Category Archives: Holidays

Anoka County, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Garden, Great Wheel, Holidays, Judaism, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Myth and Story, Our Land and Home, permaculture, Plants, Shadow Mountain, Tarot, Weather +Climate

Winter is Coming

September 22, 2021 Charles Leave a comment

Harvest Home and the Michaelmas Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Jon. Healing, in some ways. Ruth, in Spirit week at her high school. Having fun. Anxious. Gabe, with his first pimple, Nosy. That squash soup I made last year for Kate. Still good, fed us all. Jodi and kitchen ideas. Cold nights. Kep and Rigel beside me.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Autumnal Equinox

Tarot: Four of Bows, Wildwood

Monday night we had frost. Tricky. Moisture dripped from the garage eve onto the steps up to the loft. Had on my tennis shoes. Not yet winterized, my mind left out the part where that small amount of Water could freeze, become slippery. Especially on the sole of a tennis shoe. Grabbed the railing, steadied myself. Oh, shit. Went to the results of my recent DEXA scan, bone density. Hoping I have enough bone strength to fall and not break something important. Like any bone in my body.

That Worm. The one about handling this place in the Winter. Bit into the Apple of my paradise. This is something I have to face, deal with. Choose ways and means to keep myself safe and happy. Rigel, too.

Not a big deal. Yet. And there are options.

Our house in the early morning, light on Shadow Mountain

This is where I want to be. Kate’s last Home. Our Mountain Home. I’m willing to think this through, come up with solutions. One of which entails finding somebody to plow my driveway. Starting again on that one this morning.

Jodi came. She’s from Blue Mountain Kitchens. I want to inspire my cooking. Make the kitchen a place I want to be. Functional, yes. Beautiful, too. Rustic, fit the house, its location. We talked cabinetry, counter tops, backsplash, storage, prep. I liked her. She had some good ideas.

Next week Bear Creek Designs, who did our downstairs bathroom, putting in stone and tile, creating a zero entry threshold for the shower, comes out. I’ll see what they have to say. I like them, too.

Lucas Cranach the Elder, Living in Paradise

Money can answer many of the questions about that Worm. Protect the Apple. And, I have enough. Not more than enough, but enough, to tackle most of the issues.

Also needing to get strong bodies up here to move furniture. Table from downstairs to the old sewing room. Kate’s recliner up to the living room. Figure out what to do with the big wooden display cabinet and its glassware. The smaller one and its rocks, including the nice gneiss Tom sent me a while back.

As I often whisper to myself, I’m getting there. Slow and steady. The tortoise. Not the rabbit.

Jon, Ruth, and Gabe came up last night. Jon has to get Jen to sign the title to the Subaru so he can donate it CPR. This is happening. Very slowly, but it’s happening.

Today though is a holiday. Let’s not forget. Mabon. The Autumnal Equinox. The time of the Harvest Moon. The combine contractors are working their way through the Wheat Fields of the Great Plains. Corn pickers are out in Iowa, Indiana, Minnesota, Illinois. Soy bean harvest. Apples in the orchards.

Those gardens with Squash, last Tomatoes, Beans, Onions, Raspberries, wild Grapes. Wicker and wire gathering containers filled, carried into kitchens. The canning equipment taken down from its high shelves. Oh, what a time. Fresh vegetables and fruit, nuts.

Mabon is a late name for this harvest holiday: Feast of the Ingathering, Harvest Home, or simply Fall. Meteorologists say Fall when September 1st comes. Most of us still follow the old ways, though we may not think of them that way. Celebrating equinoxes and solstices, in their reversed forms in the Northern and Southern hemispheres, constituted a religious rite in many ancient cultures. Anywhere agriculture followed the seasons: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, the Sun and its relation to Earth’s orbit evoked awe and wonder.

No accident that CBE has a sukkah up, open to the sky. A prominent Harvest holiday on the Jewish calendar. And, I learned a year or so ago, once the primary holiday at this time of year, not the High Holidays. Bounty in the form of first Fruits, unblemished Animals came to the Temple in Jerusalem. Sacrifices to the most high god. Think I’ll head over there this evening. Pizza in the hut.

A week from today we celebrate Michaelmas. The traditional beginning of the academic year in England, the Michaelmas term. The feast day of the Archangel Michael. Tom and Roxann’s anniversary. And, as you’ve often heard me say here, the start of the Springtime of the Soul.

Guess I’ve had a Jewish sensibility all these years. This does feel like the beginning of a new year to me. I celebrate one at Samain and on January 1st as well. Multiple new years. Multiple opportunities to examine life. In fact, I think I’ll do a Fall Tarot spread to see what this wondrous season has in store for me.

