• Back Pain and Wondering

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

    Friday gratefuls: Tom. His visit. Mussar. Luke. Leo. Shadow. Back pain. Excruciating. Rain. Rain. Rain. Our Fire risk. Insurance. While I have it. Writing. Lumbar support. Rich. Doncye. Ruth and her finals. Gabe and his grades. Chatgpt. Dramaturgy.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: AI

    Week Kavannah: Sensibility. Daat.

    One brief shining: Getting out of bed has become painful in the extreme, at the 10 level, more, dispiriting, even after nerve glides, nothing helps except leveraging myself out of bed and beginning to move around though the moving around, motion is lotion, hurts like the dickens, too, until my tin man joints began to creak apart and move more smoothly.

     

    Dr. Shadow only knows how to do squeakectomies. Not much help. Although at certain points in the early morning, I feel like I might benefit from one.

    I have discovered Chatgpt to be very helpful. This morning I uploaded my MRI results to it, described my Tuesday injections and my subsequent pain, asking if this makes sense.

    Here is part of the reply:

    “Yes, what you’re experiencing makes sense, unfortunately — and it’s actually not uncommon with your MRI findings and the nature of epidural steroid injections (ESIs).

    Let me explain what might be going on, and why”

    In what followed I got cogent and clear reasons why my back pain has gotten worse. To a guy like me information is therapeutic. If I can understand what’s happening, my what the hell attitude drains away and I can move to what might be helpful now.

    It also helps me understand what the path ahead might look like.

    I recommend Chatgpt for medical issues. It’s knowledgeable at a granular level, will expand on things that may not be clear, and offers suggestions about what to do next.

    Just a moment: We continue to wonder, don’t we? Wonder what he, they will do next. Wonder how this nation we’ve known all our lives could dissolve in the acids not of modernity but of  reactionary political bile. Wonder how long this will last. Wonder what we can do. If anything.

    If I were younger, say in my 60’s, I’d be prepping for a move to Canada. In many ways I’ve preferred Canada since those days in the ’60’s when it looked like a safe haven I might need.

    A less coarse public culture. Further north, therefore cooler. Great culture in Toronto, Stratford, Montreal, Vancouver. Cool road signs with a crown on them. A public health system. No history as a colonial power. Boreal Forest and a long border with the Arctic. Poutine.

    Sure, there are problems, too. Royal Canadian Mounted thugs. Abysmal treatment, like us, of the First Nations. But that’s all I can think of.

    However, I’m 78. The whole emigre process seems more than I care to engage now.

    Leaves me with various ideas I’ve had still floating. Seed-keepers, or a variant. Live boldly out of your own values. No shrinking or hiding. Support communities like CBE with presence and money. Hold friends close. Live your best life.


    📂This entry was posted in Health Judaism Politics Seed Keepers

  • Shadow and Pain

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

    Thursday gratefuls: Tom. His visit. Diane. Adam and Eve. The story retold. Shadow, up at 4:45. Me, too. Outside. Gabe. Ruth. Darkness. The hours of early Morning. Thrownness. Heidegger. Dramaturgy. Sleep. Back better. For now. Golden Stix. Hot and Sour Soup. Garlic Shrimp. Lumbar support pillow.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: 4:45 am

    Week Kavannah: Sensibility. Daat.

    One brief shining: Those needles that burrowed through my extra tight foramens delivering steroids to four of them have offered some relief already, pain decreased, for how long not clear, yet appreciated, a return to a Charlie I had forgotten.

     

    Yes. Pain down my legs and around my hip much better this morning. Achiness and pain in my lower back, apparently arthritic, remains. I feel lighter though a bit strung out from the procedure, the mild sturm and drang around it. (All in my head.)

    When I got up at 4:30 for the bathroom, Shadow got up, too. She needed to go outside where she is still at 5:20. While she dawdles, I decided to get a head start here.

     

    It’s odd. Usually memory of pain recedes with the pain itself. Not with the back. At least so far. I treat myself with the same careful movements and anticipation of discomfort. Perhaps this will fade.

    Since these injections were my first procedures for the back pain, I do not know what to expect. As I didn’t when I met Dr. Vu.

    I’m a little scared, I told him.

