Category Archives: Politics

Fourth Phase, Health, Judaism, Politics, Shadow Mountain

Peace?

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Imbolc and the Moon of Tides

Thursday gratefuls: Tara. Fantastic Four. Shadow, the early riser. The U.S. military. The Middle East. War. Peace. Negotiations.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Snow

 

Kavannah: Shleimut.   Being present to myself.

Tarot: Ace of Vessels     My emotions need recharging from the deep waters of my soul. I am the stag.

 

One brief shining: Today they begin, the bone scan, the echo, the pet scan. Two cts. Is my body strong enough to withstand the trial? How we will know if the treatment I’m getting works. This bone scan against that one.

 

Not looking forward to the next week and a half. My life has pauses, then bang, bang, bang. More blood tests. More diagnostics. Since last May, the pace of surveillance has ramped up. A lot.

More scheduling. More rides needed. More information over my transom than I can keep up with. A lot.

Meanwhile, the world.  Crazy. Real estate developers as diplomats? A President against foreign intervention starts his second war this year. Israel a hegemon.

A headline says Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler may devolve into niche makers of the last gas fueled cars as China rises in building ones fueled by electricity. Many self-driven.

Climate change supercharges hurricanes. Ate our mountain winter. Sea levels go further into Miami. New York City. Thwaites Glacier rests precariously on warming Antarctic waters.

What about measles? Polio. Even covid and the flu. A polio survivor. I remember the line at age 8. Thurston Elementary. About to get a shot. The vaccine. How indignant it made me. Not fair.

Vaccines don’t work? Says the cabinet secretary, Robert Kennedy. Thanks to the polio vaccine, twenty four years later. 1979. Polio eradicated in the U.S. Measles outbreaks increasing.

The context of my old age.

Where can we find peace? Not in the clanging of the MRI or the cool gel of an Echocardiogram. Nor in bloodwork or office visits. Certainly not in the newspapers I read every morning.

A touch on the arm. Shadow’s tongue licking my hand. Tara sitting with her legs draped over the chair arm. Shadow and Eleanor playing, bumping, running.

The Mule Deer does that visit my front yard often. Dining on grass. Delicate. Graceful as they move across my field of view.

Ruth offers to drive up. Make me French toast. Even bacon. Gabe asks me to offer him fun facts about himself. He can’t think of any.

No matter. The craziness. The tests. No matter.

Even in the midst of external chaos. Teshuvah. Return to the homeland of your soul. I am a writer, a lover of nature, human partner to Shadow, curious, resilient. A friend and a brother and a cousin. A Jew named Israel.

I also love. My Ancient Brothers. My synagogue friends. Mozart. Shadow Mountain home. My life.

Peace lies not on the newspaper pages. Not in lab results or treatment protocols.

Peace lies in being who you are.

No matter what.

Family, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism, Korea, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Travel, US History

Is it time to go?

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Tuesday and the Moon of Tides

Monday gratefuls: Tara and Eleanor. Arjean. Costa Rica. Iran. U.S. Israel. Gaza. Lebanon. War and peace. Mark in Hafar.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Tara

Kavannah: Shleimut. My lev, calm. Clinical trial decision made. Living into the next.

Tarot: Knight of Vessels, Eel. My spirit, strong. My decisions, made. Old, not dead.

One brief shining: While I sit in peace on Shadow Mountain, Shadow gnaws a toy, asks for breakfast. Mary roasts in summer heat. Joe and Seoah shiver in a cold Korea. Everyone seems further away.

 

A conversation U.S. Jews. Is it time to leave? Is this a Weimar moment after Adolf took power? Friends Marilyn and Irv looked at land in Costa Rica. Decided not to go. Irv said he loved the mountains. Too old to leave.

Tara and Arjean. Have hired a property manager. Are cleaning out 27 years of stuff.  Move to Costa Rica sometime in June. Stay in AirBnBs as they scout for a place to settle. A year or so experiment.

