Our Monday Meditation podcast for today is by Caroline Kittle, our Youth Pastor. For Monday we change the format of the Daily Prayers a bit to focus more on the meditation aspect, so we don’t have a written version for this one, but here is Caroline’s introduction.
Rabbi Cooper wrote this meditation “Practicing Kavvanah: Part 1” in his book, “God is a Verb: Kabbalah and the practice of mystical Judaism” (p. 175). I read this book in a class at University of Michigan entitled, The Psychology of Spirituality. The purpose of this meditation is to raise our awareness of the holy sparks hidden within every moment, and raise the holy sparks back to their source. When we raise our intention (the direction of our heart) through awareness, we begin to experience the presence of God during difficult events and even amidst our own distracting thoughts. This meditation is based on traditional Jewish morning blessings. It can be done daily.
This meditation is special to me because I try to practice kavvanah every day. I believe that the God of Israel worked through Jesus to reach many people. This means that we must be humbled in our awareness that *we* did not discover God, but rather, God comes to us, exactly where we are today. The presence of God goes beyond religious divides. When we are able to raise our awareness to the divine sparks within all of creation through the direction of our hearts (kavvanah), we are more ready to do God’s will, rather than insisting on our own. We become more aware, that we may glorify God and not ourselves. We receive the peace that Jesus received from God, and spread to us through his breath and body.