    He nodded. Needles. And the spine, eh?

    Yes. That was it. And the initial pain. This morning. Worth it. However long it lasts.

     

    Shadow slips her head between the slats at the head of my bed. Her warm nose, wet, hits what little hair I have. Then, her tongue. Please get up. Please get up. No. Not yet. Please. Just a little more sleep. More kisses. It’s now 6:50. OK. All right.

    She continues skittish, hyper-vigilant though less so by a lot than that first month. She has a deep wound of some sort, just what I’ll never know. But its effect presents itself in each interaction with her.

    Shadow unfolds slowly, like a flower not certain it wants to bloom, perhaps the sun is too hot or the bees are not out or rain might damage the petals.

    A sudden movement. She cowers. Crossing a threshold seems to have the liminal power of ancient magic. Danger may lurk on the other side.

    Once inside and safe. She’s delightful. Tossing her toys in the air. Putting her front paws on my chair arm, extending her full length on her hind feet, all smiles and warmth. It’s a tale of two Shadows.

    Her coat has blown but she won’t hold still for me to brush her. A leash still frightens her so I can’t take her to the vet or to a groomer.

    Slowly, slowly.

     

    Just a moment: In Minnesota up on Leech Lake fisherman come to fish for the fierce Muskellunge, or Muskie. Perhaps a few of those brave souls could cast a lure onto Pennsylvania Avenue and troll for Elon.

     


    📂This entry was posted in Dogs Health Politics

  • Do You Consider Yourself a Lucky Man?

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

    Wednesday gratefuls: Dr. Vu. Michal. The guy who seated me in my chair. Lidocaine. Nono’s. Catfish Po’boy. Beignets. Crawfish sauce covered Catfish over Rice for supper. Good boy, Charlie. Shadow, happy to see me. Tramadol. THC. Ruth in finals. Gabe 17. His day. Dramaturg. Shadow blowing her coat. The green, hyper green Grass down the hill. Japan’s 72 microseasons. Scott in the protests.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: AI

    Week Kavannah: Sensibility. Daat.

    One brief shining: Leaving the patches of Snow in my backyard, the still cool morning Air, guiding Ruby through the curves as I descend Shadow Mountain, Great Sol breaking through the Lodgepoles on my left, dropping further down through the steep grades of 285N, letting Ruby gather a little speed, pulled like the waters of Bear Creek toward lower elevations, then passing through the Hogbacks and making a right toward Lone Tree where possible back relief awaits.

     

    Do you consider yourself a lucky man? Dr. Vu asked when he finished needling me four times in my spine.

    Well. I stumbled. Not an adjective I’ve given much thought in regard to my life. Uh, sure.

    Well, he went on. You were today because I got you done with no pain.

    Oh. You’ve set my expectations now, I said, still lying on the table, on my stomach, head on my hands.

    If you bring your luck with you next time, I’ll meet them again.

    I liked Dr. Vu. Before we began he said he’d looked at my MRI. He formed a tunnel with his thumb and fingers. If this is the normal amount of space I have to work with, this is yours. He all but closed the tunnel, bringing his fingers very close together.

    If I hit a nerve, you’ll feel a jolt like you hit your funny bone. Tell me. I’ll pull back. I have to get within a millimeter of your nerve. In fact, he went on, that’s how they used to do it. Push the needle in, you react. Ah. We’re in the right spot! He shook his head. Glad I wasn’t doing this back then.

    Me, too, I said.

    Some lidocaine. A sting. A deeper sting. Wait. Then. Not ten minutes later after Michal, his assistant had rotated the bed on which I lay a couple of times, once by 10%, the other I didn’t hear. Adjusting it I assume, so the needle could enter at the best angle.

    Not much if any effect in the moment. Takes some time, up to 5 days, for the steroids to start working. I felt a bit looser, less pain in my movements this morning as I took the trash out to the road. Still pretty stiff and painful for me right after I got out of bed. Usual. We’ll see.

    Since my visit to San Francisco, a test to see how impaired I was for travel, almost a year ago, my pain has increased. It was already pretty bad in San Francisco. Test result? No flying or airports for me.

