9

tet

bvu

Tov

(Goodness)

    And God saw all that He had made, and behold it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning the sixth day.

Genesis 1:31

    At the end of the initial days of the creation, God looks at what He made and “saw that it was good” every time. But on the last day, after He has created humankind, and the world is in its final form, ready to function on its own, He declares it “very good.” Many commentators point to the fact that although the world would still be a “good” place without human beings, with them, the world can fulfill its ultimate potential. Once humankind was created, the world became a “very good” place, in which anything could happen.

    We don’t often appreciate the world we live in and the mundane realities of our lives. Air to breathe, food to eat, soil to walk on, and sunlight to give us energy are all taken for granted. More important, not only do we take for granted the natural world around us and the daily miracles of life on Earth, but we get so caught up in our warped perception of things that the planet can often seem like a place filled with negative energy.

    Take one look at a baby, and you’ll remember what an amazing place our world is. The infant sees everything as new and wonderful, filled with bursting colors, sounds, and smells—it notices things we can barely perceive. This is the way the world must have looked to God on the sixth day of creation. By affirming its essential goodness, He encourages us to see the world afresh every day, rather than to take it for granted.

    The Tet is the ninth letter of the alphabet, and its character is drawn as a nearly closed structure with a protected inner part. This represents the nine months of pregnancy, the state of being expectant and filled with excitement, wonder, and awareness about the miraculous happenings of nature. It also symbolizes actualization, the coming to fruition of the process of conception: birth, a new life, and the creation of a whole new world, a personal universe.

    Tov, goodness, is our natural state of being. As infants we’re inherently good, linked only to nature. It’s only when we grow up and distance ourselves from our inborn goodness that we forget to appreciate the little miracles of everyday life.

    This declaration from the beginning of time teaches us to be thankful for the world we live in right now, rather than waiting until we’re old and fragile and looking back on our lives. We should strive to look at the world as if it’s being created anew every day.

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    The Tet card brings you to a state of appreciation for what you have in this world.

    Do you only see what you don’t have, such as the things you want to possess and the status you want to achieve? Or do you know that your life and your surrounding are tov me’od, very good?

    Creation is not something that happened just once, at the beginning of time. Every breath is a new creation, every second is the start of a new existence. Losing sight of that is losing out on the good in our lives. So this card asks that you see the world through the eyes of a baby, and appreciate goodness.