Category Archives: Politics

Dogs, Family, Far Right, Judaism, Politics, Shabbat, White Supremacy

Interesting Times

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Summer and the Korea Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Shabbat. The coming of the Jang’s. Aug. 2. My son and Seoah. Gabe and Joanne. Artemis. An early sprouter. 1 Red Russian Kale. More and more Tomato Blooms. Hard Rock. Ledges. Boulders. Scree. Talus. Mountains. Oceans. Beaches. Tides. Riprap. Water. Lakes. Great Lakes. Lake Superior. Lake Huron. Michigan. Erie. Ontario.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Rocks and Water

Year Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah: Yirah. Awe.

“Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. ….get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel

Tarot: The Woodward. How can I increase my joy of the sabbath?

One brief shining: We sat, the four of us at a round table, not our usual one which had occupiers, Gabe meeting Joanne with his desire to become a writer, excited and yet quietly confident, Alan guiding the conversation’s focus on Gabe and Joanne while punning, always.

 

Family: Part of the role of family. Recognizing the dream of the moment for another. Helping them get as far as they can. Visiting my son. From base to base. Ruth changing majors from art to pre-med. Yes. Gabe meeting Joanne at the Dandelion yesterday. Encouraging Mark as he advances in Saudi.

We do not choose another’s path. But we can spread roses along it.

 

Dog journal: Shadow has become a regular inside at night dog! I’m pretty sure we’re over that puzzling moment in our history. Thank god.

Her job during the day lies in patrolling the backyard for what are, to Shadow’s mind, errant creatures. Barking at them. This is my place. Not yours. Go somewhere else.

This job entails a lot of lying on the ground and resting, yet remaining alert. Unless Great Sol warms her belly and she falls asleep.

 

Judaism: I love Heschel’s idea of living life in radical amazement. My everyday, every moment hope for myself. That I can see the sacred lying there asleep in Great Sol’s warmth. That even the pain in my buttocks says, yes, you’re alive! That the Water I drink comes from Mother Earth’s recycled, refreshed, purified supply. That my fingers still remember the keys. That my body breathes. My heart beats.

Yirah, indeed. Joy of the sabbath. Yes.

 

Just a moment: Saw an article about RTTL, Return to the Land, an Arkansas version of South Africa’s Orania, a white-separatist town. RTTL has 160 acres in Arkansas and want to start a new version of their back to the land, whites only community in Missouri.

Idaho already has several back to the land far-right commune-like spots. Granola conservatives. Funny. We had a different idea for the same back to the land idea in the sixties.

RTTL: “You want a white nation? Build a white town,” Eric Orwoll says, in one video posted on social media. “It can be done. We’re doing it.”

“RTTL is at the vanguard of an ethnonationalist movement that has been organising online – a network that aims to define countries by ethnicity but which links across borders.” Sky news, op cit

We’re living in interesting times.

Memories, Minnesota, Politics

That Time I Worked As a Minister

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Summer and the Greenhouse Moon II

Tuesday gratefuls: Home. Artemis. Shadow. Shadow Mountain. Black Mountain Drive. Conifer. Evergreen. The Jangs. The mini-splits. Lodgepoles. Aspens. Blue Bells. Pentstemons. Tomatoes. Beets. Lettuce. Ruby. Ruth and Gabe. Joanne and Alan. Halle. Jake. Generator maintenance. Kate’s chair. My serious reading chair. Minnesota Council of Non-Profits. MICAH. Jobs Now. Stevens Square Community Association. Loring Park Community Association.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Work, well done

Year Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah: Ahavah. Love.

Tarot: Ten of Stones. Home. How can I celebrate my garden and my life?

One brief shining: Pick up a book, an old technology I know, open it and let your eyes fall on the first page, the first sentence, the rest of the pages still thick in your hand; in the good ones adventure lies in that thicket of words, or information, maybe enlightenment, maybe inspiration or self-criticism, a world made in the covenant between author and reader, so old, so old.

 

Life: I lay in bed this morning doing a little life review. In conversation with Paul yesterday I remembered the Philanthropy Project which morphed as organizing often does into something else, becoming the Minnesota Council of Non-Profits. That led me to MICAH. Last week I wrote about the Jobs Now Coalition.

