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Radical, man

November 8, 2021 Charles Leave a comment

Samain and the Holiseason Moon

Monday gratefuls: Rigel. Her head on my pillow most of the night. Kep, so happy to get up. Orion of the morning. Skeletal Aspens. Lodgepoles waiting with spring loaded Branches. For Snow. Shadow Mountain. Solid Rock beneath my house, my feet. Black Mountain. Which tucks in the Sun.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Mitzvah

Tarot: See notes from my hexagram spread next post

Holiseason. A primer. I discovered holimonth 15 years ago. That was December with its abundance of holidays. Then I extended the idea to holiseason. (discovered later that this was a word anyhow. But, hey.) Holiseason by my reckoning runs from Samain on October 31st to the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6th. [A Kate aside here. She left Sunday School for good when one of her teachers, 4th or 5th grade, kept pronouncing the holiday epi-fanny.]

Holiseason contains multiple holidays, many of the holidays of light like Divali, Christmas, Hannukah. Thanksgiving. Posada. Advent. Kwanza. Winter Solstice. Gregorian New Year. Dia de los muertos. All Saints. And, of course, Samain. It’s my favorite time of the year. Lots to celebrate.

Reflecting on my radical career. One thing in particular. A long time ago, either 1975 or 1980, I attended a conference. Liberation Theology in the Americas. There were two and I can’t recall which one I attended. Cornel West. Harvey Cox. Lettie Russel. My roommate was a priest from Guatemala. Lots of impassioned speeches. Marxist analysis. Great meal conversations. Bus tours by a Detroit Socialist party that had made some political progress.

At the time I thought the conference was important for the clergy and theologians. Only later did I realize that the most radical moment came from a member of the Iroquois Confederacy, a medicine man in a 700 year lineage of medicine men.

At the end of the conference he performed a ritual typical of the Confederacy, planting a pine tree as a sign of peace. In the original rituals tomahawks and bows and arrows and knives would have been placed into the hole, covered in soil, the tree planted on top of them.

Afterward, and this part of the story I’ve told many times, he gave a long prayer. I listened carefully. You can read it below.*

When he finished, I went up to him and asked, “I noticed you didn’t mention the two-leggeds.” Oh, he said. Yes. The people are the most fragile of all. We need all the other spiritual forces healthy if we are to survive. So we pray for them. If they are well, so are we.

That was the radical moment at this most radical of all theological gatherings. I see it now. I carried on with work for economic justice: affordable housing, supporting unions, worker owned cooperative businesses like food co-ops and grocery stores and drug stores. Restaurants. Direct financial aid to the unemployed seeking work. Until.

Kate and I attended a Physicians for Social Responsibility conference in Iowa City. On climate change. This was in the mid-1990’s. A national conference they had now well-known figures in the climate change movement presenting. Each day we would go back to our hotel and express wonder that this science was not public. And, it wasn’t then. At least not enough for anyone to notice.

No habitable planet. No need for justice. I decided then that the remainder of my political work would be on climate change. And so it was. But, I could have made the same realization back in 1975 or 1980. Had I listened to the Iroquois medicine man.

Reimagining Faith: Tree of Peace

Spring Bee Hiving Moon

The essence of the Peacemaker legend follows as told by Mohawk chief Jake Swamp at the planting of a Tree of Peace in Philadelphia in 1986. “In the beginning, when our Creator made humans, everything needed to survive was provided. Our Creator asked only one thing: Never forget to appreciate the gifts of Mother Earth. Our people were instructed how to be grateful and how to survive. But during a dark age in our history 1000 years ago, humans no longer listened to the original instructions. Our Creator became sad, because there was so much crime, dishonesty, injustice and war. So Creator sent a Peacemaker with a message to be righteous and just, and make a good future for our children seven generations to come. He called all warring people together and told them as long as there was killing there would be no peace of mind. There must be a concerted effort by humans for peace to prevail. Through logic, reasoning and spiritual means, he inspired the warriors to bury their weapons and planted atop a sacred Tree of Peace”

