MARRYING THE EARTH A SELF CREATED RITUAL

This ritual, if that’s the right word for it, came up when I was preparing a class on myth, ritual and symbol in pre-exilic Judaism.  The student of ritual in me views ritual as a collective enterprise, and what I’m about to recount wasn’t exactly collective. And yet it was grounded in my tradition and was profoundly important.

I was at the one and only retreat I ever did with Animas Institute, Bill Plotkin’s organization. I trusted the two leaders and felt close to one of them, a Jew whose parents were Holocaust survivors, about 6 or 7 years older than me. He felt, (and feels) like family—in the good sense.  I’d been doing some deep work at the retreat, most of which felt like reclaiming a part of me that had been lost and I’d forgotten. We were at a retreat center in upstate NY on a couple of hundred acres in a rural area of the state and my body felt at peace. I’d lived too long in suburbia and my body craved the rural landscape and what is for me a proper balance of the human and more than human worlds.  For me, that balance has far more more than human and far less human than what we experience in suburbia, let alone what I experienced in my weekly work trips to New York City.

I’d stumbled onto a pond in my wandering and we were given some time to go and wander before lunch one day.  I told one of the leaders I’d probably be late because I felt compelled to return to the pond, though I could not have told you why.  The pond was basically circular and when I arrived I sat on a bench looking at it, letting my mind drift.  I got this crazy idea to marry the earth and enact that ritually.  How should I do that?  Of course, a wedding ritual. I could circumambulate the pond, going counterclockwise which I thought was the direction that the woman circles her husband to be in a Jewish wedding. I didn’t have a phone or Google to check if that was right and that gave me some pause. Then I just shrugged and said fine.

I was consciously taking up the female position.  I knew that had long precedent in Judaism.  Israel is often portrayed as the bride of the divine and this female position is also characteristic of mystics in Kabbalistic practice. And there was a sense of completeness in taking on the female role as a balance to my maleness, just as there is a wholeness to the shape of the circle I was making around the circular pond, symbol upon symbol of wholeness.

I made 7 circles, just as the bride to be makes seven circles (in modern day adaptations like my own wedding we circled each other seven times).  I chanted some wedding songs, words from Songs of Songs like Dodi Li (I am my beloved’s and my beloved’s is mine) and Set me for a seal upon your heart.  I may have said some words and I walked and walked, even with my bad ankle (which has since then gotten much better, even though the problem with it is completely a question of bone and structure and so shouldn’t be able to get better).  One circle, two circles, three circles, four circles, getting tired, five circles, six circles, seven circles.  My legs were praying, though that certainly isn’t what Heschel meant by that wonderful line of his and I doubt he would have approved of an idea of marrying the earth. 

I came back to the bench after the seventh circle.  I said Harei at mekudeshet li b'taba'at zo k'dat Moshe v'Israel ("Behold, you are consecrated to me with this ring, according to the law of Moses and Israel"), using some kind of grass I had picked up along the way and twisted into a round ring, another circle, circles upon circles. Even though there’s no sanction for marrying the land and certainly no law that governs how such unimaginable marriages are done. I was committed to my relationship with the earth, and I was committed as a Jew, and this is how my legs told me to manifest this commitment.

I felt lighter and I felt right. Then I walked back to lunch, coming in half way through, as I had said I would.

The ritual, if it can be called that, changed my life.  It crystallized that I couldn’t live forever in suburbia.  It made clear to me that if I wasn’t in right relationship with the land, everything else wasn’t going to work. Now it took me over a decade since that day in upstate NY to come and live rurally again. I’ve just found a piece of land where my sacred work will be to manifest that vow to marry the earth; to put those words into action as I steward this small corner. And as I walk that land, counterclockwise, I will be reminded of my vow, a vow that I will fulfill to the best of my abilities.