Category Archives: Literature

Far Right, Judaism, Letters, Literature, Politics, Reimaging revelation, Torah

Permanent Things

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Yule and the Moon of New Beginnings

Tuesday gratefuls: Shadowy kisses across my pillow. Vince as snowplower. Tom’s enucleation. That wooden bowl. Ruth’s wrist. American Beauty, Gabe and mine’s favorite Dead album. Mary in the upside down. Star Trek: Discovery. Yale Program for the Study of Anti-Semitism. T2V: Terrorism and Targeted Violence. C-REX, center for research on extremism.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Facts

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Year Kavannah: Creativity.   Yetziratiut.   “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” ― Pablo Picasso

Week Kavannah:  Wholeness. Shleimut.                                                “The concept of shleimut extends beyond the individual, applying to relationships (finding a life partner with whom one feels complete) and the community (mending societal cracks to achieve collective creativity and flourishing).”

Tarot: Two of Arrows, Injustice

“False conclusions and unjust decisions, based on disinformation and motivated by fear, greed, and prejudice, can cause innumerable problems. Either mistakenly or deliberately distributed to pervert the course of natural justice and the revelation of the facts by those who fear the truth and wish to manipulate the situation for personal control or gain, this propaganda will not survive honest, wise, and impartial scrutiny.”   Parting the Mists

One brief shining: Ana came cleaning, portable vacuum on her back, two twisted kleenex in each box, toilet paper folded to a point, careful dusting, a big smile, so many years now and we barely know each other since I’m gone when she comes, but, not yesterda;, not Kate’s way who got to know housecleaners as friends, me I prefer not to be home.

 

Funny how things come to you. Sometimes slowly. So slowly. Other times, sudden burst of insight. The stimulus can be Proust’s madeleine, or Leo Strauss’s desire to hunt down the esoteric message in classical texts of political philosophy.

In my ongoing pursuit to understand the true nature of forces opposing my own world view, a significant number of roads lead to Leo Strauss. You may not have heard of this twentieth century political philosopher. He influenced many far right intellectuals (no, that’s not an oxymoron) with his insistence that the roots of political philosophy be found in classic texts of Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, and others.

He and his students sought permanent things, or things in human nature that persist from age to age and effect us in the political sphere. “By “the Permanent Things” [T. S. Eliot] meant those elements in the human condition that give us our nature, without which we are as the beasts that perish.” The Imaginative Conservative.

When I read that Strauss insisted his students seek an esoteric or hidden layer of meaning in classical texts, my mind went immediately to the kabbalists. They look for occult meanings in the Torah.

Sure enough, the Straussian method could be applied to Torah study and undoubtedly has been. I offer this not strictly for how it ties conservative thought to the methods of the kabbalists, but mostly for its illumination of the inner world’s mysterious ability to sharpen our awareness in unexpected, intuitive ways.

 

 

Humanities, Literature, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Our Land and Home

Riders on the Storm

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Yule and the Moon of New Beginnings

Boxing day gratefuls: Shadow, my sweet girl. Feeling no pain. Global warming. Climate change. Chatgpt. Snow in the forecast. Sorta. Football. How bout those Broncos? And, those Vikings. Joe. Seoah. Murdoch. Ruth and Gabe at Christmas dinner with Jon’s friends. Gabe looking through his dad’s art. Joanne and Alan today at the Hummingbird. Garlic in winter. Yule. Shema. Chesed. Yirah.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Resistance work

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:  Yirah.    Radical amazement, awe.

Becoming a metaPhysician

One brief shining: On Christmas day I heard the heralds sing, Vikings in yet another takeaway from the Lions, that Viking’s running back leaped and got the ball over the pylon, touchdown, Bo Nix scrambles for another first down, and Bronco’s keep the ball moving downfield, proving that Christmas day did send good cheer to me, and to all Viking’s and Bronco’s fans, a happy New Year!

 

Riders on the storm. Into this world we’re thrown. Jim Morrison, who died too young, knew his Heidegger. Thrownness is a Heideggerian idea that seems obvious once you understand it, yet has profound implications for understanding anyone’s life purpose.

