Category Archives: Great Wheel

Dogs, Garden, Great Wheel, Greenhouse, Health, Politics

Godzilla v Mothra

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Beltane and the Greenhouse Moon

Friday gratefuls: Irv, Tom. New Human Consciousness. Halle. Hip and leg pain. Exquisite. Kylie today. Taylor today. Natalie today. Alan today. Shabbat this evening. Shadow, chewer of duvets. Sweet morning girl. Tara. Susan. Diane. Morning darkness.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Information

Week Kavannah: Shleimut. Wholeness and Peacefulness.

One brief shining: Rain and slow delivery of plastic foundation tiles has delayed the construction of the greenhouse, but I’m ok with that since it will be a slow project, maybe flowers more than vegetables this year, not sure what the later planting schedules can yield.

 

Greenhouse: Nathan asked me a week ago if I would prefer plastic foundation tiles, better for water runoff in Spring. Sure, I said. He didn’t know then that the delivery of these tiles would not happen until this evening. He’s very apologetic, going to cut me a break on labor at the end of the project. Things like filling my raised beds with soil. Kind of him

The delayed construction has drained some of my enthusiasm for the project, though I imagine once the construction gets going that will return. Besides, it’s a long haul project. Once it’s up the fun begins.

Next week Nathan will have a helper and he’s done a lot of precutting so the greenhouse will go up fast.

 

Dog journal: During my nap yesterday Shadow jumped up on the bed, lay with her head on my legs, and slept. Such a sweet moment. With her willingness to hug me and get hugged back, her greater ease with the threshold (far from resolved), and her willingness to be on a leash, we’ve moved into new territory.

Of course. While on the bed, she did rip my duvet, allowing goose feathers to escape. Buying cloth tape to fix it. No sense being elaborate since she’ll probably do it again. Gonna buy new bedroom stuff from carpet to bed to nightstand after she finds her maturity.

Shadow has also mastered the stairs to the main level. She’s up there right now while I write on the lower level. Wonder what she’s doing?

 

Health: A significant Friday morning. Taylor, Dr. Buphati’s P.A., (oh, Shadow just came back down) will tell me the results of my MRI and my PET scan. As usual, my anxiety titer hits its peak about now. Do I have many more metastases? Is there cancer in my hip joint? And if so, what happens next?

That’s at 8:30. Then, at 9:40 I see Kylie to get slipstreamed into the medical process again, this time for the SPRINT neurostimulator device implantation. My life would be better if my pain were less.

 

Just a moment: Aw. The Donald and the African-American coming to blows. Elon’s intelligence and his libertarian revulsion toward government bonded with Trump’s Revenge and Chaos tour. Result? Madness.

Now Trump’s willingness to do whatever he wants whenever he wants with no underlying rationale other than personal animus and a narcissistic belief that any thought passing through his mind is big and beautiful has clashed with Musk’s libertarian, tear it all down and don’t let it get back up sensibility. This is a perverted form of ideological logic versus irrationality. Will not end well. For any party affected. Including the U.S.

Dogs, Fourth Phase, Garden, Great Wheel, Greenhouse, Health, Paganism, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation, Writing

Shou Sugi Ban Treated Wood for Artemis Greenhouse

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Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II (3% crescent)

Sunday gratefuls: Shadow jumping onto my legs this morning for a hug. So sweet. Fun with old socks. Our new, changing relationship. Back pain. Zerizut for p.t. and resistance work. Tara. Alan. Rich. Luke. Mussar. Shabbat. Morning prayers. Enveloped by Rain and Fog. Mom and Dad, both veterans. My son, a future veteran. All those who defend us with their lives.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Rain

Week Kavannah: Zerizut. Enthusiasm. for p.t. and resistance.

One brief shining: As Great Sol began to disappear behind Black Mountain yesterday, a rainy Fog rolled in and gave my backyard a ghostly appearance, Lodgepoles coming in and out of sight, Shadow rushing inside all wet from running through a Cloud.

