Category Archives: Woolly Mammoths

Aging, Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Friends, Woolly Mammoths

Knocking on the Door

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Beltane                                                                             New Last Frost Moon

There are times and this is one of them, when death seems behind every door.  My friend Bill has learned that his wife’s cancer is stage 4.  A grave diagnosis with a grave prognosis.   American’s exult in the streets over the death of Osama Bin Laden.  A friend sent out a quote from Martin Luther King* that expressed my feelings.  Today Vega, one of our younger dogs, tested positive for Lyme’s disease.  Not a big deal, treatable, unless the kidney is involved.  Hers may be.  If it is?  Difficult to impossible to treat.

Since I started today already in somewhat of a funk, all this darkness hovering around has reinforced it, made the day two or three shades grayer.

Death does not surprise us.  It lurks beside us all our born days until the last one.  Its reality, its starkness, its finality, especially that last one, passing from the quick to the dead, still strike heavy hammer blows to the heart.

Death’s most severe wounds come from the source of our greatest joy, love.  Without love death counts only as an incident, something happening to someone else, an event of little consequence.  We know this each day we read the obituary pages.  Even the death of someone we have known, but not loved, does not shake us at our foundations.  When, however, death comes to call for one close and important in our lives, the very bound of love lacerates the heart, accelerates our fear, amplifies our sense of loss. Continue reading Knocking on the Door →

Aging, Family, Humanities, Woolly Mammoths

Grasshopper, You Are About To Be A Grandfather

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Spring                                                                           Full Bee Hiving Moon

Men.  Emotions surprise us, batter us into consciousness, wake us up.  Hello, grasshopper, you are about to be A GRANDFATHER. Huh?  How did that happen?  Of course, you know exactly how it happened, but it still reaches inside and turns on the amazement switch.

Some old man, dimly known, shambles out of your past and you say, “Could that be me? That old fella?”

“Nah, I’m too young,” you say.

The event comes to pass and there you are with Ruth or Dave or Holly or Ava, a tiny pink wonder, yet, too, the most common event of all among us, a baby, a fledgling human, vulnerable, needy.  Somehow ours.  Somehow not ours.

Shaken but perhaps not yet stirred a gong sounds somewhere, a genetic clang or a cultural bong, but whatever deep, resonant, compelling and there you are at the door reserved for Elders Only.  This door, this torii, guards the pathway to the future, a divided path on which your grandchild will walk as a living memory in one direction while you stride resolute toward our last great journey.

Here’s the joy.  We can walk along this path a ways, maybe even a long ways, together.

What’s the nature of this walk?  Who knows?  One grandparent, one grandchild.  A unique way, created by the two, reserved for them alone.  Another grandchild, another way.

We spoke of these things tonight at Tom Crane’s house.  Mark, brother Mark, went along.  Warren, Charlie, Bill, Scott, Tom, Frank, Mark, Stefan were there.  We remembered our grandfather dying in front of us at four, of grandfather’s disappeared by distance and alcohol, of grandfather’s willing to play along with a silly joke, a grandfather who drank and drank and drank, having his last jug delivered the day after he died, of a grandfather with green flannel underwear that buttoned, puzzlingly, in the rear, who poured coffee into a cup, then a saucer and drank from the saucer, who made syrup from water and sugar, of grandfathers in the house, there to talk to, to go to, grandfathers abused by fathers.  We spoke of all these things nestled inside our own hopes, our joys, the wonders of our own journey through the torii of  generation.

Men wonder about these things, dream about them, hope for them.  See themselves with a tiny hand in theirs, walking along, picking dragons and mermaids out of the clouds.  Whistling.

Aging, Family, Woolly Mammoths

A Night I Needed Friends. And They Were There.

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Spring                                                      Waxing Bee Hiving Moon

On the way back from the Red Stag, the Woolly Monday night meeting, the moon hung in the western sky, a thin crescent, a slice, almost too faint to see, a shy moon against a dark blue backdrop.

