Prayer,
for me, is not primarily a religious duty. It is a life skill.
I
have been thinking about prayer a lot lately, and the substance of my
thoughts are pretty much expressed those two sentences. So, since I
have the pulpit and there’s nothing any of you are willing to do to
stop me, let me repeat them:
Prayer,
for me, is not primarily a religious duty. It is a life skill.
I
have struggled with prayer all my adult life. The first time I felt
a strong impulse to pray was in my dorm room my junior year in
college. My weekly call home made it clear that my father’s three
year struggle with cancer was coming to an end. I hung up, and
wanted to talk to God. But I was astonished by my own arrogance.
Who was I, who had spent his entire life a self-proclaimed atheist,
to ask God to listen to me in this moment of profound distress? What
had I ever given to God that would warrant His listening to - let
alone answering my - prayers?
And
for what exactly would I pray anyway? A miracle? Did I expect one?
Did I deserve one? Did my father deserve one? Didn’t far-greater
tragedies occur every day of the week to people whose prayers were
more deserving of an answer then mine?
In
the dark of my dorm room that night I verbalized all those thoughts
and more. There was no Hebrew. There were no requests, no words of
thanks or words of praise. But I think the words I spoke that night
were a prayer anyway. They were a prayer because they brought a
measure of solemnity to a profound moment in my life.
This
is prayer’s power: its capacity to solemnize – and indeed elevate
– life’s profound moments. The starting point of my sermon today
is the idea that each of our lives is a sacred undertaking. But as
is always the case with sacred works, that sanctity is not always
apparent. Most of our days are filled with routine affairs we
undertake out of necessity, or habit, or boredom. How often do I
find myself staring at a baseball game because I can’t think of
anything better to do until bedtime?
But
there are times when we sense that a sacred purpose indeed animates
our days. That moment in my dorm room was one. But in truth, such
moments are not confined to the triumphs and tragedies of our lives.
They come much more frequently and much more subtly then we realize.
We need to become aware of them. And then we need the ability to
acknowledge them. Let me give you a recent example of one such
moment in my life.
In
July, Terri and I vacationed in St. John. On our way down, a friend
of our shul left me a message. He wanted to give me an update on the
condition of his wife who has been seriously ill. I returned his
call with great trepidation, but his news was all good. Things were
looking up for he and his wife and the relief he felt was palpable to
me, even through a bad phone connection. I wanted to celebrate his
good news.
Next
day came word that an acquaintance of ours had died suddenly. Just
60-years-old, he was a man of uncommon energy and warmth and kindness
with an outsized personality; a true pillar in the Madison synagogue
community.
That
night, I stared out from the veranda of our rented house and took in
the scene: the darkened hillsides, the lights of the harbor, the vast
ocean beyond. Somewhere, a thousand miles away, one family
celebrated, while another was devastated. And from where I sat, the
world just moved on without skipping a beat. I felt overwhelmed and
confused by it all. So I picked up my siddur, and began to pray.
And in that act of praying, I took that moment of confusion and
brought to it a measure of sanctity. My prayers that evening
reminded me that there are entire worlds of meaning and significance
that exist beyond my gaze; that my eyes and my perception are,
ultimately, not the measure of all things. My prayers. in other
words, took away that sense of confusion and despair and replaced it
with an assurance that our lives are indeed bigger than we sometimes
realize.
Unlike
the prayer in my dorm room which was a spontaneous prayer, this is an
example of prayer as a life-skill; as an ability developed over years
of practice and designed to meet just such occasions. Driving a car
is a life-skill. Knowing how to conduct yourself in a confrontation,
or at a funeral, or after a fender-bender are all life-skills.
Knowing how to work efficiently or the right way to talk to people
are life skills. A life-skill is not something you are born with,
but a capacity you develop in order to live your life fruitfully and
completely.
Which
brings me back to my twice stated opening declaration that, to me,
prayer is more of a life-skill then it is a religious obligation.
Let me add a little nuance to that statement. Prayer in Judaism is a
חובה,
an obligation. I have, in my life, and certainly through my time in
rabbinical school, treated it as an obligation. Had I not done so, I
am not sure I could have learned to understand it as the life-skill I
now think it actually is. To put it more simply, what I started
doing because I felt obliged to, I now do because I think it
something that enriches, and indeed gives meaning to my life.
Here’s
the problem. With a few exceptions, none of you know how to pray.
Oh you may know some prayers and know them in Hebrew. But how many
of you know the underlying structure of the prayer service - or know
that that underlying structure is exactly the same every day of the
year - including Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur? How many of you know,
without being told, where to sit and where to stand during a service?
Or which prayers can only be said in the presence of a minyan? Or
which prayers require the highest levels of concentration? Many of
you, I know, feel great comfort being here in shul, especially on
these High Holy Days. Many of you rejoice in hearing our cantor once
again intone the prayers you have known since childhood. These are
beautiful, powerful connections and I don't mean to make light of
them. But how many of you can take that sense of connection and
comfort you feel by being here today and translate it into an
something that shapes your understanding of life? For make no mistake
about it, that is the aim of prayer - to shape your understanding of
life and your place in the world.
I
beg you not to take these observations as personal criticisms. I
know from direct observation that the obstacles that have been put
between you and a meaningful relationship with prayer are tremendous.
The evidence is all around you; you can start by looking in your
lap. There sits a prayer book meant to be used for all of three
days, that is 894 pages long. How can anyone expect you to make
sense of such an overflowing and repetitious mass?
