All posts by Charles

Cooking, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Great Wheel, Great Work, Judaism, Minnesota, Mountains, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, The Move, The West, Third Phase

The Work of Sadness. Of Grief.

March 4, 2018 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc New Life Moon

The melancholy has done its work. Still listening, paying attention, but here’s what I’ve discovered this time. My life was out of balance. I needed more time working with my hands, using my body. Also, I had neglected reading of certain kinds, especially reading that advances my reconstruct, reimagine, reenchant project.

This latter work has gotten quite long in the tooth, has become more of a forever, at least until I die thing. And I don’t want that. I want to write at least some essays, preferably something book length.

20171217_175903 It was also time to slough off some of the Minnesota based, second phase lingering work. Especially the political. I am going to the caucus this Tuesday; however, I no longer see myself as a dedicated activist. But, and I consider this great news, Ruth told me she was walking out on April 9th, standing outside Mcauliffe, her middle school, for seventeen minutes, one minute for each of the Parkland victims. She’s doing it in spite of the fact that adults tell her no one will listen. Go, Ruth!

And writing. Not giving that up, yet I feel the need now to shift at least some of that energy to the three R’s. I’ve felt this way before, yes, but something feels different now. Not sure what exactly.

20180303_171938 The melancholy also uncovered a tension I’d been feeling between leaning in to the domestic, cooking, for example, and Kate and mine’s presence in the Beth Evergreen community, and what I consider my work. Recalibrating second phase expectations about work, which I have not yet fully done, feels like a task for this time. In fact, I enjoy the domestic part of our lives and it feels good to devote more energy to it.

Recalibrating. More on this as it continues.

Art and Culture, Hebrew, Poetry

Hebrew Letters and Poetry

March 3, 2018 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc New Life Moon

Working on my kabbalah presentation. Getting further into the sumi-e.

Asia, Cooking, Dogs, Health

Positive News

March 3, 2018 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc New Life Moon

Kate’s Sjogren’s flare has begun to subside. Her energy is better. She’s smiling more. I’m happy to see her improving. Now we get that shoulder replaced. March 22nd.

In other positive medical news Dr. Bayliss called with Rigel’s blood work. Liver functions normal. It was the prednisone that knocked them out of whack. No prednisone, no abnormal liver values. So, we’re left with some G.I. tract problem, undefined. She stays on the rabbit food. Like Kate her energy is better and we have some chewed up deck boards to prove it. Something warm and tasty lives under there. And Rigel wants to eat it.

Went to see the Blade Lady out in Centennial. It surprised me, when I saw the directions on Google, that it was 50 miles from home. I remember when 50 miles required a picnic basket and a living will. Jennifer was nice, picked up our knives and scissors personally. They finish fast. We gave them to her at 12:45 and we could have had them back at 1:30, but Rigel had to get to her 2pm vet appointment. She’s mailing them.

We have a set of Shun Japanese kitchen knives. I’ve sharpened them using a sharpener that came with the set, but I wanted a professional sharpening since I’m using the knives a lot more now. Cooking most nights of the week requires a lot of knife work. Which reminds me that the cooking is also physical, manual labor. And I’ve been enjoying it since I got back to it.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Friends, Health, Jefferson County, Judaism, Mussar, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Yesterday

March 2, 2018 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc New Life Moon

Back to On the Move Fitness for my second session on the new workout. Unusually, I experienced significant discomfort in my hip, quad and lower back after Debbie gave me the new workout on Tuesday. Not the result desired. We both suspected the one leg squats, so she took those out and put in goblin squats, which I’d been doing, holding a weight in both hands in front of your body, then doing a squat. Repeat.

Getting new workouts every 4-6 weeks has been really good for me, keeps things fresh and allows somebody who knows what they’re doing to design progressions into the exercises. And, to pull back when necessary. My leg work will be less intense for the next couple of weeks. Still ouching, but not nearly as bad as Tuesday and Wednesday nights.

Debbie said something odd when I was there on Tuesday. “You’re moving a lot better now than when you first came in. But even then you had a basic strength.” She attributed it to our having Irish Wolfhounds because they’d come up in conversation about her new rescue dog, Finnigan. In fact I’ve been working out since I turned 40 and did often heavy manual labor in Andover for twenty. She saw me about six weeks after I’d finished p.t. for the new knee, so I was not in the best shape. It made me feel good for someone to recognize the effort I’ve put in to keep my body functional.

Thursday afternoon mussar. Talking about joy and sadness, how to cultivate joy. The middot of this month. Middot = character trait. Though the discussion was good, the time immediately afterwards was even better. I shared in vaad (speaking into the group, with no feedback. Concentrated listening.) about melancholy, being there now and having learned to listen to the melancholy instead of trying to fix it. Waiting it out.

