Israeli poet Natan Zach wrote a poem based on Deuteronomy 20:19. But where the Torah saw a rhetorical question about whether trees were like humans, Zach built his poem around what we share with trees. In particular, he focused on the idea that like trees, we are always incomplete–always growing, always pushing our way upward, but never finished, always in process. Even when we mark important moments of transformation as we have this week with the inauguration of a new president and vice president, we know that there is so much left to do. Like trees, we have built into us the resilience to weather the storms and to continue with the work of growing and changing. May we feel our resilience, that force that has helped us to bend and survive, now helping us to come back to our center as we enter into this new time.