Together We Are The Prayer

by Susan Weinberg

I am always overwhelmed by our final session of the lab where everyone shares their work. Trying to capture it in all its complexity and beauty in no small task. This year felt especially powerful because it is a topic of such grave importance.  Collectively we touched so many different aspects of the environment. There were two passages of Jewish text that so many responded to that I think they bear repeating. 

It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it (Pirkei Avot 2:16)

Beware lest you spoil and destroy my world, for if you will spoil it, there is no one to repair it after you.' (Ecclesiastes Rabbah 7:13) 

The first means we each add our pebble to the pile of change until we create an avalanche. It speaks to both individual and ultimately collective action. The second speaks to our responsibility to preserve, to first do no harm.

Each of us felt a responsibility to add our voice to repair, together it formed a chorus, a prayer of sorts. Indeed, it did feel prayerful as each added their voice through image and word. I found myself jotting words that spoke to me individually, but that collectively do in fact form a prayer. Hopefully you will recognize your pebble within it.

Together We Are the Prayer

Artwork by Leah Golberstein

We snowshoe due North in search of snow,

Strong enough to support the weight of polar bears.

We move on shoes of bone, 

Carefully preserved by vegan hands.

Forty years ago, you raised the cry

Returning to those smoky clouds for inspiration.

We look out from behind glass,

Safe in our enclosures

We hold our breath.

Plastic geese and turtles take form,

While gloves for safety 

Endanger our world.

It is a blackened world.

The smoke rises from the towers

With ash of rose.

Methuselah sounds the alarm,

We are but a speck in tree time.

Tree rings tell us of the past

So, we can shape the future.

What we need is a symbiotic way to heal.

Stay still,

Breathe underwater.

Artwork by Gloria Cooper

How do we cure this sick earth?

The next generation will lead the way.

We start small.

A blade of grass.

Grow, grow

The angel whispers,

It’s not too late.

We can recover

Bringing color back into the delicate reefs.

We’ll use walkabout water in a canteen,

Let the milkweed grow to draw the butterflies, 

And wash our jeans but once a year 

Lest fabric fibers find ocean depths. 

We will find the answer just three feet out our door.

Every unique green, 

A new shade of hope.

We will wear our flood pants

And find our reflection in the stream.

Artwork by Liba Zweigbaum-Herman

Together we are the prayer.  

Let us build nesting boxes to save the spirit of the forest,

Let us sound the shofar, 

And teach the youth.

Because, we want to bestow a future.

We must begin.

Let us find refuge in the womb of nature, 

Finding our way back from fright, 

To beauty 

And mystery.



In closing, let me share the words with which Meryll concluded our lab:
Hazak, hazak, v'nithazek  (Be strong, be strong and let us be strengthened)

Sound Bath

by Susan Weinberg

It has been a time of much stress.The isolation, loss of routine and fears associated with the coronavirus morphed over night into a nation horrified by the death of George Floyd. An entire world erupted in protest.

We are at a point of change as a nation and that amplifies the stress we carry within us. In light of this unique and challenging moment the lab pivoted to an exercise designed to address that stress. Fortunately within our midst we have many talents. Leah Golberstein led us in an exercise called a sound bath.

A sound bath is a meditation that guides us to a deeper meditative state through the use of vibration. You may have seen Tibetan bowls, but these bowls are made of crushed quartz crystal, silica sand.  The use of sound in meditation is based on the fact that everything has a vibration and we respond to the vibrations around us.

Dr. Mitchell Gaynor, an oncologist and author of The Healing Power of Sound notes that:“If we accept that sound is vibration, and we know that vibration touches every part of our physical being, the way we understand sound is heard not only through our ears but through every cell in our bodies. 

For more information you can explore the resource tab at Leah's meditation website.

Now, sit back and relax while you immerse yourself in good vibrations!