 

On Ancientrails: You may notice some extra posts here and there. I’ll signal them with something in the future, probably an image. You will find my regular as usual posts with the format of long standing.

These new posts are me trying to write out, work out my sense of where I am in my thought process about certain matters like spirituality, theology, politics. I’ve had this urge to write down things I’ve thought about for a long time. They’re incomplete sentences, non-systematic because I’ve admitted to myself that I’m not a system builder or even an always logical thinker. There is this strain of mysticism, a poetry of the inner world that means more to me than a syllogism. Though I love syllogisms, too.

You will know these entries by their lack of gratefuls, sparks, kavannah, one brief shining. Please feel free to ignore them. They’re me scratching my name in the wet Sand. I want a record of those ideas before the King Tide rolls in.

 

Dog journal: Shadow bounded into my arms this morning before I got out of bed, her paws on my outstretched legs. As if overnight, she’d forgotten to be shy, to be scared. I hugged her and she wriggled happy, licking my face. Yes, I said to her, this is what I want. What I need. An oh so special moment.

 

Back pain/cancer: Tara will take me to my open-sided MRI. I’ll have taken an Ativan for my claustrophobia so I’ll be talkative with little executive function for a filter. Glad I trust her.

Here’s an oddity with this MRI. Both my oncologist and my pain doc want images of my hips. Both have sent orders. I hope that doesn’t screw things up.

Oncologist checking for metastatic growth in my hips. Pain doc getting information for a possible insertion of a SPRINT device later. Two diagnoses for the price of one! BOGO.

 

Just a moment: We will move into the Artemis Greenhouse Moon tomorrow. Nathan comes tomorrow to begin building. He thinks it will take about a week. I’m excited. I want/need to grow things again.

It will be done in shou sogi ban treated wood. This is an ancient Japanese wood treatment that involves charring the surface of a board, then sealing it. Nathan has taught himself how to do this.

Since I’m starting a little late in the gardening year, I’ll have to be careful with what I plant, but I’ll get crops this year. Plus there will be flowers.

 

 

 

 

Garden, Great Wheel, Mountains, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Talmud, Torah, Wild Neighbors

Artemis: A Riff on Tactile Spirituality

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Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

A Tactile Spirituality

“I live at 8,800 feet in zip code 80433. I’m having a greenhouse built in my backyard. What vegetables will grow well in it. Look for heirloom varieties. Include recommended planting dates. Mostly I want salad ingredients and greens. Tomatoes.”

This is the prompt I gave chatgpt for a quick assist in knowing what to plant. I got back 21 pages of detailed recommendations, including specific heirloom varieties of Tomatoes, Lettuce, Radishes, Carrots, Beets, Onions, and Herbs.

Spirituality has the curse of the three-story universe, René Descartes, and destructive deconstruction. That is, Abrahamic prayer and devotional practice has historically “aimed” its prayers up toward the heavens and away from the corruptions of the flesh. Descartes’s dramatic division of the mind from the body reinforced a religious path focused on the immaterial mind, released from the body. And, in turn, Mother Earth. While deconstruction did unveil the power dynamics involved in how our agriculture works, how choice of books for a syllabus reflected white privilege, and the patriarchal symbolism of the three-story universe, it also made demythologizing a knee jerk way of removing mystery and grace.

As a result a tactile spirituality seems, at first look, an oxymoron. The mind. The heavens. Transcendence. Those are the domain of spirit. Not the soil. Not the forests. Not the feet or the hands. Not the world of this reality, this busy, noisy, fussy, often bloody and violent reality. How can we gain the peace, the calm, the centeredness where spiders crawl, illness ravages, and death dominates?

