Category Archives: Memories

Anoka County, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Garden, Great Wheel, Holidays, Judaism, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Myth and Story, Our Land and Home, permaculture, Plants, Shadow Mountain, Tarot, Weather +Climate

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.

Commentary on Religion, Fourth Phase, Garden, Great Wheel, Holidays, Kabbalah, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Tarot, Torah, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

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!

Bees, Commentary on Religion, Dogs, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Great Wheel, Holidays, Kabbalah, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Myth and Story, Plants, Shadow Mountain, Tarot

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.

Aging, Astrology, Beyond the Boundaries, Commentary on Religion, Cooking, Dogs, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Great Wheel, Health, Kabbalah, Memories, Mountains, Myth and Story, Our Land and Home, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Tarot, Translating Metamorphoses, Woolly Mammoths, Writing

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

Colorado, Commentary on Religion, Dogs, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Judaism, Kabbalah, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Tarot

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

Family, Friends, Health, Kabbalah, Memories, Shadow Mountain, Tarot, Third Phase

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.

Anoka County, Asia, Bees, Dogs, Family, Garden, Great Wheel, Memories, Minnesota, Myth and Story, Our Land and Home, Plants, Tarot, Third Phase

Movement

July 20, 2021 Charles Leave a comment

Summer and the Lughnasa Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Tony’s Market, always a treat. The receptionist at Hearing Aid Associates who fixed my hearing aid. A walk around my neighborhood. Kate, always Kate. Tom, coming for a visit. The Post Office. Mail. Money. Sarah and her organizing for the 18th. Rigel. Her funny character. Cool mornings.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Tony’s.

Tarot card drawn: Seven of Pentacles

I’ve been intending to get out and hike more. Decided to try a walk around the neighborhood. Could have done this a long time ago, but hadn’t. Nice homes. Meadows with white, yellow, and blue Wildflowers. Green thanks to the Rain. The route goes up and down with good variety, past my neighbors’ properties. Some with Horses. Most with Dogs. Views of Black Mountain. By the time I got back I was worn out and my leg, the p.t. focused right upper leg had begun to complain. That’s ok. Cardio.

Hearing aid stopped working a couple of days ago. Nothing. Happened once before. Tried to clean it, but my tools were inadequate. Over to Hearing Aid Associates. “We have a little vacuum tool. That’s how we clean them. Try it out.” Ah. Words came into focus.

Thought about aging. Lenses in my eyes to replace my cataracts. A hole through my iris to drain fluid creating pressures. Glaucoma. An aid to my hearing. That five-year old titanium knee on the left side. The repaired Achilles tendon on the right. A missing prostate. This old car’s been in the shop many times, but keeps on running. May it last for a while longer.

Mailed out money to Sarah for the Beatle’s cover band tickets. Red Rock. Kate’s family celebration. Checks to Diane, my cousin, to send on to Mark. Checks I mailed to him in Saudi Arabia last December. Got them back last week with a note in Arabic from the Saudi Postal Service. Maybe it said, Return to Sender? Also $9 to Ramsey County Marriage Records to get a certified copy of Kate and mine’s marriage license. Need it for Social Security. Can’t get spousal benefits unless you’re the spouse. And, yes, I have a copy. I know I do. But where?

An errandy day.

Pine pollen still driving me nuts. Sneezing, dripping, clogging. Ick. A gift from my father I forgot to mention last Sunday morning.

Red snapper, salad, and sourdough bread for dinner. Or, lunch. Depending on.

Seven of Pentacles. As you can see, a gardener. Leaning on a stave as I leaned on a hoe or rake many times in Andover. I felt an affinity for this guy. He’s admiring, with some fatigue, the results of his work. A healthy vine, heavy with Pentacular fruit. He’s harvested one as a reward to himself, but knows that the better wisdom right now is to let the bush or vine grow.

Each minor arcana suit: pentacles, swords, wands, and cups has an association with one of the four elements. Wands Fire. Swords Air. Cups Water. Pentacles Earth.

