Northern Parula : The Year’s Repeating Joy

This is a Northern Parula. It’s a small migratory songbird that looks more suited to the rain forests of Central America than the parks in Austin, TX. This photo I took last season, before the birds disappeared for the winter. In my now second season of photography, a Northern Parula was the first returning bird I photographed. You can imagine my joy, not just to see such a lovely little bird, but to experience how the cycle comes full circle. My anxious expectations of migration had been fulfilled.

Now is the Counting of the Omer. During this week-of-weeks, the forty-nine days between Pesach and Shavuot, the Sages teach that we move from the physical liberation of Pesach to the spiritual liberation of Shavuot and the giving of the Torah. In Temple times, these two pilgrimage festivals each included special sacrifices, and the Omer was actually an offering of the first barley harvested that season. Throughout the spring, an agricultural people reveled in the rebirth of the world around them and simultaneously, anxiously awaited the opportunity to celebrate receiving their Law.

We now live lives that are largely divorced from natural cycles. For most of us, our work is no longer tied to agricultural timelines. We shop for fresh fruits and vegetables and everything else independently of the season. But amidst this undeniable bounty, we lose something too. There is an integral part of the human psyche that needs spring, that needs to see the cycle begin again. Of course the metaphorical birth of the Jewish nation and its receipt of its governing Law coincide with the sowing and reaping of a staple crop. Like the return of the Parula, our tradition serves to remind us, even today, of the natural cycles of the world, and the joyful wholeness we experience when we align our perspectives with them.