Category Archives: Holidays

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#244

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Summer and the Moon of Justice

Saturday gratefuls: This country. These purple mountain majesties. The lakes of Minnesota. Lake Superior. Evergreen. Conifer. Shadow Mountain. The great plains, rippling wheat. Corn fields of Iowa. Lady Liberty. New York City. San Francisco. Puget Sound. The Colorado River. The Mississippi. The South. New England. The first lighters up there in Maine. Jambalaya. Gumbo. Devil’s Tower. El Capitan. Crater Lake. The Mackinac Bridge. Protests. Alexandria. Muncie. The Big Medicine Wheel. The sacred Black Hills. Cahokia. Carlsbad Caverns. Marfa. West Texas. From sea to shining sea. Haleakala. Waipio Valley. Waimea Canyon. Da Fish House. Denali. Kodiak. Salmon. Grizzly. Wolves. Lynx. Wolverines. An amazing country still.

244 years old. Lot of candles for that red white and blue cake. Hard times. Like the Civil War. The First World War. The Spanish Flu. The Depression. WWII. Yes, it’s been hard before. Will be again. We navigated the churning, stormy waters of all those. We can get through this one, too.

A canard? Maybe. Yet, I believe it’s so. Rising out of this fire may come a nation truer to its ideals. No more Trumps. Ever. No more easy white privilege. No more easy oppression of people of color, women, lbgt. A more just economic and medical system. If we do, the pain will have been worth it.

I love this country. From Route 66 to the hot dog shaped hot dog stand in Bailey. From Coney Island to Puget Sound. From the Minnesota angle to the bayous. It’s my home, my place, the spot on this earth to which I am native. It can be tarnished by the political class, but not erased.

Here are my friends, some of my family, the graves of my ancestors. Here are the roads I traveled as a young man, the streets and fields I played in as a child, houses in which I’ve lived, the cities I’ve loved and fought for. This is the land of memory.

Let’s celebrate #245 with a 46th President. And with 45 in jail or disgraced. Make it so.

Great Wheel, Holidays, Myth and Story, Science, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

Leaning In. To the Sun.

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Beltane and the Moon of Sorrow

Saturday gratefuls: The Moon of Sorrow comes to an end. Rain. The smell of the Forest, Pine needles and Pine resin, wet Soil. Petichor. A perfume created by the mistress of all perfumery: Mother Earth. Extra bonus: smelling it while I walked out to get the newspaper. Seoah’s wonderful time with us. She helped us through Gertie’s death, through the Murdoch/Kepler wars, and the coming of the coronavirus. Family. Yes. The sun at its most northerly. And, the longest day.

To a world on fire with virus infections, economic destruction, and spreading demands for real, permanent change, the sun climbs to its highest spot in the north for the year. The Summer Solstice. A fire festival.

Though most of the new age pagan types see the Summer Solstice as a masculine, Sun god holiday, I’m more drawn, again, to the Asian understanding, specifically the ancient Chinese who had the summer solstice as the peak day for yin, feminine energy. They saw this holiday as an earth focused holiday.*

Yin makes most sense to me since the next months grow the crops, fertility as a feminine focus. (BTW: just so we’re clear. Animus and anima, yang and yin, masculine and feminine, active and receptive modes are in all of us-all of Us).

The Earth gives birth to the foods that feed Us all. Us=all living things. Yes, a few exceptions like extremophils which subsist on sulfur or cyanide, but for the rest of Us-Mother Earth or Mother Ocean. The Sun is yang energy, Mother Earth yin. Both required, necessary. Each complementary to the other. This is a day to get naked and dance around the bonfire. If you’re Swedish. If not, you can go ahead. I give you permission.

This holiday celebrates fecundity, mutuality, heat, procreation, gestation. It celebrates those aspects of our lives which support our work, inner or outer. Whatever has emerged from your garden, again inner or outer, will need care to bloom, to fruit, to nut, to mature. Celebrate what you do to lift up yourself, your family, your friends. Make sure that part of your life has enough sustenance, so those relationships, your projects, don’t wither, turn brown before the harvest.

