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The WHI: the Wildlife Human Interface

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Friday gratefuls: Ruth. Rich. The Colorado Supreme Court. UC Boulder. Wolf Hall. Elephants. All of our Wild Neighbors around the world. Doug’s Diner. Being a student. Jamie. Luke. Woolly Mammoths. Driving to Boulder in the early morning as Great Sol gradually lit the Hogbacks, the Meadows in their russets and greengolds, the lower down deciduous Trees aflame with reds and oranges and yellow. Getting out and about.

Sparks of joy and awe: Non-Human Rights

Kavannah: Kavod  Honor

One brief shining: Sitting next to Ruth, I watched the mock courtroom of Wolf Hall fill up with law students dressed in their student variety from jeans and backpacks to a black dress and pearls, the conversation subdued since the presence of black robed Colorado Supreme Court Justices would soon transform the mock courtroom into a real court, one about to hear a pleading that Elephants fit the definition of person for the purpose of a writ of habeas corpus*.

 

I want to back into this topic. A story I’ve told and retold. Almost exactly ten years. October 31, 2014 I stood in what would soon be my back yard staring into the soft black eyes of three Mule Deer Bucks. Seemed like a long time though probably no more than a minute. When they decided we were done, I felt as if I’d been granted permission to live here among them, a message delivered by these spirit beings of the Mountains. Yes, you can say I overlaid on those three Bucks my own interpretation. Finding in that encounter a blessing I hadn’t known I’d sought.

In 2019. June. The day I began 35 sessions of radiation for my unhappily returned prostate cancer three Bull Elks jumped over our five foot fence with great ease and proceeded to eat the blooming Dandelions. One of them had only one antler. They would come again and again.

A year ago on a rainy July night I drove up Black Mountain Drive not far past the Upper Maxwell Fall’s trail head and encountered a Bull Elk staring at me as I passed by, his bulk hidden by the Aspen stand, but his antlers and face clear in the momentary flash of my headlights.

Yesterday morning I got up at 6 am, got dressed, drank some coffee, gathered the items I needed, put on my black Grateful Dead hat with the colorful dancing Bears and began the hour long drive down the hill, then north to Boulder. Along Hwy 285, still well into the foothills I saw a black shape along the side of the road. Since many people have metal cutouts of various Wild Neighbors as lawn decor, I imagined at first that this object was one of those. Until it looked at my oncoming car, turned quickly around, and scuttled in that soft clumsy-appearing Black Bear amble back into the Forest.

I don’t see many Bears. This is the third one I’ve seen since I’ve lived up here though they live all around us. A few years ago walking not far from my house a large Black Bear crossed the road not thirty feet from me. Last year I saw a Bear near the intersection of Brook Forest Drive and Hwy 73. That’s all of them.

In each of these three instances the Bears turned away from me, hurrying into the shelter of their wild home, the Forests and Mountains.

All this means I live in the WUI. The Wildlife Urban Interface. Again, yes, you can argue we shouldn’t be here. Maybe not. But we are. Even the cities outside which the WUI exists were once encroachments on Wild habitats, too. Like the Animals of the Mountains we too have to live somewhere.

Not an apologetic. A statement of fact.

My friend Marilyn Saltzman told of a safari she was on a few years back. Their guides took them to a Watering hole somewhere in the Bush. A herd of Elephants drank from it while a number of other Animals waited. Some Elephants left, then came back, others left. Not until the last Elephant had gone did the other Animals come to drink. As she told this story, I thought, who is the true monarch of the Jungle?

Finally, you might say. Seated in the mock courtroom made real, like the Velveteen Rabbit, Ruth and I listened to two lawyers make oral arguments that the five elephants: Missy, Kimba, Lucky, LouLou, and Jambo deserved release from their confinement in the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. Yes, that Cheyenne Mountain.

The Non-Human Rights Project had entered a writ of habeas corpus claiming they did have that right under a writ. The Cheyenne Zoo had counsel as did the five Elephants. This article in Colorado Politics is an excellent summary of the proceedings.