    It was the previous September to my S.F. trip by train that the back pain began. In the palace grounds of the Joseon dynasty in Seoul. Hobbled back to the car through the fortified walls and past women dressed in hanbok, men in military costumes.

    Since that time, I’ve experienced levels of pain when I walk or get up or lean down or roll over that exceed my ability to bear it. So. I stop.

    The pain also limits how much I can do at any one time. Organizing the trash, cutting up boxes to put in recycling, putting everything in the trash bins, then rolling them out to the road? A morning’s worth of energy.

    It means, too, that picking up and being neat often is more than I can handle. Not to  mention changing sheets on my heavy king size mattress. Laundry.

    Pain has diminished me. I’m not sure I even know how much. Pain is aversive conditioning. The point of it. I back away from tasks, don’t even engage them. Tasks that formerly would have been easy; that I could do and then move onto the next one. Not now. One at a time. Over periods as long as a day or more. No way to run a house.

    I can’t bend down and play with Shadow. I know our relationship suffers because of that.

    Not whining here. Just describing. I’ve had a level of dysthymia as a result. As if I go through the motions, though not as many motions.

    Check back in in a week. See if anything’s better.

     

     

     


    📂This entry was posted in Health

  • A New Credo

    Posted on by Charles Comment
          Hercules wrestling Thanatos

    Driving to Lone Tree this morning. Spine injections. Struck by the notion of Israel Harari. The Mountain man who struggles with God. Of Jacob/Israel as an archetype. The trickster transformed into wounded man of faith. Peniel-where I saw God face to face.

    I’ve focused on Israel, on the struggle, but not considered or not fully considered the after moment, when Israel, newly named, limps away having seen God. Who names this ford on the Jabbok river after his realization.

    So I decided to do that. I’ve struggled with God since I was young. Too small. Too violent. Too obscure and ineffable. Dead. I don’t experience God. What good can God be? And this stupid, stupid idea of a seventy year life as a test for residing in Heaven or Hell for eternity? No.

    Then, the last 30 years or so, pass. Focused on the Soil, the Seed, the growing miracle of Plants, Dogs, grandchildren, love. No need for God. I feel the sacred when I amend the Earth. Pluck Onions and Carrots from their hidden places and spray them off with a hose nozzle. Food. The true transubstantiation.

    What if I felt my way into the Goddess? Her Earth. Me as part, yet not part. Unique, but not unique. A Wave above her Ocean, ready at all times to return. What if I admitted to myself that my  feeling of separateness is the original sin. The hubris of independence. Of individuality.

    What if. The yetzer hara, the selfish inclination, speaks to us of separateness. Of our needs. Of our unique demands. While the yetzer hatov speaks to our interdependence, our awareness of the needs of others, of the World around us.

    Could I find the sense of support, of sustenance, of forgiveness, of grace, of embeddedness in the whole, the One? Could I pray? I drove on, watching the Trees, the Hogback, remnants of the orogeny that preceded the rise of the Rocky Mountains. Striated. Weathered. Shrunken. But still there, millions upon millions of years after its emergence.

    Was I really, truly part of it? Was all the artifice of highways and cars part of it? The houses and stores. Doctor Vu, the kind and careful man who inserted needles into the narrow spaces of my bulging spine. And all his tech? The rotating bed. The living x-ray. Michal, his variously adorned assistant. Even the steroids shot toward my nerves? All of it?

    What difference might it make if I leaned into this most pushed away notion. Or, is it the embrace I’ve already made of the chi, of wu wei, of the mystical revealing the ordinary as the sacred? Do those feelings find me already in her arms?

    You know, it does. I’m a man of this short moment, a Wave cresting on the Ocean of the whole, going only from emergence to absorption, not needing to understand how. Yet as that man I’m also in and of the Ocean, of the Goddess, her instrument in this troubled part of her cosmos.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     


    📂This entry was posted in Asia Judaism Myth and Story Paganism Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Reimaging revelation Science Torah Wild Neighbors Writing

  • All. All of it. Sacred.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

    Ramses II. By Djehouty – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

    Tuesday gratefuls: Needles into my spine. 11 am. Paul in Salt Lake City. Mary in Eau Claire. The wide world. The newly opened Grand Egyptian Museum. The National Museum in Taipei. The Frick’s renovation. The Isabella Stewart Gardener museum. The Phillip Johnson. The MIA. The Walker. Being a dramaturg.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: All the art in all the world

    Week Kavannah:  Sensibility. Daat.

