Category Archives: Faith and Spirituality

Aging, Beyond the Boundaries, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Humanities, Jefferson County, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Living Consciously

September 9, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Lugnasa Harvest Moon

Two great quotes yesterday. One from our mussar group: I never saw a U-Haul trailer behind a hearse. The second from a comment on a NYT article on the meaning of life: You say No Matter, I say Never Mind.

Mussar. It’s September, the days are cooling down and years of Septembers have me getting ready to accelerate my study. This year a focus will be mussar.

Mussar is defined here by Rabbi Ira Stone, of the Mussar Leadership Program: “The most accurate translation of the word mussar into English is “discipline,” defined in all three ways we use the word in English. Mussar defines a discrete area of study, like the discipline of physics. It describes a practice, as in “it takes discipline to practice piano every day.” It also describes the act of correcting behavior, as in “you must discipline the child.””

In our study of the Way of the Just, begun yesterday at Congregation Beth Evergreen (CBE) and led by Rabbi Jamie Arnold, we talked about the purpose of life. Rabbi Jamie offered what he said was a traditional Jewish perspective: Experience happiness fully. Experience sadness fully. And in the times between be content. Works for me.

It feels good to have some anchors in Evergreen now. Our work with Bear Creek Design will introduce us to the contractors who do work for them. Kate’s study of Hebrew and our mutual study of mussar has begun to open up relationships at CBE for CBE. This means Evergreen is no longer a destination only for restaurants and shopping, but also for community.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Memories, Minnesota, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., US History

A Fellow Wanderer

September 7, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Lugnasa Harvest Moon

Caspar David Friedrich Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (1818) — Caspar David Friedrich
Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (1818)

Fellow traveler. Back when America was great, like the 1950’s or sometime, fellow traveler was an epithet that indicated a person with sympathies for the communists. To be a fellow traveler meant shared understandings if not complete agreement. The aim of communism, an egalitarian society with the basic needs of all met, is still my dream. But, how to achieve it is as muddy to me now as it has been all my political life. True: I voted for Gus Hall for President in several elections.

There is, though, another sense to this term. A fellow traveler can also be one who is with, but not of, a particular group or thought-world. It occurred to me this morning that being a fellow traveler is an important part of my life.

This may be a deep flaw, but it is and has been an ancientrail on which I have walked often in my life. Let me explain. The most salient example right now is my involvement with Congregation Beth Evergreen, or CBE as they often shorten it. Being a fellow traveler with Jews and Judaism has been a consistent thread in my life since early college. That is, I admire Judaism as a culture and have found many friends among observant and non-observant Jews-not to mention a wife. Jews tend to approach the world as curious, skeptical, engaged people, people embedded in history and tradition. That worldview has appealed to me since my first anthropology assignment took to me a synagogue in Muncie, Indiana.

Maurice Denis Jacob Wrestling with the Angel — Maurice Denis
Jacob Wrestling with the Angel

Kate’s a converted Jew and feels herself part of this ancient tribe. I do not. But Judaism continues to speak to me in its ethics, its ability to withstand constant suffering and abuse, its tribalism and in its ritual and spiritual practices. I am gradually becoming in, but not of, Beth Evergreen.

Even in seminary, I felt more like a fellow traveler with Christianity. Though I did immerse myself in the Christian tradition and its beliefs, its intellectual and cultural practices, its political message was more important to me than its metaphysics. Let justice roll down like an everflowing stream. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Suffer the children to come unto me. What you do to the least of these, you do to me.

I tried to merge my political passion with a religious sensibility, but in the end it became clear that I had got the stick wrong end round. Political purpose preceded religious conviction. Within any religious way that’s backwards. As a result, over time I became more of a fellow traveler with my colleagues and friends in the Presbyterian Church than a true believer. Throughout my ministry after ordination in 1976 I felt in, but not of, the church. Eventually, the tension between my purpose and the church’s purpose became too strained and the link between the two broke.

Politically I feel and have felt in, but not of, mainstream American politics. That is, political action has been another key ancientrail in my life, but I’ve had to engage it from a stance left of even the further edges of liberalism.

There are other examples, but you see the point. It is my habit to be with groups, but not of them. This is the deep flaw I referred to above. That same curious, skeptical, engaged, embedded in history (but not tradition) fellow feeling I have with Judaism keeps me just to the side of certainty, a seeker with little probability of arriving at his goal. By this point in my life I find this outsider role familiar and, for the most part, comfortable. But I wonder what it would be like to enter the world of the convinced, the believer? Am I missing out on an important element of life? I don’t know.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Jefferson County, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Mussar. More.