That’s where Artemis Greenhouses comes in. About as down and dirty a human activity, or I should say, human aided activity as I can imagine. Soil (no, not dirt) under the fingernails. Nurturing small plants. Beets. Spinach. Lettuce. Radishes. Plucking off predating insects. Blocking out Deer and Elk. Harvesting the red and white Radish. The red Beet. Rainbow colored Chard. Green Kale and Spinach. Eating them.

Fuel for the body. That most inelegant of spiritual residences, the body. Full of blood and waste, nutrients and foreign matter. Under some understandings only a vessel for the soul, a way to keep the mind alive.

No. Souls are us. Our living flesh ensouled. Sacred. Hardly ordinary unless you call, as I do, the ordinary sacred. What we touch feels the hand of a god, the god. What we embrace knows the warmth of a god, the god. The soil in which we plant seeds quickens when we work it.

The Mule Deer Doe who feeds her newborn fawn feeds a divine presence, a unique and precious never to be repeated instance of god made flesh. Maxwell Creek filled with Spring Rain pulls bits of Rock and Earth from its bank as the god-in-water, returning the Rocky Mountains to the World Ocean.

Sure. The Torah. Yes. Talmud Torah. The hands of living gods have written it and the minds of living Jews finds god within, upon its pages, in its stories. It teaches us. Yet, it teaches the same message as Maxwell Creek. That god rushes to the Sea. That god fills every molecule of Water.

I read the scripture written in the bark of my Lodgepole companion. I see the yellow Flame of the Aspen Catkin against the blue Flame of a Colorado Sky and read of life’s elegant and graceful re-emergence in this, the wet season.

In my world all spirituality is tactile. In Shadow jumping on my legs. In turning the pages of a Torah commentary. In hearing the voice of Luke or Ginny or Janice. In tasting a bit of Lettuce, an Onion, a fresh heirloom Tomato. All of the tactile is spiritual.

Great Wheel, Mountains, Paganism, Plants, Weather +Climate, Wild Neighbors

It’s the Merry, Merry Month of May

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Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

Thursday gratefuls: Mary coming to visit. Beltane. Snow. 32 degrees. Gnawer of Bones. Slow to trust. Shadow. Roxann who knows. Tom. Tramadol and two acetaminophens. Helps. Fantastic Four. Adam and Eve. Mordecai Kaplan. Abraham Joshua Heschel. Learning. Staying mentally sharp.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Amy

Week Kavannah: Persistence and grit. Netzach.

One brief shining: We float sometimes above our life, hovering over it like some household God, hoping to change directions or circumstances with a twist of the divine hand, a twirl of the sacred finger but we know all along that only our body bound to the earth can achieve miracles.

 

Beltane. When those crazy Scots and those blue-eyed Swedes take off their clothes and dance naked around a bonfire. Enacting the magic of sympathy for Mother Earth as she takes in seeds, embraces them in her fertile womb, and kisses them into growth. Why not? She provides for us. Sustains us. Gives us water to drink and gravity to keep us grounded.

I’ve not written many Great Wheel posts in the last few years. Like Taoism and now Judaism though, the pagan in me never sleeps. I stay alive to these seasonal changes, to their meaning for our daily lives. Even if we get Snow and freezing temperatures here on Shadow Mountain. I know the Lodgepole catkins, the Aspen leaflets, fawns, calves, kits, bunnies will emerge, small flags of life’s own Great Wheel waving the colors of renewal.

Beltane honors the marriage of the Lord and the Lady. A maiden no more the Earth takes a lover who warms and quickens her. On Beltane ancient Celts would make love in the fields. Leap over small fires. Drive their cattle between bonfires. All to advance fertility.

Love realizes its biological imperative. Souls join as bodies dance together in the rites of Spring. Are we ever more than then? When our hearts fill with passion and our senses brighten to the other. The one who shares our oneness. As the One shares with us all. What an orgasm. Can you imagine how it feels to be Mother Earth in the Spring?

