This episode explores Aimee Orkin’s Judaic Prayer Wall, a luminous work shaped by grief, faith, and the practice of visual prayer. Walk with us through each blessing in this piece, inviting the art to deepen your conversation with God.

The Hashkiveinu

Use this guide for prayer and contemplation. Read slowly, pausing as needed for silence and reflection.

Opening

Find a comfortable place to sit.

Let your shoulders soften. Unclench your jaw. Rest your hands.

As you breathe in, receive this moment as a gift.

As you breathe out, release what you do not need to carry right now.

Stay here a moment.

Reflection on Contemplative Prayer

Today, you are invited to pray with an artwork that gathers many prayers into one whole—like light held in colored glass. As you gaze, let the image become a doorway. Let it carry you into God’s presence.

Some of us come to prayer with gratitude. Some come with grief, change, or exhaustion. Sometimes loss leaves us searching for meaning, longing to know that there is more than what we can see right now.

Visual prayer can help the words of faith sink more deeply into your spirit. Not only through reading, but through a gentle, sensory experience—color, shape, space, and memory.

Let us begin with a prayer for peace—peace as rest, peace as shelter, peace as a way home.

Text for Reflection

The Hashkiveinu

Lie us down to peace. Adonai our God, and raise us up to life,
our protector, and spread over us the shelter of your peace, and direct us with good advice before you, and save us for the sake of your name.

And look out for us and keep enemies, plagues, swords, famines, and troubles from our midst, and remove Satan from in front of us and from behind us, and cradle us in the shadow of your wings, for you are God who guards us and saves us.

For you are God, our gracious and merciful protector. Guard our departure and our arrival to life and to peace from now and evermore.

Holy One, meet us here. Let these words become shelter, and let your peace find us—within and around us.

Artwork for Prayerful Reflection

Judaic Prayer Wall by Aimee Orkin

As you look, notice how many prayers are held together in one work. Let the colors and patterns become a place of safety for you—a “happy place,” a beautiful place, a place where you feel connected to God.

Reflection Questions

As you begin in the bottom right—a blessing for a new day—what do you notice there, and what kind of beginning are you asking God to give you?

Moving to the bottom center—a blessing for our body—what do you sense in your body right now, and what blessing does it need?

At the bottom left—a blessing for children—who comes to mind, and what do you want to place into God’s care for them?

At the middle right—a blessing for the bride and groom—what relationship in your life is being formed, healed, or made strong?

In the center—a blessing for One God—what do you want to return to at the heart of your life, beneath all the noise and motion?

At the middle left—a blessing for travelers—where are you on the way, and what kind of guidance do you need for the road ahead?

At the top right—a blessing for healing—what place in you or in the world is asking for wholeness, and what healing do you dare to hope for?

At the top middle—a blessing for mourners—what loss do you carry, and what comfort do you want to receive from God today?

At the top left—a blessing for our soul—what is most alive in your soul right now, and what feels in need of tending?

At the top, returning to “Hashkiveinu”—“Spread over us the shelter of your peace”—where do you need to be gathered in, covered, and kept as you rest and begin again?

Closing

Adonai, gracious and merciful protector, guard our departure and our arrival. Spread over us the shelter of your peace, and raise us up to life. Cradle all who are weary, all who are grieving, all who are seeking—until we remember again that you guard us and save us. Amen.