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  • Faith

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter and the Winter Solstice Moon

    Wednesday gratefuls: Marilyn and Irv. Tara. The dark. Gradualism. Getting things done, slowly. Surrender. Emunah. Faith. The Jewish Way. Mussar. Torah. Shabbat. Holidays. Zen. Taoism. Easy Entrees. Kavanah for 2025. Choosing a way forward. Including surrender. On signs and portents. Trash day delay. Mark, mail carrier. Ana and Lita, housecleaners. Vince, handyman and Snow plower. Helping me live independently.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Surrender

    One brief shining: Opening my arms and leaning back, letting 2025 come at me with all its got while I smile and wait knowing this next year is the one I’ve been waiting for, the one when magical and miraculous things will happen, when love will be the only thing left, when I will once again live as I’m meant to with human and wild, life and death, intellect and ignorance.

     

    I could explain it with cognitive bias. Or whatever it’s called when you have something front of mind and you keep seeing references to it in newspapers, books, hear it come into conversation, happen upon a magazine article that features it. But I won’t.  Let me give an example. Long ago I bought an Anne Rice book featuring angels. This maven of the vampire world decided to write a book about goodness instead of evil, I guess. I liked Lestat and the Mayfair witches so I’d give it a go. It was on my Kindle and I never got around to it.

    This week I picked it up. It has, in the beginning, a heavily Roman Catholic emphasis and if you know Anne Rice that won’t surprise you. What surprised me was the main story line about Jews in thirteenth century England. It would have been a curiosity to me when I bought the book, now it has existential meaning. This is not a great book by any means, though an offhand comment by Fluria, a bright and capable Jewish woman, struck me. She spoke about Jews in Oxford being harassed, their homes burned, “It spreads like a plague,” she said, worrying about her community in Norwich. Oh, just like Israel v. Hamas affects Jewish life in the U.S.

    My inner life has taken a new direction and my mind reinforces it whenever it can. Yes. But why did I pick up the book now? Why did my decision to convert coincide with the Israel Hamas tragedy? I chose emunah, faith, as my mussar evening long before I chose to convert. Now it challenges me, as I wanted it to, in a way much different to what I intended. How did it happen that I would have a bar mitzvah?

    I’m choosing to surrender to the notion that cognitive bias works in mysterious ways its wonders to perform. That my new, dare I call it faith, in a Jewish life comforts and supports me, gives me confidence that my life will grow in purpose and love. That’s what my conversion meant. For me, Judaism evokes faith in a grounded experience, one rooted in the soil of Mother Earth and in the souls of my sacred community, nourished by compost from a rich and varied tradition.

     

     

     

     

     


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  • A Bar Mitzvah Boy!

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter and the Winter Solstice Moon

    Friday gratefuls: The brit of Mt. Sinai. Of Abraham. Of Noah. Torah. Midrash. Emunah. Clouds. Mussar. This Jewish journey. Wandering with the diaspora. Rabbi Jamie. Bar Mitzvah. June 12! Shavuot. The Winter Solstice. The Fire last night. Orion and the three quarter Winter Solstice Moon. Jupiter. Darkness. Immanence. Our journey as Earthlings. All my wild fellow Earthlings. And the Earth herself, the Shekinah to Great Sol’s power.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Gabriella, my adopted axolotl

    One brief shining: Put on my kippah and walked up the sidewalk to the synagogue where Rabbi Jamie let me in (everybody has to be let in thanks to anti-semitism), he looked at my kippah, pointed at his, “We have the same hat!”

     

    Yes indeed. A bar mitzvah boy! On June 12th, the holiday of Shavuot, I will read from the Torah with Veronica, Kat, and maybe Lauren. Finally coming of age. Shavuot celebrates the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai, the making of the Sinai covenant with all Jews of all time. We stood at Mt. Sinai, we stand at Mt. Sinai, we will stand at Mt. Sinai. We will all honor that mystical moment and be honored in return as children/adults of the covenant.