Two times when I almost left the continental U.S. 1969. Got the call for my draft physical. To Indianapolis with all of my money and all my possessions. (not much) Would have moved to Canada like my old friend Mike Hines.

Turns out psoriasis worsens when wearing wool and in hot, humid climates. Army uniforms. Wool. Vietnam.

As I left the place where I’d had my physical, a serious man told me: “You cannot enlist in the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, or the Marines.” I asked him, “Are you sure?” When he said yes, I said, “Thank god.”

Second time. After Kate died. Joe and Seoah. Planned then to retire after Korea and move back to Hawai’i. Cleared out the house and garage. Researched places on Oahu where Kepler and I could live. Checked out synagogues. Studied my budget.

Jon died. I couldn’t leave Ruth and Gabe.

My sister and my brother, Mary and Mark. Long time expats.  Mary now in Melbourne and Mark teaching ESL to young Arab men. Joe and Seoah: Hawai’i, Singapore, and Korea. Nine years

State Department urges Americans to leave the Middle East. Mark stays. Hafar has no military targets. He lives among the Saudi citizens. Not in an Aramco US compound. An old Saudi hand at this point.

I’m the stay at home of a far flung family.

When is it time to leave?

 

For me. Not yet.

Ancient Brothers, Family, Fourth Phase, Friends, Politics, US History, World History

Holding Opposites

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Imbolc and the Moon of Tides

Monday gratefuls: Ancient Brothers. Shadow, my downward dog. Iran. Israel. U.S. Gaza. Hezbollah. A cool, dark morning.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

Sparks of Joy and Awe:  The Deep Blue Sea

 

Week Kavannah:   Shleimut.   The alignment of the inner self with outer actions, bringing a sense of completeness to life.

 

Tarot: Three of Bows, fulfillment       Teshuva, alignment between neshama and the Self, a power that flows through me.

One brief shining: Fulfillment. Satisfaction. Not happiness. Joy in writing with more precision. Nouns. Fragments. Revising, a process with which I still struggle. My Shadow life. My Ancient Brothers life. My Jewish life. Engaged with Iran and with Mark, close by in Hafar.

 

Painful. To see Iran and my Ancient Brothers. The same day. Mary, down under. Joe and Seoah far away. Mark far away from me but near war. Grocery shopping and day care. A man pets his dog. While death races along the streets of Tehran. The One, yes, but. Pain and love, together again. Always.

A danger. Exhaustion from the steady, too steady beats of killing, of government acting in Iran and not acting at home. Epstein files. Rising health insurance costs while medical care disappears. Hospitals close. Cost of living rises. The cost of war.

So easy to turn away from accelerating drought in the Rockies. From those who need the Mountain Resource Center. ECHO’s food bank. Easier to launch Cruise missiles, Tomahawks. Drop bombs.

Ruth coming up to make me breakfast. Her specialty, French toast. This Saturday morning. Gabe sharing the poems he wrote in Oregon. Ruth in college, Gabe getting ready. Their lives full with preparation. Classes. Applications. Learning. Testing. Readying themselves for a future with dramatic climate change, increasing acts against Jews and Blacks and Latinos. What they have been thrown into.

I work. My candle is lit. These words. Those words. A Hansel and Gretel trail leading to, leading to what? A record of an Alexandria boy grown into a man. A man who acted. In theater. On the streets. In the soil. On the page.

A man whose life unfolded in the shadow of war. Whose maturation, delayed, came when conservatives began to gain ground. In 1981 Joseph’s plane landed. The wicker basket. Reagan inaugurated.

Fatherhood. Joyous. Daunting. Inspiring. Joe turns 45 this year. Seoah 48. I turned 79. Ruth will be 20. Gabe 18. That thin, yet strong line of love expressed as Ruth masters chemistry, Joe watches North Korea. I learn to write.

Too late?