It is said that the Tree of Peace given by the Peacemaker symbolizes the Great Law of Peace. The symbol is a great white pine, and it is said to shelter all nations who commit themselves to Peace. Beneath the tree are buried the weapons of war of the original five nations. Above the tree is an eagle that sees far. Also, four long roots stretch out in the four sacred directions, and they are called the white roots of peace. The Peacemaker invited any man or nation desiring to commit to the Great Law of Peace to trace the roots to their source, and take refuge beneath the Tree of Peace. The Peacemaker’s teachings stressed the power of reason to assure righteousness, justice and health. Faithkeeper Oren Lyons, an Onondaga, states that the Great Law of Peace includes freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the right of women to participate in government.

The seed-idea underlying all Iroquois philosophy is that peace is the will of the Creator, and it is the ultimate spiritual goal and natural order of things. The prayer below comes from the people of the Iroquois Confederacy. The prayer is based on the tradition of interconnectedness that the Iroquois or Haudenosaunee possess. This prayer is said to be the backbone of the Iroquois culture. The prayer expresses the belief that rather than take the world for granted, it must be respected, and that we must thank all living things in order to align our minds with creation and the Creator. Usually, a faithkeeper is selected to share the prayer of thanksgiving at the opening and closing of social, government, and ceremonial events. The prayer is comprised of three levels:

Spiritual Forces on the Earth, Spiritual Forces in the Sky, Spiritual Forces beyond the Sky

The Spiritual Forces on the Earth are:
the People, our Mother Earth, the Waters, the Fish, the Grasses, the Plants,
our Sustenance, the Animals, the Trees, and the Birds.
Throughout the year we bring our minds together as one
We give thanks to one another
All year long she gives us all that we need

We give thanks to our Mother Earth
Everyday it quenches our thirst
We give thanks to the waters In winter it replenishes the lakes.
We give thanks to the waters

During the year they purify the lakes
We give thanks to the fish
When the wind turns warm a green blanket appears
We give thanks to the grasses
In early summer the flowers turn sweet
We give thanks to the medicinal plants
In early summer they help us survive
We give thanks to the food plants
In midsummer we dance for the green corn
We give thanks to our sustenance
In midsummer we dance for the red beans
We give thanks to our sustenance
During the winter their pelts warm the soul
We give thanks to the animal creatures
Since early times they have been our companions
We give thanks to the animal creatures
In early spring we are glad they reappear
We give thanks to the animal creatures
At one point in time it became a symbol of peace
We give thanks to the trees
At the end of spring the sap will flow
We give thanks to the trees
In early morning they carry messages
We give thanks to the birds
In times of danger he warns the people
We give thanks to the birds
In the summer they sing sweet songs

We give thanks to the birds Spiritual Forces in the Sky are:
the Four Winds, our Grandfather Thunder, our Elder Brother Sun, our Grandmother Moon, and the Stars
Throughout the seasons they refresh the air
We give thanks to the Four Winds
In early summer they bring the falling drops
We give thanks to our Grandfather Thunder
Every morning he brings light and warmth
We give thanks to our Elder Brother Sun
Every night she watches over the arrival of children
We give thanks to our Grandmother Moon
In the night their sparkle guides us home
We give thanks to the stars
The Highest Spiritual Forces beyond the Sky are: our Protectors, Handsome Lake, and the Creator
All the time they remind us how to live
We give thanks to our protectors
At one point in time he brought back the words of the Creator
We give thanks to Handsome Lake
Everyday we will share with one another all of these good things
We give thanks to the Creator.
– Prayer of Thanksgiving, Iroquois Confederacy

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Fourth Phase Life

October 6, 2021 Charles Leave a comment

Fall and the Moon of the Thin Veil

Wednesday gratefuls: A stained house, newly painted garage doors. Daniel. Alvin. Greg. Sandy, coming up to be with Kate’s ashes. Kate, always Kate. The Woolly retreat in November. The Mountains. The Rocks, Lodgepoles, Aspens, Creeks, and Wild Critters. Deep peace.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Roadtrip!

