Community Shabbat Welcome 2
With candle lighting and memorial thought
Opening Song:
Shabbat Shalom
Leader:
We take the Sabbath as the Day of Rest, the Day of Renewal.
Reader l:
The artist cannot be continually wielding her brush.
He must stop at times in his painting to freshen his vision of the object, the
meaning of
which she wishes to express on his canvas.
Living is also an art. We dare not become absorbed in its technical processes
and lose our
consciousness of its general plan.
Reader 2:
The Sabbath represents those moments when we pause in our brushwork
to renew our vision of this object. Having done so, we take ourselves to our
painting with clarified vision and renewed energy. This applies to the
individual and to the community alike.
Read Silently: Once upon a time a hiker walking in a forest
became lost. She wandered for hours trying to
find her way back to town, but no path led out of the forest. Suddenly she
came upon
another hiker walking through the woods. "Thank goodness!" she cried as she
hailed the
man. "Can you show me the way back to town?" The fellow smiled at her and
shook his
head from side to side. 1, too, am lost," he said. "But we can still help each
other. We can
tell each other the paths we have taken but which have failed us. That will
help us find the
one that leads out." Each of us knows the feeling of being lost. Shabbat is a
time for us to
meet; to share the paths we have taken so that together we might find our way
home again.
Candle Lighting
Reader 3:
What is more fragile than the Sabbath flame?
And yet what is more enduring?
A single breath can extinguish its glow,
Yet no storm has ever blown out its light.
All:
May the lighting of the Shabbat candies remind us
That we are the light bearers,
and to bear our light well we must share our light freely.
All (softly):
In the quiet of my soul I
Feel the
beating of the World.
It is not other than I
nor am I other than it.
As wave is to ocean so am I to
the World
and to the source that sustains it.
Song:
Na-a-seh Shalom
ba-o-larn
Na-a-seh shalom
Na-a-seh Shalom a-ley-nu
Na-a-seh shalom
Val-kol ha-o-lam.
Shalom a-ley-nu
V-im-ru, Im-ru shalom.
Val-kol ha-o-lam. (Repeat this
verse)
Torah portion or sharing of other significant readings
Memorial Thought
Reader 4:
The light of life is a finite flame. Like the Sabbath candles, life is
kindled, it burns, it glows,
it is radiant with warmth and beauty. But soon it
fades, its substance is consumed, and it is no more.
All: In light we
see; in light we are seen. The flames dance and our lives are full. But as
night follows
day, the candle of life bums down and flutters. There is an end to the flames.
We see no more and
are no more seen. Yet we do not despair, for we are more than a memory slowly
fading into the
darkness. With our lives we give life. Something of us can never die: we move
in the eternal cycle
of darkness and death, of light and life.
Conclusion
Leader:
Reach out your hand stretch
from shoulder to nail… ahh
But there is a limit to our reach
a space just beyond our grasp.
So take ONE other hand, extended, stretched and limited,
and reach from their reach, doubling the effort
pushing back the beyond.
But still there is that space not touched, that place not grasped.
So take yet another hand and reach yet another length,
adding arms and merging efforts
until all are held and all are holding:
the first embracing the last,
and the last embracing the first.
And suddenly there is no reach and no reacher;
United as one, we find the beyond to be within.
All:
Together let us bring peace to the world. Together let us bring peace to
ourselves.
Together let us say: Amen.
Life cycle events
Song:
Hiney Matov