We braid our lives into each others. French toast. Sunday morning themes. Breakfasts at Aspen Perks. Eleanor and Shadow playing hard. Parallel. Our braids. Their braids. The wider world. Iran. Israel. Minnesota fighting ICE.

Ruth goes to class. Bombs drop. Joe goes to work. ICE leaves Minnesota. I write. Cartels ship fentanyl. No life independent of another. The web of life woven by photosynthesis, by kisses and hugs, by acts of war.

Life. Lived in paradox and irony. Always. Holding opposites.

 

Judaism, Poetry, Politics, US History, World History
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Imbolc and the Moon of Tides

Sunday gratefuls: A restful Sabbath. Tara’s home. Eleanor will come. Iran. Israel. U.S. Khamenei. Morning darkness. The power of myth. Rumi.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

Sparks of Joy and Awe:  Superman

 

Week Kavannah:   Shleimut.   The alignment of the inner self with outer actions, bringing a sense of completeness to life.

Tarot: Six of Arrows, transition

My inner world. Moving to the clinical trial and to a focus on draft 2 of Superior Wolf. With confidence.

One brief shining: Fusing the clinical trial decision with the ongoing evolution of my writing style. A sail like the Six of Arrows, full with the winds of agency, of growth, of resolve.

When I was in college in the last millennium, I met four students who identified as Persian. 1967. Street theater. Guerilla theater. Their Tehran was a place of deep culture and tradition. Long standing Persian culture in contemporary dress. A place of creativity contained and encouraged. They inspired me, then involved in a theater minor and modern dance.

At each turn of Iran’s fortunes, from the self-coronation of the Shah to the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis and to this morning’s headlines, I go back in time to those vibrant students. Their Iran has always stuck with me, especially as the cold hand of Shia dogmatism tried over and over again to crush it.

Talk about civilizational erasure. Bearded clerics. Covering women. Killing dissenters. Funding resistance to Israel and to Sunni Islam. Hezbollah. Hamas. Houthis. Persian culture in a burkah.

Khamenei assassinated. A part of me is so happy. I imagine those students, now in their old age, feeling an opening, a moment for theater of the people. A theater of liberation, one opening possibilities. How I wish I’d stayed in touch, remembered their names.

Part of me grieves his death. Not as a rigid dogmatist, but as a man. His life stopped.

Yet another part of me gets a thrill seeing the muscular actions of the U.S. and Israeli militaries. Taking the fight to Iran instead of suffering blow after blow from terrorists funded by Iranian oil. Take that, fundamentalists. Oh, to live in a world of black and white. Good U.S. Bad Iran. Too old for that.

I admit it. I don’t know what to do with those parts of me. A long time anti-war activist. Fighting American imperialism decades before our own authoritarian grabbed power. Ironic. Work for self-determination. Vietnam. The Lakota. Persians in a closed and throttled Islamic state.

I will not even use war metaphors for cancer treatment. Not a fight, or a struggle, rather a wounding. Needs healing, not gun-boat metaphors.

The problem? A pre-emptive war with no defensive justification. Gun-boat diplomacy. Reactionaries succeeding. Naked imperialism. Might makes right. It doesn’t.

In this frame? A more intellectual reaction. I’m appalled. No matter the apparent rewards, reinforcing the king is bad. Bad for the U.S. Devastating for nations around the world. Don’t catch his attention.

We contain, as Whitman said, multitudes. I see mine in reaction to this brutal smackdown. The dominant male in me. Yes. Yes. Yes. A patriarchal part of me. One I know to not entrust with the steering wheel. In there though.

Dawn arrived on Shadow Mountain. Shadow got fed.

 

Family, Friends, Holidays, Judaism, Politics

Close. Yet. Unaffected.

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Imbolc and the Moon of Tides

Shabbat gratefuls: Class with Jamie and Luke. Cardio. A transformation grid. Shadow, a sweet girl. Iran. Israel. Gaza. The West Bank. War and peace.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

Sparks of Joy and Awe:  The Night Sky

 

Week Kavannah:   Yetziratiut. Creativity.   Feedback on my new writing style.

