Water is Change. We Are Water.

This past Shabbat I experienced a sense of growing. The slowness in the collective air, helped me to feel gravity sinking me to my rightful place, a human on earth, in this time. 

Though we are amidst crisis, there is a great healing we are in the midst of. Many of us have felt this coming for a long time. Many of us were born to be the healers the earth needs at this time. 

• Opening to the unknown is the biggest gift we can give back to the earth right now.

• Making art is the biggest gift we can give back to the earth right now.

• Doing one small action a day as a form of prayer, moving the legislation towards caring for the collective whole, is the biggest gift we can give to the earth right now. 

What we need now is space. Space to feel our oneness. Space to open to the unknown. Space to feel the vastness of the universe and possibility. 

This virus is teaching us what many of us have always known: that we are all connected and capitalism is killing the beings of this earth and humanity.

Humans are not a virus, or a plague on earth. We are here to help liberate the earth as much as mycellium, stars, water, flowers, sea beings and earthly animals are. In this season of Passover, we can come to understand in our cells: humans are one key to earth’s liberation. We have something to do here. The earth will still exist long after we are gone. Yes. She will find other ways to liberate without us. But she called us to her. She wanted us here. She believes we can work together. She allowed us to become her. Our bodies are made of her. Like everyone else, if we don’t evolve our soul in this lifetime, we will get other lifetimes. The earth will also get other chances. She has a soul too. I’m not sure exactly how this earth soul thing works but I feel pretty sure we humans became a part of earth because we agreed to be in it together with mother earth. We agreed to help each other's souls evolve. 

It’s not the easiest thing, human life. But there are delights and treasures only a human can experience. Feeling and experiencing those delights more regularly will evolve us as humans. Earth gives to us, constantly. And yes, she also takes. We too, can give to her and mend what we have taken unconsenually. 

We can give back to the earth, we can evolve our souls by enjoying earthly delights and working for justice. With all the hard ways it’s is to be human, it’s also swimming in the warm ocean, feeling sun on our skin, watching a falling star, hearing beautiful music, orgasms, loving another human or animal, eating pate or chocolate or a fresh picked strawberry, cooking your ancestors foods, lighting the shabbat candles, skin on wet earth, reading poetry, having poetry read to you, giving something you treasure to someone who needs it, forgiving someone you hate. These are the gifts of human being life. 

The Wuhan Corona Virus is a teacher. Our ancestors would have called it a demon as they did other pandemics, illness and many other things. In Judaism, demons have much to teach us. They want us to change, and therefore, in a way, they are helpers. It is terrible that people have died and most have been elders, those who hold the stories, teach us the way of life. We cannot allow their lives to be in vain. We are being guided towards implementation of the interdependance that has been building for decades. Grass roots movements, mutual aid, healing modalities, those who have been most vulnerable to the effects of capitalism and white supremacy have been showing us the way towards liberation. 

This virus, it travels in water droplets. Water is what we are mostly made of. Our bodies know how to travel like water. The majority of our earth is covered in water. Water is under the ground we stand on, it’s in the clouds above us. Water is the key to our liberation. Learning to be like water, we change. As Jews, our biggest symbol of liberation is the parting of waters. Indigenous people have been calling for the protection of the waters and it long past time to head their calls. 

Water has so many qualities and sensations, it shakes and wiggles and rushes and stays still. Feel into your tenderness, your shakiness, your place of uncertainty. It’s from this place that you can feel your stillness, your calm and your expansiveness. Cultivating this sense of vastness is cultivating an intimacy with our ancestors. They did not know what lay ahead if they were to cross the Red Sea. We do not know what lays ahead on the other side of this pandemic. Ask your ancestors for guidance and support. Like, have a personal conversation with them, write it down and talk to them out loud, they have some things they really want to say. Listen to the virus. Same thing, dialogue with it on paper or out loud. 

The essence of water is movement, the essence of life is movement. We affect each other through time and space. We can make our lives holy by immersing in what is not known.