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Let go (Note: correction below)

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Lughnasa and the Michaelmas Moon

picture by Mary

Monday gratefuls: Tara. The Ancient Ones, holding space for my eventful life. Peregrenatio. Rigel, lying down with me last night. A long night asleep. Orgovyx. Exhaustion. Hot flashes. Cousin Riley, his wife. Diane and Mary in Indiana. Bailey Patchworkers. Kitchen remodelers. House stainer. Jon, Ruth, and Gabe.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Death

Tarot: Death, #13 of the Major Arcana

 

So many help me. Jon, Ruth, Gabe came up Saturday. We had chicken pot pie and I sent them home with two. They also went to Upper Maxwell Falls to scatter some more of Kate’s ashes. I didn’t feel quite up to going and I wondered if it might be better anyhow. Allow them their own time, their own way of saying goodbye.

And, it was so. Here are Gabes’s (correction) words about it:

Gabe

“Grandma’s metaphorical ashes. The ashes that stuck to the bottom were the parts of grandma that will stay with us forever. The cloudy ashes that eventually dispersed to go to the Atlantic Ocean were the parts of grandma that were temporary and that we don’t need to remember like pain and suffering. And, the glass was the vessel like our bodies, useful but not permanent.”

Leaving for Durango, Bill not pictured. Tom, Paul, me, Mario

The next morning I take a walk with my Ancient friends: Paul, Mario, Bill, and Tom. We spoke to each other in our minds, through the spirit air waves as Mario suggested. We gathered afterward. They’ve allowed me a lot of time to process my ongoing, eventful life. And, I love them for it.

Afterward I went over to an organic breakfast spot, Taspen’s. Been here almost seven years and it was the first time. Meeting Tara, my friend from CBE.

Marilyn, Tara, the Burning Bush

We talked. Tara is a great listener and an empath. When I told her I felt I’d expressed self pity when Jon and the grandkids left on Saturday, she said it sounded like love. Ruth had said, See you, grandpop. And, I said, my voice catching, I hope so. Sounded needy and self-pitying to me at the time.

After talking with Tara, I thought. No. I was vulnerable, sadly hopeful. And I don’t experience vulnerability with them too often. Maybe that’s changing now.

Today I’m going to the meeting of the Bailey Patchworkers. Kate’s stash and other sewing accessories will be given away to her friends there. I asked for a couple of minutes to speak. I’ll tell them that Kate loved them. That they gave her friendship and motivation for sewing. And, right after we got here. She went faithfully as long as she could.

They were a very different crowd from her ordinary social circles. She spoke her political truth often, to folks who didn’t agree. As Lauri, her engineer friend said, “I should have disliked her, but I adored her.” That was Kate.

These are those who helped me just in the last three days. A lucky guy, I am. And, of course, Rigel and Kepler.

 

Tarot: Death, # 13 in the Major Arcana

I’ve been drawing cards in what some call a daily oracle. Pick out one card, see how it speaks to the day. Oracle is a poor choice of words in that it has a predictive connotation. I don’t find the tarot useful as prophecy. I’ve found it astonishingly useful as a mirror to my inner world. It shows me things I ignore, or overlook, or diminish, or things I didn’t know were there.

Let’s see. I’d call it, I guess, The Daily Mirror. Ha.

Anyhow my point here is that I’m doing my own thing with these daily cards and I’m not only reading the day, but the trends. I’ve had so many cards that spoke to my anima. I’ve remarked on this before. I’ve also had cards like the Hanged Man that speak to a transformation in values, in beliefs, in life way.

The Death card is the apotheosis of that trend. Yes, indeed, it refers to death. But, to death as transition, as transformation, as a severance with the ways of the past (including life, eventually. for Kate, already), an entry way to the new. If you recall the High Priestess from yesterday, she blocked the way on the path. She encouraged waiting, going down into the depths. I’d call it wu wei.

The death card opens the way, suggests I embrace the changes that the anima cards have hinted at, the inner knowledge that the High Priestess wanted me to attain before going on. It also suggests letting go.

