All posts by Charles

Great Wheel, Politics, Weather +Climate

A Paradox

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Summer and the Bar Mitzvah Moon

Friday gratefuls: Irv. Marilyn and Salaam. Lila and Licks. Leo. Luke. Great Sol bathing us in Light. Kate, always Kate. Safeway Pickup. La Tienda for the Fourth of July. The good ole, finger lickin’, summer watermelon eatin’, mall infested, flag wavin’, pickup drivin’ USofA. My country. I love it and won’t leave it. Joe Biden. Bless his heart. Election 2024.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Leo

One brief shining: Reading the debate take-aways, Trump ranting, Biden stumbling, the most important Presidential debate in years and all we have to show for it are two old men, one a felon and a certain psychopath, the other decent and coming off an effective Presidency, who couldn’t keep up with his own plan for the encounter. We are well and truly screwed.

 

You can decide who is who in this charming, short video.

No. I didn’t watch it. Glad. I’m sticking with my election kavanah (intention, sincere direction of the lev) to not let these matters upset me. Doesn’t mean I’m not aware and don’t react. If Trump wins, I will be sure to let my oncologist know she has to keep me alive for at least five more years. I refuse to die during a Trump presidency. So there.

Enough for now.

 

A gradually darkening sky in the West. We’re in a cycle of off and on Rain, some Storms. Bright Sol in the East.

Reminds me of the interesting paradox of the growing season. As the heat builds in the Summer, especially after the Summer Solstice which was last week, the days have already grown shorter. As corn and beans fill the Midwest and as Gardens throughout the country fill up with Radishes and Heirloom Tomatoes and Beans and Carrots and Onions, as Honeybees fly, land on Flowers, pollinating and gathering Nectar to turn into Honey, the nights grow, too. Lengthening, making Shabbat candle lighting times move earlier.

The Great Wheel at work, turning gently and slowly toward Fall, the fallow season, Winter. A waltz. A slow dance. Giving up the salsa heat for a gavotte, as the tempo continues to become more tranquil, less rushed. Underneath the pulse of energy transformed to food, of Flowers turning into Apples and Cherries and Plums, runs a counter current. The colors of Fall. The sound of combines and corn pickers in the fields. Vast swaths of Nebraska and Kansas will turn golden. Can you feel Mother Earth’s own shabbat gathering force? If not right now, you will soon enough.

Instead of longing for eternal Summer, everyday a Spring Break day, I long for the quieter, darker, cooler seasons of Fall and Winter. I do enjoy going out to get the mail in my t-shirt. Being able to get my trash bins to the end of the driveway without Ice or Snow. I like seasonal vegetables fresh from the garden and all the many shades of green. Sure. I love the manic energy of Plants as they move fueled by great gulps of Light, Water from Summer Rains. Yes. But even more I love the early darkness. The cool, even cold days and colder nights.

My psyche.

 

Aging, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health

Happy people say pyt med det.

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Summer and the Bar Mitzvah Moon

Thursday gratefuls: A good, hard workout. Monoecious and dioecious plants. Lodgepoles and Aspens. The Arapaho National Forest. That Yearling Mule Deer eating alongside the road. Rain. Thunder. Lightning. Full Streams. Floods in Minnesota and Iowa. Drought eliminated. Less Fire risk here. Mark in Thailand. Mary in Melbourne. My son, Seoah and Murdoch in Songtan.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Totoro

Totoro

One brief shining: Thunder cracked over Shadow Mountain yesterday afternoon, rain poured down drenching the shallow Soil, the Granite that sits beneath it, allowing Plants to draw nutrients into their Root systems, send it up by capillary action to Stalks, Trunks, Branches, and Leaves, the coming down going up.

 

Easy. And, a mistake. The aches, pains, creaks and groans of the aging body. The serious diagnosis. The certainty of death not far in the future. Easy to let these common realities of age bring us down, send us into the place where doubt and fear rule. Not too long a step from there to depression.

