Category Archives: Commentary on Religion

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

Mussar

June 18, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Moon of the Summer Solstice

The Evergreen Rodeo closed the streets of this mountain town this morning, but Kate and I managed to slip in just after it was over. We went to Beth Evergreen, a Reconstructionist Jewish congregation located just off Highway 74 on the way out of town toward I-70.

Kate’s serious about joining and I’m serious about supporting her. It’s about time I began meeting some new friends here. I’ll not go to membership with her, I’m past joining. At least I think I am. But I’ll attend, help out.

There was an interesting piece of today’s two hours that showcased what Beth Evergreen has to offer. Mussar. Here’s a short piece:

“By this time I had already come to see myself as a soul. That’s one of the first things any student of Mussar needs to understand and acknowledge, deeply and clearly. Each of us is a soul. Mostly we have been told that we “have” a soul, but that’s not the same thing. To have a soul would indicate that we are primarily an ego or a personality that in some way “possesses” a soul.

The first step on the path of Mussar is to unlearn that linguistic misconception and to realize that our essence is the soul and that all aspects of ego and personality flow from that essence. At its core, the soul is pure, but habits, tendencies and imbalances often obscure some of that inner light.”

It looks interesting and requires no theological perspective. There will be more on all of this as we move forward.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Writing

Reimagining Gods and other matters

May 30, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Running Creeks Moon

Two odd ideas passing through, perhaps they’ll stay:

thinking about the notion of the after-life and what a miracle it would be if one exists. that led me to the thought that the real miracle is after-inanimancy. That is, life itself emerging from an inanimate stew. Which, for some reason, further lead, with the idea of emergence in play, to the meta-animate, that which exists beyond life, but in dialectical tension with it. This idea could explain gods, the particularity of them, perhaps even their existence. They would be limited, defined by the process that made them possible, life and further consciousness, yet analogous to life in the way that life is analogous to inanimancy.
thinking more about the idea of becoming native to a place in light of a post I wrote about Minnesota. I had, I said, become native there. This got mixed in with the idea of homecoming and from homecoming, reunion. So the final step of becoming native to a place is a homecoming. And when we visit other places to which we have become native, it’s a reunion.

Just my process at work and I wanted to hold onto these. Put them up on the whiteboard and look at them later.

Aging, Art and Culture, Commentary on Religion, Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Health, Original Relation, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase

Too Much Salt?

April 30, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Wedding Moon

The snow has been less than predicted, a good thing. Still, it’s the wet, heavy, slushy stuff that makes snowblowers clog up.

Jon, Ruth and Gabe are coming up tonight. Jon and Ruth will go skiing tomorrow and Gabe will stay with us. Ruth and I plan to take in a Fiske Planetarium (Boulder) show on black holes this evening. Kate’s making Mississippi Pot Roast. This is the sort of thing that, no matter how much we might have wanted to do it, was impossible when we lived in Minnesota.

Got rid of 4 bookcases bought long ago at Dayton’s warehouse in Minneapolis. They’d seen me through the house on Edgcumbe and in Andover. Most of these got sold off in Minnesota, but the remaining four held some books while the built-ins were under construction. That opens up space in the garage. It’s a priority as soon as the weather warms up. Would’ve been last year if it hadn’t been cancer season over the summer.

OK. I have a confession to make. I’ve been putting too much salt on my food for years. Big surprise, I’m sure, to all of you who have witnessed it. In fact, I was following an approach suggested by my internist, Charlie Petersen. His opinion was that once you passed a point where a problem, blood pressure in this instance, required treatment, you didn’t need to modify your behavior if the treatment worked. And it did. For many years. But, not now.

Over the course of the trip to Asia I stopped adding salt to my food. My blood pressure, which had been labile before the trip, suddenly fell into line. Damn it. Empiricism is such a bitch. And, not so small side benefit. It’s easier to sleep through the night since my fluid retention has significantly decreased.

There is no doubt that I have a self-destructive homunculus in residence. Smoking and drinking took me several unpleasant years to put into the past. Just why this little guy is so interested in my demise, I don’t know. Maybe he’s the death wish that Freud believed we all have. He doesn’t give up. If I start one of these activities again, I quickly go back to the maximum use. I learned this while quitting smoking, several times.

It’s tough getting him to just sit still. You would think that, having visited Yamantaka (the slayer of death) many times over the years, he would calm down. Yamantaka is the Tibetan God of death itself. To worship him one thing you can do is look your own death straight in the face, imagine yourself dead, meditate on your own corpse. In this way Yamantaka helps us to accept death for what it is, a natural and not to be feared part of human existence.