Let go, Charlie, of the flat-earth humanism of your post-ministry years. Let go, Charlie, of the old life you had with Kate. (note: this does not mean an end to grief or a diminished view of life with her.). Open yourself to the tarot, to astrology, to kabbalah, to the other world. Open yourself again to the creative life of writing and painting. Live into it. Live with it. Live. Let go of the caregiver, let go of the inner skeptic, the inner editor, the inner cynic. Embrace the mystical, the soulful, the beautiful. Let go.

Die to the old ways and be born again into a fourth phase of life. One focused on creativity and the other world. Let go.

 

 

“Meaning: Initiation and transformation.  The core structure of initiation involves an experience of death followed by an experience of rebirth…We often have to die to our old ways of thinking, feeling, or behaving before we can open to our new life.” DTB

* “After a period of pause and reflection with the Hanged Man, the Death card symbolises the end of a major phase or aspect of your life that you realise is no longer serving you, opening up the possibility of something far more valuable and essential. You must close one door to open another. You need to put the past behind you and part ways, ready to embrace new opportunities and possibilities. It may be difficult to let go of the past, but you will soon see its importance and the promise of renewal and transformation.

Similarly, Death shows a time of significant transformation, change and transition. You need to transform yourself and clear away the old to bring in the new. Any change should be welcomed as a positive, cleansing, transformational force in your life. The death and clearing away of limiting factors can open the door to a broader, more satisfying experience of life.” biddy tarot

 

Aging, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Kabbalah, Literature, Myth and Story, Shadow Mountain, Tarot, Writing

Tireder

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Lughnasa and the Michaelmas Moon

Friday gratefuls: Orgovyx. Biologic Pharmacy. The Roger. Phonak. Cheaters. All the little accessories that make aging so much fun. Pulmonologist, too, of course. And, Kate. Always. Jon and the kids. Coming tomorrow. Chicken pot pies. Fatigue. Cool nights in spite of warmer days.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Kabbalah and the Gates of Light, by Mark Horn

Tarot: King of cups

What a difference. Yesterday Biologic Pharmacy called and said they were shipping my first prescription of Orgovyx for which I have to pay. Co-pay, $10. Boy, that assistance fund really whacked away at that $800 number.

I am, of course, happy. But. My friend Judy says big pharma wants to cover all of our co-pays for these expensive drugs. Why? So they can charge medicare or insurance companies a higher price without resistance from patients. Don’t know, but seems possible.

When I get into any thought process about medical costs, insurance companies, and medical professionals including hospitals, my brain goes hunting for Ariadne’s thread. So far I’ve not found it. Getting back out from the maze of deals and restrictions and downright cruelty has so far eluded me.

In my second week plus of Orgovyx. It’s kicking my butt right now. The hot flashes have become more frequent, though not too bad. At least not yet. Cheer up, eh? Fatigue, however, has literally laid me low. Backed out of MVP last night after resting most of yesterday. Shortness of breath and no stamina.

This may sound like complaining, but it’s not. I’m grateful for the opportunity to use Orgovyx since it has fewer cardio-vascular risks, lowers testosterone to castration levels in the first month, and has become affordable. We’ll know more at the end of the month after blood work. It can create anemia and I’m wondering about that as an explainer for the fatigue.

Gotta say this was all simpler when I got cured after my prostate removal. Wish it had been true. The journey. My life’s ancientrail from birth to transformation, reincarnation, mortality.

So much happening in the world. That damned Texas abortion law. The possible cessation of the Gulf Stream. Hurricane Ida’s aftermath. Trying to get people to avoid death with an easy vaccine. These painful divisions in our body politic. Trouble passing voting rights legislation. Voting rights! Rights. Trouble getting the second large infrastructure bill through the Senate.

Where to put any inflection, any thumb on the scale I can manage? Seems difficult right now. And, I feel sad. Work other than staying alive feels so hard right now.