 

Tarot: King of Vessels, Heron

One-legged I stand beside my inner river, feeling joy, fear, inspiration. Purim. Starting the trial. Writing.

One brief shining  Life pushes things together: Warren’s sister dies. We celebrate Purim.  Explosions wrack the Middle East.  Iranians die. Dawn comes to Shadow Mountain. YHWH echad.

Shadow Mountain continues its snowless winter.

Trump strikes Iran. Executive power abused as royal decree.  He uses, like the neo-royalist he is, American fighter jets and bombers, aircraft carriers, to enforce his personal grievances. No checks. No balances. The sound of bombs shattering ears.

My brother, Mark, in Hafar, Saudi Arabia, lives 156 miles from Iran. Just across the Persian Gulf. He says there are no military targets nearby.

A similar situation. In 2005 I helped Joseph move. Late August. While we carried boxes into his Breckenridge apartment at 9,000 feet in the Rocky Mountains, Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. I felt lucky. 9,000 feet above sea level. In the heart of the continent. Lucky and a bit, what? Guilty. Privileged. Distant.

Close. Yet. Unaffected.

This sabbath I write at my own mountain retreat. Far from D.C. Far from the Persian Gulf.  In my country’s name ordnance falls from the sky. Persians seek shelter in Tehran. Jews seek shelter in Tel Aviv. Jerusalem.

I seek shelter. From my own government. Find it in the One.

Warren’s family grieves. His sister died this week. Pneumonia. MS. A creative heart stilled. I’m far from that, too. St. Paul.

This Monday evening. Purim. Drink until you can’t tell the difference between Haman and Esther. A celebration of a female hero who stood up to Haman, the Persian royal vizier who would destroy the Jews.

Kate loved dressing up for Purim. She would wear a coat she made for Joseph, a coat of many colors, and a floppy hat. Our first Purim at Congregation Beth Evergreen, 2016, my mouth dropped open.

Dan Herman, then president of the board, came in carrying a case of beer on his shoulder. Others brought several bottles of wine. A bar in the sanctuary. All through the service congregants would go to the bar for another beer or more wine.

Groggers, noise makers, sounded every time Haman’s name came up in the megillah, the scroll of Esther. Their grating sound joined with boo’s.

This sabbath, this Rocky Mountain day, I watch the candle burn. Will study Torah at 10. Relax.

Persia. Iran. Jews. A long, long story.

Mark teaches English to young Arab men. Close. Yet. Unaffected.

A scribe adds to the scroll.

 

Friends, Music, Politics, US History, Writing

Bodies

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Imbolc and the Moon of Tides

Friday gratefuls: Rich on Wall Street, the national anthem. Wild Flower. Downtown Evergreen. Dr. O’Leary. No skin cancer.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

 

Sparks of Joy and Awe:  Breakfast with Rich

Week Kavannah:   Bitachon. Confidence.     I need to focus on confidence this week. Important decisions for cancer treatment, how to stay confident when physical weakness challenges me.

 

Tarot: #6, The Forest Lovers

In my writing I’m learning to balance animus and anima, listening to both, especially as I link my work to the natural world.

 

One brief shining: Wall Street. More wicked than I knew. Built by slaves of Dutch owners, the first Wall Street. A stockade. In 1711 a slave market there, a city slave market. Rich taking his honors class from Colorado School of Mines. The Body Politic. Politics of the body.

Early breakfast with Rich Levine. The Wildflower’s door was open, so I went inside, sat down. Noticed on the menu: 7:30-2:00. It was 7:20. Oops. Owner came out of the bathroom, started. “You scared the shit out of me. Want a cup of coffee?” I did.

When Rich showed up, laundered and starched white shirt, blue Patagonia vest in 12 degree weather, I greeted him as a Minnesotan. Cold weather proof.

