Iyyar 5779 אייאר

 

 

 

Sunday, May 5, 2019.  On Horseshoe Lake, Iyyar is the month of spring greening, leaves and flowers unfolding.  In ancient Israel, millet and vegetables are sown, but the big news is the beginning of harvest:  barley, wheat, oats, peas and lentils.  The first sheaf of barley has been offered in thanksgiving, and now we are counting the Omer, the days until the wheat harvest, and the receiving of the Torah at Shavuot. At the time of the Exodus, our ancestors were two weeks into their travels in the wilderness, headed for Mount Sinai.

After the past month, where we seemed to be reminded daily of the divisiveness of the human world, and its propensity for violence, we read blogs and responses resonating with a call for solidarity.  We are in this together, Jews, Muslims, Christians, of all races and nations.  We are called to be uniquely who we are, in public, in defiance of all that would send us underground. We meet at Horseshoe Lake to continue to follow the rhythm of the seasons, and our connection to the larger universe. We are still walking toward Sinai, and will let nothing disable us.

Today is the fifteenth day of the Omer — beginning the third week of the mystical 7-week Kabbalistic path of refinement in preparing to receive the Torah.  This third week is assigned the quality of “Tiferet” ,תפארת, translated as glory, beauty, harmony and compassion.  Think about it:  How can all of these qualities be implied in one word?

This question brings to mind the poetry and songs of Native Americans, who use the word “beauty” as an English translation of a word that seems, from context, to come close to what we might mean by “Tiferet”.  If we walk as free people, in awareness and respect of the beauty and harmony around us, caring for the world and all people and creatures within it, we might approach the idea.  Our source Rabbi Simon Jacobson notes that Tiferet “blends the differing colors of love and discipline, and this harmony makes it beautiful.”  I think of a favorite poem by Native American Muscogee writer Joy Harjo:

Eagle Poem

To pray you open your whole self

To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon

To one whole voice that is you.

And know there is more

That you can’t see, can’t hear,

Can’t know except in moments

Steadily growing, and in languages

That aren’t always sound but other

Circles of motion.

Like eagle that Sunday morning

Over Salt River.  Circled in blue sky

In wind, swept our hearts clean

With sacred wings.

We see you, see ourselves and know

That we must take the utmost care

And kindness in all things.

Breathe in, knowing we are made of

All this, and breathe, knowing

We are truly blessed because we

Were born, and die soon within a

True circle of motion,

Like eagle rounding out the morning

Inside us.

We pray that it will be done

In beauty,

In beauty.[1]

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This month, may we walk upright in harmony and compassion, together with all the others who are on their own unique paths – and share this earth with us.

In Tiferet, in Tiferet.

בתפארת, בתפארת

—Kirby

 

[1] Joy Harjo, in Brian Swann, ed, 1996.  Native American Songs and Poems. Mineola NY: Dover Publications.