We cannot stay sad about death. Not when green shoots up from black Soil. As the Spring Ephemerals throw up their colorful flowers. As the Cherry and Plum offer their delicate blooms only to shed them in Snow like Storms so Fruit can grow. As the Honeybees leave their Winter Hives seeking Nectar and spreading Pollen, these matchmakers of the Sky. When Cutthroat and Rainbow Trout push out their Roe for the milky Semen’s discovery in cold Mountain Streams.

Death does not mark a finish, rather a continuation howsomever it might be. And Beltane marks Nature’s covenant that this is so.

We know not how it is. We mortal creatures. Beltane celebrates mortality with its promise of living abundantly. If only we care for ourselves and the land.

Get outside and visit the marks of this glorious, this wondrous, this most yes of seasons. You deserve the lift.

Dogs, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Garden, Great Wheel, Health, Judaism, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Paganism, Plants, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, The West, US History, Weather +Climate, Writing

Living. Not dying.

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Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Shadow. Her kindness. Amy. Her understanding. Cookunity. Colorado Coop and Garden. The Greenhouse. Gardening again. Korea. Malaysia. Australasia. Wisconsin. Saudi Arabia. The Bay. First Light. 10,000 Lakes. The Rocky Mountain Front Range. Where my people live.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Greenhouse

Week Kavannah: Joy. Simcha.

One brief shining: Nathan and I wandered in my back yard, his app that shows Great Sol’s illumination searching for a good spot to plant my greenhouse, until we neared a spot close to the shed, that was it with decent morning Sun and an hours worth of afternoon Sun more than anywhere else.

 

 

That picture is not quite what I’m getting. Mine will have an outdoor raised bed on either side and shutters that move themselves as the greenhouse heats up and cools down. It will also have an electric heater for Winter and a drip irrigation system inside and out.

This guy Nathan, a Conifer native, started his business Colorado Coop and Garden to give folks like me an opportunity to grow things up here. Working a garden at ground level is long past for me. But Nathan can build the raised beds at a height where my back is not an issue.

Guess I’m regressing here in some ways. A Dog. A small Garden. Andover in miniature. The greenhouse will have a sign: Artemis Gardens. Artemis Honey was Kate and mine’s name for our bee operation.

 

I’m loving my classes at Kabbalah Experience. Reaching deep into the purpose of religion and Judaism in particular. Reimagining the story of Adam and Eve. My life, my Jewish life and my Shadow Mountain life, have begun to resonate. Learning and living an adventure in fourth phase purpose.

No matter what the near term future holds for my health I will not succumb to despair or bleakness. As I’ve often said, I want to live until I die. This life, I’m coming to realize, is me doing just that.

If I were a bit more spry, I’d add a chicken coop and a couple of bee hives, but both require more flexibility than I can muster.

I’m at my best when I’m active outside with Mother Earth and inside with a Dog, books, and new learning. All that leavened with the sort of intimate relationships I’ve developed both here and in Minnesota and with my far flung family.

That’s living in the face of autocracy and cruelty. I will not attenuate my life. Neither for the dark winds blowing through our country and world, nor for that dark friend of us all, death.

 

Just a moment: Did you read Thomas Friedman’s article: I’ve Never Been More Afraid for My Countries Future? His words, served up with a healthy dish of Scandinavian influenced St. Louis Park Judaism, ring more than true to me. They have the voice of prophecy.

We are in trouble. No doubt. Trouble from which extrication will require decades, I imagine. If not longer. Yet. I plan to grow heirloom vegetables year round on Shadow Mountain. To have mah Dog Shadow with me in the Greenhouse.

I also plan to write and think about the sacred, the one, the wholeness of which we are part and in which we live, die, love. I will not cheapen my life with bitterness, rather I will eat salads, read, play with Shadow and dine with friends, talk to my friends and family near and far.

