Amidah Offering: All This Power / Gevurot
The second blessing of the Amidah speaks to a God of gevurah: strength, heroism, boundaries, power. This blessing names God as the One Who enlivens the dead (or the deadened, or all things). Here we bless God either as the One Who brings rain and wind, or the One Who calls forth the dew. What do these ideas mean for us? What does gevurah imply for us? How does this prayer speak for us (or does it speak for us)? Where does this blessing take us? These are among the questions that animated our collaborative work on this offering of liturgy, poetry, and art.
How to use this offering: Pray these in community or on your own. Add pages from the PDF to photocopied handouts, or add slides from the slide deck to services. Make one of the slides the desktop background on your computer, or use some of the art as wallpaper for your phone. Share the prayer-poems with others. Write your own prayer-poem in response, and pray that. (Or use them in some other way — and tell us what works for you.) In short: we hope you’ll use these in whatever way will best enable these words and images to speak to and for your heart.
Both the downloadable PDF, and the google slide deck, begin with the text of the blessing out of which our creative work arises.
Also in this series:
Download the PDF:
Bayit – Gevurot – All This Power [pdf]
Preview the google slides:
The slides are also here on google drive:
Bayit Amidah Gevurot Slides
(The above link will prompt you to make your own copy of the slides, which you can then integrate with other digital offerings as you wish.)
If this speaks to you, you also might find meaning in our book From Narrow Places: Liturgy, Poetry and Art of the Pandemic Era, available now for $18.
This collection features work by Trisha Arlin, Mike Cockrill, R. Rachel Barenblat, Joanne Fink, R. Sonja Keren Pilz, Emily Rogal, Steve Silbert, and R. David Zaslow. Find our bios on the Builder Biographies page.