It was like watching yesterday and tomorrow. The gray haired, dismissive and at times arrogant attorney for the Zoo, represented the status quo. Basically: We’re a really, really good zoo. The younger, much younger lawyer for the Elephants represented the growing awareness of the blurry, blurry line separating us from our Wild Neighbors. Sure, Elephants. Big brain. Social. Emotional. Sensitive. Like Primates and Whales and Dolphins and other clearly intelligent animals, even Corvids, to mention another class of Animals, Elephants in zoos represent an obvious case of anthropocentrism used as a rationale to dominate, entrap, and enslave other Animals.

Through the Rights of Nature movement, see my March 4 of this year post, not only Animals but Rivers and Forests have been granted legal rights and protections. Zoos and those defending them are on the wrong side of history. It will take years and many more legal proceedings but somewhere, sometime the thin edge of the wedge will hold open the door to a world where humans live as part of the Interdependent Web of all beings (defined as widely as you wish) on Mother Earth. When this happens, it will have Earth shattering, no let me amend that, Earth healing consequences.

This Mabon morning in Colorado, yesterday, I saw one more track being laid down toward this too far off day.

 

 

*Although there have been and are many varieties of the writ, the most important is that used to correct violations of personal liberty by directing judicial inquiry into the legality of a detention.  Britannica

Family, Garden, Great Wheel, Holidays, Judaism, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Plants

A Pagan Covenant

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Friday Gratefuls: The Sukkah. Harvest festivals. Celebrating the intimate link among humans, Great Sol, Mother Earth, and Seeds. Fall. The sweet, sad, soulful song of Aspens and their gold. Hygge. Coming soon to Shadow Mountain. Rabbi Jamie and his high holiday sermons. Ruth, who wants to eat together again. Sunday. Boulder. Kate, my love. Talking to her. Laurie and her Chi-town food truck. Tulsa King. On the Run. Phantom Toll Booth. The Iliad. Homer.

Sparks of joy and awe: The Harvest

Kavannah: Patience

One brief shining: The CBE sukkah has wood lattice on its three sides, mesh grass matting for a roof, and three children’s decorated tapestries, with a lulav always on the table, the four species: branches of myrtle, palm, willow bound together and the etrog, a large citrus fruit separate from them, the branches waved north, south, east, west, up and down, while saying a bracha, a blessing, the etrog picked up at the end a blessing and a ritual which has a theme of Jewish unity, sure, but more to the point represents the moment in time, the harvest, which Sukkot celebrates.

Seed Savers Exchange is one of the oldest and largest heirloom seed conservation organizations in the world.

Email: diane@seedsavers.org

Corn pickers and combines. Gathering in their mechanical dinosaur ways Corn, Wheat, other Grains. A rhythm with which I grew up. Farms all round my hometown of Alexandria, Indiana, around my mom’s hometown of Morristown and on the land between the two to the south, to Muncie on the east, to Elwood on the west, and Marion on the north. I learned early to always slow down on a gravel road if a hill blocked the view in your direction of travel. There might be a lumbering mechanized giant moving very slowly just over the crest of the hill.

Later the grain trucks would back up to silos when the market was right and carry the harvest to elevators and their huge silos which held many farmer’s crops for loading on grain cars for dispersal to the General Mills, Kellogs, Cargills of the world. So ordinary. Common. Mundane. Usual. Wasn’t until l moved to the Rockies that I found myself apart from the rituals of agriculture.

Oh, once in a while I’ll see a tractor harvesting hay off a Mountain Meadow, but that’s rare enough to be remarkable. There are Cattle in eastern and western Colorado, a few up here in the Mountains, but that’s ranching. It works to different rhythms and has slaughter as its grain truck to the elevator equivalent.

As long as Kate and I lived in Andover, we observed the fall agricultural rituals albeit on a much smaller scale. Tomatoes. Potatoes. Onions. Beets. Carrots. Beans. Raspberries, Ground Cherries, Honey Crisp and Macintosh Apples, Pears, Cherries, Honey. Whatever we planted. Flowers, cut Flowers, too.