    One brief shining: So many museums, the quiet time early in the morning before the crowds come, walking into the Bruegel room at the Kunsthistorisches, or the Botticelli room at the Uffizi, even walking with the crowd into the Sistine Chapel, the Sistine Chapel!, my favorite moment to spend time with the Dr. Arrieta by Goya at the MIA, there are raptures and revelations there for those who can see what they are looking at.

     

    Imagine a street in any major city. Bangkok. Kuala Lumpur. NYC. A busy street filled with pedestrians on their way. Somewhere. Vehicles in the street. Bicycles. Taxis. Private cars. Delivery trucks. Businesses fronted on the sidewalk. With offices above them.

    All those vast inner worlds. As vast your own. Never to be known. Not by you. Not by anyone else. Unless. Perhaps. A lover or therapist. Or, if one of them is an artist. Doesn’t matter what kind. Painter. Writer. Musician. Dancer. Playwright. Sculptor. Artisan. Any.

    Artists need to, have to reveal themselves, their inner worlds. Can’t help it. It’s not quite the same as conversation between lovers, but it can be pretty damned close.

    That Goya above? That’s the painter himself being treated. For what was apparently a not very serious ailment. Did he know that at the time of his treatment? Doesn’t look like it, does it? Vulnerable. Needy. Confident doctor.

    Or, that statue of Ramses II. The sculptors, I imagine there were many, knew they had to give this work all the power and majesty they could find within themselves. Only then could it meet the demands of their God-King.

    Doryphoros

    I cherish those times when I can be with an artist and their work. Why? Because then like speaks to like. Inner worlds connect. Oh, yes. Anguish. Despair. Shame. Grief. Joy. Celebration. Deep contemplation. Reacting to surface beauty. Or, the lithe musculature of a Panther, the mystery of time caught forever in the Doryphoros as he steps forward.

    Reading. Listening. Seeing. Tasting. The artistry of a well-made meal. What a wonder, the world of the arts.

    And even so. My Lodgepole companion. My friends at CBE. Black Mountain after a heavy Snow. Maxwell Creek filled with Snow Melt. A bull Elk in the rain. Yes. These, too. Reveal the inner world of the whole wide world. In those moments before a painting or listening to an orchestra or sitting on a Rocky overhang in the Arapaho National Forest. When a newborn Fawn looks up from its first meals of tender new Grass. We get that jolt, that moment of knowing. Oh. Yes. It’s all sacred. I remember. I’ve known this all along. The press of life sometimes makes me forget. But I know it. Again. Now.

     

     


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Bees Cinema and Television Fungi Garden Mountains Plants Wild Neighbors

  • Gabe at 17. The Pope is dead.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

    Monday gratefuls: Gabe at 17. The Water Grill. Creative Writing. Poetry. Looking at colleges. University of Iowa. U.C. Denver. Metro State. Go, Gabe. Wasting Time. Don’t waste time on being productive. Just live. Shadow, the toy render. A drive down the hill. Halibut. Swordfish. Clam Chowder. Oysters.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: A gap year for Gabe. Here?

    Week Kavannah: Sensibility. Daat.

    One Brief Shining: Driving back up the hill in late afternoon, Great Sol above Black Mountain, those ski runs that mar its side still limned in Snow, my new Raybans cutting the glare as I round Windy Point, closing in on Conifer where Kate found our Shadow Mountain home, back in the Mountains. Yes.

     

    Gabe turns seventeen tomorrow. We celebrated at the Water Grill where he, Ruth, Jen, and I ate Thanksgiving last November. Much, much less crowded.

    He had the clam chowder. My favorite soup. At Dad’s we always bought canned clam chowder. His entree? Swordfish. Which he ate with the completeness of Shadow finishing her meal.

    We had a conversation about colleges. His creative writing teacher has encouraged his poetry. Right now he wants to major in creative writing. No surprise University of Iowa made his list.