Although. I keep drawing Tarot cards that push me toward creative work, art. To get back to it. Example: King of Cups. Three of Stones, Wildwood Deck. Bear, the Animal Oracle deck.

King of cups: Druid deck

A well fed, calm man, a Celtic king, looks out over the ocean, possibly the Irish Sea or the North Sea. His feet, planted on bedrock, show some eagerness to get moving. The bard’s harp behind him speaks to his creativity, his status as king to Fire, a creative element, and the Irish Wolfhound behind him to his character as a compassionate, loving king who will nonetheless protect his subjects. Dawn has begun to rise over the forest behind him and a salmon, the salmon of knowledge, I imagine, jumps in the sea to his left. The small crab at his foot connects him both to the unconscious and to the Zodiac sign of the crab.

The king of cups represents a well-balanced man with his emotions and intellect working together. A great resource for the creative life. Cups as a suit focuses on the emotions so this card is the animus figure, the male energy associated with emotions.

Three of Stones: Wildwood Deck

A Green woman leans against three large standing stones, two pillars and a cap stone. Her hands rest on an Auroch, her right, and an ancient Horse, the Przewalski, her left. Her body has become rooted to the Earth, Wood and Stone and human flesh embrace each other.

The Holy wells of inspiration, of creativity are ancient and eternal like the three standing stones. They are vital and nourishing, like the Green woman and her rootedness. They feed to and from the animal energies of the Horse and the Great Auroch.

This card speaks to my anima, as have several I’ve drawn over the last week.

The Bear: Animal Oracle

Again, a focus on creativity. The Bear suggests a time to relax, to let inspiration and the muse rise to the surface on their own. He’s the monarch of the animals, no need to hurry, to rush around hunting for sustenance. Take a nap.

I’m going with the Bear for right now, going to ease back into writing Jennie’s Dead. But, I am headed there.

 

 

 

 

 

Hebrew, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Writing

Ah

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Language. Language about language. Language about languages. Language about the mind, created in the mind. The mind talking to itself, using symbols and signs. Which it has to interpret, even the ones it uses to talk to itself. A Mobius strip of neurons and synapses.

Data. Outside data. Collected. Fingers. Nose. Ears. Eyes. Tongue. Which the mind interprets. Builds. Say, a Tree. A lover. An Ocean. That pickup truck. A Dog. Stars.

Words not created in this mind. What are (a more loaded verb here than often understood) they? Where are they? In my mind where I’ve put the pieces together or out there, somewhere? What do they mean, those words? What did the one who wrote them mean them to mean? How can I know?

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. LW. Does this seal our lips forever?

Or, I think of David Hume, that Scottish curmudgeon, kicking a cabinet and saying, “I refute it thus.” Speaking of Lord Berkley. “To be is to be perceived.” The stubborn persistence of things. That stubborn consensus we seem to share. Yes, the tree is there. Where? Right over there.

I believe I prefer William James, “Consciousness is a blooming, buzzing confusion.” We put down this yod, that hey. A vav. One more hey. And we agree, sort of, about what they denote. Or, we don’t.

Look at the evidence. Fake news. It’s all in your mind.

No, no. It’s really there.

Oh, really? How do you know?

I see it. I can touch it. I can smell it.

Ah.

 

Family, Health, Literature, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Writing

The Other World. My True Home.

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Imbolc and the waning Megillah Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Easy Entrees. Kate on the vaccine hunt. Vaccines. Covid. Diane. Mary. Mark. Changing Kate’s bandage. Psalms. Poetry. Writing. Leaning into Kate’s changes. The Sun. The Blue. Black Mountain. Shadow Mountain. The road. The Creeks.

Sparks of Joy: Kep eager to eat. Rigel throwing herself on the bed, back next to mine. Vaccines and the vaccinated.

 

Forgot this. So back at it today, Wednesday. Gratefuls and joys will stand.

Kate had a better day yesterday.

I told her I don’t know what to say when folks ask me how she’s doing. “She’s holding her own,” she replied. There you have it. True.

