Nina's Blog

You Should Know...

noreply@blogger.com (BJEN) — Sun, 06 May 2012 12:39:00 +0000

Friends, I received this alert from our District 11 representatives concerning an expansion of a local gas pipeline through our neighborhoods and protected land. The Falls River Community Association has more information on their cite; and they are working on organizing local community opposition.

Check out their link as well.

May 4, 2012

Urgent Alert - Columbia Gas Proposing Construction of Major Gas Pipeline Through Owings Mills, Greenspring Valley, Falls Road Corridor, and Northern Baltimore County

Pipeline Threatens Environment, Wildlife, and Individual Homes Across Area

From Senator Bobby Zirkin, Delegates Jon Cardin, Dan Morhaim & Dana Stein

Dear Friend,

We are writing to alert you to a proposal by Columbia Gas to construct a major natural gas pipeline through many parts of our District. The route being proposed by this Corporation may have serious impact on many of our homes, communities, and natural environments in the 11th District. We are writing to you with serious concerns and urge you to educate yourself about this project.

A number of constituents and community organizations have raised questions about the impact of this project. We are working to insure that everyone is as fully informed as possible and that citizens know where to raise those concerns.

The proposed pipeline by Columbia Gas would involve digging ditches across a 21 mile path, impacting over 300 acres, following a path of their current line which was built many decades ago. Columbia is not required to follow this path. Construction of this magnitude would impact natural environments in its path, necessitate clearing of trees and vegetation, cross streams and wetlands, and impact wildlife. Although lobbyists from Columbia Gas assure that they will mitigate damage, we are not convinced of this. Environmental impacts could be severe and long-term.

Further, the project will have a serious impact on property rights and individual homes. If approved, Columbia can add an additional 25 foot easement on properties. This means that Columbia would essentially take for their own an additional 25 feet of someone's property. Citizens will be forced to deal with many months of heavy construction throughout our area. Homes may be forced to deal with the loss of forest and the natural environment. If the project is approved by FERC, citizens could be forced to remove structures such as playgrounds and decks. Citizens may face the choice of being paid money for the removal of such structures or eminent domain.

We are not at all persuaded that this project is necessary. Even assuming that a line is necessary, we believe that any line should be built with minimal impact on the environment and the community. In addition, we believe that to date, the process followed by Columbia Gas has, at best, met a minimal standard of transparency.

Please take the time to educate yourself and your community on this issue. Whether you are personally affected or not by the specific route, we all share in the tremendous value of our beautiful environment and community and we should be united in this effort.

Columbia Gas must make application through the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the national agency that regulates interstate energy matters. We are working hard to understand how state and local governments, community organizations, and citizens can impact those decisions.

It is important to send written comments to FERC. They may be sent to: The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Attn: Kimberly D. Bose, Secretary, 888 First St. NE, Room 1A, Washington, D.C. 20426. You can also comment on line at www.FERC.gov and follow the link to "Documents and Filings." There is an "eFiling" link that may be followed. In any comment, reference Docket Number PF12-6. This is critical as comments must be filed by May 16 in order to be taken into account in the "pre-filing period."

There are two meetings scheduled on this issue where you may offer testimony as well as learn details. The first is May 8 at 7:00 pm at Oregon Ridge Lodge, 13401 Beaver Dam Road, Cockeysville, MD 21030. The second is May 9 at 7:00 pm at Youth's Benefit Elementary School Cafeteria in Fallston.

Because FERC is a federal agency, we recommend contacting your federal officials. Please contact Congressman John Sarbanes (202-225-4016), Dutch Ruppersberger (202-225-3061), Elijah Cummings (202-225-4741), or Andy Harris (202-225-5311), depending on where you live. And also contact U.S. Senators Ben Cardin (202-224-4524) and Barbara Mikulski (202-224-4654).

Columbia Gas fully intends on moving forward with this major new gas pipeline in our community if FERC allows them to do so. Note that this is for gas transmission only and it will not provide any benefit to our community in any way. Your utility bills will not go down as a result of this project at all. Constructing the line in the heart of our area will have serious impact from Owings Mills to Greenspring Valley to the Falls Road Corridor to Cockeysville to Northern Baltimore County to Fallston.

As this is a federal interstate project, it is unclear what impact our efforts will have. But we believe it is critical to try to influence this process before FERC grants approval and it is too late.

Sincerely,

Senator Bobby Zirkin
Delegate Jon Cardin
Delegate Dan Morhaim
Delegate Dana Stein

Cleaning House

noreply@blogger.com (BJEN) — Fri, 04 May 2012 12:49:00 +0000

What better way to cleanse your house and your spirit than by getting rid of old things - and doing it the right way!

BJEN held the Jewish community's first electronic recycling event three years ago. Since then, we have helped safely recycled literally tons - mounds and mountains! - of materials that have since become part of our culture's technological recycling stream (parallel to nature's recycling stream).

We are very proud that now, several congregations are sponsoring their own community recycling events.

This Sunday, check out Beth El's electronic recycling (E-cycling) and document shredding event.

Shredder Truck & Ecycle
Sunday, May 6
Back Parking Lot at Beth El Congregation
9:00 a.m. - 12 noon

$10 processing donation is requested.

Shabbat shalom!

noreply@blogger.com (BJEN) — Thu, 03 May 2012 00:44:00 +0000

I forgot to tell you: we had a six-foot long black snake in our kitchen the other day. Actually, it was on tax day (which seemed appropriate, some long dark arm of government reaching into our private domain).

Evidently, the snake snuck in while the door was open during a lengthy delivery of windows.

It was immediately clear that the snake, once it got its bearings, wanted no more to do with me than I wanted to do with him. So he slithered beneath the overhang of our cabinets and proceeded to slink under our sofa in the sitting room. And stayed there 'til the nice man from critter cop came with a grabber, gloves and a bag and snatched the snake, ever-so-gently, bagged it and took it out to release it.

My friend, Charlie, has since told me that the (1) the snake was not dangerous and that (2) the state is interested in such stories. Preferably with pictures.

The Natural History Society of Maryland and the MD Department of Natural Resources are jointly conducting a five-year reptile population project called MARA: The Maryland Amphibian and Reptile Atlas.

"The goal of the MARA project is to document the current distributions of Maryland’s amphibian and reptile species using a systematic and repeatable approach.... The information gained through your volunteer effort will be used to promote the conservation and protection of Maryland’s 90+ species of frogs, toads, salamanders, turtles, lizards, and snakes. Understanding the current distribution patterns of amphibians and reptiles within the state is needed to create effective conservation strategies."

So, if you bump into a snake while out walking, mowing, or hanging your laundry out to dry (just thought I'd mention this now that summer is coming), please take a photo of it and send it along to MARA at atlas@marylandnature.org.

They can even tell you what kind of snake you saw.

Happy hunting.

