On January 5, I attended a meeting of CAFe', Communities in Action in Faith of Southern New Mexico, the local affiliate of PICO (People Improving Communities Through Organizing). I listened to the stories told by those who had gathered for training on the issues of immigration reform and preventing financial institutions from foreclosing on homes while homeowners were in the midst of seeking a loan modification. The experiences of foreclosures and family-splitting deportations are very real, and the causes are, quite often, policies that fall short of acknowledging the humanity of the people being affected by narrow-minded rules and decisions.
That evening, I began to hear in my mind the words of a reading from the Reform Jewish prayerbook, Mishkan T'filah, taken from a poem by Yiddish poet Katya Molodowsky (translated by Kathryn Hellerstein). Katya Molodowsky immigrated to the United States in 1935 after living in Russia and Poland (she was born in 1894 and died in 1974).
This is the text in the prayerbook:
Don't let me fall
as a stone falls upon the hard ground.
And don't let my hands become dry
Like the twigs of a tree
when the wind beats down the last leaves
And when the storm raises dust from the earth
with anger and howling,
don't let me fall.
I have asked for so much,
but as a blade of your grass in a distant wild field
lets drop a seed in the lap of the earth
and dies away,
sow in me Your living breath
as You sow a seed in the earth.
(the next two lines are the ending blessing for the reading about creation in the morning introductory prayers)
Baruch atah adonai, Rofei chol basar u-maf-li la-a-sot
Blessed are You, Adonai, who heals all flesh, working wondrously.
The melody began with four descending notes, the first three a step apart and the last note a fourth below the third note. It was a musical way of illustrating the sense fo falling, but the major key turned the phrase into a plea, even a proclamation that "falling" was not going to happen if God was present. At the beginning of the poem, the chords move and then pause while the first line is sung, as if to represent either breathing or a heartbeat, the pulse of living. As I constructed the music, I felt as if I was interacting with the lines of the poem to fashion independent melodies that echoed each other and that always came back to the "don't let me fall" theme. The ending blessing about healing and wonders completes this prayer with a declaration that even when we feel that we are falling, God - and people around us through whom God is working - will offer us support and hope.
(I made the recording on YouTube just after I created the melody).
That evening, I began to hear in my mind the words of a reading from the Reform Jewish prayerbook, Mishkan T'filah, taken from a poem by Yiddish poet Katya Molodowsky (translated by Kathryn Hellerstein). Katya Molodowsky immigrated to the United States in 1935 after living in Russia and Poland (she was born in 1894 and died in 1974).
This is the text in the prayerbook:
Don't let me fall
as a stone falls upon the hard ground.
And don't let my hands become dry
Like the twigs of a tree
when the wind beats down the last leaves
And when the storm raises dust from the earth
with anger and howling,
don't let me fall.
I have asked for so much,
but as a blade of your grass in a distant wild field
lets drop a seed in the lap of the earth
and dies away,
sow in me Your living breath
as You sow a seed in the earth.
(the next two lines are the ending blessing for the reading about creation in the morning introductory prayers)
Baruch atah adonai, Rofei chol basar u-maf-li la-a-sot
Blessed are You, Adonai, who heals all flesh, working wondrously.
The melody began with four descending notes, the first three a step apart and the last note a fourth below the third note. It was a musical way of illustrating the sense fo falling, but the major key turned the phrase into a plea, even a proclamation that "falling" was not going to happen if God was present. At the beginning of the poem, the chords move and then pause while the first line is sung, as if to represent either breathing or a heartbeat, the pulse of living. As I constructed the music, I felt as if I was interacting with the lines of the poem to fashion independent melodies that echoed each other and that always came back to the "don't let me fall" theme. The ending blessing about healing and wonders completes this prayer with a declaration that even when we feel that we are falling, God - and people around us through whom God is working - will offer us support and hope.
(I made the recording on YouTube just after I created the melody).
To learn about CAFe', go to http://www.organizenm.org/
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