Beltane Moon of the Summer Solstice
Drove the fifteen or so minutes to Staunton State Park yesterday. Since we moved here I’ve wanted to include regular hiking as part of my fitness routine, but I let first one thing and then another get in the way. No longer. Bought an annual state park pass. “Sir, could I ask you if you are over 65?” Saved me ten bucks. Sure. Ask away.
Debbie, the personal trainer who put together my new workout plan has suggested I alternate cardio days with resistance work. Since I’m paying her for her expertise, I’m going to go follow her suggestion. She also said hiking would be good for abductor/adductor strengthening, uneven terrain. “The Davis Pond trail at Staunton would be a place to start.”
Here are a few pictures from that very trail. I used to exercise outside a lot: Crosby Park in St. Paul, Lake George Regional Park and Rum River Regional Park in Anoka County, but the ease of the treadmill and inertia moved me away from it. Glad to be getting back. And the scenery here is amazing.
This was important because the material I had prepared focused on deeds of loving kindness toward grandmother earth. Bonnie and Tara, both fluent in biblical Hebrew, gently put me back on course when I made a mistake. Their helpfulness made me realize, just now as I’m writing this, that there is a different way of being a presenter, one that relies on others as well as on preparation. I know, obvious right? Not to me because in the Christian religious culture and even in the UU culture the clergy presents and others react. The process can be dialogical, yes, but usually involves only reactions to the ideas of the presenter.
Here are a few of the latter that I found especially moving:
Again, from Buber, “Judaism does not divide life into the holy and the profane, but into the holy and the not-yet holy.” Another scholar, a man named Finklestein, adds, “Judaism is a way of life that endeavors to transform virtually every human action into a means of communion with God.”*
Still working on how I will lead our mussar class next week. It’s been hard for me, mildly anxiety producing. First, I don’t have the depth, any really, in Jewish thought. The 
Thirdly, the whole Jewish immersion experience I’m having at Beth Evergreen is like learning a new language. I have some words and a very limited amount of grammar. I don’t want my naivete getting in the way of other’s learning.
Kate and I sponsored the oneg last night at Beth Evergreen. Oneg means delight and in this use it’s a modest event after the sabbath service. It involves the kiddush prayer over wine, the passing of challah (a ceremony not coincidentally similar to the Christian eucharist) and having some sweets or other snacks. It’s similar to coffee after a Christian or U.U. service, but different in one significant regard. The Jewish sabbath, as a day of rest and renewal has a focus on good food and general delight, so the oneg both is that ideal and reinforces the larger sabbath ethos.
Also want to include Aldo Leopold’s land ethic:
The date of the presentation happens to be Emerson’s birthday. So, from Nature: “The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship.” introduction to his essay, 
Here are some ideas about holiness from the parsha of a couple of weeks ago, Kedoshim. Leviticus 19:2b: “You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.” In commentary on Kedoshim the Conservative text* that I have quotes many famous Jewish scholars.
I say perhaps intentionally because my reimagined faith could intersect with these ideas in a positive way, especially so if the locus of the divine is the individual soul, that part of us that connects with collective unconscious, Brahma, the three Sephirot: kether, the crown, chochmah, wisdom and binah, understanding, that part of the other to which we bow when we say Namaste. Or, as I quoted Buber earlier, “Holiness is not found in rising above one’s neighbors but in relationships, in human beings recognizing the latent divinity of other people…”
Our next Sierra Club meeting will be on June 19th, one day before the summer solstice. Sierra Club work is paganism stripped bare of its mythic content. There is passion for sure, but not the poetry, no ritual, no inner work. It’s all outer work: hike, lobby, analyze, network, persuade. We may, for example, show the next Al Gore movie, Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power. See trailer below.*
Somehow I need to find a way for my inner work to imbue my outer work. Todd, a long-time member of the Mt. Evan’s local group to which I belong, talked about a hike he took yesterday in Reynold’s Park. He named a particular orchid that he found and his face lit up. “A bullsnake, too.” It may be that these folks, tied to the very local region encompassed by our borders, find their inner work in being on the trail, hiking Mt. Bierstadt, taking the Mt. Evan’s road, helping clear trail.