Easy. And, a mistake. Moods. Again. That’s the first sign of trouble. A mood that drags us into the past and what could have been but is no longer. Or, that sends us, heart racing, toward that future day when that same heart or the lungs or the cancer will take over, finish. Or, that simply lets us sit focused on present pain and discomfort. Moods. Transient and manageable.

Pyt med det. A Danish phrase that means it doesn’t matter. Or, don’t worry about it. Consider this Finnish saying, Some have happiness, everyone has summer. Another Finnish saying: Whatever you leave behind, you will find in front of you. According to this article people in Finland and Denmark, two of the nations ranked at the top for overall happiness, use these phrases as a mental shield against bad moods and spiraling unhappiness.

Take care of things as they come up. Don’t let them cook. I had to give a friend some news I feared he might take badly. Could have, and at another age, might have delayed the call. Waited until the elusive right time. Sat down and made the call. He was ok with it. Oh. Well. When I say or do something I regret, I deal with it quickly and openly. Whatever you leave behind, you will find in front of you.

That bum shoulder, the knee pain, a back that ouches, even a terminal diagnosis. Sure. Could bring you down. However, right now, which is the only moment you have, you can choose another frame. They don’t matter. Pyt med det. Easy for the Danes to say, eh? Well, we only die once and even chronic pain has its better times. Some have happiness, everyone has summer. A summer of lessened pain will come. No need to focus on it in this moment then, let the dance of the seasons bring summer to you.

Death. Not a stranger to me. To you. To all of us. The Tibetan Buddhists work to get a calm, relaxed attitude toward death. They believe the process of reincarnation takes its first cue from how you greet your end. That matters. So. When death comes round too soon, trying to blow your house down, tell her to cease and desist. Because right now is not the time. And promise to show up when it is time.

Mountains, Mussar, Plants, Shadow Mountain, Wild Neighbors

The Tree the Realtor said to cut down, Tree #7

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Summer and the Bar Mitzvah Moon

 

Too close to the house, she said. And, not growing straight. That was nine and a half years ago. I cut down forty or fifty Lodgepoles for fire mitigation. Another few for the solar panels. Shading them in the crucial hours of the day. But I cut down no Aspens. “Trees like aspen naturally have a higher water content and do not usually contain the volatile chemical compounds that can make trees like pine so flammable.” International Association of Fire and Rescue. The title of the article refers to Aspen stands as natural firebreaks.

Not why I left it alone. I felt sorry for him/her. Looked like it had had a tough life.

Aspen Trees are dioecious, meaning male and female reproductive organs grow on separate Trees. Not educated enough yet to know which is which. Though. If it has no catkins, it’s a male. We’ll see. I think he’s a guy. Don’t recall catkins.

Pando Aspen Clone 2017 photo by Lance Oditt

Whichever is not too important because reproduction by seed does not drive Aspen increase. Aspen Seedlings do not do well in shade and since Aspen grow in clonal Groves, usually within and around Coniferous Forests, they rarely grow very well. Populus tremuloides, the quaking Aspen, and other species of Populus like big-toothed Aspen (Populus grandidentata) common in the Eastern U.S., reproduce mainly through their root system. It throws up suckers around a Mother Tree and produces clones of Her. You may have heard of Pando, the Utah Aspen Colony cited often as the world’s largest Tree.

The more closely I examined him my affection for him grew. I wondered why he had this big scar, dead heartwood exposed. Looked like burn scar with all the black Bark around it, but that same coloration existed in many spots on the Trunk. Then I moved around the tree and found this pattern of discoloration on the side opposite the scar. What was that?

Oh. I see. An Elk, maybe a larger Mule Deer, scratched themselves here. Wait. Yes, the probable explanation for the big scar and maybe for his angled growth. An Elk or Mule Deer dining on his tender and nutritious Bark when he was young. Makes sense to me.

That’s not all of the insults. Two years ago his Leader cracked off and fell during high Winds. This in spite of the adaptive advantage of quaking Leaves which reduces the force of Wind gusts. I worried it might kill him, but no. He continues to grow. Sadly, I may have to cut him down sooner rather than later. He’s leaning too close to the house in the same direction from which the Winds come.