These three organizations still have significant roles to play in Minnesota’s political life. I had a lead role in organizing each of them. In some real sense they are a part of my legacy.

Then, I thought. Let’s review some other wins. We kicked General Mills out of the Stevens Square Neighborhood and Control Data out of Eliot Park, denying corporate feel-good missionary work that would have taken control of their communities away from their residents.

On the West Bank we built five hundred affordable housing units, a 200 unit apartment building, and a parking ramp. We also funded the start up of a worker owned drug store, bike shop, and hardware store.

With Bea Swanson we found funding for her ministry in Little Earth of United Tribes, a grandmother helping mothers. Started Sin Fronteras, without borders, to get money to the undocumented who needed to apply for green cards.

With Leadership Minneapolis we created a definition of leadership as love, justice, and compassion which got us all fired by the Downtown Council. Odd, in a way, since I led the Minneapolis Planning Commission’s plan 2000 which involved all key downtown players in creating a guide for planning decisions in downtown and its nearby neighborhoods.

The nature of organizing, of course, means no one person can take credit for this or that achievement. Even so, I know that in each of these instances I played a central and significant role.

There was also the unseating of a long time Hennepin County commissioner and replacing him with a progressive. Working the DFL convention to get Paul Wellstone nominated in his first run for the Senate.

All of this work I was able to do because of the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area which funded the West Bank Ministry. A ministry shaped around these verses from the gospel of Luke:

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
19 to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”

Dogs, Friends, Politics, US History

Drug Backwards Through History

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Summer and the Greenhouse Moon II

Monday gratefuls: The Seer. Luke. Ginny and Janice. Annie and Luna. Shadow at play with Annie, zooming. Another night inside. The darkness of early Morning. Tandoori Chicken. Garlic naan. ChutPo salad. Spice Fusion Ranch. Ancientrails back up. Cyber world. The leaning Tree. Friends and family.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Friends. Ginny and Janice.

Year Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah: Ahavah. Love.

Tarot: The Seer, #2 in the major arcana. How can I improve my diet?

One brief shining: Took my three pronged cultivator and worked organic fertilizer into the raised beds of Artemis, being slow to plant the fall garden, but already engaged in staking Tomato Plants which get floppy as they get tall, their strong, acidic scent carrying me back to Andover.

 

Friends: Ginny and Janice came over yesterday, picking up food at Spice Fusion Ranch on the way. Ginny had Luna the small in a t-shirt covering her surgery site. Annie the vigorous strained against her leash wanting to get inside, then outside with Shadow.

After an initial testing of each other’s mettle, they began a happy afternoon of racing around the yard, Shadow running just to the left of Annie and behind, guiding her as Border Collies and Australian Cattle Dogs will do.

They wore each other out while we ate lunch made at the too-good for Conifer Spice Ranch Fusion. Mostly we told Dog stories. Of Dogs who did agility courses fast but not accurately or accurately but not fast. Ginny said, “She ran through the tire, then turned and ran through it again.”

I told the favorite tale of Celt whom we took lure coursing. When Kate slipped him, our one hundred and ninety pound Wolfhound ignored chasing the lure and instead chose to head straight for the mini-doughnut stand.

Dog people.

 

Just a moment: Again I say the words. Concentration camps. They came for the immigrants with ICE men in civilian clothes, ready to fill prison facilities already owned by private companies. Hundreds more will be built as a result of the legislation passed last week.

Who will they come for next? LGBT? Jews? Single parents? College professors? This kind of fervor feeds only on hatred, bigotry, and cruelty. And fear. A fear consuming a minority of white people that somehow their lives, their futures, will suffer if they cannot cleanse the land of all others.

This old story crawls its poisonous path through history. Rwanda. South Africa. Sudan. Russia. Germany. China. Myanmar. India. Too many to count.

Who stands in its way? We pluralists. Globalists. Democratic socialists. We who love the rich quilt sewn by different languages, different national origins, by love expressed in its many faceted ways. Who willingly accept the creative tensions of a nation not dominated by one class, skin color, sexual preference, religion, or political inclination.