Kate would can, dry, and we both would bottle honey. Then go out to the firepit and throw a few logs on, sit with the dogs milling around, and enjoy quiet time together. The harvest season. A feast. A moment when the covenant among Soil, Seeds, and human toil revealed its promise.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Holidays, Judaism, Plants, Politics, US History

Tall lances of saffron flame

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Friday gratefuls: Aurora in Boulder. Ruth’s photo. Ruth. Mussar. The Neshamah. Our participation in all that is. The light of creation itself. Nefesh. How we interact with the world and are acted upon by it. It can conceal or reveal the neshamah. Teshuvah. Returning to the land of my soul. The writer. The classicist. Friend, brother, and cousin. A leader no longer. Simply present to the world around me.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: the language of Judaism

Kavannah: Patience – wait for it

One brief shining: The scattering of golden Leaves gives an artistic flair to my black asphalt driveway as the Mountain torches have lit up in my yard, tall lances of saffron flame, a momentary wealth that will spend itself in less than a month, like all wealth evanescent, yet while available a wonder though not a wonder that can be grasped, only beheld for its glorious punctuation to another season of the true and lasting abundance, growth in substance, in heartwood, Branches, Crown, Clones.

The 10th of Tishrei. Starts this evening when three Stars can be seen in the Sky. Yom Kippur. Noted for its observance by those who may not practice observance at any other point in the year. The Day of Atonement. Yes to atoning for hamartia, missing the mark. Especially when the prayers are communal, as they are on Yom Kippur. If it were up to me, I would have us atone for failing to halt carbon emissions, for failing to bring true and lasting justice to communities of color, for othering LBGTQ and disabled persons, for hardening our hearts against our fellow citizens, for dismissiveness of the aged, and, hypocritically, for our cruel treatment of animals.

Having said that I’d rather go with something like Make Sukkot Great Again. A positive celebration of our literal dependence on Mother Earth and Great Sol. Dancing with the Torah at Simchat Torah to express the joy of being alive, of having torah, that from which we can learn if only we study, available in all things. Doing an all nighter on Shavuot to celebrate the grain harvest. Retelling the story of liberation with friends and strangers at Passover. Booing Haman at Purim. Taking in the forever pain of the holocaust on Yam Hashoah. Embracing the new moon each month at Rosh Chodesh.

As you can tell, I’m not really a high holidays sort of Jew. Though. I do love Elul and its chashbon nefesh. And Apples and Honey and Pomegranates. The blasts of the Shofar. I believe wholeheartedly in communal accountability, too

An interesting process for me, defining myself and my journey within the world of Judaism. Not always easy. But always fruitful.

 

Just a moment: Oh the last days of this most unusual and in some ways terrifying election year. I’ll be relieved when it’s over. Even if it means girding on my loincloth for one last round of leftist political action. An odd thought has been circulating in my head. What if Trump wins? What if our fellow citizens say yes to bigotry, authoritarianism, vulgarity, and criminality? At least with Kamala in the race this odd thought goes, we’ll know it was what a majority of us wanted. It will not, in other words, have been a gimmee. The odd part is I find this somewhat comforting. At least we’ll know for sure where the true work lies.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Great Work, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., US History, Weather +Climate, World History

Not Satan

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Mark and Mary in K.L. Saudi Arabia. Malaysia. Korea. The Rockies. Ellis homeground. Diane in or near Uzbekistan. The clan is spread out over the globe. Gold and green. The colors of Black Mountain, Shadow Mountain, Conifer Mountain. My local cluster. Darkness became dominant at the Fall Equinox. Cooling nights. Less pain days. Jackie and Ronda. Finishing Ovid. Milton. His Winds and their feral sound. American politics slipping well beyond my understanding.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Aspen Roots Hair Salon

Kavannah: Savlanut, patience.

One brief shining: Like many I imagine, I scrolled through live videos of Milton making landfall, since that’s what matters to us humans, as land dwellers; Palms bent and waved showing off their adaptive strengths, driven rain streaked straight at camera lenses, docks went under the storm surge, bucking and heaving, all of that expected, awful of course, but expected, the sound of Milton’s Winds however sent literal shivers down my spine as if Mother Earth herself was in the birth pangs of a new era, one that will not suffer her human children so well as the last, an angry Goddess taking her sacrifices for herself, not waiting for altars to be built, religions to accrete around them, but seizing by force majeur what she needs.

