Our writer this week is Debra Seltzer. I can think of few more qualified to speak about Yesod, the sephirah dedicated to strong foundations. Debra is one of our longest-standing members and served many years on our Board, including as its Chair. In that role and all other leadership she provides our community, Debra lends a simultaneously soft and strong, steady presence. In both her professional and personal lives, she advocates for and has helped us learn more about and stay attentive to social justice issues in central Ohio and beyond. You can hear her voice come through the screen in this offering. I hope it helps carry you through the week.
“Yesod is situated below Tiferet in the Kabalistic Tree of Life. While Tiferet is the balance of Chesed and Gevurah, Yesod is the balance of Netzach and Hod. The first three sefirot were emotional elements, focused on the heart, while the later three are in the realm of action and relationship.” (from The Omer Workbook by Amanda Herring and Mo Golden, Gold Herring, 2021.)
Hopefully you have been reading the amazing insights our friends posted here over these past five weeks. I am so grateful to be given this opportunity to focus my own reflection on Yesod, and the realm of being called to action and relationship.
I have most often heard Yesod referred to as foundation, though it may also be interpreted as grounding, truth, integrity, and/or portal, among others. These are very rich and complex terms!
I am so very drawn to, and feel the need for that strong solid core to hold me up in these times. I’m finding more and more that my relationships, my people, my community, are that solid foundation from which I can ground myself, sustain myself, and find the energy for all the kinds of action I am called to do.
Part of my role in building the world we need is to do self-work, self-care, self-growth, and personal sustenance so that I can contribute to others, to my community, to the world in which I find so much that needs to be done. I am learning to understand the work I do with others to make the world a better place as mutual aid. As such, I understand that I receive as much as I give, that I am always in partnership with everyone involved, and that there is much that I will learn and gain in every interaction.
I would like to invite you to try something a little different; if you are willing: Join with me for a moment in a visioning –
I take some deep breaths –
breathing deeply in,
breathing deeply out,
settling into my own self,
finding the divine spark of self within me.
I reach from there and slowly connect in my mind the threads between me and my loved ones –
family – dear friends – don’t forget beloved pets! –
then move to others in my community –
neighbors, members of groups I am a part of –
co-workers –
noting there may be some roughness along the way,
some threads that are tense or frayed or hard to hold on to –
but these are the threads of my relationships with those around me.
If you are doing this along with me –
allow in your imagination for those threads to weave themselves together, building the solid fabric of community which holds you and those around you in a caring mutual embrace.
It is all too easy to blow through life taking that web of community for granted;
take a minute to acknowledge the power and value and strength of this web of relationships which builds the world you are within.
Still holding the image of that fabric,
let it settle gently into your bones and feel how it sustains you.
Let it absorb the parts that might feel a little loose or empty or needy.
Let it knit together any frayed parts of yourself,
and sense how this in turn allows you to project strength out from that newly strengthened foundation –
perhaps from this you find energy to go back out to the source of those threads –
your family –
your friends –
your neighbors –
your co-workers –
your beloved pets –
even those who may have been in tenuous relationship with you –
but you can now reflect powerfully back to them from your newfound grounding in your certainty in the value of community and relationship.
This is the foundation, the Yesod we need to be nourishing for ourselves, for each other, and for what our community and world need from us in these troubled times within which we find ourselves. Together we can honor and build the bonds of relationship that form community and support us to take action.
With every new trouble, tension, stress I come across for my own self or in the lives of my loved ones and extended friends and community, I more deeply appreciate each of you who join with me in strengthening our shared foundation. May we always remember that in giving we receive back, and we are always stronger together, in caring community.