Seems like that would get this homunculus to quiet down. Oh, it’s going to happen anyway and it’s ok, so why do I have to speed things up? But, no. Doesn’t appear to work that way.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase

But You Can Never Leave

April 15, 2016 Charles 2 Comments

Spring Wedding Moon

Kate and I have been to Nirvana. And even had lunch there. Hameed, our taxi driver, when asked whether it was a popular tourist attraction, shook his head. No, he had never taken anybody there. He seemed a bit bemused.

Nirvana has a website. And site duty agents who gave us an extended tour, explaining the entire concept, taking us through one of the three towers. Each one is five stories high like a pagoda with a circular ramp winding from top to bottom, a Guggenheim for the afterlife. Along the ramp, from top to bottom are rooms filled with niches and decorated according to the beliefs of those who choose to reside there.

When the young Chinese man who gave us our tour referred more than once to “checking in”, the song Hotel California came immediately:

“Relax, ” said the night man,
“We are programmed to receive.
You can check-out any time you like,
But you can never leave! ” The Eagles

When you check in you can also place replicas of, say, your living room, in front of the urn(s) for your cremains.

The folks at Nirvana are pragmatic. We Chinese, the site duty agent said, take three joss sticks (incense) in when we pray with our ancestors. But, he went on, if three or four or eight or ten come in the room, then… So, we invite one person to go in and invite their ancestors outside. Problem solved.

There are, in a similarly pragmatic fashion, rooms for free-thinkers. In these rooms no statuary, no sounds of chanting, just sedate jade decorated niches. In this way the site agent said, if you’re a Buddhist and your child is a Christian, who might say, if you’re in the Buddhist room, I won’t come, the family can still be together.

Both Kate and I found the place oddly appealing. It’s quiet, respectful, out of the weather, air-conditioned. Instead of creepy it has a comforting feel. Not your usual tourist stop, but a fascinating one nonetheless.

Skygreens, the vertical farm, however, was not so welcoming. When we got there, we drove in to see the place no one was around. I had e-mailed them yesterday to see if we could visit, but received no reply. We took some pictures and I called the office. “We’re not open to the general public.” OK, then. Not quite the future of urban farming I’d expected. It looked run down and somewhat sad.

Asia, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Work, Myth and Story, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Travel

A Taxi to Nirvana rather than a Stairway to Heaven

April 14, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Wedding Moon

Off to Nirvana with Hameed this morning. Nirvana is a huge columbarium that has intrigued ever since my sister sent me the link. And, besides, if I can get to Nirvana for the price of a taxi drive, why not?

We’ll go on about 10 minutes further to Skygreens, a vertical farm. Some evolution of this idea may well be the farm of the urban future and both Kate and I find it an interesting idea.

We’ve hired Hameed by the hour, $30 Singapore, about $22 U.S. I’ll let you know how Nirvana was when we get back. I think that’s what bodhisattvas do, so both Kate and I will accept the honorific when we return to the mountains.

Somewhat cooler today. But, only relative to 92 feels 102. So…

Have I mentioned that it’s hot here?

Aging, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Retirement, Third Phase

Sabbath

March 6, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

Sunday’s occupy a different reality. Time slows down. Ambition flees. A good thing. In spite of my now long absence from the Christian faith the notion of a Sabbath, lifted from Judaism, has always appealed to me. A seventh day when God rests. And us, too.

The notion of a divine creator soothing the chaos before speaking the world into being has faded from my belief system. The idea, however, of a time for setting aside work, domestic and otherwise for a reflective day every week still makes sense to me.

The sabbath can be seen as a form of radical hospitality for the self, a day when shaping our lives to the demands of others gives way. On a sabbath we could read, view art, listen to music, cook, play games, visit family. The third phase of life, after we have set aside work and at home parenting, can be a sabbath phase, much like the last of the four Hindu life stages.

Something to consider.

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

Meet and Greet

January 12, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Yule Stock Show Moon

Kate’s at the Bailey Library, a sewing day from 9 to 3 with the Bailey Patchworkers. They make stone soup and work throughout, stopping only for a brief business meeting. Quilting and handwork have been Kate’s entré to local folk. She has been invited to join a needlework group, too. It meets next week. All part of settling in.