Thrownness means birth locates you not only in a family and a place, significant enough, but also in an era, a moment in time neither in the past nor in the future, but in what becomes for you, as long as you live, your time. Sorta obvious, right?

Its profundity comes from this: Even though I may want very much to be a Druid in the peak era of Celtic civilization, I can’t. The past. Even though I may want to live in an era without Trump, I can’t. We share this time. Damn it. Even though I may want to live in a time long after this one. I can’t. The future.

Thrownness positions us where we are, with this body and its gifts, its flaws, these relatives and friends with their gifts and flaws. With the joys and possibilities available through computers, electric cars, zoom calls, good medicine, a prosperous nation. But also within a time straining to solve civilizational problems through old, time cursed solutions like oligarchy, fascism, and bigotry.

We cannot be anywhere else, with any other world around us. We must, therefore, act within this one. And, we must act as the person we are, not one we wish we might magically become.

In case this is all too abstruse, and it probably is, let me anchor the idea in my life. I was thrown into post-WW II America with two veterans of that war as parents. It was a time when polio still raged among the young. It caught up with me. I grew up in a small Indiana town with displaced hillbillie’s kids as my classmates and friends. My mother died when I was 17, almost out of high school.

Let’s stop there. I had no choice about any of these things. They were the realities of my life in the same way being raised as a  Masai warrior’s child of the same era was theirs. My development physically, emotionally, intellectually, had to have these influences.

In other words who I am today at 78, sitting on Shadow Mountain, remains anchored in how I chose to respond to those realities. Could not have been otherwise. Though my choices could have, potentially, been different, they were the ones I made and I cannot go back and remake them.

As this 21st century year comes to a close, give some thought to the world into which you were thrown. It is your only world, for this lifetime, and only you can offer yourself to it as healer, servant, bringer of justice and compassion, artist or engineer.

Art and Culture, Colorado, Humanities, Literature, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Music, Myth and Story, Shadow Mountain

Art Years. Mountain Years.

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Mabon and the Harvest Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Luke at 34. Bella Colibri. Rabbi Jamie’s Rosh Hashanah sermons. Shadow, the morning kisser. Artemis’ Cucumbers. Pizza and Burger plants in my son’s garden. Seoah’s half marathon. Mary’s political neighborhood. Mark and West Texas. From afar in Hafar. Ruth and Gabe, students. The Never Ending Story. Fourth Wing. Iron Flame.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Harvest

Year Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah:  Malchut. Wonder.    “Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.”  Socrates.

Tarot: Five of Pentacles. (Druid Craft)

  • Focus on internal resources: For a querent, this version is a powerful reminder that sometimes the help we need is within us, but our focus on the problem prevents us from seeing the solution. It is a prompt to shift perspective, recognize internal resources, and understand that our perceived limitations may be an internal block rather than an external lack. 
Festival Theater, Stratford

One brief shining: Trumpets blaring we would file into our seats at the three-quarter round thrust stage of the Guthrie Theater when it stood attached to the wonderful Walker Art Center, find our seats, and wait as the Gospel of Colonus, or the Bacchae, or the Christmas Carol came to life, poor players strutting and fretting upon the stage until they were heard no more. Applause!

 

Minnesota: Though now a Coloradan, a Rocky Mountain guy, a Jew, a widower, I once was a Minnesotan and happily so. Especially when it came to the arts. Those trumpets I mentioned? Oddly, when my family vacationed in Stratford, Ontario I had encountered them years before. Why? Because Michael Langham, the director of the Guthrie when I first attended on a student discount, had been the director of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival during those long ago family vacations.

The Walker allowed all of us tucked into the rarely visited Upper Midwest of the Heartland access to the latest and the greatest of modern and contemporary art. What a gift. The MIA, an encyclopedic museum, covered art from ancient Chinese ceramics and bronzes through impressionists and abstract expressionists and had its own contemporary art exhibitions.

I spent twelve happy years guiding tour groups through the Asian galleries discussing the Jade Mountain(s), the Japanese Tea Ceremony, Song dynasty ceramics, and Korea’s amazing celadon glazed pottery. Yes I also led tours that included Goya and Rembrandt and Kandinsky, Chuck Close and Egon Schiele, but my heart remained always in the Asian collection.

