it's snow wonder

Perhaps now is a good time to talk about excess. The snow last Tuesday night was lovely, muting the harsh tones of civilization without dulling its overall hum. The Baltimore Sun even ran a front page story congratulating all of us for not folding under the press of 5+ inches of snow.

Then there was the Shabbat snowstorm: 20-30 inches of snow. Power outages; heavy, wet stuff that hung on anything and everything; plows that strained; emergency crews who worked til exhaustion. Plowed drifts 10 feet high, blocking the view of on-coming cars. Never mind those streets that have not yet been plowed.

Still and all, we are doing what needs to be done: neighbor helping neighbor; opening and closing buildings, establishments and programs as appropriate; rescheduling life; kids and adults lavishing their unrestrained joy on the well-packed surface of this ephemeral playland.

But just as we were getting used to the scene, the driving, the drifts, more snow! What will we do? How will we handle it? Where will we put it all? Can our roofs support it? How will the homeless, who are used to the more temperate winters of seasons past, cope? This cannot be good. (Well, one good thing I can think of at the moment is that if the snow melts well, we should not have to worry about a drought this summer, neither those of us on public water or those of us on private wells.)

Is there in all of this, then, a lesson about too-muchness, excess, on the one hand and satiety, enoughness, on the other?

Like snow, commodities like food, money, leisure, space, cars, all seem like wonderful things at first. In some ways, if we believe that a little bit is good, then a lot would be great. We are seduced into the false logic of the-more-the-merrier.

True, it is hard to imagine, sometimes, how more money can be a burden; how too much leisure can lead to lethargy; how too much space can lead to emotional distance. But it can. We are not built for excess. If too much is around, we often turn gluttonous and wary, protective and ugly, difficult to please, unable to say, "Enough. I am full". Despite the popular vision of Paradise being a place of unearned bounty, in both creation stories, Genesis 1 and 2, the humans had to work for their survival. Nothing was just given to them.

Study after study shows us that, after the threshold of fundamental needs is met, additional wealth, additional stuff, does not yield additional happiness. Just the opposite.

There is much talk lately of the family that sold its over-sized house, donated half the proceeds to charity and now live a more fulfilling, shared and engaged life in a smaller home.

A friend of mine who recently lost her job is now making a living de-cluttering people's homes! We are constrained by too much, even in a time of recession. We become paralyzed and cannot recognize what to keep and what to throw away. We come to see that we can own too much and still have too little. Like the snow drifts, too much stuff can compromise our view, block our vision, hide the sight of the other coming toward us. Piles that are too big prevent us from getting to all the stuff we own. We can only access the latest stuff that we can reach on top. The treasures that lay buried underneath are not only inaccessible, they are most likely totally forgotten.

It is only when clearing excess away - perhaps even giving it away to those with too little - that we can reach and use all the riches we have.

There is a concept we have spoken about here before: sova, enoughness, fullness on just the right amount. Sova is not about restraint or sacrifice. Sova is about not needing more, or wanting more, or having room for more, because we experience the sense of fullness. We stop wanting more when we are full. Market consultants tell retailers to have large shopping baskets and carts strategically distributed throughout the store, not just at the entrance. People, they explain, tend to stop shopping when their carts are full. The bigger the cart, the longer road to "fullness," the more people will buy.

I believe we are born with a healthy, modest, appropriate set of appetites. Watch a baby eat - they stop when they are full. Life, however, teaches us to stretch our appetites, build and fill a bigger closet, keep up with the Joneses. This inexhaustible capacity for a never-ending, ever-growing appetite is one source of our endless unease. How can we know happiness if we are always plagued by an unfulfilled desire for more?

But to know sova, that sense of enoughness, that sense of satisfaction, is to enjoy a sense of fullness, of calm and purpose. It is, spiritually, to be able to reclaim the way we choose to spend our energies, not in the pursuit of excess determined by the other, a vacuous pursuit that buries what we already have in an endless grab for more, but rather, in a vibrant pursuit of discovery (of self, other and the wonders of the world), of true relationship, of curiosity, healthy progress, and adventures that bring true joy to ourselves and those around us. And in the process, in consuming less, we may discover that there may just be enough stuff for everyone to have enough, and true joy for us at the of the day.

a shoveled walkway

For Sid.

With all due deference to the place of privilege conferred upon the eyes, I profoundly believe that our actions also serve as true windows to the soul.

An example: Take a look at your to-do list and see what items get done first. Barring true emergencies or drop-dead deadlines, most of us choose to do the things we like best, or detest least, or are the easiest to accomplish or otherwise offer a low threshold of resistance. We do not always attend to those that are most important, even most urgent, or most responsible. In other words, we do what we most want, not what we most should.

