{ "clip_details": { "clip": { "is_admin": 0, "is_owner": 0, "handle": "art-blessing-day-marge-piercy", "title": "The Art of Blessing the Day by Marge Piercy", "author": "Rachel Goldberg", "author_handle": "rpultusker129294", "author_initials": "RG", "covertext": "The Art of Blessing the Day By Marge Piercy This is the blessing for rain after drought: Come down, wash the air so it s...", "user_image": "", "user_image_original": "", "body": "<p>The Art of Blessing the Day</p>\n\n<p>By Marge Piercy</p>\n\n<p>This is the blessing for rain after drought:</p>\n\n<p>Come down, wash the air so it shimmers,</p>\n\n<p>a perfumed shawl of lavender chiffon.</p>\n\n<p>Let the parched leaves suckle and swell.</p>\n\n<p>Enter my skin, wash me for the little</p>\n\n<p>chrysalis of sleep rocked in your plashing.</p>\n\n<p>In the morning the world is peeled to shining.</p>\n\n<p>This is the blessing for sun after long rain:</p>\n\n<p>Now everything shakes itself free and rises.</p>\n\n<p>The trees are bright as pushcart ices.</p>\n\n<p>Every last lily opens its satin thighs.</p>\n\n<p>The bees dance and roll in pollen</p>\n\n<p>and the cardinal at the top of the pine</p>\n\n<p>sings at full throttle, fountaining.</p>\n\n<p>This is the blessing for a ripe peach:</p>\n\n<p>This is luck made round. Frost can nip</p>\n\n<p>the blossom, kill the bee. It can drop,</p>\n\n<p>a hard green useless nut. Brown fungus,</p>\n\n<p>the burrowing worm that coils in rot can</p>\n\n<p>blemish it and wind crush it on the ground.</p>\n\n<p>Yet this peach fills my mouth with juicy sun.</p>\n\n<p>This is the blessing for the first garden tomato:</p>\n\n<p>Those green boxes of tasteless acid the store</p>\n\n<p>sells in January, those red things with the savor</p>\n\n<p>of wet chalk, they mock your fragrant name.</p>\n\n<p>How fat and sweet you are weighing down my palm,</p>\n\n<p>warm as the flank of a cow in the sun.</p>\n\n<p>You are the savor of summer in a thin red skin.</p>\n\n<p>This is the blessing for a political victory:</p>\n\n<p>Although I shall not forget that things</p>\n\n<p>work in increments and epicycles and sometime</p>\n\n<p>leaps that half the time fall back down,</p>\n\n<p>let's not relinquish dancing while the music</p>\n\n<p>fits into our hips and bounces our heels.</p>\n\n<p>We must never forget, pleasure is real as pain.</p>\n\n<p>The blessing for the return of a favorite cat,</p>\n\n<p>the blessing for love returned, for friends'</p>\n\n<p>return, for money received unexpected,</p>\n\n<p>the blessing for the rising of the bread,</p>\n\n<p>the sun, the oppressed. I am not sentimental</p>\n\n<p>about old men mumbling the Hebrew by rote</p>\n\n<p>with no more feeling than one says gesundheit.</p>\n\n<p>But the discipline of blessings is to taste</p>\n\n<p>each moment, the bitter, the sour, the sweet</p>\n\n<p>and the salty, and be glad for what does not</p>\n\n<p>hurt. The art is in compressing attention</p>\n\n<p>to each little and big blossom of the tree</p>\n\n<p>of life, to let the tongue sing each fruit,</p>\n\n<p>its savor, its aroma and its use.</p>\n\n<p>Attention is love, what we must give</p>\n\n<p>children, mothers, fathers, pets,</p>\n\n<p>our friends, the news, the woes of others.</p>\n\n<p>What we want to change we curse and then</p>\n\n<p>pick up a tool. Bless whatever you can</p>\n\n<p>with eyes and hands and tongue. If you</p>\n\n<p>can't bless it, get ready to make it new.</p>\n\n<p><br />\n </p>", "cliptype": "text", "clipsource": "Marge Piercy", "featured": 1, "featuredIn": null, "is_public": 1, "is_published": 1, "media": { "image": null, "audio": null, "video": null }, "thumbnail": null, "clip_section": [ { "haggadah_section": "Conclusion", "slug": "conclusion" } ], "likes": 0, "downloads": 263, "tags": [], "themes": [], "language": "0", "is_bookmarked": "0", "is_liked": 0, "meta_tags": { "title": "The Art of Blessing the Day by Marge Piercy | Passover haggadah by Rachel Goldberg", "description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "keywords": "", "og:type": "article", "og:url": "https://www.haggadot.com/clip/art-blessing-day-marge-piercy", "og:title": "The Art of Blessing the Day by Marge Piercy | Passover haggadah by Rachel Goldberg", "og:description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "og:image": "" } } }, "contributed_by": { "author": "Rachel Goldberg", "handle": "rpultusker129294", "author_initials": "RG", "total_books": 1, "total_clips": 3, "total_followers": 0, "is_following": 0 }, "user_book": null, "clips_by_author": [ { "clip": { "is_admin": 0, "is_owner": 0, "handle": "sitting-seder-table", "title": "Sitting at a seder table", "author": "Rachel Goldberg", "author_handle": "rpultusker129294", "author_initials": "RG", "covertext": "Sitting at a seder is an act of courage. It is an act of hope. It is an act of affirmation of