    Moving sorta fast into the whole megillah. This is an adult Brit Mitzvah.* Often for those who did not have a bar/bat mitzvah when they were young, it’s also a way for converts to have the full experience of a Jewish life cycle. I’m excited to deepen my Jewish learning and to expand my circle of friends at Beth Evergreen.

    If you read this and want to come, I’ll post details here later about the day of. For insight into this rite of passage you might want to watch the Adam Sandler film, You’re So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah! on Netflix. It’s funny.

     

    We now have exhausted all the big holidays but two: Christmas and New Years. Holimonth has worked its magic on all of us whether we wanted it to or not. We’ve seen the lights. Lit the candles. Heard the songs. Tasted a cookie or two. Smiled at children excited. We’ve had a quiet moment or two wondering again whether all this bother is worth it, does it really mean anything?

    I come down on the side of yes, oh yes indeed. It’s worth it and it has deep meaning. Maybe not the ones visible on the surface of the Santa Claus gauze thrown over this family holiday called Christmas. Maybe not the story of the brave Maccabees recapturing the Second Temple. Maybe not the story of light returning triumphant on the darkest night of the year.

    Here are meanings I find in Holimonth. We ache for sweetness and love in our lives, for the light of others. We want to share ourselves with family and friends, have them share with us. Sometimes that’s hard to do without prompts. Like Jingle Bells. Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel. A Christmas tree. Services at the synagogue or church or living room or bar. Reasons to get together, clasp hands, hug. Be merry. Kwanza. New Year’s eve parties. We come together to see the sacred beings in our lives and to be seen as the sacred, unique being we are. These are learnings we can use later in the year during what the Catholics charmingly call Ordinary Time.

    No such thing to me. It’s all sacred time, but I get what they mean. We can’t be on this high all year. Too exhausting.

    So party like the climate is changing, like we’ll see each other next year in Jerusalem, like we’re all the only ones of our kind ever.

    *KAVANNAH [intention]

    The adult bar/bat mitzvah phenomenon is a recent and inspiring trend in American Jewish life.  Since every Jewish adult is regarded by halacha (traditional Jewish law) as a bar/bat mitzvah when they come of age (12 for girls, 13 for boys), the adult bar/bat mitzvah rite of passage is completely volitional.  Those who feel compelled to prepare for a Bat/Bat or Brit Mitzvah as an adult do it by choice, and for a great variety of reasons.  Given the diversity of kavannot (intentions), the program at CBE strives for enough structure to be both formal and flexible — formal enough to facilitate the invaluable dynamics of a group working together, towards shared goals while rooted in tradition, and flexible to accommodate different dispositions, intentions and expectations. Congregation Beth Evergreen


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  • Surrender Charlie

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain and the Winter Solstice Moon

    Wednesday gratefuls: Heidi. The Dragonfly Sign. Colorado Supreme Court. Psilocybin. Nahuatl Gods and Mayan hieroglyphics. Surrender. Irv. Rider. Mt. Logan. Crooked Top Mountain. The Grandfather Tree. Park County 43. Buggy Whip Road. Hangman’s Road. Washington County Maine. Climate change. Shadow Mountain. The Rockies. The Front Range. Alan. Bastien’s Steak House. The Winter Solstice. Holimonth.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Colorado Supreme Court

    One brief shining: A cloth with Native American colors marking the four directions, circular, laid on it cut white Roses, small Pine Tree Branches, red Roses, Cinnamon, Coffee beans, Star Anise, Aspen Leaves arranged for a Peruvian gratitude ceremony in which I picked up a small Branch of Pine Needles, inhaled its essence three times and exhaled my love and gratitude before placing the needles gently in the center.

     

    OK, nation! See Colorado go. I loved living in Minnesota and in the Twin Cities for forty years. The North Woods. Wolves. Lake Superior. So many Lakes. Liberal to radical politics. Not perfect, no. Witness George Floyd. But no place is. And Minnesota seemed as close as they come while I lived there. Then Kate and I moved to Shadow Mountain.

