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Shabbat Challenge Lab 5: Finding Time for Your Soul: Pray, Meditate, Breathe, Refresh & Re-Soul

05/07/2015 09:54:56 AM

May7

Shabbat Challenge Lab 5
Finding Time for Your Soul: Pray, Meditate, Breathe, Refresh & Re-Soul

What can you do this Shabbat that will help you reconnect with your soul?

 

It is rare that we make it through a Shabbat here at Bnai Keshet without singing Veshamru. It is part of the Friday night liturgy, we sing it when we repeat the Amidah Saturday morning and we sing after services before we bless the wine. This song-prayer is all about the power of keeping some kind of Shabbat practice. It ends with the line, “…for in six days did YHVH make the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day God stopped,  vayinafash.

 

Typically this word vayinafash is translated as “rested” our prayer book translates it in a really nice way, “on the seventh day God stopped and drew a breath of rest.” This translation is connecting to the root word nefesh which means breath. But nefesh also means soul. We could read this line as “on the seventh day God stopped, and re-souled.”

 

Putting aside the challenges of what it means for God to re-soul (or breath or rest for that matter) this line is meant to be an inspiration for what we might do for ourselves to keep Shabbat.  What practices might you try that would help you to feel more connected to your soul? What might help you to breath restfully?

 

Traditionally, Shabbat services were meant to be this kind of practice. Prayer and blessings are meant to help us find the time to remember that we have a soul and listen to it. Meditation and study also can help us reconnect with what is in our heart when life feels expansive.

 

This Shabbat I invite you to find a time to pray or to pray with soul. Or find a time to meditate. Or if you have another practice that helps you to breathe with ease and connect with your spirit try that.

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Fri, March 29 2024 19 Adar II 5784