Danya Ruttenberg is a rabbi and author of Nurture the Wow: Finding Spirituality in the Frustration, Boredom, Tears, Poop, Desperation, Wonder, and Radical Amazement of Parenting, and six other books. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, WaPo, Time, and many other pubs. She was named a "rabbi to watch" by Newsweek, and the Forward included her on a list of the 50 most influential women rabbis.
Posts By This Author
Trump Wanted Prayers for America. So Let’s Pray
What is your prayer for our nation as it celebrates 250 years? Here’s a place to start.
HOW CAN WE PRAY, with honesty and humility, for the United States of America? We asked ministers, writers, activists, and faith leaders to write prayers for our nation. Some have roots in this land that run deeper than the Declaration of Independence, others are more recent additions to the American tapestry. With words of confession, thanksgiving, and supplication, they wrote from their hearts. Some prayers ring with hope, others carry the weight of years of harm to the land and people. But all these prayers are written with love, a love willing to tell the truth, even when it hurts; a love that never fails. This is the truest form of patriotism. This is what it means to seek the peace and welfare of the land in which God has placed us (Jeremiah 29:7).
May you find in these words the power of remembrance in a culture of intentional forgetting, encouragement amid despair, and joyful connection with our Creator and with all creation beyond national boundaries.
As you read these words, what is your prayer for our nation? Email us at [email protected].
—The Editors
The Question 2017 Made Us Ask
2017 was a year in which people were all too often treated as means to an end.
Perhaps in 2018 we can inscribe a different kind of a lesson.
