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.
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.
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 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]
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.
Thursday gratefuls: Shadow. Her kindness. Amy. Her understanding. Cookunity. Colorado Coop and Garden. The Greenhouse. Gardening again. Korea. Malaysia. Australasia. Wisconsin. Saudi Arabia. The Bay. First Light. 10,000 Lakes. The Rocky Mountain Front Range. Where my people live.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Greenhouse
Week Kavannah: Joy. Simcha.
One brief shining: Nathan and I wandered in my back yard, his app that shows Great Sol’s illumination searching for a good spot to plant my greenhouse, until we neared a spot close to the shed, that was it with decent morning Sun and an hours worth of afternoon Sun more than anywhere else.
That picture is not quite what I’m getting. Mine will have an outdoor raised bed on either side and shutters that move themselves as the greenhouse heats up and cools down. It will also have an electric heater for Winter and a drip irrigation system inside and out.
This guy Nathan, a Conifer native, started his business Colorado Coop and Garden to give folks like me an opportunity to grow things up here. Working a garden at ground level is long past for me. But Nathan can build the raised beds at a height where my back is not an issue.
Guess I’m regressing here in some ways. A Dog. A small Garden. Andover in miniature. The greenhouse will have a sign: Artemis Gardens. Artemis Honey was Kate and mine’s name for our bee operation.
I’m loving my classes at Kabbalah Experience. Reaching deep into the purpose of religion and Judaism in particular. Reimagining the story of Adam and Eve. My life, my Jewish life and my Shadow Mountain life, have begun to resonate. Learning and living an adventure in fourth phase purpose.
No matter what the near term future holds for my health I will not succumb to despair or bleakness. As I’ve often said, I want to live until I die. This life, I’m coming to realize, is me doing just that.
If I were a bit more spry, I’d add a chicken coop and a couple of bee hives, but both require more flexibility than I can muster.
I’m at my best when I’m active outside with Mother Earth and inside with a Dog, books, and new learning. All that leavened with the sort of intimate relationships I’ve developed both here and in Minnesota and with my far flung family.
That’s living in the face of autocracy and cruelty. I will not attenuate my life. Neither for the dark winds blowing through our country and world, nor for that dark friend of us all, death.
Just a moment: Did you read Thomas Friedman’s article: I’ve Never Been More Afraid for My Countries Future? His words, served up with a healthy dish of Scandinavian influenced St. Louis Park Judaism, ring more than true to me. They have the voice of prophecy.
We are in trouble. No doubt. Trouble from which extrication will require decades, I imagine. If not longer. Yet. I plan to grow heirloom vegetables year round on Shadow Mountain. To have mah Dog Shadow with me in the Greenhouse.
I also plan to write and think about the sacred, the one, the wholeness of which we are part and in which we live, die, love. I will not cheapen my life with bitterness, rather I will eat salads, read, play with Shadow and dine with friends, talk to my friends and family near and far.
Wednesday gratefuls: Lao Xi. Dao De Jing. Wu wei. Alchemy. The Sage. Pu, pure simplicity. Ziran. Authenticity. Just so-ness. Lao Tse’s journey to the West. On an Ox. Stopped at the Hangu Pass to write his wisdom. The Tao. The Way. Or, the Ancientrail of Chi. Other wisdom ways. That Iroquois medicine man. The Sun dance. Christianity. Especially Eastern Orthodoxy. Mystics of all cultures.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Lifting the veil and seeing the ordinary as sacred reality
Week Kavannah: Joy. Simcha.
One brief shining: We sat there, the two converts who shared a mikveh day, who received new names on the same day, who did Bat Mitzvah and Bar Mitzvah at the same Shavuot service, both a bit cold as a Mountain Evening’s chill settled on Murphy’s, an eatery beside Bear Creek in Evergreen, and caught up about her impending divorce, her brother’s death, her father’s injury, my back and cancer and Shadow my new puppy, upon leaving I said Jews together, she said it back, and we hugged, then just before I got to my car she turned, came to me, and we hugged again. Veronica. Harmonica. Hanukkah.
