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Communion words in Hebrew and English.

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These are traditional Jewish blessings that I’ve incorporated into the Communion service. They seem logical to use, as Jesus would have known and used these prayers every week for Sabbath. I’ve included the Hebrew, the transliteration, and the English for all the blessings. Feel free to use both the Hebrew and/or the English. It is important to make the people you are celebrating Communion with feel special and included. Use what you feel would be most meaningful and inclusive.

Put out a nice cloth that has room for everything you need. You’ll need two candles, a plate, a goblet, an unbroken piece of matzo, and some grape juice (or wine).

Light the candles with these words –
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ברוך אתה ה’ א לוהינו, מלך העולם, אשר קדשנו במצותיו וצונו להדליק נר של שבת

Barukh atah Adonai Eloheinu melekh ha’olam asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu l’hadlik ner shel shabbat.

Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who has sanctified us with commandments, and commanded us to light Shabbat candles.
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Then, touching the matzo lightly, bless it with these words –
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ברוך אתה ה’ א לוהינו, מלך העולם, המוציא לחם מן הארץ

Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu melekh ha’olam hamotzi lehem min ha’aretz.

Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.
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Break it into smaller pieces – enough for everybody there, and distribute it.

Then, holding up the goblet with the grape juice (or wine), say these words –
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ברוך אתה ה’ א לוהינו, מלך העולם, בורא פרי הגפן

Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu melekh ha’olam borei p’ri hagafen.

Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the universe, who creates the fruit of the vine.
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Pass around the goblet and let everyone drink from it. They can also choose to dip their matzo piece into the grape juice (or wine) and then eat it.

(If this has been of use to you, you might want to read “The Condensed Gospel” and “Free Range Faith”, both available in print and e-book from Amazon, by Betsy Nelson)

Rules versus love.

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Sometimes rules help. Sometimes they hinder.

There have been times where I have created a rule to help me on a project. This is useful when I have either no idea what I’m going to do next or worse, I have no idea how to start. If I’ve fun out of ideas for what to make in my beaded creations I’ll grab two bins and make up a rule that I can only make jewelry from those bins. If I want to write a poem I’ll pick a poem form like a sestina and use it.

Sometimes having a structure or a framework at the beginning is just the start I need to get things rolling right along.

But then sometimes a rule gets in the way. Sometimes the rule worked at the beginning but then no longer serves its intended purpose.

The goal is more important than the rule. If the rule no longer moves you towards your goal then drop the rule and either use another one or figure it out as you go. It is just like driving and then encountering a traffic jam. You need to get to your destination. Do you stay on the freeway, stuck in the traffic jam, or do you get off at the nearest exit and take the side road? If the situation is dire enough, you may even have to abandon your car and walk.

This is exactly what Jesus did when he threw away a lot of the Jewish rules of purity and separation. The goal is live in love. The goal is to show that love to God and then likewise to everyone else. He realized that a lot of the rules were no longer working. They were being done out of habit or even out of fear. But they weren’t getting people towards the goal. In some ways they were drawing people away from the goal because performing the actions had become the goal.

Jesus healed a woman on the Sabbath. That was “work.” So he was breaking a rule.

Luke 13:10-14
10 One Sabbath day as Jesus was teaching in a synagogue, 11 he saw a woman who had been crippled by an evil spirit. She had been bent double for eighteen years and was unable to stand up straight.12 When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Dear woman, you are healed of your sickness!”13 Then he touched her, and instantly she could stand straight. How she praised God! 14 But the leader in charge of the synagogue was indignant that Jesus had healed her on the Sabbath day. “There are six days of the week for working,” he said to the crowd. “Come on those days to be healed, not on the Sabbath.”

Then Jesus immediately points out that there is another rule that allows for it.

Luke 13:15-17
15 But the Lord replied, “You hypocrites! Each of you works on the Sabbath day! Don’t you untie your ox or your donkey from its stall on the Sabbath and lead it out for water? 16 This dear woman, a daughter of Abraham, has been held in bondage by Satan for eighteen years. Isn’t it right that she be released, even on the Sabbath?” 17 This shamed his enemies, but all the people rejoiced at the wonderful things he did.

When Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath, he broke a rule.

Mark 3:1-6
Now He entered the synagogue again, and a man was there who had a paralyzed hand. 2 In order to accuse Him, they were watching Him closely to see whether He would heal him on the Sabbath. 3 He told the man with the paralyzed hand, “Stand before us.” 4 Then He said to them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do what is good or to do what is evil, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent.5 After looking around at them with anger and sorrow at the hardness of their hearts, He told the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out, and his hand was restored. 6 Immediately the Pharisees went out and started plotting with the Herodians against Him, how they might destroy Him.

It was after this that the leaders started actively plotting to kill him. He hasn’t “worked.” He’s healed. They are missing the point of the rule. The rule of Sabbath is to heal us. This man was being healed on the Sabbath.