Dogs, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Sport

April

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Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Shadow, eater of bones. Fatigue. Ritalin. Breakfast out. CookUnity, above adequate. Passover this Saturday. Liberation. Easter, April 20. Resurrection. Jihad. Greater and lesser. Mark’s students, boys becoming men. Dire Wolves live. Colossal Bioscience. De-extinction. Science wonders. The Night Sky. Orion, my old friend. Andover. A time of abundance.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Dire Wolves alive

Week Kavannah: Wu Wei

One brief shining: Shadow comes over, puts her paws on the arm of my chair, stares up at me with her soulful dark eyes, and says, in crystal clear Dog, I want my breakfast!

 

April. Brother Mark and Dad’s birthdays. Ruth and Gabe’s. Kate’s yahrzeit on April l2th, celebrated on April 28th of the Hebrew calendar this year. My son and Seoah’s wedding anniversary. #9 this year. Passover and Easter.

An emotion filled month recognized by T.S. Eliot’s Wasteland. April is the cruelest month. Has some of that flavor for me.

How do we ever make sense of death and the awful emptiness it brings to the living? Especially when it comes as Mother Earth makes a seasonal turn toward new life. Plants shooting up from Winter’s sleep. Mule Deer Fawns and Elk Calves and Mountain Lion Kits. Bear Cubs. Baby Mark, baby Curtis, baby Ruth, baby Gabe. And Kate’s death. All together. Death and life. The Great Wheel turning, grinding as it goes.

I like the cohesion of Passover and Easter. Their twin messages confront April with powerful reassurance. Slavery of any kind diminishes, weakens the human experiment. Liberation from  the slaveries we are heir to lifts us all.

Death ends a life but it does not end life. Resurrection can heal a whole fallow season, the human heart as it emerges from mourning, the soul killing atrophy of numbness to existence.

These two ministers to the inner and outer realms complement each other. Live in tension perhaps as key representatives of different religions, but can be embraced by both and by those with none.

Religion holds these non-rational ideas, lays them alongside the daily human existence. Reminds us that bondage is not our fate; that death and rebirth are fellow travelers. Always.

 

Sports stop: Do not count your championships until they’re hatched. Or something like that. Ask Duke. Ask Houston. Both lost games they thought were theirs. Duke losing its long predicted Cooper Flag coronation as king of the teen basketball prom. Houston losing its championship in the final seconds of the final game of March Madness.

The new look of college basketball? Uncertain, but likely. Build a team of one and dones. Go for it. A coaches nightmare, I would think. Every year trying to get the one or two best players coming out of high school. Transferring others to compliment them. Play the season. Get into the playoffs. Hopefully. Rinse and repeat.

 

 

Aging, Dogs, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work, Politics, Wild Neighbors

They Call it Puppy Love

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Imbolc and the full Snow Moon

Friday gratefuls: Mini-splits. Shadow. Ginny and Janice. Luna and Annie. Leo. Gracie. My Lodgepole companion. The crooked Aspen outside my bedroom. The Mountain Lion family near Morrison. Black Bears. Soon. Mule Deer and Elk. Fox. Abert’s Squirrels. Red Squirrels. Rabbits. Voles. Mice. Marmots.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Wild Neighbors

Week Kavannah:  Yirah. Awe.

One brief shining: Tis an odd season this with taxes due next month, the wearing of the green celebrating St. Patrick who took Irish Wolfhounds to the Pope, big Snows covering basketball tourney roads, and hints of Spring with resurrection and liberation waiting to manifest.

 

Always of two desires in these months. Crack wind, Winter blow, Snow. Stay longer. Fire in the fireplace. A good book. Cold nights for sleeping. Yes.

Open vistas. Clear Skies. Mountain Wildflowers. Aspen Catkins. Lodgepole Anthers. Rabbit families. Chipmunks. Greening Willows and Dogwood. Mountain Streams in full voice, tumbling and turning. A sense of possibility strong in the Air. Yes.

