
that I might go on giving praise,
pouring my soul
into places on high,
seeking,
aspiring to
Your presence, Elohai.

Laurie Altman Sunshine, award-winning poet, author, and Literary Editor of "Siddur Sim Shalom for Shabbat & Festivals", is currently Literary Editor of "Siddur Sim Shalom for Weekdays", to be published this year. Both volumes include some of her poetry. An artist as well, and a graduate of Brandeis University, she is married to Bob Sunshine, USCJ VP, and is the mother of Ari Sunshine, recently ordained at JTS, and Josh Sunshine, a high school history teacher.