    As the Dead said: What a long, strange trip it’s been. Many of you know my story over the now 9 years exactly since my buddy Tom and I drove straight through from the Twin Cities with Kepler, Vega, and Rigel in the back. And, yes, that story has its definite peaks and valleys. But that’s not my reference here.

    No where else in the country, this divided and often pitiful land of ours, could I have had a legal psychedelic journey on Crooked Top Mountain then come home to Shadow Mountain and read the wonderful news that the Colorado Supreme Court had called a crook a crook, an insurrectionist an insurrectionist and kicked Trump off our ballot. I mean, whoa! What a day.

    I shifted my inner identification a few years back from Minnesotan to Coloradan, my Mountain home become just that. Home. Yes, we elected a gay Governor. How bout that. And of course the wild Neighbors and the Mountain Streams and the Black Bears. The Snow and the spectacular Autumns with gold and green. Over the time I’ve lived here Colorado has shifted from red to blue. Not without some Western weirdness along the way, but that makes it interesting. All that’s true.

    But in one day to take a psilocybin journey with a good friend on property so evocative of a sixties commune and then learn we Coloradans had taken a firm stand, saying what all clear eyed non Trump bedazzled folks already know but somehow cannot communicate, that insurrectionists should not, in fact,cannot hold office. Well, I’m busting with state pride right now. Colorado is the California of the new Millennia. OK. Enough local chauvinism. Still, pretty damned cool. Gives this aging radical a boost.

     

    Short note on the psilocybin journey about which more later. Ate the mushroom after the gratitude ceremony. Mixed with a little lemon juice supposed to make it come on quicker and go sooner. Sat outside in the glass enclosed shelter where we held the gratitude ceremony, the others going inside. Watched the curved Snowy Bowl of Mt. Logan as my inner weather shifted under the power of the mushroom.

    Went inside and lay down on a heated pad. Soon Nahuatl Gods and Mayan hieroglyphics began to move across the ceiling. Sometimes two dimensional sometimes three almost down to my face. I love hallucinations. So fun. I told my guide I might be under utilizing the experience; it was so entertaining.

    Turned out no. I hadn’t. I had two intentions going in, the one I wrote about yesterday, how to live fully, and the second to continue my exploration of the sacred.

    During some brief conversation after being asked if we had any insights I said, yes, I had one. In living more fully I’ve pushed, thought about things to do, about acting in my life to live more fully. Answering Shakespeare, I have always chosen to take up arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them. Now I need to learn surrender.

    To live fully I need to open up, accept what’s coming. Greet the new year with arms spread wide for what it brings rather than what I can make happen. Well, not rather than. I mean, I’ll still take up arms, of course I will, but I learned yesterday that I have another option. To embrace, to wait, to listen, to let the world and its wonders come to me. As the Wicked Witch of the West might say, “Surrender, Charlie!”

     

     


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  • Traveling

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain and the Winter Solstice Moon

    Tuesday gratefuls: Shrooms. Heidi. Irv. Psychedelics. Colorado. The West. Wolves and ranchers. Mountain Lions and Bears, oh my. The Rockies. Shadow Mountain. The Atlantic. Washington County Maine. Lake Superior. The North Woods. Wolves and Moose there always. The Wolf exhibit by Ode in Ely. Ely. The Boundary Waters. Voyageurs. Mt. Blue Sky. Grass along the shoulder of the road. The road itself. Cars. Bikes. Feet. Buses. Subways. Light rail. Heavy rail. You who read this.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Psilocybin

    One brief shining: A certain coolness headed toward warmth, humidity rising and the dawn approaching, another new life redolent of travel those early mornings getting out the door to the yellow taxi cab, the ride to the airport, that buzz of anticipation making all my senses quiver with quiet joy.

     

     

    Going on a trip today. Traveling to the inner reaches of my mind. And heart. The whole lev. Psilocybin. With a friend and his daughter. In Bailey, the Platte River Valley. Turn right at the Dragonfly sign she says. Bring a pillow, a blanket, a water bottle, snacks, and a journal. I’m ready. And, it does have the same feeling, oddly, of going on a trip.

