Spirit and Story Archive

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Growing Seasons

By Janet Kirchheimer 

 

“Come on, you can do it,” my father says as he wraps the tendrils of a cucumber plant around the fence of our garden.  “Sometimes you have to show the plants how to do it,” he tells me.  I am in awe of my father’s relationship with the garden.   My father is in awe of God, of nature and creation, and by example is showing me how to be in awe.   

Recently, we celebrated Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, the “Yamim Noraim,” the Days of Awe, of God and creation.  Awe is one of the things that makes us human.  For me, it is a feeling that comes over me when I look at a natural or a man-made achievement.  The feeling draws me out of myself in wonder and appreciation.  In these moments, my brain and heart are overloaded.  There is something mysterious about this feeling I that cannot  rationally explain. 

For me, awe is a religious or spiritual feeling.  When I pay attention to a wonder of nature, I connect it to God.  One morning this past summer, I spent two hours watching a morning glory open – its heart-shaped leaves spiraling up towards the sun, the blossom that slowly opened up to a trumpet-like flower that basked in the sunlight.  It is not possible for human beings to create a morning glory, a rainbow, a butterfly, or a mountain range.   

About six years ago, I vacationed in the Canadian Rockies.  The vastness and the grandeur of nature blew me away.  It was beyond my comprehension.  I had never seen such big mountains and glaciers.  Both my brain and heart were overloaded.  When I returned home, I wanted to tell everyone about it, but couldn’t find the words to describe it.  To say that the mountains were huge and the glacier waters were a blue that I’d never seen before sounded inadequate.  Not even my photos were able to do it justice.  Being a poet, I tried to write poetry to capture what I’d seen, but I couldn’t manage to wrap myself around such a large experience, and no words came.  The landscape, like the awe, was too big for me to take in.    Only a line from the Hallel prayer that is said on holidays and new moons came close to evoking what I felt:  “This is the day God made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.”  

For me, awe comes in many different ways.    Sometimes it comes in an overwhelming experience such as the scale and grandeur of the Canadian Rockies that brings me face to face with the power of God’s creation.   And other times, it comes in more intimate moments such as when I am watching my father show the plants how to grow.  Still, other times, it comes while I’m contemplating an exquisite piece of art or a technological innovation, and I am filled with amazement that God has given human beings the capacity to design and make such works. 

And yet while there is so much in the world that can inspire me, there are times when I feel no sense of awe, moments of darkness when there is no connection to God and God’s creations.  If only it were as simple as gathering up the moments of awe and storing them away like the squirrels store nuts for the winter, then it would be easier during the times when awe is harder to find. 

Perhaps this is why we celebrate the Days of Awe in the fall, towards the end of the growing season so that we can harvest and store away the moments of awe that come readily during the growing season and are scarcer in the winter.  I want to be able to recall and be comforted by these moments of awe and to be reminded that the growing season will come again.  I do not want to be like Adam who, as the Midrash says, was terrified that another day would not dawn when he experienced the first nightfall after his creation. 

Sitting on the back porch the afternoon of the first day of Rosh HaShanah, looking out at the garden, my father told me, “In the winter when there is ice and snow covering the garden, it’s hard to imagine that the garden will ever come to life again.  But it will. Nature has its rhythms and cycles.  Spring will come again and so will those plentiful feelings of awe.”  

As the season turns to winter, I want to draw on the lessons from my father and the Days of Awe.   Together, they make me more confident that I can trust in the rhythms of nature and that, when I am in the midst of a spiritual winter, it will give way to a spiritual spring.   

 

To read additional articles by Janet Kirchheimer, click here. 

 

    

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