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Temple Israel Greenfield

Center for Jewish Life in Franklin County

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Rabbi Message: December 10, 2020

December 8, 2020 by Rabbi Andrea Cohen Kiener

Bio-Mimicry. When I first heard that phrase, I knew exactly what it meant. What could improve on millenia of applied intellegence, that is actually the warp and weft of life. Humanity has managed to control our environments and liberate ourselves from the limitations of weather, seasons, etc. Those same technological acheivements have removed us from the wisdom of cyclicality, modesty of consumption and many other life-affirming dynamics. The world is the finger print of God, according to Job. Earth’s systems are our siblings. And so we live now into winter, like nature, like a tree. The torah portions of this season include Jacob’s dreams, and Laban’s and Joseph’s and Pharoah’s. The dark is predominant to the light. The movement is inward and still. The planet’s surface in our region is covered and stiff. It is a time of hibernation.Now we live into another kind of winter, a political, social and medical winter. We need to contract inward to preseve our health. We need to be still, in order to not stir the virus. Like a tree in the deepest winter, we need to tend to the core, from where new life emerges. We treasure and concentrate the sap of life at the core of us. We tend to the ember of the heart of the tree, always responding to life. In this season, holding and preserving and protecting.The kind of help we need in this season is core work. We have to call forth something new, fortitude and vision; trust and creativity, to feed the heart’s ember. Sacred community, learning community, generous community and a creative community supports this vision and strength. The God in me sees the God in you.Wash your hands in the new “I love you.”Wash your hands!

Filed Under: Spiritual Life

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Greenfield, MA 01301

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