• Category Archives Holidays

  • Uncle Sam

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer and the 2% crescent of the Bar Mitzvah Moon

    Thursday gratefuls: Irv, Paul, Tom. Rich. Joan. Jamie. Tara. Talking politics under the starlight with Rich. Rescheduling with Joan. Tara today. Driving in the dark. Going to bed really late. This July 4th, 2024 life. Dreams that may come. Joe Biden. The New York Times. Newspapers. Printer’s ink. Justifying the galleys. Linotype machines. Letter presses.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Journalism

    One brief shining: A dull steady drone, quiet yet woeful, persistent, challenges my hearing since I cannot locate the source which increases and decreases according to the position of my head, clamoring for all the attention I would rather devote to writing, in the background yet pushing itself into the foreground. Acchh.

     

    Wednesday. A busy day. Up sticks. Shema. Back exercises. Write Ancientrails. Over to Evergreen Medical for my Prolia shot. Back to Conifer, Aspen Perks for breakfast, pickup flannel shirts at the dry cleaners, ready for storage, back home to Leo. Get Leo’s stuff together for his Dad’s afternoon arrival. Read. Watch a little TV. Shower. Order from Beau Jo’s to pick up on the way to CBE. MVP. Then, a half-hour with Rich on the Supreme Court, Joe Biden and our hapless nation. In the parking lot, a warm Mountain summer night with a clear field of stars. Home around 10:30 pm. 2 hours past my usual bedtime. Oi. A little THC.

    Then up at 7:30. For the life that happens on July 4th, 2024.

    Happy birthday, Uncle Sam! Speech. Speech.

    Thank you. Thank you. No. Really. Thank you. (puts hands out, palms down. In response the crowd quiets.)

    I know. I know. This has not been democracy’s finest year. Anywhere. Except maybe Britain. A bit of a nod to India, too. Otherwise the forces of autocracy and prejudice, of chauvinistic religion have proved ascendant. Yes. I read the newspapers, too. Online of course.

    (crowd laughs)

    So. What to say. A time of peril for our government and its authority granted by the citizens of our nation. Raising the President above the law? That’s not an American idea. Remember King George? The divine right of Kings? No citizen, no matter what their title or station is above the law. I’ve said that over and over since the founding. A hard lesson, one that may seem too hard to some. But to me? Essential. Sine qua non.

    And on that divine right business. Who knows about divinity and what it wants or who it wants to lead? That’s why we established a government of the people, by the people, for the people so help us the non-intrusive god of the Deists who wrote our constitution. Now many of our citizens, in defiance of that bedrock principle, want to put so-called Christian values as superior, as national values. They even want me to preside over a Christian nation.

    No. I will not. I’m agnostic myself. Not to mention the Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Sikh’s, Jains, Taoists, atheists, humanists and who knows how many others. We are a quilt, a tapestry, not a pristine white altar cloth.

    Enough of that. I’m headed to Coney Island for a hot dog and some fireworks. Enjoy the 4th.

     


    Holidays Politics US History

  • Tree Time

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer and the Bar Mitzvah Moon

    Monday gratefuls: Flonase. Tree sex. Grass sex. Make me sneezy. Leo the gentle. Luke. With family in Florida. Mark dealing with loss in Hua Hin, Thailand. Seoah turning 46 this July 4th. Murdoch. My son, who cares for those who work for him. The unconscious. The collective unconscious. Archetypes. Dreams. Depth Psychology. Rollo May. Marie von Franz. James Hillman. Robert Johnson.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Sleep

    One brief shining: A mystery this slipping into the unprotected, vulnerable hours, extinguishing the busy scanning of the everyday for a nighttime swim in the inky waters of just our Self, a time for only you, only me, rummaging through the storehouse hunting matters that need healing or celebration or acceptance, speaking the language of symbol and emotion, of the deep you, attending to your Self in the inner cathedral.