We spent a long time talking about death. It’s our turn, soon enough. What do we want? How will we live if the other dies first? What do we need in that case? We’re not finished with the conversation. Perhaps we never will be.

Next to me right now I have a stack of books. No surprise. On the bottom of the stack is my yellow Westminster commentary on the Psalms. A gift from Bethlehem-Stewart Presbyterian church where I interned for a year. Above it is Emerson’s Etudes by Cavill. Above Cavill is the Murmuring Deep by Avivah Zornberg, a brilliant Jewish commentator on the Torah. Above that, the Tanakh. On the Tanakh, the Viking Spirit, a new book on Norse Mythology, and a very good one.

I mention them to illustrate what keeps pulling me back in, what is never far from my consciousness. The Other World. That place where the human mind goes when it tires, grieves, no longer knows any answers. Or, when it feels buoyant and joyful. A place that can seem hidden and faraway. At other times so close.

Next to these books are two small collections I purchased recently. Both of JRR Tolkien’s work. One is familiar: The Hobbit. The Fellowship of the Ring. The Two Towers. The Return of the King. The other less so: The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, Farmer Giles of Ham, Smith of Wooton Manor, and Roverandom.

See what I mean? My heart swings toward the fantastic, the religious, stories of the sacred, of gods and men and women and boys and kings and faeries. Where I live when not doing other things like cooking and taking the trash out.

Guess I’m not gonna get on with adulthood. Too late. Somehow though. I’m glad.

These places are not escape for me. That Other World gives us all, has given me, so much. What justice is and why it’s important. What love and loyalty and duty are and why they matter. What adventure and risk and danger offer. How humans transform into creatures and creatures into angels.

They even explain 45 and all his bullshit. Why he’s so unimportant, yet so damned troublesome. Think Sauron. The one ring. There will always be a Bilbo and a Gandalf, a Frodo and a Samson. A Joshua and Jesus. A Thor and an Odin. So much more than the darkness that always threatens to engulf us.

In my own way I write about and inhabit that Other World as much as possible. Not because of its metaphysics, not because of its promise about what we cannot see. No, not that. But because of its impact on the heart, my heart and yours.

Judaism, Poetry, Torah, Writing

Psalm for a Wednesday

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Imbolc and the Megillah Moon

Friday gratefuls: No lupron. Good PSA’s. Dog warmth, cold night. Kate and her sisters. Pickup at Safeway. Bright Snow. Lodgepoles. Black Mountain. Bunch Grass. Wild Rugosa. Mushrooms. Friends, old and new. Covid. Purim today.

Sparks of Joy: Vaccines. Purim shpiels. Dr. Thompson.

 

 

The Days Are Gods.

(attr. Ralph Waldo Emerson)

 

A Psalm for Mittwoch

 

Woden. Odin. Ooinn, Master of Ecstasy. How do you fill our mittwoch?

Ecstasy. Fill our poetry with heat, intensify our lives.

Days swelling with your power. Ours, too. Our days. Oh. Ooinn.

Never quit us. Never again hang from the great tree, never again die for knowing.

Ecstasy. Learning flames within our hearts in your honor.

Shaman, seer. Poet, warrior. See with the empty socket. Let me.

Dance with Mimir who slaked your thirst. And took your eye.

And water the great tree Yggdrasil with your blood

You, Odin. One-eye. Trickster. Seeker of knowledge. On this, your day, we let you in to quicken our lives.

 

yggdrasil

 

This was gonna be my megillah post, but I’m going to have to do that tomorrow. I needed the time this morning for my assignment for Psalm’s class. We had to write a psalm for a day of the week.

Makes me want to go through all the days, seek out their divine names and powers, honor them as they seep into us, over and over and over again. Not sure I will, but the idea’s there.