It was a distinct privilege to immerse myself in the thousands of years of art in the MIA’s collection, to have my understandings of the modern world upended at the Walker, to have the Western world’s best playwright’s effort brought to life while I attended the Guthrie.

Too, there was and will always be for me: The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. Decades of attendance acquainted me with Mozart, Teleman, Bach, Ives, Copeland, Fauré. And, ta dah! Kate.

Today my chamber music is the golden swathes of Aspen Leaves on Black Mountain. My Guthrie is the rain swollen Maxwell Creek while the Arapaho National Forest recapitulates the MIA and the Walker. So be it.

Asia, Family, Greenhouse, Literature, Politics, US History, World History

Demons and Devils oh my

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Summer and the Greenhouse Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Morning darkness. Shadow. My sweet girl. Kate, always. Aurora preceding Great Sol’s full reveal. Molas. The Cuna Indians, forced to move on land due to Sea level rise. Panama. Colombia. The Darien Wilderness. The Panama Canal. Ecuador. Peru. Chile. The Fjords. Ushuaia. Cape Horn. The Falklands. Argentina. Uruguay. Brazil. Kate’s retirement cruise.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: South America

Week Kavannah:  Roeh et hanalod. Foresight. Knowing what will be needed in the future.

One brief shining: Nathan stood on his ladder, rubber mallet in hand while he installed the clear roofing for the greenhouse, pounding away, engaged in the act of creation, a maker in his element with electric saws, drills, hand saws, squares, and measuring tapes, lumber.

 

Iran: Anthony Blinken, “Trump’s Iran strike was a mistake. I hope it succeeds.” NYT, 6/24/2025. I’m with Blinken on this one.

Brother Mark works in Al Kharj, Saudi Arabia. Outside Al Kharj is the joint U.S./Saudi Prince Sultan airbase, home of the US 378th Air Expeditionary Wing. The only base in Saudi Arabia with a U.S. military presence. Qatar lies about 400 miles to the northwest.

Prince Sultan AFB received Patriot missile batteries from Osan AFB where Joseph now lives. I doubt Iran would be foolish enough to strike in Saudi Arabia, its chief Muslim rival in the region and only a missile’s throw over the Persian Gulf.

Still. To have a civilian family member that close to the troubles. Troubling.

This poor benighted place, the Middle East. Religious and ethnic hatreds, hundreds and thousands of years old. Everybody packed in tight. Doesn’t say much for religion as an agent of peace and compassion.

May this ceasefire hold. May negotiations commence and have good results. May the Gaza horror end as well as the violence on the West Bank. And, may Netanyahu go to jail. Where he has long belonged.

 

Greenhouse: Nathan finished the roof yesterday so he could at least paint and lacquer inside if it rains.

Thunderstorms likely this afternoon and tomorrow afternoon. The monsoons. May they come and may they persist even though it slows Nathan. Wildfire protection trumps everything.

I finally put away the electric blanket and the temperatures dropped. Sigh. Yet. Rains.

 

Reading: I go in spurts. With authors. Genres. Ideas. Sometimes two or three at a time. Right now I’m immersed in the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. Harry Dresden is a wizard in Chicago. Saw it described as Harry Potter for Adults. Sort of.

Butcher’s a better writer than Rowlings. Found out on Sunday that he lives in Evergreen.

I’m continuing my as deep as I can dive into the weird Christian world of the New American Reformation. An odd thing. The world of Harry Dresden and the NAR are not so far apart.

The NAR believes in demons and devils, in spiritual warfare. They also believe in political warfare and have become a solid foundation for Trump’s base.

Matthew Taylor, author of The Violent Take It By Force, which I’m reading, says we need to think of American Christianity in four quadrants* rather than the out of date Protestant, Catholic, Evangelical.

He emphasizes the Independent Charismatic Quadrant though it’s the smallest of the four. The New American Reformation is the key player here. Paula White, a prominent and highly successful NAR preacher, has been teflon Don’s religious adviser for twenty years.