Getting from Here to There

noreply@blogger.com (BJEN) — Wed, 02 May 2012 16:44:00 +0000

Quote of the week:

"We are a Star Wars civilization [with] Stone Age emotions, … medieval institutions… and god-like technology. And this god-like technology is dragging us forward in ways that are totally unpredictable." E. O. Wilson in an interview with Grist.org.

Not a bad assessment. We know our emotions and our structures lag far behind our curiosity, imagination and scientific discoveries.

The question is how do we - and the world - stay safe while we build the future of our dreams?

My sense: stay with the basics -

* care for each other - remembering the legacy of the past, honoring those here today and protecting those to come tomorrow;

* pause a moment to think things through; then talk about it with those who might agree AND those who might not agree;

* be passionate but not impatient

* speak out boldly and often when necessary (E.O. Wilson also asked in that interview why the youth of today weren't on the streets protesting to protect the world that their leaders and parents are consuming before their eyes? Environmentalism was a cause of social protests in the '70's. Why not now?

Add your own wisdom and spread the word.

Earth Day 2012

noreply@blogger.com (BJEN) — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 22:11:00 +0000

Below is the talk I had the privilege of delivering today at the Maryland Presbyterian Church on Providence Road, in honor of Earth Day.

Hope you all are celebrating - the earth is, with all this wonderful rain.

“Midrash” is the ancient rabbinic technique of taking tantalizing verses in the Bible and creatively unfolding and reshaping them, tucking them a bit here and tweaking them a bit there, until voila, a new meaning emerges that is deftly applied to the author’s rhetorical purpose.

The text this morning comes from such a midrash on Ecclesiastes 7:13.

“Consider all that God has done: Who can make straight what he has made crooked?”

The text’s meaning is clear. It proclaims: How powerful God is! No one and nothing can countermand his word. Yet, along came a rabbi of old who decided that he could tweak the verse just a touch – changing the meaning of just one word – and thus teach an important lesson. In doing so, he created the midrash that has become the anthem of the Jewish environmental movement today.

Why, this anonymous rabbi-of-old asked, would the God of goodness make something crooked, twisted, broken?

Rather, the verse must be referring at the end not to God, but to man: “Consider all that God has done: who will be able to straighten again that which he – mankind - makes crooked?”

With this one change in mind, from “he” meaning “God”, to “he” meaning man, the rabbi creates the following story:

"When the Holy One, blessed be He, created the first human, He took him by the hand and led him around the garden, showing him all the trees.

God said to the human, 'See all my works, how good and beautiful they are? Know that all I have created, I created for you. But be mindful that you do not spoil and destroy My world - for if you do, there will be no one after you to set it right."

This is a stunning sixth-century rabbinic warning that teaches us that as big and magnificent and divinely-wrought as the natural world is, it is not indestructible, not immune to degradation by human hands.

The midrash teaches us that all creation, in all its detail, in all its particularity, is God’s work, glorious but vulnerable. Like a proud artist giving a tour of their studio, God took the human by the hand and showed him each and every tree and animal and stream and hill and the ways they all fit together.

And the human was told, all this is for you! All this I did for you! Remember, it is not impervious to harm, or steeled against ruin. It is the work that I love. Be sure to treat it well.

Note that the midrash notably and I would argue intentionally does not say: “All this I give to you.” It rather says: “All this I made for you.” This world is here for us to cherish, and use, and even improve. The human is to acknowledge it, admire it, be humbled and grateful and awed by it. It is ours to live fully with, but it is not ours to possess.

As big and magnificent and important as we humans are, we need to be humble about our place in creation. We have been given great power, and great latitude in how we use that power. We need to be mindful and deliberate and discerning so that we use our knowledge, our appetites, our curiosity, and our power for good and not for evil, for growth and not destruction.

Along with this message, it seems to me that this story is pointing to yet something a bit deeper: that in the biblical imagination, nature is not just a gift, or commodity, or necessary accessory to the good life. It is the very currency, the language, that God uses to speak with humanity. And therefore, it is the currency and language that we should use to speak back to God.

In the Bible – if we are good and God is pleased, the rains are soft and timely and come in just the right amount. If we are good and God is pleased, the land is blessed and giving; the harvests are bountiful and filling.

If we are not good and God is not pleased, the rain is hard and damaging, or sparse or absent; the land is parched and unyielding; the harvests are meager.

Deuteronomy 11 says:

¹³ If you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today—to love the LORD your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul— ¹⁴ then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn and spring rains, so that you may gather in your grain, new wine and olive oil. ¹⁵ I will provide grass in the fields for your cattle, and you will eat and be satisfied.

But if not, if ¹⁶… you will be enticed to turn away and worship other gods and bow down to them. ¹⁷ Then the LORD’s anger will burn against you, and he will shut up the heavens so that it will not rain and the ground will yield no produce, and you will soon perish from the good land the LORD is giving you. ¹⁸

We tend to dismiss these words as quaint, outdated theological beliefs of cause and affect. After all, we moderns don’t believe as the ancients did – we know droughts and floods, extreme weather and climate change don’t come as punishment from God in response to our bad moral behavior.

Perhaps not. But it is true that our behaviors affect the natural world, that how we manage and manipulate the environment determines the abundance, availability, health and distribution of the goodness of the natural world.

It’s true that hording and wasting, taking too much and returning too little, poisoning and trashing our waters, our land and our air upsets the ebb and flow of nature and the very systems we depend on.

So, while the Bible speaks of the necessity living in good relation to God, we can extrapolate that to mean living in good relation to God’s world. That is what the midrash is teaching. Whether through theology or natural law, failure to respect the vibrancy, integrity and moral laws of nature will bring havoc to the earth and all its inhabitants. And it is we humans who will be held responsible. And, as the midrash says, there will be no one after us to set it right. And it is in the way we treat nature that our devotion to God is measured and weighed.

The midrash continues with a haunting vision:

To what might this be likened, it asks:

To a woman who is pregnant and gives birth in jail. The child is raised in jail; grows up in jail, and his mother dies in jail. One day, the king was travelling by the jail, and as he passed by the son shouts out to him and says: Oh King: it was in this prison that I was born, and it is here that I was raised, and here I live: but I ask you, by what sin have I earned this punishment of being here? And the King answers, Because your mother gave birth to you here.”

If we destroy the world, if we create out of it a prison of destruction, we curse our children with living in that destruction. That is something we cannot do.

How do we avoid it? In the very first chapters of the Bible, we read a phrase, a formula, that helps guide us in the task of living well with God’s gift, and of avoiding the fate we dare not bring about.

In Chapter Two of Genesis, in the story of the creation of Adam, the Bible tells us that:

“The LORD God took the man he had made and put him in the Garden of Eden “to work it and care for it.”

It is in this pairing of verbs, this yin/yang of purpose, this balance of consumer and protector; manipulator and preserver, that the vision of how humans should and must relate to the earth is revealed and measured.