I admire Trees, Animals that take injury and accident and disease yet do not give up. Three legged Dogs, for example. Vega. And this crippled Aspen. I hope that when I do cut him down that suckers will grow further from the house. I’d be happy to see him live again in a different spot.

 

Commentary on the news, Great Wheel, Great Work, Science

Cosmic Context for Election 2024

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Summer and the Bar Mitzvah Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Irv. Tara. Veronica. Her Bat Mitzvah party. Blazing light from Great Sol. Black Mountain’s gentle curve against a Colorado blue Sky. My Lodgepole Companion, among the Lighteaters. Monkeys in Bangkok and K.L. Primates. Gorillas. Bonobos. Chimpanzees. Orangutans. Lemurs. Gibbons. Humans. Monkeys. Baboons. So many relatives.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Our order among living things

One brief shining: Sunlight filtered down to Earth after its 93 million mile journey, some eaten by Coastal Redwood crowns, some by Kentucky Blue Grass on unnecessary lawns, some by the Saguaros in Arizona, some by fields of unnecessary Corn in Iowa, some by Moosehorn and British Soldier Lichen, photons into carbohydrates, raw energy into matter, a transubstantiation so real and true that it supports life of all kinds on the surface of Mother Earth.

 

Here is the best piece of theology I’ve read in quite a while: Earth’s Mysterious, Deep Dwelling Microbes That Sculpt Our Planet. Ferris Jabr, NYT, June 24, 2024. If you choose to read it, you will learn that the Gaia hypothesis has infiltrated much of contemporary science that deals with matters biological, ecological, and, yes, even geological. Life shapes our Earth. Our Earth shapes Life. Here’s the closing paragraph:

“For more than two centuries, Western science has re­garded the origin of life as something that happened on or in Earth, as if the planet were simply the setting for a singular phenomenon, the manger that housed a miracle. But the two cannot be separated in this way. Life does not merely reside on the planet; it is an extension of the planet. Life emerged from, is made of and returns to Earth. Earth is not simply a terrestrial planet with a bit of life on its surface; it’s a planet that came to life. Earth is a rock that broiled, gushed and bloomed: the flowering callus of a half-sealed Vesuvius suspended in a bubble of breath. Earth is a stone that eats starlight and radiates song, whirling through the inscrutable emptiness of space — pulsing, breathing, evolving — and just as vulnerable to death as we are.”

https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2024/05/30/nasas-james-webb-space-telescope-finds-most-distant-known-galaxy/
Just a moment: Here’s another look at God: Piping up at the Gates of Dawn. Dennis Overbye, NYT, June 22, 2024. In this article scientists enthuse that something like JADES-GS-z14-0, a luminous Galaxy formed a mere 300 million years or so after the Big Bang, could have done all it did in “such a short time.” That makes geological time seem like a Mayfly. JADES-GS-z14-0 is the most distant Galaxy ever found.
The James Webb at work.
Feelings, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Hermitage, Holidays, Humanities, Kabbalah, Latin, Letters, Mountains, Myth and Story, Plants, Poetry, Tarot, Travel, Weather +Climate, Wild Neighbors, Writing

Herme’s Journey

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Summer and the waning Bar Mitzvah Moon

Monday gratefuls: The Ancient Brothers. Great Sol. Shadow Mountain. TV. Books. CD’s. Jazz. Mozart. Telemann. Bach. Coltrane. Monk. Parker. Gregorian Chants. Rock and roll. CD player. K-dramas. Netflix. Amazon Prime. Mhz. Starlink. Conversation. Listening. Seeing. Really listening. Really seeing. The Aspen out my bedroom window. The dead Lodgepole.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The lesser light-the Moon

One brief shining: When I go now to an airport, when I even imagine going to an airport, I recoil, seeing the old Native American punishment, running between rows of TSA employees, airline boarding agents, and crabby fellow sufferers all diminished by the experience, yet needing to pass along, like some fraternity hazing ritual, the same misery to the pledges not yet seated in their too narrow and too jammed together seats. And paying often thousands of dollars to do it.

