• Overburden

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

    Tuesday gratefuls: Kristie. Prostate Cancer. Erleada. Orgovyx. Life with cancer. Marilyn and Irv. Cold. 6 last night. Polar Vortex. Samsara. Monkey mind. Inner peace and wholeness. Shleimut. Water. Heat pumps. Keyboards. Microphones. Life. Death. The most ancientrails. Great Sol.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Living

    Kavannah 2025: Creativity

    Kavannah this week: Wholeness and Peace

    One bright shining: Wanting to reveal a part of my cancer journey, not that I’ve kept it secret, rather that I have let it travel along largely unremarked, yet the truth may be important for you or someone you love.

     

    Diagnosed in May 2015. Prostatectomy that July. Radiation 2019. Gold standard treatments. For the cure. Didn’t happen for me. 99% of men diagnosed are alive 5 years later. As I was. In May I pass the ten year post diagnosis trail marker. In 2021 a p.e.t. scan showed metastases, cancer spread into my bones and lymph nodes. At that point I became stage 4. In many cancers stage 4 is an imminent death sentence. Not so in prostate cancer. 34% of men live 5 years past that change. One man lived 22 years with stage 4 prostate cancer.

    This is not about prognosis, which I’ve decided is a red herring. At least for me. The variables are too complex and whenever I’ve had an answer it has pressed down on me. Most important? Gonna die from something anyhow. And nobody can prognose that.

    Here is the illustration in the style of 19th-century photography of the U.S. West, reflecting the somber mood and enduring journey described

    Rather this is about what I call the overburden of prostate cancer. Any cancer, really, that hasn’t killed you. The difference with prostate cancer lies in the capacity to live 10, 15, even 20 years after diagnosis.

    That means waking up each day of those 10 years with the knowledge that I have cancer. No, I don’t turn to that each morning, not even every day, yet the reality of having a part of my body actively trying to kill me never leaves me. I might encounter the thought, as I did yesterday, on learning a friend who also has prostate cancer may be nearing death. Or, on those every three month visits to the phlebotomist, waiting for the results. Then, soon after, a visit to the oncologist. Maybe an article in the newspaper. Or, another friend, like one of the three members of my Thursday mussar group, who have different forms of cancer, speaks up.

    To not let this send me down, down into the darkness of self-pity or melancholy or depression I have taught myself ways of addressing these moments:

    Sometimes. I’m  living one life at a time. Today I’m living my January 14th, 2025 life. I only have today, this life, anyhow.

    Other times the tried and often effective, well, you’re gonna die anyhow. Always true and usually reassuring in its own, odd way.

    Another method relies on a mantra: live until I die. That reminds me to focus on living rather than dying.

    Yet another approach. Lean into the thought of death. View my own corpse. Accept death’s reality as an ever abiding constant over the whole of my life. This can be surprisingly effective.

    Here, though, is the point of all this. Every time I have to use one of these strategies takes mental and emotional energy. Depending on other circumstances in my life either more or less energy. And, there is a certain accumulative effect. Which means I have less resilience for other aspects of my life. Like doing my taxes. (ha)

    This is the overburden. And it never disappears.

     


    📂This entry was posted in Health

  • Meh in the rearview. For now.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Yule and the Full Quarter Century Moon

    Monday gratefuls: Marilyn and Irv. Alan. The Full Moon. Cold night. 4 degrees. Good sleeping. Celebrex twice daily now. Chronic pain. Snow. Moving stuff around. Brings George Carlin to mind. Carlin and Monty Python. Douglas Adams. The trinity of comedy for me. Exodus parshas begin this week. Zohar, all 12 volumes. Clearing space for study. My son. Murdoch. Seoah. Korea. Mary in Brisbane. Mark in Al Kharj. Diane, healing.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Grocery pickup

    Kavannah 2025: Creativity

    Year Tarot: The Archer

    Kavannah for this week: Wholeness and peacefulness  shleimut

    One brief shining: A new Dell desktop sits nearby, still in its substantial box, waiting to get lifted out, placed next to my old Dell desktop so the transfer of files can begin, underwriting in its newness the sense within me, reinforced by my Tarot year card, the Archer, that this will be an important year for me: “This Wildwood Tarot card makes meaning: the dawn of new life is beginning and a bumper season is coming.”

