Category Archives: Holidays

Beyond the Boundaries, Commentary on Religion, Great Wheel, Health, Holidays, Myth and Story, Paganism, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Paganism lies just beneath the surface

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Lughnasa and the Cheshbon Nefesh Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Shadow, her sweet self. Dr. Bupathi. Another blood draw. Soon another P.E.T. scan. Oh, joy. Cancer. Driving down the hill. Rides for my nerve ablation procedures. All our organ recitals. Mark’s journey of return to Hafar. Darkness. Welcome it. Vikings. JJ McCarthy.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Dr. Bupathi

Year Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah: Ometz Lev   Strength of the heart

Tarot: Nine of Wands. (Druid Craft)

  • Inner fortitude: Past struggles have made you wiser and tougher. The card encourages you to trust the wisdom of your experiences and to have faith in your ability to handle whatever comes next.

One brief shining: I dropped into Noodles and Company, bought a large bowl of mac and cheese, a side salad, rewarding myself with comfort food for driving down the hill, hearing the news I expected to hear, taking care of bidness, thinking I might have to start being even more kind to myself if I’m in new territory.

 

Health: Saw Bupathi. As expected, he ordered a new blood draw. And, another PET scan. I’ll see him again when that’s been done. Short version. This rise in my PSA, by itself, is not concerning. If it jumps again? New drug protocols.

Here’s an oddity. The Rocky Mountain Cancer Care Offices had Halloween decorations up. Not just a few. Witch’s conical hats. Bats. Black Cat. Plastic Pumpkins. Strands of purple and black crepe paper. More. In every hall and hung with a decorator’s eye.

This celebration seems both early to me and yet so apt. If there is any place where the veil between the worlds thins out everyday, all year it’s at an oncology practice. Many, perhaps most of us who visit here, have seen the possibility of death move closer, some so close her breath is hot on the back of their neck.

Sure Halloween doesn’t hold the same punch that it did during early Celtic times, but it retains the spirit of it actually pretty well. Trick or treaters costumed in the night do represent, though most don’t realize it, the back and forth between this world and the Other World so pronounced during this holiday of Summer’s End, Samain.

I mentioned all the decorations to the phlebotomist who had just slid a needle painlessly into a vein on my left arm. “Like Christmas,” she said. “Yes,” I replied, “Only scary.” She laughed.

Do you ever wonder about Halloween? How much effort some folks put into it? Their yards decorated with ten-foot skeletons, witches standing around a boiling cauldron, maybe a devil, or a vampire? Pumpkin lights. Elaborately carved real pumpkins.

Paganism always lies just below the surface. In the holidays of most world religions. In the resurgence here and in Europe of diverse pagan “traditions.” It’s there to receive those whose faces turn toward the greensward, to the soil, to seasonal change. When the miracle of photosynthesis goes from science to awe.

Halloween speaks to our need to recognize death, to know the fallow time will come for us all.

Holidays, Humanities, Memories, Retirement

A Curse on All our Houses

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Lughnasa and the Cheshbon Nefesh Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Shadow of the morning darkness. Nerve ablations scheduled. Artemis. Mythic Quest. Apple TV. Tenderloin, sweet Corn, sliced Peppers. Lunch. All labor. Robots. A.I. The cloud. Desktop and laptop and handheld computers. Nividia. AMD. Intel. Spending on AI data centers. The environmental cost of AI. Life. Death. Mystery.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Tzelem elohim. All made of the same stuff.

Year Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah: Ometz Lev. Strength of the heart. The inner courage to move forward. Courage.

Tarot:  #4, The Lord (Druid Craft Deck)

  • Stability and structure: Creating a solid, secure foundation for a project, family, or business. This card suggests a time to build and organize.

One brief shining: The inner world, a place of dreams and memories, emotions and intuition, Progoff’s inner cathedral, Jung’s shadow and the collective unconscious, the nefesh and the ruach and the neshama, where the outer world of materiality has no foothold, blends and develops our experience with our gifts, creating an I am.

 

Labor day: A bit late, but hey, I’m retired.