 

Still enjoying a post bar mitzvah push sense of opening, of new possibilities. Herme’s Journey, which I imagined after the dream workshop last month, got sidelined a bit by the week of the ritual, guests, celebration, and the week of physical recovery that followed that one. Though. Kavod for the Trees (Honoring the Tree) has kept it alive.

Herme’s Journey followed thoughts and feelings triggered by my Wabash dream. That dream encouraged me to reenter the life vision I had when I started college almost 60 years ago. To embrace that dream of a long period, lifelong in my hopes of those years, as a student, then a scholar. With libraries and writing instruments my primary tools. With ideas and their expression as my life work.

Herme, you may recall, is the name I gave to the neon sign I had made of the Hooded Man Card* from the Wildwood Tarot Deck. The name I gave to myself in the wake of Kate’s death, of a mourner then a griever, then… I wasn’t sure what.

Herme’s Journey blends the Hooded Man Card with the first card of the Tarot Deck: The Fool. The major arcana of a tarot deck tells a story of the Fool’s journey, begun blithely, a bindlestaff over one shoulder, a dog alongside, stepping off into the unknown. In the Wildwood deck** the Wanderer’s journey is through the Wildwood. Yes. My journey, too.

The Wanderer is a beginner, the beginner’s mind at play in the fields of the psyche. Herme’s Journey is my Wanderer’s path, a beginner’s path, but one begun with the age and experience of an old man. So, Herme’s Journey.

What lies along this path? Still unclear though Trees play a central role. As does the Great Wheel of the Year and the Jewish Lunar Calendar. As the pilgrimage unfolds, I plan to explore Kabbalah, my long period of work with Ovid’s Metamorphosis, poetry and literature, myth and legend, fairy and folk tales, religion, and the arts: music, painting, sculpture, theater, dance, opera.

What will come? Again, unknown. It will be the path, not the destination. What I will do is read a lot, write, travel, think, listen, see, taste. Talk.

 

*The Hooded Man stood at the winter solstice point on December 21, along with the earth and the sun in the night. This is the time to be alone and contemplate life. This card describes the gates of death and rebirth, deep inside the Earth.  Hooded Man

**A central theme of the Wildwood Tarot is the interconnection of humans with the wild, with animals, and with the calendar cycle.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Humanities, Latin, Letters, Literature, Writing

Tsundoku

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Summer and the Bar Mitzvah Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Workout. Bechira point. Good choice. Herme’s Journey. Each Tree. Each Rock. Each Stream. Each Valley. Each Meadow. Each Ocean. Each Volcano. Each Dog. Each Person. Great Sol. The Great Wheel. Sukkot. Pesach. Shavuot. Tu B’shvat. Lunar months. Lunar calendar. Cyclical time. The phases of the Moon. Cognitive effort.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Accepting

One brief shining: Check out the stack, pick up a current favorite like Storm Before the Calm (thanks, Tom), sink into that Stickley chair, find the dust jacket flap marking where reading left off, open the book, and proceed to learn, in this case that there are cycles in our national life, that Friedman’s way of parsing two of the big ones may offer hope for the grandkids. Smile quietly.

Reading. What a revolution in my life when I learned how. Of course, Dad read. And wrote. Being a newspaperman. Mom I can’t recall though I imagine she read, too. Exemplars of a sort. Enough anyhow. All three of us: Mary, Mark, and I read.

Interesting word, read. It can mean something as simple as understanding a Stop sign or an effort as complicated as following the story of War and Peace. When I say we read, I don’t mean we can read, I mean we actively use the skill to learn. As Mark Twain said, There is no difference between a man who can’t read and one who doesn’t read.

Yes, if you know me, you know I have a book thing. Kate said to me once, “Most people go to a library. You buy the book.” Well, yeah. A habit formed first at Guilkey’s Newstand with comic books and then all of Ian Fleming, then whatever looked good. When I had a little money, I bought books. When I had enough money, I bought more books.