Commentary on Religion, Fourth Phase, Garden, Great Wheel, Holidays, Kabbalah, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Tarot, Torah, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Tradition a longer conversation summarized

September 20, 2021 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa and the Michaelmas Moon

Tarot: Nine of Stones in the Wildwood Deck

Meaning (according to the Wildwood Tarot book-WTB):

Reverence for past wisdom and sacrifice. The ability to relate to ancient knowledge and pass on the lessons of ancestral memory and ritual.

Let me throw in here, too, Ovid. And, my interest in pre-Socratic philosophers like Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus. Dante. The Tao. The early world of Hinduism. Christianity and Judaism. Those very early shamanic faiths of the Mongols, of the Japanese (Shinto), the Koreans.

Even anthropology. My interest in anthropology was to find the way of other peoples, to know and understand them as much on their own terms as possible. Travel as well. The learning inherent in being the other.

I’m not a syncretist. I’m not an everybody has something to teach us sorta guy. Though there’s a sense in which that’s true. I’m not trying to find the one truth that snakes through all the traditions. There isn’t one. And, yes, I’m pretty sure of that.

There is though this truth. The human body, its limitations and potentials, does remain pretty much the same over time. The brain and its evolution has hardwired certain ways of responding to the world around us. Though there have been dramatic climatic changes like the ice age, the sorts of challenges the world provides in its various regions remain at least similar even today.

What I’ve done, often without knowing it, is to immerse myself in the thought ways, the life ways, the ritual ways of so many different cultures over long periods of time and in very different geographical and geological conditions that I feel like a citizen of multiple cultures, yet beholden to none of them. Including, perhaps most of all, my own.

The tricky part for those of us raised in the West and in the Judaeo-Christian tradition can be capsulized in one word: progress. Progress assumes linear time. Progress assumes one culture can evaluate others qualitatively. Nineteenth century France is better than, nineteenth century England. Or, China’s civilization is superior to everyone else’s outside the Middle Kingdom. Or, we, the USA, will make the world safe for democracy, the obvious best form of government.

Progress both puts blinders on us, makes jingoists of us all, and imagines an unproven and unprovable idea: that next year, next day, next minute things will get better. By whose standards? Mine? Yours? Theirs? The citizens of ancient Ephesus? Of X’ian. Of Kyoto.

Of course, central heating beats a fire in the middle of the hut with a hole in the top to let smoke out. Of course, driving in a motorized vehicle is easier than walking or riding a horse. Of course, air conditioning is preferable to suffocating heat. You can extend this list.

But. Is central heating progress? Depends on the fuel, in one way of looking at it. Natural gas, propane, and heating oil are all common fuels. Think. Climate change.

Same question about driving and air conditioning.

Humans tend to favor the thing they have and know. So, today is better than yesterday.

Meaning (according to the Wildwood Tarot book-WTB):

Reverence for past wisdom and sacrifice. The ability to relate to ancient knowledge and pass on the lessons of ancestral memory and ritual.

As a 1960’s radical, anti-establishment, pushing for new political, military, economic, sexual, intellectual mores, to consider myself one who reveres past wisdom, ancient knowledge? No. No. No.

Yet. There I was studying Socrates. Zoroaster. Ovid. Greek history. Biblical literature. Dante. Taoism. The history of ancient civilizations like Assyria, the Qin dynasty, Middle Kingdom Egypt. Not only studying. Learning. And in that learning, unbeknownst to me, at least partially, being shaped by that learning.

When I went to seminary, I saw the utility of the prophetic tradition in Judaism and Christianity. It could be used to press for change on behalf of the widow and the orphan, the enslaved, the oppressed, the poor and the hungry. I considered this tradition, that of the prophets of Ancient Israel, the real gem in the long years since the death of Jesus.

It was. And, is. But. There is another jewel there, too. One only accessible to the meditator, the reader of scripture, the ascetic, the one willing to face the root of the faith. To get burned by its heat. This is the faith of the Russian Starets, the Welsh peregrinators, mystics like St John of the Cross and Meister Eckhart. And, not faith. Not really.

Why? Because it involved and affirmed an actual experience of the numinous.

My inner world got shaped, in the end, more by this strain of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Though. Again, I was only partially aware of that at the time.

When I fell too far away from the very idea of theology, of religious institutions, I went into a long period of quiet. I sold my commentaries, no longer engaged in lectio divina, or used the Jesus prayer.

Camus came back to me. Life is absurd. Without meaning. Death is final, extinction. To live is a choice. One that can be altered.