No time for hesitation, for weak words or weak action. These actions of an administration dragging us backwards through history to a simpler time when oligarchs stood astride the land and our country shrank from the world must not stand.

 

Dogs, Politics

Evolutionary Marvel

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Summer and the Greenhouse Moon II

Shabbat gratefuls: Salam. Marilyn. Irv. Primo’s. A Mountain Morning. Shadow, sleeping with me. Protecting her territory. Great Sol, seen later and later. Trump Tarrific, with chronic moral insufficiency. Tomato Blooms. Tomato cages. Ruth and Gabe coming up Thursday. Beets. Chard. Spinach. Lettuce. Arugula. Drip irrigation.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Physical therapy

Year Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah: Ahavah. Love.

Tarot: King of Stones. Wolf. How can I reengage regular exercise?

One brief shining: Again a Shadow on my pillow, reaching across it to lick my face, then stand, body stretched on the head of the bed while investigating the back yard for intruders of any kind, violators of that invisible line Dogs draw in their minds and declare as their own.

 

Dog journal: On August 4th Shadow and I will celebrate 7 months together. Neither of us understood the magnitude of our commitment.

From her first days cowering under the bed to today Shadow has proved a challenge to me and me to her.

She had experienced the trauma of a fire in her home, then movement to an enclosure in the Trinidad, Colorado shelter, and after that transfer with her brothers to another shelter in faraway Granby. She had been there a week when Ginny, Janice, and I drove up the hour or so to meet her, up Berthoud Pass and through Winter Park on our way. Coming to my house was her fourth home in less than two weeks.

I have sensed a huge shift in our relationship. She’s more trusting, more willing. She has come inside every night for the last week, lowering my anxiety level. She responds to me more like other Dogs I have known.

Not all the way yet. Still no leash so she can’t go with me when I go out, but I feel we’re not far from crossing that barrier.

Has it been worth it? There were many days and even more nights when I felt I’d made a mistake, bound her to an old, achy back man who couldn’t give her the daily life she needed. I imagine there were even more days when she had similar feelings.

As the rhythm of our life has become clearer, as she leaves her under the bed spot to sleep beside me, and as her nights are, for me, less fraught, I can see the strong bond we’ve developed. I can see her genuine affection for me and see it no longer through the veil of her trauma induced fear.

We’re gonna be ok.

 

Just a moment: I have diagnosed red tie guy with chronic moral insufficiency. His chronic venous insufficiency correlates with it in that he eats like a starving teenager ready to chow down from whatever fast food place appears next. It endears him to certain parts of his base, sure, but it also adds a lot of bad fat into his blood stream.

I understand that Trump himself travels through this life as a fellow wanderer, a child of Mother Earth and her evolutionary marvels, and as such is worthy of our love. But. It makes me very uneasy to know this.

Dogs, Fourth Phase, Health, Politics

Wolf Energy

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Summer and the Greenhouse Moon II

Wednesday gratefuls: Shadow’s head on my pillow. Waking up to her by my side. Nathan and the cold frames. Randy at Evergreen Medical. Kristie, my oncology P.A. Ultrasounds. Hernia? Testicle? Oh, boy. Another medical journey. The Wolf. Luke and the Tarot. Kabbalah Experience. Tanya. Her obituary. The Lamb. Jesus Christ.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Shadow

Year Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah: Patience. Savlanut.

Tarot: The Wolf, King of Stones. What do I need to know about my health?

One brief shining: A Tarot deck may seem like an instrument of the devil, or superstition; it may seem, if not those, too distant, too abstract, too hard to make use of; however, if you lean towards it, embrace its ability to interrogate both your inner life and your physical journey through this material realm, then wisdom will rise from it as if on its own.

 

Tarot: The Wolf. King of Stones. I asked a question about my health. A significant topic for me, as you know. Made emergent (as Kate used to say) by a possible hernia or something up with one of my testicles, or both. Oh, joy.

When I began to read a bit about the Wolf, the first thing I noticed was its position on the Great Wheel, departing Samhain. Samhain, or Summer’s End, sets off the fallow season. Though it has come down to contemporary culture as Halloween, it has a much deeper meaning.