The NAR has a loose organizational structure which allows them a great deal of flexibility when it comes to political action. Taylor says it was influential members of the NAR who stood on the fringes of January 6th and prayed them on.

More on this as it gets clearer to me.

1. Denominational / Institutional Evangelicals

  • Rooted in traditional, denomination-based churches (e.g., SBC, Assemblies of God).

  • Emphasize preaching, missions, conversion.

  • Historically influential in conservative politics—but less so now compared to charismatic groups.

2. Independent Network Charismatics

  • Non‑denominational, centered around powerful apostles and prophets.

  • Operate in networks rather than denominational hierarchies.

  • Emphasize supernatural gifts, spiritual warfare, cultural transformation.

  • Includes movements like the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) books.google.com+4en.wikipedia.org+4amazon.com+4.

3. Progressive / Social Justice Evangelicals

  • Focus on issues like poverty, racial justice, climate, immigration.

  • May be evangelical theologically, but lean politically left.

  • Often positioned as a counter‑voice to Christian nationalism.

4. Mainline / Liberal Protestants

  • Include historic denominations (e.g., UCC, ELCA, Episcopalians).

  • Theologically liberal, embracing biblical criticism, LGBTQ inclusion.

  • Maintain a strong social‑justice ethos with little overlap with evangelical or charismatic movements.

 

 

 

 

 

Commentary on Religion, Dogs, Health, Humanities, Judaism, Kabbalah, Literature, Myth and Story, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Science, Torah

This Is Not the Way

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Beltane and the Greenhouse Moon

Sunday gratefuls: A day of no-things. Shadow and I outside, drop, walk, stop, drop, turn, walk, drop. Her eagerness. Her five o’clock licking. Sciatica. Morning darkness. The morning service. The Shema. Tara. Ruth, home two days ago, leaving for Alaska today. Gabe, now a senior. Whoa. Mary in Seoul. Seoah, Murdoch. My son. Mark walks to downtown Al Kharj. Shadow Mountain.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: MRI

Week Kavannah: Wholeness and Peacefulness. Shleimut. Integrating pain into my daily life.

One brief shining: Sorry, Marines, pain is not weakness leaving the body, no; but, it is a constant reminder of being alive, of still having a body that can identify itself through the jolt that starts in the hip, gathers intensity around the knee, and on occasion flashes to the foot.

 

Back and cancer: Get MRI results tomorrow. Buphati at 3 pm. On Friday I see Kylie my Army officer retired P.A. for preparation. I have a SPRINT device in my future. The bogo MRI. Checking for cancer and readying me for a pain reduction, elimination procedure. Rare confluence of medical care.

Ouch, ouch, ouch. ouch. Sciatica is a son of a bitch. Above 10. A crescendo, then a falling away. I. Do. Not. Like. It.

If the SPRINT device works, I will send up hallelujahs in the name of its inventor, Kylie, and the doctor who installs it. If it doesn’t? I’m no worse off than before. Probably nerve ablation.

If there’s cancer in my hip? Don’t know. But Buphati will have things to recommend, I know.

 

Reading: I’m on a run of science fiction and magic. John Scalzi’s Starter Villain and Kaiju Preservation Society. Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files. The Gray Man and Daniel Silva set aside for the moment.

My serious reading of late has been for my two Kabbalah Experience classes. A New Story for Human Consciousness and the Radical Roots of Religion. The first, learning to retell, reimagine the story of Adam and Eve. And, in so doing, realizing we can reframe, reconstruct any story, including the one we tell ourselves about who we are in this world.

The second investigating moments when Judaism received a radical refit. Focused on Mordecai Kaplan, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Reb Zalman, and Art Green, but looking backward to Maimonides, the Bal Shem Tov, the destruction of the second Temple and the rise of Rabbinic Judaism.

I’m excited about these classes. I want to retell the story of Adam and Eve. Maybe my own story, too. Most of all I’m excited about considering what the next revolution might be in Judaism, imagining it, perhaps helping to build it.

