on my lips

Discouraged and bound to petty worries, I see myself praying, praying to pray. As Nachman suggests, praying to find the words for the prayer that life provokes from my heart. Even as I articulate the words, I feel the swell of all that robs humanity of hope crowding around the new baby, this newborn prayer, absorbing its light and cloaking it in doubt and darkness. It's like a race, to keep the prayer always new, always at dawn, to fortify the words against a thousand corrupting influences. Maybe that's why an old sage might stay up all night to pray, to make sure the dawn is pure and nothing blocks its rays.

So, on your mark, get set, go, here's the prayer.

Let the soul of humanity be deeply nourished by the beauty of human souls and the mystery of their radiant origin. As a friend of mine might say, let us become drunk on the event of ourselves and others and warmed by the unseeable light that carries us continually into being.

Amen