Tending the Earth

Earth Etude for Elul 26

by Rabbi Marisa Elana James

We do live in overwhelming times, as have so many of our ancestors, but I suspect that my great-grandparents’ lack of the internet and 24-hour news cycle made it somewhat easier to cope.

Part of me wants to know about every wildfire, every tornado cluster, every new “thousand-year flood,” every point of data that helps me articulate what needs to change.

And another part of me is simply exhausted, flattened with helplessness in the face of so many tragedies, unable to transform my outrage and sadness into something that might be useful.

I live in Manhattan, and every day I walk past a two-block long patch of scrub on the side of the road, full of weeds and invasive vines and wildly overgrown. Early this summer, I noticed one day that someone had cleared a small patch of ground in the mess. A few days passed, and the cleared space increased to about two yards, and a circle of stones lined a patch with new soil. One day, a butterfly bush appeared, along with some perennials.

After a few weeks of deep curiosity, I finally walked by and saw a young woman digging, expanding the size of the cleared patch. No, she didn’t work for the parks department, she just lived nearby, and felt that she could revive a piece of this land into a haven for pollinators, and set to it herself. She has no ambition to transform the whole two-block stretch, but she’s created a small, beautiful oasis in an unexpected place.

I needed this reminder, and perhaps you do, too – that there are no small things when it comes to protecting and nourishing this world. If each of us finds our patch of earth and tends it, the small pockets of beauty and health and justice we create will build on each other and inspire others.

Small things are also reminders of the whole – I find it overwhelming to consider the extent of deforestation around the world, but when I sit in the park on clear evenings and feel gratitude for the gorgeous elms giving shade to the humans below and homes to the birds and squirrels, I feel deeply how much I love this world, and how much it is worth saving.

Find your patch of earth and tend it, in whatever way. 5785 needs us to show up, ready to dig into the soil and help good things grow.

Rabbi Marisa Elana James (she/her/hers) is a graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and the Director of Social Justice Programming at CBST (Congregation Beit Simchat Torah) in New York. Marisa and her wife, contrabassoonist and translator Barbara Ann Schmutzler, live in New York City.

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