September 2, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Lugnasa New Harvest Moon

Moshe Chaim Luzzatto (ramhal) Wall painting in Acre, Israel

Yesterday in our Midday Mussar gathering we chose a book for study during the next year, The Path of the Just, “the Mesillat Yesharim an ethical (musar) text composed by the influential Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto (1707-1746).” Amazon tagline for the book.

I was in favor of using this text because Mordecai Kaplan, an early 20th century rabbi who founded the Reconstructionist Movement in Judaism, translated it in 1936. Studying his translation of this key mussar volume will help me understand the Reconstructionists as well as the spiritual practice of mussar. A twofer.

Though I have little use anymore for God (and, yes, if he/she exists, he/she may not have use for me anymore), spirituality and the search for a good and compassionate life are still critically important to me.

This mussar class is, too, something Kate and I attend together. It’s good to have a spiritual discipline, an ethical path to discuss and practice. The class itself provides us with some exposure to more mountain folk, increasing the possibility that I will eventually find a friend or two up here.

Faith and Spirituality, Jefferson County, Mountains, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain

Elevation

August 30, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Lugnasa Superior Wolf Moon

The World Is Too Much With Us

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

Sitting up here on Shadow Mountain, as I’ve said before, the world can seem far away, down the hill: lodgepole pine, aspen, mountain streams, rocky hillsides, mountain peaks, wandering elk and mule deer, bobcats and mountain lions and moose show up on Pinecam.com postings. There’s also a lot of talk about our mountain lifestyle, though I’m not sure just what that is.

In a presidential election year the world can be too much with us. Trump seems to be gaining back some purchase in the polls, but not enough to win, not even close. His candidacy has shaken and stirred Republican politics like no other in recent memory. So much so that more than one article has wondered about the death of the GOP. The constant heavy breathing from the punditocracy can make any election year seem portentous. This one actually seems to be. I’m glad to start gaining altitude when driving out of Denver.

Gaining altitude is my new equivalent to turning north. When I traveled from Minnesota by car, whenever the return journey changed direction toward Canada, toward the north woods, I would feel a certain relief, a sense of imminent homecoming. When we cross into the foothills from the end of the great plains, our Rav4’s four cylinder engine begins to work harder, as if it too is eager to get back, clawing its slightly underpowered way back to its stall.

Wordsworth and the poem above, especially these lines: “Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away…” convinced me long ago that I’m a latter day Romantic, one inclined to shrug off getting and spending for finding in nature what is ours. That’s the point of reimagining faith and I suppose you could call it a regression, a move backwards. To me it feels like a peeling away of the getting and spending layer of our third millennium lives, so we can see clearly what’s beneath, not a regression to a past framework, but a revealing of what is always.

As Wordsworth says further on:

“I’d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn…”

And so I am.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Jefferson County, Mountains, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Beau Thai. Bear Creek. Beth Evergreen.

August 26, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Lugnasa Superior Wolf Moon

Bear Creek Designs has finalized our bathroom remodel plans. They start next week and estimate 4-5 weeks total. A zero entry shower may not be strictly necessary right now, but when it is necessary, I don’t want to have figure out if we have the money to make the change. We do now.

We went over to Bear Creek in Evergreen yesterday and discussed possible shower door options, an unexpectedly complicated chore due to the small size of the bathroom. The solution, move the shower valve to the opposite wall from the shower head, seemed counter intuitive until we explored all the other options. It allows us to maintain the zero entry which was the point of the remodel. So, we chose to do it.

Afterward we ate at Beau Thai. Get it? The food is better than the pun. It’s sister restaurant is a Himalayan spot only four doors away. Tom yum and green papaya salad. Since we still had a little time, we went to our favorite small shop in Evergreen, the Village Gourmet. Among many kitchen and home related items, the Village Gourmet also has a very nice truffle shop. We got four truffles plus some dishtowels and a plate to replace one broken over the weekend.

Then to Beth Evergreen for Midday Mussar. This was the fourth of four weeks in which we looked at classic texts in this long established Jewish spiritual tradition. Once we choose a text, next week, I’ll probably write more about mussar. It’s a very pragmatic discipline and worth knowing.

A woman we met recently was at the end of a four year saga waiting for a new kidney. She had diabetic neuropathy and finally found a kidney for transplant a few weeks ago. Her explanation of the transplant’s effect on her was eloquent. “I thought I knew about gratitude, but now I know I didn’t. This gift to me from a man who checked his organ donor box is beyond explaining. I now have to consider what I will do with the rest of my life. Which I will have. I’m going to live it to be worthy of the gift I’ve received.”

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Jefferson County, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

A Ploy of the Devil?

August 19, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Lugnasa Superior Wolf Moon

A taste of fall here. 42 degrees right now and cool weather tomorrow, too. A soaking rain yesterday.

Step-son Jon took Kate and me out to Carra Viejta, a Mexican spot just off 285 at Windy Point. Kate’s birthday. Good food and good company. Jon’s in much better spirits these days as the divorce moves closer to resolution.