The Great Wheel came into my life sort of through a back door, a way of understanding Celtic thoughts and motivations. But when Kate and I moved to Andover and our long horticultural, beekeeping, canine loving life really began, the Great Wheel slowly seeped into my thinking about the garden, about the life of dogs and people, about the hives and their superorganism.

That was what I had been prepared for. Staring at the root of an ancient faith. I had the inner tools to accept the Great Wheel as the genius of a culture, one that had clear application to what I did every morning with hoe and spade.

Gradually I came to see that this ancient religious calendar spoke as forcefully to my spirit as the Gospel of Luke, as the prayers of Meister Eckhart. More forcefully at that point.

That was what led me to a bare knuckle spirituality, stripping away the accretions to the Great Wheel that had come from well-meaning, but in my view, silly, Wiccans and Druids.

I saw the Great Wheel, and when I did I saw it through Taoist influenced eyes, as not a belief system but as a metaphor with its feet planted in my garden. It was there, right before my eye. Beltane to Lughnasa. To Samain. To the Winter Solstice.

I had embraced an ancient way, a way I had learned from study and practice. I am, sort of, a traditionalist.

So, Nine of Stones. Hear ye, hear ye. Yes, sir!

Bees, Commentary on Religion, Dogs, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Great Wheel, Holidays, Kabbalah, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Myth and Story, Plants, Shadow Mountain, Tarot

An Ordinary Pagan

September 20, 2021 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa and the Michaelmas Moon

Monday gratefuls: My sisters: Mary, BJ, Sarah, Anne. My brother: Mark. My ancient brothers: Tom, Paul, William, Mario. Family. It is both what you make it and part of what made you. Three-hole punch. Internet recipes. Cooking. Inogen. Rain and a cool night. Living on the Mountain top.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Rain on the deck

Tarot: Nine of Stones, Wildwood Deck

The Wildwood deck bases its suits and major arcana in Celtic myth and lore. And, it correlates them to the Great Wheel. I’m learning from the deck, deepening my own thinking about the Great Wheel, about this World, this Earth onto which I was thrown along with each of you reading this.

My interest in the Great Wheel ignited during my search for a theme, a focus for writing. Kate suggested I look into my heritage. At the time I knew about Richard Ellis, my indentured servant ancestor who arrived in the U.S. in 1707. His father, a captain in William and Mary’s occupying army in Ireland, came from Wales. Denbigh. I also knew that the Correls, also on my father’s side, immigrated during the Great Potato famine in the late nineteenth century.

So, things Celtic. I expanded my reach later on into Northern European myth and legend. Genetics put this strain of my family history as more significant than the Celtic, but I was well into the Celtic material before I got genetic information through 23andme.

This learning coincided with my leaving the Presbyterian ministry and moving toward Unitarian-Universalism. I found(find) the UU movement liberating, but thin soup. It’s a nice refuge for folks fed up with traditional religious institutions, but in itself it offers only a bland diet of warmed over religious thought disconnected from its roots, decent poetry, and a laudable willingness to take action for social justice.

Though I transferred my credentials to the UU, I found my attempts to enter its ministry regression. After a couple of embarrassing and unnecessary attempts. (Kate told me I was making a mistake.) I needed to write, to be away from religious institutions. Not try again in a profession which did not fit me from the beginning.

After I left my ministry monkey back in its theological jungle, I became a flat-earth humanist. Atheist. No afterlife. Death=extinction. No world beyond the phenomenal one. And that one only as it can be understood through science. Logic. Yes. Data. Yes. Facts. Yes. Myth. No. Other World. No. Spirituality. No. Learning from poetry and the world’s religious traditions? No.

Oh, I used the Celtic and Northern European folk traditions in my writing, yes. But, did I believe it? No. How could I?

Yet. The Great Wheel. Fit so well with my Thomas Berry inflected view of climate change work: creating a sustainable future for humans on this planet. It helped me into the thought world, the faith world of the early Celts.

When Kate and I moved to Andover in 1994, I’d already written three novels using the faith worlds of early Irish, Welsh, Scots, Cornish, and Breton folk. And, one using the Ragnarok idea from Northern European faith worlds.

We wanted to grow perennial flowers. Have fresh cut flowers every day. So, I learned about spring ephemerals, corms, tubers, bulbs. Food for them. The culture they needed in terms of soil, light, protection.

Then vegetables. A degree in horticulture by correspondence from a university in Guelph, Ontario. An orchard. Bees. A fire pit.

Our life together, Kate and mine, had Irish Wolfhounds, Whippets, and plants. Lots and lots of plants. We worked together, sweated together. Got sticky harvesting honey. Steamed from canning. Drying and freezing became a usual part of our fall.