Warren and Mark were there tonight.  We had a couple of laughs over hearing as we each turned our heads to hear what the other had said.  Aging men, old ears.  We talked about nuclear power, the Republican health and human services budget which Warren covers for the Star-Tribune.  Mark told me he and Elizabeth had learned Tai Chi from a Chinese teacher in Shanghai.  The instructor spoke no English.  We’re going to practice together at the next Woolly meeting.

We spoke a bit about Mark (brother) and his coming to America.  Mark (Woolly) met some of the ex-pat community in Thailand.  He said they’re a bit edgy, a different group than other places.

We each had one of Red Stag’s local food dishes.  I had a Kale gratin that was wonderful with a Limousin hamburger.

This was a night I needed to talk to friends and I’m glad they were there.

So, life will change, again.  As it always does.

Aging, Humanities, Travel, Woolly Mammoths

The OWM

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Spring                                                    Waning Bloodroot Moon

The Order of Woolly Mammoths, or OWM, the sacred sound that created the world, met tonight at Frank’s for our annual corned beef and cabbage feed.  Bill Schmidt gave us an insiders perspective on the nuclear crisis, explaining the safeguards in place and said, with some emotion, that if called and if he could contribute, he would go.  It gave me a personal connection to the brave, even heroic effort that engineers and other workers at the Fukushima facility have already offered and confirmed what I suspected.  These are men and women who have a wartime level commitment to their jobs, knowing that if doing them costs their lives; it’s a sacrifice both necessary and worthwhile.  They deserve our deepest admiration and respect as humans tested in a type of cauldron most of us will never, thankfully, see.

Tom, a new grandfather-to-be, asked for advice, stories, thoughts from current Woolly grandfathers.  He has chosen to devote his meeting, our next one, to the topic.  Gray heads discussing gray-headdom.

Stefan and I discussed a possible visit to Aerquipa when our cruise hits Peru.  It would involve a plane flight from Lima of about an hour and a half.  I want to make it work, seeing Lonnie and her folks at work, visiting someone I know.  Some planning to be done.

These men, this crowd of silverbacks, men I knew when our hair had color are a central part of my life.  It was good, as it always is.

Aging, Art and Culture, Bees, Cinema and Television, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Friends, Great Wheel, Great Work, Humanities, Politics, Weather +Climate, Woolly Mammoths

Carpe diem

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Imbolc                                 Full Bloodroot Moon

Got my novel a boost by going out to Blue Cloud, got back and dove into the legcom, MIA, Latin sequence plus finishing my presentation,  Redefining the Sacred, and have gotten little novel work done.  The times.  Now the air has begun to warm up and the snow to melt.  That means more time outside, which I’m eager to get started, but that, of course, means less time inside and all of the winter work is desk bound or at the museum.

When I talked to Kate about my despair for human life on this planet (see yesterday’s post), I also commented on my zest for life.  It’s never been higher, I told her.  OK, yes, the sun shone, the sky was blue and it looked warmer, all boosts to the life zestometer, but it’s more than that.  Kate’s retired and that’s removed a lot of stress from my life as well as hers.  I know this for sure because I have a mild case of psoriasis and its gotten much, much better since her retirement in January.

I’ve also got two challenging volunteer roles, docent at the MIA and the legcom at the Sierra Club, each of them test different skill sets every week.  The Latin work has given renewed confidence in my learning capacity, plus it’s fun in ways I hadn’t anticipated.  We have two grandkids with birthdays coming up.  The dogs are healthy.  Our orchard should begin producing this year.  I know what seeds I’m going to start and what I’m going to plant outside, early.  There’s a novel underway.  I’ve made new friends at Bluecloud and through the MIA and Sierra Club work. This will be my third year as a beekeeper. The Woolly’s are in our 25th year.  Finally, Kate and I have started new physical routines.

Said another way I get to be around art, practice politics, create, grow, love, laugh, visit with friends and family.  Life is full of matters that can keep us excited and eager to get up in the morning.

No matter what the world may be like tomorrow today is a day filled with promise.  So, like my friend, Bill W., I’ll take my life one day at a time.