    On my Lodgepole Companion the yellow male Flowers, catkins, have disappeared. The female ovulate Cones, red and swollen, fertilized, now dot the Branch ends, beginning the transition from female Flower to Pine Cone. These serotinous cones require fire to open them, a hot fire like one produced when the Crowns burn. Crown Fires burn fast, destroying acres of Trees at once. Stopping them tests the mettle of current Fire suppression techniques. Often the Crown Fires burn until they burn themselves out. As once they did always.

    Fire does not destroy the Lodgepole; rather, it opens their seeds to newly fertile soil. One Forest dies that another may be born. Not a lot different from the way death burns through a generation of humans, one generation dying, the other growing up in its stead.

    Annie Novak, the instructor in my Tree Communication class, cautioned us to notice our anthropocentric tendencies when talking about Trees, Plants. An example. We consider seconds, hours, months, years, decades, as important measures of time. How does a Tree experience time? Or, does a Tree experience time?

    Dendrochronologists may use Tree growth rings to accurately place an individual’s life span in our human history. The Tree growth rings themselves? Dead. The heartwood of a Tree functions as a Tree’s columnar support essential to support the Crown as it grows up and up. A key Tree strategy for access to Great Sol’s Light.

    Trees do move, up from their Seed toward the Sky, out toward the space around them, and down into the soil beneath them. But they do not move from their chosen location. They also grow in girth, expanding as the cambium produces xylem cells which push the width of the Trunk out as they die and form the heartwood.

    (NB for the Ancient Brothers. I misspoke about xylem cells. They die and become the strong support for the trunk. In the center of the heartwood xylem cells transport water from the roots to the leaves through capillary action.) The phloem cells, between the bark and the cambium (growing part of the tree), take sugars down from the Leaves and Branches to other parts of the Tree. It is the phloem and cambium that measure only a few human hairs in width.

    Since the heartwood and bark are dead (bark not always, see Aspens for example, but mostly), and the living part of the tree-phloem and cambium-have only a few hairs width presence in the huge structure of the Tree, what of the Tree might experience time? Do we consider the whole organism, which consists of mostly dead tissue, or do we consider the living cambium and phloem only? Perhaps the whole Tree and its growth rings simply are time itself measured in a Treecentric way?

    Lots to think about and I’m only one or two strides into Herme’s Pilgrimage. Where will Herme go?

     


    Fourth Phase Great Wheel Hermitage Holidays Judaism Mountains Plants Shadow Mountain Wild Neighbors

  • Herme’s Journey

    Posted on by Charles 1 Comment

    Summer and the waning Bar Mitzvah Moon

    Monday gratefuls: The Ancient Brothers. Great Sol. Shadow Mountain. TV. Books. CD’s. Jazz. Mozart. Telemann. Bach. Coltrane. Monk. Parker. Gregorian Chants. Rock and roll. CD player. K-dramas. Netflix. Amazon Prime. Mhz. Starlink. Conversation. Listening. Seeing. Really listening. Really seeing. The Aspen out my bedroom window. The dead Lodgepole.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The lesser light-the Moon

    One brief shining: When I go now to an airport, when I even imagine going to an airport, I recoil, seeing the old Native American punishment, running between rows of TSA employees, airline boarding agents, and crabby fellow sufferers all diminished by the experience, yet needing to pass along, like some fraternity hazing ritual, the same misery to the pledges not yet seated in their too narrow and too jammed together seats. And paying often thousands of dollars to do it.

     

    Still enjoying a post bar mitzvah push sense of opening, of new possibilities. Herme’s Journey, which I imagined after the dream workshop last month, got sidelined a bit by the week of the ritual, guests, celebration, and the week of physical recovery that followed that one. Though. Kavod for the Trees (Honoring the Tree) has kept it alive.

    Herme’s Journey followed thoughts and feelings triggered by my Wabash dream. That dream encouraged me to reenter the life vision I had when I started college almost 60 years ago. To embrace that dream of a long period, lifelong in my hopes of those years, as a student, then a scholar. With libraries and writing instruments my primary tools. With ideas and their expression as my life work.

    Herme, you may recall, is the name I gave to the neon sign I had made of the Hooded Man Card* from the Wildwood Tarot Deck. The name I gave to myself in the wake of Kate’s death, of a mourner then a griever, then… I wasn’t sure what.