 

I heard the sound. Sure it came via microphone, distributed to me digitally, and filtered through my speakers. So not a direct experience. Didn’t need to be. This was a monster alive and needing to be fed boats, humans, trees, cars, light posts, trash cans, restaurants near the Water. Milton declared himself angry at having to distance himself from the too warm Gulf Waters, his food. But even weakened, or perhaps because weakened, his rage multiplied, sent Winds, Rain, Storm surge, then around midnight, a high Tide to multiply his power. I may not live long, he said, but while I do I will make you know me.

Oh, the ungentle Goddess who made us. She of the Crown Fire, the F5 Tornado, the Derecho, the flooded River, the broken Dams, Hurricane and Typhoon. Drought. Why have we not known her as she is? Yes, our parent. Of course that. She warned us with hockey stick graphs. With Ocean Waters lapping further inland than they used to. With those magnificent Rivers of Ice giving way to warmer temperatures. Even the densest among us felt her warnings. Stop now or I will be angry. Very angry.

We have not stopped. We have said sorry, sorry and gone on misbehaving. Like toddlers. After a million years of nurture and bounty, we have not grown up. We are not adults in this relationship. No. We are small children, expecting Mom to once again be lenient, let us get away with it. No more. The Waters of the World Ocean have begun to turn against us. So too the daily average temperatures. We know this and yet still we do not change our behavior.

No. Not Satan. Not an angry God. A Goddess who has had enough. She and her partner Great Sol wreak havoc and sew chaos. Will they listen after this?!

Great Wheel, Hermitage, Holidays, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Plants, The West, Weather +Climate

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Mabon (Fall) and the Sukkot Moon

Friday gratefuls: Heidi. Salaam. Marilyn. Ruth. Alan. The Dandelion. Big O tires. Phillips 66 Gas. The waning of the gold. Leaves beginning to fall. Clear, bright, blue Sky. Great Sol grinning. Mother Earth happy with what they’ve made together. The Ocean. The World Ocean. The unknown of the deep. Its wildness. Beavers damming Streams, making Ponds. Thinning Forests. Wild Life. Our Wild Friends. Cyclical time.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Aspens, the Mountain torches of Mabon

Kavannah: Teshuvah

One brief shining: Driving past the spot where I saw the Bull Elk in the Rain, I noticed the golden torches blazing, flanking where he looked at me through the dark, Aspens, oh, I see, Bull Elk sacred in the night in May, Aspen leaves in their brilliant final phase in October, yes, I see, the Wheel turning, the sacred manifesting in its seasonal way, different yet also always there.

 

These blue days with golden Leaves and water reflecting Lodgepole green. Lake Evergreen, a small jewel set amongst the inner Foothills, Mountains rising on all sides of it. Folks paddleboarding, kayaking, canoeing small moving dots of color rippling the reflections. You might think after almost ten years these sights would be ho-hum, I’ve seen it before, so what. No. Instead the turning of the Great Wheel puts all of them through kaleidoscopic changes.

Soon the Aspen Leaves will be gone or scattered on the Lake like thin gold-leaf, no longer reflected but held up by surface tension, Leaf on Water, no longer Leaf mirrored. The deciduous trees become skeletal before Samain, fitting into the bleak tones of fallow fields, decay, and death.

Too, the Elk and the Mule Deer have chosen, over the millennia, this time for reproduction. The Bears, hyperphagic, know Winter looms ahead, a season with little food. Great Sol’s rays spread out over larger and larger chunks of Land and Water, reducing their effect.

The Grasses have gone russet and tan. The Asters have gone to seed. In a few Meadows tractors have bailed hay for the Horses and Llamas and other cud chewers with Mountain homes. The Cattle Company that feeds out their Black Angus on the Meadow the Bike Park folks wanted will come soon for their long last ride.

The fireplace beckons. It sits throughout the summer, mocked by the heat. Pointless. Needs more wood available. Have not yet gone down the hill to Variety Firewood where they have hard Woods and perfumed Pinõn. Maybe tomorrow.

