Pine Siskin : The Cycles of Time

This is a Pine Siskin. Pine Siskins come and go with the seasons. Today we sit on the cusp of a new season, inspiring me in this second year to revisit returning birds and improve the photos I’ve taken. The year begins anew. The Siskins track their food source, looking for available seeds and bringing life to ostensibly dead scenes like these sunflowers. The Siskin draws nourishment from the dead flower and simultaneously spreads the flowers’ seeds to encourage new growth. They live in a cycle.

Jewish tradition is thoroughly permeated with cycles of time. From the divisions of a single day to the 49 years of the Jubilee, Judaism defines the world in recurring intervals. Demarcating set times, each with its own opportunities and limitations, guides our actions. The Sages very consciously erected these divisions of time to give us the psychological permission to accept closure and the responsibility to accept challenges. We are taught both to immerse ourselves in the deepest mourning and giddily revel in our happiest joys, precisely because there is a known period for these emotions. Our tradition puts our lives in a cycle.

HaShem’s gift to us is the cycles of time. In all that we do, we are promised another opportunity. Knowing that we can revisit what needs further attention lets us remain conscious of our history while still open to our futures. Nothing is ever irrevocably behind us because every hour, every Jubilee, affords us an opportunity to look once again, to delve still deeper, to improve and to become more than we were. Like the Siskins, we travel through life aligned with our psychic sustenance, and through our holy actions, we enhance and expand the world around us.