Tag: asher yatzar

A Prayer for the Body: Take Two

Image: A footprint in the sand on the beach. (pixabay)

I just took an unpleasant little trip down memory lane, but with good news at the end of it. I’ve been dealing all summer with a minor foot problem, and avoiding the podiatrist. I knew I was avoiding him, rather as one might avoid the dentist. Today I finally got to the office, and as soon as I saw the big chair featured in podiatrists’ offices, all the memories came flooding back.

In March and June of 1985 I had surgery for bunions. The podiatrist-surgeon had an excellent reputation and the bunions had become a real barrier to a goal of mine: I wanted to run a marathon, but I couldn’t push off with the front part of either foot. So I went to this nice doc who said he could fix it, and I fell down a rabbit hole that would completely change my life.

I’ll spare you the details; the gist is that my mangled left foot is one of the reasons the rest of my body has troubles. I have stayed away from podiatrists’ chairs ever since my recovery from the final salvage surgery in 1988. I sat in that chair today, and I held Linda’s hand to keep memory at bay.

But here’s the lovely thing: today’s meeting with the doc was no big deal. My left foot, the mangled foot, had coped nicely with the splinter that had driven deep into it. My immune system swatted away any infection. The life force within me packaged up a long splinter that had gotten in there and had done such a good job sliding it back out that all the doc had to do was take a forceps and pull. My body works.

Back in rabbinical school, there was a prayer that used to make me angry and/or sad to say it as part of the daily prayers. It went:

Blessed are You, Eternal our God, who formed the human body with wisdom and placed within it a miraculous combination of openings and organs. It is evident and known before Your honored throne, that if only one of them should be opened or blocked at the wrong time, it would be impossible to exist and stand before You. Blessed are You, Eternal One, the healer of all flesh and worker of wonders.

“Asher Yatzar,” Shacharit

It was the “stand before You” that annoyed me – my body was steadily losing its ability to stand without pain in those years, until I finally rewrote the prayer:

Thank God it all works! — No. —

Thank God enough works.
For all our science, and all our technology,
These bodies You have made in Your wisdom are wrapped in mystery: Rooms within rooms, openings and closings,
All work so wonderfully that we only notice when they don’t.
We are able to stand or sit before You, our Creator,
Because enough works today.

Blessed are You, Eternal our God, Ruler of Time and Space,
Who heals our flesh and continues doing wonders.

Asher Yatzar, Ruth Adar, 2004

And I say that revised prayer today in gratitude, because the foot still has its problems, but the beautiful systems within me continued to function on other levels. And that was enough, praise God.

I know – so much fuss over a splinter! Ridiculous. But such is the power of bad memories. If there is some health matter you’ve been putting off out of dread I hope you will attend to it as soon as you can.

Eyes Full of Wonder

Dr. Reuben Rivera, OD, MS
Dr. Reuben Rivera, OD, MS

Yesterday I made a pilgrimage to see one of my teachers, Dr. Reuben Rivera. He’s my optometrist, but he’s much more than that. Over the past 20 years, he has not only helped me keep my vision clear and my eyes healthy, he has acquainted me with the wonders through which I see the world. I always leave his office in a state of amazement, murmuring to myself the words of the ancient prayer for the body:

Blessed are You, Eternal our God, Ruler of the time and space, Who formed human beings with wisdom and created within us openings within openings and hollows within hollows. It is well known before Your Throne of Glory that if even one of them ruptures, or if even one of them becomes blocked, it would become impossible to survive and to stand before You. Blessed are You, Eternal One, Who heals all flesh and acts wondrously.

You see, I’ll be 60 in March. I’m aging. Dr. Rivera always reminds me how wonderfully our bodies age and compensate and heal. I was hit in the eye with a stick when I was about 14. The scar’s still there, on my cornea, but the eye healed and sees just fine. I am very, very nearsighted, and now that I’m older, there are issues that go with that, but my eyes are aging with grace, plastering over the thinning places with pigment, keeping clear my window on the world. My retinas are hanging tight. My astigmatism seems to be rotating, which makes no sense to me at all, but darn, it’s a wonder!