Do I read them all? No. Tsundoku is the Japanese word for the stack(s) of books you’ve purchased but haven’t read. These articles in Big Think: “I own too many books” and in Maria Popova’s Marginalia: “Umberto Eco, Why unread books in our library are more valuable to our lives than read ones.” explain.

My favorite rationale from these articles? Tsundoku is an antidote to the Dunning-Kruger effect, the tendency of ignorant people-Twain’s those who don’t read-to believe they know and understand vastly more than they do. Orange 45, I’m looking at you.

Those unread books apply a force field to any upwelling of know-it-allness. Why, right here, I don’t know much about Herodotus, or the life of Edward Hopper, or the American Prometheus. My ignorance extends to Clausewitz, Severe Weather, and the plays of Plautus. Perhaps I’ll get to them, some day. But even if I do there will still be the volume on the journeys of Captain Cook, or that other one about the geology of the Plains. Or… You get the idea.

I love the content of books and not the books themselves so my library contains no first editions, few signed books. It does contain the complete works of Emerson, more than one translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy and Ovid’s Metamorphosis, and lots of science fiction along with, well, many many others.

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Mountains, Mussar, Plants, Shadow Mountain

A Doubled Trunk, Grown Over Tree #6

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Summer and the Bar Mitzvah

Tree number 6 grows near the dead Lodgepole. Like the Lodgepole Companion it lacks Branches at certain points on its trunk. The most notable feature of this tree though is what appears to be two Trunks grown together, fused now, and joined as one.

Around the Trunk opposite to this photo another, less obvious obtrusion suggested to me that my hunch was correct. When Splintered Forest came through and marked Lodgepoles for Fire mitigation, they always marked those Trees with two Trunks. They have a tendency to split apart under the pressure of high winds.

I also found several instances of what looked like Fungus, maybe Lichen. I didn’t see this on other Trees nearby and it made wonder what about this Tree attracted them.

Tree number 6 grows in a small cluster of other Lodgepoles though at some distance from its neighbors. While it is similar to the other Lodgepoles it, too, has distinctive features-Fungus, double trunk grown together, its location.

As I’ve worked on this project, somewhat episodically, a strange thing has begun to happen to me. As I drive down the hill toward Evergreen, I don’t always see the Forest. Now I see its individual Trees. Not always, but often.

I love photographs of Animals that show their distinctive personality, their uniqueness. Yes there are Dogs. But only one Kepler, Gertie, Rigel, Vega. Cattle, Horses, Sheep, Mule Deer, Elk, yes, but each one has their own history, their own unique way of being in the world.

There is an interesting foreground and background awareness going on related to this. Individual Lodgepoles. Individual Aspens. Individual Willows and White Pine and Ponderosa. That Mule Deer, curious about me, who looked in my bedroom window. I find identifying and appreciating unique individuals a good balance to the tendency to lump members of a species together.

Yet. There is a deeper oneness in which all individual, unique beings participate. We are constitutive of that oneness even as we are unique and identifiable. Our change and growth is the change and growth of the one. We are, at a deeper level, part of each other in a profound, yet too often invisible way. Somewhat like the Root system of the Trees I’ve met.

Honoring ourselves can lead us to honor what appears to our limited senses to be an other.

 

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Memories, US History

New Harmony. Fireflies.

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Summer and the Bar Mitzvah Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: The Billy Joel/Paul Simon shabbat. Veronica. Tom. Paul. Joan. Irv. Kaddish. Yahrzeits. Numbers. Parsha Beha’alotcha. Lisa. The James Webb. The Hubble. Euclid. The context provided by the Cosmos. Storm Before the Calm. Election year 2024. The June 22, 2024 life. Mezuzahs. Orion. Betelgeuse. Rigel. Vega. Polaris. Arcturus.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Our magnificent, short, wonderful life

One brief shining: Each summer the ceiling fan in my bedroom makes sleep possible, yet it refused to turn on, so I called Altitude Electric who sent hipster bearded Karsten; no bueno, no bueno, he said to the work of the previous electrician who installed this fan, as he pulled its main body out of the ceiling and sparks flew, tripping the breaker.