 

 

Art and Culture, Cinema and Television, Literature, Media, Myth and Story, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Travel, US History, Writing

Acts of Creation

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Imbolc and the crescent Wolf Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Beau Jo’s pizza. Easy Entree’s Chicago beef sandwiches. Keepin’ me sane. Kate. Somewhat better days. Trying new things with her nourishment. That crescent Moon. Sleeping through the night. Invisible City, a short Netflix series featuring Brazilian folklore. Latin American magical realism. 100 Years of Solitude. Marquez.

Folklore. Legend. Fairy tales. Mythology. Religion. Art. These are some of my favorite things.

Just finished the short series, Invisible City, on Netflix. It features Brazilian folktale creatures like the Saci, the Cuca, the Cucupira, the pink River Dolphin. Green Frontier, a Colombian series from 2017, focuses on the Amazonian forest and the supernatural.

Netflix and to a lesser extent, Amazon Prime and HBO Max, keep offering films and television series from all over the world. I love this, especially the original programming on Netflix produced by local creatives in their own language and in their own thought worlds. The supernatural dramas draw me in though they vary a great deal in quality.

I also love dramas and mysteries that show life in different places. Gomorrah, organized crime in Naples. The Alienist, turn of the century (19th to 20th) New York, Monarca, contemporary Mexico City, Wild District, contemporary life in Bogota and the lives of guerillas. Many others.

Since I can’t get out, get around, these days, travel comes to me. The anthropologist in me loves the folktales, the cultures, the different mores. And the ticket price is far lower.

Reading lately. Finished a few chess related novels after watching the amazing Queen’s Gambit on Netflix. Finishing Theodora Gossa’s European Travels for Monstrous Women and will pick up Kim Stanley Robinson’s, the Ministry of the Future next. Science fiction and fantasy also live in the fairy tale, folktale, legendary realm.

Writing. Jennie’s Dead. Ancientrails. Writing a Psalm for the Rabbi Jamie class. Not as much as I’d like, more than I’ve been doing. Just bought some Brazilian folklore books. Might be good basis for a new novel.

I have another novel idea I’ve been kicking around for years, one that would examine white supremacy, maybe militias. This one emerges not from the favorite things I mentioned above, but from my growing up years in Indiana. Like my buddy Mark Odegard this work sustains me, even though it may never see the light of day.

My birthday’s coming up and I’m playing with the idea of a podcast or a Patreon website on which I would read my own novels, figure out some sort of subscription service. Not a new idea, novels were sometimes published in newspapers, magazines, in serial fashion. Combine my speaking voice with my creative voice. The birthday part of this is buying items for a podcasting studio.

Friend Alan Rubin has a lot of experience in audio recording and has created a studio for himself to do voice overs and commercials. He’s advised me. I’ve watched Youtube videos and just bought Audio for Authors, a book about this sort of project.

So, yes, the creative me stays alive, is never far from my consciousness.

The only rule is to work. From a list of rules by John Cage. That’s the trick. Persistence.

Beyond the Boundaries, Commentary on Religion, Great Wheel, Holidays, Myth and Story, Our Land and Home, Poetry, Shadow Mountain, Writing

Imbolc 2021

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Imbolc and the Wolf Moon

Monday gratefuls: Easy Entrees bacon wrapped pork tenderloins. Green Beans. Kate’s no nausea days. House cleaning today. LLBean and my new shearling hurricane shirt. The Ancient Ones tell stories around the council fire. Tom’s story. 45 gone. 46 doing stuff I like. Feel better. Imbolc.

The Ewes, the pregnant Ewes. Milk for their Lambs. Means Milk for all. For Cheese. For children. Imbolc. In the belly. In Ireland this is and was the birthing time for Sheep. The Lambs came; the Ewes freshened; the family fed on food not stored over the long fallow time.

It was clear the promise of the day after the Winter Solstice was not false. There would be another spring, another freshening of the earth. All would be well, all manner of things would be well.

What a precious and delightful time. Lambs gamboling. Suckling. Milk squirted directly into children’s mouths. All delighted by the miracle of birth and renewal.