Bees, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Humanities, Woolly Mammoths

The Bishop’s Room

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Imbolc                                     Waning Bridgit Moon

This room is the Bishop’s bedroom.  B-1 in the Bishop’s wing.  Which has only B-1 and B-2.  When the Bishop comes, he stays in this room, uses this pigeon-hole desk, which I find surprisingly user friendly, and has a whole sitting room for himself and his entourage.

(lined up to reserve this room. this first guy just couldn’t believe they’d let me in ahead of him.)

I imagine I have it because, since Tuesday, I’ve been the sole retreatant.  Just me and 14 monks.  By chance I stayed in B-2 during the Woolly Retreat in February, so I’ve completed a tour of the Bishop’s wing.  This room’s better.  It has this pigeon-hole desk while the other has a flat top desk that would look at home in a down-scale dormitory room at a community college.

The shower here has sliding doors and a plastic molded seat.  B-2 has a narrow stand-up shower almost under a window.  Here, I have a bookcase bed.  In B-2 it was just a bed.  There is also a small nightstand with four drawers and brass handle pulls.  I put my pajamas in there.   Oddly, the drawers all have a divider which makes them less, rather than more, useful.

Tonight, after I wrote in praise of silence, I discovered that the monks kick up their heels on Thursday night, dining in the guest dining area and, wait for it, talking during the whole meal!  I sat with Brother Paul and Brother Chris.  Father Tom joined us, too.

We talked bees.  Brother Paul and Brother Chris are bee-keepers here though they’ve not kept any bees for the last couple of years.  Sounds like they’re going to give it a go again this year.  They have large fields of clover, one of the best honey plants, and alfalfa.

Aging, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Humanities, Myth and Story, Woolly Mammoths

Obits Optimists

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Imbolc                                                                       Waning Bridgit Moon

The most optimistic page in the newspaper?  The obituaries.  Every day and especially on Sundays I see evidence of the hopefulness and optimism of Minnesota citizens.  I imagine it’s the same everywhere.  With no evidence for an afterlife at all, let alone a particular one, person after person greets their mother and father, relaxes in the arms of their Lord and Savior Jesus, are welcomed by God the Father or pass over to their next adventure.  The range of metaphysical perspectives may be narrow, usually encompassing some version of the Christian afterlife or the less well understood world of late 19th century spiritualism, the passing over folks, but the confidence and clarity braces me every time I read it.

I’ve not done a comprehensive study of obituaries, let alone a cross cultural one (though it would be fascinating), but it seems likely each place has its own, culturally specific brand of confidence about the unseen world.  In ancient Rome a favorite epitaph mentioned here before:  I was not.  I was.  I am not.  I don’t care. represents a very different take on the after death experience, one more in tune with my own existentialist one, though I’m not as nihilistic.  I do care, at least now, about my death, though, with my Roman fellow travelers, I’m pretty sure that after death I won’t care either.

This kind of optimism has ancient roots.  Certain Neanderthal remains have been found with ochre painted on the body, indicating some thoughts about life after the grave.  Just what that thought was, of course, we have no idea, but burying a body and decorating it moves well beyond the animal world’s relative disregard for their dead; relative because elephants do have mourning rituals*.

The new atheists like to lampoon all this as magical thinking or evidence that the human race has not yet grown up, but there are ways of looking at it.  To my mind it is a poetic, metaphoric way of declaring that the person’s memory will live on among there descendants and friends.  It also a means of consolation in the face of a forever event, perhaps the first one the family has experienced.  Since there is no evidence, it is possible that one of the many perspectives has got it right.

Long ago I made a pact, a version of Pascal’s wager, with the afterlife.  I will live my life in as straightforward and useful a way as I can, being true to my own understanding of the world.  With Camus I stand with those who would make the trip toward the great river of death easier for all.  If, as I suspect, death is a personal extinction event, then the wager ends.  If there is a supernatural being who cares about living entities and their future, then the minor or even major screw ups in my life will be forgiven since their/its perspective will embrace all things, giving a context to any individual life that even the most forgiving friend cannot.  Either way, I’m ok. Continue reading Obits Optimists →

Aging, Family, Politics, Woolly Mammoths

A Good Birthday

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Imbolc                                                     Waxing Bridgit Moon

Relearning old lessons.  Today I went to the capitol to do some lobbying.  While there, Justin (Sierra Club lobbyist) and I met with a member of the legislature whose outline was a bit murky relative to our issues.  We found an ally, someone we can work with who has the ear of folks we can’t reach directly.  It was a fun and helpful meeting.birthday-stupa-james-johnson

A lot of people sent wishes for a good day on my birthday.  Nothing is a better present for me than finding an ally in unexpected places.