L’ovdah ul’shomrah. To till and to tend; to work and protect. These are not to be seen as two separate, sequential tasks, doing one now and the other later: mountaintop removal here and preserving the Tetons there. Our agriculture, manufacturing, energy production, recycling, waste disposal all must be a piece of preserving and not just consuming. That is the message of living right in the Bible. That is the message we in the faith community must know and speak.

This, then, is the task of the faith community:

· To live in sync with the flow and pulse and patterns of the world

· To live humbly and joyously with God’s awesome gift

· To advance and preserve the work of creation

· To be witness to the truth that living our lives this way is a most blessed and purposeful way to be.

· And to teach the lessons of the midrash to our neighbors and children, our businessmen and politicians, our farmers and bankers, and to ourselves, saying:

'See all God’s work, how good and beautiful it is? Know that all God created, he created for us. But we must be mindful that we do not spoil and destroy it - for if we do, there will be no one after us to set it right."

Rethinking Hametz

noreply@blogger.com (BJEN) — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 13:21:00 +0000

We often hear that hametz - the puffed up, leavened food that we banish from our homes on Passover - represents the less attractive parts of being, our puffed up egos that slowly bloat the boundaries of self and ooze onto the protected space of others. Or the encrusted coating of pride or psychological armor that builds up over time to protect our wounded, vulnerable inner core but that needs to be periodically scraped away so that our souls can breathe and be restored once more.

I like that view and have taught that in years past.

But I am thinking of hametz in a slightly different way this year. What if we thought of hametz not as bad, but as "dirt"?

Mary Douglas, the eminent anthropologist (of Purity and Danger fame), taught that "dirt" was not a thing but a concept, not an essence but an attribution. Dirt is not something that can be scientifically catalogued the way pathogens or bacteria are. You cannot put something under a microscope to see if it is "dirt" or not.

"Dirt" is stuff out of place, something existing where somebody thinks it shouldn't. Just as a weed is a plant growing where you don't want it, so dirt is something being where you don't want it.

This explains a lot. It explains why, for example, when there are clothes all over your son's bedroom floor, you may think the place is "dirty" while he thinks the clothes are just arrayed on the biggest shelf in the room. Or why a child's hair-clippings found in a mother's keepsake box are precious whereas that same hair found on the bathroom floor is a mess.

Which helps me - and challenges me - when I think of hametz.

What is the right place, and time, for things? Why are things that were perfectly good for us yesterday forbidden to us today? How did this thing that is a staple of life on other occasions become so virulent on Passover that it must be totally banished, or at least nullified and transformed?

Perhaps, as Avram suggests, it is a matter of degree. A bit of pride, a bit of ambition, a bit of selfishness is not bad. They are even essential. How else do we build and discover and push beyond contemporary limits without the urgings of ambition or pride, or genuine curiosity? But what dangers lie, as well, in uncontrolled pride, greed and voyeurism? And where do we draw the lines?

Perhaps Pesah is that annual season of line-drawing, re-setting the boundaries, of cleaning out the expanding, crusty accretions of too much pride, too much desire. Perhaps Pesah should be seen as a radical reboot, a cleansing that offers a stark exercise trimming back the excess and re-evaluating the value that guides these impulses. What, Pesah might be asking us, are all those urgings for? What service should we properly put them to?

Perhaps that, too, is why Pesah is a week long. We could not bear to strip ourselves of our protective coatings, rid ourselves of the armor of pride, and return, so exposed, to the unchanged rigors and dangers of the world. We need a week to live in this pristine world of the wilderness, in the company of each other, in a taste of a place where all is in balance, where manna comes with the dew, where the world protects us. We need a week to take in this gift of freedom, to bask unafraid in the presence of each other, to understand where - when we return to the world of hametz - we should direct the power of our urgings.

And then, with that as our armor, return to tangle, or tango, with hametz.

The spirituality of rain

noreply@blogger.com (BJEN) — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 22:29:00 +0000

Passover is when the rain stops. It is the close of winter in the Mediterranean climate of Israel, the end of the wet season, and the time when we usher in the summer. It is the time our prayers shift from gratitude for the seasonal bursts of rain to the appreciation of the miraculous morning dew.

It seems like a perfect time to muse, for a moment, about the place of rain, geshem, in the rabbinic imagination, and how it morphed from the realm of physics to the world metaphysics.

Gashmiut (from geshem) is how the medieval rabbis referred to life's "physicality," the earthy, material dimension of this created world. It is juxtaposed to Ruchniut, the non-corporeal, spiritual dimension.

You won't find Gashmiut in the Bible. You won't find it in the Talmud. It was a word formed by our medieval ancestors to encompass one half of their world-view divided into two: "stuff" on one side and "essence" on the other.

The choice of Ruchniut is clear. Ruach is wind, breath, the intangible but enduring essence of life as expressed in Genesis 1:2 "the ruach of God fluttered over the waters." It is a fine root for spirituality.

But the choice of geshem, rain, is curious. It seems the opposite of substance. Episodic, fluid, impossible to hold, "raininess" hardly seems to convey the sense of sturdy "materiality". A stronger candidate might have been "earth," adamah. Earthiness powerfully carries the meaning of physicality, groundedness, something solid and enduring.

"Even" or "tzur," stone and rock, could have conveyed an even better sense of sturdiness, physical presence. It was good enough to serve as a metaphor for the reality, presence and steadfastness of the Divine. And its hard substantiality contrasts nicely with spirituality.

But the medieval philosophers didn't choose those. They chose geshem, rain, instead. I haven't yet found a study that explains why, so I take the opportunity to muse. (I haven't nailed this one yet so your guidance and responses would be most welcome.)

What are the material dimensions of rain that the rabbis wished to emphasize as the essence of physical life? It is not possessiveness. Rain neither owns things nor can it be owned. It cannot be held long in the hand or carved or mined. And though we can gather it in cisterns and guide it through water races, we cannot possess the rain, only the pools in which it gathers. There is something, then, mercurial, evanescent, otherly and fragile about it.

Yet, rain is powerfully, desperately desired, but only at the right time and only in the right amounts. In its parts, it is insubstantial. Drop by drop it amounts to little. Single drops do not make rain; single drops do not bring life. It takes a cloudburst to make a rainfall. And it takes a rainfall to bring life. Too much, though, and life is destroyed.

Captured and horded, it can go stagnant and stink. It is through its flow, when it is shared among the land and trees and streams that it is vibrant and yields life.

Rain is, in the rabbinic imagination, the major currency between God and humans. It comes from the heavens and descends upon the earth. It is stored in the vaults on high and released in its time as blessing or curse. It captures the mystery and majesty of God's hold over all nature.

So, what does all this tell us about ourselves? What does this tell us about our bodies as material husks and our desires for material possessions and well-being?