The Earth tilts fully toward the Sun today. 3:44 pm MDT. 23 degrees and 26 minutes, pointing the Tropic of Cancer directly toward our Star. And, it rises as high in the northern Sky or as low in the southern Sky, as it will all year.

Which brings to me my favorite fact about today. This is the longest day of the year. From this day forward the nights grow longer until we get to the yang holiday of the Winter Solstice. Hello, darkness my old friend. I’ll come to visit you again.

*see Ancient History for a brief summary

Aging, Family, Feelings, Holidays, Memories, Minnesota, Third Phase

Mom

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Beltane and the Corona Lunacy II

Friday gratefuls: Zaidy’s Deli, where Seoah and I will pick up supper. The sensory practices of medicine. Rain. 25 degrees with ice on the stairs. Mother’s Day. Mom. Hand made May baskets. (elementary school). Wild Flowers. Mushrooms. Altitude. My hands. My feet. Lungs. Keen’s.

Mother’s day, or fishing opener as it’s known in Minnesota, is Sunday. Korea’s got a solution to that annual Gopher State family paradox: Parent’s Day. It was yesterday. Seoah’s sister called and I saw her niece with helium balloons and some sort of Korean delicacy in a clamshell box. A better idea, Parent’s Day. Then U.S. Dad’s wouldn’t get so many ties.

Mother’s vary, of course. Some mothers are mean, cruel. Some mothers belittle and deride. Others, most I like to think, love their kids. Support them. Encourage them.

To this day my mom’s hair do, smell after a perm lingers. Her lipstick, usually bright red. Her smile. Her hug. Her kindness to us, to others. Those memories have faded, the colors softened. This will be the 55th Mother’s Day without her. She’s vintage. My memories of her have a definite 1950’s flavor. She died in 1964.

This holiday is bittersweet for me and has been most of my life. Sadness, joined with cool rain and overcast sky. Sun peeking through.

She will always be the small town girl grown. Her hometown, Morristown, south of Alexandria, had around 800 people. The high school reunions include all classes. Not much in the way of sidewalks. A farm town.

The Copper Kettle gave it a touch of class, a place outsiders would come for the fried chicken and mashed potatoes. Which my Aunt Mary would make. The Blue Bird was where town folks had breakfast, coffee. Sugar cream pie.

Mom was of the Blue River, the corn fields, and dairy farms even though she grew up in town. She traveled, though. Made it to Capri, Algiers, Rome. A WAC in WWII working with the Signal Corps.

This morning I put my hand in hers, my 73 year old hand in her 47 year old one. We’ll walk a bit, talk about the old days. Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.

Aging, Family, Health, Holidays, Jefferson County, Judaism, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

In the Time of the Crown

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Imbolc and the Leap Year Moon

Thursday gratefuls: the warm reception for my presentation yesterday. Alan and the Bread Lounge. Being the doorman last night for Purim. Seoah greeting me when I got home. Kep, who stayed up waiting on me. The melting of the snow. The coming snow. The drive back from the Kabbalah Experience.

An all CBE all the time day yesterday. Left the house at 7:45 for the Kabbalah Experience. Not a fun drive into morning rush hour in Denver. If I do this again, I’ll do most of them by Zoom. It’s an unsatisfying technology in this context, perhaps because it’s not well integrated into the classroom at Kabbalah Experience.

Yesterday the sun had a corona as it sat behind a veil of cirrocumulus clouds. There was a streaky rainbow smeared across underneath it. Last night the moon, too, had a corona, a faint golden hue with a red tinged outer circle.

Seemed appropriate for life in the time of coronavirus. It’s spreading no rainbows. On the New York Times page I counted 46 stories that were virus related. That’s two-thirds.