    Herme’s Journey blends the Hooded Man Card with the first card of the Tarot Deck: The Fool. The major arcana of a tarot deck tells a story of the Fool’s journey, begun blithely, a bindlestaff over one shoulder, a dog alongside, stepping off into the unknown. In the Wildwood deck** the Wanderer’s journey is through the Wildwood. Yes. My journey, too.

    The Wanderer is a beginner, the beginner’s mind at play in the fields of the psyche. Herme’s Journey is my Wanderer’s path, a beginner’s path, but one begun with the age and experience of an old man. So, Herme’s Journey.

    What lies along this path? Still unclear though Trees play a central role. As does the Great Wheel of the Year and the Jewish Lunar Calendar. As the pilgrimage unfolds, I plan to explore Kabbalah, my long period of work with Ovid’s Metamorphosis, poetry and literature, myth and legend, fairy and folk tales, religion, and the arts: music, painting, sculpture, theater, dance, opera.

    What will come? Again, unknown. It will be the path, not the destination. What I will do is read a lot, write, travel, think, listen, see, taste. Talk.

     

    *The Hooded Man stood at the winter solstice point on December 21, along with the earth and the sun in the night. This is the time to be alone and contemplate life. This card describes the gates of death and rebirth, deep inside the Earth.  Hooded Man

    **A central theme of the Wildwood Tarot is the interconnection of humans with the wild, with animals, and with the calendar cycle.


    Feelings Fourth Phase Great Wheel Hermitage Holidays Humanities Kabbalah Latin Letters Mountains Myth and Story Plants Poetry Tarot Travel Weather +Climate Wild Neighbors Writing

  • The Longest Days

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer and the Bar Mitzvah Moon

    Thursday gratefuls: Orgovyx support. Alan. Joan. Irv. Marilyn. Jamie. Luke and Leo. Covid. Paul. Tom. The life of June 20, 2024. Summer. Solstice. The growing dark. Dogs. Toby. Findlay. Gracie. Leo. Licks and Lila. Zeus. Boo. Thor. The Soil. Cancer. Growing season. The Full Bar Mitzvah Moon tomorrow. The asteroid belt. Mars. Io. Europa. Callisto. Ganymede. The Galilean Moons.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Yin and Yang

    One brief shining: After learning that my insurance company would charge me seven-hundred and fifty three dollars a month copay for the drug Orgovyx, which stops my cancer while the plan and execution of the new radiation take place, I ceased to live in the moment, in the life of each new day, and projected out a depleting bank account, old old age with limited resources; as Jack Benny said when the robber put a gun in his back, “Your money or your life!”. And after a pause from Jack Benny, “I’m thinking about it!” (thanks to Tom for this bit of comedic history)

     

    Learned yesterday that Orgovyx support looked upon my credit report and pronounced it adequately inadequate to pay for the drug. Yay! So, I’ll get the drug for free. Hot flashes here we come.

    As I’ve written here, this has been a harder encounter with cancer news. Again, I’ve been projecting more metastases, more radiation, more hassles with insurance. And, at the same time trying to stay in this day, this new life, the moments of it as they come and go, talking of Michelangelo. Will I wear my trousers rolled?

    That may be the real learning. The wrestling back and forth with cancer has brought me to a new appreciation for the rabbinic ideas of each morning a resurrection, each day a new life. The more I live into them, with them, the better I am at isolating this day as the only life I have. Each moment in this new day as an ichi-go, ichi-e moment.

    What about tomorrow? There is no tomorrow, only a new life on the day you rise up from the grave, wipe the sleep from your eyes, and start life over. A day fresh with possibility and time and precious experience.

     

    Just a moment: The Summer Solstice. The holyday polar opposite on the Great Wheel from the Winter Solstice. Light and dark. Heat and cold. Growing season and fallow season. Summer and Winter. T-shirts and down vests. Working and resting.