Each season leaves its special imprint on familiar scenes, changing them not only from the season just past but from the previous occurrence of the same season. Trees grow taller, fall over, get cut down. Streams alter their flow. Seeds carried by the Winds and by Birds and by Wild Neighbors germinate in new fields and open ground.

So the Mountain Dweller enjoys the changes, gets renewed by Nature’s own renewal, feels sadness as a season comes to an end. Home. Here in the Rockies.

Family, Feelings, Friends, Great Wheel, Holidays, Judaism, Memories, Plants, Weather +Climate, Wild Neighbors

Israel

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Mabon (Fall) and the Sukkot Moon

Thursday (Rosh Hashanah) gratefuls: Happy New Year, 5785! Sukkot. Mom. 60 years ago this month. Her death. Tom’s eyelid surgery. Mark in Georgetown, Malaysia. Visas. Soon to travel to Saudi Arabia. Fall. Harvests all around the world. Friends and family. Dogs. Wild Neighbors. Cecil’s Deli. Bill and Paul. Travel. AI. Playground by Richard Powers. Ocean.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ocean

Kavannah: Teshuvah

One brief shining: Wrestling with the angel of belonging, my own Jabbok Ford, why I chose the Hebrew name, Israel, no longer wanting to be in large groups no matter how significant the occasion, yet also knowing, as friend Paul says, that showing up is often all that matters, how to reconcile my covid/introvert/homebody/back pain inflected avoidance with my love of CBE. Acute on the High Holidays.

 

Do not want to become a recluse. In no way. In no way either do I want to get sick or deny my nature. Aware attendance at High Holiday services (or, lack of) gets noticed by friends. Am I not committed? Am I not a Jew? So I struggle. Here’s another aspect of it. As a new Jew (ha), I don’t have a lifetime of memories about the High Holidays. I find the services long and, with the Hebrew and davening, often obtuse.

Also, I didn’t suddenly release my pagan ways. Sukkot, Simchat Torah, Tu B’shvat, Passover, counting the Omer, Shavuot reflect my Judaism much more strongly than the heady and often patriarchal notes of the High Holidays. The month of Elul as preparation, chasbon nefesh. Yes. Taking a soul returned to its own land into a new year. Yes. Grieving at Yom Kippur. Yes. Human matters.

And then, the reflection of the Great Wheel in Jewish colors: Sukkot, the fruit harvest. Simchat Torah, dancing with the Torah, the body itself in motion. Tu B’shvat, the new year for the Trees. And I might include Wilderness, Wild Neighbors, Horticulture. Passover. Spring planting. Counting the grain as it grows and gets harvested at Shavuot. This is my Judaism, an ancient celebration of humanity’s connection to the life-giving turn of the seasons and to Mother Earth.

On a lunar calendar note, also a link for me with Judaism, lunar calendars rapidly get out of alignment with the seasons without leap months added. This year we added a second month of Adar. This means that yahrzeits get pushed out by a month or so from the actual death date. Though the yahrzeit rarely lines up with the actual death date, usually it’s within a week or so.

This finds my mom’s 60th yahrzeit falling on October 31st this year. On Samain. On All Hallow’s Eve when the veil between the worlds thins. Judaism and paganism line up to make her 60th year in the Other World a special moment for me. Hard to believe she’s been dead 60 years. Never gone, of course, but fainter as a memory. On the 31st I’ll light a yahrzeit candle for her and look through the photo albums and photos I have of her. Remember, re-member, her.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Mountains, Plants, Politics, Shadow Mountain

Fall. Closer to November 5th

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Mabon (Fall) and the Harvest Moon

Autumn’s first morning!

The bare foot knows it

on the newly

washed porch      Ishu

Sunday gratefuls: Snow. 35 degrees. Mountain living. Feeling ready. Chasbon nefesh. Teshuvah. The land of my soul. Shadow Mountain. Books. Writing. Thinking. Seasons. The Great Wheel. The month of Elul. New Year. Soon. Great workout. Barbecue from Fountain Barbecue. Election year 2024. Kamala and Tim. My Lodgepole Companion with their first bits of Snow on their branches.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Snow

Kavannah: Teshuvah

One brief shining: Fall came bearing Snow, near freezing temperatures, while I slept warm under my summer weight comforter, arising first to a slushy Rain which changed to the first Snow of the season about an hour ago, a slick driveway, the blue Asters a bit forlorn though soon to go to seed anyhow.