    He may want to take a gap year. To find out who he is. What he wants. Guess where he wants to live? Grandpa’s house. He loves the Mountains. And his Grandpa. That’s a year away. So we’ll see.

    By that time Ruth will be a junior at CU-Boulder. In her second year of pre-med. Not sure how that timing works out for graduation.

    I recall holding infant Gabe while the mohel circumcised him. He looks older now.

     

    chatgpt in the style of Raphael

    The Pope is dead. Long live the Pope. The Conclave comes to life at the death of Pope Francis, a man who had an inclusive heart.

    The intrigue of papal politics will be on display. The ritual seclusion of the Cardinals, princes of the Church. The Sistine Chapel in all its Michelangelic glory. What a setting! Smoke signals. A Monarchy with a ritual method of choosing a ruler to follow in the footsteps of St. Peter.

    I admire the Catholic Church as an institution. It’s nearly two thousand years old, an astonishing run for any human creation. Not to say there haven’t been many bumpy years, even centuries. Yet it remains largely the same. Which is why I don’t admire it as a religious institution, yet I’d acknowledge that may be a clue to its longevity.

    A story only beginning. But I have a question first.

     

    Just a moment: Did JD Vance kill the Pope? This correspondent wants to know. Sure, the Pope had been ill. Sure. What better time for an assassination attempt.

    Besides, that odd beard. What’s he hiding? Is this why Vance converted? To get close enough to take out a Trump critic?

    Q-a-conspiracy thinks it might be true enough. I don’t know what to believe. And so close to Easter? Come on, something smells fishy in the Vatican State.

    You heard it ginned up here first.


    📂This entry was posted in Commentary on Religion Family

  • Tao De Jew

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: Shabbat. Torah. CBE. Sacred community. Where everybody knows your name. Shadow and the canoe cut marrow bone. Cold Night. A Mountain Dawn. Great Sol shines again. Being able to buy seeds and plants again. Easter. Matthew. Mark. Luke. John.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Gabe at 17

    Week Kavannah: Sensibility. Daat.

    One brief shining: In their waning years Taoists left behind their jobs in the court bureaucracy for small dwellings in the Mountains where they practiced calligraphy, played the Qin, wrote poetry, studied the sages, and lived close to the natural world.

     

    Tao De Jew. With a dash of Alinsky and street focused organizer. The Reverend Doctor Israel Harari. That would be me. With a domestic side of Gardener, Beekeeper, and Docent.

    Try to work with the flow of chi, the energetic and transformative aspect of our oneness and our sense of uniqueness. Look for the path that emerges, that asks and invites. Follow it. This ancientrail, then that one. With the ease of Water running toward the Ocean.

    Find the moment when chi has found you. Act with its already organized aim. If Shadow gnaws the bed at 5:20, get up and let her out. Saves cleaning up. Makes her happy. Gives the day an hour head start.

    Reconstructionist Judaism, Paganism, Taoism.  Sacred Community, Mother Earth, and a follower of the Way. When the Mule Deer comes. When the bull Elk bugles. When Fawns and Calves play. As the Mountain Lion strikes. As the Bear paws a Bee hive. Yes. When tender shoots break through the soil. When friends gather over breakfast. When Torah study opens new human insights. When the Breeze through the Lodgepoles whispers follow me. Yes.

     

    Have you been following the Adventures of Trump Tarrific? I know I have. Sort of. There was the all tariffs all the time moment. Then there was the oh wait not on tech stuff moment. Now there’s, what is it again? 10% on everybody and a whole lot on China. Yeah, I don’t get it either. Lucky I’m not alone. Business leaders. Economists. Inflation wary members of the Fed. For a start.

    Then there’s Trump the Depo Man. Proving his masculinity by using the military, ICE, and millions of dollars to sweep people off college campuses, out of their janitorial and dishwashing jobs, making a mistake or two along the way, but hey that’s ok, omelets and eggs, eh, and not getting many folks deported except the most vulnerable.

    That what it says in the Gospels: find the poor, the stranger, put them on a plane and send them to prison in El Salvador. Oh, Jesus. Oh.

     

    Just a moment: Yes. It’s Easter. Easter eggs. Chocolate and marshmallow Bunnies. Ham. Cute dresses and boys in ties. All the holiday essentials. Wonder how that whole egg business has worked this year, the year of Bird flu?