It marks the end of the growing season, the time when the fate of a subsistence farming community had already been set for the coming cold of Winter. No wonder the veil between the spirit world and this material realm became thin. Life and death were at stake.

And, yes, I’m departing Samhain, headed toward my own Winter Solstice. Not yet. Not now. But that’s the location of my body’s pilgrimage, on the wane. I’m ok with that.

What can I do to be healthier during this part of my journey? P.T. probably. Perhaps see a post-polio doctor. Eat more. Good food. Sure, all of that. Yet the Wolf suggests not fooling myself into thinking there’s a route back to where things used to be.

The Wolf also honors my deep connection to the Soil, to Artemis and her nurture.* Highlights my grandfather energy toward Ruth and Gabe, toward Shadow, toward myself.

 

Dog journal: Shadow has been inside every night since Friday last. Three of those nights she came in on her own. Two saw her inside already when 6 pm came round.

Perhaps her feral nature is Wolf energy, the very energy I need now to be my optimal self. Be more like Shadow.

 

Just a moment: The hits just keep on coming. Another tie vote. Another tie breaker by that shape shifting weasel, Vance. Now cutting, cutting, only to transfer wealth on the oligarchs conveyor belt from the rest of us to their crypto accounts.

Shame on all of them and their houses.

 

*The Wolf:

  • Protection and Nurturing:

    The wolf, as a protective figure, indicates a strong bond with the land and a nurturing nature, especially towards those they consider family or part of their domain. 

  • Practicality and Skill:
    The King of Stones is practical, grounded, and skilled in managing the physical world, often possessing a strong connection to nature. 
Dogs, Health, Politics, Tarot, US History

A Holocaust Moment?

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Summer and the Greenhouse Moon II

Tuesday gratefuls: Pain and lump resolved. Shadow, the feral dog. United Health Care paying for my P.E.T. scan. Shadow coming in. Potcake Dogs. Harry Dresden. Jim Butcher. The Morning Service. The Woodward. TACO. Darkness my old friend. Immigration/Holocaust. Cruelty, Vengeance, and Greed as a philosophy of governance.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Natalie

Year Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah: Patience. Savlanut.

Tarot: The Woodward. ? How shall I live my life today.

One brief shining: Yesterday around six p.m. a sharp, yet diffuse pain in my abdomen, a lump there roughly over the site of my steroid injection yielded a bit to the touch, not hard, an emergency or not, I couldn’t tell so I called the on call doc of my practice who said it didn’t sound like one, but if it gets worse, call him back. It didn’t and the lump is gone this morning. Wha?

 

Yeah. These things happen after hours. By rule. No Kate in the house anymore to reassure me. How would I get to the E.R.? Who would I call? Exposed the everyday vulnerability of all of us who live alone. Things are fine. Until they’re not.

The doc last night reassured me, said he’d leave a message for the front desk, have them call me, get me seen. Glad I have these folks in my hip pocket.

Drive myself or call a friend. Driving myself saves time. Have to find a friend at home and able to come. Then, it takes them time to get here. You get it. No obvious best answer.

 

Tarot: The Woodward, major arcana #11 in the Wildwood deck.

“The Woodward represents emotional support when we fall into a state of out of control, out of reason, when we encounter destructive challenges.

When individuals are pulled out of their comfort zone, they will be deprived of every emotion they once had when they were in a stable state. During that depriving process, individuals will have to seek within them their own true strength.”

Well. Gee. The message. Don’t tip over into anxiety. Call the on call doc. Which I did. Go see a doctor today. Which I will do. Don’t fuss. Act.

 

Dog journal: Natalie came yesterday. It was raining so we worked on a command called place. It involves a towel or some other well defined spot. I reward Shadow when she comes on the spot, then draw out the time she stays on it by slightly delaying the next treat.

Natalie told me Shadow acted like a feral dog. Like a Caribbean Potcake Dog, or a wild Dog fed from the leavings in a pot. She’s smart, learns things in one or two passes, but she’s also very suspicious. That means when a negative thing happens, like when I accidentally stepped on her left paw, she learns right then to avoid that situation.

