Shevat
Signs and wonders
Since my mother died five years ago, I have learned a new way of communicating with her. Maybe it’s she who learned a new language and now that she is part of the vast oneness, her soul bits, her essence, her memory shows up for me when I pay attention.
She comes to me in owls and hawks and moonflowers.
I don’t try to force meaning onto these moments. I certainly don’t turn them into certainty or any kind of affirming doctrine. I just notice. I am a deeply pragmatic person and I don’t believe in an afterlife and I’m pretty sure I don’t believe in “intact souls.” I tend to think we have a brief “wild and precious” human life and then we become one with the turning seasons, the cosmic unfolding, the stardust and wheeling hawks. But things happen and they can not be denied or explained.
Because my mom was killed during the early covid months, the normal rites of mourning could not be observed. But in February of 2021, a very small number of family gathered outside to plant a tree on Tu B’shevat and place my mother’s ashes around it. It was the middle of a chilly day. My family and our beloved rabbi gathered in circle. The songs were done, the ashes were in the ground and there was nothing left to do but continue the grieving. And then the owl called out, her voice ringing in the forest in the middle of the day. Signs and wonders.
After covid restrictions had lifted, I don’t know when this was, we gathered with community at the tree, perhaps it was her yahrzeit, the day of her death. I honestly don’t know. The songs were done, the ritual concluded and then the owl called out, her voice ringing in the forest in the middle of the day. Signs and wonders.
It’s happened enough times that I shouldn’t be surprised. I am always grateful and yet actually always still surprised and overcome with awe.
A couple of weeks ago, I told a story at the Atlanta Jewish Storytelling Festival that lives very close to my bones. I spoke about kol d’mama daka — the “thin sound of silence” the prophet Elijah hears in the quiet that follows the fire, the wind and the earthquake. Kol d’mama daka also means “the still, small voice.” I told them how I watched the moonflowers open and counted them each night that first August after her death and how that small ritual helped me get through those terrible days.
Not surprisingly, telling the story cracked open a grief wave, which still occur, though with much less intensity and frequency.
The day after, I went into the forest with the dog as I do many days. I found myself weeping by the tree I had planted in her memory. Rage and longing and love all moving through me at once. Being the good modern woman, I filmed myself walking in the forest talking about grief and ended with a song by the creek and I posted it to IG. Then I went home to do what needed to be done and to cry on the couch a little more.
I was sitting on the couch, computer on my lap, working away. Well, trying to. I was pretty raw but I was still trying to make the good effort. And I glanced up and out the window, the one that faces my very close next door neighbor’s house. And there, sitting on the railing was a hawk.
I have never seen a hawk there before. Not once.
He wasn’t hunting. He wasn’t startled. He was just there.
Of course I took pictures because otherwise how would you know? But I also just stood there, tears streaming down my face, overcome with gratitude.
Signs and wonders.
The next day, I was cleaning up my art room and took down a box that had been made for my mom. The daughter of the person who made it, whom I had not seen for 40 years, emailed me later that day out of the blue saying she had a piece of my mom’s art.
Signs and wonders.
Signs Are Not Escapes — They Are Tools
I want to say this clearly: noticing signs is not spiritual bypassing.
It does not mean pretending things are fine when they are not.
It does not mean that my gratitude practice supplants my grief or that I can place any hope in an external force to make things better.
Absolutely not.
In fact, I think the opposite is true.
I think “signs” are survival tools. It’s really about tuning in and noticing the vast pattern that we are a small part of. Tuning in to the bigger web of nature and connection helps us keep our hearts soft in a time when it would be easy for them to harden. It can help staunch the bleeding wound of grief, rage, pain and despair. Help, not cure.
Grief walks with me always - for my mom, the planet, our democracy, the pain that humans inflict upon each other.
The only way I get through is because of the wonder of this planet, this living world. The hawk.
The moonflowers, the sunset, the trees.
These moments do not erase the pain. They give me just enough steadiness to keep going without calcifying into despair. They remind me that the story is still being written and that as long as I am alive to be present to the turning cycles, there is some kind of hope.
Becoming a Tree in a Breaking World
Trees represent this kind of strength.
Trees survive in multiple different ways - bending, staying rigid, adapting, perhaps by growing in relationship to what presses against them. They adapt to their environments.
Under the forest floor, trees are constantly communicating through sharing nutrients, sending warnings, and redistributing resources. It is said that the strongest trees are not the most isolated ones; they are the most connected.
Which brings us to Shevat. The month with the birthday of the trees.
In my part of the world, the soft southern winter provides so many opportunities to enjoy the bare trees, to walk in the forest and revel in seeing the bones of the trees, old nests tucked in upper branches, and to see birds perched or active in the branches and trunks.
I think the forest is where my sanity lives.
Practicing Wonder as Resistance
In a culture that profits from numbness, noticing and tuning into the more than human world is an act of resistance.
Wonder helps me be able to keep going.
Gratitude keeps me tender.
Tenderness keeps me capable of love and therefore, of justice.
This month, let Shevat remind you to notice, perhaps to drop into a “gentle vigilance”
Look up — what is flying overhead?
Look down — what sparkles?
Listen — who is reaching out, and who might you reach for?
Do it because we need ways to stay alive to beauty while resisting those who seek to make the world in the image of hate.
A Shevat Practice
If you want a practice for this month, try this:
Each day, notice something, maybe you could call it a sign, or maybe you’re just noticing what’s there.
Don’t overanalyze
Just notice.
A bird.
A message.
A moment of unexpected ease.
Let it be what it is — a reminder that you are part of a living system that has not stopped changing, even in the midst of grief and rage and longing.
May this month strengthen your roots.
May it teach us how to bend without breaking.
B’shalom / Peace