 

Firewood. Up here, mostly pine. No self-respecting Minnesotan would burn it. Too much creosote. Actually, a bias. All wood puts out plenty of creosote. Pine does, however, burn faster than hardwoods. By a lot. No loading the fireplace with oak or ash or elm for the night. However. Down the hill I can find hardwood firewood. Lots of deciduous trees in the high plains part of the Denver metro. One outfit has offered to let me go through their piles for Yule logs. I want to find some large oak or other dense hardwood to burn on the Winter Solstice as Yule logs. The concept: don’t let it burn up. Put it out, pull it out, and store it for next year to start the next Yule log.

I plan to pick up some pinõn, too. Sweet smelling. Perhaps some fruit woods as well. Too expensive to have someone deliver. Will store in the garage. Dry. Plan to go as hygge as I can this late fall and winter. Not sure what else I’ll do. Candles. Inviting friends over. Hot chocolate. Cozy blankets.

 

May be confirmation bias, almost certainly is to some extent, but I feel the winds shifting toward Kamala and Tim. In part because of their cash advantage, their ground game advantage energized by the debate, and the recent poll numbers I’m seeing. I respect Nate Silver’s reminder that 20% remains a 20% chance to win and both the orange one and K./T. are polling well above that. I know. I add to those positive trends the apparent disarray in the Trump campaign. He’s not got a good slam against Kamala. His policy positions are unclear-see abortion and taxes-or are too clearly tied to Project 2025.

Momentum, as I wrote a bit ago, carries the day and right now I believe Kamala and Tim have it on their side. And, it feels to me like the pace and inertial force of the momentum increases with each news cycle. May it be so.

 

Only for a moment, maybe 15 minutes, but we did have Snow. Then, cold Rain. 35 degrees this am. With the Aspen colonies flashing their season ending golden signals we have begun Fall on this, the autumnal equinox.

 

Cooking, Dogs, Dreams, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Garden, Great Wheel, Judaism, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Plants, Shadow Mountain

Oh, my

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Lugnasa and the Full Harvest Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: New credit card. Tom in Omaha. At the Air and Space museum. Good workout. Isaac coming today. Possible personal trainer. Ginny and Janice today. Cooling nights. Gold popping up here and there on Black Mountain. My son. His commitment. Palliative care. Sharpe. Salisbury Steak. A vegetable smoothie. Bad dreams.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Protein

Kavannah: Teshuvah   Returning to the land of my soul

One brief shining: Geez, ever have a night where the dreams stuck with you and you wish they hadn’t; last night I bought a used Porsche that had bald tires and rust, tried to preach in a synagogue bare foot which they said was ok, but couldn’t find my sermon, woke up agitated, out of sorts.

 

What dreams may come. Must have been feeling insecure last night. Perhaps because I got a Groveland UU e-wire announcing their dissolution. Kate and I were a part of Groveland from the beginning and I preached there off and on even after we moved to Andover, then the Rockies. I tried to help them grow. Didn’t have much luck. A feeling of failure. Though I never was their minister except for a brief period. Guess it is a feeling of failure. As I write this, I feel bad. Sad. Inadequate. Groveland was the place Kate and I landed after I left the Presbyterians.

Moods. As I’ve written. Need to return to the land of my soul. Which is here, today, this September 19th life of 2024. Shadow Mountain. Seeing friends. Living. How do I feel? Down. How do I feel? Grounded. How do I feel? Anxious. How do I feel? Sad. How do I feel? Inadequate. How do I feel? In my body. How do I feel? Grateful. How do I feel? Gathered in. How do I feel? Anxious. How do I feel? Surprised. How do I feel? Glad. How do I feel? Here. How do I feel? Sad/OK. How do I feel? Ashamed. How do I feel? Oh, yeah. How do I feel? In myself. How do I feel? Knowing. How do I feel? Back. Mostly

What I learned here was why I never served as a pastor. Not me. I’m a political activist, an organizer, but never a minister. Even though I tried on the role briefly. Twice. Kate told me it wasn’t me. She was right. I wanted to work. To mean something. Sure, that’s fine. But I couldn’t get to that being someone I wasn’t. I didn’t have the right skill set to help a congregation grow unless I was a consultant, not of the congregation. And I was not meant for a pastoral role.

