Amidah in the Time of Covid19

Photo by Nick Decorte on Unsplash, Photoshopped by me
There is a section of the shabbat service called the amidah. in which congregants pray silently for what usually seems to me to be a relatively long stretch, given that the rest of the service is filled with someone speaking, people chanting and singing, and in our congregation, beautiful music. In my Reconstructing Judaism/Jewish Renewal congregation, our rabbi encourages us to pray as our inner sense of what's needed in the moment calls us to do: to read the pages of prayers in the prayerbook or to be alone with the Self. I am always moving within and so choose to wait to receive what my soul sends me.
Since the pandemic descended, we have been zoom-gathering one by one or family by family, filling our screen-focused eyes with the little squares of faces we know, many of which are beloved. In what feels like a miraculous blessing, during every one of these shelter-in-place services, I have received waterfalls of words my hand somehow knows to record in poetry form, although that is normally not my preferred mode of creative or inspired writing.
Last night's amidah brought me into a dreamscape of roaring thunder. If you have ever stood in a huge waterfall or ridden the Maid of the Mist into Niagara Falls, you know how it felt. And this is what flowed into me. With gratitude to Reb Irwin Keller and our open-hearted community for cradling and raising me in your midst.
Amidah April 3
Let the fullness
your fullness
fill your life
as images fill your screen
and let the fullness of
Source Unleashed
as lightning, thunder, wind, flood and searing sun –
all those Great unyielding forces
from which you hide
BE WHAT YOU ARE.
Let the unlimited force of All Being
rush through your gates
your open gates
your gates shuttered in vanity
as if you could resist
the wholeness of All That Is
your Being
open to All that You Are
that You created yourself
to be
for this time.
In all time
you dance through the cosmos
the expanding stage
broader than any you have ever trod;
your stage awaits
your presence to
fill it, light it
without footlights, keylights or floods.
You are the light gathering behind your shuttered eyes.
Illumine your life.
Step into that light your open eyes release.
Command your life
around you.
Revel in what your mirror reveals
In the joyous
flushing of pale corners
opening into porticos never to be cornered again
into shame or shyness
for want of an adequate mirror.
(c) Leiah Bowden
Olive, thank you!!!
Photo. Narrative and Poem all go together like flowing water.Thank you.