Hard to put ourselves in the place of people who subsisted on stored Grains, Vegetables, smoked Meats over the long fallow time begun on Samain, Summer’s End, and lasting until today.

Brigid, the Triple Goddess. Her day. This from a wikipedia article:

She is the goddess of all things perceived to be of relatively high dimensions such as high-rising flames, highlands, hill-forts and upland areas; and of activities and states conceived as psychologically lofty and elevated, such as wisdom, excellence, perfection, high intelligence, poetic eloquence, craftsmanship (especially blacksmithing), healing ability, druidic knowledge and skill in warfare.

Poetry, the smithy, and the hearth were her domains, thus the Triple Goddess. The often week long festivals the Celts celebrated on their four cross quarter days: Imbolc, Beltane (May 1), Lughnasa (August 1), and Samain (October 31st) gave villagers a break from their subsistence lives. A chance to play, to sing, dance, trade, honor their gods and goddesses.

Imbolc was also a time for discerning weather, peeking into the immediate future. Hoping for Spring, but knowing it could still be distant. It was this tradition that has translated in the U.S. into Groundhog Day. Here’s a Scottish proverb that suggests the link. Bride is Brigit.

Imbolc is a good day to consider those freshened thoughts and projects you have. What came up for you during the dark, fecund days of Winter? Are there dreams or hopes or works you imagined then that need a push right now? You can ask Brigit for help. It’s her big day and she’s listening.

If you have an artesian well nearby or know of one, you could also follow the ancient Celtic practice of dressing the wells. On these holidays the Irish, the Welsh, The Scots, the Cornish, the Manx, and Bretons would, in ancient times, take flowers to the well, make corn dollies representing Brigit and leave them there, tie rags with wishes and prayers to shrubs and trees nearby.

These Holy Wells are pathways to the Otherworld, the world of Faery, and a place where the Holy Ones pay attention to the needs of the common person.

Brigit, the Triple Goddess, is a Fire Goddess, and at Kincaid in Ireland a double monastery, men and women, kept her eternal flame alive throughout the year. Might be a good day to have a Fire in the Fireplace, her hearth, and consider the creativity her Holy spirit represents.

Welcome all to the blessed season of Imbolc. May your projects blaze up and warm you and yours.

Commentary on the news, Coronavirus, Family, Feelings, Friends, Health, Holidays, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, US History, Writing

Electoral College. Today, and Today only. Yes.

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Samain and the 2021 Moon (yes, this moon will be full on December 30th and still big on the 31st. It will light our way out of this god forsaken chunk of chronology.)

Monday gratefuls: Cribbage. Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective. Snow on the ground. Blue Sky overhead. Hanukkah with the grandkids on Wednesday over zoom. Rigel’s visit today to the docs who cured her endocarditis. 37 days. When will he ever leave? The electoral college votes today. The Supreme Court ruled against the Texas lawsuit. Pushing us toward a new gratitude for our system. And, how it needs to change. BLM. Yes. Police radical reform. Yes. A broken medical system reform. Yes. Inclusion of all Americans. Yes. Better education and financial support for working class folks. Yes. Vaccines. That light at the end of the tunnel. Faint, but growing brighter.

 

Sometimes I wish I was more poetic. Less choppy, more graceful in my prose. More metaphorical. More allusive. But. I’m not. I’m a meat and potatoes writer. You can see all the ingredients. Shorter sentences. Phrases. Using those ands, buts, and ors as headers. It’s not so much choice as it is feel. The way things come out, especially when I write Ancientrails. My way. Not a High way. A side road. Might be scenic, though.

Next March Ancientrails will begin its sixteenth year. The longest project I’ve ever engaged. And, I still don’t know it’s purpose. A sort of heads up to my friends and family about life. Sure. It replaced years of handwritten journals. Probably those were more revealing about certain matters, less about others. Ancientrails has turned into a running commentary on my life, Kate’s, dogs, kids, grandkids. Politics. Religion. Art sometimes. If you’re a reader, thanks for following this inner dialogue.