He ordered the Athena, a vegetarian omelet.  A Mountain Skillet for me, eggs and chicken-fried steak, wild potatoes, and pancakes.

Over coffee, while we waited for our food, Rich told me of his pending trip with his class, the Body Politic, to New York City. Most interesting to me? Wall Street.  Built by the enslaved.   Later a city slave market.

The owner of Wild Flower delivered Rich’s omelet, my Mountain skillet. “Ready for a refill?”

We ate.

Plantation cotton fed Wall Street’s growth. Eerily, I also discovered mortgage backed securities sold to foreign investors. The collateral? Enslaved people. Aetna insured the enslaved as property.

Rich also pointed me to later stanzas of the national anthem which include these verses:

“No refuge could save the hireling and slave

From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave”

The British armed the enslaved. We sang, “Sweet land of liberty.”

A couple more cups of coffee later Rich told me his Ob/Gyn daughter was pregnant. His second grandchild, a sister for one and a half year old Felix.

Bodies feeding. Bodies about to be born. Bodies aging.

We parted ways. Love you, Rich. Love you, Charles.

Started up a begrimed Ruby. Drove away smiling. Energized.

Rich wants to collaborate on Even the Gods Must Die, my first novel. Vulnerable. My first.  Not confident it shows skill. He says that doesn’t matter. It matters. To me.

Admission. I plan as many revisions to Superior Wolf as necessary to make it sing. Then. I’ll use ChatGPT to help me find an agent. A place I got stuck a while back.

 

Health, Politics

Calibration

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Imbolc and the Moon of Deep Friendship

Friday gratefuls: Rabbi Rami. Rabbi Jamie. Rich. Marilyn. Tara. Alan. Stephen Miller. Judaism. Two Jews, three opinions. Teshuva. Tikkun. The One. Morning service. Kabbalat Shabbat service. High Holidays. Passover Seder. Purim. Simcha Torah. Shavuot. Succoth. Tu B’Shvat. Hannukah. Bet din. Mikveh. Sabbath. Israel. Holocaust. Pogroms. Reconquista. Mussar. Blessings. Belonging before believing. Reconstructionist. Reform. Conservative. Orthodox. Tanakh. Torah. Songs. Writings. Shiva.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Cinema

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Year Kavannah: Creativity.   Yetziratiut.   “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” ― Pablo Picasso

Week Kavannah: Tikkun  Olam. Repairing the world.

  • Lurianic Kabbalah: A 16th-century mystical belief that the world was created by divine vessels that shattered, scattering “sparks” of divine light. Humans perform tikkun by gathering these sparks through prayer and mitzvot.
  • Modern Social Justice: Since the 1950s, the term has become a shorthand for social action and progressive activism, such as environmentalism and human rights.
art@willworthington

Tarot: 10 The Wheel

“The Wheel has turned; change is at hand. In all nature, there is a time and tide. The cyclic laws of birth, death, and rebirth are ever revolving and, without change, all things stagnate. How you deal with this change is the issue here. Within the tangled and tightly woven fabric of chance, you have the power to make a difference. By your own action you can change your life.”  Parting the Mists

 

One brief shining: On walking into Ginger Itaewon I noticed a string of Korean flags and on the front wall, the word Itaewon in large yellow letters, naming a culturally diverse, tourist friendly neighborhood in Seoul, yet over the cash register hung a portrait of the Thai king and the door to the kitchen had a colorful Japanese cloth room divider. Culture clash.

Evergreen: Drove over to Evergreen for lunch with Rebecca at Ginger Itaewon. Turns out the owner, a former Texan, is Thai.

I planned to calibrate through this lunch plus the drive to Evergreen and back how much accommodation I need to make to head drop. I had it figured about right. A half hour drive plus an hour and fifteen minute lunch, then a half hour back home found me nap ready.