Classic anxiety. Generalize from a negative experience, then protect against it by avoidance. Slowly, slowly.

 

Just a moment: Concentration camps like Alligator Alcatraz, then depriving immigrants of due process before deporting them, sometimes to countries where they don’t speak the language and have no family connections.

No, there might not be gas chambers. Yet. But a minority group has been singled out for rough treatment, taken from their homes, and disappeared from the U.S. Which minority will be next?

As Linda Greenhouse says in this New York Time article: We Will Regret Not Standing Up to This Venomous Cruelty. New York Times, 7/14/2025

And I have to also recognize this former Israeli, former member of the IDF, now a genocide scholar’s article: I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It.

I will not be a fellow traveler. I will not let my voice be on the wrong side of history.

Dogs, Great Wheel, Greenhouse, Judaism, Politics, Shabbat, Tarot

Lowering the Flag

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Summer and the Greenhouse Moon II

Sunday gratefuls: Cookunity. Shadow, face licker. Her head on my pillow this morning. The Bird of Dawn. Firm steps. International Rock Day. Shadow Mountain. Conifer Mountain. Bergen Mountain. Black Mountain. Really big Rocks. Artemis. The stool. Cool Morning. Dreams. Mark in Al Kharj. 111 degrees. Getting his May pay.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Shadow

Year Kavannah: Wu Wei. Gliding on currents of the sacred.

Week Kavannah: Patience. Savlanut

Tarot: Two of Swords. Injustice.

One brief shining: Shadow goes from rug chewing to sock eating and throwing over to her puzzle with treats under plastic sliders, her tire goes up, now her squirrel long ago rendered squeakless, a quiet moment, then a roll on her back making satisfied sounds. Waiting on her breakfast.

 

Dog journal: Through various ad hoc strategies I’ve been able to get Shadow inside the last few nights. I sleep better. Except. She gets up at 4 am. So there’s that. Yesterday she came inside on her own. The day before Gabe got the door closed.

Life improves when she’s inside at night. She likes it, too. I woke up this morning and her head rested next to mine. All l want for her and me.

 

Sabbath: I prioritize reading, time with Shadow, with friends. Tending the garden. Quieter moments. Allowing the week’s sludge to settle, then drift away. Some sabbaths I study. Torah. The New American Reformation.

Oddly, after long conditioning from my youth, the more I observe the Jewish sabbath, the more Sunday takes on a similar cast. Two sabbaths. More quiet time.

 

Tarot: I asked the deck, what can I do to reignite my creativity. The two of swords gave me a jolt. Made me reconsider the content of my writing. Maybe I could write more about injustice? Plenty of material these days. Or, have I done myself an injustice by letting my fiction slide away, buried under the weight of days. Things to consider.

 

Artemis: The unfinished wooden stool for Artemis came Friday. I plan to spend some time today using a couple of wood oils to give it protection from both moisture and drying out. A manual act I enjoy.

Waiting on a small rake-like tool and a trowel then my fall garden will go in the Soil. Excited to add Seeds to the Squash and Tomatoes. The fall planting will include carrots, beets, spinach, chard, lettuce, radishes, and, of course, herbs. Will be exciting to see Sprouts.

Great Sol throws light on Artemis early in the morning, arcing across the back yard, then bathing her west-facing raised bed in the afternoon and evening. With the translucent material used for Artemis’ greenhouse, Great Sol illuminates both raised beds and the greenhouse most of the day.

 

 

Just a moment: Trump Tarrific. Interesting article in the NYT about trade realignment among nations trying to soften the chaos created by our TACO President.

Trump may force other countries to bond together to counter his tariffs. This will mean stronger trade ties that do not include the U.S.

Let’s lower the flag another quarter inch. (Think Union of Concerned Scientists atomic clock.)

Dogs, Great Work, Greenhouse, Judaism, Politics

Lessons

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Summer and the Greenhouse Moon II

Friday gratefuls: Gabe. His awakening. Ruth. Her new apartment. Shadow, who came in last night on her own. The greenhouse, a fall garden ready to plant. A mezuzah for Artemis. Rebecca. Mussar. Azzut. Self-Confidence. Luke. Leo. Marilyn and Irv. Tara. Rabbi Jamie. Alan and Joanne. Dandelion.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Wildwood Tarot

Year Kavannah: Wu Wei. Swimming in the direction of novelty.