Tarot: Ace of Pentacles

Daniel stained my whole house in just over a day. A sweet man. The 3M window coverings reminded me of St. Paul, of the Twin Cities. Alvin, his partner yesterday, took down my blue lights. Think I’m gonna leave’m down. Lots of neighbors complaining about lights ruining the dark Sky, a true Mountain amenity. They’re not wrong. Does mean I gotta dig out the box of solar lights I ordered. I need something to identify our house at night. So easy to drive right past it.

On Monday, Coyote HVAC. Then, choosing between bids for remodeling the kitchen. Probably won’t happen until later in the year. May seem strange, my doing all these things, spending a bunch of money. Not to me. They represent another phase of grief, one in which I celebrate what Kate and I had together while creating my fourth phase life. Hence, I’m enhancing the house she found and in which we shared our last years together.

Got a note from the Assistance Fund, the one that pays down my copay for Orgovyx from $800 a month to $10. I have to reapply for coverage on December 1st. Won’t miss that deadline.

Greg Lell, owner of the painting company, came by yesterday to get his check. We got to talking. He was, he said, a dairyCatholic.* He ran the words together. His parents figured out a three to four year gap system that resulted in six siblings for him, and, crucially, a new farm hand growing into the job as one left it. Oddly, he has a distinctive Texas accent, but he grew up in Colorado. Over 15 years in Texas he began to sound like a native.

Many Woolly brothers, Tom, Mark, Paul, have decided not to attend the retreat. Excellent reasons, probably ones that apply to me, but I need to get outta here, get on the road, be somewhere else. Not new, forty years a Minnesotan, but also not Colorado.

Largest wood fired kiln in the U.S. Bresnahan in sportcoat

I will be staying in retreat lodging at St. John’s Monastery in Collegeville. I have done retreats there before and visited many times. The ceramic urn which holds Kate’s ashes came out of the Johanna Kiln, shaped by Richard Bresnahan from clay dug not far from the monastery. The firing of the Johanna Kiln is a major event as it’s a dragon kiln with several bays snaking up a hillside. When it’s firing, volunteers feed split Wood into its firebox 24 hours a day until the ceramics finish their ordeal. Maybe I’ll finally buy a teapot.

Drew the Ace of Pentacles this morning. The aces are potential, the essence of their suit. Pentacles represent mother earth, malkut, this world, this physical world. In many cases this card may signal success in business, an inheritance, making progress in a career. It also can suggest deep peace, well being in this world. Feeling calm.

As I’ve entered this new phase of grieving, a great calm has settled within me. A deep peace. I’m more in my life than regretting, mourning Kate’s death. As I said yesterday, my life with her is the foundation for this phase, what I’m calling my fourth phase. I’m modeling this fourth phase idea on the Hindu life phase of renunciation and a focus on the spiritual.

The Ace suggests I’m on the right path. Let’s call it a new ancientrail. Though the road that led here connects to it, this ancientrail has made a sharp turn toward the West, toward the setting Sun. It is the final phase of life and one I want to walk intentionally. To walk it like a Celtic Christian saint. Peregrenatio.

*Yes, I did mention the other dairyCatholic I know, Mr. Bill!

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Michaelmas

September 29, 2021 Charles Leave a comment

Fall and the Michaelmas Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Coyote HVAC. Starting next Thursday. Greg Lell, starting tomorrow on house staining. Mussar. Tarot. Kabbalah. Astrology. Elisa Robyn. Rabbi Jamie. Alan. David Jordani. Tom Crane and his colleague who recommended the mini-splits. Shirley Waste. Frozen dinners. Cool nights. Rain and snow on the way. Ruth and her first homecoming. Max. Claire and Patrick, his mom and dad. Paul and Sarah, grandpop and grandma. Kate, aunt.