It was hard manual labor and I loved it. So did Kate. We also loved each other and who each other was when working outside. When putting food by.

As the life of our gardens became our lives, the Great Wheel began to make deeper and deeper inroads into my heart. The Winter Solstice became my High Holiday. Or, my Deep Holiday. I celebrated the Celtic holidays, wrote e-mails and blog posts about them in addition to using them in my novels.

At some point I realized I had become a pagan. Not in any particular sense like Wicca, or Druidry, or Witchcraft, just an ordinary pagan, a person who found his religious life adequately nourished by the turning of the seasons, by the natural world, by love.

I’ll get to the nine of Stones later, but it supports this journey in a very specific way.

Dogs, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Great Wheel, Holidays, Kabbalah, Mountains, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Tarot, Third Phase

The Year of Grieving ends in Wisdom and an Irish Wolfhound

August 29, 2021 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa and the Chesed Moon

Sunday gratefuls: 49 degree morning. Ruth, only a strained shoulder and sprained back in a car accident with Jen. Gabe o.k. A quiet three days. Subway. Tarot. Kabbalah. The Hermit. The Magician.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ruth’s ok

Tarot: finishing the Life spread

As you may recall from yesterday, I created a new Tarot spread. Forgot to say it’s my final project in the class. We all have to show something we’ve learned. Not gonna go through the whole thing with them, too long. And, I imagine you didn’t read it through. But, I have. And, I will again.

Why? Because the tarot cards have the capacity to breach the veil of consciousness into the collective unconscious, to call out and up to awareness archetypal energies at work in my life. The only way to do it? Hardly. Poetry. Art. Friends. Kabbalah. Torah. Sacred literature. Movies. Literature. Nature. The tarot works for me much to my surprise.

#8. Samain/Binah, Three of Wands

“Keywords: Confidence, Realizing goals

Hard work begins to payoff…Realizing long term dreams and goals.” DTB

Perhaps Steiner’s springtime of the soul. A man, a farmer? an arborist?, stands with his hand on a Tree, looking out to the horizon. Beside him three wands have begun to leaf out, signaling that his work is vital, growing. A scene of future possibility. The full grown tree recalls earlier work, perhaps of another such man, now mature.

“Binah refers to the analytic, distinguishing aspects of God’s thought.

It is the uppermost feminine element in the Godhead, and is symbolized as the mother of the Shekhinah. Many of the symbols associated with Binah are therefore identical to those of the Shekhinah.” Jewish Virtual Encyclopedia

8 is infinity stood up straight.

Samain is the time when the veil grows thin and the boundary between this world and the other world is at its most permeable. Thus, Halloween, Dia de los muertos, All Saints. Coco.

The Celts chose to start their year now, at Summer’s End. The seasons between now and Ostara are Samain, Yule/Winter Solstice, and Imbolc. With Ostara these make up the first half of the Celtic year.

All this suggests that my life after Kate’s death may take a turn at Samain rather than Michaelmas. If her spirit/soul lives on (I make no assumptions.), then she will be able to communicate easily with me. I will make her an offrenda, my altar surrounding her ashes is a good start.

We’ll have a meal together, as Latin and Central Americans do in their graveyards on dia de los muertos. We’ll discuss her life and mine. She’ll have a glass of chardonnay, scallops and rare steak with fresh boiled asparagus. Finished off with some espresso, doppio, and a flan. I’ll have the rare steak, fried potatoes, and asparagus. Espresso and flan. A Paulaner Thomasbrau.

Perhaps I will achieve binah about her death and my life, discerning understanding.

#9 Yule/Tipharet Ten of Wands

“Keywords: Demands. Burdens. Overwork.

Carrying the weight of responsibility or obligations on your shoulder…Uncomplaining acceptance of your perceived burden. Reassessing priorities and values.” DTB

“Tipharet represents the ideal balance of Justice and Mercy needed for proper running of the universe.

This Sefirah unites all the upper nine powers.” JVL

The season of Yule, midwinter. The season beginning at the Winter Solstice. I feel strong, centered, in midwinter. 40 years a Minnesotan. The winter will not be ten wands on my back, though I would say that those wands don’t look all that heavy.

The man here, who does look overburdened, has walked a long way and has now begun an uphill segment. Might be me, coming back from down the Hill and through the Valley of grief. Navigating now a new life, back up on the Mountain. It will be, could be, that the new understanding of life will have created a tension between the old ways of life with Kate and the new ways of a realized life without her physical presence. That may be the ten wands.

But tipharet is the beautiful, the balanced place between Justice, Gevurah, and Mercy/Chesed. So it may also be that the wands will have begun to balance themselves, their weight distributed well for the climb.