Last night at the Purim event at Beth Evergreen I filled in for Kate who had a Sjogren’s flare. She was to be the board member on duty. The bmod greets people at the door. That’s the primary task. I also had to shoo folks into the sanctuary so the Purim spiel (a musical written by CBE’r Ron Solomon) could begin.

There was elbow bumping, some shoe greetings, and the purloined Cohen blessing, live long and prosper with fingers spread to create the shin letter in the Hebrew alphabet. There was bravado. I’m living my life as usual. I’m not afraid. There was cautious laughter with each improvised non-handshake. Even so, more folks showed up than I had imagined. The sanctuary was well-over half full, many of them older, like me.

As I opened the locked door for each congregant or visitor, I greeted them with a welcome, a smile, an occasional elbow bump. Yes, two contagions affected my work. Antisemitism keeps CBE’s doors locked at all times. We’ve had visits from the Jeffco sheriff, the FBI, and letters from politicians expressing support. It’s a virus of the heart, infectious hatred cultured in a stewpot of fear, white supremacy, Trumpian permission.

We had the whole megillah. No, really. The whole thing. On Purim the book of Esther, the megillah, is read in its entirety. It’s the story of Ruth, who saves all the Jews from the evil vizier, Haman. I want to write a bit about Purim, maybe tomorrow, but for today I’ll just add that as Haman’s name comes up in the reading everyone cranks their grogger and shouts boo! Sort of like watching a silent movie when the villain twirls his mustache.

The groggers, the boos, the whole megillah work against both contagions: antisemitism and the coronavirus. Next time you see the word coronavirus whip out your grogger (no, not that. look at the link on grogger above) and shout boo. Might catch on.

Commentary on Religion, Great Wheel, Great Work, Holidays, Judaism, Mountains, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

A Task

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Imbolc and the waning crescent of the Shadow Mountain Moon

When I first began reading Art Green’s Radical Judaism, I thought maybe my job would be to think Christianity through from his truly radical, non-supernatural perspective. Look at Christian civilization in the manner of Mordecai Kaplan with Green’s theology as a pathway, a halakha. The way to walk. Couldn’t get any energy up to start. Why?

Ah. I left Christianity behind long ago now. Of course, it still informs me and my life as the Torah informs the life of a Jew whether secular or religious. But, I don’t feel shaped by it in the distinctive manner my friends at CBE exhibit. Even if G-d no longer requires the hyphen, they still bow during the Amidah, wear the kippa, show up for High Holidays. I have no interest in Christmas or Easter services, that old life.

Huh, I thought. That’s weird. I spent all that time in sem, 15 years in the ministry, and I’m a product of Western civilization, profoundly shaped by Christian belief and thought. I like big projects. Why wouldn’t I want to go back and rethink all that?

It came to me slowly. Somewhere in Green’s book, I can’t find it right now and that frustrates me, he casually dismisses neo-paganism. It’s not clear what he meant, whether he’s taking a substantive jab at pantheists from his panentheistic position, or knows the shallow roots of Wiccan’s, witches, and druids. If it’s the latter, I agree with him. Silliness abounds in contemporary pagan practice and what passes for thought.

If it’s the former, he and I are in conversation with each other. In either case though it triggered a realization. I’m a pagan. Maybe not the best word with all its freight, but one I use intentionally. The pagans of the middle ages, rural folk (classical Latin paganus: rustic, villager, rural folk, peasant, unlearned, countryman, bumpkin), held onto their older religious practices and beliefs because the church had a more tenuous connection with them, less power over their daily lives.

In contemporary usage pagan is a very broad umbrella: Wiccans, latter day Druids, Asatru, Dianists, polytheists of many shades all fall under it. There are also pagans, see this page, who use the term much as I do, as a placeholder for a religious position outside the usual suspects of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam as well as outside other traditions, in particular Buddhism, Hinduism, and most shamanisms.

That’s it, I realized. My task is to use the theological tools of Art Green and the civilization leaning thought of Mordecai Kaplan to reconstruct paganism for a contemporary audience. That I have energy for. Stay tuned.



