Until the Two are One
My first experience with Wilderness Torah was with this year’s Tu b’Shevat Seder, which took place in a lovely little redwood grove up in the Oakland hills. It was a wonderful celebration, with an excellent balance of music and meditation, mystical teachings and earth-based ceremony.
Our Seder’s readings and chants, teachings and blessings were deeply inspiring…so that when we were sent out on our experiential exercises, it was easy to enter into a deep place of reverence and awe, stunned to inner silence before the beauty and power of creation. A high point for me came in simply hugging the trunk of a small tree, doing it consciously, sensing the sap rising. Such an embodied experience of the essence of the festival! – to feel the life force rising up out of the earth, through the tree’s roots and tender trunk, even as its branches and leaves stretch toward the sun in our sky. For me this was such an embodied experience of the essence of the festival: to embrace this tree was to embrace the Holy One herself, and my own inner juices rose up strongly in the process.
In the very first Psalm, we find: ‘Fortunate is the person…whose desire is for Torah…for he shall be like a tree deeply rooted alongside brooks of water, that yields its fruit in its season, and whose leaf never withers; and all that he does will succeed.’ (Psalm 1: 1-3) This is such a beautiful promise of perpetual renewal: through imbibing the living waters of Torah, even as the body ages, the soul itself continues to flourish, and in this way, brings forth benefit – delicious fruits – for others to enjoy.
The Torah itself is considered a miraculous tree: the Tree of Life, its roots growing through our skies – beyond, beyond. So…two trees: one rooted in the earth, flourishing beside the living waters, one rooted in eternity, growing into our world, wherever minds and hearts open to receive miraculous renewal. Tu b’Shevat is a holiday whose time has come: the need for us to heal and honor our earth-mother is so great.
May our ceremonies and our meditations, our actions and our prayers bring forth a harvest of goodness – from above, from below. May we live to see harmony and love prevail within all creation, between all creatures, to the glory of our common Creator.
Thank you to Jeffrey Kessler for this post.
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