    Remember Ukrainian Easter Eggs. Wonder if anybody’s on that this year? Or will Putin target little old ladies with eggs and candle wax.

     

     


    📂This entry was posted in Asia Fourth Phase Holidays Judaism Paganism Politics Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. US History

  • That Great Wakin’ Up Mornin’

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

    Shabbat gratefuls: Counting the Omer. Shadow time. 5:15 am today. Nap later. Shabbat shalom. Nathan and the Greenhouse. Snow. 6 inches. 15 degrees. Easter. Resurrection. Mussar. The Days of our Lives. Fawns. Calves. Kits. Cubs. Birthdays in the Mountains. Puppy energy. Breakfast. Early Morning on Shadow Mountain.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: National Park Week

    Week Kavannah: Sensibility. Daat.

    One brief shining: Rubbing my sleepy eyes I rose before Mother Earth revealed Great Sol, a darkness into which my Shadow slipped, needing to be out in the Snow, the cold for reasons of elimination, I imagine.

     

    Easter. Resurrection. A difficult thing to believe. Yes. The story until the rolling away of the Stone? A Jesus story, a Jewish story. An against the Roman occupiers and the perceived rigidity of Jewish leadership story. A believable story of a young Jewish man who captured the hearts of many with his gentle message of love and compassion, his radical insistence on caring for the poor, the widowed, the left out.

    His popularity his downfall. A threat to Roman overlords. Who even after arresting him, tried to let him go free. Even believable up to the crucifixion, a cruel punishment. Even up to his death and burial.

    Sure, the miracles. But who hasn’t imagined one they love able to walk on water, heal with a kiss, drive out the demons of yesterday. Or, just give him the miracles. He was not the only miracle worker ever.

    Where it gets hard. Impossible? That great wakin’ up morning. An empty tomb. Empirical Thomas putting his fingers in Jesus’ wounds. An ascension.

    Why do some people believe it? A lot of people. 2.38 billion Christians according to PEW research. More than any other religion with Muslims next at 1.9 billion.

    Let me say. Resurrection has that whole death is not the end thing going for it. A powerful idea. Responds to the hidden fears of so many. What’s next? Is there life after life?

    There’s the butterfly after all. That creepy leaf-munching wiggle worm weaves a chrysalis and thanks to the magic of imaginal cells becomes a beautiful Swallowtail? Why not us? Are we not as worthy of transformation?

    A story of death’s defeat. Remember Max Von Sydow playing chess with death? Checkmate, Jesus.

    Always seemed a bit too far for me. A punchline delivered long after the hero had already died. He was great, wasn’t he? Well then. If anybody could come back? Eh?

    Still. It’s a great metaphor. Take that beaten down mother. Show her kindness. See a resurrection. Or, take a cruel despot like Trump and overthrow him. Resurrection. Look at the Gardens, the Mountain Meadows and Hillsides in Spring. Resurrection.

    If believing in life after death helps you get through the day? Why not. Not for me. Though if it could be. If I could see Kate again. Tor. Celt. Kona. I’m ok with it if it’s there. Not counting on it.

    Whatever you believe, I hope you have splendid Easter.


    📂This entry was posted in Commentary on Religion

  • is it bad?

    Posted on by Charles Comment
    Ancients,
    What are your favorite ways to waste time.
    When I am on task I get a lot done. When I waste time, it clears my mind of all the things I need to accomplish. Wasting time on the internet, reading a good trash crime/detective book, taking a long mid-day nap, staring out the window at birds, all these things keep me from the task at hand. But is it bad, or a needed outlet?

    A few resources below. The etymology of productive, waste, and sloth.

    I offer them because Ode’s theme rests in a labyrinth of Protestant work ethic hedge rows. There was a time, now long past, when productivity mattered to me. When I made pound cakes in the bakery. When I moved eight-hundred pound bales of cotton underwear cutouts for rag-cutting. When I had to have something to show for my work in the West Bank Ministry. When I wrote 1,000 words a day.