From my 50’s Indiana childhood I imprinted a steadfast rule. School starts the day after Labor Day and ends the day before Memorial Day. Anything else violates my understanding of a proper childhood. Colorado schools, for example, start in mid-August and end in mid to late May. Beep! Wrong. No kid should have to go back to school before the State Fair is done. I’m just sayin’.

Labor day returns our focus, however briefly, to labor unions, the working class, blue collar folks. The citizens of Alexandria, Indiana. My home town. Workers who made batteries and alternators at Delco Remy. Workers who made headlights and taillights for Guide Lamp. Who worked one of the three shifts: days, evening, nights. Yes, in that time General Motors required enough batteries and headlights to require factories that ran twenty-four hours a day.

No longer. What is the future of this kind of labor? Bleak. Even with red tie guy’s tariffs. The return of manufacturing to US soil? Unlikely in any substantial way. Global trade will not go away and the benefit (?) of cheaper labor will always land somewhere around the globe.

Then, of course. A.I. What will it do to the labor force? It may extend the leveled sites of Delco and Guide to paralegals,  lawyers, doctor’s offices, newsrooms, and classrooms. So called knowledge workers. No one really knows.

But, disruption for workers of all sorts has been the norm in the not free for all of capitalist economies. Whatever AI and robotics can do will shuffle the deck of work, of that I have no doubt. But how much? Hard to predict.

Work, if you recall your Bereshit, Genesis, is a curse laid on Adam and Eve for eating of the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A curse. We pretend it’s ennobling because we need to. We have to justify our need to leave a warm bed, a lover or spouse, the kids and the dog to, what, win bread? Move up, gain status? Do something worthwhile? Yes. A curse on all our houses.

 

Feelings, Great Wheel, Holidays, Mountains, Paganism, Plants, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

The Springtime of the Soul

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Lughnasa and the Cheshbon Nefesh Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Road trips. Telluride. Ouray. Silverton. Durango. Shadow, rising in darkness. Morning darkness. Electricity. Artemis. Tomatoes nearing maturity. Very cool morning. Authoritarian playbooks. 2025. May you grow old in interesting times. TV. Books. Computers. Mini-splits. Fall come early. Aspen gold. CBE. Gabe and Gordonzeo. Ruth in her sophomore year.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Bubble gum and baling wire

Year Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah:  Ometz lev. Inner strength to move forward. Courage.

Tarot: Ten of Arrows, Instruction

Generational Wisdom:
The card emphasizes the transfer of knowledge from elders to youth, ensuring that traditional skills and wisdom are not lost.

 

One brief shining: Shadow is in the house, goes straight to her Nylabone Lobster, begins to chew with what dog toy makers call aggressive chewing, the kind that shreds toys made for softer dogs, ones whose chewing gentles the toys, treats them like Velveteen Rabbits, not Shadow for she demands resistance, counts on toughness.

 
 

Seasons: A cool morning. Forty-three. The greenhouse heater either can’t keep up or turned itself off. I’ll find out later this morning. These late August days and all of September mark a gradual transition from growing season weather to the bleakness of the fallow season. Sometimes cold, even frosty, sometimes warm.

 

Soon the Aspens on Black Mountain will begin to turn from green to gold. Jackie who lives above 9,000 feet in Bailey said they’d started to turn a while back where she is. Kenosha Pass, too, said a friend of hers. The whispered reports we share. Knowing seasonal change for what it is. Life-changing.

 

When to put on the Snow tires? Will my cold frames be done before the first frost? When will the Garlic come? Do the mini-splits need cleaning? How’s my supply of firewood? How about that first Snow? When will it come? Homes become refuges from the cold. Shadow loved the Snow in February. How will she react when it comes again? With delight, I imagine.

 

Mountain roads. Become more challenging. Technical. Call on forty years of Minnesota winter driving experience. When these Blizzaks lose their tread, I’m buying Hankook quiet studded tires.

 

Holiseason lies only a couple of months away. Starting on Samhain and running through the Epiphany. My favorite time of the year. Family and friends. Festive days and long cold nights.

 

But. Not yet. First the corn-pickers and the combines. Reaping the harvest as the mad colors of a Midwestern Fall bloom, red Sugar Maple leaves floating down, down onto Lakes and Ponds. Boaters heading out to see the colors on Lake Minnetonka. College football underway. Can the NFL be far behind?