Relatedly, I know that no matter how much I protest that I really am feeling better (as I did time and again this week after being felled by a hat-trick of ailments), it is only when I start cleaning up that you know health is on the way. If I say I am better and prove it by going into the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea, bad news. But if I go into the kitchen, grab the broom and start sweeping, or grumble while washing the dirty dishes left in the sink, then you know I am on the mend.

Which leads me to the following question: what am I to make of the fact that the first thing I did this morning after but 2 hours sleep (our electricity went out from 6:30 a.m. Saturday til 4:00 a.m. Sunday and there was lots to do to make sure the house stayed warm and the family comfortable and the food didn’t spoil) was bundle up, grab the shovel and clear my front walk? Mind you, the street was only moderately drivable, my driveway was impassable, piled high with snow, and, to state the obvious, we were not expecting any company. But there I am, at 7:30 a.m., battling with the well-packed snow, clearing a path no bigger than the shovel is wide, along the 35 feet or so of my front walk.

(By the way, if you ever wondered how the Eskimo can build their igloos out of snow, the weekend storm offered the perfect answer. You could literally cut the snow into blocks. That is how I shoveled it. In chunks sliced off at the edge, like serving a huge birthday cake. So imagine if the snow were colder and denser and had more time to set. This weekend’s snow would have made fabulous igloo material. And I can attest to its insulating power. We went without a heating source for 12 hours on Shabbat and lost only five degrees of heat during the entire time, no doubt due to the blessing of snow on our roof. Many of us may have smaller energy bills this month because of the snow. Now we just have to worry about it melting.)

My son emerged from his room close to noon, glanced at the shoveled walk that led to nowhere, and asked me, incredulously as only a 17 year old can, “What were you thinking?”

It was a reasonable question. Clearly, I wasn’t thinking; I was just doing.

My husband suggested I shoveled the walk because I couldn’t get to the gym, which didn’t open till midday today (and besides, we were still snowed in).

And there may be some truth in that. But here is what I also think, more altruistically, contributed to my decision: the need for neighbors and neighborliness multiplies during snowstorms.

If we have strength and health, shelter and company, food and a source of warmth, light and security, we can settle in, hunker down and enjoy the show. But if we do not, snowstorms can be frightening, lonely and dangerous. To know that there is someone down the road whom you can count on, someone across the street who will dig you out, someone whose door is open to you should you need them, is to turn a potential terror into a fun family story for the ages.

I know several neighborhoods, cul de sacs mainly, that have a tradition of gathering in one of the homes on snow days and power outages. Everyone brings something: food, a game,a buoyant attitude, and the group celebrates this time-out-of-time together.

Then there are my dear friends who spent much of the day digging out elderly and sickly neighbors. Their caring and company were as valuable as the tangible results of their kindness. To know you are remembered when least able to be seen, to know that despite being unable to give back you are deemed worthy of being given to, is to feel loved, unconditionally. That is what we all seek.

Yet it is hard to show that during normal times. As benefactors, we hardly have the time to give. As recipients, we wonder with skepticism at the generosity of the benefactor. So how wonderful that snowstorms provide both the time and the circumstance that allows this social exchange, this knitting together of proximate lives that too often are lived apart.

My neighborhood is not conducive to personal shoveling. The driveways are too large; the seasonal contracts for plowing have long been signed. But the one thing I can do is signal this intent of caring, of symbolizing the open-home to any who need it. And to hope that others will signal the same for me in my time of need.

In the Talmud we read that during mealtimes, Rabbi Yehudah would hang a napkin outside his home signaling to all who were hungry that dinner was being served and there was a place ready for them at the table. We no longer live in such mixed neighborhoods, nor are we at ease inviting such others into the intimate places of our homes. But my shoveled walkway was meant to signal something similar: that despite the apparent barriers society throws up, despite the emotional distance so many of us place between ourselves, it is good to know that perhaps deep down, our homes are always open to those in need of warmth, a bowl of soup, a comfortable chair, a tender heart, and a listening ear.

in praise of kindling

It wasn't until I got my new wood-burning stove that I learned to appreciate the value of kindling. You know: tinder. Those small pieces of wood we generally overlook, kick aside or sweep away when they fall on our front walks. Several friends have shared with me stories of finding their preferred wood vendors; the secret art of stacking wood; the pros and cons of pellet vs wood stoves. But only one mentioned kindling to me.