Week Kavannah: Hearing on the side of merit

Tarot: The Six of Stones, Exploitation.

One brief shining: Shadow jumped up on the bed, came over and licked my face, I put my hand under her belly, giving her a quick scratch, all I want.

 

Tarot: I asked the Wildwood Deck what insight it might have about the mezuzah hanging today. Drew the six of stones which you can see above. I thought, what? Artemis is exploitative?

Then I read about the card: “If we continue  to exploit the land without replenishing what we take, the things we take for granted will disappear and our world will be broken and ruined, like hives. This card may represent poverty of the soul – some form of psychosis…”  TarotX.net

I had an aha with this card about Artemis. Artemis is a living witness to our need to care for the Soil, for the Plants that flourish in it.

She has no solutions, will grow little food, but her presence on this Land says yes. Yes we belong to the Soil. Yes that belonging is collaborative. Yes the Soil is in danger and the Plants that thrive in it. Which means that we humans, creation’s most fragile and dependent creature, are also in danger.

It’s a matter of love. Which do we love more, Mother Earth or our things? Artemis is a sanctuary for all those who love the Soil, Plants, caring for the Planet. She is a sacred place.

 

Dog journal: Shadow came in last night on her own. Gabe and I were talking. She strolled in. Ran back out. Came in again. And stayed. Made me so happy. Hope we can figure out how to repeat this.

 

Floods: The Texas hill country, site of the awful catastrophe unfolding over the last week, was LBJ’s home. Ironic, when you think about it.

Kerr County politicians and administrators have denied requests for various sorts of alarm systems from early warning messaging to sirens. Red tie guy has gutted NOAA and the National Weather Service. In both cases these represent government refusing to do its most basic job: seeing to the welfare of its citizens.

Red tie guy also had FEMA on the way out until-TACO alert-until this morning. When it wasn’t.

How is all this ironic? Red tie guy and the Kerr county officials have just taken a severe lesson in the proper role of government. It was LBJ who, for all his Vietnam War faults, passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights act, Model Cities and other legislation aimed at building a Great Society, not destroying it.

No wonder TACO.

Dogs, Family, Fourth Phase, Memories, Minnesota, Politics

It still exists

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Summer and the Greenhouse Moon II (Full)

Thursday gratefuls: Shadow, the outdoor girl. Artemis ready to receive plantings for a fall garden. Halle. Capybaras. Marmots. Nutria. Mice. Cool morning Breezes. Mezuzah. The ritual for hanging them. Monism. Squirrels. Tarot. The Forest Lovers. Wild Neighbors screeing. Rain incoming. What did the idiot do today?

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Wind and Rain

Year Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah:  Hearing on the side of merit

Tarot pick: Forest Lovers, #6 of the major arcana

One brief shining: This morning I shuffled the Wildwood deck, cut it three times, and asked the deck what I needed to do about Shadow, my mystery girl, and it gave me this card, the Forest Lovers, the male and female energy present on Beltane, the start of the growing season.

 

Dog journal: A hot night. Mid sixties. Shadow outside yet again. Once again challenging my vision of our relationship. How it should go. At night in particular.

Last night we were having a hug on the small patio stones outside my back door. We shifted our stance a bit and I stepped on her left rear back paw. She yelped and ran off. No way she was coming in last night. No words, no apologies. I hurt her. She left. Fast.

Better this morning. I think she knew it was an accident, but her love of freedom and being her own Dog wouldn’t allow an immediate reconciliation. Damn it! Neither of us needed that.

The Forest Lovers. Drawing this card made me see that as I’ve wondered and as Tom suggested yesterday the wu wei here, the flow of the chi, may entail letting her stay outside at night.

I need to get an assessment of how much danger Natalie believes Shadow is in at night. From Mountain Lions. I believe the threat is low, but the consequence of being wrong is catastrophic.

We are yin and yang. I need her feminine energy in my life and she needs my masculine energy. Together we can bring out parts of ourselves that would lay dormant otherwise. The most confounding experience I’ve ever had with a Dog.