What does it tell us about one and many, enough and not too much, having and sharing? And what, in the end, does it tell us about the rabbis' sense of purpose and the world's best way of being?

There is, as always, something ever more interesting in the curious than in the obvious. I am eager to hear what you think.

Darkness and Light

noreply@blogger.com (BJEN) — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 13:00:00 +0000

I had the privilege earlier this week of teaching at the Anacostia (DC) Watershed Stewards Academy. This version of the course is specifically designed for faith leaders. And I can tell you that there is no better place to study the first lines of the book of Genesis (describing the emergence of the world out of the primordial waters) than with a bunch of spirited, spiritual water activists.

We spoke about how, in the biblical view (as in other tales of creation), life begins in water. So it is with our modern story of evolution, life emerging from the seas. So it is with the story of each human being, each mammal and even each egg-born being. All emerge from a life-giving, life-protecting sac of liquid.

Water, we discussed, is the culture of all life and the world's great purifier. Fire is also a purifier, but it tends to destroy in the process. Though some things are purged and improved through fire, living things tend to perish in it. Water, though not without risk, cleanses and restores us, ridding us of our unwanted past and preparing us for a desired future. How awful, then, when we pollute the purifier.

But there was another insight that emerged in that discussion. About darkness. The scene of creation is set as follows:

When God began to create the heavens and the earth - the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and the spirit of God sweeping over the waters - God said, "Let there be light." And there was light. God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And there was evening and there was morning the first day.

Why, someone asked, was only the light good, and not the darkness too?

Perhaps, it was suggested, because light was a new creation, something novel and unknown, something that had to be tested out, tried on for size, taken out for a spin to see how it felt. And the answer was, it felt good.

Darkness, on the other hand, was already present, a known quantity, and a conundrum. Was it a product of creation or the absence of creation? Was it part of life or the essence of nothingness?

And once light came along, why was there still darkness? Light, after all, infuses and banishes darkness. Once light was created, darkness was vanquished, destroyed, chased from every corner of creation. The rabbis emphasize this, saying the primordial light of the first day - unlike the light of the sun of the fourth day - filled the universe from one end to the other. And yet the text speaks of God separating the light from the darkness, reining in the light, and reintroducing darkness into the world of creation.

Even if this darkness is not "good," the text seems to be saying, it does have a purpose. It is not the same as the darkness that came before. That darkness was chaos, enveloping everything. This darkness is contained, sharing time and space with light. That darkness hovered over all, defined everything. This darkness is tamed, has boundaries and is part of the breathing of the universe, the rhythm of life. It is a relief, a rest, the incubator of life.

Most of all, this darkness is different because it has a name given by God. This darkness is Night.

As part of the divine cosmic scheme, no matter how deep the Night, it ultimately gives way to the light of Day.

So we hope, at the dawn of spring.

Hands-on Jewish sustainability course

noreply@blogger.com (BJEN) — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 19:18:00 +0000

(I just received the following from Hebrew College up in Boston. For all those who are between 18 and 25, with time, inclination and the funds, this could be a great learning opportunity. Spread the word!)

"The Jewish Farm School and Hebrew College are partnering to offer you a week-long, intensive course exploring the intersection of Judaism, agriculture and contemporary food justice.

This week of experiential learning will help you increase your skill-based knowledge of sustainable agricultural techniques while you engage in meaningful volunteer service work.

You will have the opportunity to dialogue with activists, community leaders and business leaders and to study in the Hebrew College beit midrash (house of study) where classic Jewish texts will enlighten your understanding of contemporary environmental and food justice issues. A team of expert instructors from Hebrew College and Jewish Farm School will be on hand to offer guided mentorship.

When: Sunday, June 3-Sunday, June 10, 2012
Where: Sustainable farms in the Greater Boston Area and Hebrew College, Newton, MA
Who: Students and professionals, ages 18-25; others will be considered.
How: Tuition is $1000 + transportation; generous fellowships are available.

*College credit available for interested participants*

To find out more about fellowships and credit expenses contact Rabbi Or Rose, 617-559-8636

To find out more about this program visit jewishfarmschool.org.

Application Due: May 1st, 2012"

Harbingers of Spring

noreply@blogger.com (BJEN) — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 12:31:00 +0000

Right on time, the peepers have returned.

They greeted me after megillah reading last night, singing their chorus of longing into the soft, warm March air.

Well, one did at any rate. It was, as usual, a lonesome call of an avant-garde male, out before the rest, desperately hoping that at least one of the pond's she-frogs has emerged from her hibernation seeking a long-delayed, refreshing, gratifying tryst.

It is a daring audition. But then again, pioneers are, by definition, singular folk, carried aloft and ahead by their visions and passion, fueled by the same breath that gives wing to their song. If they are right, or lucky, or both, their solo turns into a rousing, transporting chorus that lifts the spirit and well-being of all. So it promises again to be for this little fellow, and his awakening cohort of lovers.

In 2008, they emerged around March 5. In 2009, around March 7. Last year, no doubt the same time (I came back from Cambridge around Purim-time and heard the peepers in full chorus then). I know because I mentioned them in this blog.

The cycles of the seasons are comforting, reassuring. It seems prudent to give up all expectations of a late-winter blistering blizzard (I will shelve that hope and dust it off next winter). But that disappointment is soothed by the peeking out of spring crocuses and daffodils, the heightening chatter of birds, the lengthening of daylight (growing by a hefty 2.5 minutes a day!) and the spring leap of the clock this weekend.

One more sign that spring is pressing hard to come: sunrise is no longer visible from my south-easterly-facing study. It is time, then, to retire my snow-starved boots, crank up the compost, clean out and close up the forlorn wood-burning stove, shed the pleasures of cozily hunkering down and ramp up for the joys of ... Passover preparations.

Primer on current Jewish voices on environment

noreply@blogger.com (BJEN) — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 12:53:00 +0000

If you want an overview of some major developments and players in the field of climate change and the Jewish community, take a look at this article posted by the Yale Forum on Climate Change.

The privileged place of fruit trees

noreply@blogger.com (BJEN) — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 02:26:00 +0000

Once upon a time, we knew, deep inside, the magic of fruit trees.

The trees of life and the knowledge of good and evil in the Book of Genesis were not pine or poplar or cypress. They were fruit trees. The dove did not bring back an ash leaf or elm bough but an olive branch.

The laws of the Torah that urge us to avoid waste and limit what we disturb in the process of building, come from the command not to destroy fruit trees in the pursuit of war. Other trees may be made into battlements and weapons of war, but not fruit trees. In a time of siege, in a time of such need, fruit trees may not be destroyed or harvested for their wood.

The lesson: we may not destroy what we will need tomorrow in response to the desperations of today.

The rabbis extended this preferential treatment of fruit trees.

They asked, why does the Torah (Exodus 26:15) require the pillars of the Tabernacle be made out of acacia wood? To teach us a lesson. Though God could have chosen any tree for the construction of the Tabernacle, God chose the acacia, a tree with no beneficial fruit or product save the wood itself.