Sparks of joy and awe: Writing. Michaelmas. Tom and Roxann, anniversary.

Tarot: Rebirth, #20 of the major arcana, Druid

And so this day comes round at last. Michaelmas. The feast day of the Archangel Michael, defender of heaven, God’s most fierce warrior. Tom and Roxann celebrate their wedding anniversary on this day, usually on the North Shore, sometimes with a cooked goose. Jen, mother of Ruth and Gabe, celebrates her birthday. And Rudolf Steiner thought of this day as the springtime of the soul.

I feel, different. Better. Almost like having awakened. Not woke in the social justice sense, but in the, oh this is what my soul needs to do next sense. Seems like the Tarot and my chart reading with Elisa on Monday and my own feeling that Michaelmas could be the date for a life transition have synched up, said YES.

Delacroix Eugene: St Michael Defeats the Devil

I’ve got a few things underway: house staining starting tomorrow and the mini-splits install beginning next Thursday. My Tree of Life Spread class starts on Saturday. I meet with Kristie on Friday. PSA at 1.0. Not quite low enough. Perhaps a kidney issue in the bloodwork panel. We’ll see. Started a new painting. Changed my days, I hope permanently. Looking forward to the Woolly Retreat at the end of this month.

The loft’s organization makes sense now. Not cluttered. Some more work to do. Still pruning downstairs. Wanting to get further along before snow. Not quite sure how to manage that. But, I’ll figure it out. Back at my workouts and feeling better physically.

Here’s something I got from Elisa on Monday. “I’m a reconstructionist. Just not a Jewish reconstructionist. I’m an MOT (member of the tribe) of Congregation Beth Evergreen and Jamie is my Rabbi.” “Oh,” Elisa’s face lit up in a big smile, “That’s such an Aquarian thing to do. To be in but not of something. And you may decide later that that’s over for you.” “Yes. When I met Kate, I had known for a year or more that I had to leave the ministry. It was over.”

Since September 23rd, I have drawn the Lady, #3 of the Major Arcana, three times, The Moon, #18, and, today, on Michaelmas, Rebirth, #20. In the last 8 days I’ve drawn 5 Major Arcana. The Lady and the Moon both point toward the anima and the inner world, living into the feminine creative energy, my Yin chi. The rebirth card. Well, that’s another matter and it came on Michaelmas. I consider that more than significant. It’s a clear message.

According to the Druid Craft Book, the message is: “You hear the call and awaken to the new light of day. You have entered the darkness and drunk of the cup of silence. You have chosen life and emerge reborn.”

Meaning: “The Power of the Call. You may have heard the call of the spiritual path you are seeking. Rebirth into a life that is more fully your own. You may have come to a crossroads in your life, and a decision is required that will take you in a new direction.”

Life has given me no choice. Change or retreat. Grief forces the soul to reconsider its location, its direction, its purpose. Yes, even its calling. I count my grief as having begun on September 28th, 2018, three years ago yesterday. That was the day of Kate’s bleed. The acceleration of her decline.

From that day forward my life had as its everyday anchor Kate’s medical and emotional and spiritual needs. Not that I could fulfill them all, no, but her gradual physical diminishment meant no day could pass without considering them.

I took her hand that day, September 28th, and never let go until April 12th of this year. The letting go was so painful, so shocking. Disorienting. Even disfiguring my soul. Nothing abnormal. Mourning. Then, grief and its labyrinth.

It was as Dante said.

IN the midway of this our mortal life,
I found me in a gloomy wood, astray
Gone from the path direct: and e’en to tell
It were no easy task, how savage wild
That forest, how robust and rough its growth,
Which to remember only, my dismay
Renews, in bitterness not far from death.

Those caregiving years were not hell. Kate, my love and my soulmate, was still alive; but, they did hold suffering and torture for both of us. When she took that long, last ride, I climbed the mammoth frozen body of the Devil into purgatory. I’m still there, but I can see the sky above me.

