Poem for Tuesday

For the Shofar Blower
By Janet Zimmern

At this awesome season
pregnant
with all possibility we pray today:

By our choices and deeds,
with Divine Intervention,
Supernal Midwife of Israel
and of All Creation,
attend,
assist us
to birth as yet unknown wonders,
miracles of Life.

With an awesome fear of God,
I place this shofar to my lips.

May the breath
You breathe inside me momentarily,
now return to You
to be renewed and return again
to this world for Life, for Peace

May the birthcries of my shofar blasts
be pleasing to You,
as the words and deeds of Shifra
with fear of You, she
lovingly births Your People:
Freedom
to do Your Will.

Like Puah,
be hutzpadik
in Your advocacy
Encourage us toward Life
even when we ourselves may feel discouraged,
distressed in the midst
of life's hard pangs.

Breathe life into us anew!
While others take us for dead.
Lest we face despair of lost hope,
even we,
may abandon ourselves.

In the name of Shifra, Puah,
Sara Emainu
Hana,
in the name of Rahel Emainu,
let her tears for her children,
be of gladness and joy.

In the name of God that is Birth,
let the joy of becoming, of hearing
sounds from this birthing shofar
overcome and become us all.

God, cleanse us of our sins
like the midwife
who cleanses the newborn infant.

Wrap us in the beautiful garments
of the Soul.
Bathe us in Your Light
so our Divine nature may shine
even as we walk joyously in Your Light -
B'or paneha yehalayhun!

May the breath of my being
blown into this shofar
hearken us
back to the shofar
that is Shifra
and the breath
that is Puah.

Deliver us from the narrows
of, God Forbid, an evil decree,
into the breadth of sound.

Signal in us an expansion.
Together God
may we birth this coming year!

God,
Supernal Midwife,
send me no angel, no seraph, not even
Hayot Hakodesh!

Be Thou my Midwife!
Be Thou my angel!
Be Thou My Self!
Birth me yet again anew,
renewed for this coming year.

--------


'Tis the season. Am trying to find a really good English version of the mourner's kaddish; does anyone know of one, not the one from either version of the Union Prayer Book or anything that uses "Lord" in the translation?

And now a public service: ROTK trailer images! has a lot too in successive entries.

I was trying to do that author meme list in which you're supposed to remove the names of authors you do not have in common with someone and replace those names with authors you do have so that your list contains ten names. I looked at 's list and discovered that I actually have every single author on her list; then I looked at 's and I have all of her authors as well. However, I think Neil Gaiman is the most overrated writer in the planet, and I loathed Jane Austen in grad school (bad bad feminist me!), and I felt like a lemming reading over other people's lists, so here is my mostly-from-scratch list of ten desert island authors who haven't shown up nearly enough for my bias:

Janette Turner Hospital
Nancy Kress
Richard Zimler
Octavia Butler
Jeanne Larsen
Amy Tan
Salman Rushdie
Clysta Kinstler
Roger Zelazny
Richard Bach

I really should have included L'Engle despite her ubiquitousness on my Friends list, as well as C.S. Lewis, since they taught me to read allegory. Go ahead and say something snide about Tan's over-hyped bestsellers and the fact that I like Illusions better than Coraline. Shall I admit how close I came to putting Ayn Rand on the list? And, you know, I might chosen Anne Rice in spite of everything but I will never forgive her for Taltos, not to mention threatening her fans with legal action.

As for the music meme...you can learn all this nonsense about me here, if you're really interested. It's not updated for the past several months but October Project is on there so it's definitely updated since I got this LJ. This is why, although I do a lot of quizzes, I skip a lot of memes.