So too, we humans, when selecting wood to build our homes, should not choose a fruit tree. To do otherwise would engage in discretionary, avoidable destruction.

It is not hard to extract a more global message: in the act of building civilization, we must uproot bits of nature. That is unavoidable. But we should do so only with the most efficient of materials, the least disruptive of methods, and in ways that allow us to be nurtured as much tomorrow as we are today.

Just, Green and Free

noreply@blogger.com (BJEN) — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 20:17:00 +0000

I went to the first Siach conference (see below) last summer. It was an amazing opportunity to meet fellow activists all along the religious and social justice/environmental spectrum. It is premised on created a world-wide conversation, and new, unexpected synergies to make things happen.

This summer, it is in Israel If you are interested, check out the information below.

Siach: An Environment and Social Justice Conversation

Applications for 2012 conference are open!

WHAT: A unique opportunity to meet, share and collaborate with fellow social justice and environment activists from across the Jewish world. Siach, an Environment and Social Justice Conversation, brings together committed activists from across Israel, North America, and Europe. Supported by the UJA Federation of New York, with anchors in the US, Israel and Great Britain, and scores of member organizations, Siach is deepening the nuanced understanding of Jewish Peoplehood and Israel engagement with those for whom the pursuit of social and environmental justice is one of the defining characteristics of their identity.

WHERE: The second annual Siach conference will take place in Ohalo Manor Hotel, on the Kinneret in Israel.

WHEN: June 15-18, 2012

WHO: We are looking for individuals who are doers, networkers, out-of-the-box thinkers and visionaries with the desire to share our vision of creating a global network of collaboration in the areas of environment and social justice.

Stipends up to $1200 are available.

Click here for more information and to apply.

Old Things

noreply@blogger.com (BJEN) — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 14:53:00 +0000

When my son moved to NYC last summer, he took the furniture from his DC-sized area apartment to his Manhattan-sized apartment. And - unfortunately - discovered that it didn't all fit.

So, like the native New Yorker he is, he put the excess furniture out on the curb. Three hours later, it was gone. I had earlier seen a man on the street stop, set his briefcase down beside my son's flotsam (or more properly, jetsam), call someone to describe his find to, all the while assuming that protective, this-is-mine-don't-even-think-about-it stance.

When I went back outside a half hour later, the furniture, and the man, were gone. You gotta love New York.

It handily solves one of life's persistent questions: What to do with things we don't want, perfectly good things that too often find their way to the trash, or clutter up our otherwise perfectly fine homes, all because we don't know how to properly get rid of them.

Thankfully, more and more, across the world, we are re-creating the best of New York City's casual street trade in a more organized, yet equally robust recycling, re-using, and re-purposing marketplace.

I recently read about Bookcrossing.com, a way to recycle your books, track where they go and see who else reads them in a worldwide book-sharing community. (You go to the site, download bookcrossing ID labels, slap them on the books you want to give away, and then either release them into the wind or register them on the site for others to request).

There is of course the old standby, Freecycle.org, the local on-line neighbor-to-neighbor free marketplace that allows you to post stuff you want to give away and find stuff you want to get. It is, according to their website, made up of "5,022 groups with 8,878,732 members around the world." Pretty impressive. And you can get anything from open bags of kitty litter to living room suites.

Baltimore also has our very own Loading Dock, a national model for re-cycling and re-using building and construction materials. You can get or donate windows, appliances, flooring, paint, most anything that is still in good working order that you would otherwise have to pay to haul away. (Baltimore County, at least, does not collect construction debris in its trash or recycling rounds.)

And there are of course the old stand-bys: flea markets and garage sales.

There are some folks who worry about lost manufacturing jobs and a hit to the economy that such re-use might have. The truth is, as long as the population is still growing, we will need more - not just re-used - stuff. But we also know that we cannot keep digging things out of the earth for materials and energy and think that is the best way to give people jobs.

Re-cycling and re-purposing can also be a growing jobs sector. Someone has to drive the trucks and manage the inventory and keep the books and do the advertising; and someone has to demolish the old and rebuild the new.

What is wonderful about many, if not most, of these enterprises, is that they start out home-grown, work through the affordable services of the internet, and build community at the same time. They don't take an MBA or lots of start-up capital. They take passion, caring and faith in the goodwill of people.

I do have one question though: What do people do with their old, shabby clothes? Not the kind that you can give away to Goodwill or take to the Hadassah re-sale shop. And certainly not the kind that you can sell via a consignment shop.

I mean those socks with holes and t-shirts that are threadbare... those things that years ago might have been made into rag rugs or used to clean silver.

I have enough cleaning rags, thank you. And we have enough quilting squares to keep my daughter busy for years. So the question remains, how do we recycle fabric that otherwise just goes into the landfills? Old kitchen towels, underwear, totally unwearable and unsaleable stuff hanging in closets.

If you have an answer, or better, a vendor, who can solve this dilemma for me, please do let me know.

I will gladly share the advice.

A pod of wishes

noreply@blogger.com (BJEN) — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 13:50:00 +0000

There is a tree in our yard that is hard to see, nestled as it is in the midst of bolder, taller and more boastful trees.

Its demur boughs are entwined in a tangle of branches. You would hardly know it was there at all, and I almost never pay attention to it. But what caught my eye today, as I wrestled with a stubborn, thorny nemesis nearby, were the drapings of shimmering, gossamer pods.

The tree looked enchanted, lit up as if from within, by the light of the translucent pods. It was as if a fairy had hung the seeds of a thousand dreams on the tips of its branches.

(Now it all makes sense: This is what the tooth fairy does! It isn't our children's teeny teeth that she wants. It is the dreams that are born with, and borne by, each tooth lost. Each tooth that falls out, each tooth excitedly placed beneath the pillow, captures the delight, the dreams, of our children. It ferries them between their worlds of fantasy and growth, childhood and maturity. The tooth fairy gathers these innocent, inchoate dreams, before they get lost in the passage of time, and adorns the world with them.)

The pods are frail, yet tenacious. They hang there together, two-by-two, bunch by bunch, throughout the winter, cradling the dreams of yesterday, the seeds of tomorrow.

Waiting. Waiting.

Waiting for us to remember and redeem them.

We are like the tree. We carry around our invisible, tenacious gossamer dreams, hidden in the rush of daily life so that we rarely notice them. They dangle, almost weightless, as we move, fluttering ever so gently in the gusts of time.

Then one day, when we are wrestling with the weeds of life nearby, we look up, and there they are.

And we remember, vaguely, the delight of childhood and the world we wanted to find, the world we wanted to create.

Fruit Trees

noreply@blogger.com (BJEN) — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 11:19:00 +0000

I just returned from a whirlwind trip to Israel, which serendipitously coincided with the season of Tu B'shvat, the day that marks the new year of the trees. Since the times of the early rabbis, this holiday has been a sacred day on the Jewish calendar.