After the class brokeup, a guy said he had the same experience , “After my dad died, when I was 50. Since then, every year.” A human moment. Then I spoke to a woman who’d been away for a couple of months. They’d been tough for her and we talked for awhile. Another woman, who played Queen Esther in the Purim play the night before, when complimented on her acting, said, “I just lived out my inner Jewish princess.” We all laughed. This is a group that cares about each other, about the journey, the ancientrail that is life.

Next week Kate and I are presenting. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Feelings, Friends, Garden, Great Wheel, Jefferson County, Judaism, Kabbalah, Mountains, Myth and Story, Our Land and Home, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

March 1, 2018 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc New Life Moon

The full new life moon had a cloudy cover as it rose in the east yesterday, a halo. Driving back from the Purim celebration last night it was moving west, though then in a clear sky, Orion visible nearby. This morning as I came up to the loft it sat near the horizon, visible only through under the branches of our lodgepoles. This bout of melancholy began under the waning Imbolc moon, grew stronger under the first days of the new life moon and now seems likely to be gone during its waning. Maybe a month total. As these visits go, not too bad.

Fellow melancholic and friend, Tom, called yesterday and we talked about the gremlin’s energy sink, its dredging up of old emotions, its general sucking out of life’s marrow. We both have long acquaintance with it. And, long experience does yield some perspective, a hint of how it will probably go. For me, the down is matched by an up, a safer version of the bi-polar depression to mania swing. The up has not come yet, but I can feel it on its way.

A couple of things have come into focus over the last few days. One, I need to work more with my hands, with my body. Now that the turmoil of our first years here has begun to subside I’m missing the garden, the orchard. Not just the growing, the plant care, the flowers and vegetables and fruits fresh out of our soil, but carrying bags of compost or digging or moving bee hives, tending to the raspberry patch. If I don’t do this, I can get stuck in my head. Not the only part of me I want to nurture.

Two, I need to read more, be quiet more. Meditate. I’ve been reading novels, as is my habit, and I read news of all kinds on the web, but I need to shift my reading diet a bit to include more philosophical, theological non-fiction. Example. I began re-reading, as I mentioned, David Miller’s, The New Polytheism. That’s the sort of work I’m talking about. It sends sparks off in so many different directions.

A few possibilities for more tactile activity. Kate and I looked at a greenhouse made by an outfit called Grandio Elite. I’m not interested in the very laborious work it would require to garden in the rocky Shadow Mountain soil. But, in a greenhouse, yes. I miss working with the soil, with plants. And, we could grow plants in the greenhouse and put them outside in containers during our short growing season. Green thumb Kate grew tomatoes here last year. Not easy.

Finally got to working with my brushes and ink, rice paper. Still a really, really long way to go before I have any true facility with it, and that’s a good thing, lots of practice required. My presentation for the kabbalah class, unveiling the Hebrew letters, will be certain letters drawn with these ancient Chinese tools and a line of poetry congruent with the letters deeper meanings written below it. Here’s a couple of alephs and a mem.

Hiking, of course. And to that end, more new workouts. Though. Got a new workout Tuesday and my left quad and bursa have complained a lot. Gotta figure out what caused that. Still, these workouts give me more strength and balance, continued ability to be in the world with my body.

And the reading. Oddly, the deeper my immersion into Judaism, the more my interest in Taoism increases. So. Diving into those books, some online educational material. Also, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Material on emergence. James Hillman. Magic and reenchantment. Reinvention of the sacred. The auld Celtic faith.

These things seem to have traction and will be a significant departure from the immediate past. A balancing, or rebalancing, of time, of attention. An outcome I expect from melancholy. Underway now.

Colorado, Feelings, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., The Move, Third Phase

Moody Blues

February 28, 2018 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc New Life Moon

mood ring As melancholy begins to lift, where does it go? Does it go back into memory, added to a store of melancholic episodes over a life time, each one different, unique, becoming part of the polyvalent stew that is our psyche? What triggers the end or, better, the gradual tailing off of doubt? Of the heaviness? Of the stasis? Where do all those moods and temporary inner states (and, they’re all temporary) go? Do they just float up into some neuronic cloud, then get washed away through the body’s toxic cleansing processes?

Psychic moods are more important than we realize and they’re little understood, little discussed; but, these colorations of our inner world directly influence how we react to others, to events in our lives. A positive mood contributes to resilience, to the ability to take in an insult, large or small, and respond in a constructive manner while a negative mood can take an insult as devastating, catastrophic.

moods I’m not talking here about depression or anxiety or mania, serious and long lasting mental states; rather, I’m talking about fleeting, sometimes changing moment by moment, atmospherics. Joy. Sadness. Glad. Mad. Eager. Reluctant. Energized. Slow. Crisp or dull. They come and go like the lenticulars over Black Mountain or the high white mare’s tail cirrus. Sometimes they crowd our mind with the darkness of a thunder head or roar through us like a tornado. And then they go, pushed away by a high or low pressure system, perhaps a psychic La Nina.

