MEDITATIONS BEFORE PRAYER
‘To serve the Eternal your God with all your heart’ (Deuteronomy 11:13). What is a service with the heart? It is prayer. Ta’anit 2a We do not even know how we are supposed to pray. All we do is call for help because of the need of the moment. But what the soul intends is spiritual need, only we are not able to express what the soul means. That is why we do not merely ask God to hear our call for help, but also beg the One who knows what is hidden, to hear the silent cry of the soul. Chasidic So long as the world moves along accustomed paths, so long as there are no wild catastrophes, we can find sufficient substance for our life by contemplating surface events, theories and movements of society. We can acquire our inner richness from this external kind of ‘property’. But this is not the case when life encounters fiery forces of evil and chaos. Then the ‘revealed’world begins to totter. Then those who try to sustain them– selves only from the surface aspects of existence will suffer terrible impoverishment, begin to stagger, ... then they will feel welling up within themselves a burning thirst for that inner substance and vision which transcends the obvious surfaces of existence and remains unaffected by the world's catastrophes. From such inner sources they will seek the waters of joy which can quicken the dry outer skeleton of existence. Avraham Isaac Kook ‘You are My witnesses,’the Eternal says, ‘and I am God.’Rabbi Simeon ben Yochai said: ‘If you give witness unto Me, then I am the Eternal. If you are not My witnesses, then I am not the Eternal, as it were.’ Pesikta d'Rav Kahana In my experience, prayer does not give security or the answer to the problems of the cosmos – at least it never has for me. But though it has not changed the external world to suit my convenience, it has changed me, and I am part of that world. It has not given me security … but it has given me courage, and helped me cope with the next step ahead. Lionel Blue Prayer will not come about by default. It requires education, training, reflection, contemplation. It is not enough to join others; it is necessary to build a sanctuary within. Abraham Joshua Heschel For prayer is the language of the heart – needing no measured voice, no spoken tone. Grace Aguilar
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