This particular card sends a slight tingle up and down my arm. One of my avatars, horticulturist Charlie. An avatar I love, with whom I spent a lot of time, and an avatar who shared with Kate the wonder of Plants and Bees. To see a horticulturist, leaning on what could be, probably is, a gardening tool, admiring the plant. I know that guy!

Gardening, like marriage, only flourishes with cooperative relationships. The plants, like spouses, need tending, nurturing. With thoughtful, regular care amazing things become possible. It allows for the wonderful moment depicted in this card where the work has gone well and the Plant flourishes. The relationship between Plant and gardener has succeeded. Will succeed. That’s the message of the six pentacles remaining on the vine. Further growth will come. A bigger harvest.

Guess I’m an Earth guy. At least this avatar of mine is an Earth guy. Following the Great Wheel has made me sensitive to the changing of Earth’s seasons, what they mean, can mean, will mean.

In the flow of cards over the last week we’ve come to a culmination. The seven of pentacles suggests investment and effort pays off. Or is about to. I don’t think it’s in my immediate future, but perhaps in my near term future. My investment in Kate’s life, in our relationship. My efforts with her up to and after her death. My investment in my own worldview, nurturing a pagan, earth-centered way, one influenced by the ten thousand things. My willingness to learn, to adapt, to change, to transform.

Worth it. Even with the struggles that the transition has created. Not yet finished, but the seven of pentacles suggests the next phase may not be far off. May it be so.

*”The meaning of the Seven of Pentacles relates to investment and effort. It follows the Six of Pentacles which refers to the end of financial or material hardship. If you have been putting in time and effort in your work, it signifies that your efforts are paying off and they are going to pay off in the future as well.

If you are looking to invest, the Seven of Pentacles suggests that you are ready to put in a lot of effort, time and work into whatever you want to achieve. It reaffirms you of your long-term vision and helps to show that you are not confined to seeing results in the short term only. It shows how much you value the investment because of the effort that you are willing to put in.” Labyrinthos

Aging, Astrology, Family, Great Wheel, Kabbalah, Memories, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Tarot, Torah, Travel, Woolly Mammoths

Simple Gifts

July 19, 2021 Charles Leave a comment

Summer and the Lughnasa Moon

Monday gratefuls: Rigel eating and running. Mary’s pictures from the Van Gogh show and the Beach. Hsieh Ling-yun. Shan-shui poetry, creative sensibility. Wabi sabi. Fermented foods. Korea. The United States, as a vision. The United States, broken.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The cool Wind off Black Mountain yesterday afternoon.

Tarot card drawn: The Lovers, number 6 of the Major Arcana

The gifts of our parents. The Ancient ones theme for our Sunday conversation. As it happened, Bill and Ode went first. Happy childhoods, role model parents. Smiles and good feelings. Tom, a thoughtful assessment of what his parents inherited from their parents and how that made him more accepting of what they had to offer him. Paul found gifts. There must be a pony in there somewhere.

We described our mothers as gentle and well-liked. We recognized from our childhood the post-depression, post-World War II definition of motherhood, realized in the women who birthed us.

Fathers were different. More individual in our telling. More difficult, sometimes, but also more formative. My father, from whom I was estranged most of my adult life, gave me a willingness to express contrary opinions in the public square. A willingness to use analytics to solve problems, to understand political life. A tendency to wander, to find the curious and the unusual. A conflicted version of hard work. That is, he modeled hard work. Always. But he expected it of me just because he was my father.

My mom modeled compassion, a desire to meet each person without judgment. She supported me, honored my gifts, which my father challenged, belittled. To this day I don’t know why he did that.

They were both conventionally Protestant; not overly affected by their faith, but committed to it. Both of them prized intelligence and learning though my father denigrated it in me. Why? Don’t know. They kept in touch with their extended families, Mom’s in Indiana, and Dad’s mostly in Oklahoma.

At 74 I love learning, love figuring out how and why things work, what the facts and the possibilities are. I try to meet each person without judgment and to exercise compassion for their journey. A radical analysis of our economic, educational, health, religious, and political systems, mine since college, represented a working out of my father’s liberal views carried to what I consider their logical conclusions.

