Each moment gives birth to the next, with all the excitement, dread, predictability and surprise of a newborn. “And she shall count.” The mother counts days, weeks, months, years: not a countdown or count of anything in particular, it’s the counting itself that counts. After a sickness, too, they count: desperately trying to grasp Becoming and Being. A mother slowly becomes Other to the child; a moment creates the conditions for the next and becomes history; recovering becomes healing becomes growth. Shadow-memories of past and of future dance around us, but the count keeps us in the Now, the birthed becomes the birther. Noticing this constant Becoming is the miracle-consciousness that religious counting-rituals desperately try and often fail to teach.
.
.
.
[Inspired by: Leviticus 12 and 15; Sefirat Haomer; Shakuntala Janm.]
.
.
.
120 words of Torah 