With Tisha B'Av behind us, and the second Shabbat of Consolation before Rosh Hashanah, my thoughts are turning to the power of prayer. I have come to see prayer as a sacred drama, a play into which we intentionally place ourselves so that the drama will alter our perceptions of reality to see the spiritual and eternal alongside the circumstantial and ephemeral. The physical world constantly impinges on us, and forcefully molds us to discern how our physical being must conform in order to meet our appetites. But prayer, particularly shabbat prayer, exposes a separate reality. With the descent of the sun, and surrounded by the believing community, we are free to distinguish, emphasize and enhance the spiritual world in we which live constantly but feel compelled to ignore. Sacred drama lights the way.
Imagine Moses' frustration having led this people for 40 years, watching his people experience the miracles without making them a permanent enhancement in their moment to moment lives, returning constantly to the physical world in order to satisfy their appetites. "Feed me meat!"  "Find me water!"  "Give me a leader."
They lived in but not of the spiritual world surrounding them.
In his final speeches, Deuteronomy, Moses emphasizes their tragic blindness: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your mind with all your strength and with all your being. Set these words which I command you this day upon your heart...Know then this day and take it to heart. the Lord your God is in the heavens above and the earth below, there is none else." We repeat these words in our sacred drama to take us to the place of the divine encounter and immerse ourselves in its emotions and draw its lessons in our own lives.
We are not Moses, however much we may wish to compare ourselves. We are the people, struggling to personally ingest the encounter with the divine, not just in our communal history called Torah. This week, what did you do to poignantly bring God into your life? Whose life did you change for the good? What did you add to the world?  And do you understand that prayer's sacred drama enables us to rehearse and increase those roles in life, such that, when Rosh Hashanah is upon us, we are ready and eager to change.