#10 Imbolc/Hokmah Ten of Pentacles

“Key words: Blessings. Prosperity. Legacy

You may be in receipt of a legacy, or are creating one-either for your family or the wider community. Even difficult circumstances can carry hidden benefits. The chance to count our blessings and discover that they’re too numerous to count.” DTB

This is the last card in the spread, having now come round the full Great Wheel from Ostara to Imbolc. That it should have an Irish Wolfhound on it tells me all I need to know. The circle of Kate and mine’s life is in this card.

The woman stands in the black, out of the frame, perhaps out of this world. Perhaps in the other world. The gray headed man has a blond haired granddaughter by his side, Ruth, and a young man, perhaps Joseph over his shoulder. This represents the family left after the woman has gone into the blackness of death.

Though dead, the woman still holds a pentacle, a symbol of earth and abundance. Her presence is yet a source of comfort and grace for the family still on this side of the veil.

She is not absent from the lives of her family, just absent from Malkut, the physical realm.

This card strongly suggests to me that a full year after Kate’s death will find me, and our family, living and celebrating together, informed and supported by Kate’s legacy, her person and the wealth that she created. The spirit of the Irish Wolfhound, kind, compassionate, loving, loyal made present to all of us.

Since this is also the card for hokmah, or wisdom, I’m also inclined to believe that the year of grieving for Kate will bring to all of us a better sense of how to live our lives, both with each other and for each other.

Denver, Dogs, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Health, Holidays, Judaism, Kabbalah, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Tarot, Weather +Climate

The Moon

August 8, 2021 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa and the Moon of Chesed

Sunday gratefuls: New neighbors. Rigel, slow. Kep, eager. Workout yesterday, 20 minutes of cardio. Treadmill. Mac and Cheese. Vacuuming. Video on Akitas. Bad air. Shortness of breath, sleep.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Breath. Ruach.

Tarot: The Moon, #18 of the Major Arcana

We’re #1! Denver topped the world list of most polluted cities yesterday. Smoke. Bad. Today, also bad. A level of 172 on a scale where 300 marks the start of I can’t breathe! weather. Not a spot we cherish. Better in the Mountains, but not by a lot. Smells like a clothes closet full of worn bonfire apparel.

Not to mention pollen. High yesterday. Fun times in the Arapaho National Forest.

Makes sleeping a challenge for me. I wake up consistently in the early morning with clogged sinuses. I can unclog them with saltwater, but the effort tends to wake me up so far that I have trouble returning to sleep.

Got a glimpse of the new neighbors yesterday. They brought their mountain bikes. Then, left.

Went 20 minutes on the treadmill yesterday. My IT band and the knot over my hip have begun to loosen. Still tight, but better. I can see a return to my old exercise habits in the not too distant future. This has been a tougher recovery than I had imagined. Slow and painful.

Friday and yesterday were domestic days. Doing chores like vacuuming Kep’s hair, brushing him. Again. Still. Making Rigel flee as I came toward her with the brush. Put some more soil in the road divot after traffic pounded down the initial batch.

Attended a session on kosher rules and regs. Virtual. Rabbi Jamie. He’s kosher at home, not necessarily so out. Mordecai Kaplan suggested this. Kosher at home for Jewish tradition, flexible out so dining with others doesn’t stigmatize Judaism.

The kosher rules don’t appeal to me though the notion of conscientious eating does. Hard, though. I find my meat and potatoes Midwestern diet stubbornly persistent. Long ago I added a fruit and a vegetable at most meals, but cutting down on red meat? Not so much. And, I have the vascular disease to prove it.

Big day tomorrow. PSA time. Appointment with oncologist on the 16th. As I’ve written before, this is an important one. After that, I go for a hearing exam. Maybe new hearing aids? Also, house cleaning.

The next day Coyote HVAC comes out to give me a bid for mini-split air conditioning. As pollen and smoke interrupt my sleep, heat, too, this feels like a logical step. At least for the two downstairs rooms. Might get pricey for the rest.

Elul, which begins this evening, is the sixth month of the Jewish lunar calendar. The New Year, Rosh Hashanah, is the first day of the next month, Tishri. It gets two nights of celebration. On the tenth day of Tishri the high holidays end with Yom Kippur, the feast of atonement.

Nissan, the first month of the Jewish year, is in March-April, the beginning of Spring. But. The Jewish year number changes on Rosh Hashanah. Not sure why.

Elul is a month of preparation for repentance and atonement, the central theme of the High Holidays. Chesed, loving-kindess, matters when a period of self-examination like this comes. Especially for your own soul. Treat yourself honestly, but gently.