No more driving into Denver. Perhaps western Lakewood, no further. The combination of holding my head up while I drive, then sitting for an hour or so in a chair with no head support? At the outer edge of my capacity. Holding my head up now calls on back and shoulder muscles that begin to fasciculate under the strain. Effects my capacity to use silverware, eat from a plate. Geez. Eating out’s not as much fun.

Now rescheduling any days on which I have two medical appointments. Used to bunch them for convenience, now I can’t handle more than one a day.

Just a moment: Drawing down 700 ICE agents. Leaving only 2300-only?-in Minneapolis. Still not getting the message. ICE out now!

Friend Tom sent me this link to an MPR article: Pursued by Federal Agents Suburban ICE Observers Remain Resolved.

Here a couple of paragraphs:

“Elizabeth and other suburban observers interviewed for this story said they haven’t seen federal agents de-escalate their activities since Homan’s arrival. In fact, they’ve noticed more federal agents on the roads, and the agents have moved from merely mocking observers to aggressively pursuing them or using dangerous tactics to try to box them in on suburban roads.

“I think they’re getting angry that we’re winning and the country is rallying around us,” Elizabeth said. “We’re so organized and we act with such integrity. They don’t want to admit they feel threatened by us.””

 

 

Great Wheel, Minnesota, Politics, Seed Keepers

A Winter People

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Imbolc and the Moon of Deep Friendship

Renee Good and Alex Pretti, say their names

Sunday gratefuls: Dr. Josy coming to change Shadow’s bandage. Shadow, enconed. Cool weather. Protein. Exercise. Roxann and Tom, recovering. The resistance in Minnesota. In Minneapolis. A gentle, angry people. Political pressure. Finally, Democratic pushback. Minneapolis nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. A light to the nation and the nations.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Courts of law

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Year Kavannah: Creativity.   Yetziratiut.   “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” ― Pablo Picasso

Week Kavannah: Tikkun  Olam. Repairing the world.

  • Lurianic Kabbalah: A 16th-century mystical belief that the world was created by divine vessels that shattered, scattering “sparks” of divine light. Humans perform tikkun by gathering these sparks through prayer and mitzvot.
  • Modern Social Justice: Since the 1950s, the term has become a shorthand for social action and progressive activism, such as environmentalism and human rights. 

Tarot: Queen of Arrows, The Swan

  • Attributes: She embodies honesty, logic, and a sharp wit. Like the traditional Queen of Swords, she is highly capable and values direct communication.
  • The Swan Element: The swan’s presence signals a need to swim toward clearer waters after a period of sorrow or separation.

One brief shining: Can you feel the sorrow, the sore hearts, the sadness rising in Americans all over this land; the Swan that is  our collective weariness with the harsh, coarse hand of a government devoid of love, compassion, and justice swims in her graceful desolation toward states united against rule by whim and fear, standing together like the North Star, blazing in the cold.

Minnesota: “Don’t attack a winter people in the winter.” A Minneapolis resident quoted yesterday. Going in layers to meet the day. A layer first, close to the skin of warm compassion.  A second layer over that one of chesed, loving kindness expressed in action. A third layer of indignation, a layer protective against the winds of oppression, and finally, a layer of gentle fierce anger, an anger that pleads for, no, demands justice.

Don’t forget a warm hat and boots. Gloves, too, my winter people.

The Great Wheel: Today, February 1st, marks the beginning of Imbolc, a Celtic cross quarter holiday that lies midway between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. A traditional understanding of Imbolc says it means, “in the belly.” Short hand for quickened Ewes beginning to freshen, that is, lactate.

After a long fallow time living off the stores of last year’s growing season, the freshening of the Ewes promised milk, cheese, and the birth of new Lambs, pure white Lambs. Family and village wealth increases and the Lambs evidence the imminent coming of a new growing season. Cold weather crops might go in the ground just after Imbolc, providing fresh greens for the table.