Aging, Art and Culture, Family, Friends, Health, Holidays, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Travel, US History, Woolly Mammoths

WWMD?

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Winter and the Future Moon

Monday gratefuls: Kate’s feeling better. Stefan and Lonnie on zoom. Tom’s gift of cartoons by Sack. Beau Jo’s pizza, novel and tasty. Driving in the mountains. The three deer I saw on the way to Evergreen, especially the tiny one. The bare rock, the cold streams, the lodgepole and aspen. Steep slopes. Florence and its art.

After a somewhat comical series of no-goes, I gave up on going to Vail to see Lonnie and Stefan. Stefan had a new hip done at the Steadman Clinic. Snow came to Vail on the first two days I offered. Not unusual, but enough to not make me want to do a two hour drive in it. Yesterday, my third choice, was MLK weekend. The second busiest of the entire year for ski traffic. And, Sunday, the Denver Post said, would be the busiest of the four day holiday. So, zoom.

Good to talk to them. Four years ago they decided to learn painting in an atelier in Florence. They’ve become patrons of the school as well as students, spending much of each year in Italy. Now they face an existential choice between remaining most of the year in Florence, where they’ve become part of an international crowd of artists and art students, or returning to the Twin Cities where their family lives. Would be a tough call for me.

The mood here is lighter. After a tough period of dog bites and exhaustion, I’m rested again. Kate’s had some issues, but eliminating tramadol from her daily meds has given her easier breathing. It’s nice to have a respite from angst.

Today’s MLK. I wonder what he’d do right now? Would he organize mass marches in the face of the rising right wing threat? Would he stay away from such events as the pro-gun rally in Richmond, Virginia today?

Will the MLK holiday become a neo-nazi, white supremacist rally day? A day to show “racial solidarity” and protest for the right to gun ownership. IDNK.

His dream, MLK’s, is mine and probably yours. I’ve always been soothed by his quote from Theodore Parker, Unitarian clergy and anti-slavery activist, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Still am though this seems to be a time when it’s not bending very much in the direction of justice.

Beyond the Boundaries, Commentary on Religion, Family, Friends, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work, Holidays, Mountains, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Painting, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Merry, Merry Meet

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Winter and the Gratitude Moon, waning sliver

Christmas gratefuls: the silence on Black Mountain Drive. Black Mountain itself. The stars above Black Mountain. Shadow Mountain. Our home. This loft, a gift from my Kate, now five years ago, and still wonderful. Kate and her increased health. The sacred side of Christmas. The pagan (also sacred) side of Christmas.

When I went out for the paper this morning, it was dead quiet. No dogs barking. No cars or trucks on the road. No mechanical noises. The sky was the deep black of the cosmic wilderness, lit only by bright lights: planets, stars, galaxies. Silent night, holy night.

Those shepherds out there tending their flock, sheep shuffling around. A baa and a bleat here and there. Visitors on camel back. All that singing. As imagined, probably not a quiet night.

Here though, this dark Christmas morn. The deer are asleep. The elk, too. Pine martens, fishers, foxes, mountain lions might be prowling, but part of their inheritance is silence. Black bears went to sleep long ago. Millions of insects are quiet, too. The microbes in the soil, the growing lodgepole pines, the aspen organisms, their clonal neighborhoods, bulbs, corms, rhizomes all alive, all quiet.

Silent night, holy night. Yes. Sacred night, holyday night. Yes.

I read this long essay on consciousness by the president and chief scientific officer of the Allen Institute for Brain Science. In it he says this:

” Yes, there’s this ancient belief in panpsychism: “Pan” meaning “every,” “psyche” meaning “soul.”…basically it meant that everything is ensouled…if you take a more conceptual approach to consciousness, the evidence suggests there are many more systems that have consciousness—possibly all animals, all unicellular bacteria, and at some level maybe even individual cells that have an autonomous existence. We might be surrounded by consciousness everywhere and find it in places where we don’t expect it because our intuition says we’ll only see it in people and maybe monkeys and also dogs and cats. But we know our intuition is fallible…”

Even silence, since it presumes an awareness of noise, is a proof of consciousness. All that consciousness around us here on Shadow Mountain. The trees and wild animals, grasses and microbes, dogs and humans, all here, all experiencing a self.