So the punishment for healing on the Sabbath is death? Seems a bit excessive.

The purpose of the Sabbath rules of refraining from work is to ensure that everyone rests. We all work too much. We all spend way too much time being human doings rather than human beings. If we don’t take a day off to rest we will wear ourselves out. The week is just like the day. If we don’t take time at the end of the day to sleep we get frazzled and frayed. If we don’t take time at the end of the week to rest we get unraveled entirely.

But the rules had gone too far. The rules were meant to keep the Jewish people mindful of their special covenant with God, and to make them mindful of their duty to God. Many times throughout their history they had collectively forgotten this goal and had suffered greatly for it. Throughout their wanderings in the desert large swaths of the Jewish people were destroyed by God for getting off track and out of line. Many of the Jewish rules for how to conduct your life were created to keep God’s wrath at a low simmer rather than from boiling over.

But Jesus came to point out that the rules were not only getting them towards the goal of loving God, but they were simply being used as a stopgap to keep God loving them. They didn’t get that if they showed love to God, then God would show love to them. They were acting out of fear rather than love.

Church refugee. On circle, and communion.

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I’ve met so many refugees from church recently. We are starting to find each other. We are all people who went to church for many years because we love Jesus. We left church because we weren’t finding him there.

So many of us feel hurt by church. We were made fun of or silenced. We were mocked for our gifts and talents. It seems that all we were wanted for was our money. We were expected to sit down and shut up and listen to the minister and pay our tithes and then go home and be equally passive. If we read the Bible for ourselves and asked questions we were discouraged. We knew in our hearts that this wasn’t right. We knew that God wanted more of us.

We tried to make it work in church. We volunteered for more activities. We were on committees. We were in several different groups. We were active. We were the first at the church and the last to leave on Sunday morning.

But it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough for us, and it wasn’t enough for God. We were trying to make it work.

So we left. Some of us left the churches we’d put a lot of time and money into. Some of us left the churches that we were raised in, that our families still go to.

Several of us have found each other in a circle gathering. We share time together, and we are honest and open. Each person gets to talk, and every person listens. This is so different from church as we know it.

But for me, there is one thing missing. We don’t invite Jesus into it.

This isn’t an interfaith gathering. We are refugees from church, remember? We are people who left church because we couldn’t find Jesus there. While many of us think that Buddha and Rumi are enlightened beings and we like to share their quotes, we are still afraid in these gatherings to invite Jesus into it.

Why is this? Have we thrown out the baby with the bathwater? Are we afraid to bring Jesus into our circle because we associate Jesus with the people we left? If people are hateful, they don’t have Jesus. If there is love, then Jesus is there. If there was love at our last church, we would have stayed.

We left because we felt undervalued, underappreciated. We left because we were silenced. We left because we knew that the car that is church was going off the road and to stay in it would have meant we were going to go off the cliff with it. We left because we’d rather walk towards what is right than go quickly towards what isn’t.

So while we are reevaluating what church is, what community is, we aren’t taking the Guide along with us. We aren’t inviting Jesus into our circle, into our hearts.

I’m considering hosting my own circle, and I want to have communion. From all I’ve read of the words of Jesus and from my personal prayer time I’ve realized that you don’t have to be ordained to do this. That is yet another method of controlling people. Jesus didn’t create the institution of priests. Jesus did away with all of that and gave the power to everybody, with no distinctions. Jesus made us all equal.

I’m learning more and more about Judaism, and it is amazing how diluted the Christian communion service is. It is simply a Sabbath meal at the dinner table. It has been boiled down to the bread and the wine. There are two candlesticks as well. The chalice and the paten are the Kiddush cup and the saucer. It is like Christians are playing house. The congregation doesn’t know about the Jewish roots of this ritual.

I’m thinking about making it as inclusive as possible – having kosher grape juice and gluten-free matzo. While I’d love to serve actual wine, it isn’t fair to exclude those people who are in recovery. While I’d love to serve challah, the bread that is served at the Sabbath meal, it isn’t fair to those who are gluten intolerant. And while some churches will have a separate line for those people who are gluten intolerant, and tell those in recovery to let the cup pass them by – that isn’t fair. We all need to share the same bread and wine. When you exclude someone, you are saying they aren’t the same. When someone has to exclude themselves for health reasons, they are making themselves stick out. If the elements of the meal are safe for everybody, then everybody is welcome and everybody is equal.

And that is really important.

Rest period.

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You know you need to take time off when you start to seriously contemplate calling in sick and then you realize that it is your day off. I’ve crammed so much stuff into my days off that they aren’t days off. I still do just as much work – I just don’t get paid for it.

Now, I’ve come to realize how important momentum is for me. If I laze about all day, then I tend to keep doing that. I’m a binge lazy person. Doing nothing is the same to me as eating sugar is to some people. Once I start, I can’t stop.

Well, I can, but I don’t want to.