In modern Israel, it is a day of joy, when school children go out into the fields and countryside to plant trees, put on plays and celebrate the glories of a returning spring. Friends and family visit each other, exchanging gifts of dried figs and dates, almonds and apricots. Wherever we went, we were the recipients of the abundance of these baskets and platters of this vernal visiting.


Almond tree in blossom. wikicommons. Zierman

Off a side road from Tel Aviv to Be'er Sheva, at the farm of Ariel Sharon, we saw that almond trees really do burst into blossom almost overnight. Adorned in white petals with a pinkish hue, almond trees stand, a bit demur yet all puffed up, looking like a shy but proud debutant being presented to the world in her poofy crinolined skirt. All around, the land just smiles, covered with a profusion of wildflowers.

What struck me throughout these quiet celebrations - though why it took me all this time to fully grasp this, I don't know - is that Tu B'shvat is not a holiday about trees. It is not like Arbor Day, a broad celebration of the gifts of all trees. It is, rather, a holiday pointedly about fruit trees. Non-fruiting trees are, technically, unconcerned with Tu B'shvat. For Tu B'shvat is an accounting tool, a way to determine how old a fruit tree is and which fruits are counted in which year's harvest.

Perhaps I am more sensitive this year to this fact given that I am the founder of a new organization called the Baltimore Orchard Project, which began last September and focuses on gleaning fruit from residential and other non-commercial trees and giving it to the hungry, as well as promoting the planting of more local fruit trees.

(By the way, we are looking for volunteers to help us build an inventory of all such fruit trees in the city and county, and to help us harvest and distribute the fruit in late summer and fall. If you would like to join us, please let me know! You can sign up on our website or send me a comment on this blog.)

What was stunning in Israel is the way so many people across the land (we went from Be'er Sheva in the south to Zichron Yaakov in the north) have fruit trees growing in their yards and along the sides of roadways. Teas were spiced with lemons and loquats plucked before the meal (and in one case, our host made it from fresh herbs growing in her garden).

Though Baltimore is not the climate for citrus, we are a great climate for other fruits like figs, peaches, pears, apples, nut trees, and much more. Once upon a time, here in Baltimore, it was all the rage to plant fruit and nut trees in one's yard. Somehow that fell out of favor for more exotic ornamentals.

How wonderful would it be if we could re-establish the norm of planting fruit trees in our yards. And orchards on empty city lots. How wonderful if our homes and cities were not simply sterile, ornamental landscapes but working land that enriched the beauty, the bounty and the health of our community.

It's all in the story

noreply@blogger.com (BJEN) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 21:13:00 +0000

On Sunday, I had the pleasure of visiting Congregation B'nai Israel in Easton, MD. A gem of a shul, we celebrated a Tu B'shvat seder that was built around the kabbalistic symbols of four cups of wine whose color deepened from white to red as the seder progressed, and four kinds of fruit with edible and inedible centers and skins.

After the seder, I spoke about the need for us to imagine a new narrative, one that moves us from what-we-do to who-we-are; one that can transform our bundle environmental deeds into body of purpose.

Shabbat, it seems to me, is such a narrative. Our entire week (and hence our entire life) is framed by Shabbat. The rabbis tell us that just as a person cannot go three days without water, so we are never more than three days away from Shabbat.

We are told that the essence of Shabbat trails into the beginning of the week, that we can do havdalah, the ritual ending of Shabbat, as late as Tuesday. And on Wednesday, we begin preparing for the coming Shabbat.

Shabbat, then, is not just a day. It is the frame of our days and our lives.

And what is the essence of Shabbat? Abraham Joshua Heschel explains it this way: "There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord."

This vision of Shabbat the rabbis call: a taste of the world to come.

Shabbat is, in essence, the perfect world we seek, where there is no want, no possession, no lack. We rest on Shabbat not so much to recover from the week past or to prepare for the week to come - though those are blessed benefits of Shabbat. We rest on Shabbat for all is - symbolically - done. We have arrived - the fullness of our quest is realized. We don't need to own anymore for all that we have is sufficient. We don't need to work anymore for all we sought is accomplished. We don't need to fear for everyone has all they need.

But the commandment to observe Shabbat has not one part but two: "Six days shall you labor, and do all your work; but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord. You shall do no work."

The Shabbat commandment teaches us not only about the quality of our "rest" but the quality of our work. We get to enjoy Shabbat because we earn it through the work of our week, the work of our lives.

Ortega y Gasset said: “Living is nothing more or less than doing one thing instead of another.”

Living in the light of Shabbat helps us choose what to do: to live in a way that leads to a world of fullness and contentment, a world of Shabbat.

Are we there yet?

noreply@blogger.com (BJEN) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 09:24:00 +0000

"We used to teach technology as a subject. [Today,] it's no longer the 'something' that we teach; it's the platform on which we deliver information." Shaindle Braunstein-Cohen on iPads in Jewish Day Schools, by Rabbi Jason Miller (quoted from eJewish Philanthropy)

This is true with so many fundamental tasks of life: walking, reading, writing ... The techniques that we once labored so hard to master ultimately become merely platforms upon which we build creative worlds.

So too with sustainability. We teach sustainability as a subject today. We will know we have arrived at a sustainable world when it is no longer something we teach but something that forms, quite naturally, the "platform", the given, upon which we build the production, consumption and "waste" of our society.

noreply@blogger.com (BJEN) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 12:48:00 +0000

Remembering Apollo 1

On January 27, 1967, Apollo 1's crew--Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, Edward H. White II and Roger B. Chaffee--was killed when a fire erupted in their capsule during testing. Apollo 1 was originally designated AS-204 but following the fire, the astronauts' widows requested that the mission be remembered as Apollo 1 and following missions would be numbered subsequent to the flight that never made it into space.

Image credit: NASA

For those of us old enough to remember, this was a horrific moment. It reminded us how dangerous was the irresistible romance of exploration. And for a moment, our dreams were consumed on that launch pad. But the human spirit is remarkable and the endeavor went on. My the memories of the Apollo 1 crew encourage our dreams to soar - and may we make a world down here as awesome as the world in space that they dared to explore.

Maryland Legislative Summit

noreply@blogger.com (BJEN) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 19:53:00 +0000

The annual Maryland Legislative Environmental Summit was held yesterday in Annapolis. Hundreds of people, really, a lot, (I'm waiting for the official count) packed into the Miller Senate Building to hear activists, elected officials, and me (!) make brief (5 minute) talks as this year's legislative session kicks off. It was an honor to be a voice from "the faith community" speaking to such an august and passionate crowd, a group of people who work so hard on behalf of all of us. There is much to do, what with issues such as wind energy, water quality, a bag bill, and more. To keep abreast of issues, you can always check the Maryland League of Conservation Voters site. Or better yet, become a member and get updates sent to you.