I take panpsychism a bit further than Koch with the kabbalistic idea of ohr, the divine spark, resident in every piece of the universe and the process metaphysical view of a vitalist universe creatively moving toward greater complexity.

This waking up mornin’ we can see the baby Jesus as an in your face message that, yes, of course we are holy. Yes, of course the universe sings to us from the depths of the sea, the top of the redwoods, and the person or animal across from us this morning. And, to get downright personal, from within the deep of our own soul.

Great Wheel, Holidays, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Cheery, eh?

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Samain and the Gratitude Moon

Monday gratefuls: The Evergreen Chorale and their Season of Light concert at Colorado School of Mines. The Undertones, a choral group from Northwestern. The Denver Children’s Choir. The folks who built 470, 285, 6. The geology that built the Front Range. The snow last night. All the brave lights and the coming darkness.

Haven’t mentioned it much this year, but we’re in holiseason. The Evergreen Chorale’s holiday concert. The trees lit with colored lights up and down Black Mountain, Brook Forest Drive. The not-so quiet desperation of brick and mortar retailers. Dreidels and menorahs. We’ve passed through Samain (almost), dia de muertos, all souls, Thanksgiving, Divali, the Posada, most of Advent. Some big ones still ahead: the Winter Solstice, Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanza, New Years, Epiphany.

Here in the mid to northern latitudes the gradual lengthening of the darkness has created fear and some mad ideas. Like, daylight saving time, for example. Some of this fear has gone into each Christmas light, each Divali light, each menorah lit for the holidays. We want to say: We are human. We can fight the darkness. Beg Sol to return with sympathetic magic.

Here’s the thing though. We can’t fight the darkness. No matter how many bonfires we ignite, how many strings of lights we hang, how many courageous songs we sing to the many gods we hope will bring us out of the darkness, the Winter Solstice comes. Its darkness compels us to consider the so-far away apocalypse, the one we know is coming.

About a billion years from now Sol’s luminosity will have grown bright enough to boil our oceans and disperse our atmosphere. Well before our star expands into the red giant phase, much further along in its lifespan, Earth will no longer be inhabitable. This is the end, my friends, and the winter solstice reminds us of the forever darkness.

Will humanity have migrated far enough away to survive? Hard to say. Most of the sci-fi ship propulsion systems are very, very far from practical. Maybe we can get far enough away by hopping from home to home: Mars, then Enceladus, then ? Maybe not. Perhaps this strange, weird experiment, life, will wink out then, never to be repeated.

No Christmas lights, no Divali lamps, no menorah will save us then. Of course the personal apocalypse of each of us alive now will have long passed, so the Winter Solstice can remind us of that, too. We are temporary, fragile, unique, wonderful. Why can’t that be enough?

Aging, Cooking, Family, Holidays, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate
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Samain and the Gratitude Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Jon and Ruth skiing. It was a powder day and Ruth said, “I needed that.” Jon’s 51 years. Seoah’s vegetable pancakes. The cattle that gave us the delicious New York Strip steaks for Jon’s birthday meal. The baker that made the carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. The laughter around the table last night.

Jon’s birthday was on the 10th, but we celebrated last night since Ruth’s play was that evening. I’d post pics but I’m still struggling with downloading pictures from my host server using FTP. It’s simple, they say. Oh, yeah, I say. Someday I’ll get it.

