Another Unique Tradition

How they cut the trees, or should I say how they harvest the trees, is a little bit different.

Too much considerations and rules.

This is how they live, to love nature as a form of respecting God’s blessing.

There, people will not cut trees as free as they want. They have to look on the Javanese days before doing it. Bad days, good days can be determined based on the Javanese days. Mostly people called this system itung-itungan jawa.

WHY?

The answer is simple. Trees are also living organism: they live, they grow, they eat, they breathe in their own ways. That is why human and trees a little bit similar. As a human, we also have to respect them and understand. Taking care of them can be done in many ways. One of them is cutting them in a right condition.

According to Javanese belief, there is a time when a wood will be filled by waters. Therefore the wood will look bigger and fresh. On the contrary, there will be a time when the wood will look thinner because there is only a few water inside. This condition can be predicted using itung-itungan jawa. Yet how they calculate is still a big question answer (this needs further observation).

HOUSE

To build a house, they also have to think of itung-itungan jawa. Indeed they need woods to build a house. Therefore they have to be careful to choose the woods. If they take one wrong step, the house they build will not stand longer as it should be.

WEIRD

No, it is not weird. Though people, especially in modern era, always wonder how it can be, or they don’t believe in such things like that, this happens. It is all about belief. Since people there believe on it, everything can happen. It also happens on how they build a house. Not only a good choice of wood, they also do rites before building a house and after the house built. This aims to thank to God for the blessing giving to people so that people can be safe when they build house. Moreover, they also pray demanding for the house to stand longer and keep bad things away from house.

Javanese belief taught people to love their nature, to be in harmony with nature since they can live without nature, their environment. They have to take care of it all. That is why most of the tradition is related to nature.

This is how they live to keep tradition, to save nature, and to thank to God.