Kate made me two wonderful shirts, both short sleeved, Hawaiian like shirts.  When it gets warmer, you’ll see them.  Having a wife that sews and quilts is a great gift.  Oh, and she’s good at diagnosis, too.

Thanks to everyone who sent birthday wishes.  Brother James Johnson, aka Dusty, sent me a birthday stupa:

Aging, Commentary on Religion, Humanities, Retirement, Woolly Mammoths

Words.

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Imbolc                                                            Waxing Bridgit Moon

“Belief in the truth commences with the doubting of all those ‘truths’ we once believed.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

This intellectual bomb-thrower has always been a favorite of mine though I’ve not ready any of his stuff cover to cover.  A recent bio tries to make him into a closet hyper-religious, but if he is he did the damndest job of hiding it.  Sometimes I think an atheist is just an atheist and not a cigar.

I have felt the force flowing with me ever since the retreat.  There’s something about being lifted in the mosh pit of old friends that buoys the soul.  I’ve got out the pages of Missing I’ve written so far and am finishing an edit/revision I began a while ago, then I’m going to pick up the keyboard and set byte to screen.  Kate and I also identified a week in March when I can go back out to Blue Cloud and work intensively on the novel.  I’m still weighing it since it seems indulgent, but, hey, maybe it’s time for this kind of indulgence.

We had our business meeting this morning and I had a post-retirement anxiety tremor, so we ran numbers out past 2012.  Hah.  As if it matters.  After 2012.  Just in case, though, we ran them anyhow and the numbers do begin to make sense when looked at over a period of time.  My tremor quieted.

Had a call this morning from a brother asking for some reassurance.  I gave it, though I’m not sure how my input helped. It’s humbling to be asked for such a thing.

Met with Leslie, the UU student at UTS that I’m mentoring this year.  It’s fun to watch a young person, she’s my age when I was in Sem, go through the back and forth of this strange vocation, ministry.  Had I a chance to do it over again, knowing what I know now, I would have worked at McDonald’s.  No.  Not really.  But, I wouldn’t have gone into the ministry.  Maybe art history.  Maybe politics full time.  Maybe something else, but I wouldn’t have ended up in the ministry.  But, I did.  Go figure.

Aging, Commentary on Religion, Woolly Mammoths, Writing

Back From The Cloud

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Imbolc                                                           Waxing Bridgit Moon

The drive home with Frank is over.  We followed route 12 back east, away from Blue Cloud Abbey and the snow which had claimed a semi and an SUV on the road away from the Abbey, stopping only in Litchfield for a Chinese lunch, a buffet.  We talked as usual about many things religion, politics, women and family history.

Another Woolly retreat has finished, our 24th by some counts.  The 25th will break with our two decade long tradition of late January, early February dates and move us into the last days of September and the first of October, September 29-October 2.  We hope this will encourage more of us to get outside, walk, hike, enjoy the weather and the place.  We’ve opted for our fourth retreat at Blue Cloud Abbey.  It suits our sensibility as a place dedicated to the sacred and brotherhood and is far enough away to count as a trip.  It also has individual rooms and prepared meals.

We have also developed a relationship with the monks, two brotherhoods with different founding purposes, yet a common focus on the life of men together.  We explore different facets of common ground each time, this time the chanting with Father Michael and some time with Father Tom.  We will, I believe, prove resistant to their attempts at evangelism, hamfisted as they are, but not done in mean spirit.

Now I’m on my study computer where I’ve just entered the upcoming activities from calendar, trying to spot the time to get back to work on Missing.  That will emerge this week, as I plan to get at least an hour a day in until I can squeeze out more.  I may still go back out to Blue Cloud for a quiet and solitary place to write.