Elul Day 8 - ח באלול

Dear Elul Writers,

I know that shrooming rabbis are a dime a dozen these days, but this was a year of deep discovery for me. I have tried my hand at so many earth-based traditions at this point, but it wasn’t until this year that I ventured into the world of mushroom inoculation. At a workshop at our community land trust, an old hippie brought logs and drills, spores and wax. An hour or so later, we left with a log that was inoculated with oyster mushroom spores. In six to eight months, we were told, we would be the proud parents of a colony of oyster mushrooms. These oysters could be roasted or sauteed, tossed with pasta or pureed into a sauce; all we had to do was keep our log in the shade and remember to water it from time to time.

I placed the log on a couple of bricks behind a camellia bush, not far from a bed that I occasionally watered. Even though we’d been given a timeline of mushroom growth, I still glanced expectantly at the log in those first months. When six months arrived, I grew a bit more intentional about watering — it could be any day now! When eight months arrived, I had a tab open on my computer with oyster mushroom recipes. At ten months, my expectations began to fade — was all of my hope for naught? As we closed in on a year since inoculation, I started to see it as a plain, old log — potential firewood.

So, what an unexpected delight when, after a year, I glanced behind the shrub one day while heading towards the front steps and caught a glimpse of beautiful, smooth, silvery, gray-blue oysters covering the log. If there’d been any sign of these mushrooms about to emerge, I had missed it. Here they were, suddenly, miraculously, abundantly. These were not psychedelic mushrooms, but my mind was blown.

DAY 8 PROMPT

Rav Kook discusses the difference between gradual teshuvah and sudden teshuvah. It is the latter form of return, teshuvah pitomit, instant teshuvah that I am most fascinated by. How is it that change, complete and total transformation, can sometimes happen in an instant? Just like a sorry, old log can turn into a mycological marvel overnight, we have the capacity on occasion to receive a burst of insight and to shift our way of being completely. Perhaps, it is just when we have given up on the idea of transformation, no longer giving it our time or attention, that change takes hold. What aspect of your life did you long ago plant spores in? Where did you once seek return and repair that you might have given up on? Is there a part of your life in which you desire instant teshuvah? How can you make yourself receptive to that insight?

Bivracha,

Jordan