She knew that there is pride in starting a fire with just one strike of the match. But to do that requires more than dry logs and bits of crumbled newspaper. The experienced fire-maven knows that the secret to a good start is good tinder. The twigs have to be big enough not to be consumed in a flash of flame, but they also have to be flammable enough to catch with just a whiff of intense heat. Brittle twigs with dry pine needles attached are the fire-tender's philosopher's stone. They turn brown waste into golden flames. Using wood saturated with an accelerant or other chemical fire-starter is cheating. (Not that I am above cheating every now and then, but it is hardly something I aspire to.)

If all goes well, the paper lights; the tinder catches; the twigs burn; the smallest logs heat and you are off and running.

Early on in my wood-stove career, I skimped on the kindling. I built my wood mound with lots of paper; the slenderest of logs and then the bigger logs. Needless to say, the stove and I did not bond. The fires weren't strong; they petered out; and I got frustrated. It was only when I tended well not only to the logs but also and especially to the tinder that the fires roared and my relationship with the stove ignited.

I am still discovering what my stove likes and doesn't like, and what I need to do to get the most out of it, but learning to tend well to the tinder was a huge first step.

That would have been grist enough for a blog, but then, I was sent this article by a new friend from, of all places, Grist. (The article comes from Grist, not the friend.)

http://www.grist.org/article/2010-02-01-how-personal-actions-can-kick-start-a-sustainability-revolution/print/PALL

The article begins this way: "The environmental movement is divided over the importance of small steps — are they a critical starting point or a distraction from needed policy and institutional changes?"

This may be a new question to the environmental movement but the answer is age-old wisdom to the religious community: tend to the details. Mind the small stuff. Develop the habit.

The article, thankfully, comes to the same conclusion.

The authors focus on three impulses that build on the small stuff:

(1) People like to feel virtuous, and doing something small that connects them to something large makes them feel virtuous. If we can give people small acts that are expressions of grand values, they will not only be likely to act accordingly but feel good about doing so. That then begins a feedback loop where they want to do more good so they can feel better about themselves and so on and so on.

(2) "People [seek to] justify their past actions according to their values." Sometimes that means we change our behavior to endorse or live our values. Other times it means we change our narrative to match and support our behavior.

(3) Which explains how "daily conscientious actions can cement a gradual shift in our deepest values."

In short, we become what we do. I know this flies in the face of our popular understanding of Ginott, that we should not conflate the behavior and the child. And that is true when the behaviors we are talking about are episodic and rare. But when behavior becomes habitual, it is likely to express who we are. Indeed we become the personality we act.

Which is why we have to sweat the small stuff. And which is why getting started up this mountain of environmental behavior can be so easy. We just need to begin with one, repetitive, accessible step, which we can justify in light of a greater, indeed global cause. We can choose recycling or turning out lights or air drying our laundry. Whatever we choose, as long as we do it consistently (which is why giving once a year to an environmental cause is not as powerful or transforming an act), will shape the person we become.

Acts are like tinder. We cannot get from cold to hot, inert to inspired without it. So find your tinder, see how it fits in the overall vision of values, and set your match to it.

dispatch from the woods

Once again I am at the cabin, a solitary refuge tucked away in the woods. And once again, the woods do not disappoint. Indeed this time, they outdo themselves. For six hours, the skies showered them with snow. For six hours, the trees stood like so many buoyant children, heads tilted upward, arms outstretched, welcoming, delighting in, the snow.

Looking outside now, I can see that I am surrounded by mounds of the glinting, gleaming, glistening freshly fallen stuff. At moments such as these, the woods are enchanting, seductive, alluring. They are calm, serene, still, deep, soothing, healing. It is hard to cease praising them. From the base of their sturdy trunks to the very tips of their delicate limbs, they are draped in their snow-dappled mantle. In their quiet majesty, they subdue and overwhelm. For the moment, they are all that exists. I can see no other house but mine; no road; no hint of humanity beyond my own.

If the woods were not so lovely, they would be threatening. It is they who have the power. I am their supplicant. They are my guardians. I am their guest. Quite different from what we experience back in the paved-over, built-up, rushed-through environment of civilization, where we reign, or so we think, and at our best act as guardians of the trees. We know what we are like at our worst.

But perhaps the woods here look so lovely because I am warm and snug inside. I am tucked away in the cabin, while the woods remain safely out there. As long as I stay here, they cannot menace me, cannot lead me deep into their thickening midst, or turn me around and cause me to lose my way. They cannot suddenly loose a bear or wolf on me. They cannot cause me to fall into a root pit camouflaged with the cover of snow.

