WHAT HUMBLES ME

i wrote a piece on the more than Human World at the beginning of Kislev (https://earthbasedjudaism.org/kislev/kislev-more-than-human-world) and as usual I asked questions designed to encourage your spiritual growth. I always do these questions myself as well. This blog shares one of the questions and my reflections. I was focused on being humble, acknowledging all that I do now know based on watching some squirrels who seem fat to me and wondering if that was true, what it might mean and how to understand it in the context of my mast trees not having nuts this year. The more than human world is a mystery, and the quietness of this time of year maybe lets us sink into that.

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 humbles me?  Here’s what is interesting.  I’m far more interested in this kind of humbling than I am in the spectacular kind.  This is why I prefer valleys to mountain heights, for instance. So crops growing in my garden absolutely humble me.  I’m amazed that something can actually grow and that I can then eat it—it’s this amazing miracle that I find hard to comprehend and I am certainly humbled that I have absolutely no idea at all about how it all works

I’m humbled by birds because I completely can’t understand them.  I am completely confident that they are communicating something, but I have no idea what.  I’m humbled by trees because they are so vibrant in their different life stages.  A skag is home and supports life in a way that seems unimaginable to me to apply to a corpse. A corpse feels like a short term feeding, akin to the corpse of a mouse or a fox, here today, gone in a few months. But a tree can “die” and last for years first standing upright and then lying down, becoming the home for so much life.

I’m humbled by the squirrels racing up and down the trees.  I climbed trees as a kid, but never, ever anything like that, for sure. I’m humbled by clover and by pastures with animals on it, a just perfect marriage in balance that bends with the wind and the weather.  There is a oneness in the more than human world of which our mystics just dream. I’m humbled by wood as it burns, this miracle that makes me feel safe and warms me. Again, this is just a great and beautiful marriage of our human need for warmth and working with what the more than human world can provide.  I’m actually humbled in the kitchen, when I remember to be.  That I can take a bunch of ingredients and make something that is edible from them strikes me as a miracle.