    Andover found me active, working at many different tasks. Amending soil. Planting Vegetables. Caring for our Fruit Trees. Inspecting the Bee hives. Feeding and Watering the Dogs. Cooking. Yet I never felt a need to be productive. I worked at this, then that. Doing what was needed.

    Even my writing took on this patina. I did it as an act of self-giving, an expression of my love for the imagination. Since moving to Colorado, I extended this approach to fire mitigation, caring for Kate, being with friends and family.

    Now in what I count as my fourth phase, with a  terminal illness, retirement in the past, I find myself leaning into relationships, to reading and watching TV, learning with my friends at CBE. Caring for Shadow.

    Not to say that the productivity demon doesn’t raise its hoary head now and then. It does. Yet I see it for what it is. Old pathways, deep ruts from past eras. No longer what I need now. Or, desire.

     

    produce(v.)
    early 15c., producen, “develop, proceed, extend, lengthen out,” from Latin producere “lead or bring forth, draw out,” figuratively “to promote, empower; stretch out, extend,” from pro “before, forth” (from PIE root *per- (1) “forward,” hence “in front of, before, forth”) + ducere “to bring, lead” (from PIE root *deuk- “to lead”).The sense of “bring into being or existence” is from late 15c. That of “put (a play) on stage” is from 1580s. Of animals or plants, “generate, bear, bring forth, give birth to,” 1520s. The meaning “cause, effect, or bring about by mental or physical labor” is from 1630s. In political economy, “create value; bring goods, manufactures, etc. into a state in which they will command a price,” by 1827. Related: Produced; producing.

    waste(v.)

    c. 1200, wasten, “devastate, ravage, ruin,” from Anglo-French and Old North French waster “to waste, squander, spoil, ruin” (Old French gaster; Modern French gâter), altered (by influence of Frankish *wostjan) from Latin vastare “lay waste,” from vastus “empty, desolate.” This is reconstructed in Watkins to be from a suffixed form of PIE root *eue- “to leave, abandon, give out.” Related: wasted; wasting.The Germanic word also existed in Old English as westan “to lay waste, ravage.” Spanish gastar, Italian guastare also are from Germanic.The intransitive meaning “lose strength or health; pine; weaken or be gradually consumed” is attested from c. 1300; the sense of “squander, spend or consume uselessly, expend without adequate return” is recorded from mid-14c.; the colloquial meaning “to kill” is from 1964.

    To waste time “act to no purpose” is from mid-14c. Waste not, want not is attested from 1778.

    Sloth

    [edit]

    Main article: Sloth (deadly sin)
    Parable of the Wheat and the Tares (1624) by Abraham Bloemaert, Walters Art Museum

    Sloth refers to many related ideas, dating from antiquity and including mental, spiritual, pathological, and physical states.[29] It may be defined as absence of interest or habitual disinclination to exertion.[30]

    In his Summa Theologica, Saint Thomas Aquinas defined sloth as “sorrow about spiritual good”.[28]

    The scope of sloth is wide.[29] Spiritually, acedia first referred to an affliction attending religious persons, especially monks, wherein they became indifferent to their duties and obligations to God. Mentally, acedia has a number of distinctive components; the most important of these is affectlessness, a lack of any feeling about self or other, a mind-state that gives rise to boredom, rancor, apathy, and a passive inert or sluggish mentation. Physically, acedia is fundamentally associated with a cessation of motion and an indifference to work; it finds expression in laziness, idleness, and indolence.[29]

    Sloth includes ceasing to utilize the seven gifts of grace given by the Holy Spirit (Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Knowledge, Piety, Fortitude, and Fear of the Lord); such disregard may lead to the slowing of spiritual progress towards eternal life, the neglect of manifold duties of charity towards the neighbor, and animosity towards those who love God.[18]

    Unlike the other seven deadly sins, which are sins of committing immorality, sloth is a sin of omitting responsibilities. It may arise from any of the other capital vices; for example, a son may omit his duty to his father through anger. The state and habit of sloth is a mortal sin, while the habit of the soul tending towards the last mortal state of sloth is not mortal in and of itself except under certain circumstances.[18]