     

    Yes, the period of meh has receded. Encouraged by learning that my aorta won’t bother me. By writing stories in the Storyworth app. By leaning into my mobility limitations. By deciding to go for an ortho consult: right shoulder, left forearm and hand, lower back and hip, neck. By focusing on kabbalah and Torah study. By the new CBE men’s group. By my pescatarian (plus chicken, if nothing else is available) turn. No, not a hard decision, a decision to lower the number of choice points when it comes to food.

    Also by recognizing, even more, the value of my mornings. And further, by the decision to move my home gym down to Kate’s old sewing room. Concentrating my workouts downstairs.

    Glad for all this.

     

    Only a week away from MLK holiday. And, on the very same oh so ironic day, the inauguration of our 47th felon, no. Wait. President. No. Felon President. That’s it. If the long arc of history bends toward justice, the sag created on the 20th will have to be repaired.

    MLK. Malcolm X. I’m more a Malcolm X sorta guy. Sure, non-violence. Yes. As a way of bringing change. When it works. Where it can work. Not much good against despots, Proud Boys, 3 Percenters, Christian Nationalists. Violence. Often counter-productive. Yet look at the Day of Love, as felonious cousin Donald has renamed it. That was violent, not extreme, yet that was the overall look and feel. No Velveteen Rabbit stuff. More like where the wild things are.

    Din, or justice in Hebrew, insists on right and wrong, demands restitution and retribution when a wrong is committed. (from Tara’s work sheet on rachamim).

    This image puts the Wanderer’s Journey overlaid on the ten sefirot of Kabbalah’s Tree of Life. Though interesting for that reason I want to focus on the line between Chesed, #4, and Gevurah, #5. Chesed is loving kindness and Gevurah is strength, boundaries, the law. If rachamim, compassion, were placed on here it would be on the midline between Chesed and Gevurah, blending the attributes of strength and boundaries with loving kindness.

    Realized in reading Tara’s notes that I’m a left side of the tree guy. More severe and punishing in my approach to injustices. Which I think is appropriate for public and systemic wrongs. Rabbi Jamie, I think, is more of a right side of the tree guy. Loving kindness and compassion as first approaches. Which I think are more appropriate for individual and small group situations.


    📂This entry was posted in Fourth Phase Judaism Kabbalah Tarot

  • Rachamim

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Yule and the almost full Quarter Century Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: Vince and his friends. Their muscles. Moving day for my home gym. A couple of chairs. My new computer. The complete Pritzker Zohar. My classroom for the next few years. Year Tarot: The Archer, #7. Life Tarot: The Wheel, #10, and a shadow card, The Wanderer, #1. Wildwood Tarot. Going deeper, yet staying on the surface. Ruby and her Mountain ways. Talmud Torah

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Leaning in to mobility limitations

    Kavannah for 2025: Creativity

    Year card: The Archer, #7  “The Archer is located on the spring equinox, March 21. The time this card represents is sunrise. The Archer belongs to the Air element, bringing creative energy and inspiration. This Wildwood Tarot card makes meaning: the dawn of new life is beginning and a bumper season is coming.”  TarotX.net

    Kavannah for this week: Wholeness and peacefulness  shleimut

    One brief shining: Seeing my son over the thousands of miles, listening to him describe his life and work, hearing his melody loud and clear, a strong man, dedicated, caring, loving, thoughtful, a tune marked by doggedness and intelligence, commitment, warrior energy.

     

    Here is the illustration in the style of an ukiyo-e print, visually interpreting the nurturing and generative qualities of compassion.

    This new practice for the month, listening for the melody of the other, has proved challenging to recall. Its purpose is to train my rachamim muscle, my compassion, over against my din muscle, my justice muscle. Justice somehow got wired into my soul from a young age. Always ready to judge and enter the fight on behalf of others. Compassion came later, or at least in much smaller emergences than my desire to stop the war, further women’s rights, block capitalist greed, build affordable housing.

    As I’ve aged, compassion (rachamim) has pushed its way forward. Perhaps because I have needed more compassion. Perhaps because aging can induce, and has for me, vulnerability. Life contains fewer and fewer chances, contains more and more tragedy and chaos. Reduced energy, at least for me, plays a role here, too. I don’t have the get up and struggle sort of vitality, physically, that I used to have. Also friendships and acquaintances have risen to top priority in my life. Following only family. To retain and sustain relationships compassion must show up first.