Another
obstacle in you way to a meaningful relationship with prayer is your
lack of exposure to it. This may seem odd given the 894 page prayer
book, but Jewish prayer has a definite structure and rhythm that
carries it along and imbues it with meaning. When people tell me
that they like “the old ways,” and “the way we did it back when
I was a kid,” I know they are craving the familiarity that gives
their prayer a context of memory and emotion. But really, the
connection has to run deeper than that. It has to run to the order
of the prayers, to their words, to their rhythm. None of those
things have changed in any significant way, even if some of the tunes
have.
In
truth, Jewish prayer – in its size, its structure and its
complexity – reflects a different era in Jewish history. It
reflects a time when a Jew's world revolved – at least in part –
around the synagogue. There, he or she really learned how to pray.
And if they did so out of a sense of religious obligation, it was,
nevertheless, a life-skill.
Our
lives no longer revolve around the synagogue and the payer books we
have been handed down – despite every effort to change that –
have failed us in our efforts to make prayer a meaningful part of our
lives.
I
want to change that.
In
my seven years here at Beth Israel, I am most proud of how this shul
has become a house of study. We have a large, devoted Torah study
group that meets here every Shabbat. Every adult education class I
have offered here has been better attended than I had ever hoped.
Every time I have used a Jewish holiday as an opportunity to teach,
people have flocked to the moment. We have truly become a learning
congregation.
What
we are not is a praying congregation. And because we are not a
praying congregation, we are failing to stamp real, practical
knowledge and skill that can enrich our lives. I have two proposals
to address that.
First,
we cannot become a praying congregation without actually praying.
And the most important prayers a Jew says are those said in the
morning – particularly on Shabbat morning. Last year I developed a
45 minute long Shabbat morning service that draws from every part of
our liturgy while preserving its essentials. It isn't a perfect
service, but it is a beginning. Starting this Shabbat, and
continuing one Shabbat per month, I will be leading this service at
8:45. For those of you who are willing to accept the challenge of
developing your own ability to pray, this service is intended as a
primer. For those of you who miss the old ways, this service will
provide us a starting point for exploring how we should continue to
develop our prayer service here at Beth Israel.
My
second proposal builds upon the success we have already enjoyed as a
learning congregation. I propose to teach an open-ended course on
Jewish prayer. We will focus on history, structure, meaning and even
the practical “how-to's” of prayer. I want the course to be
open-ended first because the subject is so big, but more importantly
because I want your interest, your discussion and your concern to
shape much of its content. In other words, in addition to learning
about prayer, this course will be about learning why we pray, why we
don't pray, and what we can do to overcome the obstacles that stand
between us and this sacred life-skill.
Because
I consider this class so important, I want to make it readily
accessible to all. So I would like to teach it over the internet
using one of the video conference services such as Google Hangouts.
I have had great success conducting meetings and general discussions
through these services and I think they will work extremely well in a
class. For the technophobic among you, I will offer all the help I
can; and perhaps there are members of the congregation who will
volunteer their expertise to make this all work. But I want this
class to be easy to attend – regardless of the whether or how hard
your day had been. My hope would be to begin our class on Wednesday,
October 2 from 8-9pm. But we can adjust that depending on the needs
of the majority.
The
monthly Saturday morning prayer service and the weekly prayer class
will provide you two different opportunities to bring prayer into
your life. You can participate in one or the other or both. I
indeed hope that either will lead you to the same place – to the
ability to sanctify those profound moments in your life.
That
is my hope for each of you individually. On a practical level, my
goal is to create 12-15 members of our congregation who are experts
at prayer. By that I don't just mean that they know how to pray, but
also that they know why they pray. I want people who have the
ability to lead a service both because they know how to do it, but
also because they know what they seek to get from it. If we can
achieve that, then we will have built in this small shul a vibrant
community that is ready to welcome any spiritual seeker who knocks on
our door. We can attend to those in need not merely by having
services, but by having services that are spiritually rich. Ours is
a shul with a rich and giving heart. With knowledge, thoughtfulness
and insight, we can give even more.
As
I look back on that night in my dorm room when I uttered that first
somber prayer, I realize that many things for me have not changed in
thirty years. Prayer remains a challenge to me. Sometimes, when I
think of the intentionality our tradition demands in our prayers, I
see myself as coming so woefully short. Sometimes, when I reflect on
the content of our prayers, I find myself tripped up by the words and
their sentiments. And sometimes, I just don't feel like doing it.
What
has changed after years of treating prayer as an obligation is that I
now see its power. When I feel lost and confused, prayer has the
power to help me find my way. When I feel happy or grateful, prayer
has the power to sanctify that happiness by sharing it with others.
When I feel overwhelmed or insignificant, prayer has the power to
raise my sights to a higher plain. When I feel scared, prayer has
the power to calm me. And when I don't feel anything in particular,
prayer has the power to connect me to the source of ultimate meaning.
This is prayer as the means of sanctifying our lives. This is
prayer as a life-skill.
As
we now get ready to close our prayers on this day of remembrance, I
know that for many of you these hours have consumed a lot of
patience. The Jewish calendar may say its Rosh Hashanah, but that
does not necessarily mean you are in the mood or have the desire, let
alone the skill to pray. That, of course, is part of the demand
prayer makes of us: sometimes you have to do it not because you feel
like it, but because it is time. If this day has been to you more
obligation than spiritual journey, I ask you to consider this radical
idea: I ask you to consider that this is something in your life that
needs fixing. Each of our lives is a sacred undertaking. Each is
touched by moments of greatness, of goodness, of joy and of pain.
These moments deserve to be sanctified. These moments deserve
prayer. Let us learn the ability to pray from one another. And let
that learning show us the holiness in our lives.
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