I attach my presentation below, fyi:

We live in the midst of a 4-billion year old mystery, an on-going miracle that we call Earth. For all we know, no such miracle exists anywhere else. Whatever we may be skilled enough to find out there, there is likely not to be another Planet Earth, or another you, or another me, or another Bay or the parade of moonrises and sunsets, or the cascade of creatures that have filled our air and seas and land and made our world what it is today.

We are the chosen ones, blessed with being alive at this awesomely rich and perilous time. We didn’t ask for this moment, we didn’t create it, we did not earn it, and we don’t even understand it.

What we do understand, however, is that something very dangerous – even wicked - is happening out there – and we are doing our share to cause it.

But the good news is, we can do our share to stop it.

We are Earth’s most aware beneficiaries and its most powerful stewards.

We are not its masters, we are not its owners. We are its tenders. We are called upon to use it, take care of it, and give it – healthy and robust - to our children, just as our ancestors gave it to us.

Thomas Berry, the Catholic theologian – taught that each generation has a Great Work. It is a work that we do not choose, but that we are dealt by the hand of history. It is a work that drives our ultimate purpose and inspires our days, a work that all future generations will judge us by, a work that is bound to “the larger destinies of the universe.”

Our generation’s Great Work is to learn to thrive within life’s sustaining cycles. Our Great Work is to build a world that is resilient, ever new and ever fresh to each generation, that matches our desires and consumption, our use and our waste, our progress and our joys, to the untransgressible bounds of nature.

We must do this and we can do this, for we are not alone.

It is crowded in here.

It is crowded with your passion and persistence, your hard work and hopes, your wisdom and commitment.

And it is crowded with the concern and confusion, the hunger and the worry, the needs and prayers of hundreds more, thousands more, millions more who have never heard of you, but who depend upon you, and who need you to pursue this sacred work.

For all of us work on behalf of everyone who takes a breath of air, who wants a sip of clean water, who works to put food on their table, who takes refuge from the cold, seeks a good day’s work today and tomorrow, anyone who relies upon this awesome, giving world for their manifold, mundane needs. And that is everyone.

The names we use to describe our work might be throwing people off. It seems to me that Senator Carter Conway’s and Delegate McIntosh’s committees might need to be renamed:

Perhaps something like the: Education, Health and Environment, Economy, Jobs, Energy, Equity, Life’s Well-being, Earth Stewardship and Children of Tomorrow Committees.

The world of tomorrow will not be the world of yesterday. It will take more than science and knowledge, more than money and regulations to get us from here to there. It will take our trust, it will take our will, and it will take our faith.

We are not engaged in an us-vs-them agenda. It is not about jobs vs the environment; enviros vs progress, government vs the people.

Our task can be stated simply:

It is about us taking care of nature so nature can take care of us.

There is a great future waiting for us; we must find the way, and we must all get there together.

That is our Great Work.

That is our sacred work.

And that is why you are here.

Thank you for what you do.

noreply@blogger.com (BJEN) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 23:27:00 +0000

Counting enough

There is something odd, and instructive, about manna.

It was, by all accounts, miraculous. Accompanying the Israelites from Egypt to the Promised Land, it was not like other food. It did not grow from the earth and it did not fall from the sky (despite the poetic vision of Exodus 16:4) . It appeared after the dew of the morning had worn off on the ground and, if not harvested promptly, vanished into thin air.

It was to be collected and eaten everyday. Hoarding was not allowed. It rotted if left til the following morning, though it lasted two days, from Friday to Shabbat. (Shabbat, after all, was the day of rest and no collecting could be done.)

When first introduced after the miraculous events at the Red Sea, and the sweetening of the bitters waters, Moses instructed the Israelites in what it was and how to collect it:

“It is the bread the LORD has given you to eat. ¹⁶ This is what the LORD has commanded: ‘Everyone is to gather as much as they need. Take an omer for each person you have in your tent.’”

In teaching this recently, I saw that this law could be confusing. If I take as much as I need, I might require more, or less, than an omer for each person. So I might not be able to gather as much as I need if I gather it by the count. How is the commandment to be fulfilled? By need or by set measure?

Then we are told:

¹⁷ The Israelites did as they were told; some gathered much, some little.

This just extends the dilemma. Does that mean the Israelites gathered only an omer for each person? And those with large households gathered their large share of manna and those with small households gathered their small share?

^{Or does that mean that they gathered according to need and not according to measure? It seems like - through some alchemy - both were true: the gathering was by measure and need.}

¹⁸ And when they measured it by the omer, the one who gathered much

did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little.

Everyone had gathered just as much as they needed.

One possible solution is that the omer was a fluid, flexible amount here and not yet standardized. It might have referred to the amount each person needed to become sated daily, before it got ossified into a straitjacketed measure.

Or perhaps it meant that while a household of nine, say, consumed the total of nine omers, each person in the household ate what they needed, some more and some less. And it all evened out to nine.

Whatever the answer, the story of the manna is food for thought. It is an ethical tale of enoughness. It asks us to be grateful every day for the miracle of food; to guard against selfish hoarding, but know when to save; to count equitably for everyone's needs, but acknowledge our differences; to be mindful of earthly and divine gifts, and share them with each other.

^{So the question is: how many miracles do we count here? The manna itself? That the omer was a magical measure, bulking up like wheat in water, to fit the stomach it was destined for? That there was an omer for everyone? That there was always enough? That it defeated hoarding and required trust? Or that households, tribes, and the entire Jewish people were able to share, learning to gather just enough to satisfy their needs, and rejoice in this vision of enoughness?}

Seeds

noreply@blogger.com (BJEN) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 12:26:00 +0000

In Genesis 1, on the sixth day, God creates man and woman after having created all the rest of Planet Earth. In a gracious effort to provide some guidance, some instruction to these bewildered, befuddled neophytes on how this novelty of life could possibly work, God says, "Look around. All this grandeur is there for you."

²⁸ God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

"All this is at your disposal. But, and this is a huge But, you have to learn how to use it well so you don't mess things up. (I am paraphrasing from the midrash here.)

"Let's begin with the basics.

²⁹Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. ³⁰ And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.

"Though I said to you" (interpreting God here), "that the earth is yours, your food shall be its plants. Not the animals and not just any plants, but the stuff that comes with seed, zorea zera, those things that fertilize, renew and regenerate themselves. To the animals and all the other creatures I give green plants for food. To you I give grains and fruits and vegetables of all kinds that carry this harvestable gift of regeneration.

"Regeneration. That is the key. Without that, all this ends. Even you. You need to know that, for you are the one species whose imagination will lead you to assume great powers. You will learn how to tame fire and subdue infections, travel great distances and send messages across the galaxies. But you will also learn how to wrest millions of years of stored energy (stored sunshine!) from the earth and consume it in a flash, to cut down forests faster than they can grow, to drag the seas clean, scraping all its life into your nets.

