[Image via Matthew “Levee” Chavez, founder of “Subway Therapy”]

In a New York City subway, people filled the white tile squares of the station’s walls with words written on Post-It notes. Billed by the project’s creator as “Subway Therapy,” the words weren’t called “prayers,” but that’s what they were; expressions of grief, entreaties, dreams, and calls for community. They were small and large. Small – private and written by hand; and large – public, not folded or secret, but prayers to each other.  When seen all together, their numbers display a powerful expression of shared need. This is how we pray now.

Prayer now is not a wish, not a child’s version of prayer of asking for an outcome that they favor. And prayer now is not lazy. It does not ask that the solution come from outside. Prayer in these recent days is a crying out and then a turning in, praying to reflect and discover solutions. What will we do now, how will we activate, how will we move our world, how will we repair it?

For many of us, the result of this election has been an injury, a wound, an  affirmation of a man who trades in hate. We, as citizens, have been asked to honor the principle of democracy over the principle of decency, over our own humanity. We are being tested. Not by an outside force but by a deep, stirring internal force that asks us: Who will we choose to be? Who will we choose to be?

Children raised in the Jewish tradition are told stories of those who hid us, who protected us perhaps putting at risk their own flesh, their own family to protect the safety of another human being. We hoped for ourselves that, should that moment of need occur in our own history, we would be possessed of that same courage. And here we are.

We are in a moment where our community is in danger. And I do not mean specifically that the Jewish community is in danger, though it certainly may be: I mean that the community that is formed by the truest expression of our Jewish values is in danger. Our brothers and sisters, women and men of color, LGBTQ, immigrants, Muslims, those who are disabled, we ourselves, our brothers and sisters, the members of our human family …are under attack.

These members of our community are afraid and they are right to be, because their safety has been threatened by a man who cynically stoked fear for his own gain. But we also have reason to be unafraid. Because we have all just learned who we are. If you move to strike my brother, your blow will strike me. If you mean to harm my sister, you will have to get past me.  We are willfully becoming one body.

Our unity will be the answer to our prayer.  In the face of these threats to our fellow citizens, are we strong enough? Do we have enough power? We have an endless fount. If we are moving in justice. If we are acting in fairness. If we are saying that no one outside of us has the right to define us. We need only to stand for each other as our prayer. Walk together as prayer. March as prayer and even love as prayer, for the world of fairness we demand. A world where we can each grow and love and move with safe passage– with liberty and justice for all.

Racelle Rosett is an award-winning television writer (Blossom, thirtysomething) and Jewish short story writer (Moving Waters). She is a fellow with the Institute for Jewish Creativity and has been awarded a Word grant for the writing of prayer and liturgical poetry.