Dog journal: If you’ve never had a skittish puppy lay at your feet, head rested on your slipper. If you’ve never had a puppy wriggle up the side of your leg and look you in the eye with, yes, puppy love. If you’ve never had a puppy. I wish you had.

Shadow incarnates love. Adoration. Companionship. Even the struggles and the outright exhaustion. All part of the joy.

Puppies, like Wildflowers and Spring, remind us of the Great Wheel, Maiden-Mother-Crone, life begetting life. Old age and youth running next to each other in partnership. With love.

Shadow. A small streak of black fur bounding through Snow drifts, racing around the perimeter, the fence line, all young muscle and limber movement, all newness. A potion to ease the aching joints and rigidity of 78 year old bones.

 

Just a moment: I keep finding Seeds. Books about Seeds. Seed-Keepers. Seed Savers Exchange Catalogue. Seeds. The Seed Vault in Svalbard. Chapters in the Light-Eaters. Lectures in online botany classes.

Recalling the spiny nubbin of a Beet Seed. The delicate Carrot Seed. The thick Pea. The Soil in an Andover raised bed leavened with compost and top soil, organic chemicals. Pressing the Seeds into the Soil. Feeling a frisson of future salads, side dishes.

In remembering these things a sort of strange hope rises. That we, the faded flowers, now the Seed heads of yesterday’s generational garden will leave our Seeds of love, justice, and compassion to grow in the rich Earth of this once and future nation.

Maybe we could create a Seed Catalogue for our nieces and nephews, our grandchildren. Even a Seed Savers Exchange for the ideas and actions that still hold the promise of a victory garden for diversity, for equality, for shared wealth and opportunity.

Or a nation in exile limned in a new Whole Earth catalogue for those of us who hold fast to the notion that rapaciousness, cruelty, mockery, and misogyny have no place in America’s fields and beds. Plant these instead, these seeds of liberty and freedom with their attendant responsibilities.

Plant this seed of love and that one of compassion. Fertilize with chi, illuminate with ohr, moisten with joy.

Commentary on the news, Friends, Great Wheel, Health, Judaism, Mussar, Politics, US History

Toxic. What else can you say?

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Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

New Year’s Day gratefuls: Tara. Ron. Ruth and Gabe. Veronica. 5 degrees this morning. Good sleeping. Snow. A new year. Kinda. The Realm. Von Bek. The Grail. Snowplows. Another Mountain Day, another Mountain life. Ruby in her winter shoes. MVP tonight. Family. Love. A new Zen calendar. Enlightenment. Not hard. Not easy. See what you’re looking at.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The feel of a fresh slate

Kavannah for 2025: Yetziratiut  Creativity

For January 1 life: Wonder, Malchut

One brief shining: Sitting with Tara over sausage patties, home fries, eggs over easy, and sourdough toast, coffee steaming, the noise almost too much, I felt yet again love, again chesed, again the presence of one who sees me as I am and accepts me, as I see her and accept her.

 

I promised something less abstruse today. Here it is.

Carried the three largest split Oak logs in with the intention of burning them last night, starting a new tradition, burning Yule logs on New Year’s Eve since I missed the Winter Solstice. As in love with the night as I am, I no longer experience as much of it. I go to bed early, too early I felt for burning the Oak. Or, maybe I’m just too set in my ways. Whatever. I didn’t do it. Again. That’s twice.

On a related note: I was gonna go upstairs and hit 30 minutes on the treadmill. Thought about it right after I got back from breakfast with Tara. Almost. Knew it was my yetzer hara, my selfish inclination saying nah. You worked out yesterday. You can work out tomorrow. Take a rest already.

I read instead.

We make these sort of decisions at bechira points, choice points, and whichever way we decide we reinforce the likelihood of making that same choice again. I had two bechira points yesterday and chose the easy way. The good news here is that the yetzer hatov, the generous inclination, the possibility directed yetzer, will always have a chance to change that decision at the next bechira point, reinforcing the way that nurtures becoming.