Dog journal: Shadow’s back to training with me now. Except for the leash. She runs when she sees it. Gotta get her leash trained. I want to take her with me places. To the vet. To a groomer. As the weather warms, she’s blowing her coat. To mussar to meet my friends, see the synagogue. Over to the Happy Camper. On grocery pickups. Wandering around. Maybe a hike if the injections work.
Shadow loves her toys. I bought her a miniature tire and she hasn’t played with anything else for a couple of days. Her playfulness makes me smile.
What injections you might ask. On April 22nd at 11:00 am, I’ll have needles inserted into four foramens on my lumbar spine. Steroids. Could take two weeks to start working. Typically lasts less than three months if it works at all. Partial relief at best since it will not treat the arthropathy, arthritic damage. A more modest first step. Plus, only ten minutes or so, requiring no anesthesia.
After this there are two other possible procedures: radio frequency ablation of the nerves, and peripheral nerve stimulation. Both are more involved, yet offer the potential for longer term relief. One set of needles at a time.
Just a moment: Veronica worked on the GOES satellites, vehicles in her parlance, and now manages Lockheed’s planning and development for the next generation weather satellites. As Trump defunds NOAA, he wants to privatize weather data, leave it to a corporate entity yet unborn. If he succeeds, Veronica may not have work. Who do you know directly affected by the blob that ate our government?
Judge scolds the Justice Department for ignoring her rulings? Scolds. Oh, we are well and truly screwed.
Anticipatory obedience. Check. Congress at heel. Check. Judiciary sidelined. Check. Government as we have known it gutted. Check. Our economy in a tailspin. Check.
Tuesday gratefuls: Veronica. Saigon Landing. Tonight. Pain doc. SPRINT PNS. Steroid injections soon. Pain. Weariness. Good mornings. Fatigued afternoons. Waning evenings. Shadow bouncing and running. AI 2027. AI. A world beyond our imagining not far away. A world so far away we cannot imagine. The early universe.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Pain relief
Week Kavannah: Joy. Simcha.
One brief shining: Hobbled by back pain I moved slowly toward the steps, up and in to the Mountain Pain Center building, doors an obstacle, walking an obstacle, fuck this, I thought, damned back, afterward over to nearby Tony’s Market for an Italian Sub and then home, my day finished around 11 am.
When the Ancients gathered on Sunday, I had asked for each person to tell us how they see themselves. Speaking for myself I said I was weary. Back pain limiting my mobility, my stamina. Causing inertia to set in earlier and earlier. Wrassling with prostate cancer, now for eleven years. Also, the week of Kate’s death four years ago.
Not depressed. Tired of it all. Just tired.
I see myself as a small town boy who has gone through many transformations. Student. Protester. Draft resister. Husband. Husband. Husband. Alcoholic. Rag cutter. Seminary student. Worker with the developmentally challenged. Manager. Organizer. Dad. Gardener. Bee Keeper. Dog lover. Writer. Grandpa. Friend. Docent. Actor. Woolly Mammoth. Doctoral student. Mountain dweller. Caregiver. Jew. Old man. Shadowed. Cancer patient. World traveler. Brother. And others I’m not remembering right now.
I see myself as confident, secure in who and what I am. A good friend, a devoted husband, companion to Shadow. An intelligent man, seeking always the hidden, the obscured, the sacred. Creative. Curious. A family man to the bone.
I also see the dark places within me. The man who is afraid of pain. The man who is shy, reticent in social situations. The man who would rather stay home, read, watch TV than interact with the world. The angry man who, though modified a lot over the years, remains. Impatient with stupidity, cupidity, rudeness, injustice. The man who wishes for something, some sort of recognition, yet also does not care about it. The man who judges too quickly and often not on the side of merit.
There is also the man of whimsy, of folderol. The man who laughs easily and often. Who sees the irony of life and smiles at it. The man who looks deep into the eyes of the Mule Deer, the Elk, Shadow and sees fellow travelers on this ancientrail of life.