Paradoxically, my inside refuge comes from them as well. For this cabin is made from them. The walls are pine logs, rough on the outside and shaved and finished on the inside. The floor is hickory; the cabinets cherry. It is wood that protects me from the woods. The tamed protecting me from the wild.

And yet, there is something wonderful, at this safe remove, to be able to feel the fear of the wild that the woods once caused our ancestors. I remember as a child, sitting in the suburbs of Pikesville, listening to “Peter and the Wolf” and wondering where such a terrifying, wonderful place as those woods could be. Surely not among the well-mown lawns of our neighborhood. What would it have felt like to know nature that way! What have we lost by shielding ourselves from such feelings.

But the truth is, nature still can ambush us unexpectedly. Haiti is only the latest, tragic reminder of that. How much more prepared would we be practically, how much richer spiritually, how much more sated economically, how much more inventive scientifically if we could once again experience the awesome rawness of nature.

So to be in the woods, able to reach out and touch the edges of nature’s raw wildness and the terror it conjures up, all the while risking little to myself, is a rare joy, and a valuable lesson.

It will be light soon. The animals will be stirring and the mystery of the woods will recede. I better go find my boots.

unripe fruit

I celebrated Tu B'shvat, the festival of the trees that coincided with Shabbat this year, by reading a most charming book. It is a slim volume, all of 117 pages, written originally in Czech, and first published in Prague in 1929. The author is Karel Capek. The book is called The Gardener's Year. It is a joyous romp through the emotional highs, lows and obsessions of the constant gardener. So endearing was this book that it was translated into English in 1931 by M and R Weatherall, and reprinted as a part of the Modern Library Gardening Series in 2002, with no less a series editor than Michael Pollan.

It was in the midst of this light-hearted diversion that I bumped into a powerful insight. Here is the set-up. Imagine gliding smoothly through Capek's easy prose, reading along about how a hapless gardener must wrestle with an obstinate garden hose.

It will soon be clear that until it is tamed a hose is an extraordinarily evasive and dangerous beast, for it contorts itself, it jumps, it wriggles, it makes puddles of water, and dives with delight into the mess it has made; then it goes for the man who is going to use it and coils itself round his legs; you must hold it down with your foot, and then it rears and twists round your waist and neck, and while you are fighting with it as with a mighty cobra, the monster turns up its brass mouth and projects a mighty stream of water through the windows on to the curtains which have been recently hung.

When, not a page later, I am ambushed by this observational gem:

Odd as it may appear, a gardener does not grow from seed, shoot, bulb, rhizome, or cutting, but from experience, surroundings, and natural conditions. When I was a little boy I had towards my father's garden a rebellious and even a vindictive attitude, because I was not allowed to tread on the beds and pick the unripe fruit. Just in the same way Adam was not allowed to tread on the beds and pick the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden, because it was not yet ripe; but Adam - just like us children - picked the unripe fruit, and therefore was expelled from the Garden of Eden; since then the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge has always been unripe.

Who knew? The first humans were not, according this Capek midrash, forever forbidden access to this most desirable of fruits, this conveyor of the complete corpus of wisdom and knowledge. Nor were we, their unimagined offspring generations hence, damned to a life of naive innocence and solipsistic ignorance. What good news! For I have always been disturbed by the thought that our idyllic vision of paradise was one in which progress and development played no part; one which did not allow the full dignity of humanity to mature and flourish.

Rather, to push Capek's midrash one step further, the problem was simply, regrettably, and profoundly, that neither the fruit nor the humans were yet ready for their mutual encounter. Both were still very young, in the throes of their own becoming. Both were busy gathering in experiences, nutrients and essences that would build the substance and scaffolding of their bodies. Both were busy filling out, plumping up and putting flesh on these foundations that would become and define their full being. This is delicate and intricate work that does not want to be rushed or interrupted.

But, according to Capek, that is exactly what happened. In the midst of becoming, the fruit was plucked, frozen in an unripe state, and ingested by an unripe body. The act of incorporating knowledge, literally bringing it into our bodies and making it one with us, was forever premature, incomplete.

So it remains to this very day. We are bombarded with raw knowledge, unripened, and indigestible. We are forced to act before we understand what we are doing:

How shall we manage the awesome power of atomic energy?
What are the ethics of cloning animals, body parts, whole persons?
When does genetically modified food mimic the healthy evolutionary traits of nature and when does it slide into the grotesque world of dangerous mutants?
Is it proper for new forms of life to be privately owned and patented?
How does one blend the equitable distribution of goods and services with the functioning of a free market?