My impact from both parents seemed less profound than any of the other four in our group. That may be because my mother died young. I never got to know her after I became an adult. And Dad and I never overcame the distance between us.

We all agreed though that whoever we are now, in the elder stage of life, came through choice, intentionality. We are not the sock puppets of our parent’s gifts or their curses. Yes, they shaped our lives, no doubt, but how we use compassion, a sense of humor, a genius for invention, gentleness, a hard-edged approach reflects how we have chosen to incorporate them in the now long stream of our life.

A touching conversation.

The Lovers. A sequelae. As a change, a transformative wave, pulses through my life, as it creates difficulties, struggles, it does point toward a new creation. What will that new creation be like? Not sure yet. My sense, if I have to choose between important and unimportant (see below), I’m thinking of the difference between the Chinese literati role model and the engaged political and religious life I have known. Perhaps between passive and active. Learning and doing. Which will inflect my next path more?

There is a distinct and strong part of me that would read, write poetry, paint, listen to music, dine with friends, go for hikes, travel some. That has always felt like a lifeway that needed to wait. Come the revolution, maybe that would be ok. Come publishing. Then. Yes.

Now. In the wake of Kate’s death I’m once again reexamining my primary inclinations. When I met her, I leaned into writing, a definite change from life as clergy/activist. Perhaps I could see that change as a step toward a more reclusive, monastic life, a way only partially taken.

Is now the time? There’s a Trappist/Benedictine soul in this body. With those words referring to lifestyle, not content. There’s a Taoist soul in this body. One which does not take up arms against a sea of trouble, but rather flows around them, with them. There’s a mystical soul in this body. One that finds nourishment in odd places: tarot, torah, astrology, astronomy, poetry, paintings, sculpture. There’s a Great Wheel soul in this body, one that desires only a place in the natural process, a moment of birth, a short life, a long death. There is, too, a Jewish soul in this body, one committed to others, to community, to justice, to learning.

Will I try to rebuild my past life, only at a different age and place? Will I listen to the murmurings in my soul? Will I follow what I believe to be the deeper path for me? Deeper at this moment in time. The Lovers card suggests I will need to choose. Are these the choices? Not sure. Are these the best choices? Again, not sure.

*”This is one of the times when you figure out what you are going to stand for, and what your philosophy in life will truly be. You must start making up your mind about what you find important and unimportant in your life. You should be as true to yourself as you can be, so you will be genuine and authentic to the people who are around you.” Labyrinthos

“There is an approaching conflict that will test your values. In order to progress, you are going to have to make a decision between love and career. Neither will disappear forever, but the choice will shape your priorities.” Trusted Tarot

Dogs, Family, Feelings, Health, Kabbalah, Memories, Shadow Mountain, Tarot, Third Phase

Still Changing

July 18, 2021 Charles Leave a comment

Summer and the Lughnasa Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Rigel’s bad leg. Her sweetness. Fire mitigation and a moderate Smoky the Bear wildfire risk. Staples. Envelopes. Colorado Furniture. Subway. Radiation induced proctitis. Cool mornings. Kate, always Kate.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Black Mountain, stolid.

Tarot card drawn: Reversed Ace of Wands*

Low energy. I get up, feed the dogs, go up to the loft, write Ancientrails, workout, eat breakfast. After that, errands or pruning. The usual nap. After the nap, sometimes nothing. Just. Don’t. Feel. Like. It.

My five days a week, seven weeks worth of radiation created an inflamed and bleeding lower bowel, radiation proctitis. Most of the time it’s not a big deal. Last couple of days has made me wonder if I need to see my G.I. doc.

An odd circumstance makes me hesitate. When Kate was alive, I could ask her opinion at times like this. Should I wait for it to declare itself? A doctorism of Kate’s. Or, perhaps abate on its on? I trusted her and almost always followed her advice. She would laugh reading this, I know, because she’d say I never followed her advice.

