Seeds of Sinai

 

 A humanist reading of כִּ֥י מִמֶּ֖נָּה לֻקָּ֑חְתָּ  — ki mimenah lukakhta,

"for from it you were taken" (Genesis, 3rd chapter)  

 

ki mimenah lukakhta — For from it you were taken.

I am not separate from the world.
I am taken from the same earth as every human being,
from the same living world as the animals,
from the waters, the plants, the soil, and the air.

My life is one life among countless lives.
My body is made from the world around me,
sustained by relationships I did not create,
and dependent upon forms of life I will never see.

I am part of humanity,
the lives of other people,
the lives of animals and plants,
the health of rivers, forests, oceans, and soil—
none exist entirely apart.

ki mimenah lukakhta...
From this earth I was taken.
To this earth I belong.
For the short span of my life,
I am one particular expression of a larger existence.

What happens to the whole touches each  individual.
What happens through the individual becomes part of the whole.

I am not the center of life.
I am a participant in it.