    A little bit anticipatory last night. Not anxious. Not calm either. First time with a guide. She’s a Ph.D. psychologist and a remarkable woman. Went skydiving to celebrate her 50th. Her parents are both good friends so I feel very comfortable with her.

    Judaism emphasizes kavanah, intention, when engaged in prayer or action. I’ve been considering why I am doing this. The reason is simple. I’ve done mushrooms several times, as recently as this summer, but I’ve never done any psychedelic with a guide. After reading Michael Pollan’s book How to Change Your Mind, I decided I wanted to try that, too. That’s why.

    But. What do I want to focus on, consider? Right now I’m at living life fully. However. I feel I’m doing that. Maybe not, though? Or, maybe I could go in a different direction or emphasize something more? What could I be leaving out of my life? A relationship? More travel? What else could I choose?

    The more I mull this on the page, right here in real time the more I like this question. I have no need for career motivation or advice, nothing to prove. I love my life as it is yet I’m willing to enhance it. Excited to do it.

    Unless I change my mind on the drive to Bailey. That’s it. Living life fully.

     

    Yesterday Luke came to take Leo home. Luke comes in without knocking now and I like that. Makes him and me feel more like family. We love each other, all three of us. Nice to have that relationship with a guy Luke’s age. Could be my son from another mother.

    Great Sol has stayed in place while Shadow Mountain whirled around to our location in the Solar System where he can see us. Light breaks on Lodgepole Branches, on Black Mountain, on the milky blue Sky.

     

     


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  • A Use for God?

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain and the Winter Solstice Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: Images. The eye and its mysteries. Our stories, the Ancient Brothers. Evoked by photographs: Orion, a candle, the symbol of the Tao, a leafless tree in winter with a sun on the horizon. Christmas Cactus. A light, fun drama. Alan as an assistant director. Cheri the salsa dancer. Leo, a true garbage hound. Luke in Granby with Tal and friends. Rabbi Jamie and Laura yesterday. Going on a mushroom journey on Tuesday. A celebratory steak dinner at Bastiens. Wednesday. Thanks, Alan. Reading now about covenant. All day today.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Alan

    One brief shining: Found the strip mall, found suite J, the Wheatridge Theater Company, delivered my phone as ticket, found a seat next to Alan and Cheri, a three sided stage with three sided seating, a woman next to Alan working the lights in a black curtained space, and settled in for the entertaining story of Christmas Cactus, the detective.

     

    On my heart this morning. A new vision, new eyes. Opened to a different wavelength, the band of sacredness. Since the drive the other day when the sacred pulse along the road began to insist, I have had my sensibility shifted. Not all the time, but much of the time. That tree, the Aspen there with its gray bark, its leafless Branches, its sturdy Trunk, and the roots below say to me: yes, I grow here, am here, one piece of this Forest whole. But not in words. The Lodgepole just out my window. Its curved Branches salute Great Sol as they soak up fusion energy, life giving energy. Their humility, their prayerfulness. I feel glad.

    Where these new eyes to see what I’m looking at have come from I don’t know. I can only report that I have them. Sleeping Leo gives me a swelling heart as he is the Dog, Leo, but also all Dogs, all animals.

    I hear the heat pump working, drawing what heat there is in the 35 degree weather into my house. Warming me. A marvel. Awesome. Sacred. Think of the water vapor also invisible, also in the air. When a cloud forms, the invisible water vapor becomes visible. Ah, we say. Water. But only a fraction of the story. Why? Because the water vapor is there right now, all around you, around that Aspen and that Lodgepole. The cloud functions as a reminder, a natural heuristic device.

    “See” the water vapor. Know it’s there. This is the same experience I’m having with the sacred right now. I can see it where before it was invisible to me. Perhaps I’m meant to be a cloud, a natural heuristic device.

    Different tact. Same vein. God. Does that word, that idea add anything to this experience. My inclination is no. In fact perhaps the word God with all its linguistic and historical baggage obscures rather than unveils. Yes. My immediate, knee jerk response after many years of abdicating myself from God language.

    However. As a word that might denote the totality of this experience, of seeing, being enveloped by, the sacred? There might be some purpose there. Not finished with this. Not at all.