The Moon: A path runs from the sea, past a Dog and a Wolf howling, through two Stone Monoliths, and on beyond the rise. Perhaps to the Moon itself?

The Moon in a crescent phase shows itself between two curtains of Clouds and above the Monoliths. Mountains are visible in the background. The Coast goes on for some distance beyond the Monoliths and, to the left, a Crab crawls up on land, near the path but still partly in the water.

The overall effect is mysterious, lonely, and eerie. The howling adds to it.

With the Wolf and the Dog evolution has a prominent role, ancient ancestor and modern descendant showing how close they still are. The wild does not leave us. Consider fight or flight. Fear. Peripheral vision. Vasovagal response. Lust.

Both the Sea and the Moon can be metaphors for the subconscious or the unconscious. Perhaps life emerges from the unconscious, travels the path of evolution while retaining a rootedness in the past, then passes on through the gates of death back to a post consciousness existence.

Here’s what the Druid Craft creator says about this card:

Keywords: Psychic awakening. Dreams. Deep revelation of feminine mysteries. Facing Fears. Change. Imagination. Creative work.

“A difficult emotional journey ahead. Any loneliness or confusion you feel will pass as this phase reaches its natural conclusion.”

This feels like one with those cards of last week or so, ones suggesting a time of sadness, perhaps grief, will change in this next phase of my life. The August 18th celebration of Kate’s life will, I hope, mark a change. The retreat idea for the Michaelmas time sits gently in my mind as a time to integrate and incorporate that change into a new life.

May it be so.

Aging, Art and Culture, Asia, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Holidays, Mountains, Myth and Story, Our Land and Home, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Tarot

Sannyasa

August 3, 2021 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa and the Lughnasa Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: HVAC mini-splits. Tom. His HVAC guy. Diane. Cousins. Family. Extended and virtual. Claire and her new life. Social Security. Cool morning. Allergies. Ragweed. Chenopods: amaranth, pigweed, waterhemp, russian thistle, lamb’s quarters. Washing machine. Dishwasher. Stove. Refrigerator. Sink. Well. Pump.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The trouble small bits of plant sex can cause

Tarot: Justice, #11 of the Major Arcana

Beginning, slowly. Sensing. Too much time in the afternoons. I take this as a good sign. I’m getting what I need to get done in the mornings, my best portion of the day, then I have a larger chunk of time in the afternoon where I feel a bit aimless. Over the last three years, the afternoon and evenings involved caretaking for Kate. So, filled up, always something else to do.

The pruning, the planning for the 18th, the administrative side of taking over all responsibilities, have all begun to yield. Hardly finished, but none of them weigh on me, pushing me, as they had even this last month.

The Musician and the Hermit – Moritz von Schwind

In my life change often comes because I’m bored. Oh, I’ve got time for this, now! Or, what could I be doing with this time? I have a few go to’s: reading and writing at the top of the list every time. Travel, especially close to home. Hiking. Museum going. Eating out. More time with friends.

There is, too, a niggling sensation that I could be doing more. Something more in a justice/climate change/political activism way. And, yes, I could.

But. I’m trying to lean into the life of the sannyasa, the fourth stage of Hindu life, a stage of renunciation, of pursuit of spiritual matters. And, the life of a mountain recluse in the shan-shui tradition of China. Perhaps, for now, a semi-hermetic life. Focused on reading, learning, writing. Self-awareness. Deepening my inner journey.

I’m going to mark September 29, Michaelmass, as a time to focus on whether this will remain my path. A retreat, perhaps. Three days somewhere in the mountains. Seems like a good idea.

Drew the justice card. No big insights today.

But. I did get a letter from Social Security yesterday explaining why they can’t pay me right now. My mistake. I didn’t give a new routing number after I closed the Health Care Credit Union account.

However, I have a call with them on Thursday, long awaited. This will be the one where I claim survivors benefits which will bump my social security up a grand plus. I started this process in April when I informed them of Kate’s death. Lots of getting put off, turned over to someone else.

*”It can also suggest a frustrating encounter with bureaucracy. If it shows up in your reading in this context, be prepared to navigate some red tape. Get help or advice from someone within the system you’re working in. Stay patient and persistent. This card in a positive position and upright indicates a good outcome.” tarotluv

Family, Great Wheel, Hawai'i, Holidays, Weather +Climate

Big Island. Miracles.

June 20, 2021 Charles Leave a comment

Summer and the Shadow Mountain Moon

A year. Either I will make a yes or no decision about moving to Hawai’i at the end of it, or at some point during the year. That is, if I haven’t already.

