REMEMBERING WHY WE WERE BORN

There’s a famous Jewish midrash that says when we are in utero we remember all of Torah, all of traditional Jewish teaching, but as we are about to descend the birth canal, an angel taps us on the top of our upper lip and we forget everything. (BT Niddah 30B)

But what if the angel forgets to tap us? What if we remembered what we were here for? Why we were born in this place and in this time? That would be a tale to tell.

I sometimes wonder why I was born into this crazy civilization, that I would be much more suited to an agrarian lifestyle without all the noise and complexity of modernity. And yet here I am.

I rub my upper lip, where the indent is even though you can’t see it because of my beard. What was it that the angel erased? I work to go backwards, not to Gan Eden, but to earning my food by the sweat of my brow working with all the beings who both feed me (thank you corn, squash, beans) and all the beings who eat my crops (thank you squirrel, woodchuck, rabbit and a hundred kind of insects who I don’t know). What was it that the angel erased?

I was wandering along a path in the woods the other day. As I crossed the creek, the land said welcome back. I stopped to breathe in the gentleness of the land, the forgiving of all of my sins, both personal and collective, the land grateful for my presence as I walked. Not as slowly as I would have a few months ago, I was a bit cold. I was going to stop and say hi to one of my friends, a twin hemlock, but I got into my head and walked right past. I realized it maybe 5-10 minutes afterwards and said oops. I heard the hemlock say to me, it’s fine, keep going, you’ll stop and say hello the next time you come here. And I will.

To me, this is some hint of the Torah the angel erased. Not some collection of laws or the details of priestly sacrifices of our honored ancestors, but a way to walk and work with the web of all life. We are all connected. I struggle to remember this. And this struggle is the gift of the angel, just as the snake’s gift is the apple he gave the woman to eat. “And the human called his wife Eve (Hayya in Hebrew) for she became the mother of all the living [humans]” (Genesis 3:20) It is her birth canal that we descend where the angel taps us on the upper lip and we forget.

May we find hints and paths back towards remembering. And may our sins towards the more than human world be countered by our love, affection and work with her.