    Did that shoulder slump? Is her head slightly tilted down? Is there a tightness in his voice? That foot tapping. Clock watching. Smiling without sarcasm. She leaned her head suddenly on to my shoulder. What do I know of the composer? What’s likely influencing this melody? Is it one I’ve heard before? Is it new? Is it shrill? Or is it like morning Bird song? My eye can be, must be my ear.

    Both rachamim and the Hebrew word for womb share the same root. What can we imagine from this? Does compassion have a generative quality, creating a womb-like space for another’s soul to grow? Does compassion nurture over time, making it a necessary element of every interaction with another? Frequent exposure to your compassion may be the fertile Soil another’s soul needs to flourish.

    Sometime I’ll write about din. Which sets aside compassion in the interests of equity, fairness, fighting oppression. Not today.


    📂This entry was posted in Feelings Fourth Phase Judaism Mussar

  • Listen to the Melody of Others

    Posted on by Charles 1 Comment

    Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

    Shabbat gratefuls: Talmud Torah. CBE. New Dell tower. Warmer. But not too warm. Salmon. Asparagus. Baked Potato. Better. Ann, palliative care nurse. Leaving. New nurse in February. Sore shoulder and left forearm. Arthritis in my right hip? Diane and her shoulder. Mark in Al Kharj. Lodgepoles and Aspens in Winter. Mule Deer and Elk. Fox and Mountain Lions. Bears hibernating. Humans with higher heating bills.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Personal Computers

    Kavannah for 2025: Creativity

    Kavannah for the 7 lifetimes in this January 11th life-January 18th week: Wholeness and Peacefulness – shleimut

    One brief shining: A knock on the door, a young East Indian man in a Federal Express shirt holding up a small screen for my signature, where do you want it, and he carried my new computer upstairs to my home office, solving the first problem I would have had with it.

     

    Here’s the updated illustration showing the stressed physicians in a medieval illuminated manuscript style, now highlighting their anxiety and overwhelming work conditions.

    In the way of the medical world these days. Ann, my palliative care nurse whom I’ve seen four times, resigned her position. Moving on. As did Kristen, my former PCP. And Lisa and Susan, other former PCP’s, and Eigner, my urologist, and Bret, the young ophthalmologist who went back home to North Carolina during Covid. And Charlie Petersen before all of them, moving to Colorado, and Tom Davis after him.

    I had one doctor my whole childhood. Dr. Gaunt. Whose son Mike was in my class. When I left Alexandria, he was still at work in his office, in a converted house; I remember it smelled of alcohol, he had a nurse in white with the little cap, glass jars of cotton bowls and syringes so big.

    Not today’s medicine. Hospitals are understaffed. Physicians find working for corporate entities like Kaiser and Optum and Allina stressful. No longer able to practice medicine, rather having to practice assembly line healing, pushing patients through in shorter and shorter visits. Revenue capture now the main goal, not health.

    I get the churn in this environment. Again, though I am anti-murder-as we all should be-I understand Luigi Mangione’s frustration. He is not alone.

     

    Here is the image in the style of Albrecht Dürer, illustrating the concept of active, caring listening through harmonious interaction and natural surroundings.

    Today we’ll study the last parsha in Genesis: Vayechi, He lived. The story of Jacob’s death and Joseph’s, too. A story full of pathos as Jacob blesses his sons, claims Joseph’s sons as his own, then, “…is gathered to his ancestors.” The last line of the book of Genesis: “Joseph died at the age of 110 years, and he was embalmed and placed in a coffin in Egypt.”

    There is no mention in the Joseph story of slavery. This is odd since the next book in the Torah is Exodus. In other words the story goes from saving Jacob and his sons, patriarchs of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, by a big move to Egypt and then to the story of their enslavement and later liberation that defines the Jewish people down to this day.

    You may recall my practice from the last month, to say, “This too is for the good.” especially in situations I might consider negative or even bad. One way to look at the book of Genesis, from the Garden of Eden and eating from the tree of good and evil, down to Joseph placed in a coffin is as a sequence of this too is for the good moments.