Today I identify with the curly haired boy standing at the exit of an elaborate dolmen. A priest, a Druid perhaps, sounds a trumpet of relief. The journey through the Inferno is complete. Purgatory lies almost behind.

I can feel the hesitancy in him. The darkness, the strangeness of purgatory still more familiar. The long, long path from that dark Wood more known than what lies ahead.

Symbols of eternal life, of rebirth, like the Holly and the Mistletoe and the Hare and the triskelion crowd the picture below him.

Will he step out of the door? Embrace the Hare. I know he wants to. The energy and promise, the possibility of life renewed, remade, reimagined, reconstructed only just ahead.

He feels, as I do, an expansion in my chest, a lifting of the head, eyes no longer cast down, or around in a worried scan. That feeling, that alone, can propel him out into the sun.

Let it be so. For him. And, for me.

St. Michael and the Devil, 16th century Book of Hours

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Mountain People

September 25, 2021 Charles Leave a comment

Fall and the Michaelmas Moon

Saturday gratefuls: Coyote HVAC. Bear Creek Design. Bread Lounge. Sourdough bread. Breakfast out. Golden Flame Aspens. Against the Evergreen Lodgepoles. On Black Mountain. That Deer I hit. Hope she’s doing ok. That twelve point Bull Elk and his Gals. The mysterious trail off of Brook Forest Drive. The Mountains. Shadow Mountain.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Max. A tall Sunflower in a Rocky Garden bed. A Dog in the back of an SUV ahead of me, wagging his tail.

Tarot: going to invent a Harvest Home spread. Will report.

Deviation from the norm. Got up and drove to Evergreen after feeding the Dogs. Didn’t come up to write Ancientrails which is my every morning habit. Why? Wanted to get a Pullman loaf of the Bread Lounge’s Sourdough. They sell out fast. Took my new book, Four Lost Cities. Sourdough French toast, applewood smoked bacon, black coffee. While learning about the reasons civilizations have abandoned their urban centers. Gonna be an interesting read.

I can do this because I’ve got workout mojo. 4.5 hours this week, M-F. I take the weekends off. Always enjoyed breakfast out, but Kate didn’t. At least not as much as I did. Bittersweet moment when I remembered this as I ate a piece of French toast dipped in syrup. Kate wouldn’t be back home either. How grief sneaks back into your day.

Reconsidering my estimates for the mini-split system of a/c. Talked to friend David Jordani who installed one in his second home in Evergreen. His first home is in Orono, Mn. Prices were comparable though mine was a bit less. Sticker shock is less now that time has settled on the bids.

Redo the kitchen and add a/c? Pricey, but why not? If it gets burned up, I’ll rebuild.

On the drive back from Evergreen I turned off the radio. My usual habit, but I started listening to NPR again. Realized I’d slipped into always on. Not what I want. I noticed the light, small Aspen torches lighting my drive with golden Fire. Rocky outcroppings with brave Lodgepoles clinging to their crevices. Maxwell Creek pummeling the rocks. That mystery trail that seems to disappear into a Canyon.

Back and forth. Move because it will all be too much for me? Spend money on a nicer, prettier kitchen and a/c? Hunker down in the Shadow Mountain hermitage until death do us part?

A stay here reinforcer. When I went to the Parkside Cafe in Evergreen yesterday for lunch with Alan, I got there before he did. Not unusual for Germanic me. There at an outside table were David Jordani and his son Adam. I greeted them, they invited me to sit down and chat. I did.

Alan came. David and his wife and Adam have been members of Beth Evergreen here and Beth El in St. Louis Park for quite a while. Spent a good hour batting the conversational shuttlecock.

I love this casual encounter with people I know. Stopping for ten minutes or an hour, catching up. Seeing each other. My guess is it’s my small town roots. In Alexandria if you went to get gas, buy groceries, pick up a prescription, you’d run into somebody you knew.

Not on a phone. Not on zoom. Not on purpose.