Kate and I drove over to Congregation Beth Evergreen yesterday for another session of mussar, led by Rabbi Jamie Arnold. Over the last three weeks we’ve been discussing possible texts to use as the basis for study over the next year. One more this next Thursday. The three texts so far are: The Palm Tree of Deborah, the Way of the Tzaddikim and the Way of the Just. These are completely unfamiliar to me, which makes them interesting.

I get surprised occasionally. Jamie said yesterday, “We’ll have to see what our ancestors saw in these texts.” Not my ancestors. It’s interesting to be in but not of the conversation, I like it. Also, when the conversation turns toward G-d, I stop internally. I have to engage in a reconfiguration of the idea. What does G-d mean to the author here? Does the idea bring anything unique to the conversation or does it serve as a placeholder for something like: This is really important; or, take this seriously, dude; or, this is the best we could do in figuring out why should we believe this; or, this idea links us to all those in our 5,000 + year history who have believed this.

My impatience with religions of revelation has not waned. Revelation, word and practices with the imprimatur of divinity, has created so much bloodshed, so much cocksure wrongheadedness, so much diminution of the other that it seems like the opposite of what it claims to be. If there were a devil, it would be a clever ploy to create texts reputedly authored by God and spiked with so much absolutism that adherents to the texts would consider themselves an exclusively correct clan.

Outside dogmatic adherence to the idea of revelation most religious traditions have also devoted a lot of thought and practice to the question of the good life. How might we live? What are behaviors that respect all of G-d’s universe? How can we navigate the often muddy waters of our inner life? This is mussar. And kabbalah. And lectio divina. And the Way of the Pilgrim. And meditation. And the four noble truths. And the Tao Te Ching. These approaches to life as we live it here and now are among the great gifts of the world religions. They distill the wisdom of generations of sophisticated and nuanced thinkers, practitioners. It feels good to be learning another one.

Aging, Asia, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Great Wheel, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase

Becoming Vishnu

July 27, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Summer Park County Fair Moon

Vishnu is the Hindu god of stability, the preserver and protector. When I look at the Hindu pantheon, my eye has always gone to Shiva, the god of creation and destruction, the whirling vibrant energy of the universe. Were I Hindu, I would be a Shaivite. But as we’ve aged, as we’ve become the members of our family and, for that matter, of our generation, at the edge of extinction, it has become clear to me that Vishnu defines us better.

When we stand, as we do, between life and death, life itself takes on a different color, a different valence. That’s not to say that we don’t always stand between life and death, life is fragile and death, in its entropic way, more natural. But as we veer past the mid-60’s, the path from birth to death has grown long and its terminus closer.

We stand, too, at the end of our ancientrail, able to look back over the days and years with gathered wisdom. At least sometimes. Shiva forces are at work in our children’s lives and especially in the lives of our grandchildren, creating careers, destroying dreams, unfolding the future. Our reach now extends into those lives as a somewhat distant, but sometimes intimate force, offering stability and protection. We have become the avatars of Vishnu.

The role is unnatural for me, having been more of a bomb thrower in my youth and in my middle-age, too. The Vaishnavite forces, always there, for we are a mix of all these fundamental powers, have gradually strengthened, gained more purchase. It’s possible, I suppose, to see Shiva as the radical, willing to take apart received wisdom, to burn institutions to the ground, to start over and over and over, and Vishnu as the conservative, or at least conservator, the solid, steady hand needed when Shiva’s work has gone too far.

The Hindu trinity of Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma, the God of origins, the creator force who lives now distant from the work of his creation, constitutes, like the Christian trinity, an expression of the one god in three manifestations. Like the Great Wheel it is a poetic, a metaphorical expression of the nature of reality. You may choose to believe that these gods are real and I wouldn’t argue the choice, but in my maturing understanding of religious belief, all the world’s religion are artistic renderings of the subtle and not-so subtle forces set in motion at the big bang. No, they are not all the same, hardly; but they are all attempts to give expression and coherence to the context of this temporary, wonderful miracle we call life.

So, it’s not surprising to me that in this third phase of my life, I find a purpose defined by a Hindu god. We arrive at this moment shaped and pulled by the paths we have chosen. Our ancietrail is now more experience than future. As Vishnu rises in our lives, that experience becomes his form, the vital energy that allows us to serve as anchor for our family, for our community, for the world we’re passing on to our children and grandchildren.

I said above that the Vishnu role is unnatural to me. Perhaps I should say that it was unnatural to the younger me. Now, it seems natural, necessary, good. The maintainer and protector.