When Dr. Rivera looks into my dilated eye, he cannot see my soul, but he can see what’s happening inside my body: how are all those fine veins and capillaries doing? How’s the blood pressure, the blood sugar, the cholesterol? What news is there from the openings within openings, the hollows within hollows? He reads all that, and he tells me about it, tells me enough that I can marvel with him at the beauty of it.

Our bodies are miracles. We lose track of that sometimes, when we worry about Hollywood standards of beauty and even more so when we confuse those standards with health. Nothing is more wonderful, more beautiful, than the simple fact that we survive.

This is the reason that I don’t worry about a conflict between science and religion. Science at its best  helps us appreciate the miracles of everyday existence. Religion at its best is the response to those miracles.

May your day be full of miracles, and your eyes full of wonder.

 

 

A Lesson from Daylight Savings

Daylight savings time annoys me. It gives me jet lag without the pleasure of travel. However I have to admit that I learned some thing from it this year.

I woke before my alarm, gently, easily, perfectly rested. Then I saw the sunlight pouring in and jerked fully awake, horrified that I had slept through my alarm and would be late to teach my Sunday morning Intro class. I calmed only when I saw the clock: yes, it was only 6:30.

“Fall back an hour” gave me the additional hour of sleep that I usually deny myself. I felt GREAT.

We make tremendous fuss in our culture about “fitness” which is almost always code for “weight.” But we often abuse our bodies in socially approved ways which leave us anything but truly fit,

There is a prayer for the body which Jews have said from ancient times, Asher Yatzar. It reminds us that our bodies are intricate creations which can be disrupted by a small misfunction. I am going to pay more attention to getting enough sleep. So thank you, Daylight Savings, for pointing out to me that I need to make this small teshuvah (adjustment.)

Is there something you need to do to take better care of your marvelous, mysterious body?

Asher Yatzar: The Prayer for the Body

This is me. Standing is not my best thing.
This is me. Standing is not my best thing.

So far, this has been a month for studying the Torah of the body. I have twice had accidents that hurt my back, and I am just now progressing to crackers and water after a bout of a mysterious virus.

I have been sustained over this time by a prayer that I have come to love. It’s the blessing Asher Yatzar that observant Jews say every morning, either as part of private morning prayers or as part of the morning service:

Blessed are You, Eternal our God, who formed the human body with wisdom and placed within it a miraculous combination of openings and organs. It is evident and known before Your honored throne, that if only one of them should be opened or blocked at the wrong time, it would be impossible to exist and stand before You. Blessed are You, Eternal One, the healer of all flesh and worker of wonders.

After a fortnight when standing is sometimes excruciatingly painful, and my “openings and organs” have been in an uproar, this prayer reminds me that I am not alone. I am one among a whole tribe of human beings made of flesh and blood, and sometimes our fragile, complex bodies are overcome by misfortune or tiny viruses.

I used to have a lot of trouble with this prayer. When we said it every morning in rabbinical school, I would sometimes get angry, because my body is often rather frustrating. I’ve had a very full life, and part of that fullness has included some adventures that left me with old injuries that never healed quite right. I was not always able to “stand before” God, in the words of the prayer. I was so frustrated that I wrote a new version that I felt I could say with a whole heart:

Thank God it all works!

No.

Thank God enough works.
For all our science, and all our technology,
These bodies You have made in Your wisdom are wrapped in mystery:
Rooms within rooms, openings and closings,
All work so wonderfully
That we only notice when they don’t.
We are able to stand or sit before You, our Creator,
Because enough works today.

Blessed are You, Eternal our God,
Ruler of Time and Space,
Who heals our flesh and continues doing wonders.

Age, illness, and injuries take their toll: bodies are fragile and complicated, and things don’t work sometimes. This takes a toll on the spirit, whether the illness is minor and miserable or major and life-changing. This is part of the human condition. Paradoxically, that is also where the spiritual element enters: it is the human condition. We are finite and fragile. This is what we are.

Nowadays I say the prayer sometimes in the traditional language, and sometimes in my rewritten form. It reminds me that my problems are not unique.  It reminds me that even a creaky, cranky fifty-something body is quite a miracle.

In the meantime, around us, the world continues to be full of wonders: the wonder of a friend calling on us, a spouse fixing the pillow, the beauty of sunshine. The world goes on: I hope to rejoin it soon.

Is there a prayer that doesn’t work for you? Have you ever rewritten a prayer to fit your need?