Another reinforcer. Driving up Brook Forest, then Black Mountain. Winding around the curves, watching (more carefully) for Deer, Elk, Fox. Smiling at the huge number of cars at Lower Maxwell Falls trailhead. They come up here for the same reason I live here. Upper Maxwell Falls trailhead, much closer to Shadow Mountain, was also full to overflowing. What a nice day to be out in the woods with half of a Denver neighborhood.

Somehow Kate and I became Mountain people. She died here and I belong here now. This is home, where my people are, where the Natural World is close, yet wild.

So I’ll find my yaktraks for the climb up the loft stairs. I’ll find a snowplower. Get the mini-split system and fancy up the kitchen. Write. Paint. Live until I die.

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Winter is Coming

September 22, 2021 Charles Leave a comment

Harvest Home and the Michaelmas Moon

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

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Autumnal Equinox

Tarot: Four of Bows, Wildwood

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

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

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

Our house in the early morning, light on Shadow Mountain

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

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

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

Lucas Cranach the Elder, Living in Paradise

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Tradition a longer conversation summarized

September 20, 2021 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa and the Michaelmas Moon

Tarot: Nine of Stones in the Wildwood Deck

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Same question about driving and air conditioning.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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An Ordinary Pagan

September 20, 2021 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa and the Michaelmas Moon

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

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Rain on the deck

Tarot: Nine of Stones, Wildwood Deck

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Let go (Note: correction below)

September 13, 2021 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa and the Michaelmas Moon

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:

“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.

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

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Uh-oh. Changes.

September 8, 2021 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa and the Michaelmas Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Orgovyx. Biologic Pharmacies. Money. CBE. The New Year. Rigel, sweet girl. Kep, happy boy. Dan Herman. Rich Levine. Alan Rubin. Marilyn Saltzman. Jamie Arnold. Judy Sherman. The Ancient Ones on peregrinatio. Safeway pickup. Cool breeze last night.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Dan’s honey

Tarot: Ace of Swords

Big news. $800 a month co-pay for Orgovyx. Not my first encounter with the predatory pricing of American pharma. Kate had a drug, I can’t recall the name right now, that was $500 a month. I’m applying for assistance. Yes, that’s enough, with the hit I took from going to one social security check and losing a third of my pension, to bite. In the decision making process between Orgovyx and Lupron. Lupron has a higher incidence of cardi0-vascular side effects. But, it’s only once every three months and covered by insurance.

Can’t imagine what folks do who don’t have resources at our age. And, that’s the bulk of us, I understand. What if you had to choose between rent and your cancer drug? Or, between food and your cancer drug? Self-triage.

On the other hand life is valuable. Sure. And, I want to do what I can to sustain mine. Let me see? Universal health care, anyone?

Boy, that Safeway really steps up. I put in a pick-up order for 8 am. They sent me a text at 6:00. Ready. Come whenever. I’m glad. It makes the morning simpler.

Barring more illness on Jon’s part or another wreck on Ruth and Gabe’s, we’ll finally distribute some of Kate’s ashes at Upper Maxwell Falls this Saturday. When Jon, Ruth, and Gabe can make it. Ruth told me she wanted some of my chicken pot pie so I’m making some on Friday. It’s been a while. Usually makes four to five full pie tins. Freeze well, too. I’ll give her two and keep two here. A good incentive to actually cook.

This will be the last of the family remembrances originally planned for August 18th. I’m planning a Kate offrenda for Dia de los muertos. I’ll burn a yahrzeit candle. (a twenty-four candle burned on the death date, but it seems appropriate.) Mix up the cultures a bit.

Which brings me to Yamantaka. The mandala at the MIA. Where I learned to accept death, my own. Long meditations on my corpse. Greeting the change, the transformation with excitement. Still sad. Yes. But also, what a moment!

Realizing I’ve been such a flat-earth humanist for so many years. Death=extinction. No god. Life is absurd. Don’t give me any of that metaphysical stuff. Changing.