     


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  • I Could Have Said, Hallelujah

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain and the Winter Solstice Moon

    Saturday gratefuls: Word to Deed. Rabbi Jamie. The dark of a Mountain Winter morning. Good sleeping. Darkness and Fog. Obscurants. Leo. Here again. Luke. Tal. Sofers. Scribes for Torah scrolls, ketubahs, and mezuzah scrolls. Evenings out. Alan. His BMW. Dispatched from the factory. Not yet at the port. Kabbalah. Talmud. Midrash. Faith and its cultured despisers. Including me? Learning. Bread Lounge. French Sourdough. A Cuban.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Christmas Cactus, Alan as assistant director

    One brief shining: The Bread Lounge inhabits a second floor space over Nelly’s General Store in a small upscale shopping center in Evergreen and is at least for now the place to go filled all the time with young lovelies, retirees, the occasional tourist, and the friendly cash register lady who asked Alan and I yesterday morning, “What are you two fine gentlemen up to this morning?”

     

    You know you’re a regular when the cashier not only greets you but on occasion gives you the military discount just because she wants to. Or a waitress leans out from the kitchen, “Hi, Charlie!” Or when the Sugar Jones folks put together a box of 8 creme brulee truffles just for you because they’re selling out their Christmas orders and want to be sure you have your weekly fix.

    My address says Conifer but I spend much more time in Evergreen. CBE is in Evergreen and many of my friends. Though. My precinct is actually an Evergreen precinct. I live between Evergreen and Conifer, a bit closer to Conifer but not that far from Evergreen either.

    As a small town boy, I find these sorts of interactions grounding. I’m known. Not well, but as a person who belongs here. That was the way of life in Alexandria, Indiana as I grew up. Many folks knew who you were, well enough to greet you on the street or in a restaurant or shop. Those greetings said, yes, I know you and I know you know me. The relational glue that made a small town function.

    We also knew when Art got caught again playing poker in the backroom while on duty as an Alexandria policeman. When a local teacher got caught stealing a cup of quarters at a casino in southern Indiana. Who died. Who had a wreck. Who was sick. Who got pregnant with no husband. But we also knew who the father was. Small town life had its definite pluses and minuses, especially in the golddust covered years of the late 50’s and early 60’s.

    Plus or minus my 76 year old person still responds with warmth to situations that remind me of days spent at Bailey’s Drug Store or the Bakery or at the County Fair. 12 years of education with the same kids. Paper routes on the same streets. All those stories involving the same people. A real place, a real there there.

    I want to be clear. These are not conscious triggers. Rather, they are subtle, below awareness until they begin to mount up, hit a critical mass. And I realize, oh, I feel comfortable here. Part of not apart from.

    Had a related feeling yesterday as I drove to Evergreen. Driving through the Arapaho National Forest, familiar with the curves, the houses, the terrain up and down. The sacred began to be visible. Those Lodgepoles growing in the rocky crevices, life powerful and insistent. The wavy brown stalks of Grass covering a Meadow like a beard on a face. The Red Osier Dogwood and the Willow Trees outlining the Mountain Stream from which they drink. Those two Mule Deer crossing the road in front of me. All sacred, all part of the one. Suppose I could have said, hallelujah.


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  • Neverending Story

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain and the Winter Solstice Moon

    Thursday gratefuls: Marilyn and Irv. Good friends. Tom, always a good conversation. My son and compartment syndrome, the bloody treatment. Seoah shooting a 90 at screen golf. My son an 85. Two athletes. Plus Murdoch. Hamas. Israel. Palestine. The diaspora. The Joseph story. The Jacob/Israel story. The Abraham story. Bereshit, Genesis. Beginnings. Ganesha. Krishna. Vishnu. Shiva. Snow plows and their drivers. My mail carrier, Mark.

    (N.B. I capitalize words associated with what I consider the living world, a practice of honor I picked up from the Potawatomi in Braiding Sweet Grass. [except for humans] Also, I include in my gratefuls the dark as well as the light since both make up our whole life and contain a seed of holiness. I learn this from the sacred nature of reality as One. It does not mean that I love, say, Hamas.)

