In response to yesterday's post, friend Susan sent two paragraphs of a prayer by Rabbi Marc Gellman in Melville, New York. I was so moved by the two paragraphs that I searched until I found the entire prayer, posted on December 18, 2012, and am reprinting it below in its entirety, with thanks to Rabbi Gellman.
The prayer reminds me of a part of the biblical story often forgotten amid the pageantry and wonder of Christmas Eve services. The Christmas tale is of angels singing, shepherds and magi finding their way to a stable where the baby was born; but it is also a story refugees and of the slaughter of children by a puppet of Rome. That part of the story does not fit with the gaiety of our Christmas celebrations. But this year the terrible events in Newtown and countless other places on earth cannot, and must not, be exorcised from Christmas any more than the wailing of the parents of the murdered Innocents in the first story of Christmas. That's why Rabbi Gellman's words will be my prayer this Christmas.
- Milo
Carl
Sandberg wrote, "A baby is God's opinion that life should go
on."
Oh, God,
dear God, what is your opinion about the slaughter of 20 babies and their brave
teachers? Is it now your opinion that life should not go on? This is one path
some have taken out of this darkness.
They say,
with Franz Kafka, that "The meaning of life is that it ends."
They say, with Thomas Hobbes, that "Each man is the wolf of his
neighbor." If you don't want us to travel down that road of nihilistic
despair, we pray to you now, help us to believe that the good in us will win!
Even when our children and our hope are cut down like trees, help us to
believe, with Job, that at the first scent of water we will send out new green
leaves again.
At the
coming of this winter of sorrow, dear God of all our seasons, help us to
believe that spring will come again.
Alexander
Solzhenitsyn wrote:
"What seems to us more important, more painful, and more unendurable is really not what is more important, more painful and more unendurable, but merely that which is closer to home. Everything distant, which for all its moans and muffled cries, its ruined lives and millions of victims, that does not threaten to come rolling up to our threshold today, we consider endurable and of tolerable dimensions."
Oh, God,
dear God, help us to mourn not just those children and those teachers taken
from this life in the state of Connecticut in the country of America,
but also, dear God, open our hearts to the suffering and deaths of other
children and other teachers whose deaths have not come rolling up to our
thresholds today: the children and teachers
of Syria and Congo,and North Korea and every place
where children and their teachers are caught in the web of war. Each one of
them was made in your image. Each one had the songs of their lives cut short
even as they were singing them. We pray to you as Lincoln prayed to you that
our hearts might become as large as the world.
The poet
Rainer Maria Rilke wrote:
"I would like to beg you to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."
Oh, God,
dear God, help us to have patience with all the social questions raised by this
tragedy and to be cautious of those offering neat and immediate answers. For
well we know that there is no cure for evil here on planet earth. Help us to
help those among us struggle with severe mental illness and who stare every day
into the eyes of demons at their doors to their minds. Help us to love them
while also protecting ourselves and our children from those who cannot conquer
or control their demons.
May we
never force the innocent among them to live like pariahs or prisoners of our
collective fears. Help us also to learn how to defend ourselves against evil
either domestic or foreign without making us victims of our own weapons of
defense. Keep us far from those who are often wrong but never in doubt. Grant
wisdom to our leaders that they might find a way to protect both our freedom
and our future.
A.A.
Milne wrote: "'It is hard to be brave,' said Piglet, 'when you're
only a Very Small Animal.'"
Oh, God,
dear God, help our children to be brave. Our children are very small animals
and so many of them are so frightened now. Help them to be brave by believing
in what they cannot always see, so that in time they can see what they believe.
Help them to be brave by believing that the souls of these children are with
God in heaven even though they cannot see heaven yet. Help them to be brave by
believing that they do not need to cling to us always in order to be safe.
The most
frequent phrase in your Holy Bible is: "Be not afraid." Help us to
take those words into our hearts and hearths, so that our children can laugh
and sing again.
May the
Christians among us still find a way to celebrate the light and hope of
Christmas and may those of us who do not celebrate Christmas find light and
hope through them.
- Rabbi Marc Gellman
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