    BTW: my practice for this month is to first listen to the melody of others.


    📂This entry was posted in Health Judaism Mussar Torah

  • Ripped from the Headlines

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

    Friday gratefuls: Rabbi Jamie. Loving rebuke. Unloving rebuke. Mark in Al Kharj. Hyperpanda. Saudi Arabia. Mary in Brisbane. Diane healing. My son. Seoah. Murdoch. Eleanor. Kingsley. Tara. Arjan. More Snow and Cold. Mini-splits keeping me warm. Go, heat pumps. Mussar. Listening for the melody of other persons. Salmon. Russet Potatoes. Asparagus. Baby Beets. Celery. Mandarin Oranges. Muesli. Milk. Protein powder.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Firefighters

    Kavannah for 2025: Creativity

    Kavannah for this January 10th life: Perseverance & Grit  Netzach

    One brief shining: Rooting around for something to eat for dinner last night, peanut butter and English muffin, no, ramen, no, Chicken potpie, no, then, there in the back of the top freezer door, a rubbermaid container, what is it, Senate Navy Bean soup, the last bowlful, ah.

    Here is the image styled as a dramatic movie poster titled “LA Burning.”

     

    Let’s see. LA on fire. Trump gaining his long deserved status as a felon today. Our criminal President. The picture of the Presidents at Carter’s funeral. Every one with a hand over their heart. Except for cousin Donald. And how bout that threshold we just passed, eh? An average “2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, above those the planet experienced at the start of the industrial age.”*

    Wonder if the wizard in his Mar-a-Lago Oz has a heart for him? Doubt it. Already taken by the cowardly lion. I can see Trump’s inner persona with a Bert Lahr face, without the humor.

    That threshold? It was the goal of all the carbon dioxide emission heroics planned. If only we do these things now, we’ll stop the rise of the hockey stick at or below 2.7 degrees F. How we doing on containing emissions anyhow? We did reach a record last year there, too. The highest rate of carbon emissions ever. That’s right. All the angst generated in all the world and not only have we passed a critical threshold going up, a failure, we’ve ensured a yet hotter world by increasing rather than decreasing carbon emissions. All in the article linked to below.

    Oh. And that felon about to run the most powerful nation in the world? He got this: (an) unconditional discharge, in which a defendant is not fined, locked up or given probation. You can read more details about this outstanding moment in Presidential history here: Trump Sentenced.

    All this ripped from today’s headlines. Gosh, gee whiz. What an interesting country we have. What a hot country we have. What a felonious President we have.

    LA burning? a tragedy for humans and infrastructure. One that will take decades I imagine for a full recovery. Here’s an irony. I don’t how much, don’t even know how to figure it out, but much of the water pouring down on those fires has to have come from Colorado Snow melt draining into the Colorado River.

     

    Just a moment: Sometimes the world around me outstrips my ability to grasp, understand it. Even at a rudimentary level. I’m ready for four years of daily lessons in humility.

     

    *2024’s record breaking heat.


    📂This entry was posted in General

  • Sometimes Dreams Devolve

    Posted on by Charles 1 Comment

    Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

    Thursday gratefuls: Rabbi Jamie. Laurie. Tara. Eleanor the dog. Rich. Joanne. Marilyn and driving in the dark. Irv. Nate. Cold. Snow. Dr. Whited. CT scans. Aortic artery. The heart. The lev. Mussar. This too is for the good. Doctors, Nurse Practitioners. Physician’s Assistants. Medicine.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Cancer

    Kavannah for 2025: Creativity

    Kavannah for this January 9th life: Chesed – loving kindness

    One brief shining: This computer, the one recording my fingerstrokes in bits and bytes, I bought in a slight morphine haze after having had my left knee replaced in 2016, eight years ago this last December; I will receive its replacement, another Dell tower and new curved 32 inch monitor today, which means that awkward phase moving from one computer to another will begin soon after.

     

    I have two addictions these days. One is buying books. And keeping them. The other is buying a new computer every now and then. I don’t need to. In either case. But both of them trip a little trigger that delivers the equivalent of sugar water for rats in a cage. Given that my previous addiction, alcohol, was both destructive and over time cost more than these two combined, I have come out about even I reckon. Can you say rationalization?