I found work that mattered, that was me, in Andover. Gardener. Bee Keeper. Dog wrangler. Lumberjack. Cook. Husband. Writing. Learning. Oh, the joy I felt. We felt. How much time I wasted trying to fit into square holes when I was a plant shaped peg. A lover of dogs, plants, bees, writing, Kate.

Here in Colorado I have a new focus. The Mountains. Judaism. Friends and Family. Writing. Learning. All about love.

 

 

Beyond the Boundaries, Great Wheel, Holidays, Judaism, Memories, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation, Torah

More things, Horatio

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Lugnasa and the Harvest Moon

Monday gratefuls: The Ancient Brothers. Visa. Stolen number. Gold on the Mountains. Coming. Crisp nights. Herme’s Journey. Candles. Cernunnos. Paul, splitting wood. Ode and Elizabeth. Tom on his bike. Bill and Marietta. Full Harvest Moon on the 18th. September in the Rockies. Elk Cows grazing along the roadside. The Rut. Green and its many shades.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Aspens in the Fall

Kavannah: AWE   יִרְאָה Yira   Awe, reverence, fear (פְּלִיאָה Plia: Wonder, amazement) (כּוֹבֶד רֹאשׁ Koved Rosh: Seriousness, solemnity, gravitas) [קַלוּת רֹאשׁ Kalut Rosh: Disregard, levity, flippancy; literally “light-headedness”]

One brief shining: Mabon, the fall harvest holiday, begins on the Fall Equinox, September 22nd this year, but the full harvest moon arrives sooner, both raising memories of nights driving on gravel roads past fields of Corn stubble, across Nebraska as the combines cut their wide swaths through gold fields of Wheat, Pumpkin patches filled with orange globes ready for front porches and pies, of Grain trucks lined up to unload at train side granaries, of Shine on Shine on Harvest Moon for me and my gal.

 

I’ve been wanting to write this post for a long time. Religion and its cultured despisers. Friedrich Schleiermacher. Why, I’m asking here, in a time of rapid secularization, do I keep choosing a religious lens through which to view the world? I don’t believe in God, not in any way that would resonate with folks in Alexandria First Methodist or probably anybody at United Theological Seminary. I’ve left two traditions behind, Christianity and Unitarian-Universalism, only to convert to Judaism at age 76. Paganism, finding the sacred in the ordinary, especially for me in the turning of the Great Wheel and the world of Wild Neighbors, Mountains, Streams, and Plants remains core for me as it has since about age 40.

Part of the answer lies in the middah of Yirah. Awe, reverence, wonder, amazement. Maybe the whole answer. Like a Plant, heliocentric, turns towards Great Sol, I’m Yirahcentric, turning my face, my lev toward Awe. Can’t help it. I see beauty in the eyes of a toddler searching for the next target as they dash around a playground. In the Dog hanging out the window of a car, letting the breeze bring scents. In the Moon as it changes. In the smile of a friend. In the songs of the Morning Service. In the shema. In studying ancient scriptures to learn what those in past found yirah worthy.

Awe grounds me, grabs me, says to me, hey, pay attention. Here. Right here. At the memory of Kate. Rigel snuffling my hands as I tried to tie my shoe laces. Perhaps you, perhaps most people, can experience awe without a religious frame for it. I want the constant reminder that the Jewish liturgical year, the cycle of the parshas, Jewish friends bring to me. Oh, my sacred community. It’s right here in Alan, Joanne, Ginny, Janice, Tara, Ariaan, Jamie, Rebecca, Sally. Sharing with me a sense that the world has more, far more, to offer than even the white coats and their laboratories, their microscopes and telescopes and centrifuges can grasp.

Which no way denigrates what science has made known. I’m in awe of the CERN collider, the deep underground searches for neutrinos, the close readings of the double helix. The images of the Hubble, the James Webb? Awesome. Wonderful. Amazing.

