Years ago now George Montag gave a beautiful little teaching at Rosh Hashana in which he talked about standing in his vegetable garden in the fall. I'm sure he said more than I will here, and more eloquently too. But the part that has stayed with me all these years is the image of looking at each plant you put in the ground the previous spring, noting which ones produced and which did not, thinking about which you might choose to plant again for the next year and which to give up on, which might do better if they were tended differently and so on. And, he said, you realize at that moment that, however well or poorly your garden fared, a new planting season will be coming, and you can try again.
So we have arrived at that time once again, in our gardens and in our lives. It's Ellul, the holy last month of the year, given over to "heshbon ha-nefesh," to taking account of our souls. It's the month when I take out my calendar for the past year, make my little time line of the year's ups and downs, think about those moments when I succeeded and moments when I failed, try to figure out how I might be able to repair some of those failures and restore some of the fragmented relationships that always show up in my fall garden and then set about trying to do so.
In one sense the work of Ellul is the same every year and for every person -- accounting, apology, restitution, resolution. But in another sense I find that every year I have a different, and hopefully richer, sense of what it means to look back and take account. This year now ending -- the year 5763 -- was, after all, a year of LIFE. This Ellul I look back on a full year of the functioning of my body, its changes and aging and also its beloved constants of heartbeat, respiration, metabolism. This past year I started ill and finished well. I'm very happy and grateful about that! I started with a few grey streaks in my hair and ended up salt-and-pepper with an emphasis on the salt. I started with a bit more memory than I finished with. It was a full year of feelings and thoughts, a year of input of all sorts, welcome and unwelcome. It was a year of very difficult news on the world front but also a year in which I read some wonderful books. It was a full year of conversations, some memorable. It was a year in which I only talked once to someone I used to talk to all the time. It was a year in which a bunch of my old friends reappeared, to my delight. It was a year in which I struggled with some intellectual problems and began to see things slightly differently. It was a year in which I was frustrated a lot, and a year in which I feel like I neglected some people I care about. It was a year in which I got a bit clearer about some of my personal priorities. It was a year in which some other priorities long held came up for question, leaving me more confused. It was a year in which I made some new friends that I love a lot. It was a year in which I watched people I care about suffer, and I didn't feel like I had quite as many answers for them as I once might have. It was a year when at times I found it hard to listen to people. It was a year when sometimes it seemed like things I care about were falling apart. It was a year in which I swam in the ocean four days in a row without a wetsuit, in which I traveled, had a big anniversary, missed people, forgot about people, had some moments of transcendence and some epiphanies -- not always when planned -- and when, indeed, I grew a garden.
What of any of this would I excise if I could? Certainly some of the forgetting and neglecting people, definitely some of the demoralization, some of the impatience. I'd be responsible all the time if I could, happy all the time, never without confidence. But that would be some other creature than myself. This was, after all, a year of LIFE. And I am amazed, awed by the complexity, the teeming quality of my life, of any life. It's all so rich and thick and ultimately beautiful, the all of it. There are things I wish I would have done better, and, I suppose, a few things I wish other people would have done better towards me (though I can't really remember what...) But would I cut out even a single day from last year? Not on your life!
When I look at my garden -- which I think is just extremely beautiful, if I do say so myself -- there is a bed of vegetables which is a thick tangle of squashes and beans spreading up and out all over the place, punctuated with some leeks that I let head up into big, bold flowers just because they were so trippy looking. There are spires of bolted lettuce, nicotiana that is too pretty to pull out, even though it takes up space I mean for edibles. There is a bare patch where I took out the old lettuces but never got around to planting the carrots I meant to put there. There are broken tiles around the edges that are half-covered with mud and weeds. The whole thing is in a spiral shape, my effort to avoid the tedium of rectangular beds, which sort of works, maybe better in conception than execution. It's not something you'd see at the Botanical Gardens! My little veggie bed is full of mistakes and holes and things neglected, overgrown and under-grown -- but all so beautiful in these late days of August. There's even a squash or two on the vine, and you can usually eke out some kind of a salad in the evening. I look at it so tenderly, so proudly and happily. I'm not mad at the broccoli that bolted before I cut a single head. I'm not ashamed that I forgot to plant the carrots. I'd like to be more together come next spring, grow more and better vegetables -- but in the meanwhile there is this gorgeous, happy tangle of life out there with Susan's sunflowers shooting up all over the back.
I guess I'd like to look at my year of life in something like the same spirit -- wanting to fix what I can, yes, but basically proud and happy and amazed that so much grew there at all this past year. When I look back over 5763 I can say that I lived a year of rich, beautiful life. I started with a pretty open heart, buoyed by the power of the High Holy Days. And I've ended up with a pretty open heart. There have been some fluctuations over the course of the year, but why wouldn't there be? Of course there are no ethics in a garden. Everything tries to live, and some things thrive while others choke and starve. In my life, life in family, friendship, community, nation and world, my conscience is challenged as relationships struggle, are undernourished or set upon by pests. I care more about my life of relationship than I care about my zucchinis. The call to teshuvah, to repair and turning, is stronger if I have hurt another person than if I have neglected my kale plants. The mandate to take responsibility for those I have wounded, to feel remorse, to try to renew, is pressing, as well it should be.
Still and all, I would like to look back on the crops of my past year of life with some of the same gratitude and pleasure with which I look at my beds of veggies and flowers. Yes, life is a serious responsibility -- finite, precious, easy to abuse -- but it is also a gift and a delight. All of us managed to grow a year of life, however sloppy we've been with the compost and the watering and the nutrients. I imagine that when you look back over your own year you might see something not so different from what I see when I look at mine -- a tangle of the planned and the unplanned, that which thrives and that which struggles, pests and incursions you could do nothing about and some you probably could have avoided, the well-managed and the completely fortuitous, success and failure. When you look back on a year of life calendar page by calendar page, day by day, it is easy to miss the whole. It's easier to see in a garden bed, the beautiful tangle, the bold thrust of life to overcome harm and neglect, the glory of it all. Baruch Ha-shem -- blessed be, that we all lived another year of life, that we have each made it to the turning of another year. Blessed be that the earth herself and her natural and human wonders have survived another year. Wounds, harms, failures and all, here we are. May the new year come to us all for good.
© 2003 Rabbi Margaret Holub
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Updated 09/09/2004 (rge)