 

Life insights: A family of teachers. Mom. Mary. Mark. Several cousins. I’ve often wondered why I didn’t become a teacher, too. When graduate school slipped out of the picture, I never pursued teaching again.

Except. As an organizer, it was my job to teach people how to live into their power. When unemployment had reached crisis levels in 1988 Minnesota, I along with others recruited church leaders, union activists, and unemployed people across the work spectrum.

Once in a room together, with an 18 month old Joseph on my hip, I drew from them their anguish, their anger and frustration. This was the fuel for them to come together against a common foe: an unfair labor market.

Once we identified those emotions, we moved to  using our various strengths. The moral power of the church. The organizing power of the unions. And the willingness to put it all on the line of the unemployed.

The Jobs Now Coalition came into existence. Together we convinced the Minnesota Legislature to pass M.E.E.D. The Minnesota Emergency Employment act which funded half of a new hires pay for their first six months.

It still exists:  Jobs Now Coalition.

 

Dogs, Greenhouse, New Apostolic Reformation, Politics, US History

The Seven Mountain Mandate

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Summer and the Greenhouse Moon II

Sunday gratefuls: Ginny and Janice. Annie and Luna. Tomato Plants. Squash Plants. Compost. Planting again. Today. Greenhouse 90% done. Indoor bed ready to go. Shadow. Outside again. Wu wei. Back and leg pain. Labrum tear. Potential fixes. Nathan and Dakota. Dakota’s recovery. Vince and Preston. Mowing.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Tomato Plants in Artemis

Week Kavannah:  Wu Wei. Work with the chi.

One brief shining: Yesterday I laid my dibble, ruler, and hori hori knife on the shelf inside Artemis, touched the green Leaves of the Tomato Plants and the Squash plants, began the transition from Nathan’s construction project to my greenhouse and I felt an odd, but familiar calm settle over me.

 

Artemis: Nathan took a couple of hours from watching Dakota, who returned home from the vets without surgery needed, and put compost in the greenhouse bed. He also brought six Tomato Plants and two Squash Plants grown in the greenhouse he finished before mine. I’m excited about planting them today after the Ancient Brothers.

We also discussed the Deer and Elk protection, which he had forgotten. He will use black mesh fencing material and build a wide door on each raised bed. The outside beds need this protection. They also have a roof extension over them for hail protection. One hail storm can destroy a garden up here.

Artemis has begun to feel alive, a place for growth and love. I’ve missed having my hands in the Soil, taking care of Plants, eating produce fresh from the garden.

Shadow also has an interest in Artemis. She’s dug a bit in the Cedar chips that cover the floor. Likes the smell I imagine.

 

Dog journal: Shadow continues her outdoor ways. Sleeping near my bedroom window right on the ground. Last night, as other nights of late, she found things to warn off her property. Meaning she was the one breaking the silence of  Shadow Mountain. Embarrassing.

Natalie and I have two objectives: the leash and Shadow inside when it’s dark outside.

 

New Apostolic Reformation: You’ve probably not heard of the Seven Mountain Mandate. Yet in tandem with Cindy Jacob’s new interpretation of “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations…” it provides a deep rationale for Christian Nationalism.

The idea popularized by Lance Wallnau says to conquer and rule nations Christians (read: charismatic Christians of the New Apostolic Reformation) must rise to the top of the seven mountains of culture:

Only the religion mountain requires a spiritual leader. Wallnau explains this idea with the government mountain. From an Isaiah passage about the anointing of Cyrus-a Persian ruler who freed the Jews from their Babylonian captivity-Wallnau proposed that Donald Trump had received a Cyrus Anointing. That is, though not a Christian or even a moral man, as Cyrus was neither a Jew nor a righteous man according to Jewish law, Trump could/would free Christians from their captivity to the forces of Satan.

The Jacobs’ idea of discipling nations and the need for Christians to rise to the top of the seven mountains of culture in each nation makes for a politicization of all the mountains. The Cyrus Anointing brought most New Apostolic Reformation types quickly into the 2016 campaign on Trump’s side.

This is a quick summary. More on this later.