Oddly, part of the stimulus for the change is a Korean tv show I’m watching, Hotel de Luna. It’s on Netflix. Instead of seeing a psychologist, Seoah saw a mudang, a shaman. Kate and I met him. The Korean worldview is a complicated mix of ancient folk traditions and high-tech, global capitalist culture.

Near Seoul, Kate. April, 2016 Visiting Seoah’s mudang

Hotel de Luna includes an Asian emphasis on ghosts, vengeful ghosts, shamans, an afterlife, and reincarnation. I’ve always dismissed reincarnation. Part of my existentialist, humanist, empiricist worldview. But. Kabbalah includes reincarnation. Buddy Mark Odegard once said he believes in reincarnation. The Buddhists, do, too. Hindus. None of this is evidence of more than a human desire to continue life in any way. Or, is it?

I’m beginning to open myself to the idea. What does it mean? What could it mean? I can feel the consolation it brings and consolation is pretty important. I know that right now. What about my embrace of the Great Wheel? Was I a Druid in a past life? Or, at least a believer in the auld religion?

When I mentioned how hard I find the idea of synchronicity, Jamie said, “Ah. The inner skeptic.” Yes, exactly. What if the inner skeptic needs an equal, perhaps stronger inner believer? What if I could find him again? I knew him once, right after college and on into seminary. He got a lot of learning from Christian mystics, ascetics, the Celtic Christian Church. He saw Jesus, Moses, and Abraham perched together on the sliver of a crescent moon while meditating.

I miss him. That guy that could embrace the irrational, the possibility of an Other World. And not cringe. Not shrink away. He was a bad boy of the Enlightenment. Oddly, the place I’ve retained most of him is in my Taoist thought. Wu wei? Yes. Sometimes. Follow the chi? Yes. Always. Experience the contradictions of consciousness and dreaming? Oh, yes. Follow the I-Ching? Yes.

Then there’s this Tarot. How can it be so damned meaningful, so consistently? Sure, it evokes archetypal thoughts, realizations. Yes. But, where do those archetypes come from? Is it the collective unconscious?

Changes on the horizon, I can feel them. Not there yet. The inner skeptic is still ascendant, but maybe not for long.

Ace of Swords:

“Keywords: Clarity. Clean break.” DTB

For example. I drew this card before I wrote this post. I didn’t look at its meanings until I finished. I mean… How?

The two commentaries below are from the Rider-Waite card, but the Druid Craft card I drew differs from it in a way especially important to me. This is Excalibur, lifted up by the Lady of the Lake. The intellect (the sword) rising from the unconscious.

The Dawn breaks at an inlet between the Loch and the Mountains to either side. I can see those Trees as Birch or Aspen. The Flowers look like Blue Bells. Both Minnesota and Colorado have the unaltered Natural World as substantial aspects of their identities. Birch or Aspen. The Mountains. A Lake.

This card speaks directly to my inner world. The Celts, Jung, my two favorite places on Earth. Appropriate that it should signify a break through. There are dark clouds there, too, and a Bird, maybe a Heron? The Heron is the on the card for the King of Vessels in the Wildwood Tarot.

I drew that card two nights ago. I’ve begun drawing a card at night, something to meditate on before I go to sleep.

Here’s a description: “As a bird that welcomes the dawn and often lives alone, the heron is known for its awareness and spiritual thoughts that its creator offers. This bird, defending ancient secrets, is said to stand at the gate between life and death, acting as a mediator between the Celtic’s journey of the soul to another world and reincarnation.”

Don’t understand how these things can be so closely linked, but perhaps that’s the point. I don’t need to understand, but accept.

“New ideas, new plans, intellectual ability, victory, success, mental clarity, clear thinking, breakthroughs, ability to concentrate, communication, realising the truth, vision, force, focus, intensity, stimulating people and environments, new beginnings, new projects, justice, assertiveness, authority, making the correct decision.” Tarotguide.