    I’ve long rejected the Summer Solstice as an overly exuberant presentation of Great Sol. This year I’ve begun to, are you ready for this, see the Light. Sorry. Anyhow, I emphasized the Winter Solstice in my heart and diminished Summer. Perhaps necessary to rebalance what I see as a too strong embrace of Summer days and too little appreciation for the joys of a Winter night. Yet the gardener in me always celebrated Summer, the season of vegetables, of bees hard at work, of evenings with Kate by our Fire pit.

    So today. In this June 20th, 2024 life I dance around the bonfires, too, joyful about chlorophyll and photosynthesis, about the growth in all the Lodgepoles and Aspens, about Elk Calves and Mule Deer fawns, about the Light which streams down on us, Great Sol’s beneficence granted to us all, the just and the unjust.


    Feelings Fourth Phase Great Wheel Health Holidays

  • I’m Into Something Good. Oh, yeah…

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: Cool night. Elk. Mule Deer. Fox. Great Sol. The Great Wheel. The Great Work. The Jewish Year. Wild Trees. Ancient Forests. Sequoias. Coastal Redwoods. Bristlecone Pines. Kabbalah. Shekinah. The Sabbath Bride. Emergence. Lodgepoles. Aspens. Jewitches. Love. Justice. Compassion. A direction, a purpose. A way to live.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Emergence

    One brief shining: Before the closing of the door and before I even open it, I stand hand over my eyes repeating the shema, declaring that I, god-wrestler, find the one to be all and the all to be one, which we might call god or not, but we can call it for sure the interdependent web of all things, all becoming things, everywhere there is a where, stretching from me in front of my bedroom door to the other reaches of this universe, passing by the Crab Nebula and the Horse Head Nebula on its way to a boundary where there can be no boundary.

     

    I’m into something good.* Said this this morning during the Ancient Brothers. An exciting burst of serendipity, synchronicity, plain old enthusiasm. Heading toward eudaimonia. Wow. Sounds manic as I write it. Has some of that flavor. The shovel that uncovered this new path? A dream. And the Dreamers’ response to it.

    And… Here we go. I’m going back to Wabash College. At least that place I was when I was there. Serendipity note: the Herman’s Hermits song below was released in 1964, the summer before my last year of high school, and before my mother’s death in October. Another serendipity note: Herman’s Hermits.

    When I went to Wabash, I had competing emotions, both so very strong. The first. Grief. Unresolved, not understood, in no way dealt with. Mom was dead. I left home to go to this school, at the time highly competitive, and bare my small town intellect to so many others so much smarter than me. Grief and uncertainty. Toxic at best.

    The second. Finally! A liberal arts education. A chance to get into the cultural deposit of the West. (It would be many, many years before Asia showed up in my life.) Philosophy. History. English Literature. Languages. A chance to grow beyond my autodidact years, guided by professors and stimulated by fellow students. Hard to convey the excitement, even relief, I felt at starting college.

    Then German happened. I wanted to read Hegel, Nietzsche, Kant in the original. So I signed up. And floundered. Bad. Got c’s and d’s on quizzes and tests. Where this headed was clear. Abject failure. I did not do the brave and movie worthy thing. Face up to it and overcome. No. I dropped German like a hot potato masher hand grenade.

    At the end of the year summer jobs were hard to find and Wabash was expensive. I decided to go further. Leave Wabash altogether. I’m not big on regret, but this is one of them for me.

    The dream. Said. Go back. Be who you intended to be. The one that got lost along the way. So who was I going to be, the 18 year old version of this 77 year old. I wasn’t sure of anything but my desire to dive headlong into the deep waters of the liberal arts. Where would I come out? No idea. Didn’t want to know. I only wanted the journey. No destination.

    I’ve made a journey, but got off the path of liberal arts, shunted aside by politics and religion. By alcohol and women. By travel and jobs. All ok, all good. Yet not where I wanted to be.