Imbolc also celebrates the Celtic triple goddess, Brigid. She is the goddess of the hearth, inspiration, and the smithy. She warms the home, inspires bards and poets, and heats the blacksmith’s fire. Fire is her element and her holiday reminds us each year that Great Sol has begun to warm Mother Earth with new intensity.

This Imbolc I’m celebrating the fire in the belly of Minneapolis citizens. Their actions can birth a Spring of justice and compassion if we can keep the pressure on, turn up the heat.

 

Dogs, Minnesota, Politics, Seed Keepers, Tarot, US History

We Are the North Star

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Yule and the Moon of Deep Friendship

Shabbat gratefuls: A day of peace. Shadow and her cone, her brightly taped leg. Roxann. Tom. Jessie. Minneapolis. Resistance. In song and action. Red tie guy who could end this. The Federal Reserve. Washington Post reporters. Don Lemon. Cell phone videos. ICE. Border Patrol. Our poor benighted Republic.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Dr. Josy, caring vet

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Year Kavannah: Creativity.   Yetziratiut.   “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” ― Pablo Picasso

Week Kavannah: Tikkun  Olam. Repairing the world.

  • Lurianic Kabbalah: A 16th-century mystical belief that the world was created by divine vessels that shattered, scattering “sparks” of divine light. Humans perform tikkun by gathering these sparks through prayer and mitzvot.
  • Modern Social Justice: Since the 1950s, the term has become a shorthand for social action and progressive activism, such as environmentalism and human rights. 

Tarot: Nine of Vessels, Generosity

Generosity of Spirit: This card represents a deep, selfless love (agape) and a willingness to share one’s inner resources, compassion, and joy with the world.

Connection: This card emphasizes that sharing your emotional abundance fosters deeper connections with companions and the surrounding environment.

One brief shining: Non-violent resistance flows from nine of vessel’s energy, linking this peace seeker with that peace seeker in a chain powerful enough to hold back cruelty and hate, yet soft enough to ensure the well-being of neighbors in distress, and loving enough to re-place power where it belongs, in the hands of just folks.

Dog journal: Beginning the fourth day A.C. After the cone went on. Neither one of us like it much, only its proven medical purpose makes it and Shadow’s bandage bearable.

Going outside has become a chore. The bandage can’t get wet. That means I had to place the makeshift IV bag solution on Shadow’s injured leg. Difficult. I bought and received booties which are somewhat easier, but both require a lot of bending over and my right lower back does not like that. At all.

Only eleven days to go.

 

Just a moment: I can’t improve on this excerpt from a Krista Tippet Substack post forwarded by friend Paul Strickland. Her credo nourishes and promotes a way to heal our sore hearts:

…this is one of those moments when the strange and beautiful reality of the human condition rises in the face of what would deny it. In Minnesota, where I raised my children and grew this On Being Project, a world of care and dignity one human being towards another has flourished within and around all the images coming to us of violence and protest and despair. There are churches converted to food banks. There are families accompanying other families and neighbors delivering meals and other essentials to individuals who feel vulnerable for multitudes of reasons. There are strangers bearing witness, non-violently, as homes are approached and doors beaten down. There are teachers and librarians and healers stepping up to care for children and teenagers who are traumatized by all of this. I am hearing a thousand stories that are not making the “news” as I’m trying to follow it, but they too are the story of our time, and they are stories of what makes us human and humane.

I repeat: I cannot believe that this beautiful strangeness and complexity reside on one side of our political lines and not the other. A few years ago, I penned a few lines in this newsletter that have become my credo:

Enough of us see that we have a world to remake.

We want to meet what is hard and hurting.

We want to rise to what is beautiful and life-giving.

We want to do that where we live, and we want to do it walking alongside others.

We’re asking, where to begin?

We have a long way to go to find our way back to feeling our belonging to each other that has never stopped being true. But it is what we are called to. I cleave to my faith that there are “enough of us” longing to meet this calling.

The common ground of our sore hearts may be the place to begin, and return, and ever begin again.