    Anyhow my shiny new platinum Dell tower will arrive along with a bigger, curved, 4K screen. That means I can take this 27 inch screen downstairs and watch Criterion Channel movies on it. Or something. I’m just grateful that my thing is not new cars, or houses.

     

    Mussar last night. The stories we tell, this group of confidants, soul replenishers. The seeing and being seen. Intellectual stimulation. Gentle challenges. Digging into the inner world with each other, sometimes guts and all. Hugs and smiles each time we meet. Lunches and breakfasts, texts and phone calls in between. A sphere of intimacy as close as BFF’s, approaching family without quite the same level of obligate love.

    Kate and I came to this group together until she died. I went as her spouse. She was on the board at the time. Eight years, or nine. Long enough for the Velveteen Rabbit effect to have worked on each one of us.

     

    Just a moment: Conflagration. Crown Fires. Santa Ana Winds. Movie stars. Canceled premieres. Canceled houses. Armageddon. Hard not to wax apocalyptic. We’ve all seen L.A. burn, get swallowed by earthquakes, invaded by aliens, wrecked by rampaging gangs. This time though the disaster is not on the lot, the lot is the disaster. Life imitating, well, art. Sort of art that is.

    And add the compassion of a past, yet future President, who says: the fires are Gavin Newsome’s fault. Just makes it all the more surreal.

    California is a repository of the American Dream, one forged by those who kept going west until they got stopped by the waters of the wide Pacific. And sometimes Dreams devolve into nightmares. Right now in LA.

    Selfishly, I hope we’re not the next fire prone area to make national news.

     

     


    📂This entry was posted in General

  • Blunted Dagger Rattling

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

    Wednesday gratefuls: Rich Levine. Marilyn. Dr. Whited. Tom. Paul. Alan. Cold, single digits. Vince, plowed driveway. Rabbi Jamie. Writing. Kavannahs. Ukraine. Iran. Iraq. Turkey. Israel. Palestinians. Syria. Jordan. Egypt. Yemen. Saudi Arabia. Lebanon. China. Russia. South and North Korea. Japan. Taiwan.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Aortic Artery

    Kavannah for 2025:  Creativity

    Kavannah for this January 8th life: Foresight   (roeh et hanalod)

    One brief shining: Aortic artery aneurysm they say, spreading, mom’s brain aneurysm, a visit today to a cardiac surgeon, the past coming forward to haunt me, not as a synaptic engraved memory, but as a body recapitulating my mother’s, weakened arterial walls threatening to let my blood run free.

     

    Yeah. Keeping the world of doctors, nurses, technicians, phlebotomists, and billing departments in a steady flow of the green blood which runs through their veins. That’s me. Today’s contribution will go to Dr. William Whited, a cardiac surgeon, who will reveal to me the amount of danger I’m in from a slowly thinning aortic artery. A new issue for a new year. Yay.

     

    After about a five hour break from that last paragraph I can write off my aorta as an issue. At my age, Dr. Whited said, most likely will never be a problem. I liked him a lot though I admit I’ll like not seeing him again even better. I’ll need a CT scan in the next few weeks, just to make sure measurements are up to his standards, but he expects no trouble. Would that cancer and my back held such casual futures for me.

     

    From a geopolitical point of view I can see a certain logic in Trump’s desire for Greenland. Warming of the Arctic. The great northern passage opening up. Rare Earth elements. Sure, as a parlor game. Like, say imagining Canada as our 51st state. When we consider a rules base global order, maybe our NATO treaty for example, it’s not only flat out bonkers but a reflection of the Trump doctrine: keep your friends at arms length and your enemies close to the Oval office. Do favors for your enemies and take what you want from your friends.

    Of course, as one commentator noted, this blunted dagger rattling has a bread and  circuses appeal to his followers. Watch me stand up to Denmark and Canada. What a strong guy am I. All the while his real work will be cutting taxes for billionaires, expanding his family’s net wealth, and punishing all who dared to stand against him.

    Gonna be a long four years. And they haven’t even started yet.

     

    Just a moment: Apocalypse Now. I love the smell of wildfires in the morning. I feel for all those whose lives, whose homes, whose work places may have to yield to the fury of a Mother Earth grieving for her finely tuned climate.