    Now. The tarot card, the Hermit, hangs rendered in neon over my breakfast table. Herman’s Hermits remind me of the year before college, feelings accelerating, ground speed increasing. I’m also reminded of my first response to Kate’s death. I’m going to be a hermit. Hence, the neon. Last year I wrote a one-act play introducing Herme, the Hermit, and Cold Mountain’s poetry. And the dream says, go. Teshuvah. Return to the highest and best you.

    A semi-hermit, a sometime recluse, a happy loner. But one with the permission to study, to write. To go back into the liberal arts and see if, as Israel: God-Wrestler, I can add to the world my own learnings.  About the Great Wheel, the Jewish liturgical year, trees and plants, about process metaphysics, about religion, about poetry and literature, about transformation and metamorphosis. These are the lenses through which I have learned to see the world.

    Next. Organizing my days, weeks, months, years around this Fool’s Journey. After that. On to the diving board, spring up and down. Out into thin air.

    *


    Feelings Fourth Phase Friends Great Wheel Great Work Holidays Humanities Judaism Letters Literature Myth and Story Plants Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Reimaging revelation Tarot

  • Memorial Day

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

    Monday gratefuls: Cool night. Memorial Day. Decoration Day. Parades. School’s over and summer starts. The World. Its many Wild Neighbors. Mountains. Lakes. Ponds. Tides. Tidal Pools. Forests. Trees. Plains. Rivers. Streams. Creeks. Meadows. Valleys. Cultures. Long evolution. Its oneness. Its holiness. Its sacred nature. Our Hullian needs. Our need for fulfillment and satisfaction.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Warriors

    One brief shining: Those parades when heat softened the asphalt on Harrison Street so it could accept treads laid down by the tank from the National Guard Armory, when the guys carrying the colors insisted on wearing their old uniforms, pale stretched skin showing where the buttons held, only just, when last year’s homecoming queen sat prim and straight on the folded convertible top of an impeccably restored 1957 Chevy, when we would stand along the parade route enthralled.

     

    Memorial day. Mom and Dad. Veterans of WWII. Uncle Riley, too. That generation that gave so much. War. A human horror engaged too often for too little reason. Though WWII was not one of those. To have had that great world spasm followed by the never finished Korean War and the unnecessary Vietnam War, then Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya has sullied the warrior class, making them too often pawns of geopolitical maneuvering by oligarchs, dictators, and short sighted politicians.

    Yet. They persist. Often frustrated and hemmed in by those who misunderstand their role. As I once did. Warriors and priests. Old, old roles in human cultures around the globe. Both often abused. Both in my immediate family.

    Easy to forget the purpose of the Lt. Col. who is my son. The USAF. Defense. Not offense. Oaths taken to defend the U.S. against all enemies domestic and foreign. Obedience to civilian authority delivered through the Commander in Chief, the President.

    The military does not define who the enemies are. That’s a civilian responsibility. Often lacking in both reason and ethical justification, yes. But it is the civilian authority who aims and then empowers our military. Only then can they engage.

    Warriors place themselves in harms way to defend their tribe, their people, their nation. This is an ancient and honorable role. Indigenous people in the U.S., in spite of their history, sign up in disproportionate numbers because the warrior class holds such high esteem in their cultures.

    Yes, war is terrible and often, perhaps most often, wrong. That is, engaged not for defense but for seizing land, control of another people, for vengeance. For reasons of profit and misguided fears. For this last think the domino effect.

    The warriors themselves continue on. Learning, training, readying themselves for what might be, for what even they hope may never be. Yet when called they will respond and respond with all that they have.

    I’m not thrilled to have a warrior son. Though I recognize the selflessness of his choice. And the values which led him to choose service to country. I wish he could have become a social worker, a lawyer, a physician. He was pre-med before turning to the Air Force after 9/11.

    Yet over the years I’ve come to appreciate the sacrifice in life-style, income, and personal freedom. I’ve met many of his colleagues and to a person they are warriors, too. Global politics are anarchic and still ruled by might makes right in the minds of many. We need a military, citizens willing to defend us.

    They are who we honor today. Especially those who died as a result of their service.

    All year after the parade we would drive over those tank treads, hardened into a feature of our main street. The slight rumble would remind us.


