Shmirat Halashon and Tefilla

 

SHMIRAT HALASHON & TEFILLAH

 

I had a conversation with the great facilitator of conversations, MS, to whom I am grateful for her suggestions and helping me process and put this to writing (not to mention sending me a capture of what we discussed). 

Strategizing prayers is a high form of שמירת השון as taught by Rebbe ^נ׳י.  So I undertook to do so as a שמירה for Aviva bas Shaina Chana, may she have a thorough and quick רפואה שלימה. 

I recall S.Y. Agnon’s story, Tehila, which introduced to me the concept that every person has a limited number of words they get to speak in their lifetime.

“After days I came to fully understand the man’s logic: that a man shouldn’t spend in a short time what’s been allotted to him for all the days of his life. I trained myself to closely examine every word, whether it truly needed to be said, and came to be frugal with speech. And being frugal in speech, I was left with a great treasury full of words. My days have been drawn out until I speak all the words that were allotted to me.”

So each word, then is precious, and as applied to words of תפילה, each breath you take to speak should honor your נשמה, should be an expression of life, and should count.

 I want to pay attention to the words I pray. 

I want to especially be aware of how and where the words, פה and שפתים show up in my תפילות. 

I want to be careful to use my mouth in a caring, constructive way with others so that my mouth can be an appropriate and effective vessel of nurturing and thus, for prayer... prayer that will be heard. 

I want to draw on and send upward healing, clean, pure prayer from my נשמה through my mouth. 

As I recite Ps. 135 — אזנים להם ולא יאזינו —I want to be aware of how precious the gifts of breath and speech are; and as I recite Ps 150 —  כל הנשמה תהלל י-ה— I want to focus on how my breath and נשמה should be focused on praising Hashem, and to focus on the word with its homonym, קול, that the entire voice of our נשמה should praise Hashem with each breath. 

I want to plug in these kavanot into my שמע קולינו, having in mind that Hashem should hear the voices of all who are crying out to be heard, to be healed, to be helped.

By:  Nathan Kruman