 

I love this transitional time. A joy of living in the temperate latitudes where we have four seasons, more or less. And this change from the heat of summer to the crisp weather of fall? The best. All poignancy and anticipation.

 

As Rudolf Steiner said, the springtime of the soul. That’s why cheshbon nefesh fits so well here. An outer change enhances, encourages an inner one.
Dogs, Greenhouse, Holidays, Judaism

Let’s Do It

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Summer and the Greenhouse Moon II

Sunday gratefuls: 404 errors. Cybermage. Ancientrails. Writing. P.T. Computers. Zoom. Ionos. Help. Insect noises as Great Sol appears. Shadow playing inside while she waits on breakfast. Tomato Plants flopping over. Supporting them. Working organic fertilizer into the Soil. Artemis. Ginny and Janice. Annie and Luna. International Moon Day.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: WordPress

Year Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah: Ahavah. Love.

Tarot: The Wanderer.  What do I need to do to align my soul?

One brief shining: Yes, even at 78 there’s still soul work to do, surprised me though to see the Wanderer come up when I pulled a card this morning because it suggests a new journey, a new path for that work, perhaps with Artemis and Shadow as my guiding stars or perhaps the one suggested at the Bagel Table yesterday, restoring Sukkot, Passover, Shavuot, Tu B’shvat to their original, earth-based significance.

 

Caspar Friedrich, Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog

Tarot: The Wanderer.* Exciting. A new journey begins. I always enjoy pushing out into new territory, putting my foot down on the rainbow. The Wanderer, major arcana #0, represents the turning of the Great Wheel back to its starting point as well as the start of the journey represented by the major arcana.

Applied to my soul alignment I imagine it relates to one of two possibilities:

First: The ongoing, yet still very new world I have here on Shadow Mountain with Shadow and Artemis. We three have many new opportunities for learning as we interact with each other. Shadow needs her leash. Artemis needs to teach me how to use her beds to create produce and beauty.

Second: A throwaway line from yesterday’s Bagel Table which looked at Numbers 28 and 29. In chapter 29 all of the major Jewish holidays come to life. Surprisingly though what is now Rosh Hoshana and Yom Kippur, the days of Awe, merit only a couple of sentences and bear none of the weight it occupies in today’s Judaism. Instead, Sukkot, a harvest festival, has specific instructions for all 7 days.

When I asked Rabbi Jamie how Sukkot got shunted aside, he told a story about a Babylonian ceremony at about the same time of year that honored the renewal of the king.

He suggested returning Sukkot to its original prominence and featuring its earth focused origins. I said, “Let’s do it!”

 

 

 

* From Gemini:

  • Self-Discovery and Exploration:

    The card suggests a journey of self-discovery, urging you to explore your potential and embrace new experiences. 

  • End and a Beginning:

    The Wanderer can represent the completion of one cycle and the start of another, urging you to reflect on past experiences and embrace the future. 

  • Connection to Nature:

    The Wildwood Tarot emphasizes a deep connection to nature, and The Wanderer often symbolizes a return to the wild and a reconnection with your primal instincts. 

  • Not Always Easy:

    While representing new beginnings, the Wanderer’s journey may not always be smooth. It can involve facing fears and overcoming obstacles as you step into the unknown. 

In essence, The Wanderer in the Wildwood Tarot is a powerful reminder to embrace change, trust your intuition, and embark on a journey of self-discovery with courage and enthusiasm. 

 

Dogs, Great Wheel, Greenhouse, Holidays, Paganism, Politics

Feel the Fire in your Bones

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Summer and the Greenhouse Moon

Friday gratefuls: Luke and Leo. Laundry. Shadow and Leo. Buddies. Warm Night. AI. Chatgpt. Images. Mussar. Diane. Her book club and cherry chutney. The Greenhouse, Nathan’s careful work. Scott. His pollinator Garden. My son. Moving. Seoah. Murdoch. Ruth and Gabe coming up today.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Luke’s many talents

Week Kavannah: Bitachon. Confidence.  “A feeling of self-assurance arising from one’s appreciation of one’s abilities or qualities.”