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Breakfast with Marilyn and Irv

    One brief shining: At Primo’s Cafe I scooched between a diner’s chair and a giant Santa, right hand raised in what I imagine is a greeting gesture though it looks more like he’s waving to other outsized folks like Johnny Inkslinger, Paul Bunyan, Babe the Blue Ox, or perhaps very large Reindeer, a Rudolf with a nose the size of a softball.

     

    Conversations. Tom. Marilyn and Irv. Diane. Alan and Joan. Luke. My life requires time alone the most, yet it also requires conversation, connection, the intimacy of knowing and being known. Yours too I’ll bet. The second one, I mean. Most don’t need as much alone time as I do.

    I’m lucky enough to have regular folks to meet over eggs, potatoes, and bacon in the breakfast spots available here in the Mountains. And others I meet in the cloud, that mysterious realm just on the other side of my computer screen that contains people I know. Like Tom and my cousin Diane, my Ancient Brothers: Paul, Mark, Tom, Bill. The Thursday mussar group. A blend of the cloud and IRL.

    Judaism contains its own cloud. What Christians often called that great cloud of witnesses, referring to the dead. In Judaism the Rabbis speak over the ages through the Talmud, the Midrash, and the stories of their lives.  The rituals and traditions of Jewish life, the Torah, the Kabbalah, even the blood of the ancestors carry their own message. As well as the history of the Jewish people. That great cloud of witnesses places my temporary life in a broader and longer context. Comforting and challenging.

    Each book I pick up becomes a dialogue between the author and me, between the story and me. In this way my life might be said to be a constant conversation with interlocutors living and dead.

    Then there is the world of my wild neighbors and the planets, Great Sol, and other galaxies. A conversation exists between that very young Mule Deer Doe that comes to eat grass in my yard and me. She looks at me through the window with gentle, puzzled eyes. Among those three Mule Deer Bucks who welcomed me here. That Elk Bull watching from the side of the road in the rainy night. Black Mountain and its changes. The running Streams and the Arapaho National Forest. Crows, Ravens, Magpies. The Snow as it marches across Mt. Blue Sky to Shadow Mountain.

    A neverending story you might say.

     


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  • All We Can Absorb, Hear

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain and the Winter Solstice Moon

    Tuesday gratefuls: Phonak. Aimee. Mile High Hearing. Good workout. Luke and Leo. Leo’s food. Zornberg. Joseph and his brothers. The seven fat years and the seven lean years. Not-being. Catastrophe and hope. Parsha. Hanukah, night 5. Jeffco Snow plows. Trash pickup people. Mail carriers. Schoolbus drivers. Essential Mountain services. Dangerous jobs. Mountain Nights. Clear, clean, cold. A new moon. Pipe Creek. A Desert Eagle in Saudi Arabia. That Monitor Lizard in K.L.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Hearing

    One brief shining: In the dark of tomorrow night the Geminids will appear, motes of dust flying through thick atmosphere, heating up, becoming meteorites, flashing across the sky in the universe primeval language of formation and destruction a reminder message to us all that our lives, our planet, our Great Sol will all burn out on some other starry night.

     

    Hearing test next month. I suspect my hearing has declined. Missing things in conversations, can’t understand Gabe when he’s in the passenger seat and I’m driving. The Phonak gives me a relatively normal hearing experience, as good as I can get I imagine with only one good ear and that one on the wane. Even so. When I take out my hearing aid now, the world around me quiets way down. Good for reading, sleeping. Not so good if I forget to put in my hearing aid.

    Jeff Glantz, of blessed memory, and I talked only once before his sudden death. He told me Long Island was a hundred miles long. That’s long. Not the point here though. Jeff’s hearing aid dangled out of his ear. Ever since that conversation I’ve been aware that the only thing we old folks need to look demented is our hearing aid dangling out of our ear.

