This post was made to my personal Facebook page, but I decided to add it to my blog as part of my own record of progress.
On January 1, 2016, I started a year-long project of taking pictures out my back door. I wanted to watch the seasons change and find beauty in each day. It was truly an extraordinary winter, the colors were amazing, and I looked forward to those special moments in the evening when I would take pictures, always of the “same” thing but always surprisingly different.
When I arrived at December 31, 2016, I wasn’t quite ready to end my project, and I continue to take pictures occasionally. I still have a few to post and will probably have more, but this winter been less colorful. I don’t know, maybe it’s as much a function of my internal state as of my environment.
Wrapped up (somewhat obsessively in recent weeks) in the progress of events since June 16, 2015 when our current president announced his candidacy, I was slow to start a new project.
February 1, 2017, I began work on the weekly Torah readings. My intention was to explore what the Torah (1st five books of the Hebrew Bible) has to say about topics near and dear to my heart, food, agriculture, our fellow creatures on the planet, ecology.
This focus seemed as though it would serve two purposes for me: 1) give a shape to my deep anxiety about our country’s direction, and 2) help me prepare for two classes I will teach at MCC, one on hot button issues in the Bible (Hebrew Bible) and one a repeat with revisions of a course I offered last year on Conscious Choices related to food.
This project, like my picture project last year, exceeds my expectations each day for discovering beauty and meaning. It feeds my soul in ways I couldn’t have imagined before I started this exploration. I started turning off all electronics on Friday evening when the Sabbath begins and leaving them off until Saturday evening when it ends (as I used to do in an earlier life). I look forward to picking up an actual book during that time and spending hours reading and re-reading a portion until I can begin to see patterns and gain some understanding.
I write about my explorations in my blog, www.vegetatingwithleslie.org under the heading “Torah Ecology,” part of each post title. Some of these posts are lengthy, and some need more editing. Maybe that will be next year’s project. They are a work in progress as these words reveal meanings to me. Writing helps me shape my thoughts as I work my way through, and as my doctoral adviser once told me, the editing process involves moving your conclusion to the beginning, then making a step-by-step argument to support the conclusion. I’m not up to that part yet.
Here is a glimpse of what moved me so deeply as I worked my way through the portions of the last four weeks. These are things that I see and experience as I study: 1) The Torah is the creative work of a unified consciousness, 2) What it has to say about food, agriculture, our fellow creatures on the planet and ecology goes way beyond a line here or a line there. These themes are what the Torah is about and breathe life into every word. 3) The creation stories of Genesis describe 3 domains, each in this list part of but different in some way from the domain that precedes it: transcendence, creation and all creatures in it, humanity. The 10 Words/Commandments add a fourth domain, a local community, “neighbors.” 4) The Torah is about relationships within the local community and between these domains.
Here is an example of how this works from this week’s portion, Mishpatim, a series of regulations directed toward this local community:
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Ex 23:10-12 ordains that Israelites sow their land and harvest their olives and vineyards for 6 years and in the 7th year let the fields lie fallow, leaving the olives on the trees and grapes on the vine so first the poor, then the “beasts” can eat.
Ex 23:12 proclaims that Israelites must do their work in 6 days and on the 7th day rest. This rest extends to their beasts (ox and ass), the “son of your handmaid,” and the stranger, emblematic of every creature for whom an Israelite has responsibility.
The 7th year or the 7th day restores a balance. A slave goes free, the land rests and replenishes, providing the poor and the beasts of the field with nourishment. For a period of time, an Israelite can take — but there is also a time to give back, to allow restoration. In the 7th year or on the 7th day, Israelites feed their fellow creatures and the creation that sustains them during the other six.
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I am constantly moved as I read these beautiful passages with the amazing message of interdependence and balance between the domains of transcendence, creation, humanity and a specific society, where the focus is on freedom and justice.
Passages describing the extraordinary beauty of creation, its order and patterns, can bring tears to my eyes, perhaps more so now with my concerns that we are destroying this amazing gift of creation with our arrogance and greed.
Similarly, the absence of freedom and justice in a society causes a roll back of creation in images that echo the creation story. The 9th of 10 Plagues brings a pre-creation darkness so deep that it is palpable, and one person cannot see the person next to him/her. When the Israelites fail to follow those “ordinances” that maintain their relationships to each other, transcendence and creation, they too suffer a roll back of creation:
“I looked on the earth, and behold, it was formless and void; and to the heavens, and they had no light. I looked on the mountains, and behold, they were quaking, and all the hills moved to and fro. I looked, and behold, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens had fled. I looked, and behold, the fruitful land was a wilderness, and all its cities were pulled down before the Lord…” (Jer 4:23-26).
These are the eternal messages I find as I study these words week by week. Creation overflows with life and pattern, with beauty and wisdom. Its message about ecology, food and our fellow creatures on the planet informs the entire text.
As humans, we are part of this amazing creation, and we can contribute to it and experience joy in it. We can also cause it to roll back, we can destroy it all — not because we didn’t follow a particular rule or regulation or adhere to a particular theology but because we do not have humility in the face of transcendence. We do not live in balance with our world. We do not show compassion toward every creature and insist on freedom and justice for all in our local community, however we define that.
These failures in our society are an affront to creation and to transcendence, and whether or not we believe in a supernatural deity, they will bring us down.
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