Complete, ripened knowledge eludes us at every frontier. We are forced to deliberate, decide and function with ignorance fully in hand. Still, we bound on ahead. Like Adam and Eve, we will not be restrained. We have no choice. Ready or not, we will eat the fruit. And we will again be banished from the sheltering arms of certitude and complete knowing. That is our calling. It makes no sense to rail against such imperfection.

Acknowledging this, though, helps remedy it. We will no doubt be better off if, with each new discovery, we remember that we are again cast a bit further beyond the center of Eden. Success, and survival, demand that we proceed together, with humility, hard work, and eyes wide open.

the light of tu b'shvat

I write these words as the world around me is bathed in the soothing, flowing light of the full moon. No wonder most of the Jewish holidays fall mid-way along the moon's monthly trek. When the sky is cleared of clouds, allotting the moon full reign of the heavens, its light shines down upon us like pearls, poured from a jug, that break and splash upon hitting earth. Silently, the light bounces and spreads, gently subduing the realm of darkness. The light is pale and thin, true, but also cool and sure, allowing us to peer just enough into the unknown to calm our night fears.

An architectural peculiarity of my house makes me especially fond of this time of night, at this time of the month. When the full moon is high in the sky, just about half-way along its nightly journey, its light floods through a skylight into my bathroom, filling the tub with its ethereal essence. It almost appears as if the tub were awash in lunar water, the very stuff that could establish the moon as an hospitable outpost for human space explorations. So real it sometimes seems that I want to call NASA and say, here it is. Lunar water exists after all. Come, gather it up for yourselves.

The light, though beckoning, is also sometimes cruel, alluring with its desperately desired but maddeningly elusive gifts of healing. I have often been tempted to climb into the tub, to sink and soak gently in those sacred waters poured from the very pools of heaven, reaching back to the first moments of the world's creation. What ailment could not be cured by those primordial waters, when earth and heaven were one? What pains and sorrows could not be washed away?

These thoughts and feelings are magnified on this particular full moon of Shvat, for this month marks the turning of the seasons, when the sap begins to rise in the trees in Israel and the almond blossoms begin to bud. This full moon of Shvat is a herald that the back of the winter has been scaled and spring is now upon us. So even if, come break of day, we see there is no such thing as lunar water, even if the celestial blessings of rebirth are not ours, the earthly blessings of renewal are.

What more can we ask for?

sawing wood

I am looking forward to Sunday. If the weather cooperates, I am hoping to spend a few hours collecting my windfall of tree limbs that the weekend storm delivered. And if it is not too cold, for either me or the wood, I hope to saw many of the limbs into stove-sized fuel.

There is something compellingly intimate about sawing wood. When you saw, you have to hold the wood steady, gently restraining it, feeling it respond, reassuring it, noting where it resists and where it gives. You must avoid the knots and gently work it through. When the pile begins to grow around your feet, you gather up the sections you have cut, cradle them in your arms, and carry them to the woodpile. You then gently place them down, like a sleeping child whom you don't want to wake. (Stacking wood is a whole other spiritual discipline.)

Sawing is a remarkably engaging, full-body experience. Kind of like meditation, I would imagine. No music; no extraneous thoughts; total concentration. And when you are done, there is a rush of instant gratification; instant satisfaction; and physical exhaustion.

One kind of tree populates most of our property: the tulip poplar. I can see why it is a favorite of woodworkers. It is easy to saw and easy to work into cabinets and veneers. The trunks shoot straight up for 50-80 feet without a branch in the way. That's a nice run of wood (though not fun for kids who like to climb trees).

But if the tulip poplar is a sweetheart of a tree to saw, the beech is a bi***.

It is very hard and very dense. I would rather saw 10 poplar branches than one beech. Thankfully, we only have one beech that is big enough to drop branches - so I only had to saw two fallen beech limbs.

And the tree itself is gorgeous - it stands like a sentry in the center isle of our driveway, spreading its shade over half the house in the summer. I don't know what we would do without it.

My nascent apple orchard is still just a gleam in our eyes. One of the three 5-foot trees I planted last summer died. The two that are left are struggling through the winter. We will see if blossoms return in the spring. I bought three more - these are just twigs though - to plant in the spring alongside the larger ones. Perhaps one day they will be gnarled and fruit-filled, if the deer don't get them first.

All this growing personal fascination with trees - and just at the time when a new organization, the Baltimore Tree Trust, is being formed. Baltimore City has a 25% tree canopy cover. That is not enough. It wants and needs to return to 40%. Such a move will improve the social, structural, economic, spiritual, and physical health of the city and its residents. The BTT is designed to make that happen. I will report back to you with more information as this initiative grows. It will need our help.