    Family Feelings Fourth Phase Friends Holidays Memories US History

  • Mary Jane Hits Number One

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane and the Moon of Shadow Mountain

    Friday gratefuls: Ginny. Marilyn. Rick. Luke. Sally. Carol. Fran. Mussar Thursday. Mediguard. My phone/handheld computer. Mark in Bangkok. Mary in K.L. Me on Shadow Mountain. Distributed siblings. A new laptop. Bonobos. USA cleaners. Shirts. Breakfast. Fountain Barbecue. Chicken. Mac and cheese. Barbecue beans. New tires. Big O.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: These two

    One brief shining: The snow has melted in the back, on the ski runs of Black Mountain, the Streams carry Water from the melt, from the Rains of this week; the Grass turned green, inviting Mule Deer adults and young ones over for a quick bite, loving too the dandelion delights all yellow and waiting.

     

    Cannabis is now number one, passing even sturdy alcohol as America’s drug of choice. See this NYT article for more. I recall being in Colorado in 2012 when dispensaries first opened. I went into one, a strange transgressive thrill passed over me. Marijuana! Legal? Nah. Now, a short twelve years later, this news. I suppose all us old folks, each who bought his or her or their share of oregano no doubt, were already primed. Lots of articles too about seniors-neither high school nor college, but demographic-adopting cannabis for regular use.

    Folks who visit me still want to go to the dispensaries. Colorado figured out to how make this transition first and did it pretty well. I used edibles for sleep for a year or two, but no longer. Though I am finding that after a day when my back pounds at me, 5 milligrams of a chill pill (indica) calms me. Of course, that’s not much use when I travel.

    Amtrak reminded us several different times that its trains and stations were Federal property on which Federal law enforcement would snag riders who got off the train at a stop and lit up a joint. Since state law and federal law are in an odd balance, one ignoring the other, manifesting mostly in the now obviously silly Federal ban on banking for dispensaries, it leaves those of us in the many states where cannabis is now legal: 38 for medicinal, 24 for medicinal and recreational, in an odd patchwork of jurisdictions when leaving our home states.

     

    Just a moment: three weeks to my bar mitzvah. Learning goes well. Torah portion learned. Readings for leading the morning service getting there. Need to work on my prayer shawl moves, bending the knee.

     

    Memorial day weekend. The Indianapolis 500. The 108th running. Used to be in the Formula 1 circuit way back. Basketball and the Indy 500, Hoosier sports. Hard to credit how completely the 500 (as we called it) takes over life and news in an Indiana May. Race car trivia, time trails, practice runs. Gossip about the drivers. About the probable size of the crowd. The Greatest Spectacle in Racing. Capped at the end with the chugging of milk from a glass bottle. A nod to Indiana’s dairy farms and the wholesomeness of the Midwest. (spare me on this last one)


    Colorado Health Holidays Sport

  • Dissonance and its troubles

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Passover Moon

    Monday gratefuls: Marilyn and Irv. Steve, Cyndi, Hoosier woman. Heidi. Salaam. Kathy. Patrick. Gil. Seder at  the Saltzman’s. My permanent seat at Tara’s seder. And, Marilyn said, hers as well. Belonging, not believing. Judaism. An Ancientrail of debate, song, justice. The Passover Moon last night. Mountains. Forests. Wild Neighbors. Good food.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Palestinians. Israelis.

    One brief shining: When the chatter grows loud and the hearing aid fails, the world recedes and I sit there, an observer wishing I was elsewhere, sort of engaged, hearing the headline words, wanting to add something, get in there, talk, yet both functionally unable, too little signal, and emotionally unable, I need to get away from here, from these people.

     

    Passover last night at Marilyn and Irv’s. Wonderful. Frustrating. My first passover as a Jew. Now my story in a different way than metaphor, though it is too metaphor. My ancestors who stood up to Pharaoh. My ancestors fled into the Sinai, wandered there for forty years eating manna, grumbling, receiving the torah, making a golden calf. That’s the difference. The lineage. Whether Hebrews were slaves in Egypt or not, this origin story conveys how and who we are even now, thousands of years later. The we there is the difference.

