Sh'vat 5785: feeding and seeding

🌒 Moon of Centering 🌒 begins at sundown on January 29, 2025. Tehomic Tu B'Shevat Seder and Psalm 104 for Tu B'Shevat and riddance of enemies.

Jan 26, 2025

a tree that is growing out of some rocks — Photo by Mark Vihtelic on Unsplash

The trees act not as individuals, but somehow as a collective. Exactly how they do this, we don’t yet know. But what we see is the power of unity. What happens to one happens to us all. We can starve together or feast together. All flourishing is mutual.
~ Robin Wall Kimmerer ~

What Happens to One Happens to Us All

Tu B’Shevat is the new year of the trees, in the simplest understanding. It was a day for taxation, but it became a day to notice the shift in energy, the changing of the appointed angels, and to draw on and offer back to The Supernal Tree of Life.

In recent years, we’ve learned that trees are not singular — they are interconnected. They work together in community. When one is harmed, all of them are harmed.

The same is true for people. We cannot continue to consider harm done to others as NOT effecting us. Because when “they” are harmed — WE are harmed. It’s not just that we may be harmed in the future after they are harmed. Harm to them is harm to us. And it is true that harm to “them” now is an indicator of future harm to others because what impacts one impacts all.

This is what we must believe. We must put into action. As we roll into the full moon, when you consider how you honor Tu B’Shevat — how can you bring this into your practice.

We can Starve Together or Feast Together

These are the early days of 47. We know from the 45 administration — that they will not stop. Every time you think there is not a new low — they WILL find one.

Today [Inauguration Day] will, indeed, be remembered in hindsight as the dividing line between Before and After. … This is a moment of adaptive change. This is the beginning of a season in which the story of this country could be profoundly rewritten. Our actions now can have reverberations for decades, centuries. Even if we don't see it right away.

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg

This is not the era of ‘resistance.” This is the era of DEFY, ORGANIZE, DEFEND.

Resisting is not enough. Protesting will not change their policies, especially if we are out in the streets every day for everything they do. There will be moments for mass protests, but we must find new ways to defy attempts to harm us in the now and defend the future. We must organize and develop new systems of care and tending.

Protect as much of the forest(s) as we can AND tend new seedlings that we, personally, will never see come into their fullness.

There is a growing list of people who are doing this in news making ways and many others who are doing it ways that are just as important, but will never make the news.

close-up photography of green plant — Photo by Daiga Ellaby on Unsplash

All Flourishing is Mutual

That is what I am centering on right now. All flourishing is mutual. I am not Trans, but Trans people being able to live their lives as they wish helps EVERYONE. I’m not queer (mostly), but queer folks being able to live and love as they choose helps all of us. I’m not BIPOC, but their flourishing is my flourishing. I AM a woman, and I know that forwarding women’s equality is equally beneficial to people of all genders.

A win for one is a win for all, just as harm to one is harm to all.

If nothing else this Tu B’Shevat — recite Psalm 104, which is an Ashkenazic tradition for the holiday. And it turns out I crafted my own transinterpretation of Psalm 104 for a Tu B’Shevat seder for OneShul, back in the day.

Why? I don’t know. But a good reason this year is because in inherited Jewish magiq, Psalm 104 is used to rid us our enemies - but not through violence.