I see myself, too, as accomplished. That my life has had, has, purpose and meaning. That I have made a difference, small differences in the large sweep of history, yes, but differences none the less.
I see myself now as a man in the fourth phase of his life. Beyond retirement. With an illness that could be terminal. Death as the next big event. There is a liberation in this phase, a freedom from worry, a sense of wrapping it up.
Monday gratefuls: Cold Night. Snow. Shadow. Good friends. Here and there. Family. Here and there. Daniel Silva. Gabriel Allon. Painting conservators and restorers. Peter Paul Rubens. Caravaggio. Da Vinci. Michelangelo. Hopper. Bierstadt. O’Keefe. Rothko. Kandinsky. Creativity.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Rothko
Week Kavannah: Joy. Simcha.
One brief shining: The muddy Colorado runs in torrents through northwestern Colorado, carrying in its rush the waters of Snow packed on Mountain sides, deposited over the Western Winter, but will it, can it be enough for Las Vegas, Tucson, Phoenix, the Diné Nation, L.A., and even parts of the Baja.
With the end of Winter in sight the question, the every Spring question in Colorado. How’s the Snowpack? This is God’s own Water Bank, stored and frozen for use throughout the Water year. Its politics more fraught than those of the Education Department or USAID. Its impact? On lives in the millions, crops, economies of the West.
This year critical Snowpack like the Upper Colorado River Basin is at 84%. We could still get more Snow, plump it up, but time has begun to run out. The pact that governs Water distribution in the Upper and Lower Basin states resets this summer.
Already hampered by the Gap, an error in the original pact that divided up Water allotments using peak years never again realized, and now beyond the breaking point due to rapid urbanization in the Southwest and Southern California, the pact will require a King Solomon.
Current Water law is a labyrinth of rights based on who got there first, second, third. This makes it impossible to rationalize the allotments. The Upper Basin and Lower Basin states have their own politics to consider. Many senior Water rights are in the Upper Basin states: Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico. While much of the development has occurred in the lower basin states of Nevada, Arizona, and California.
Thus the states of Wyoming and Colorado in particular produce most of the Water through their Snowpacks, but the largest consumers of the Water inhabit the Lower Basin states.
Changes to Water law face years of precedent and controversy. It will not happen easily.
Having a lower percentage of Snowpack exacerbates the problems and can be anticipated as climate change alters and warms Winter weather.
Just a moment: The rejection of the judge’s ruling. The president of Salvador saying of course he would not release the wrongly imprisoned man. Our government, our “Justice” department saying nah, ne, na nah to the judge. Cruelty and our way or the Salvadoran prison way as policy. No longer a question what we have come to. This is what we are. Mean. Insensitive. Immune to the rule of law. Capricious. No way to run a country, especially this country.
Sunday gratefuls: Second day of Passover. Kate, always Kate. Shadow the toy mover. Her zooming in the back yard. Liberation. Freedom to choose. Egypt. The many Egypts we are heir to. Tara. Arjan. Robbie and Deb. Sandy and Mark. Eleanor. Kilimanjaro. Jungfrau. Black Mountain. Shadow Mountain. A Mountain night.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Liberation
Week Kavannah: Joy. Simcha.
One brief shining: The Haggadah had wine stains; the seder plate had a kiwi because we can; we dipped the parsley into salt water, tears for the suffering of the slaves, of all oppressed people, spread dots of wine or in my case grape juice for each plague, retelling each part of the passover story as if we were there, as our story.
Talmud Torah in the morning. (Torah study) A focus on the maggid, the telling of the passover story in the Haggadah. Complete with midrash, interpretation and expansion.
Later, around 4, over to Kilimanjaro Drive. Tara’s house. Steep driveway with cars parked at various spots along the way. All the way up to the top where I found a spot in front of a Tesla.