Yet I remain aware of how shallow an understanding even these majestic human endeavors bring us. Consider the red dots in a James Webb image. What are they? Galaxies. Is it amazing that the Webb can see these galaxies far away in distance and time? Oh, yes. But consider. They are Galaxies. Billions of Stars, Planets that we can experience only as tiny red dots. Or the neuroscientists searching for consciousness. Where is it?

Perhaps the easiest example of what I’m trying to say: love, justice, compassion. Feelings and abstract thoughts. Find those Sam Harris.

As Hamlet famously observed: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy” Perhaps I gravitate toward religion because it openly acknowledges this. Religion is, in this sense, more humble than scientistic reverence. More humble than any certainty blathered on by politicians or even psychologists.

I bracket those who seek refuge in religion against a chaotic and uncertain world. I understand that impulse, the desire to know for sure. Yet it is a trap, a leghold trap, that keeps its prey away from the very thing they seek: freedom.

Two Jews, three opinions. Yes.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Harvest Season

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Lugnasa and the Harvest Moon

Friday gratefuls: CBE. Tara. Jamie. Luke. Rebecca. Joanne. Alan. Marilyn and Irv. 50th year Jubilee. Celebration tonight, tomorrow, and Sunday. Diane in Indiana and Michigan. And Ohio. Cousins. Mark and Mary. Fall. This surprising election year. Hope, that battered refuge. The United States of the Americas. Our regional and political differences. Ruth in college. Gabe a junior. All you Virgos out there. Including you, Mary.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Tarot

Kavanah: THANKFULNESS   הוֹד Hod Thankfulness, acknowledgement, distinction; related to הוֹדָיָה/הוֹדָאָה confession. Eighth Sefirah = splendour, literally “glow/brightness”; concession & submission; left leg (opposite Netzach/Victory) (הַכָּרָת הטוֹב Hakarat Hatov: Gratitude, appreciation; literally “recognition of the good”)

One brief shining: Calmed my breathing, cast a mental net for the question that mattered most today-Is my final harvest beginning to take shape?-and drew a card from my Jessica Roux Woodland Guardian’s deck, 46 the Butterfly and Snowdrops, then one from my Wildwood Tarot deck, the Ace of Arrows, went over to the chair and read what they portended, rejoicing.

I sent this question to the Ancient Brothers for this Sunday mornings reflection:
“Fellow travelers on the Great Wheel. We are in the Celtic season of Lugnasa, the first fruits of the harvest. It is the first of three harvest festivals, following it is Mabon or the Fall Equinox, then Samain, or Summer’s End.
I invite you to place yourself on the Great Wheel of your life. What might you consider its first fruits, its main harvest, its final harvest before the fallow time?”
My own reflections on it prompted the question in one brief shining: Is my final harvest beginning to take shape?
Got to this today because my first fruits harvest and my main harvest seemed apparent to me. First fruits were the various justice and Great Work initiatives I worked on in my late 20’s, 30’s, and early 40’s. They were a direct link to the preparation for leadership and for a sensitivity to issues of justice that had dominated my life in high school, college, and directly after college.
My main harvest happened in the Years of Abundance, from 1994 to 2014, when Kate and I gardened, growing vegetables and flowers, had an orchard, cared for bees and many, many dogs. Novel writing. Caring for Joe and Jon. A lived expression of our mutual commitment to and love for Mother Earth. What a time!
The harvest of my final years, still underway of course, seems more difficult to define. I see three or four main threads, but can’t yet see the common one. There is a thread of death, disease, loss and grief. There is a thread of living into what is here: the Mountains, the Trees, the Wild Neighbors, Congregation Beth Evergreen, Mountain living, Evergreen and Conifer, Colorado and the West. There is a thread of relationships as life giving, life affirming treasures. Since Kate’s death, there is, too, a modified Hermit’s life thread which includes the mystical matters of Tarot, Astrology, and Kabbalah.
So my question. Is that common thread becoming visible? Is there another turn that might happen, needs to happen? Will happen? I don’t know. The cards I pulled today offer the possibility that its appearance might not be far off. May it be so.