    Emotionally, and cognitively, the evil of acedia finds expression in a lack of any feeling for the world, for the people in it, or for the self. Acedia takes form as an alienation of the sentient self first from the world and then from itself. The most profound versions of this condition are found in a withdrawal from all forms of participation in or care for others or oneself, but a lesser yet more noisome element was also noted by theologians. Gregory the Great asserted that, “from tristitia, there arise malice, rancour, cowardice, [and] despair”. Chaucer also dealt with this attribute of acedia, counting the characteristics of the sin to include despair, somnolence, idleness, tardiness, negligence, laziness, and wrawnesse, the last variously translated as “anger” or better as “peevishness”. For Chaucer, human’s sin consists of languishing and holding back, refusing to undertake works of goodness because, they tell themselves, the circumstances surrounding the establishment of good are too grievous and too difficult to suffer. Acedia in Chaucer’s view is thus the enemy of every source and motive for work.[31]

    Sloth subverts the livelihood of the body, taking no care for its day-to-day provisions, and slows down the mind, halting its attention to matters of great importance. Sloth hinders the man in his righteous undertakings and thus becomes a terrible source of human’s undoing.[31]


    📂This entry was posted in Ancients Dogs Shadow Mountain

  • Wildness in the Garden

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

    Friday gratefuls: Select P.T. Rick. Ginny. Luke. Jamie. Marilyn. Ratzon. Mussar. Shadow, the eater of bones. Kate, always Kate. Breakfast for Shadow. Cookunity. Vegetables home grown. Nathan. Marilyn and Irv. Steroid injections. Anavah. Diane’s healing. Mark and his ESL students in Al Kharj. Snow, a lot. Easter and resurrection.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Snow

    Week Kavannah: Joy. Simcha.

    One brief shining: A Mountain Spring includes 70 degree weather yesterday and 19 this morning; Sunshine and greening grass yesterday and Snow coming straight down, already covering my backyard this morning; at some point a sudden shift will occur and a Mountain Summer will have begun.

     

    My Wild Neighbors like to eat Garden produce. My new Greenhouse will have net covering to foil them. Besides I let my Dandelions go to seed and multiply offering dainty treats for the Mule Deer and Elk who love this briefly available food. I also offer plenty of Grass and other Plants desired by my Ungulate friends over the course of the growing season.

    Shadow’s amusement will include this year Voles, Mice, Rabbits, Chipmunks, and the occasional Squirrel, either Red or Aberts. My guess is that she’s not the predator Rigel and Vega were, but she’ll still have fun chasing these Mountain Mammals for whom speed is safety.

    I’m not fully in the Wild, but I am fully in the Wildlands Urban Interface and the Arapaho National Forest. No Grassy yard expected or desired. Only what grows on its own. My happy place.

     

    chatgpt

    Third new human story class. Holding the Genesis accounts of creating humans to closer account. For example. You can’t eat of the Tree of Good and Bad. How would either Eve or Adam know what that meant? They have no experience, no prior knowledge of those words. Good and Bad are empty vessels.

    The voice, as Twain calls God, may as well have said don’t eat of the Tree of Rocks and Scissors.

    And that Snake that gets all the blame? Well, guess who made him. Why make a sneaky Snake in the first place. Then to blame and punish him for acting as the Snake God created him to be? Doesn’t really seem fair, does it?

    I wonder, too, about God’s observation about the human (adam). It’s not good for the human to be alone. Hmmm. From a Kabbalistic perspective that sounds like God’s contraction in the ayn sof, the emptiness that preceded everything. God pulled back to leave room for the universe. Was God lonely, too?

    There are more, many more questions about this old, old story. All of them echoing down the millennia since it’s inclusion in the Torah. Original sin, for example.

    Here’s a new take on original sin (in which I have never believed) that came to me yesterday. When Adam and Eve eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Bad they become self-conscious. They need clothes. Might the original human sin have been self-consciousness?

    That is, could the awareness of themselves as beings separate from each other and the rest of the Garden’s plants and animals, be the fall. The illusion that our separateness is real and total. That we are somehow wholly independent from the natural world and other humans, too?

    I could easily draw a line through all of human history that would link this fallacy with all the major sins our flesh is heir to.


    📂This entry was posted in Commentary on Religion Kabbalah Mountains Myth and Story Plants Torah Wild Neighbors