Jewish identity. And it is...", "user_image": "", "user_image_original": "", "body": "<p>Sitting at a seder is an act of courage. It is an act of hope. It is an act of affirmation of Jewish identity. And it is an act of attempting to create a new and better world. We fill our chairs, and we inspire future generations to fill theirs and to tell the story, to remember and to prove that we will never, ever, ever be destroyed. Instead, we will keep trying to repair the world and to make its brokenness whole, through our stories and our lives. (Jordana Horn)</p>\n", "cliptype": "text", "clipsource": "", "featured": 0, "featuredIn": null, "is_public": 1, "is_published": 1, "media": { "image": null, "audio": null, "video": null }, "thumbnail": null, "clip_section": [ { "haggadah_section": "Introduction", "slug": "introduction" } ], "likes": 0, "downloads": 244, "tags": [], "themes": [], "language": "0", "is_bookmarked": "0", "is_liked": 0, "meta_tags": { "title": "Sitting at a seder table | Passover haggadah by Rachel Goldberg", "description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "keywords": "", "og:type": "article", "og:url": "https://www.haggadot.com/clip/sitting-seder-table", "og:title": "Sitting at a seder table | Passover haggadah by Rachel Goldberg", "og:description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "og:image": "" } } }, { "clip": { "is_admin": 0, "is_owner": 0, "handle": "maggid-marge-piercy-2", "title": "Maggid by Marge Piercy", "author": "Rachel Goldberg", "author_handle": "rpultusker129294", "author_initials": "RG", "covertext": "Maggid by Marge Piercy The courage to let go of the door, the handle. The courage to shed the familiar walls whose very...", "user_image": "", "user_image_original": "", "body": "<p><strong>Maggid by Marge Piercy</strong></p>\n\n<p>The courage to let go of the door, the handle.</p>\n\n<p>The courage to shed the familiar walls whose very</p>\n\n<p>stains and leaks are comfortable as the little moles</p>\n\n<p>of the upper arm; stains that recall a feast,</p>\n\n<p>a child’s naughtiness, a loud blistering storm</p>\n\n<p>that slapped the roof hard, pouring through.</p>\n\n<p>The courage to abandon the graves dug into the hill,</p>\n\n<p>the small bones of children and the brittle bones</p>\n\n<p>of the old whose marrow hunger had stolen;</p>\n\n<p>the courage to desert the tree planted and only</p>\n\n<p>begun to bear; the riverside where promises were</p>\n\n<p>shaped; the street where the empty pots were broken.</p>\n\n<p>The courage to leave the place whose language you learned</p>\n\n<p>as early as your own, whose customs however</p>\n\n<p>dangerous or demeaning, bind you like a halter</p>\n\n<p>you have learned to pull inside, to move your load;</p>\n\n<p>the land fertile with the blood spilled on it;</p>\n\n<p>the roads mapped and annotated for survival.</p>\n\n<p>The courage to walk out of the pain that is known</p>\n\n<p>into the pain that cannot be imagined,</p>\n\n<p>mapless, walking into the wilderness, going</p>\n\n<p>barefoot with a canteen into the desert;</p>\n\n<p>stuffed in the stinking hold of a rotting ship</p>\n\n<p>sailing off the map into dragons’ mouths.</p>\n\n<p>Cathay, India, Serbia, <em>goldeneh medina</em>,</p>\n\n<p>leaving bodies by the way like abandoned treasure.</p>\n\n<p>So they walked out of Egypt. So they bribed their way</p>\n\n<p>out of Russia under loaves of straw; so they steamed</p>\n\n<p>out of the bloody smoking charnelhouse of Europe</p>\n\n<p>on overloaded freighters forbidden all ports—</p>\n\n<p>out of pain into death or freedom or a different</p>\n\n<p>painful dignity, into squalor and politics.</p>\n\n<p>We Jews are all born of wanderers, with shoes</p>\n\n<p>under our pillows and a memory of blood that is ours</p>\n\n<p>raining down. We honor only those Jews who changed</p>\n\n<p>tonight, those who chose the desert over bondage,</p>\n\n<p>who walked into the strange and became strangers</p>\n\n<p>and gave birth to children who could look down</p>\n\n<p>on them standing on their shoulders for having</p>\n\n<p>been slaves. We honor those who let go of everything</p>\n\n<p>but freedom, who ran, who revolted, who fought,</p>\n\n<p>who became other by saving themselves.</p>\n", "cliptype": "text", "clipsource": "", "featured": 0, "featuredIn": null, "is_public": 1, "is_published": 1, "media": { "image": null, "audio": null, "video": null }, "thumbnail": null, "clip_section": [ { "haggadah_section": "Maggid - Beginning", "slug": "maggid-beginning" } ], "likes": 0, "downloads": 222, "tags": [], "themes": [], "language": "0", "is_bookmarked": "0", "is_liked": 0, "meta_tags": { "title": "Maggid by Marge Piercy | Passover haggadah by Rachel Goldberg", "description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. 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