Beltane and the Greenhouse Moon
Sunday gratefuls: Israel. Iran. The Middle East. War and peace. My son. Father’s Day. Korea. Commander. Seoah. Murdoch. The Jangs. Shadow. Our relationship. Dogs. Kate, always Kate. Evergreen Rodeo. Tourists. Maxwell Creek.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: CBE Men’s Group
Week Kavannah: Week Kavannah: Bitachon. Confidence. “A feeling of self-assurance arising from one’s appreciation of one’s abilities or qualities.”
One brief shining: Touched the framing of the greenhouse, sturdy, and began to imagine the Garden beds filled with Lettuce, Radishes, Beets, Peppers, Tomatoes, Marigolds, a favorite salad ingredient, Nasturtiums, and standing inside a heated greenhouse in the Winter, Snow piled up outside and tending to the raised bed with Lettuce, Peppers, Radishes, Beets, Flowers growing in pots.
Life, tactile and warm, Shadow and the greenhouse, living, not dying. Nurturing life other than my own, right here at home. As I’ve been used to doing for the last 40 plus years.
This is walking upright in the world. For me.
Yesterday I attended the CBE men’s group. Rabbi Jamie said, “I’m seeing you in person.” I finished a ten session zoom class with him on Wednesday, and I haven’t been to the synagogue in several weeks though I’ve attended Thursday mussar on zoom many of them.
Driving has become such a literal pain that even a trip to Evergreen makes me uncomfortable. Working on it. SPRINT device in July sometime. A visit to an orthopedist on Wednesday for the tear in my right hip’s labrum.
Glad I have Halle and her spirited work, her sage advice. One hour then up. A walking meditation. Dog training. Making breakfast, lunch. Getting the trash ready. Yes. Agency.
Father’s Day: Talked to my son yesterday. His Sunday morning. Father’s Day. Being a father in my particular way began with my commitment to feminism. Doing my part for birth control. I had a vasectomy at age twenty-six. The Rice Street Clinic in St. Paul.
As a result, when the need, and that’s what it was, the need to become a father hit me, quite unexpectedly, at age thirty, I had to have a reversal. Which never woke my little guys back up. Low motility.
Which left adoption. Raeone and I worked with an adoption agency in Minnesota to find a baby who would die if they were not adopted. At the time, the late seventies, that meant India.
Women in rural Bengal would find themselves pregnant in their eighth month due to malnutrition. The would go into Kolkata to give birth, then the babies were discarded.
Unless. International Mission of Hope had arrangements with several of the “hospitals” that took in these women. In those instances the babies were taken to an IMH orphanage and made available for adoption.
Our first referral, a girl, died due to a salmonella infection that rampaged through the orphanage. It took another year for a new referral, little Jang Deep, four pounds and four ounces, delivered in a wicker basket by blue and white garbed nuns at the International Arrivals section of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.