I think the trick is to set limits. I have to allow myself time to do nothing. From this time to this – say from 12 until 3, I’ll do nothing on my day off. Nothing at all. Lay on the couch and read, or make jewelry. Something for me. Something fun. That sounds like a good plan. Maybe I’ll do it someday.

Right now, I’m playing a bit of catch up. I decided to skip going to my yoga class. The teacher is more challenging than the first one, but she needs to change things up to keep it interesting. I really get bored if nothing changes. I need to be challenged. I need to try different moves. If nothing else, I need to hear different music. I’d like to think that a yoga class with a real live person is different than watching a videorecorded one.

However, even though it is dull sometimes, I need the discipline of getting up and going. I need to be out of the house early on a Friday, otherwise I’ll stay in my pajamas all afternoon long and not get any of my chores done. And then I start to think – is that so bad? Is it bad to rest? Is it bad to actually take a day off?

It is for me. I feel guilty if I rest.

I have a bad relationship with rest. I really am starting to like the idea of the Jewish Sabbath. One whole day where you are commanded to do as much nothing as possible. You can’t feel guilty about doing nothing – you are supposed to do nothing. You are supposed to feel guilty if you do something. You are to rest and recharge and refuel.

We just don’t have that in Christian culture. Sure, we sometimes refer to the day we go to church as the Sabbath, but we don’t treat it with anywhere near the preparation and seriousness the Jews approach their Sabbath. And I think we suffer because of it. Imagine how cool it would be to have a holiday once a week. Once a week you take a vacation from the world, and enter into a special time where there is nothing you have to do except rest. Sounds just like heaven to me.

I have a bit of the “get things done” feeling in part because my parents died young. I feel like it is important to not waste time. I see how quickly time slips by and then you are either too old to do something with your life, or too feeble. Some things take time to get going. Better start now.

But then I am starting to understand that I need to rest too. There are rest periods build into yoga. It isn’t go go go. The human body just can’t handle that. The space between the notes is what makes the music, so says Claude Debussy.

This is why I’ve signed up for another retreat. It is a time of silence and rest. All my physical needs are taken care of. There is a place to sleep, and food is prepared for me. All I have to do is show up and be present. The only electronic device I use is my Kindle – and I use it to write. I don’t check email. I don’t check Facebook. The only input is from God.

I think that I need to do this more than just four times a year. I need to set aside a chunk of time to just listen, and by that I don’t mean little snatches of time. The more I pack into my day, the more God can’t get a word in edgewise. I pray throughout the day, but it all seems to be in five minute pieces.

Sure, bills have to be paid. Sure, the housework needs to be done. But if I don’t take time off, time to just be, then I’ve become something other than a human. I’ve become an automaton, a robot, a thing. I’ve become a human doing, and not a human being.

So I still wrestle with this. I feel like I’m in overeaters anonymous. Having a bad relationship with food isn’t like having a drug addiction – you have to eat food. You can give up heroin. You can’t give up food. So how to you create a healthy relationship with something you have to have in your life? I think boundaries are part of it. I can allow this, but not this. I can allow this time to be work and this time to be free. I think it is important to self-police too. I think it is important to not allow my free time to become work time.

I’ll report back on whether this works or not. As of right now, I’m still in my jammies and it is 1:30. I think I have to wrench myself free and go out for a bit, just so I can say I’ve done something. My head gets a little fuzzy with too much nothing.

Every day is the Sabbath.

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We are told to keep the Sabbath holy, but which day is that? Is it Sunday, as most Christians observe, or is it Saturday, as Jews and Seventh-Day Adventists observe, or is it Friday, as Muslims observe?

The early Christians decided to set aside Sunday to worship because that is the day that Jesus rose from the tomb, and they were getting a lot of flack from the Jews. They were convinced that Jesus was the Christ, so in their minds they were simply Jews who had found the Messiah. The Jews didn’t agree that Jesus was the fulfillment of the prophecies, so they chased them out of their synagogues. So the Sabbath got shifted a day. The Seventh-Day Adventists are Christian but follow the original Jewish Sabbath observance. Then we have Muslims, who pray every day but choose Friday as a special day of observance. It isn’t seen as a special day of rest so much as an obligatory day of prayer.

But then we have Psalm 118:24 “This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.” (Holman Christian Standard translation)

I tell you that every day is the Sabbath. Every day is a day to remember that God made you and everyone else and everything. Every day is a day to give thanks for all the many blessings of this life. Every moment of every day is a time to be filled with the knowledge and love of God. It is good to live your life full of thankfulness and awareness of God.

Why wait for only one day a week to praise God? Why wait for only one day a week to uplift your soul? Every moment can be a time of communion with God, even in the middle of a routine transaction at work. God is constantly seeking us, constantly desiring for us to be in communion with him. You don’t have to quit your job and join a monastery or a non-profit to focus your heart and mind on God. It can be done right now, right where you are.