One brief shining: Piece by piece the greenhouse comes together, two Koi on the door, deep raised beds on the sides, a raised bed inside it, shelving for pots and space to work along both inside walls, the clear insulating sheets going in place to let in Great Sol and retain the warmth.

 

Summer Solstice: For those of you new to Ancientrails, this is the day I celebrate not only the victory of light on the longest day, but also the ascendancy of the night which starts tonight, continuing night by night until the Winter Solstice. We need the warmth of Great Sol for our plant allies to grow and we need the darkness and Lesser Light illumination of the night for our soul’s growth. The yang and the yin of seasonal change.

In Nordic and Scottish lands the Summer Solstice, much like Beltane, finds bonfires blazing, naked bodies dancing to the drums and pipes. Never got the chance to participate, perhaps next incarnation.

Stop a moment today. Feel the heat of Great Sol. Let the Sun enlighten you, fuel the dreams and work of your heart. An active time, a time to push forth into the world with the best, the strongest parts of your Self.

Choose, if you can, to feel fire in your bones, energy surging from feet to head like the sacred flow of energy from the crown of the Tree of Life to Malkhut, this tangible world, and back up again toward the ayn sof. Your body and soul, unique and irreplaceable, yet also one with the other, all others. The true and important secret not hidden from us except when we slip into routine, into habitual ways of knowing.

As I wrote yesterday: Celebrate, celebrate. Dance to the music.

 

Dog journal: Luke and Leo came over yesterday. Shadow greeted Leo. A nip here, a play bow there. Leo, a large and older Dog took his time to respond. He played a bit with her before lying down on the cool tile for a gentleman’s rest.

Meanwhile Shadow put her paws on the other chair down here, and licked Luke’s face. She takes others visiting with enthusiasm. Ginny and Janice come over on Sunday afternoon with Annie and Luna. More fun for Shadow.

Right now Shadow has the severed tail of a stuffed Skunk toy in her mouth flailing it from side to side while she rolls on her back. A puppy.

 

Just a moment: Well, red tie guy has proved more thoughtful than I imagined. Diane offered a reason. The isolationist wing of the MAGA movement having its say. Could be.

Asia, Fourth Phase, Holidays, Judaism, Paganism, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., US History

Tao De Jew

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Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Shabbat. Torah. CBE. Sacred community. Where everybody knows your name. Shadow and the canoe cut marrow bone. Cold Night. A Mountain Dawn. Great Sol shines again. Being able to buy seeds and plants again. Easter. Matthew. Mark. Luke. John.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Gabe at 17

Week Kavannah: Sensibility. Daat.

One brief shining: In their waning years Taoists left behind their jobs in the court bureaucracy for small dwellings in the Mountains where they practiced calligraphy, played the Qin, wrote poetry, studied the sages, and lived close to the natural world.

 

Tao De Jew. With a dash of Alinsky and street focused organizer. The Reverend Doctor Israel Harari. That would be me. With a domestic side of Gardener, Beekeeper, and Docent.

Try to work with the flow of chi, the energetic and transformative aspect of our oneness and our sense of uniqueness. Look for the path that emerges, that asks and invites. Follow it. This ancientrail, then that one. With the ease of Water running toward the Ocean.

Find the moment when chi has found you. Act with its already organized aim. If Shadow gnaws the bed at 5:20, get up and let her out. Saves cleaning up. Makes her happy. Gives the day an hour head start.

Reconstructionist Judaism, Paganism, Taoism.  Sacred Community, Mother Earth, and a follower of the Way. When the Mule Deer comes. When the bull Elk bugles. When Fawns and Calves play. As the Mountain Lion strikes. As the Bear paws a Bee hive. Yes. When tender shoots break through the soil. When friends gather over breakfast. When Torah study opens new human insights. When the Breeze through the Lodgepoles whispers follow me. Yes.

 

Have you been following the Adventures of Trump Tarrific? I know I have. Sort of. There was the all tariffs all the time moment. Then there was the oh wait not on tech stuff moment. Now there’s, what is it again? 10% on everybody and a whole lot on China. Yeah, I don’t get it either. Lucky I’m not alone. Business leaders. Economists. Inflation wary members of the Fed. For a start.