When I went to the Ira Progoff workshop in Tucson, the inner work there made me see that being part of Ruth and Gabe’s lives would pass us by if we didn’t move. When I got home. Kate and I talked, agreed. Then we started working on the move. Took about a year, a little less.

I feel like I’m in the same spot about moving to the Big Island as I was when I left Tucson relative to Colorado. I want to do it. But, I need a conversation with Kate. Maybe I’ll write it out. Dialogical, as Progoff suggests. Put it in the workbook.

]In other words I feel confident. I want to go, though there are a lot of details to work out. Yet. I need a talk with a confidant, a person who won’t let me blow smoke. Kate. The Ancient Ones. Maybe Jamie. Tara, Marilyn.

A year from now. Or, so. I may be writing Ancientrails from a spot near Mauna Kea, Mauna Loa, and Kilauea. Hope so.

Tom Crane alerted me to the Solstice. I had it in my head as the 22nd, so I wasn’t paying attention. It’s the triumph of Sol in the North. He stands above our lands longer than on any other day. The longest day. Spreads his power on the narrowest patch of Earth, too, so the energy concentrates, intensifies.

Me, though, I see it another way. Darkness moves in. The days begin to shorten. Can the Winter Solstice be far behind? Seasonal processions make me happy. Even here in Hawai’i Kau moves slowly toward Ho’oilo. Ho’oilo brings rain and somewhat cooler weather. Transitions.

The Great Wheel turns now toward Lughnasa, the festival of first fruits celebrated on August 1st. The growing season busily stores Solstice energy, converting nuclear fusion to stored carbohydrates. You want miracles? Try that one.

We only get so many seasons. Part of the deal. I’m celebrating this one. See you at the suntan lotion counter.

Dogs, Family, Feelings, Friends, Holidays, Memories, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Travel

Penultimate Day in Colorado

May 13, 2021 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane and the Island Moon

Thursday gratefuls: The intricate web of people, near and far, family, friends who held and hold me as I walk, slowly, this most ancientrail. Emily, who will love Rigel and Kep while I’m gone. Rigel and Kep, my home companions. The Ancient Ones. CBE. MVP tonight. Covid 19 test at Walgreen’s today. Jet travel. The great moisture we’ve gotten in May so far.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Mountain Night Sky. Lift. (airplane wings) The vastness of the World Ocean and the Islands sprinkled throughout. Life.

After plowing through several usernames on different sites as I changed our information to my information, I found one I could use and not have to start over: animist. Guess it’s not front of mind for hardly anybody. Yeah. (psst. Don’t tell. Though. I do use a password manager.)

The safety deposit box and all banking accounts are now in the trust, the Olson Buckman-Ellis family trust. The big advantage of this is that, at my death, either Joseph or Jon can write checks, access the savings and the safety deposit box. It was simpler for me since I was the joint account holder, but it will be a different situation when I die. A little extra work now makes life easier for them.

I’m also switching to all online bill paying through Wells-Fargo. Easier, quicker, better records. Cheaper, too.

Tuesday morning it took right at 2 hours to remove Kate from the Verizon account and establish me as the account owner. Will said, “She’s going by the book.” I sat in the uncomfortable plastic chair as he calmly talked her through it. I’d spent just under that completing the banking changes with Cody. Over 4 straight hours from starting with Cody to finishing with Will.

Wiped me out. The sitting. The why of the tasks. The long interaction with other people. Slept for two and a half hours when I got back home.

It’s been a theme. The death certificates, too. Many of these tasks have taken longer than usual. Different reasons in each case. I have, however, finished everything that had to be done before I leave. Feels great, burden lifted.

More tasks still, but none that have to be done before I leave.

Called Emily and had her come out again. We chatted, exchanged information, I paid her, gave her the keys. Glad I had her come back. She’s going to be the one staying here and she’s obviously competent and caring. Leaving the dogs is difficult. Again, a burden lifted.

Staples laminated my proof of vaccine card. Free. A smart move on their part. I also faxed the death certificate to OptumRx. After the I pushed the button for send, the fax machine reported it was in deep sleep. Huh? Several minutes later it woke up, printed a receipt.

Breakfast now. Get started packing. Shouldn’t take too long, but has to get done. Covid test at Walgreen’s at 10:45. Info for Hawai’i’s safe traveler program. Prevents a 10 day quarantine. Worth it.

MVP tonight. Appropriate. Reconnect in person with folks, some of whom I haven’t seen in a year. Others came to make the minyan at Kate’s service and at shiva. This gives me a chance to reenter the in person world of CBE before I leave. Glad for that chance.

