Northern Cardinal : Kavanah

This is a Northern Cardinal. I was on a phone call in my library and heard a tremendous crash. I looked out the window and saw she had hit my window - HARD. She was lying on her back, chest heaving, seemingly not long for this world. It was a terribly affecting sight. Inexplicably I opened my phone’s camera. Several minutes later, I looked again. The near-dead bird was now sitting up. She saw me… and flew off into the woods. In a 10 minute span, she had cycled through three radically different presentations, from healthy flying to death’s door to relaxed sitting and back. My conception of her changed moment-to-moment. When did I walk into the movie?

My rabbis so beautifully teach that as we enter into Shabbat, we should set a “kavanah.” This intention guides how we want to look at sacred time. Kavanah pilots us to deep meaning rather than falling into the trap of rote recitation and scripted observance. At this time of New Year’s Resolutions, let me suggest setting a kavanah for the year. With what lens do you want to look at the world? A kavanah for the year is more a thematic understanding rather than a laundry list of specific accomplishments. Your kavanah is about how you see rather than what you do. What perspective do you want to adopt for this coming year?

At what point in the movie do we enter others’ lives? Particularly in this shemitah year, I am focused on being more passively receptive, more attuned to receiving. Just the slightest bit of contextual awareness - knowing what happened to someone just ten minutes prior - can profoundly shape our understanding of their present status. The kavanah we set, which guides our own perceiving, also fundamentally frames others’ lives and actions. Our evaluation of what “others are doing” becomes more an introspection into “how are we thinking.” Set your kavanah; see all the Cardinals through a more conscious lens.