 

Just a moment: Whoo, boy. We’ve crossed over and I didn’t really get it until I read this paragraph in an article titled: “Why Trump’s push for ‘gold-standard science’ has researchers alarmed.”*

Crossed over to what? An age of ideology, a time when political thought, doled out by political commissars, trumps (see what I did there?) decision making for any other reason.

This is a direct route to a Stalinesque, Mao Tse Tungesque form of governance. It is, as George Will observed in his strange opinion piece about Trump as a progressive, a form of Statism.

I admit I’m an Enlightenment, scientific method guy. But. I know that science does not occur in a political vacuum. Its funding, its direction, even its focus often has political influence. Look, for example, to the Agricultural and Mechanical universities dotted around the U.S. and delivering junk methods to farmers that kill the soil and enrich Big Ag.

Even so. I support science and the scientific endeavor to understand, to grasp the world around us as it is, not as we either imagine or wish it to be. No political commissar will know scientific facts better than scientists themselves.

I do agree with one facet of this critique of science, however. Many Americans have lost faith in science and we need, as a country, to help restore it. This is not the way.

 

 

 

” “And in a “Gold Standard Science” executive order last week, President Donald Trump outlined a new level of oversight over what counts as quality evidence and what does not, (emphasis mine) putting “a senior appointee designated by the agency head” in charge of overseeing “alleged violations.” Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said in a briefing that the goal of the executive order is to “rebuild the American people’s confidence in the national science enterprise … the status quo of our research enterprise has brought diminishing returns, wasted resources and public distrust.”” Washington Post, June 1, 2025.

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Literature, Memories, Minnesota

The Skein of our Lives

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Yule and the 2% crescent of the Yule Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Honesty. To others and self. Yule darkness. The days between the Winter Solstice and the New Year. 5th day of Hanukkah. The Maccabees. The oil in the Temple Menorah. Good workout yesterday. Chatbotgpt. Ruth and Gabe. Mark and Mary. My son and Seoah. Murdoch. Rich. Ron. Alan. Diane back home. That long dive into the deep end of my mind.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Lev

Kavannah: Love (ahavah) and Persistence

One brief shining: Reading Michael Moorcock’s The War Hound and the World’s Pain I followed von Bek through Hell, through Mittlemarch, or Middle Earth, out to the world as we know it always hunting for the cure for the world’s pain until finally at the edge of the forest near heaven he receives a clay cup that signals his oh, so ordinary enlightenment while representing the culmination of human striving.

 

I have these threads weaving through my life and my heart as we head toward the quarter century mark of the first century of the third millennium. In no particular order: kabbalah, mussar, friendships, family, writing, the nature rights legal movement, Mountains and Shadow Mountain, Wild Neighbors, reading for Herme’s Journey, exercise, cancer, back pain, books of all sorts, travel, Seed-Keepers, telling my story, Ancientrails. AI. Judaism. Paganism.

And, of course, there is the wider context for all these: Kate, politics, organizing, Christianity, paganism, alcoholism, Jungian therapy, the Wooly Mammoths, Minnesota, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Raeone and Judy, Tina, seminary, Alexandria, the Andover years, the Peaceable Kingdom, all those dogs.

There is the third place of the lev, as well. Or, perhaps better, the lev as a third place in which all these coexist, influence each other, reaching over and shaking hands, embracing. Pushing away. Denying. Erasing. Recreating. Nothing is static. All effects All. Moving not necessarily forward or backward, up or down, but in and out, releasing new energy with each penetration, impregnating the moment so something novel can grow, reach out for something else and keep the whole underway.

 

Yes. We loved each other.

Let me give you a modest example. Last night I decided to have an English muffin with peanut butter plus the last bit of the unfrozen Senate navy bean soup. As the English muffin toasted and the soup warmed in the microwave, I got out the peanut butter and thought. Hmm. Honey.

Reached into the cabinet, moved a box of sugar, and there sat a small canning jar with a handwritten label: Artemis Honey. In Kate’s beautiful cursive. She came. Standing there with the uncapping knife, honey super in hand, looking beautiful and engaged. The Andover years where we worked as one. Dogs. Vegetables. Flowers. Bees. And the chamber quartet we commissioned for our wedding. The honeymoon. Living in the move as we prepared to come to Colorado.