We got a bit of snow yesterday. When it came, it came straight down like rain in the Midwest. It still amazes me since I can’t recall, though it must have happened, a no-wind snowfall in Minnesota. This type of snow is so beautiful. It comes down quietly and layers itself on roads and roofs and the land. Giving us white trees, snow covered rock, enough snow for skiing, snowballs, snowpersons.

Ruth said skiing in powder is harder physically, but way more fun. She pointed to her hip and said, “It was up to here most of the time. It’s more difficult to turn.” “All that resistance?” “Yes.”

Gabe was here while Jon and Ruth skied. Family. And friends. Family first, SeoAh says. An Asian tradition for sure. Not so sure about the U.S. Does wealth make family less “first”? That is, is family first essentially welfare in a society where there may be no other? My guess is that wealth decreases the gluons that create strong extended families. Doesn’t eliminate them, but makes them less effective. What do you think?

Today I have to finish my work on tzedek. Justice. And, do a painting about hope. Later.

Art and Culture, Asia, Commentary on Religion, Family, GeekWorld, Holidays, Memories, Third Phase, Travel

Always Something to Celebrate

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Samain and the Gratitude Moon

Thursday (Thanksgiving) gratefuls: Annie, who came yesterday. The snow on Tuesday. The capon that gave its life for our meal. The winds that howl through the forests this morning. Orion, faithful friend and his good dog, Canis Major. The folks who designed and built our Rav4’s, especially Ruby, whose AWD makes her surefooted. Those who care for them at Stevinson Toyota. And, on this day in particular, for all those who sustain traditions and holidays, moments out of ordinary time.

I asked brother Mark and sister Mary what Thanksgiving, a very American holiday, looks like in lands Asian and Arab. Mark said Thanksgiving probably got celebrated in Aramco compounds. Here’s Mary’s reply from Singapore:

“The big hotels serve Thanksgiving dinner & it needs to be reserved way in advance; Brits have Christmas dinner which is also involves Turkey so food is authentic- with all the trimmings- here Halloween and St Patrick’s Day☘️are also widely celebrated- in addition to Asian festivals- so pretty much there is always something to celebrate“

Mary has made this comment, always something to celebrate, before. When I visited Singapore for the first time in 2004, I was there the first week of November. Christmas decorations lined Orchard Road, the big commercial street. It was also U.S. election week, so the American Club had a big breakfast spread so we could watch the returns live. You know how that turned out. We weren’t celebrating. (though right now GW Bush looks like a political genius)

These paled in comparison to the Arab quarters celebration of post-fast Ramadan. We found shisha smokers lounging on the sidewalks and had a good Arab meal, probably lamb and rice, but I don’t recall.

Little India had a huge arc of lights over its main road marking the holiday of Diwali, the festival of lights, also underway. There were stalls selling sweets, Diwali lights, and Hindu related religious artifacts. I bought a Kali medallion, a Vishnu and Shiva medallion. We had a vegetarian meal in a Tamil restaurant where we ate with our hands. Our right ones.

Not sure whether it was Diwali related or not, but much later that night, in the early a.m., Mary and I went to the oldest Hindu temple in Singapore, Sri Mariamman Temple, built in 1827. According to the Temple’s website the firewalking was on October 20th this year.

Due to changes in population over time it happens to sit now in the midst of Chinatown. There were lines blocks long of men in various sorts of clothing, all holding branches of some kind and, if I recall correctly, lemons or limes. At the very end of these line were a few women.

I stopped to talk with some of the women. “Oh, yes. Now we can go to the firewalking, too. But they didn’t want us. We insisted.” This was about 3 am or so. Mary and I walked along the lines of devotees waiting for their turn.

We got to the temple and watched folks walk across the bed of coals, then into a milk bath, and finally into the arms of priests and fellow firewalkers. The moist night air, the early morning quiet, and this strange (to my eyes) sight is a special memory for me. Afterward, Mary and I had Chinese food at a big hotel.

Ramadan, Diwali, Christmas, firewalking, and the American election. It was my introduction to Asia and underlines Mary’s there’s always something to celebrate.