Then there’s Trump the Depo Man. Proving his masculinity by using the military, ICE, and millions of dollars to sweep people off college campuses, out of their janitorial and dishwashing jobs, making a mistake or two along the way, but hey that’s ok, omelets and eggs, eh, and not getting many folks deported except the most vulnerable.

That what it says in the Gospels: find the poor, the stranger, put them on a plane and send them to prison in El Salvador. Oh, Jesus. Oh.

 

Just a moment: Yes. It’s Easter. Easter eggs. Chocolate and marshmallow Bunnies. Ham. Cute dresses and boys in ties. All the holiday essentials. Wonder how that whole egg business has worked this year, the year of Bird flu?

Remember Ukrainian Easter Eggs. Wonder if anybody’s on that this year? Or will Putin target little old ladies with eggs and candle wax.

 

 

Asia, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Holidays, Judaism, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Travel

Passing on Passover? The Jangs.

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Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Second day of Passover. Kate, always Kate. Shadow the toy mover. Her zooming in the back yard. Liberation. Freedom to choose. Egypt. The many Egypts we are heir to. Tara. Arjan. Robbie and Deb. Sandy and Mark. Eleanor. Kilimanjaro. Jungfrau. Black Mountain. Shadow Mountain. A Mountain night.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Liberation

Week Kavannah: Joy. Simcha.

One brief shining: The Haggadah had wine stains; the seder plate had a kiwi because we can; we dipped the parsley into salt water, tears for the suffering of the slaves, of all oppressed people, spread dots of wine or in my case grape juice for each plague, retelling each part of the passover story as if we were there, as our story.

 

Talmud Torah in the morning. (Torah study) A focus on the maggid, the telling of the passover story in the Haggadah. Complete with midrash, interpretation and expansion.

Later, around 4, over to Kilimanjaro Drive. Tara’s house. Steep driveway with cars parked at various spots along the way. All the way up to the top where I found a spot in front of a Tesla.

Thirty minutes before I had almost chosen not to go. Coming home in the dark. General inertia. A long standing aversion to parties. But this was Passover. At Tara’s. I’d be happy once I got there.

So I went to the liquor store, picked up a bottle of mid-range red wine and drove past Evergreen Meadows and past Evergreen Funeral Home where both Jon and Kate lay after death, down curvy N. Turkey Creek Road to the Mountains and roads leading to her house.

And I was happy to be there. Until we sat down to the table. Then the noise level, the angle of the voices, the general clash and clamor of a meal with eighteen other people. I began to recede. Off in my own quiet room of acoustical challenge. Nodding and smiling. Trying to keep up. Too often failing.

Now having to rethink even Passover, at least in people’s homes. Where it means the most. Where my friends want me. Where I want to be. The congregational Passover has round tables, more distance among the guests. Kate and I usually attended. I may need to go to it just so I can hear.

 

Talked to my son and Seoah on Friday night. Murdoch’s getting crate training. Seoah’s running, happy. We talked about Kate, her death, her wonderful life.

My son and I discussed details for the Jang family visit this summer. Money is, as you can imagine, an issue. 5 adults and two children. Seoah’s Mom and Dad, her brother, her sister and her two kids. Airfare, lodging, transportation. Food. That’s what we’re working out now. Need to make some decisions soon because Air BnB’s begin to fill up for the summer in this time frame.

Will be the trip of a lifetime for the Jang’s. The U.S. The Rocky Mountains. Deepening connections with my son’s side of the family. Myself, Ruth, Gabe.

Stay tuned.

Dogs, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Holidays, Judaism

Shadow. Yet again. Passover.

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Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

Friday grateful: So. It has come to this. The Supreme Court, remember how big it used to loom over our culture, has to say no, you cannot leave an immigrant you deported by mistake in an El Salvadoran prison because you claim you have no authority to undo it, to the President’s lawyers arguing against bringing him home. The Supreme Court. Involved in fixing a bureaucratic travesty any decent person would have scrambled to fix on their own.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Puppy energy. Even at 5:30 am.