For a long moment I stood there. Before I reached in. Should I eat this? As if it were the last piece of her, of our life together. The honey harvest. Of course I can eat this now, a holy communion, a eucharist. Her body and mine together again if only for a moment.

I spread a bit of the wonderful thick amber colored honey over my peanut butter. And ate it.

Fourth Phase, Holidays, Literature, Politics, Shadow Mountain

Sleeping with the Enemy

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Samain and the Yule Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Elements. Au. O. He. H. C. N. Li. Nk. Atoms. Molecules. Protons. Neutrons. Quarks. Leptons. The quantum World. The Universe. Galaxies. Local clusters. The Cosmic Void. Great Sol. Nuclear fusion. Solar flares. The magnetosphere. Earth. Venus. Mars. Our planetary neighbors. The Oort Cloud. Voyageur. Space flight.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Gravity

Kavannah: GOODWILL  Ratzon  רָצוֹן  Goodwill, friendliness, agreeableness  (קַבָּלָה Kabala: Acceptance, welcome)

One brief shining: In time for the holidays my Murphy chair recliner arrived in a yellow Penske rental truck unloaded onto a rolling platform, its brown leather cushions in a large cardboard box, two young men one carrying the chair downstairs and the other the box, setup the chair with its three slots for dowels, enabling three different angles of recline, placed the cushions, maneuvered the chair underneath the violet themed Tiffany lamp and my arts and crafts lower level came one step closer to being finished.

 

On my third Gray Man book. Allowing myself a long reading vacation, not ignoring serious reads, but letting my oh what the hell preferences dominate for a bit. The Gray Man books are the most realistic I’ve read about assassins. How would I know? Well… No. I read about the author and his meticulous research and I see it reflected in his work. Court Gentry, the Gray Man, slips in and out of various countries, scenarios, always on the run, also always finding a mission of moral worth in an immoral/amoral world. If you like such writing, the Gray Man books are top of the heap. IMO.

 

We may be seeing the future this week. Too many cooks in the kitchen. Mike Johnson creates a deal to keep the government at work. First Musk, then Trump step in and say no. Result? Chaos. Or the kerfuffle between Musk and Kennedy over how to deal with weight control: drugs or lifestyle change. This is all, mind you, a full month before Cousin Donald takes the reins of what already appears to be a runaway carriage.

 

Yes. Next week’s Christmas day. The holiday has gradually receded from my notice, at least here at home. In its place Hanukkah gifts have begun to pile up on the bench around my breakfast table. This for Gabe. That for Ruth. We will celebrate with a meal and candle lighting on December 27th, the third day of Hanukkah, which starts on the date of its more consumptive cousin this year. The latest it can ever start. Lunar v linear calendars.

 

Just a moment: That trial. 51 guilty verdicts. Gisèle Pelicot’s strength and presence. She impresses the hell out of me. Collected and authentic, leaning into her power. Each image I see of her shows a person at peace with themselves. A towering accomplishment considering the patriarchal abuse she took time after time from so many.

If the patriarchy is not on your hit list, who are you, anyhow? Oh. Wait. You might have a red hat on your coat rack. A really long red tie in the closet. Be aware women of the right. You are literally sleeping with the enemy.

Colorado, Commentary on the news, Family, GeekWorld, Literature, Science, Sport

Fun with our AI future overlords

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Samain and the Yule Moon

Monday gratefuls: Google calendar. Computers. NVidia. AI. Catastrophizing. Equalizing. Leveling. Great Britain. Scotland. England. Wales. Ireland. Brittany. Galicia. The Gaeltach. The Celtic Faery Faith. Wassailing. Yule logs. Evergreen Boughs and Trees. Singing and Feasting.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Echocardiograms

Kavannah: Perseverance and Love

One Brief Shining: The bigger and harder and more important project, supporting the liberal democratic vision of Lincoln, Teddy and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which, as Heather Richardson said, means having a government big enough and strong enough to fight off not only foreign foes, but especially domestic ones: the haters, the oligarchs, religious extremists like the Christian nationalists.

