KISLEV MORE THAN HUMAN WORLD
FALL INTO WINTER. Month of raining leaves, November-December.
This is the month of falling leaves. As I start the month, there is still a small shrubby tree that has green leaves, there are some trees that still have leaves of a dull red, plenty of trees that have lost most or all of their leaves. The brownness of winter is coming; by the end of the month the trees except for the beeches and a few oaks will have lost all their leaves.
It rains leaves when it is windy, and I sit on my bench, wrapped against the cold in the winter jacket and the blanket around my legs, watching it rain leaves, in much the same way as it might rain snow in the coming few months, the wind picking up the leaves and having them swirl in the air as they inexorably head to the ground. It’s also the time of people cleaning up leaves in suburbia. The two most popular strategies seem to be leaf blowers or riding mowers with big attachments on the back to catch the leaves or grass and make sure that they don’t return to the earth where they belong. Raking leaves seems a bit of a lost art. I watch the big bags full of leaves being put out for the garbage collection. We have collectively lost our minds and bodies in suburbia.
This year I actually have plants in the garden. I’m really not much of a gardener, but I’ve managed to grow a crop of chard, bok choi, kale and carrots that are still in the garden. The green of the vegetables seems oddly out of place against the progressively brown and grey of the coming winter. The grass of the lawn is still green, but in the back where the garden is, I can’t really see much of it because of the cover of leaves, a cover I will leave to rot and enrich the soil.
The deer have turned the same grey-brown as the woods, the better to camouflage themselves, not that they need it here. The squirrels seem fatter than usual, even though none of the oaks or hickories have masted at all this year. Are they fattening up against a colder than normal winter? Are they flush with food for some reason I can’t discern? The more than human world is a mystery to me, the details of the behavior of the other beings with whom I share this particular piece of land something unknown to me. Maybe I should sit and have a conversation with the squirrels? But I am not sure they would sit still for long enough, at least for me.
You might say that their behavior is understandable and I am just testifying to my ignorance. I certainly say this to myself often enough. And yet there is a valuable lesson in being clear about what I don’t know, a lesson in humility that humanity would do well to learn. We are but a part of this wonderful, ever changing world. We would like to think we are masters of it, we delude ourselves into this view often enough as we seek to control everything we can. We are supposed to have a relatively snowy winter, and I can already hear the complaints about shoveling snow and how the snow will crimp our 24/7 on the go lifestyle. And I can already hear the snow blowers interrupting the blissful quiet of a world under a blanket of snow.
I pray that we find ways to embrace the world and ourselves as part of this beautiful world. As fall merges into winter in this month of Kislev, let us slow down with the shortened days and cold weather.
QUESTIONS
What humbles you, but in a quiet way, as opposed to being humbled by something spectacular like a sunset or the Grand Canyon?
What seems discordant in your life like the green of my winter vegetables in a cold world?
What needs to be left to compost in your life, like the leaves on the ground?
