Note: This ritual was published in the year 5782 (2022), but its invitations to rest and renewal are evergreen.
It’s Shvat and we are hibernating inside a collective release for the soil, and for the soul. This is a time of year when the exhale can be more deliberate: longer, slower, and deeper. It is a time to tap into the sacred stillness of winter’s hibernation, and fallow the fields of both the inner and outer landscapes. Like Shabbat calls for rest once a week, this year is Shmita–an ancient Sabbatical and Biblical pause to rest once every seven years. There are seven laws in the Torah that invite a collective reset to balance out between opposing forces of growth and rest as we take in what has transpired over the past six years. In other words: there is a time to do and a time to be; a time to gather, and a time to release; a time to acquire, and a time to replenish. Rest is an antidote to the culture that leaves us - and the land - overworked. Inhale and take a moment to share your breath - your carbon dioxide - with a plant or tree as we contemplate a simple and sacred way of giving back to the plants and trees this Tu B’Shvat.
Tashlich ritual, usually performed during the 10 Days of Awe in between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, is about collective and personal release. During this time, we reflect on a range of mistakes and systemic failures that are known and unknown, seen and unseen. This spiritual matter is very fertile. Traditionally, Jews toss scraps of bread into flowing waters to release the old and welcome the new. In our ritual here, instead of casting away into water, we gather to recognize, embody, and tangibly release what no longer serves us by offering food to the earth, to literally feed the land that feeds us. In this Tashlich Compost ritual, we cast away into a compost heap - it’s our ancient Sabbatical year of release! This collective offering will become a bioavailable source of tree food.
To ensure you generate enough, Well Circle participants can freeze a bag of their green scraps from the week leading up to the New Moon.
In building this sacred compost pile, we are witnessed in an act of Sabbatical release to feed the earth.
Roll up your sleeves. Let’s get our compost on! To revitalize hungry soils, make two separate piles in the center of the Well Circle: 1) food scraps and 2) brown materials. The alternate layering of greens and browns, more or less balancing nitrogen and carbon, aids the decomposition of the compost pile. Imagine consciously stepping outside of the extractive mindset of harvesting whatever we can commodify. Instead, we physically enter into intimate exploration with reciprocity at its core. We are fallowing and rewilding - two Sabbatical ideas our grind culture doesn’t permit. Reach your hands out, touch compost scraps, knowing they will become the skin of the earth. We align soul and soil to restore a connection to land as holy.
Let’s share a moment of silence to burn a sprig of Rosemary in the four directions (Arba Ruchot), the Four Winds, to thank the elements, seasons, angels, and ancestors, and open collective ritual space. Pause and reflect on the barely perceptible first signs of sap-rise and bud-swell after a season of fallow...
Together, in whatever way you are able, read any/all of what resonates from these seven statements for our seven-year Sabbatical cycle. Add whatever else wants to be named in your Well Circle...
WE compost...to take responsibility for fencing off the heart. For allowing fear, misinformation, or indifference to keep us numb, complicit, or unkind all too often. For believing we are not good enough, or making others feel they are not good enough. This Sabbatical year, we compost and take down these fences.
Instruction: Add a thin layer of your BROWNS.
WE compost…to take responsibility for incurring or keeping others in financial or emotional debt...in ways that are seen or unseen. We take responsibility and compost these debts.
Instruction: Add a thin layer of your GREENS.
On Tu B’Shvat this Sabbatical year, WE compost...to take responsibility for treating the Earth like a toilet and leaving a toxic, hot mess for the next generation. For prioritizing convenience, efficiency, and productivity over health. For exploiting farmworkers and undocumented laborers that steward the land. For placing the burden of environmental toxins onto the most under-resourced communities. For over-treating our soils and overfishing our oceans. We compost to regenerate the health of the planet.
Instruction: Add a thin layer of your BROWNS.
WE compost: in the name of Purpose and Pleasure and we compost to regenerate body and mind, heart and spirit.
Instruction: Add a thin layer of your GREENS.
WE compost…knowing or not knowing that we belong to a long line of land stewards...we compost to connect with the soil of our ancestors, feel their presence and reconnect with their ways to feed what we already know...
Instruction: Add a thin layer of your BROWNS.
On Tu B’Shvat this Sabbatical year, WE compost...to take responsibility for fencing off private property for the few, and keeping land, housing, and healthy food inaccessible for the many. For building racist walls; for fencing people out of access to abortion; for walling-off access to disabled people. We compost to take responsibility for benefiting from a racist system of land ownership that denies sovereignty to Original stewards. We compost to dismantle fences that disproportionately incarcerate QTBIPoC behind walls, far from supportive community structures.
Instruction: Add a thin layer of your GREENS.
WE compost: so we can learn to say no...or learn to say yes. We compost excessive busyness and noise, so we can remember how to listen for the still small voice that whispers in the trees.
Instruction: Dress the compost heap with your final thin layer of moist BROWNS on top.
Sprinkle herbal water to wash hands over this compost heap, seal the box/bag, and close with this optional recitation:
Inspired by our ancestors and the Original stewards, we dedicate this Tashlich Compost learning to feed a reverential relationship to the trees, animals, minerals, fungi, and soil microorganisms! We thank the gardeners, farmers, and the farmworkers! The arborists, advocates, and water protectors! We thank all earth stewards!
May this compost bring fertility to the yards, orchards, meadows, deserts, community gardens, urban rooftop gardens, the muddy slopes, the savannahs, the sandy eroded farmland, the vast areas of scorched habitat, the forgotten rocky hills, and the loamy valleys this Sabbatical Shvat New Year! As we rewild with nutrients, minerals, and lifeforce may this offering feed the Aytz Hayim, the Tree of Life.
@Dev.Brous wrote and designed the ritual Tashlich Compost for the Shmita year.
Dev Brous is a mama, an urban homesteader, and herbalist helping clients develop resilient practices for soul-care, earth-care, and community-care. Formerly a frontline community organizer and nonprofit Founding Executive Director for nearly 20 years, today she serves the community as an educator, writer, and ritualist that is deeply rooted at the nexus of burnout and renewal. She guides individuals and institutions through transformative online Sabbaticals that focus on regenerative practices for the inner and outer landscapes. @dev.brous
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