Another chatbot image

Having fun with chatbot and image creation. It often doesn’t spell too well and can approach the cartoonish rather than the beautiful. Still. I can get an image I know I have the right to post and that’s original. I’ll get better with my prompts and chatbotgpt will improve over time, too. I’m also using chatbot as a resource for the work I’m doing on the Great Wheel holidays.

Working with the idea from a couple of days ago. Write Ancientrails. Eat breakfast. Write five hundred to a thousand words on the Great Wheel. Workout. I like this rhythm and it gets my candle lit. A key reinforcer.

 

Brother Mark has flown back to Bangkok, awaiting January 1 and a flight to his old stomping grounds in Hafar, Saudi Arabia. He’s also figuring out what he needs to do to retire. A task all of us have faced or will face.

I admire his ability to live what he himself calls his unconventional lifestyle. Not many have seen as much of the world as he has. Not many Americans know Saudi Arabia and its citizens as well as he does. Mark shows  what it is to be an American by traveling to spots where our kind is not common. An important role and one he does well.

 

Just a moment: My heart goes out to Colorado skier Mikaela Shiffrin. Puncture wound from the gate at the top of her run. Having had Kate with a feeding tube I know how troublesome these kind of wounds can be. Often requiring expert management. She’s a phenom not only while skiing at speed, but in her mental toughness, yet her public vulnerability, too. This last noticeable after her father’s untimely death a couple of years ago. She’ll come back and snag that 100th victory. I’ll be skiing with her when she does.

As long I’m writing about young women I admire, let me add, again, Zöe Schlanger. Her sensitivity to the Plant world, her depth of research, and her own inquisitive intellect. You go, Zöe.

 

I understand Joe. You had the power. You love your son. 45/47 will do the same for so many, too. Not sure what I’d do. An ethical/emotional vice I hope never to encounter. My take? It’s holiseason. With an emphasis on light and family and the warmth of human community. In the spirit of the season, I’ll say.

Family, Great Work, Literature, Paganism, Plants, Politics, Science

Blindness

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Samain and the Yule Moon

Sunday gratefuls: For all the ways we learn and express ourselves. The Ancient Brothers on Gardener’s 8 intelligences. My son, Seoah, and Murdoch. Coming in January. Going to Korea in May. Maybe with Ruth. Snow. Mary. Mark. My family spread along an Asian crescent from Korea to K.L. to Brisbane. Far from Rocky Mountain high.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Learning

Kavannah: Enthusiasm (Zerizut) and Joy (Simcha)

One brief shining: Lit the candle yesterday, wrote 500 words on a why/how to celebrate Yule essay, starting with my personal journey this year, intending to produce 8 essays, one for each of the Great Wheel’s holidays, using stuff I’ve written and collected over the years.

 

Spent yesterday in conversation over zoom with my son and Seoah in Songtan, Korea and Mary in Brisbane. Separate calls. Wrote to brother Mark in K.L. A bit weird. Sitting here on top of Shadow Mountain, in the Colorado Rockies, speaking directly to Korea and Australia. No latency. Clear pictures. Sound good. Pandemic tech and habits, a changed reality. Amazing to this small town Hoosier boy.

Shadow Mountain Home as imagined by chatbotgpt

Want to give a big shout out to Zöe Schlanger. An amazing intellect. Intrepid and careful reporting. The Light-Eaters. So many good quotes. Here’s an example. “I think of plants as primary and humans as secondary. Plants can do without us. We can’t do without plants.” Thank you, photosynthesis.

Reminded me of the Iroquois medicine man I’ve often talked about. He delivered a prayer for the Soil and the Rocks, the Trees and the Mountains and the Oceans, those who swim in the Water and fly in the Sky but never mentioned humans. Why? Because, he said, humans are the most fragile and vulnerable of all creation. Without all the Plants and Animals and Water and Soil, humans can’t exist.

In so many ways, so many obvious ways, we receive this message every day. Did you eat breakfast? Where did it come from? What was it? It was either a Plant or an Animal fed by a Plant. Did Night and Great Sol emerge this morning where you are? Imagine if Mother Earth decided to stop turning. How about the Water to fill up your Water bottle, the Water you used for that shower, or to wash your clothes and your dishes?