Some moods last a bit longer. Melancholy is one for me. I can feel it beginning to leave, pressed out, as it usually is, by a renewed sense of purpose; yet, right now that renewed purpose is not clear. That means the melancholy cannot fully go because its reason for emerging has not been resolved.

Still waiting on the outlines of the new life melancholy seeks. It starts out, I think, with dissatisfaction, usually inchoate, not yet conscious, about some aspect of my life. And, I think, further, that that very inchoate state is what develops into melancholy. A sort of psychic brake gets pressed as the mind tries to grasp both the dis-ease and a route forward. The melancholy lasts as long it takes for the reordering of life’s energy into a new way of being in the world.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

A First Colorado Nocturne

February 27, 2018 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc New Life Moon

Haven’t done a nocturne since I got to Colorado, if I recall correctly. However, driving home tonight with the waxing new life moon shining through the lodgepole pines and Orion high in southwestern sky I wanted to write one.

I’m re-reading an old book, 1974, by a theologian named David Miller, The New Polytheism. It is, in a way, a counterpoint to H. Richard Niebhur’s important essay, “Radical Monotheism and Western Culture.”

The moon and Orion both represent, and are themselves, forces in our culture. Orion, the hunter and warrior. The moon, our light in the darkness, the periodicity most familiar to us after night and day. I could feel them both tonight on the drive up Brook Forest, these old friends, 71 years of nights, 49 since my time in the guard shack in Muncie when Orion and I became friends.

I find polytheism, multiple centers of value in H. Richard Niebhur’s conceptual framework, a much more sensible approach to the diverse and plural world in which we live, and which lives in us.

Night makes this clearer to me, cleans up the distractions of the day. My mind ranges further, makes unusual connections, feels old threads linking now and then, now and tomorrow. Time for bed now. Good night.

Colorado, Faith and Spirituality, Health, Mountains, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, The Move, The West, Third Phase

The Inner. The Outer.

February 27, 2018 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc New Life Moon

visual_field_test Glaucoma stable. Did a visual field exam yesterday, space invaders with a clicker and dots of light flashing off and on, testing peripheral vision.

Kate went with me so we could go to the Village Gourmet and buy a carving knife and a better potato masher. Turns out what I thought of as a carving knife was a filleting knife, a boning knife. What I wanted in spite of its different purpose. It’s in the knife rack now awaiting the time I have to cut up more chunks of beef or a chicken or a capon. Remember the capon saga around Thanksgiving? Found a potato masher, too. With a horizontal grip, easier on old hands.

My birthday present is to change out my wardrobe. That is, get rid of the old work related shirts and suits and shoes and pants and replace them. It’s been a long, long time since I had to show up at the office or appear in a tie, so this is not a sudden decision.

No. Not cowboy boots and shirts with triangle shaped pockets, pearl snaps. Not cowboy hats and big belt buckles. Just not me. But. Part of the motivation is to dress as the Coloradan I now feel myself to be. I’m no cowboy, nor are most of the folks who wear Western style clothing either. My Colorado is more mountains than ranches, more forests and streams than ski slopes. And, in that, my Colorado has definite affinities with my other favorite places, northern Minnesota with its clear lakes and thick forests, Lake Superior, especially its western and true northern shore, and northern Anoka County in Minnesota.

So. More flannels and plaids. Fleece vests. Another pair or two of blue jeans. Some new hat, though I don’t have a particular one in mind right now. There is a tiny part of me that relates to loggers, lumberjacks. Not the whole lumberjack look that spread out from Minnesota a few years back. That’s not still a thing, is it? But related to it. With all the chainsaw work I’ve done over my lifetime I feel I’ve earned some of that.

Mussar puts a significant inflection on changing outward behavior to change inner attitudes. As part of a strategy for self work, this makes sense to me though it conflicts sharply with my understanding of authenticity. In the case of defining a new look it feels appropriate.

What I want is my costuming, my outer look, to reflect my inner attitude, my changing sense of the place to which I belong. It’s definitely no longer oxford cloth shirts and polished wool pants, silk ties and Cole Haan shoes. Finished with that. For good.

A more comfortable, rumpled, casual look. One with a north woods, mountain feel. We went to a thrift shop yesterday after the Village Gourmet and I found two flannel shirts and a brown fleece vest. $16. I’ve gotten started. My plan is that for each new (new to me) shirt or accessory I buy, I’ll put an existing shirt or pair of pants in a box for the Mountain Resource Center.

