וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים, הִנֵּה נָתַתִּי לָכֶם אֶת-כָּל-עֵשֶׂב זֹרֵעַ זֶרַע אֲשֶׁר עַל-פְּנֵי כָל-הָאָרֶץ, וְאֶת-כָּל-הָעֵץ אֲשֶׁר-בּוֹ פְרִי-עֵץ, זֹרֵעַ זָרַע: לָכֶם יִהְיֶה, לְאָכְלָה
בראשית א כט
And God said, here I give you all the plants which bare seeds that are on the face of the Earth, and all the trees which bare fruit so that they will be your food.
Genesis 1:29
The Earth is filled with plants which are good to eat and plants which are good for healing. Some would say that these two jobs are not separate but in fact one role.
One of my favorite writers and teachers of herbal medicine is Susun Weed. She points to Hippocrates who said, “Let your food be your medicine and your medicine be your food,” and she suggests that the best herbal allies are those which are not poisonous to our bodies in normal food-dosages. She also says in her book Healing Wise that the “Wise Woman approach” to health and wholeness is to be flexible enough to use whatever tools are best for a given situation. In otherwords, use the gentle approach as a general rule, but when the battle gets tough, if you need to pull out the poisonous stuff (or the surgery or whatever else), don’t shy away from it.
I am currently exploring the plants of Israel, getting to know them better as healers and food, as ground cover, as lure for birds and wildlife, and generally as an integral part of this amazing Land. It dawned on me even as I was writing the first two posts about medicinal plants in Israel that I was starting with the poisonous and the esoteric. Since that time I’ve been thinking about how best to proceed. Should I continue to write up information about lesser-known plants and their properties? Or should I instead focus my attention on common herbs of this land which are good for food and medicine.
I believe that all plants have spiritual lessons to teach, just as all animals do, and every person you ever meet does. Each part of creation is a piece of God Themselves, a small shell from the great explosion that created it all, a tiny spark of the Divine, but those shells are not the Whole. This is not worship of creation, but reverence. The plants are not my gods, but my friends and allies. Only God is my God, but all of creation has something to share.
And so, after much thought I realized that I didn’t have to focus on one sort of medicinal plant or the other. The posts about herbalism will have some of this and some of that. Some posts will have recipes for foods or medicines. Some will simply tell a bit about a plant that you may or may not be familiar with but which grows in the Land of Israel. And I hope that you, wherever you may be, will feel closer to this Land as you read, and I hope that the knowledge of these plants and the recipes I share will help bring more health and more wholeness into your life.
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