The Shape and Size of a Prayer

Is a Prayer round or square?

Is a prayer more like an email or a phone call?

Is a Prayer very loud or more like a whisper?

Does a prayer make a sound? What sound would a Prayer make?

If a Prayer could take a particular shape, what would a Prayer look like?

Is a Prayer hot or cold?

What does a Prayer feel like, very soft like a pillow or very hard like the sidewalk?

Does a Prayer smell like a flower or like cinnamon?

Is the light that a Prayer gives off more like that of a candle or more like that of the sun?

Does a Prayer taste more like hot chocolate or honey?

Is a Prayer more like the sun or the North Star?
Is a Prayer more like the sun or the moon?

Does a Prayer weigh a lot or just a little?

Does a Prayer fill a whole room or just a small part of the room?

Must a Prayer always be very serious or can a Prayer just be very joyful?

Does one Prayer weigh more than another Prayer?

Is a Prayer smooth like a piece of glass or rough like a piece of sand paper?

Can you hear the answer to your prayer?

If a Prayer fell into your hand, would it land softly?

Sentinals in the Night

The freeway was mostly empty of cars last night as I drove home from work. By midnight, most people have enough sense to be off the roads and at home in bed. As I proceeded home, I had driven past that stretch of the parkway with a lot of businesses on either side of the road and the only illumination came from my headlights and from the freeway lighting mounted on the towering poles in the center of the road. The lights were mounted in pairs, each light facing out toward either side of the road. The pairs of lights stood like sentinels, one pair after another stretching out ahead of me. The yellowish points of light snaked out into the night, sometimes rising, sometimes falling. These sentinels lit my way ahead, undulating to the left and right and then straightening out for a stretch of road. The road would dogleg to the left again or to the right perhaps. I had a sure sense of where the road would go just ahead and I could mentally note that I would need to turn just a bit to the left or right in about a minute. These sentinels were my unwavering guides to what lay just ahead and they marked the way home through the darkness that covered the land on either side of the road.

As kids, you are so very fortunate to have parents who love you and who want only the best for you. At least for awhile, they will be there for you, like those streetlights were for me on the freeway. Your mom and dad will be there to guide you and offer you advice as you get older and prepare for the time when you will be expected to live on your own and to make your own decisons independently.

As you have probably already figured out, the world can be a pretty confusing and complicated place. Everything is not necessarily what it seems to be. In some situations, you will have a difficult time deciding which of two possible choices you should select. So many things are just so unclear or just a complete mystery. However, for the moment, your parents can help you to make good choices and good decisions. They will be there for you when you need them. And if you make a mistake or screw up, they will love you just the same. When they were young like you, they made mistakes too. But they learned from their mistakes, just as you will learn from your own mistakes.

They are the sentinals who will help you to see the path ahead into the future. Your mom and dad are the sentinals who will enable you to one day be able to leave home and to go out into the world, living on your own... living independently. For now, they will light your way to that day.

Questions to Answer:

1. What does the word, sentinal, mean?

2. In exploring the role your parents play in your lives, what is the main idea of this passage.

3. How are the streetlights on the freeway like sentinals?

4. Do you think that comparing your parents to sentinals helps you to understand the main idea of this passage? Why or why not?

Prayer in Our Lives: A Way of Connecting

This year, Town Meeting HCRJ will focus on helping us to understand the place of prayer in our lives.

We will explore what it means to pray. We will explore how we psych ourselves up so that we are able to pray. We will will talk about the reasons that we sometimes need to pray. In our sessions we will think about how we are supposed to be feeling at the time.

What exactly is prayer? Consider the following definition. "Prayer, like plugging in an electrical appliance or logging on to the internet, is a way of connecting. We may not understand how electricity or the World Wide Web work, but we still benefit from using them. Likewise, when we pray we may not at first understand to whom we are praying, nor how we might be answered, but by daring to make that connection..." we can begin to make some sense of the things that are happening to us in our lives. We can begin to figure out who we are and where we fit into the world. Prayer enables us to find strength that we did not know we had, to find hope when life gets a little bumpy and to learn how to forgive ourselves and others when things get screwed up.

We will also learn something about how we can use time, as well. These days we live very busy lives, with too much to do and not enough time to do it. Being so busy, it is easy for us to sometimes neglect the things that are most important in our lives, like spending time with our family, being considerate of the feelings of other people or setting aside time for the things that make us feel good about ourselves.

Rabbi Abraham Heschel called the Sabbath "...an island in time." Why do we need an island in time? We set aside a part of the Sabbath to find a quiet place and time where we can just think clearly. We have a lot of issues and problems we have to deal with every day. Setting aside a block of time away from the television set or the computer gives us the opportunity to sort things out. When we have these conversations with ourselves, it isn't a lot different from praying. We are connecting with ourselves and in the process keeping things real.
Learning how to make prayer a part of our lives will enable us to connect to ourselves as well.

This may all seem a lot to be taking in. Even adults have a problem fully understanding the idea of prayer and how praying works. So let's just take this adventure in learning one step at a time and see where it takes us. Come with good questions and your own take on things and share those thoughts with us.

Once again, welcome to Town Meeting this year. Hopefully this will be a very interesting and rich experience for all of us.

Kindest regards,

Howard Fireman