 

Home. This and that. Ceiling fan that doesn’t work. Grass needed cutting for Fire mitigation. Marina calling to ask how my roof was doing. Mini-split filters need cleaning. You know.

 

Rappite Buildings, New Harmony***

On some long ago trip back to Indiana I made a brief stop in New Harmony. It sits north of Evansville in the far southern part of the state and far enough west to be on the Wabash River with Illinois on the opposite bank.

Whoa. What a place. Founded by Rappites, followers of a German Christian theosophist* and pietist, George Rapp, the Harmonist Society created three model communities, two in Pennsylvania and one in Indiana, now New Harmony. They held goods in common and were so successful in their business endeavors that Rapp sold Harmony, Indiana to Robert Owen, a Welsh industrialist. Rapp felt their secular success was compromising their religious mission.

Rapp moved the Harmonists back to Pennsylvania while Owen found a number of scientists, artists and educators who left Philadelphia on a riverboat, bound for New Harmony. It became known as the Boatload of Knowledge. Owen was a utopian who wanted to create a socialist society in his New Harmony experiment. The experiment failed, but not before the United States Geological Survey was founded.

Roofless church gate

In its latter day existence New Harmony has become a conference center, an open air museum with buildings from the Rapp and Owen eras preserved. It includes, too, a large labyrinth created by the Harmonists.

Phillip Johnson’s roofless church, a non-denominational walled compound, stands across the street from the Red Geranium Restaurant. Behind the Red Geranium lies Paul Tillich Park, the burial site of one of the twentieth centuries most prominent Christian theologians.

There is a short street that runs between the roofless church and Paul Tillich Park. One evening on a subsequent visit to New Harmony I left the Red Geranium at dusk after a tasty dinner. Strolling I went into Paul Tillich Park, read some of the inscribed boulders, left the Park and continued down the road. It didn’t go much further until it entered a grove of Maple and Oak and Beech Trees which arched over it.

Tillich Grave Site

Fireflies. Thousands of them. Lit the arched space over the road, giving it depth and wonder. My then immersion into Celtic lore meant I could only see this as an entrance to the Otherworld. Walking towards the grove, I imagined myself coming out in Faery where time passes differently and returning years later to a changed New Harmony.

Instead I chose to stop and enjoy this amazing sight.

 

 

 

*Christian theosophy, also known as Boehmian theosophy and theosophy, refers to a range of positions within Christianity that focus on the attainment of direct, unmediated knowledge of the nature of divinity and the origin and purpose of the universe. Wiki

**Philadelphia Academy of Sciences…President William Maclure, “father of American geology,” had gathered (members of the Academy) them all aboard the keelboat Philantropist [they used the French spelling]: scientists, artists, musicians, and educators, some bringing along their students, and all were eager to settle in Robert Owen’s New Harmony community on the Indiana frontier. JSTOR

***By Leepaxton at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9065488

 

 

Commentary on the news, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Science, Torah, Weather +Climate

Talmud Torah

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Summer and the Bar Mitzvah Moon

Friday gratefuls: Sleep. The fan. Rain. Vince. Jamie. The dead Lodgepole. Books. Storm Before the Calm. Orgovyx on the way. Juneteenth. Love. Justice. Compassion. Irv. The Ancient Brothers. A dull white Sky. Little Breeze. The Mountains with their green clothes on. Rock outcroppings. Mule Deer. Elk. Fawns and calves. The life of June 21, 2024. Sweets from Durango via Melbourne. Where it is the Winter Solstice.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Low Fire Danger-in late June

One brief shining: Opened a pocket-knife I bought when the shoe store in Evergreen went out of business, slit the tape on the box from Durango Chocolates, discovered a sealed foil bag, inside it paper shredded insulation, then two cool packs-colder than ice!-and below them a box wrapped in clear plastic announcing chocolates inside, the knife again, the box has yet more shredded paper inside covering a melt in your mouth chocolate bar, sea salt toffee, and Bear balm; a bar mitzvah present I received a day before the Winter Solstice in Melbourne where Mary sat with her computer and ordered it.