    No longer do I sit at a seder table as an interested observer, rather now as one whose attention and person has direct links with the maror, the haroset, with the seder plate. Profound for me. And, oddly dissonant.

    As I sat through my first seder as a Jew, I was with people who waved “organized” religion away with a Buddhist shrug or a spirituality makes more sense wave from the back of a parade convertible. I wanted to say, well, ok, but for me I find wonder in the torah. In the blessings. In the community of Beth Evergreen. But my hearing issues and my sense of the chasm between me and religion’s cultured despisers kept me quiet. And in that quietness I judged. Judged.

    Shallow. Timid. Fearful. Seeking the pablum of the inner life. Baby food. The reason our politics are so screwed up. Bright but so caught up in their white privilege they can’t see the world as it is.

    Oh, I was superior. Better than them. And in that very feeling of course reduced myself and my own observations to a sideshow. I felt defensive, but not willing to talk about it. To challenge, to step in the water. I stewed. Wondering how I could extricate myself. I couldn’t.

    It was my first passover as a Jew. I wanted to be there. To hear the four questions, to sing Dayenu, to taste the bitter herb and the haroset. To listen to and participate in my story.

    Later, this morning, I found myself. Collected the Charlie from the table last night. Sat him down and said, “Look. These are people trying their best. Wanting to live well. To be loving and kind. As are you.” They don’t share your radical politics, very few do. They don’t share your fascination with the ancient ways of a desert people. And why should they? You are the one being judged when you judge. Lighten up and enjoy these folks.

    And here’s the thing. Outside celebration of a holiday focused on liberation I could have found each of these people to be interesting interlocutors. Good for a breakfast or lunch time heart to heart. Passover, and my first as a Jew, revved up my political and religious engines. I ran too hot for the evening.

    That is the other thing. I’m a man of religion and of politics. What are the two things folks agree not to discuss at Thanksgiving? Yep.


    Feelings Fourth Phase Friends Holidays Judaism Politics

  • Passed Over

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Moon of Liberation

    Sunday gratefuls: Passover. The Saltzmans. Tara. Arjean. My permanent seat at their seder. Their willingness to sign so I can have a dog. Yesterday’s Snow melting off my Lodgepole Companion. Dripping toward the Aquifer that fills my well. Great Sol brimming over, gently warming the Needles, the clumps of Snow, an eternal cycle of Sun and Water, Plant Life and Soil. Observing it.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Gravity and Water

    One brief shining: Sat down this am to write three morning pages, picked up the yellow legal pad, the black pen, and feeling overwhelmed, too much to do, wrote myself into a calmer place, write now I wrote, hah, I liked that writing write now, then slowly penning my way toward blessings, the hundreds of blessings I’ve experienced just since getting up and the joy of them, oh, not so bad now, eh?

     

    Snow melted off my Lodgepole Companion. A lot of it still there at 7:30 am. Now three hours later. Great Sol convincing a man to take off his coat. A blue Sky. Ancient Brothers on favorite places finished. Morning pages written. Breakfast made and eaten.

     

    Ancientrails, then a shower and a nap. Passover seders take a while and it’s often quite a while until the food. So, a nap. And a snack before hand. This is the day before the actual day because Salaam may have a track meet tomorrow.

    The Moon of Liberation carries us into this ancient story of slavery, plagues, a recalcitrant Pharaoh, and a stuttering advocate. The journey which leads me to the Saltzman’s began on the day in the far past when Azrael, the angel of death, passed over the homes of Hebrew slaves if they had lamb’s blood smeared on their lintel.

    The passover liberation of Hebrew slaves underlies de minimus this holiday, but also that Egyptian night of deliverance underlies all of Jewish history since then. The story told and retold among diaspora Jews in Babylon, in Russia, in Poland, in Hungary and Austria and yes Germany. Later in many places in U.S. cities. And in any other spot where enough Jews have immigrated.