Mussar expresses a medieval psychology, yes. But. Clyde Steckler, professor of pastoral care at United Theological Seminary, said you can explain the workings of the mind using any system of thought you want and still come up with useful, meaningful ways to understand it. Mussar exemplifies this idea.

I no longer live in a world of bad and good, right and wrong, but in a world of possibilities and potentials reinforced or thwarted. Maybe it’s that field that Rumi talks about. The one out beyond right and wrong. Where we can meet. My practice this month helps reveal this reality: this too is for the good.

 

Just a moment: Driving a pickup truck into a crowd of revelers on Bourbon Street. These newer pickups look like weapons to me. Their massive grills. Cabs high above the rest  of us tooling along in our SUV’s and sedans. And aggressive driving? Speeding. Impatience. Road rage. Seems baked into the I’m bigger and stronger than you are toxic masculinity cast in steel and named Ram. About to get stroked by the red tie guy. Who will attempt to make normative an unthinking, insensitive, domineering version of maleness.

 

Asia, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Holidays, Kabbalah, Paganism, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation

Merrily we roll along, roll along, roll along

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Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: This too is for the good. 2024 and 2025. And this December 31st 2024 life. 8 degrees this morning. Good sleeping. Von Bek. The War Hound and the World’s Pain. The Psalms. Bob Dylan. The Band. Ain’t No Grave. The Blues. Jazz. Jefferson Airplane. The Doors. Led Zeppelin. Ginger Baker. John Coltrane. Thelonious Monk. Slipping quietly into the next year.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Tara

Kavannah: Persistence and Joy

prompt: A vintage father time with sickle and an infant new year

One brief shining: How to encapsulate a year in one sentence, a challenge, perhaps remembering a Bar Mitzvah with friends and family present, a changed arc for cancer, a couple of months of low feeling, many breakfasts and lunches and zoom calls, visiting Ruth in Boulder, Gabe solving puzzles, many visits from my Mule Deer friends, the Mountains remaining-steady, solid, reliable-Great Sol and Good Night, Orion’s return, all while turning 77. Whee!

 

As the Zen calendar from Tom says:

This year,

yes, even this year,

has drawn to its close.   Buson

 

Here is the illustration inspired by Japan’s Kano school, visually interpreting your evocative paragraph.

Though age and wrinkles compared to that slender hipped 28 year old in his silly multi-colored suspenders and shorts would suggest definite linear time, no, I say no to that. I say live by the Great Wheel. By the telling and retelling of the story in the five books of Moses. By Sukkot and Mabon, Samain and Shavuot, the Winter Solstice and Passover. All repeating in a yearly cycle, spiraling through the heavens of time’s confusing paradoxes. Always ready to leave behind the hell of human insistence on seeing the profane where only the sacred-ONLY THE SACRED-exists.

I confess I don’t understand how time can seem so linear yet reside all the while in an ever repeating, glorious parade of seasons and holidays, all of which may in some future Samain-see the problem, all of which may in some future Samain, be harvested for a final time as our universe slips into its own Winter Solstice. Only, if I have an understanding of it, to experience its own rebirth as a cosmic Great Sol, a Phoenix, rising again, still?, from the depths of a cold forever.

All this to say happy new year! Let’s hear it for the calendar, for aging, for yesterday and tomorrow, all the while knowing we can never live anywhere but today. And not even today, but in this ichi-go ichi-e moment. Which will never repeat yet is eternal, never gone from the roiling, boiling mix of creation in which we live and move and have our becoming.

God. I sound like a bad fortune cookie. Nevertheless. Yes. To all this. To however we are, whomever we are, whenever we are. Bouncing along jostling each other, holding each others hands, walking each other home, living with the thereafter, somehow, even if it’s only in molecular hand me downs.