Another staycation starting this week. No exercise. Learning new games we’ve purchased. Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective. Seven Wonders Duel. Twilight Struggle. Doing this and that around the house. Maybe some painting and writing. I’m trying to resolve a persistent inner conflict between caregiving and creative work.

Why is this so hard? Something about my schedule. About when I exercise. Cook. Eat. Nap. Watch TV. I could do things in a different way, but I don’t.

Yes. Even as I write this and read back over it, I can see the dark angel of doubt, of melancholy hovering over it all. Not a place I wanna be. But. Here I am. Again.

My hope. Some downtime will help a new way of organizing my time emerge. Or, an inner assent to this is the way things are now. That my creative work also involves shopping, cooking, caring. Could be. Navel gazing. Yeah.

Let’s hear it for the finality of the electoral college voting today. I don’t like the electoral college for reasons you already know, but I’m happy about its finish line role right now. Start renting the U-Hauls, Don, you’re moving house soon.

How will we move forward? The important question now. In choppy, contentious ways, I imagine. But without the fact confounder. Without the ethical midget. Without the orange hair and funny skin. Without the Dunning-Kruger mind at the helm. Without his cronies. Without his kids. Without him.

We could sink, relieved, into a blinkered return to “normal.” We must not. For, if the Donald has done nothing else, he has made us turn huge spotlights on the cracks in our nation. The Grand Canyons of racial oppression, violent policing, fenced medical care, and a chaotic foreign policy. We see them now. All of us. Time for radical change. Let’s get it going.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Health, Humanities, Minnesota, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Science, Torah, Writing

Unanswerable Questions.

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Fall and the RBG Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Orion, clear and distinct, like Descartes wanted his ideas. The night sky, visible again! Meatloaf from Easy Entrees. Learning to sleep all night on my side. The lens in my left eye. Kate, waiting for relief. Ruth will watch Kiss the Ground. Groveland wanting to hear me again after all these years. It’s Beyond Me.

Three days post-op now. Biggest surprise so far was Orion, there. No longer several bursting flares, but his own, distinct self. Rigel there, too, his left foot, bright and clear. Ah. It’s good to see an old friend looking well.

I no longer need glasses for television. But, I did order three pair of 2.5 cheaters off Amazon. I can still read now with my right eye, but that goes away on the 8th of October. With the artificial lens I can’t focus anymore.

This surgery is such a good metaphor I wonder why it’s not deployed more often. Our vision gradually becomes clouded, the world becomes less and less easy to see. What do we need to remove our political cataracts and gain a humane vision? Those cataracts that have developed over years of lesser evils and disappointing politicians. Do we all come with the cataracts of racism and classism or do we develop them over time? Who will be our surgeons?

Shifting. It’s Beyond Me. I’ve had fun gathering answers to Groveland UU’s question: What are the origins of religious beliefs?

Finding an anthropologist, Harvey Whitehouse, has worked on the subject pleased me. He’s a cognitive anthropologist, a specialty that had little footing when I studied anthropology back in the late 1960’s. They study the way our mind shapes our understanding, rather than the understandings themselves. Whitehouse’s work is bloodless, but it has high points.

This presentation has to be a discussion. It asks an unanswerable question, my favorite kind. Each of us has an intuition about the answer. It will be interesting to learn what others have concluded. I have several notions to throw into the pot, but the answer is lost in the long ago, far away.

Doing presentations is a delight. I get to do research. I get to think about a topic. My ideas and conclusions get an airing. Feedback comes. On occasion cash, too.

It’s also unsettling. The research has to stop. The thinking must end. No matter how tentative, the ideas must be articulated. Exposed. Naked. And, in person.

My work doesn’t include the realm of the certain. I cannot say what the origin of religion is. No one can. Then I here Wittgenstein, of that about which we cannot speak, we must be silent. I only speak about such matters. A challenge, for sure.

So right now I’m anxious, teeth a bit clenched. Zoom adds another layer of uncertainty. Also a layer of experiment, of trying something new.