Let The Trees Be Our Teachers

Tu B’shvat is also called Rosh HaShanah La'Ilanot (Hebrew: ראש השנה לאילנות‎), literally New Year of the Trees. Ecological awareness is highlighted this month and traditionally, trees are planted to celebrate.

Trees have so much to teach us. Just as we experience many cycles through life, a tree cycles annually through the different seasons. As we start to move from winter and into springtime, imagine the preparation trees will go through.

Discussion

With your Well Circle, or in your journal, consider some or all of these questions:

• Amidst winter, how do you stay grounded and rooted?
• What brings you strength during these winter days?
• How do your roots, which are your ancestors, inform your actions and choices?
• Why is it important to you that you connect with your roots?
• What is helping you wake up from these months of hibernation?
• This can be a time to plan for the future, plant new seeds, and shed what you don’t want to blossom. Is there anything you’re wanting to shed?
• As you blossom toward spring, what are you looking toward?
• Do you have an idea or thought that wants to come to life? If so, what is it?
• What seeds are you planting?
• How can you support your body, mind, and spirit during this transition?

Ritual

Over the next month, take a walk around your neighborhood or a place nearby that has trees. It could be the lawn at the museum, a park, or even your front yard. Try to visit a place that you will see at least a few times a week. Find a tree there and follow the tree over the next month.

Walk by the tree, have a cup of tea with the tree, read the tree a poem, and begin to notice how it changes over time. Be in relationship with this tree and also bring this tree inside as a reminder of the preparation we embark upon as we awake from hibernation.

Some ideas on how to do this:

• Draw the tree
• Write a poem about how you feel about the tree, or about how it looks.
• Take a photograph of the tree
• Make a piece of collage art using recycled magazines
• Find a fallen leaf or piece of bark from the tree (use this in an art project!)

If you have an altar, put this creation on it as your daily reminder of the blossoming taking fold. Let the tree’s essence live inside you and your physical space this month as we plant seeds for our future.

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