    Do we accept the changes of age or rail against them like Dylan wanted his father to do? Rage, rage, rage against the dying of the light. Or, perhaps the dying out of sound? There is a third option, the one I choose. Know the changes, do what you can to ameliorate them, accept what you can’t. Applies to hearing, sight, cancer, sarcopenia in my case.

     

    The chaotic chatter of our time has grown, to continue from the above, deafening. Perhaps that’s what going on with my hearing. My brain no longer wants to absorb thoughts about a second Trump term (I can’t call it a presidency because, well…). About A23a floating its way toward South Georgia Island bearing 1 trillion tons of ice formerly resident in Antarctica. About the Israeli Defense Force bombing, shelling, shooting persons and buildings in the Gaza strip. About the Chinese wanting to wreak havoc with our infrastructure through cyber warfare. About Ukraine’s failed offensive. About the dysfunction of the House of Representatives and the Senate. About the many trials of the Orange one. About sexual abuse in women’s soccer and gymnastics.

    Here’s what I want. A visit to the Rothko show in Paris. Rothko and me. Except, crowds and Covid. A midrashic hermeneutic for the Torah study group I’m starting. Breakfast at Primo’s tomorrow and at Aspen Perk’s on Friday. Marilyn and Irv, then Tara. Zoom time with Tom and Diane. My son and Seoah. More Snow for Shadow Mountain. Calm days for Ruth and Gabe. A gentle Winter with Snow and cold, flocked Lodgepoles and that very young Doe eating Grass in my front yesterday. Yet more books. Some good movies and TV. Quiet sabbaths unless filled with family and friends. Then noisy and upbeat.

    Happy Hanukah!


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  • Call Me When You Get It

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain and the Choice Moon

    Friday gratefuls: Good sleep. Laying around. Hanukah. Lighting my first candles as a Jew. Toba Spitzer. Mordecai Kaplan. Metaphor. God is Here. Mussar. Holimonth. Advent. Posada. The darkness. My inner Shadow Mountain. Tara’s cute new puppy. Kippur. Leo. Kepler of blessed memory. Rigel of blessed memory. Kate of blessed memory. A pinch of dysthymia. Oversleeping. Winds knocking over my trash can. Weather on the way. Cold and Snow. Rich. Diane. Tom. My son and Seoah and Murdoch.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Leo

    One brief shining: The cloud as metaphor sitting in Evergreen, Colorado, talking to Rabbi Toba Spitzer in Newton, Massachusetts, while others dotted the screen from Lakewood, Georgetown, Conifer who was the live audience, us around the table in Beth Evergreen or the individuals in the cloud, or were we all simply in the Cloud alive to ourselves but bits and bytes elsewhere? The multiparity?

     

    Not sure what’s going on with me right now, but I’ve slept in a lot this week. Over two hours this morning. Post-conversion dysthymia? That old melancholy coming up the chimney from its shack on my inner Shadow Mountain? Have felt slightly off for a few days. Negative thoughts showing up, not staying, not affecting my mood for long. Thanks to the how do I feel exercise Tal taught us. Yet they keep returning and oversleeping usually means a disturbance in the inner world.

     

    When I drove back from p.t. yesterday though. Mary discharged me. Good work on the back and I now have the exercise tools to manage it, know when to ask for help if it flares again. Prior to seeing Mary we had the Zoom which included Rabbi Toba Spitzer answering questions about her book, God is Here. Loved her. A great mind working at the frontiers of religious thought.

    Coming back up Brook Forest Drive I felt good. Reminded myself that people, people are good. I need people on line and in person regularly. Patted myself on the back for attending mussar, seeing Mary. Having meaningful connections in both places. Told Mary when she said something about her boyfriend that he was lucky, somebody out there needed her in their life, glad to know she’d found someone.

     

    Janet and I had an interesting post-mussar conversation. She said the only way to find God is through meditation. She’s a Jewbu. A Jewish Buddhist. And a very bright lady.

    Well, god is a universal idea so how can you be sure if the one you find in meditation is the One? Don’t we need each other for that sort of connection? She agreed we need the sangha, the synagogue.