Thirty minutes before I had almost chosen not to go. Coming home in the dark. General inertia. A long standing aversion to parties. But this was Passover. At Tara’s. I’d be happy once I got there.
So I went to the liquor store, picked up a bottle of mid-range red wine and drove past Evergreen Meadows and past Evergreen Funeral Home where both Jon and Kate lay after death, down curvy N. Turkey Creek Road to the Mountains and roads leading to her house.
And I was happy to be there. Until we sat down to the table. Then the noise level, the angle of the voices, the general clash and clamor of a meal with eighteen other people. I began to recede. Off in my own quiet room of acoustical challenge. Nodding and smiling. Trying to keep up. Too often failing.
Now having to rethink even Passover, at least in people’s homes. Where it means the most. Where my friends want me. Where I want to be. The congregational Passover has round tables, more distance among the guests. Kate and I usually attended. I may need to go to it just so I can hear.
Talked to my son and Seoah on Friday night. Murdoch’s getting crate training. Seoah’s running, happy. We talked about Kate, her death, her wonderful life.
My son and I discussed details for the Jang family visit this summer. Money is, as you can imagine, an issue. 5 adults and two children. Seoah’s Mom and Dad, her brother, her sister and her two kids. Airfare, lodging, transportation. Food. That’s what we’re working out now. Need to make some decisions soon because Air BnB’s begin to fill up for the summer in this time frame.
Will be the trip of a lifetime for the Jang’s. The U.S. The Rocky Mountains. Deepening connections with my son’s side of the family. Myself, Ruth, Gabe.
Shabbat gratefuls: Kate, always Kate. Her yahrzeit. Passover. Talmud Torah. Tara. Arjan. Eleanor. Leo. Findlay. Gracie. Annie and Luna. A Mountain Morning. Pagans. Planting festivals. Beltane. Greenhouse. The Night Sky. Shadow. A perfect night. Paul’s procedure. Dad’s birthday.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Passover
Week Kavannah: Wu Wei
One brief shining: Kate had the b-pap on, negative pressure to get air in the lungs, hated it; not long after she asked me if I would rather have her dead or disabled, not long after that she decided to die.
Kate in Lima, Peru. Pissaro’s place. 2011
Of course I told her I wanted her alive between those two choices. When she decided to die, she asked what I thought of her decision. I hate it, because I’ll lose you; but, I think it’s the right decision for you.
She had a clarity of thought, an unflinching nature in the face of trouble. If there was ever an emergency at work, she got called to go with the crash cart. We both knew the struggle had gotten near the end.
We cried. I asked her about some of her last wishes. Jewelry to Jeremiah, the painter and brother-in-law. Expand the Iris bed on Shadow Mountain. Plant lilacs. Then to me: Zip up. And trust your doctors.
Her doctor came in and said she understood Kate wished to “transition.” Die is not in the vocabulary of the physician. Kate said yes. Her life supports, including the b-pap machine were removed. Morphine sufficient to stave off the fear generated by air hunger dripped from her IV.
I left. The doctors said it would take a day or two for her to die. I had Rigel and Kepler to take care of back home. After driving me home, Rich asked me if I wanted to go back. No, I said.
At that point I had to feed and get water for Rigel and Kepler. The last ten days had been constant travel between Shadow Mountain and Swedish Hospital down the hill in Englewood. Emotional and physical exhaustion had taken a toll on me, too.
She died that night. I regret not being there. I also regret that when I saw her corpse it frightened me so I could not go to her. Over the years since I’ve made my peace with those regrets. I can’t change them and Kate, I know, would have understood.
This is the first time I’ve written about these last things. The regrets. I do it now because we make such a fetish of hiding the reality of death. I don’t want to be part of that. It was hard, painful for her and for me. For many others, too.
Later on, a couple of years following her death, I took her remains, housed in a Richard Bresnahan clay jar, and spread them out on a small, unnamed Mountain Stream that feeds into Maxwell Creek, then Bear Creek, then the South Platter River, carrying her down to the Gulf of Mexico and the World Ocean.
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.