Week Kavannah: Wu Wei

One brief shining: No more night time excursions for Shadow, for whatever reason darkness transforms her from Shadow into Nightshade the ornery, unwilling to come in, happy to wander in the dark well beyond my bedtime.

 

Dr. Shadow is in the house

 

Dog journal: She’s nose deep in a new toy for aggressive chewers. Sharp teeth and not afraid to use them. By turns amusing and frustrating.

She’s house-trained. Loving. Self entertaining. Willing to train. Sometimes. Her eyes contain the lives of Dogs around the campfires in the Veldt. Domesticated, but not quite.

Part Dingo. Part Kelpie. Part Dalmatian. All Australian muster Dog. Alert and ready to herd.

No, Shadow. It’s not yet time for breakfast. She’s looking right at me, putting in her order.

 

Got back to mussar yesterday. First time in a month or so. Maybe a bit more. Though I’ve been on zoom. Still working on anavah: humility.

Odd moment. I wore my new round Raybans, my trademark plaid flannel, and my Grateful Dead dancing bears hat. One of the women said, after class finished, that I was the sexiest man in the room. Only three of us: Rabbi Jamie, Luke, and me, so there’s that…

Still. It surprised me. Made me think of days long past. BP. Before prostatectomy. 2015. Yet the affirmation made me feel good. Even at 78.

We all need the occasional validation of others. No matter the reason. When validation comes unexpectedly and in a manner that delights us, all the better.

Here’s the big takeaway. You can be the source of that kind of validation for another. Elevating others is a kindness always available to us. Worth doing.

 

Dawn has come to Shadow Mountain. An hour plus after Shadow gnawed me awake. Another Mountain Morning. Grateful for that.

Going to Evergreen this morning. The Dandelion. Breakfast with Alan.

 

Just a moment: Yesterday was anniversary #9 for my son and Seoah. Today’s my brother’s 66th birthday. Tomorrow’s Passover and the fourth anniversary of Kate’s death and my father’s birthday: #112 had he lived.

A lot of big moments for a three day period.

I’ll be heading over to Tara Saltzman’s for her seder tomorrow afternoon at 4 pm. My contribution is red wine.

We’ll sit around the table and celebrate the origin story for our people. Remember that time back in Egypt, so long ago. That night when we spread the blood of lambs on our doorposts and lintels. When the angel of death passed by our first born sons. Remember?

Remember the Reed Sea. How it made way for us?

This festival of liberation. Of the freeing of slaves. This is now my story, too. And a wonderful story it is. To have at its root the struggle against an oppressor, one who would diminish slaves through harsh labor. Of a people who listened to the sacred inner voice calling out for freedom and, most important of all, acted on it. Gained their release. An ancient story, yes, but one that needs reliving in every decade, every century, every millennia.

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Holidays, Judaism, Woolly Mammoths

Men. In their awkwardness. Beautiful.

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Yule and a beautiful crescent of the Quarter Century Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Torah study. Men’s group at CBE. Flat bread with lox and onion. Pescatarians. Ruth skiing. Such joy. Gabe and his puzzles. 9 degrees. New Snow. Driving in the dark. A boost. Diet. Changing. Matt. Rob. Bill. Jamie.  The mesh bag. Neck weakness. January 20th.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Men, struggling with their hearts

Kavannah for 2025: Creativity

Kavannah for this January 5th life: Persistence

One brief shining: Drove back last night from the men’s group at CBE graced by the waxing crescent of the Quarter Century Moon; its soft light radiated by a Mountain Fog illuminating the Arapaho National Forest and the curves of Brook Forest Drive, then Black Mountain Drive until Shadow Mountain Home appeared out of the mist, welcoming me.

 

Got a boost yesterday. Community working its magic. During Torah study in the morning I still felt pressed down, disengaged. Distant. But Luke came up and gave me a big hug. Ginny smiled to see me. I felt seen. Though. Still coasting at a slow low place when I left.

Came back and did nothing until 5:30 when I left to go back to CBE for the first meeting of the men’s group. Buzzed the door. Got let in by a guy I didn’t know. Then I let in a  couple of other guys, neither of whom I knew. One of them, Matt, turned to get his nametag. Oh, good idea, I said. I’m usually good for one a day he said.

