Day 41 of the Omer

On this sixth day of the fifth week of counting the Omer, we consider Y'sod in Y'sod – Bonding in Bonding.

Some trees are covered with large, bright, decorative blossoms in the spring – magnolias, flowering dogwoods, cherry trees, flowering crab apples. These and others we plant in our yards and parks so we can enjoy their showy blooms. We plant oaks and maples and beeches for shade and spruce and fir for their gracious shapes and evergreen needles. The pine trees we complain about their thick pollen and the needles we must rake in the fall. If we take time to notice, we can see the maples covered with tiny reddish flowers and the oaks covered with light green in the spring before the leaves open. The flower are there. All these trees, all trees have some kind of structure – either flower or cone – that produces seeds; we might not notice them if they are not the reason that we are interested in the tree. But they are there. And they are crucial for the ongoing existence of the trees.

We, too, have flowers. Some of our flowers are bright and big and showy, and everyone sees them and appreciates them. And some of our flowers are small and not so easy to see. They just come along with us, perhaps unnoticed by others, but still very much part of who we are, and crucial to our ongoing existence and well-being.

Bonding in bonding. Holding everything within ourselves, and honoring it all, for all of it together makes up who we are. Our obvious gifts, our less obvious gifts, our obvious short-comings, our less obvious short-comings – bound altogether, they make us who we are, part of the sacred creation.

Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu melech ha'olam, asher kid-shanu b'mitzvotav, vitzivanu, al sefirat ha'omer.

Blessed are you Adonai our G!d, ruler of the universe, who sanctifies us with mitzvot and commands us regarding the counting of the Omer.

Today is forty-one days which is five weeks and six days of the Omer.

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