    One way to reach the Great Work, a sustainable presence for humans on this Earth, lies in disaster after disaster until a more reasonable population size is left.


    📂This entry was posted in Great Work Health Politics US History

  • Aging and its cultured despisers

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

    Tuesday gratefuls: Phonak. Amy. Mile High Hearing. All body workout today. The Outpost. Emunah. Snow. Cold. A Mountain Winter. Still light on Snow. The Churning of the Sea of Milk. Angkor Wat. Siem Reap. Cambodia. The Mekong. Brother Mark on his way to Saudi. Eleanor, the Dog. Tara. Friendship. Men. CBE.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Eleanor, fluffy kind energy

    Kavannah for 2025: Creativity

    Kavannah for this January 7th life: Understanding. Bina

    One brief shining: How many moments of wind carrying cold air over my bald head have to happen for me to have a good night’s sleep; or, how high do I have turn up the electric blanket which pleases me for reasons I cannot define; or, how much peace in my stomach and in my heart leads my mind into slowing down and slipping away into human sleep mode.

     

    Here is the illustration inspired by Hokusai, depicting the essence of aging and Elderhood in a serene, nature-filled setting.

    OK. Here’s a new pet peeve. Super agers. No, I’m not dissing them, whomever they are, for having won a genetic or geographic (blue zones) or good luck lottery. Good for them. Banners and candles and whatever else goes with it. Huzzah! Might we learn something valuable from their lives? I suppose so.

    No. The peeve I have lies in the way we valorize certain individuals, lift them up as exemplars for what aging can be. That can have the effect, like all the hoohah about diet and exercise, of diminishing the perfectly normal aging most of us will experience.

    The vast, vast bulk of us, somewhere north of 99.9% I imagine, live our lives doing the best we can, making decisions that impact our overall health in many ways, some good some not so good and often living out the consequences of a genetic heritage in which we had no choice.

    Super agers. Centenarians. The tail of the bell curve, the one sloping to the right. Are they our role models? What about the poor bastards on the other end of the curve with disabilities of all kinds. With limited resources to realize the dreams of the American Immortal.

    I do not consider myself poor because I have less money than Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk. And more importantly I don’t want to have that money. It’s not a perfect analogy of course.

    Would l want to have the supple brain and over-70 Olympian’s body of these wunderkind of the Sun City set? Yes. I would. Didn’t happen for me. Am I a less good person, is my aging somehow less than? No. I’m at 77 and-here’s the comparison I like-above ground and taking nourishment.

    What I’m pleading for here is a way to accept and celebrate aging in all its varieties, all its super and non-super manifestations. There’s no one way to do aging right. There’s your way and my way and, yes, the way of the .001%. Everybody who manages to slip past, say 65, deserves the honor and recognition of Elderhood, something our society, our individualistic, youth oriented, success infested society has drained away from us. To its peril.

    End of rant.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Feelings Fourth Phase

  • What defines you?

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

    Monday gratefuls: Friends. Family. Medical Guardian. Tech help for living alone. Tom who recommended them. Cold week upcoming. Snow. Living in the Rockies. Being a Westerner. Having been a Midwesterner. Being a Jew; having been a Christian. Meeting new men. Kate, always Kate. Lunar calendars. Gregorian calendars. Maintaining the illusion of time.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: the Tanakh

    Kavannah for 2025: Creativity  Yetziratiut

    Kavannah for this January 6th life: Patience Savlanut

    One brief shining: The phases of the moon play out against a backdrop of stars, galaxies, the cosmic void which changes as we race through our orbit around Great Sol; Mother Earth tilted, so the weather changes from hot to cold and back again, and all of these repeat like life and death and birth among living things, nothing lost, all cycling in the great spiral of the Milky Way as it too races on its way, yet somehow also all becoming new, changing. A miracle.

    Here is the illustration in the style of a medieval illuminated manuscript, focusing on the concept of a personal core story. It combines rich colors, detailed motifs, and symbolic elements to evoke a timeless sense of life’s journey.

    Your core story. Rabbi Jamie wrote an interesting article focused on the notion of a core story for religious communities. The Christian core story focused on the life, death, and resurrection of Reb Jesus. The Jewish story focused on liberation from oppression and the journey afterward. Got me to thinking about each of us. You. Me. Even our Dogs and the Trees near you. Last night’s Sky. What is your core story?

