Suburban Zen

Our home and yard are shaded by a canopy of beautiful tall trees; pines, poplars and oaks that provide valuable shade during the oppressive Atlanta summers.  Unfortunately, as summer turns to autumn, the trees also deposit a cache of leaves that, in the weeks before Rosh Hashanah, begins as a lovely wafting of greenery and elevates by mid-November to a vegetative torrent and, I would add, torment.  As a dutiful suburbanite I spend each Sunday during this period accompanied by my electric leaf blower, rake, broom and Costco leaf bags blowing, pushing and bagging.  It is not a task that lends itself to a sense of accomplishment as, invariably, as soon as I have moved the last bag to the curb a breeze wafts through the neighborhood and leafy stragglers descend to litter the driveway. 

Not wanting to make leaf collection my sole preoccupation during these months, I have adopted a mantra, which I call suburban Zen: “There are always more leaves”.

Perhaps this is the lesson of the sixties – my sixties that is (I won’t try to fathom the lesson of the 1960’s).  No matter how hard we work, our lives seem to tilt towards entropy.  We literally and figuratively rake, mow, sweep and brandish our hot air but “there are always more leaves”.  Or as Rabbi Tarfon would say upon viewing his lawn: “You are not obligated to complete the task, but neither are you free to desist from it”. 

Perhaps this is also a lesson for the High Holy Days. It is a messy, unfinished, oft frightening leaf-filled world, perhaps more so every day. Even if we can never solve every problem, resolve every conflict and address every local, national or global challenge; we need to keep raking.

This is our partnership with the Almighty; she will continue to provide trees and leaves and we must keep raking.  And that’s the good news.