Steve brought flat bread with lox and onions. Made by his wife. I brought my go to mandarin Oranges in my new mesh bag. Joe brought miniature rugalach and date bars. Jamie tossed a handful of leftover Hanukkah gelt on the table. Chips and dip appeared. Finger food. Manly interpretations.

The conversation had that awkward I don’t know you tone, things held back, laughing. I only knew Jamie and Steve. Steve just a little. As we navigated telling bits and pieces of our stories, wondering who resided behind the careful words, I felt myself easing onto familiar ground.

When it came my turn, the Woolly Mammoths came out naturally. 40 years of learning how to get behind the careful words, the fear of vulnerability, with other men. Men trained by American culture and in this case reinforced by Jewish culture that feelings were at best anti-competitive. At worst they could…well, you know, don’t you?

Sensing the journey ahead and enjoying the tender feelers put out, an occasional smile, a sad look, a story that told more than intended, my downward emotional Dog began to shift to a Sun Salutation. I didn’t expect that to happen, but it did. Not all the way back to normal, no, not at all, but buoyed up all the same.

 

Just a moment: Tomorrow some Christians celebrate the Magi’s visit to the lowly manger in which the Son of God was born. And Trump will trumpet the day of love which the bulk of us call insurrection. MAGA or Magi? Even as a Jew I’m going with the Magi.

Commentary on the news, Holidays, Memories, Minnesota, Politics, US History, World History

Yesterday’s Lives

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Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Reconstructionist Judaism. Judaism as jazz. My White Pine companion at Boot Lake Scientific and Nature Area-Minnesota. Those elms I had to cut down and debark in Andover. Emma’s fallen cottonwood. The Seven Oaks out my study window. The dead Ash Tree where the Morel’s grew. The Ironwood that was so tough to cut. Honeycrisp. McIntosh. Plum. Pear. Cherry. Trees in our Orchard.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Mountain Winds

Kavannah for 2025: Yetziratiut  Creativity

For this January 2nd life: Netzach  Perseverance and grit

One brief shining: A hand on her back, a flinch, you scared me, oh wondering what could have made her flinch since she knew I was there, right behind her, sad that touch took her into flight mode, the snow blew busily across my driveway.

 

We’re almost done with Holiseason. I count January 6th, Epiphany as the end of this wonderful time of year that began on Samain, October 31st. Here’s a connection I’d not made before. January 6th, day of the insurrection, when MAGA stormed the Capitol building carrying weapons and looting like vandals. January 6th, day of the Epiphany, which celebrates the visit of the three Magi bearing gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Sorta different, eh? Now wedded by history.

 

Not sure why, but yesterday’s lives have begun seeping into my present. Not in a regret or shame or guilt way, but as a remembrance of time’s past. Could be the stories I’m writing in the Storyworth application. Maybe not though. At breakfast with Tara I told Ball State movement stories that I rarely tell. Today in my gratefuls Trees I had known in Minnesota kept coming to mind. A few days ago I took the Artemis Honey jar out of the cabinet and went into a combination of grief and joy, of remembering life with Kate and the persistent joy then which brought grief about its loss and about Kate’s death.

Most lives, like mine, are ordinary. Most lives, like mine, are extraordinary. Ordinary because they will sink under the burden of history, little known and less remembered. Extraordinary because only I could live my life which makes it, like yours, wonderful, another full-on, head down, legs moving experiment in what it means to be human.

May as well lean into it, the onrush of old lives. Seems to be what’s happening in my psyche.

 

Just a moment: That truck. Near Cafe du Monde. Jackson Square. ISIS? Geez, guys. Read the room. So yesterday. And the irony, the maybe intended irony, of an ugly Tesla cybertruck blowing up in front of a long red tie guy hotel in Las Vegas. Why can’t China or Russia be the great Satan? Or at least share the honor.

I can already feel the aggrievement wheels turning in cousin Donald’s meanness machine. What if he decides to turn the full weight of the U.S. military against Muslim terrorists? He’s capable of that. And trust me someone in his sphere of malevolence has probably recommended it already. What if?