A Poem-Prayer against Ableism

HaMakom, the Place, Ever-Present One,
I am reaching out to You today with the wrong words.
You see, I know I’m supposed to start this prayer formulaically:
May the One who blessed our ancestors… bless us now.
But, the thing is, my ancestors had biases:
They thought blessing was for the so-called unblemished.
They thought blessing came in the form of perfectly functioning bodies
(whatever that means).
They were divinely inspired to pray each day to a God who preferred
The offerings of the unbroken.
How strange, when Jacob/Israel is the ever-limping one.
How strange, when You are called karov nishb’rei lev,
Close to the broken-hearted.
How strange, when You tell us over and over again
To love the stranger
For we know the very soul of the stranger, the marginalized,
The ones who do not belong.
(And, how strange, to wail about our ancestors’ biases
When we know
We hold unconsciously to our own.)
So I don’t want to call You the One who Blessed our Ancestors
In these days of pandemic,
In these days when my beloveds, Your creations, are called
“Acceptable Losses.”
I want to call You the One who Is in All Places,
The Ever-Present One.
HaMakom, be in all places today.
Be with our beloveds
In hospital beds and behind caregivers’ masks,
In wheelchairs and behind grocery store counters.
Be with the temporarily able-bodied and with the chronically ill and the aging
The traumatized.
Be with us in the extraordinary and the quotidian
Of staying in our homes, should we be so privileged as to have homes.
Let us be rageful, Ever-Present One,
And let us rise up in our anger
To sound the shofar of justice,
To make change, to call out ableism when we see it,
And, when the time comes, to build new institutions
That refuse to deem your creatures disposable.
Let us be loving, Ever-Present One,
And let us quiet our souls in chesed,
In the loving-kindness that emerges from covenant, from relationship,
To be present with those we love,
Through sound-waves and video conferences,
To simply express I-am-with-you,
You-are-not-alone,
I-will-fight-for-you-with — you.
HaMakom, may strangers advocate for strangers
Whose lives, whose bodies,
They cannot understand,
In whose shoes they could never walk.
HaMakom, may we know that all strangers
Have souls.
HaMakom, be in All Places
Where the pandemic of ableism infects our society.
And call us to eradicate it.
Speedily. And in our days.