“As with all the aces, the Ace of Swords indicates that one is about to experience a moment of breakthrough. With its sharp blade and representing the power of the intellect, this sword has the ability to cut through deception and find truth. In layman’s terms, this card represents that moment in which one can see the world from a new point of view, as a place that is filled with nothing but new possibilities.” Labryinthos

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The Weight

August 18, 2021 Charles Leave a comment

Lughnasa and the Chesed Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Kate, always Kate. Her 77th. Sadness. Grief. Down. Plunging. Rigel, the slow to wake. Rain. Kate’s ashes. Touching them. Canning. Kate in the kitchen. Cancer. Treatment. PSA. 7.4. Life is short; death is sure.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: BJ and Mary here

Tarot: The High Priestess, #2 of the major arcana

Feeling the weight. Yesterday. Today. A sinking in, slowly, a light burden tied around my feet. Watching joy and peacefulness go by. The surface getting fainter. Can’t say I’m surprised.

Wish it would have waited a day or two. The folks coming today. Kate’s ashes. Her birthday. Being a host not my thing. At all.

Even my fingers seem slow. Not as nimble on the keys. An opaqueness behind my eyes.

Talked with Diane yesterday. A good talk, mostly about cancer, but still good.

Afterward I loaded almost all the remainder of Kate’s personal belongings in the Rav4, ready to donate to the resale shop in Bailey. Two and a half cases of nutrient liquid and adult diapers for Mt. Evans Hospice. Felt weak. I mean, geez.

Waited on a call from Urology Associates. Got it. Rocky Mountain Cancer Care will do my pet scan. If my health plan approves it. They often drag their feet, the nurse from Urology Associates said of my insurance carrier. This may have been the stimulus for feeling the burden.

It took me back to the bad old days before my radiation therapy and just after the recurrence, the first one. When I found out on the day of the test that a pet scan would not be covered. I felt abandoned and devastated. Then.

Now. The specter of an insurance company closing its fist around my life. About all the various incidents with insurance around Kate. Around the imaging studies. The constant trips, waiting rooms. Diagnosis. Prognosis. Each time a little worse, not better.

Feeling it all. In my chest, my face. My vision. A lassitude creeping over my muscles. An inertia in my bones. Not wanting to move. Take action. Be present.

Grief. Sadness. The profound exhaustion and stress. Kate’s long illness. Today. All present. Visiting me at the same time.

Won’t last. Will pass. Equanimity shattered for the moment.

My practice.

Name the moment: Kate’s birthday. Cancer matters swirling. People coming. A celebration of Kate’s life.

Name the feelings: Loneliness. Sadness. Exhaustion. Inertia. Grief. Resignation.

Choose: Yes, I’ll let these come. They all feel appropriate, timely. Necessary.

An instant feeling of relief when I chose. No longer pushing them away, trying to rationalize, or deny. Yes. These are my feelings. And, I am not my feelings.

The Jewish idea of the lev: the heart/mind. Which suggests to me, again, that the heart and mind are one, yet severable in a moment. The heart affects the mind and the mind affects the heart, they work in synchrony. Except when they don’t.

Right now my lev is one. Wracked and wrecked. OK with it. Need help today. Especially. A tough one. Yes, there it is. I need help. Today.

The High Priestess: “Entering the stillness. The High Priestess seems to bar our way forward-don’t be in a rush to move onwards…true passivity is strong and fertile…Open to the stillness and the depth within you to gain strength and wisdom.” Druid Craft Tarot Deck

Over the last week plus I’ve drawn the High Priestess card three time and the Queen of Swords twice. My anima. Gaining ground, becoming stronger. Taking me down and encouraging me to stay strong, to act when the time is right. Wu wei. The Te, the integrity, of the Tao, the way. Strength for me right now, the path, involves surrender, slowing, resting in my inner sanctuary.

She who is me. And the feminine side of my intellect. Together. Nourishing each other. Counseling my animus to be still. To wait. To feel. To ask. Yes.