Even though we’ve had a bumpy road with many of our house related projects, it occurred to me that even a bumpy start still grounds us in the local culture. We’ve learned about the shortage of folks in the skilled trades, an apparent difference of work ethic between here and Minnesota and had to adjust our expectations about how long projects will take, to get started and to finish. There are local habits and customs, a mountain way of doing things, that we have had to adapt to.

Sometime soon we’re going to start attending services at Beth Evergreen, a small Jewish reconstructionist congregation in Evergreen. They have a more relaxed worship schedule, none during the Christmas and New Year’s holiday time and when they are regular they alternate between Friday night and Saturday morning. I’m looking forward to an opportunity to meet folks.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Holidays, Jefferson County, Mountains, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase

Lights by the Lake. With Latkes

December 11, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Samhain New (Winter) Moon

Watched several different people, a rabbi, a politician, a cantor, a newspaperman and a Chamber of Commerce woman struggle with lighting a menorah on the shore of Lake Evergreen. We’ve had chinooks for the last few days and though muted at night they still made the bic auto-match flicker and the temporarily burning wicks blink out.

The politician, Tim Neville, is a conservative Republican. He had real difficulty getting the shamas lit. It was as if the winds were saying this one has no light within him. To be fair, others had difficulty, too.

This was a pan-Judaism event with Beth Evergreen, where Kate and I have attended educational classes, Judaism in the Foothills and B’Nai Chaim reform synagogue collaborating. It was not a huge crowd, maybe 75 to a 100 people: a few boys with prayer shawl fringes dangling beneath their t-shirts, two rabbis and a cantor, tables with Hanukkah gelt, dreidels, a two table set up for the latke cookoff* and an adorable two year old girl whose body posture said she was ready to rule the world.

The evening was enough for Kate to say, “I want to join.” She means Beth Evergreen.

I was happy the event took place to a giant fir tree festooned with many lights. That’s my religious tradition, Germanic paganism.

*Kate’s latkes are superior, in every way, to the ones I tried last night.

Commentary on Religion, Holidays

8 Nights of Illumination

December 6, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Samhain Thanksgiving Moon

Hanukkah begins tonight. Another Holiseason festival of light. We have several packages wrapped in the blue and silver colors of Hanukkah, dreidels and the Star of David scattered across them. They go to the grandkids this morning.

144 candles for the 8 day festival since each night a new candle is added and all are replaced. We have several menorahs ranging in design from very traditional to crystal and metal. Like many Jewish holidays this one is home based with a regular nightly ritual involving lighting the candles in the menorah and reciting certain prayers in Hebrew.

Kate and I plan to attend a public menorah lighting on December 10th in Evergreen. There is a latke cookoff as part of the ceremony. Latkes with sour cream are one of my favorite parts of Hanukkah.

We decided a while back that our Hanukkah gifts to each other are the solar panels and the remodeled kitchen.

So. Happy Hanukkah to one and all.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Friends, Great Wheel, Holidays, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Weather +Climate

Black

November 28, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Samhain Thanksgiving Moon

At 4:30 this morning the Thanksgiving moon hung to the north of Shadow Mountain, obscuring Orion and most of the stars. Luna was the first light polluter. The lodgepoles glisten faintly, the snow on their branches catching a bit of the moonlight. It’s quiet, too, a Saturday on a holiday weekend, so few cars on Black Mountain Drive.

Black Friday has been on my mind. Maybe yours, too. This morning I contrasted the peaceful moments I have looking up at the night sky with those, who at the same time of day, waited in line in the cold for the chance to save big on some item or another.

It’s an easy target, Black Friday. The crazed shoppers banging carts to get there or there or there, first. The notion of a “holiday” devoted to retailers finally easing out of the red into profitability. The mission creepiness that caused Black Friday to ooze backwards into Thanksgiving Day. Trying to find a connection with the holiday of the incarnation or any of the wonderful celebrations of Holiseason.

Yet. For all the blackness and greed and confused motives Black Friday seems more sad to me than blameworthy. The assumption that somehow, if only I can get it, that cheaper something will heal me or make someone else happy. The frantic desire of parents to find the it toy of the season for their kids. The real underlying issue, the squeeze of the 99% by the 1%. Then twisting that squeeze into a way to wring more money out of the 99% and funnel it to the 1%.

Feels more like desolation, despair. Bordering on hopelessness.

Give me the Thanksgiving moon north of Black Mountain. The forest covered in snow. Orion above the house. And the gifts that are my family, the dogs, my friends, this wild and stony place.