My husband and I have begun to study together a commentary on Perek Shira ("The Book of Song"), a slender, ancient book which reads something like an anthology of spiritual lessons from the natural world. Each entry is a quote from a verse somewhere in Tanakh (the Bible).

The author, who is anonymous, clearly reveled in nature and needed a way to weave his love of nature and devotion to God together. Not since the psalmist, centuries before, had Judaism offered such a sweeping, authorized way to indulge in the attentiveness to and enjoyment of nature, and press that into a "kosher" way to seek and find God.

This book does. Yet, it is telegraphic, somewhat cryptic, and needs, in the jargon of the academy today, to be "unpacked."

Luckily, there is a commentary by Hanokh Zundel Luria that tries to do just that. Called Kenaf Renanim, it is as robust as the original is spare - over 500 pages of explanation and inspiration layered over the 84 one-line entries of the original.

You can dip in anywhere you like. Each of the sayings is self-contained, with the whole definitely greater than the sum of the parts.

We opted to start at the beginning.

Luria explains the first entry: "The heavens tell of the grandeur of God, and the sky proclaims God's handiwork." (Psalm 19:2)

Why does the book start here?

There are so many lessons that people need to learn; so many mysteries we yearn to uncover.

Sometimes, these lessons are particular and focused, like the values our parents try to teach us when we are young: modesty, thrift, diligence... We learn such particular lessons from particular elements of nature: modesty from the cat; caring (hesed) from the stork (hasidah); and so on.

But life's fundamental lessons, the pursuits of life's constant mysteries that are neither episodic nor situational but are present day in and day out, are taught through broader, enduring means.

As Luria says: Those all-enveloping elements of nature that are constantly in view constantly remind us of life's all-enveloping truths. Just as we are unable to overlook or ignore the heavens, so we are unable to overlook or ignore their teaching that God is all-enveloping and ever-present.

Even more, as heaven and earth sing their song of creation, they remind us of the Creator who gave them voice, and a reason, to sing. There can be no song and no singer without the composer.

A nice reason to hum our way through the day. Even and especially when the days are hard and dark.

(photo: solar flares from NASA)