This feels of a part with the melancholic turn, not a symptom of the melancholy, but of the inner change struggling to express itself. The who am I now question that has me stalled for the moment. And that’s ok. Maybe when I put on that new(er) Clear Creek Outfitter flannel shirt a piece of this journey will come into focus.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, Friends, Jefferson County, Judaism, Mountains, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., The Move, The West, Third Phase

A Very Jewish Weekend

February 26, 2018 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc New Life Moon

Silhouette of hiking man jumping over the mountains

In psyche news. The heaviness seems to be gone, that drug down, want to keep going down feeling. When I’m in it, my soul seems more attracted to weight, willingly binding itself to a fall. The heaviness is a major physical clue to melancholy for me, a way I know to check for other signs. Its absence does not mean the melancholy has lifted, but does usually precede it. May it be so.

A very Jewish weekend. On Saturday we attended bagel table, an informal sabbath worship with conversation and, you guessed it, bagels. The presenter this week though wasn’t Rabbi Jamie, but Rabbi Evet of B’nai Havurah, a reconstructionist synagogue in Denver proper.

A congregant of Beth Evergreen, loved and respected, a mensch, had died suddenly, just that morning. The conversation about his death after operation for a malignant brain tumor was hushed, shocked. When Rabbi Evet started the service, the conversation quieted, but the looks, the feeling of it was still palpable. She stopped the service and had us focus on his death. It was a powerful moment, one in which what was being suppressed got lifted up. People told stories about Jeff, about what he meant to Beth Evergreen.

Evette_Lutman2-350x247 Rabbi Evet teased out characteristics from those stories after a bit and suggested that a way to honor his memory was to figure out how to put back into our little community the attributes lost by his death. His smile. His willingness to help. His commitment to education.

Steve turned to Marilyn and said, “Marilyn, I really appreciate everything you do here. We don’t say those things out loud while people are alive. Maybe we could.” And, later, after the service was over, Marilyn came up to Kate and me and said, “I want to tell you both how much you mean to me.”

“And you to us,” I said. “Through having met you and found Beth Evergreen, we feel like we’ve finally moved to Colorado. This is our community now.”

“Makes a difference, doesn’t it?” Marilyn replied.

“It makes all the difference.”

Lev_Poster_LB I meant that and this experience with Rabbi Evet illustrates it. Beth Evergreen is a place where the heart and the mind both get their due. In fact, lev, the Hebrew word for heart, is also the word for mind. There is no other word for mind. Mind and heart are lev.

On Sunday we drove over to North Turkey Creek, up Peaceful Hills to Meadow View Road. The occasion was a new member/prospective member gathering at the home of Dan and Kristin. 40 or so folks, some board members, Rabbi Jamie and Tara, folks I knew and many I didn’t gathered around, yep you guessed it, bagels and lox and fruit and veggies.

The energy was good. There were little kids and older adults, all milling around, getting to know each other. I enjoyed the time. As is now usual for me though, I felt a sense of relief when we left and I got outside, to the quiet. Like the candidate event at the Friedman’s a couple of weeks ago I can hear in these settings, but it’s hard and stressful. I don’t always notice the stress until it’s absent.

Cinema and Television, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., US History

Black Panther

February 24, 2018 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc New Life Moon

Kate took one for the team yesterday. She went to see Black Panther with me. I had two reasons for wanting to see it. One, it’s a Marvel Studio movie and, god help me, I really like them. Most of them. Two, it’s become a cultural sensation and I wanted to see why, if I could. Kate gave me a third reason. To lift my spirits.

Nothing like vibranium theft and lots of gratuitous violence in a movie filled with elegant looking black folk, a few Koreans and a couple of supporting white actors to counter the gray veil. Black Panther, with closing and opening scenes in Oakland, home of the Black Panthers, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, was ok. Not great. Might have been better if I could have heard all the dialogue. Where are my closed captions at the theater?

The plot was less important, I think, than the stage settings and the actors. From Chadwick Boseman and Michael B. Jordan to Lupita Nyong’o and Danai Gurira the young black actors were both beautiful and powerful. Forest Whittaker and Angela Basset added gravitas.

It’s an interesting commentary on our global culture when a single movie, made with high production values, can garner so much attention and be hailed as a “defining moment.” For this white male, certainly born to white privilege though of a lesser amount than, say, Donald Trump, it was not a defining moment. It was a decent action movie. It was not, however, blaxploitation, like those 60’s and 70’s movies with mostly black casts. And, I suspect, that contrast gave it some of its power, too.

Did it lift my spirits? Well, it got me to ignore them for a couple of hours. And, I don’t feel as heavy this morning. Maybe it helped. Time, good ol’ time, will tell.