Love the Earth (and moss): B’khukotai

The other day, I was talking to a neighbor, and I told her about the Emergency Rental Assistance Program that was created in New York State during the pandemic—incredibly helpful to many people.

She was happy to hear about the program, but soon moved on to the subject of “personal responsibility.”

She complained bitterly about people who “take advantage of the system that’s supposed to help hard-working people.”

“These people have four kids they can’t support, and take hand-outs instead of going out and getting a job—I don’t care, even if it’s at McDonald’s!” she yelled.

Her point was, people need to learn to live within their means.

True…

But then I tried to veer the conversation off the individual, towards the systemic issues that plague our society. I reminded her that McDonald’s doesn’t pay enough to cover anybody’s rent, no matter where you live.

She wasn’t having any of it: “I pay my taxes so somebody else can buy drugs by trading their food stamps for cash! My mother worked three jobs so she could feed us!” she yelled.

I see my neighbor’s pride as a beautiful thing that I wish for every struggling person, but to hear her talk this way made me really sad.

It was a reflection of the extremely successful indoctrination of millions of Americans to take the blame for being poor.

It reminded me of the Bush presidency years, when George W. commended a woman for doing just that (“You work three jobs…How amazing!”).

Where was the question of government responsibility? Where was the awareness that no one should have to work three jobs just to make ends meet?

It takes responsibility off the government for the very poor job it does in taking care of its residents.

Our taxes should be to make sure that everyone gets their basic needs met; it should be a reciprocal relationship, especially in a country with such wealth as ours.

Yet abuse of the tax system in our government, by our government and among rich and poor alike is rampant.

And then there is abuse of our land.

This week’s parsha, B’Khukotai, continues with the laws we are to abide by as a people if we are to have our needs met, with enough food for all.

It says that “God will walk among us” if we listen, but if we don’t, we will have pestilence, we will be so hungry that we eat our own children, and we will be constantly on the run, though no one is pursuing us.

It seems that’s where we are: living with widespread pestilence and constant fear—not to mention eating our children’s future away in our abuse of the Earth.

The parsha goes on to say that the land will no longer yield because we have not followed the laws of Shmita and Yovel/Sabbatical and Jubilee.

Therefore, the land will take its sabbatical, its Shabbat, its rest, simply by not yielding.

Finally, the Earth will regain its balance and God will remember the covenant God made with our ancestors.

I was listening to On Being, and I heard botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer, in an interview with Krista Tippett. She says we could learn a lot from plants and their particular intelligence, but especially from moss.

Being very small, moss is very poor at taking resources for itself, so it is forced to stick together, to cooperate and help each other; “Because it takes up very little space, moss is a great example of how to live within your means.”

Also, though made up of tiny organisms, mosses make huge contributions to us and the Earth. For instance, they filter and conserve water and prevent soil erosion—so important.

We as homo sapiens have tried to have “dominion” over the land, as we thought the Bible told us was our right, but that hasn’t worked so well, as we are seeing now.

Those who have inherited our Bible are re-evaluating; did it mean that we should exploit the earth by taking as much as we could, stripping it bare until it wouldn’t yield anymore—depriving our children of their future?

Clearly not, or those who interpreted those lines about dominion didn’t read far enough. Or maybe they chose to ignore the part about allowing the land to rest.

As usual, the Bible has been misused by the powerful to manipulate the weaker for personal gain.

Here is an excerpt form Kimmerer’s book, Braiding Sweetgrass, that I found particularly poignant:

“We are all bound by a covenant of reciprocity: plant breath for animal breath, winter and summer, predator and prey, grass and fire. night and day, living and dying. Our elders say that ceremony is the way we can remember to remember. In the dance of the giveaway, remember that the earth is a gift to pass on just as it came to us. When we forget, the dances we’ll need will be from warning: for the passing of polar bears, the silence of cranes, for the death of rivers, for the memory of snow.”

Kimmerer comments on the pain of this passage: “One of the things I had to learn was the transformation of love to grief to even stronger love, and the interplay of love and grief we feel for the world, and how to harness the power of those impulses.”

May we learn to harness the power of the love and the grief we feel for the world, our beautiful Earth, and may we remember our Covenant.

And may we say Amen.