L’Shana Tovah! Somehow tonight is the start of Rosh Hashanah! The Jewish High Holy Days are here. I don’t feel ready. There’s too much going on. So many balls in the air. It’s still 95 degrees out. It still feels like summer.
We picked pears this week from a tree in a local park. Do you know that you’re supposed to pick pears before they are ripe? You know they are ready if you twist the stem and the pear pops off easily.
I feel like a pear. I’m not quite ripe, not quite ready to face the High Holy Days and all the power and potency that comes when you truly show up for these days. And yet, here we are.
We’re here in Ashland and will be attending services at our synagogue again. We were supposed to be at the beach, but remember how we bought a beach house as a climate change refuge for wildfires? There is a wildfire eight miles from the town of Port Orford. It’s terrifying and tragic and yet here we are.
It’s harvest time. The time of year where we take a judicious look at what has grown this year. Previously, this has always been a metaphor for me. But this year I grew some things and that’s progress. We harvested four heads of purple corn from our garden this week, a few summer squashes, and lots of tomatoes and grapes. The fig trees around town are popping. There’s one particularly grand one near another park in town. We’ve been walking there after dinner for some dessert figs.
Hadassah double fists the figs. Hadassah picks her own blueberries, grapes, and tomatoes. In her one year of life, she’s had blackberries straight from the vine and plums and figs straight from the trees. My mom says Hadassah will grow up thinking food grows on trees! That’s the goal. May she always know the abundance of ripe fig trees where she can keep saying ‘more, more’ and more will keep appearing.
The elderberries are ready for picking; we have to go up to the mountain this weekend to pick them for syrup-making this fall. Fall is going to be here soon. Somehow.
What have you harvested this year, food or otherwise? Have you had an abundant harvest or have some factors hindered your output — maybe soil, pests, time, heat, drought, or distraction? Where have you put your energy, love, and presence? What haven’t you nurtured as much as you would have liked to? I always like taking time to reflect, but it’s basically a commandment to do it now at this potent time of year.
It seems like every year Isaak and I crash into the High Holidays desperately in need of some miracle or other. Every year our prayers have been answered.
During this portal, we are harvesting the fruits of our labor. Sometimes it’s ripe like figs and sometimes it needs more time like pears. We can look at the stories we tell about our lives and decide to tell a new story. Is there a different story you would rather tell? Is there something else you would rather plant?
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