We humans consider ourselves agents nonpareil, yet we could not accomplish basic tasks without an assist from Mother Earth. Thankfully, she is on our side. Even when we are not on hers. Nor could we continue above ground and taking nourishment without her and her gifts. Why are we blind to this?

 

Just a moment: 45/47 continues to play tiddly winks with appointments to powerful positions. Now Patel, a man committed to gutting the FBI, nominated to head it. This is a revolution of the ill informed, driven by intentional ignorance and malevolence. Will the Senate do its job? Its advice and most critically consent role has never been more important.

Have any good will left over from Thanksgiving? Time to access it now.

Aging, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Health, Holidays, Judaism, Literature, Mussar

Contentment and Joy

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Monday gratefuls: Dr. Buphati. Snow. 4-5 inches. Powder. Or, as the skiers say: Pow. Vikings win. The Ancient Brothers. Walking Each Other Home. Mark in K.L. The Brickfields. The lives of all the Wild Neighbors. Everywhere. And, all the domesticated Animals. The Great Wheel. The Tarot. Kabbalah. Living in joy. Cosmic voids. Sculpture. Rodin. Brancusi.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: First substantial Snow of the season

Kavannah for election week: Contentment and Joy

One brief shining: At night I crank open the casement window over my bed, letting in the  smell of Lodgepoles and Grass as the Night Air streams over my head, when Snow begins to fall like it did last night Snowflakes come through the screen, shower me in a light experience of the weather outside, and often, like last night, make the window hard to close.

 

Without knowing. Without certainty. I claim today my joy and my contentment. I seek today those moments that delight my heart, tickle my inner child. Like my Lodgepole Companion holding the powdery Snow as an early seasonal decoration. Thinking of lights, Christmas and Diwali and Hanukah and Kwanza and Yule. Remembering sliding down the hill at the end of Monroe Street and taking my sled over the jumps we kids created. Of the farm outside of Nevis, Minnesota on a Snowy day, air-tight stove crackling with good, dense Oak logs, the cook stove boiling water for coffee. Of standing by the Shadow Mountain kitchen window with Kate by my side, watching the Snow come down. How lucky we are to live here, she would say. Yep, I would reply.

Also enough coffee in the pot this morning for a full cup. The mini-splits keeping the house warm. An early Dawn, at least according to the clock. Life, this precious and wonderful gift.

Reading, that most amazing skill. Example: The Emptiness of the Universe Gives Our Lives Meaning. I loved this short piece. The cosmologist Paul Sutter chose for his life work the study of cosmic voids. The apparently empty spots between and among galaxies, local clusters, superclusters. How innovative and creative, to study negative space. It’s as if an art historian chose to study only the negative space in sculpture, in paintings. Or a musicologist specializing in rests and stops.

I am content. I’ll have Fire in the Fireplace tonight. Toss some Pinōn on for a scent treat, thinking of the clay stoves in the corners of rooms in New Mexico. I’ll have a good book, probably An Unfinished Love Story by Doris Kearns-Goodwin recommended by Marilyn.

I’ll take in what Dr. Buphati has to say at 2:30 today and I will see it as the next steps necessary to claim the life I have yet to live. Not as the first steps toward death. Which comes anyhow.

Realized the other day that after my Bar Mitzvah, literally the day after when I had my unsettling telehealth visit with Kristie, I’ve been living with the notion of a shortened life span, an inner focus on decline. So much so that I gave up exercising. Wanted to privilege spontaneity.

My year of living Jewishly had its capstone moment and I voluntarily took the steps down into my Cloud of unknowing. And reified it. Since that day, June 12th of this year, until last week, I’ve had a focus on less than, what would soon be missing. Me. I made a pivot from a deep plunge into Judaism to a dive into the shallow end of lack. Broke my heart for a while.

Then I began to understand that the Cloud of unknowing was the true and only way to view life. Whether shorter or longer, I don’t know. As has always been the case. I came up from the mikveh a Jew. I came up from the shallow end of lack attentive again to today, to this life as I have it now. As I will until I don’t.

Herme Harari Israel