Family, Great Wheel, Health, Holidays, Judaism, Myth and Story, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Easter Morning

April 4, 2021 Charles Leave a comment

Ostara and the Ovid Moon of Metamorphoses

Sunday gratefuls: Broad spectrum antibiotics. Kate’s will. Jamie Bernstein. Easter and Passover and Spring. Friends. Rabbi’s. Countryfolk. Mountains. Dogs.

Sparks of Joy: Kate’s blood cultures negative for infection. Exhaustion, but exhaustion held in the care and concern of so many others.

Been thinking, a lot, about the holidays: Ostara, Easter, Passover. How they hold the wonder and awe of Spring and apply it to our human lives. On Maundy Thursday (no, I never remember what that means) Kate was in severe crisis. She had a crowd of nurses, physician’s assistants, respiratory therapists, a pulmonologist. All working carefully, quickly, urgently.

I had a hushed conversation in the hallway with the physician’s assistant and Dr. Fenton, the pulmonologist, about resuscitation. Asking hard questions. Trying to be true to the situation, to her wishes, to the possible.

She survived the crisis, her blood pressure down and her breathing more stable. She moved to the 10th floor where she could be treated with nurses who work with more complicated cases.

Her situation got better, but death still seemed as plausible as recovery. On Good Friday, her lucidity returned, she made it off the bipap (a small mask that is actually a treatment for the pneumonia, among other things), and her white cell count continued to come down.

Yesterday we found her blood borne infection was gone. Though it still needs a four to six week bout of IV antibiotics to make it sure it doesn’t resurface. She passed her swallow study so she can drink and eat. Prognosis still guarded, but less so now.

Her friend, Jamie, reported she looks good. Jamie stayed all night with her.

It’s Easter morning.

Garden, Great Wheel, Holidays, Humanities, Memories, Mountains, Myth and Story, Our Land and Home, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

They Say It’s His Birthday!

March 20, 2021 Charles Leave a comment

Spring! and the Ovid Moon of Metamorphoses

Shoutout to birthday boy Publius Ovidius Naso, or Ovid as we know him in the English speaking west. He’d be two thousand and fifty-four today.

Saturday gratefuls: Safeway pickup. Kabob skewers. Kate’s fluid flowing. Psalms class finish. New class start April 9. Writing poetry. Colorado Mountain Sun. Ancient ones on Justice. Vaccines. April Fool’s Day: shot II for me.

Sparks of Joy: Unclogging Kate’s feeding tube and avoiding another ER adventure. Wu wei, the Way of my life.

March 1, meteorological spring. No romance in that one. March 20, today, 5:37 MST, the Vernal Equinox. Spring. Ostara. Bunnies and crosses and parting of seas, oh my! Lots of romance, lots of theological pulling and hauling. This religion defining moment: resurrection and another: the Exodus. I settle these days for the Sun and the Earth’s celestial equator. See this explainer if you need more. More or less equal hours of Sun and night.

Yes. We’ve moved from the transitional time of Imbolc to the birthing blooming buzzing time. Spring. No wonder the Anglo-Saxons, those Northern European ancestors of so many of us, chose a fertility goddess, Eostre, to celebrate. Estrogen. Ostara. Easter. Yes, the Catholics took her name, added it to the resurrection celebration, and, voila: Easter!

Jesus as Eostre. A dying and rising God like Tammuz, Adonis, Attis, Dionysus, Osiris, or Jesus seem like good company for a fertility goddess. Any gardener can testify to the thrill of planting dusty brown clumps of vegetative matter in the Fall of the year and in the Spring of the next year, the rapture of a moistened bed pierced by green shoots, then Tulips, Crocus, Grape Hyacinth, Iris, Lilies in colorful flower.

Isn’t resurrection a matter of taking a dead thing, or what appears to be a dead thing, putting it away, and having it rise out at the right time? If you listened to the Southern Gospel Revival’s rendition of “Ain’t No Grave” )two posts below this one), you heard the line, “Ain’t no grave, can keep my body down.” Further on, “When that trumpet sounds, I’m a risin’ from the ground.” Could be sung by every Tulip bulb I ever planted.

This is the right time to celebrate those things you may have planted a while back, projects or dreams that have needed some time in the grave or the soil or the unconscious.

It’s also the right time to look at the bed you’ve tended, the one in which you planted them, your life. There might be weeds, or, as I prefer, plants out of place. Note that this means you may have good habits or plans or projects that have become plants out of place in your life. You may have to remove them so your new projects and dreams will flourish.

Ask Eostre for help. You might find her in your anima, perhaps buried in your shadow. She’ll burst out, give things a boost up, if you let her. I’m sitting right now on Shadow Mountain, imagine what lies beneath.