    When we dip the parsely in the salt water, and the haroset in the bitter herb, we show the paradoxical nature of this holy day. It is of spring and growth, yet also tainted by the waters of the Reed Sea. The mortar of the former slave’s work has transformed to haroset: apples, walnuts, cinnamon, honey, and sweet wine, yet we dip the matzah covered with haroset into the bitter herb, often horseradish, to remind us that wandering the Sinai was also a time of affliction, affliction in spite or or as a direct result of liberation.

    We embrace our history, knowing we all have our own Egypt’s, our own shackles. Knowing, too, that the shackles of others, as long as racism and sexism and homophobia create contemporary ghettos, are our shackles as well. This is not just a holiday, it’s a promise to ourselves, to each other, and to the world that we will share the burden of the other.


    Feelings Fourth Phase Friends Holidays Judaism

  • Hongbau

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Moon of Liberation

    Monday gratefuls: Ruth. Gabe. April birthdays. Mark and Dad, too. The Ancient Brothers on listening. Alan on the Fountain of Sheep, Fuenteovejuna. Spending time with friends and family. Morning pages. Exercise. Its limits. Snow in the forecast. After 82 in Denver yesterday! Shadow Mountain. Shabbat. The Morning Service. Anxiety. Writing.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Red envelopes

    One brief shining: Walked past concrete temporary ballards, through high chain link fences in a maze leading to the Cheesecake Factory, found the entrance, secured a table from the front desk, walked back with the hostess, waved hi to Ruth and Gabe when they came in, and they found the table so we could celebrate Gabe’s 16th.

     

    If you’ve never been to the Cheesecake Factory, good for you. Over priced and decorated, at least the downtown Denver location, in a faux Egyptian style that makes no sense at all. Not to mention: NOISY. The kids talked about school, about college, about music, five women you need to listen to, and things that happened when they were “young.” I picked up headline words while the details got lost in the clanking of silver ware, the bouncing of multiple conversations off the hard coffered ceiling and the tile floors, the shifting of plates. Could have stayed home for all the signal I got out of the noise. But if I had, who would have paid for dinner?

    Took Gabe and Ruth their hongbau with $10 for each year of their birthday age, my main gift for several years now. Took Gabe a miniature claymore and a new pocket knife. As a hemophiliac, he has a certain obsession with knives. Which I indulge. Ruth got all of Kate’s tassels from high school, college, and med school as well as Korean artist’s paper I purchased in the first Korean city to have paper making.

    Walking back to the car I was short of breath and my back hurt, but felt good. Love spending special time with Gabe and Ruth. Family and its sinews. Ruth has committed to CU Boulder. She doesn’t know her FAFSA results, financial aid, so she can’t sign up for housing yet. I’m glad she’ll be in Boulder. I’ll be able to go see her, take her out to dinner, to the planetarium, stay in touch.

    Meanwhile Gabe has two more years of high school left. What’s next for him? He doesn’t know. And isn’t particularly concerned. College figures in somehow.

     

    Alan is assistant director again for a play in Wheatridge at the Wheatridge Theater Company. The director is a Mexican woman who directed plays for many years in Mexico City, Maru Garcia. Which explains how Fuenteovejuna or, the Fountain of Sheep*, shows up on a Denver metro stage with a very Jewish assistant director.

    Keeping up with the theater world through Alan’s journey. Don’t think I’m going much further with my own journey. At least for now I’ll allow my one act and performance last year to be my capstone.

     

     

    *Billing from the Wheatridge Theater Company:

    FuenteOvejuna

    May 31 to June 16

    By Lope de Vega

    Directed by Maru Garcia

    First published in 1619, the play is based upon a historical incident that took place in the village of FuenteOvejuna in 1476. While under the command of the ruthless Commander Guzmán, the mistreated villagers band together and kill him. When a magistrate sent by the King arrives to investigate, the villagers, even under the pain of torture, respond only by saying “Fuenteovejuna did it” thus obtaining the pardon from the King and their freedom. A powerful play which depicts the triumph over the mistreatment from authorities.

    Rated: PG13 for descriptions & depictions of physical and sexual violence.


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