Commentary on the news, Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Great Work, Politics, Science, US History, World History

Not Quite Yet

July 19, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Summer Park County Fair Moon

“We’re in grave danger”

“The lineup of speakers presented a United States in danger, threatened from abroad and from within, a once-proud nation on the very brink of chaos and dystopia.” NYT, GOP Convention, Day 1

My post about Mutual Homicide might give you the impression that I agree with this analysis of the immediate future. Nope. Standard and Poor’s and the DOW have both reached record highs in the last couple of days. There are signs that the climate change movement has begun to get traction. The Cubs are winning. Von Miller finally signed with the Broncos. US demographics portend an increasingly diverse nation, with contributions from many cultures strengthening our common life. We’ve just had two full terms of an African-American president and are probably near our first woman president. LGBT rights have increased as has an understanding of transgender individuals. Women have entered more and more careers, have more real power. We are not spiraling into the earth. Not yet.

My mutual homicide conclusion, a dark one, possibly too dark, comes not from the near term, but from a very long term view of the way we humans are acting. We have in place an economic system that does not account for externals, the costs to the public good of private profit seeking. This fact, by itself, is enough to explain the dire distant future I imagine. When the engines of our ingenuity (to borrow the title of an NPR feature) rely on diminishing natural resources and cost-free toxification of the air, the land and our water, then economic advance (like the records for the DOW and Standard and Poor’s) is really a blinking red light. A stop sign. But together we choose, over and over again, to run the light imagining that there is no truck marked CO2 concentration barreling through the intersection.

Can we agree to change course? In theory, yes. In practice, with the state of anarchy that exists among nation-states, it will be very difficult. We need not just one but many statesmen and stateswomen to move into leadership. And unfortunately this is not the trend around the world. No, the world has begun to move toward more and more nativist politics. The Han chinese. The Hindu nationalists. Brexit. The increasing strength of far-right parties in Europe, especially Austria, France and Germany. Donald Trump.

I know, after writing this and the mutual homicide post, that I owe you all a strategy, a path to a future where we do learn to live sustainably on our planet. I’m thinking. I’m thinking.

Commentary on the news, Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Great Work, Jefferson County, Mountains, Politics, Shadow Mountain, US History

Mutual Homicide

July 16, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Summer Park County Fair Moon

Up here on Mt. Ararat, aka Shadow Mountain, our small ark has come to rest. Or at least so it seems at times. The rising waters of hate, fear, violence, guns, neglect lap, muddy and turgid, not far below. We keep sending the dove of peace out from the ship. It quickly returns, finding nowhere to rest in a world rent by pain. Doves can read the headlines.

Under the headlines a friend faces death from lung cancer. Jon and Jen fight. The wildfire season is underway on the Front Range, a Russian roulette moment until the rains return. The Trumpet blasts ignorance and xenophobia.

Yet. The lodgepoles blanketed us with their yellow pollen. I watched bees, native and honey, crawl in and out of pale blue Penstemon. Stacked and neatly trimmed lenticular clouds form over Black Mountain, Mt. Evans. Cub Creek and Bear Creek and Deer Creek carry water stored higher in the mountains by late winter snows, feeding trout and willows along the way to the Gulf of Mexico. The mule deer and elk come to our yard for grass and other small plants, show up on Black Mountain Drive as we drive home from dinner. A great horned owl flies above the pines, hunting for prey.

All this human turmoil happens as the Great Wheel turns, as it turned long before humans emerged from the evolutionary struggle and as it will turn long after our mean spirit has scrubbed us from the planet. We may live on beyond this wonder, this earth, but our fate here seems one of mutual homicide. Could we only take the lesson of the Great Wheel and learn to live with our kind as part of rather than against each other and the natural world.

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Feelings, Friends, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase

Fraught

July 14, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Summer Park County Fair Moon

Feeling the pressure of the divorce. So many tensors pulling this way and that. Jon and his understandable anxiety about his immediate and near term future. Kate’s tough position as mother, mother-in-law and grandma. Court hearings with deep consequences. The fate of Ruth and Gabe as their mother and father fight over them. The friable nature of our extended family as it goes through a wrenching alteration, one with permanent implications. Trying to stay centered and available. All difficult.

This is life at its most fraught, perhaps the only analogue being serious illness or an unexpected financial crisis. All of us become frayed, our best persons fighting to remain present, but often submerged in our collective anxiety. A good time for Mussar, the Jewish spiritual practice Kate and I have taken up through Congregation Beth Evergreen.

If there were a red flag warning for families, we’d have one on our flagpole right now.

Yet. The immersion in each others lives at increased intensity also has positive implications. We get to know each other better, perhaps most possible when the day-to-day gets set aside and we become more vulnerable, more accessible. If we listen to our inner life, we have a chance, too, to learn more about ourselves.

A friend going through a difficult period refers to it as graduate school for self-awareness, for learning what truly matters. Yes.

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