You out there. To a less abstruse post next year. Tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

Bees, Dogs, Garden, Great Wheel, Hermitage, Holidays, Jefferson County, Judaism, Kabbalah, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Paganism, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation, Shadow Mountain, Wild Neighbors

Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ

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Yule and the Yule Moon

Christmukkah gratefuls: Many happy Christmases. The complete severance of Christmas from Christ’s Mass. All of the childhood induced fantasies drifting up and out of bedrooms all over the world. All of the Jewish memories of resistance triggered now for 8 days. Holiseason peaking with Christmas, Hanukkah, and Yule all resonating, vibrating with each other. It is indeed the most wonderful time of the year.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Holiseason

Kavannah: AWE Yira יִרְאָה  Awe, reverence, fear (פְּלִיאָה Plia: Wonder, amazement)

One brief shining: I hear the rattling of old Marley’s chains this morning, looking at a world about to devolve into a Christmas Carol with a different ending, where the Scrooge’s of our country like Trump, Bezos, Musk, and Gates join oligarchs from around the world to ignore even the Ghost of Christmas future and forge for themselves heavy chains and money boxes that will haunt them into their unredeemed future.

Here is the image representing “Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ” in the style of socialist realism, emphasizing interconnectedness and harmony.

And even so, let me say a word for yirah. For wonder, amazement, awe, reverence. Paul reminded me of the Lakota phrase, all my relations. I asked chatbotgpt to give it to me in Lakota and what it means in the Lakota worldview.

The answer* made me realize that I’ve spent decades deconstructing theological and philosophical and even scientific ideas, trying to swim down and through them to the core of what matters. Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ matches my current conclusions though I had to get through years of seminary, meditation, horticulture, dogs, loving Kate, to find the final ingredient I needed, the unitary metaphysic of Judaism. The Tree of Life in Kabbalah maps on to this native worldview, too.

Wish it was as easy as reading this years ago and being able to integrate it, but that wouldn’t have worked. I needed to live the struggle. Judaism with Kabbalah contains this wisdom and expresses it without dogma. Makes me feel even more like a member of the tribe. Or, a tribe.

When I talked to the Mule Deer Doe last week, when I spent time with the three Mule Deer Bucks on my first day here on Shadow Mountain ten years ago, when I planted tulips and iris and crocus and garlic and heirloom tomatoes, when I removed honey supers to carry to Kate for our honey harvest, when I sat with a Wolfhound’s head in my lap and another’s in Kate’s, I engaged the embodied learning of Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ.

Yes, mitákuye Oyás’iŋ comes most vividly into our whole life through direct experience. Yet for me the life of the mind is important, too, and I wanted always to be able to clarify, to say in words the truth my body already know.

In a way I sense my life is now complete. I made the swim all the way to the bottom and down there was the Holy Well of the collective unconscious, linking me to all my relations through the world of Judaism.

Reincarnation? Could be. Death a transformation? Without a doubt. Life a continuous amazement and wonder. For sure. May as well celebrate.

BTW: I like this image from Chatbot’s Dalle, too.

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah!

 

*”Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ” reflects the interconnectedness of all beings and entities in the universe. It embodies the belief that everything—humans, animals, plants, stones, water, air, the earth, and the stars—is interrelated and part of a sacred whole. This worldview emphasizes:

  1. Unity and Kinship: All beings are regarded as relatives, forming a vast web of relationships that must be honored and respected.
  2. Reciprocity: The phrase underscores the importance of balance and mutual care among all entities, fostering a sense of responsibility toward the natural world and its cycles.
  3. Sacred Connection: Life is seen as a continuous, sacred circle in which every part has its place and purpose, contributing to the harmony of the whole.
  4. Humility and Gratitude: By acknowledging “All My Relations,” individuals express gratitude for the interconnectedness of life and humility in recognizing their place within it.

In ceremonies and prayers, “Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ” is often used to close statements or invocations, serving as a reminder of this profound interconnectedness and the sacred responsibility it entails.

                                                Herme Harari Israel