OUR TEMPLE DESTROYED
Helpless cries turn to whimpers
Our homeland place
Bright future hopes erased
Only a single wall remains
All we built as Holy
All we held as Holy
All we thought we knew
Home and all we called our own
All our magnificent constructions
Shattered
Scattered
Beneath a soot-filled sky
In the mournful remains of our edifice wall
search for cracks press tearstained papers
holding heart-soaked prayers to climb
like wild grass growing through wounded stone
That they may rise renewed with
Ancient longings taking flight
Though once bright dreams are doomed
dulled by pain and desperation
Rage against encroaching darkness
Relentlessly wrestle an unknown angel
Until
The egg of sky
Splits open with the dawn
Wounded still clinging to hope
Behold the shining ladder
And holding fast the angel’s wing
we cannot be denied
Embrace our strength to sing
Singing clear and loud
Bless us
Bless us
Bless us
Now
Ritual for the Month of Av (Outline)
Transforming Grief Through Creative Expression
Av is the month where grief is transformed to joy. In this ritual focused on themes of grief and joy, particularly exploring how to transform grief through loud singing and smoke rituals.
Although this ritual can be done alone, I believe there much there’s much to be gained in the shared experience of a gathering or minion.
Two starting suggestions:
- At the start of our ritual either in a group or alone allow yourself to give full expression to your grief. Don’t compare your grief to others. Don’t minimize it because someone else has supposedly more to grieve about than you.
2) Let yourself feel all of your emotion of grief as your energy in motion.
The Process:
- Breathe into it what does it feel like? Is it a hollow or tight space. Is it dark or blinding, fiery, hot or cold.
Notice where your grief lives in your body.
Allow yourself to really experience where it lives in your body.
Is it in your muscles, Do you feel it when you breathe? Is it in your breath?
Examine your organs. Does it reside in your skin, stomach, heart or lungs?
On your tongue does it have a smell or taste?
Allow yourself to simply explore your inner being. When and where you find your grief hold it.
This is the time and month where you may allow yourself to know your grief
and allow it to expand.
Until you feel you contain all grief that you’ve ever lived. All the grief in your world.
If you feel rage, look deeper. Learn if the rage you carry is grief disguised as often rage is grief energized.
- Ask yourself “What angel am I wrestling with? What wounding can I not release until it blesses me?
- You may want to let your non-dominant hand write answers to these questions as it is often more connected to your unconscious, home of your dreams.
- Write holder of your grief and your heart-soaked prayers. and place the paper with where they can be safely and completely burned with sage or other sweet scented natural substance.
- As the smoke rises sing “Shalom” sing it loud sing with all your heart all your energy as the rising smoke lifts and caries your prayers your deepest longings.
- Until the smoke melts into the Eternal energy, until you can feel Holy One.
- Until you feel your spirt move from Grief to Joy.
You may want to leave some time for sharing at the end.
Some notes of interest about the name of this month, Av
The name of the month Av combines the letters Aleph and Vav (numerals 1 and 6).
The Aleph, Holy Infinite One symbolized by the ideograph of Ox horns and Vav, ideograph of a nail or peg that joins opposite entities/energies into one.
The gematria of 1+6=7 The day the Holy One looks on Their creation and pronounces it Good.
Thus the name of the month of Av describes the journey we take from Av to Elul.