"To you I say, consume only that which has 'seed' in it, that which can regenerate itself. Harvest the fruit, preserve the seed, plant it and let it grow. Do not consume it all so that it is unable to renew itself."

It seems a simple enough task. Use only what can be recycled and healthily reused. Consume only the stuff and the amounts that allow renewal. Yet we are failing at it.

There is one message we need to repeat over and over again til it sinks in and changes our thoughts, our values and our behavior:

We can't get there from here (to a renewable, resilient world).
We can eventually get there.
But we can't get there from here.

We need to step off this path and move to another. We can do it. We can survive it. We can thrive in it. Indeed, it is the only way we can. But we need to change paths, and it all begins with a change of spirit, of will, of desire.

And that is where we, the faith community, comes in. Spread the word.

Perfection and Contentment

noreply@blogger.com (BJEN) — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 12:40:00 +0000

(Photo from potter-sculptor.com)

While the philosophers and rabbis of old lost themselves in labyrinths of logic like: "Can we have free will if there is an All-Knowing God," mothers of old (or so I imagine) struggled with the very real question: "How can I raise my child to reach for excellence but be content with their best?"

That is, how can we, how do we, hold together two sides of an irreconcilable coin: actively seeking perfection and being content with less?

How do we avoid feeling like failures, like we are living lesser lives, when we come up short? How do we not give up, slump in our chairs, be washed in despair, and set our sights lower next time so we are not so disappointed again?

This is hardly an idle question. It is one we must all grapple with throughout our lives. It is the question that determines the essence, and difference, of religious traditions, and the difference between a content life and a unsettled one.

Judaism answers in a pithy aphorism, and in the ways we are taught to live.

"Rabbi Tarfon said: You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to ignore it." (Pirkei Avot, Ethics of the Fathers, 2:21) Our task is not to achieve perfection but simply strive for it.

Shabbat agrees, but teaches more sweetly. We learn from the ebb and flow of Shabbat and workweek that for six days we are to work, chasing perfection, never achieving it. Yet, once a week, we get Shabbat, a taste of perfection. The candles we kindle, a midrash tells us, are sparks from the primordial light of the first day of creation. A pure light, different from the sun (which was created on the fourth day), this first light was set aside for the end of time, but it dips into this work-a-day world once a week in the form of our Shabbat candles to inspire and refresh us.

So every seven days we get a taste of perfection, a respite, a balm that celebrates our good-enough workday achievements, soothes our sagging spirits and sends us stronger back into the frail, imperfect world to keep striving for better.

Hanukkah, too, offers us a way forward. We sing of the miracle of the oil, when what was enough for one day lasted for eight. The true miracle, though, was not the oil but the faith of those who bothered to light it. The work needed to restore the Temple was beyond the task of one day. Or one precious cruse of oil. To light it would be a waste at best and a folly at worst. Yet they lit.

So too we light our Hanukkiot in the midst of darkness for eight days, even though we know that when the week is over, the darkness again follow.

We know that when we start. But we light anyway. We must. For while the lights are burning, we are buoyed. And when they go out, we start our work again.

(My thoughts on this subject were stimulated by a conversation I had with Elicia Brown who is writing an article on this subject for Jewish Women International's Jewish Woman magazine. Check out JWI, their important work and their wonderful magazine.)

on resilience

noreply@blogger.com (BJEN) — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 16:55:00 +0000

on resilience, from The Post Carbon Reader Series. Thinking "Resilience". William Rees.

page 6: Resilient thinking recognizes that: "resource management efforts must shift from reshaping nature for the purpose of satisfying human demands to moderating human demands so that they fit within biophysical limits."

Lessons from the Darkness

noreply@blogger.com (BJEN) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 10:44:00 +0000

We are deep into the season's darkness, hurtling toward the shortest day of the year. Our days will continue to shorten and our nights will continue to lengthen until the welcome solstice (Thursday, December 22, 2011 at 12:30 AM here in Baltimore). Then, the sun will cease its southern recession, pause and begin its northern trek again. On that day, night in Baltimore will last 14 hours, 35 minutes and 59 seconds. That is way too much darkness.

My interfaith study group has begun delving into the nature of night, as found in the Bible. We imagined that we moderns could not begin to know the full experience of night (how it could evoke awe, depth, terrors, thickness, cover, refuge) as did those who lived before the easy flip of a switch. Our experience of darkness and our fabulously easy ability to create light right here and now strips out the rawness of unrelenting darkness. Back in the day, the dark must have felt as much like a creature, a presence, as a duration of time.

So we are reading narratives of night in the Bible. We began with Genesis 1 - a good place to start.

When God began to create the heavens and the earth - the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep, and a wind from God sweeping over the water - God said, "Let there be light." And there was light. (New Jewish Publication Society translation)

Or, in the creatively faithful translation of Everett Fox:

At the beginning of God's creating of the heavens and the earth, when the earth was wild and waste, darkness over the face of the Ocean, rushing-spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters - God said, Let there be light. And there was light.

It is our good fortune to have both a sailor in our study group, someone who has logged thousands of hours on the water, day and night, and a theater director. So we read and saw this text through their eyes.

The beginning of time began in water and darkness. That was the setting: darkness and water. Imagine that, our director said: all darkness, all around. You can see nothing. You know nothing about space, place, orientation. You have no sense of what "here" is. You just sense your body but don't really know what it looks like. And then you feel a whoosh.

The sailor explained to us that not seeing on the water is different from not seeing on land. One's exposure, lacking of bearings, leaves one feeling vulnerable.

You can walk in the darkness, count your footsteps, feel the rise and fall of the land, find a tree or rock to serve as a marker. There is a way to ground and orient yourself, even if only minimally. Not so in the dark at sea. You can stay put on land, know that you wake up at the same place you lay down on land. Not so at sea. (Yes, there are anchors for larger boats in shallower areas but not for all boats and not deep at sea and not here in the story.)

Even more, our sailor told us, it is not the water that is most attended to on the open sea. It is the wind. Water is water, he said. It is when it is whipped up by the wind that you notice it and must respond. The responsiveness of the sails, sense of security, ease, confidence - all are determined in some measure by the wind. A sailor is ever attentive to the wind's speed, force, direction, waxing, waning. It is the wind that will determine the quality of the trip. And at night, in the darkness, exposed and drifting, the wind can feel like the whooshing, rishrushing of God.

With this understanding, the "rushing spirit/wind of God" takes on new resonance. In the midst of the chaotic, watery mass of creation, the text is telling us, there appears a constant, flowing wind that soothes and calms and fashions the world.

Perhaps even more, we can learn from this text that when we find ourselves adrift, afraid, in the dark, at a loss, we should pause, stay still, and attend to the spirit/wind that blows over the depth. Then, perhaps, the light will come.