    Let me see if I can tease one out for me as an example. May not find this one on the first go round. A core story functions as a touch stone, a marker of identity, something so central to our sense of self that we cannot be who we are without it.

    Polio. Experienced before most of my memories had begun to form. Known mostly through family stories and its bodily sequalae with which I still live. A central part of this story lies in my needing to learn to walk a second time after six months of paralysis on my left side. Rug burns on my forehead as I drug my body along Aunt Virginia and Uncle Riley’s couch, encouraged by my mom and Aunt Virginia. Uncle Riley wrote in concrete, 1949 Charles Paul. Polio.

    To this day I live with a paralyzed left diaphragm and dead muscles on the left of my neck. Others lived and live with much worse. Not complaining. Observing that this core story remains with me in a tactile, never to be forgotten way.

    In later thoughts about polio I decided Standing Upright in the World would be my way of honoring that young me and my parents and all who cared for me over the time of my illness. My personal motto.

    Are there other key stories in my life? Yes. My mother’s early death. Searching for a sacred reality. Getting sober. Finding and losing love. Kate. Yet none rest at the very core of my ancientrail like polio does.

    What’s your core story?

     

     


    📂This entry was posted in Humanities Myth and Story

  • Men. In their awkwardness. Beautiful.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Yule and a beautiful crescent of the Quarter Century Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: Torah study. Men’s group at CBE. Flat bread with lox and onion. Pescatarians. Ruth skiing. Such joy. Gabe and his puzzles. 9 degrees. New Snow. Driving in the dark. A boost. Diet. Changing. Matt. Rob. Bill. Jamie.  The mesh bag. Neck weakness. January 20th.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Men, struggling with their hearts

    Kavannah for 2025: Creativity

    Kavannah for this January 5th life: Persistence

    One brief shining: Drove back last night from the men’s group at CBE graced by the waxing crescent of the Quarter Century Moon; its soft light radiated by a Mountain Fog illuminating the Arapaho National Forest and the curves of Brook Forest Drive, then Black Mountain Drive until Shadow Mountain Home appeared out of the mist, welcoming me.

     

    Got a boost yesterday. Community working its magic. During Torah study in the morning I still felt pressed down, disengaged. Distant. But Luke came up and gave me a big hug. Ginny smiled to see me. I felt seen. Though. Still coasting at a slow low place when I left.

    Came back and did nothing until 5:30 when I left to go back to CBE for the first meeting of the men’s group. Buzzed the door. Got let in by a guy I didn’t know. Then I let in a  couple of other guys, neither of whom I knew. One of them, Matt, turned to get his nametag. Oh, good idea, I said. I’m usually good for one a day he said.

    Steve brought flat bread with lox and onions. Made by his wife. I brought my go to mandarin Oranges in my new mesh bag. Joe brought miniature rugalach and date bars. Jamie tossed a handful of leftover Hanukkah gelt on the table. Chips and dip appeared. Finger food. Manly interpretations.

    The conversation had that awkward I don’t know you tone, things held back, laughing. I only knew Jamie and Steve. Steve just a little. As we navigated telling bits and pieces of our stories, wondering who resided behind the careful words, I felt myself easing onto familiar ground.

    When it came my turn, the Woolly Mammoths came out naturally. 40 years of learning how to get behind the careful words, the fear of vulnerability, with other men. Men trained by American culture and in this case reinforced by Jewish culture that feelings were at best anti-competitive. At worst they could…well, you know, don’t you?

    Sensing the journey ahead and enjoying the tender feelers put out, an occasional smile, a sad look, a story that told more than intended, my downward emotional Dog began to shift to a Sun Salutation. I didn’t expect that to happen, but it did. Not all the way back to normal, no, not at all, but buoyed up all the same.

     

    Just a moment: Tomorrow some Christians celebrate the Magi’s visit to the lowly manger in which the Son of God was born. And Trump will trumpet the day of love which the bulk of us call insurrection. MAGA or Magi? Even as a Jew I’m going with the Magi.


    📂This entry was posted in Feelings Fourth Phase Health Holidays Judaism Woolly Mammoths