 

Started torah study with Rabbi Jamie yesterday. Once a month we’ll read the parsha of the week and Aviva Zornberg’s commentary. The current torah readings are in the book of Numbers. Her commentary, “Bewilderment” will be what we use for now. Jamie’s also going to share a weekly commentary he gets from Art Green, his mentor and former president of the Reconstructionist Seminary.

This is a rare privilege for me. He and I decided to continue our monthly sessions that had been focused on conversion lessons and turn them into torah study. When I was in seminary, the classes on the New Testament and the “Old Testament,” now the Tanakh for me, were my favorites. Something about studying source materials, getting to know them and their stories really well. About revelation and its history. About literature, ancient literature. About myths and legends. About adapting their meanings to the contemporary world. That fascination is still there.

If I remember, I’ll share some from our sessions.

Yesterday we discussed how to interpret God since neither of us are supernaturalists. How do we make sense of the character god’s role? Didn’t get far with that, but as I’ve thought about it since I found myself wanting to go back to Rabbi Toba Spitzer’s book, God is Here, about metaphors for god. Lowercase god is the way Rabbi Rami Shapiro differentiates the henotheistic deity of the Torah from the One who is all who is us who is becoming new right now and always.

 

Just a moment: Heat. Across the U.S. Across the world. High heat. Record breaking heat. Don’t hear much, except in Florida, about climate change deniers. Down there in that puzzling state DeSantis has perfected the nah nah nah nah response to Black history, queer life, and climate change. If you don’t talk about them, they’re not real. DeSantis hasn’t passed the object permanence stage of human development. That’s when babies learn that peek-a-boo’s a game, not the way things are. Poor Florida.

 

 

 

Mussar, Plants, Shadow Mountain

Honoring the Dead, Tree #5

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Summer and the Bar Mitzvah Moon

 

Tree #5 is a dead Lodgepole in the back yard. Its Bark has faded in color to a dull brown and become brittle. Where the Bark has peeled off dead Wood shows traces of Critters that left small trails along its surface. Looking up toward the Crown and the Lead ghost Branches project out, no Needles, no flexibility, like fingers stretched out in pleading. Remember me as I once was.

A long, deep crevice runs up and down the Trunk allowing a glimpse inside. Reminds me of the necropsy on the dead collared Timber Wolf during my Wolf intensive in Ely, Minnesota. Several Januaries ago. The crevice and the biologist’s opening of the Wolf’s thorax and abdomen provided a sight not available in life except under rare circumstances. In both cases the Lodgepole crevice and the Wolf laid open I could imagine galaxies and local clusters whirling in this not meant to be seen space. Inner space, not outer space, the one suggesting the other, by the wonder of life gone from its home on the one hand and the vastness of the universe on the other.

The dead Tree stands where it grew, a corpse remaining in place. Made me wonder about the idea of death itself. We imagine death as a clear and distinct state from life. In terms of agency I suppose it is. But consider the dead tree. Birds rest on it. Woodpeckers eat from it. Squirrels may build a home there. Its roots have begun decomposing, feeding already the living Trees, Grasses, Soil microbes. When it falls, were it to remain in the yard, it would decay slowly while offering homes for Voles, Chipmunks, Rabbits and other Animals.

So death in nature has many phases, all of them useful in some way to other Creatures and Plants. Perhaps death is not so clear and distinct. In Muir Woods there were fallen Coastal Redwoods that will take decades, maybe centuries to complete their death. And throughout those Woods as in the yard here death actively supports life. Is not its enemy but instead its friend.

Does that help us, frail mammals that we are? We can certainly formaldehyde a body, put it in a box and surround that box with cement or even steel vaults. But why? To defeat the natural processes which Elk, Mountain Lion, Aspen, Willow, and Meadows filled with lush Grass not only go through themselves, but need so that others of their kind can survive? We have set ourselves apart from our Mother, rejected her ways, and visited upon her insult after insult. Perhaps the dead Lodgepole can teach us a different, better way.