The "AVATAR" film & the Trees' ReBirthDay:
Celebrating Forest and the Lungs of Earth --
Interfaith gatherings for Tu B'Shvat, Jan. 29-30
Several milestones in my life came this past week as I continue
climbing into and beyond my post-car-crash ordeal of the last four
months. One came Sunday afternoon, when Phyllis and I saw our first
movie-movie (in a movie house, not DVD) since August. We drove there in
a used Prius we have just bought to replace the car that was totaled in
August.
For the indigenous peoples of the film's planet Pandora, the most
sacred places are ancient living trees that embody the life force of
the planet. So for me, the film spoke powerfully in the tongue of Tu
B'Shvat, the festival of the Trees' ReBirthDay.
AVATAR is extraordinary. -- Not only the technology of the filming/
viewing, 3D and FX, but most of all for its spiritually rooted
progressive politics.
See it!
See it in the spirit of its watchword: "I see you." Expressing what in Hebrew is "yodea,"
interactive knowing that is emotional, intellectual, physical/ sexual,
and spiritual all at one - what "grok" is in the English borrowing from
High Martian, channeled by Robert Heinlein.
In the film, the indigenous people - the Na'vi - [in
Hebrew, this would mean "prophet"] of Pandora stand in the way of an
Earthian techno-conquistador corporation that is hungry to gobble up a
rare mineral.
The Na'vi worship/ celebrate a biological unity of the planet and all its life-forms -- Eywa -- especially focused on great trees that are the most sacred centers of their lives. These great trees embody Eywa, the Great Mother - but S/He is more than even these trees, S/He is all life. Spirit incarnate.
We are just now approaching the ecological-mystical festival of Tu
B'Shvat. It intertwines celebration of the midwinter rebirth of trees
and the rebirth of the Great Tree of Life Itself, God, Whose roots are
in heaven and whose fruit is our world.
Tu B'Shvat comes on the 15th day (the full moon) of the midwinter
Jewish lunar month of Sh'vat. This year, that falls from Friday evening
January 29, till Saturday evening, January 30.
Flickr Photo by by Rob__
Out of winter, out of seeming death, out of seeds that sank into the earth three months before, the juice of life begins to rise again. Begins invisibly, to sprout in spring.
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