     

    I don’t think the only way to connect with the sacred is to go in. As most of you know. Though it’s a sound way. I find the sacred right out there on the surface of things. The Lodgepole. Janet. Black Mountain. Mary. Leo. Electricity. Computers. Darkness. Daytime.

    Rich and I had a disagreement about this on Wednesday night. He wanted to preserve the particularity of Judaism, that its holy places in Israel, for example, were special. I asked him what Judaism points to.

    I agree with his appreciation and love for the particularities of Judaism, its holy places, rituals, people. Otherwise I would not have converted. Yet. I also want to preserve the idea that we do not need the rock on which Abraham would have sacrificed Isaac, or the Western Wall, or Mt. Sinai, or even the Torah to find our way to the sacred, to recognize our inescapable linkage to and with it.

    Here’s a poem that Tom offered this morning that says what I’m saying. By David Budbill

     

    The Three Goals
    The first goal is to see the thing in itself
    in and for itself, to see it simply and clearly
    for what it is.
    No symbolism, please.

    The second goal is to see each individual thing
    as unified, as one, with all the other
    ten thousand things.
    In this regard, a little wine helps a lot.

    The third goal is to grasp the first and the second goals,
    to see the universal in the particular,
    simultaneously.
    Regarding this one, call me when you get it.

     

     


    Feelings Fourth Phase Friends Judaism Mussar Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Reimaging revelation

  • Keep the Sabbath

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain and the Choice Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: A full sabbath observance. Finishing another novel. Reading this week’s parsha. Starting Zornberg. Breakfast with Ginny and Janice. The service on Friday night. Joan and Rich. Did not do a havdalah service, but went through that time with my observance. Still much to learn about the sabbath. On a ritual and on a how do I make it work for me basis. Holimonth in full. Lights on many trees and houses along Black Mountain Drive/Brook Forest.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Christmas Lights

    One brief shining: Looked up at the blackboard at Aspen Perks and saw breakfast quesadilla, ordered it, it delighted me when it came since it had crispy bacon bits in addition to the sausage and cheese, an oh my cardiologist would not approve breakfast though to be fair Dr. Rubenstein did say keep doing what you’re doing, so.

     

    You might think observing the sabbath is only related to my joining the tribe, but that’s not true. Like the South American siesta which I also observed up until recently, at least the nap part, I always thought a day of rest, a day to enter sacred time, was a great way to push back against consumerist/careerist American culture. Just never quite got over the hump of a regular ritual, maybe I had too little information, maybe I was stuck in our gotta work, gotta get something done milieu.

    That mikvah water though. Getting serious about Judaism. The push I needed. I plan to be like Tom’s former corporate lawyer, available 24/6. Well, maybe 12/6. Oh, it doesn’t matter. I’m not on anybody’s clock anymore. Always admired Sandy Koufax who refused to pitch in a World Series game that fell on Yom Kippur. Not so much about rule following as about serious intent to me.

    Joan said on Friday that the sabbath is addictive. I know what she means. I looked forward to it this week. Starting Friday night when Veronica lit the sabbath candles. Continuing into Saturday until 5:28 pm. Had breakfast with Ginny and Janice, deciding that time with friends will be part of my sabbath. Still figuring out what will constitute the sabbath for me. Study. Reading fiction. Nice meals. Friends. Painting. Writing poetry. It will take its own shape over time.

     

    Had an odd realization when I read this week’s Torah portion. Included Joseph’s coat of many colors, his enslavement through the action of his own brothers, jail time, dream interpretation.

    When I chose the name Israel, I hadn’t thought about Jacob as Joseph’s father. I chose the name Joseph based on this story, a foreigner who went to a distant land and did well. When I picked my Hebrew name, I chose the name of Joseph’s father.

    Might reflect the miracle of the mikvah that Rabbi Jamie told me about. Once going through the immersions, you have always been a Jew. This was always coming, this choice. I was a Jew at birth in Duncan, Oklahoma. As I grew and had various moments when Jewish life intersected my own. More on this at a later time.

     

     


    Feelings Fourth Phase Friends Judaism Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.