Mark Moore
@markmoore
Mark Moore
@markmoore
cf cognition/intelligence of trees
I don’t quite know what to say, so I mostly listen. I’ve found during the past forty-eight hours with Gail and Colin that my role as their rabbi is less to dispense wisdom—I wouldn’t dare—and more to engage in the very holy work of not running away.
Make a commitment today to listen well. When someone is speaking, listen with your whole body. Listen without trying to form a response. Listen to the words being spoken and listen to the currents underneath the words. Practice listening with compassion.
Now, God uses the word chasta—“Ýou have looked with compassion.” This is a synonym for rachamim (compassion), but with the specific nuance of a certain quality of gaze. It is associated with the eyes, with a way of looking with compassion, care, and regret at all forms of life. By its very nature, life, even vegetable life, is endangered, vulnerable, volatile. Subject to compassion. Jonah has seen the gourd, an ordinary plant, as bearing the force of divine compassion, when it shaded him from the glare of the sun. He has experienced— suddenly, irrationally —“great joy” in the gift that God has “provided” for him, as well as great anger at its loss.[3] Ironically, through the medium of a small, short-lived plant, his inner world has become enlarged and enlivened. Both elements of his experience become components of God’s word—chasta (“You have looked with compassion.”).
Avivah Zornberg Jonah: the dynamics of compassion 9.7.2022