Standing Prayer

It has been a wild two weeks of despair and hope in the world--the spiral upward of covid deaths, the murder of George Floyd in the wake of so many other murders and lynchings of black Americans, the intensity of protests and uprisings against this ongoing racial violence all over the world,  the meeting of peaceful protesters with tear gas, rubber bullets, police in riot gear clubbing and arresting those marching in the streets for human rights and respect and decency. And there has been dancing, heart-wrenching expressions of pain, and singing and wailing and mourning, and then more organizing. This past Shabbat I participated in a morning service with the Aquarian Minyan, in honor of the 80th birthday of one of the Minyan's longtime leaders, Shoshana Dembitz. Invited to give a kavannah, an intention for the Amidah, the time of silent communion with the deep self and with the Divine, which  precedes the reading of Torah in the traditional order of the prayer service, I offered these words...

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