I have to revert to the situation all of us find ourselves in, at least those without a doctor in the house. Does this rise to a level of concern? Or is it a nuisance? My own sensibility is my guide now. And, I don’t trust it as much as I did Kate’s.

Added to this is a desire not to start down the path Kate found herself on. This one is irrational. This is about a bleed, an intestinal bleed. Which marked the beginning of Kate’s long decline. I’m not Kate. I know that. But I do not want to follow her into a long, slow deterioration. No indication that I will, but I worry about it anyhow.

Also, Rigel’s been a bit down the last couple of days, not eating as well. She’s been holding her right rear leg up, as if it hurts too much move it or it’s too weak to use confidently. Same issue. In the past I would ask Kate. Should Rigel be seen? And, by whom, a neurologist or an orthopedist?

Together these questions and conditions put me in a low state for a while yesterday. Low energy. Proctitis flaring up. Rigel’s leg. No Kate. All on me. That’s the downer insider thinking. Untrue. Not all on me. I have choices and support with physicians and veterinarians.

Just fussin’. I’ll make a decision tomorrow morning about both.

Not a surprise then to draw a reversed Ace of Wands. It fits with the general direction of life right now as the other cards I’ve drawn have underlined, too.

Reshuffling. Reimagining. Reconstructing. Me. Me alone. Me without Kate. Learning how to be me without her counsel, her love (well, no, not without her love, without her physical, loving presence), her support. The task of grief.

Tiring. Dispiriting. Exhilarating. Exciting. Back and forth. Some fear, too. Will I ride this out, find another path? Or will I wander, like Dante, in the dark wood lost?

I’m trying to move forward and rest at the same time. Tough. Taoism has some insight here. Let it be. Flow with the uncertainty, the challenges. Neither try to stop them, nor hurry them to resolution. Live in the reversed Ace of Wands space. It will not last.

This is evident in the illustration. Both upright and reversed the ace of wands has a wand with leaflets. It’s alive and growing, not stopped, not dead.

The cards let me see my psyche in a mirror, to reflect on it from a perspective I might have not noticed, or avoided. And, I admit, they’re doing a damn good job. Yes, a major change. Yes, perhaps the deep grieving is past (mostly) and, perhaps, yes, it is a time when I can close off the Kate (a living Kate) chapter of my life. Perhaps it is a time of big change. Yes.

What these cards have helped me see is that this is not an on/off time. I’m neither done completely with life with Kate, nor am I ready to move into a fully realized life without her. I’m in the transition space. Draining, hopeful. Energizing, scary.

Conclusion? Be easy with myself. Work at things in increments, but keep working. Pruning. Don’t get stuck in the mud.

*”The reversed Ace of Wands indicates trials and tribulations that you will face in the near future. You might not have any direction, which leads to being uninspired or unmotivated. At this point of your life, you might not know what you really want to do. You don’t know how to get out of the slump.

…When you draw a reversed Ace of Wands, you should consider taking some time off to allow inspiration to come to you. You feel so weighed down by your current commitments and responsibilities that you can’t come up with new ideas, or muster the passion to push forward in your projects.” Labyrinthos

Astrology, Family, Feelings, Garden, Kabbalah, Memories, Minnesota, Third Phase

I’m Still Learning

July 15, 2021 Charles Leave a comment

Summer and the Lughnasa Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Grant Property Medics. The Wildflowers in the back. Their Pollen. Tarot and Kabbalah. Loki. Rain. Cool night. Alan. Breakfast out. Mussar. Its folks.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: I’m still learning.

Tarot card drawn this morning: 6 of cups

As you can see, I’ve added a new section. Rabbi Jamie’s Tarot and Kabbalah class started yesterday. A guy named Luke, a Tarot reader and scientist, has a co-teacher role.

The first class involved introductions and brief comments about the Tarot and its relationship to Kabbalah. Rabbi Jamie talked about the evolution of the standard deck of 52 cards used in various games in the U.S. He sees a direct line between the Tarot deck and the Bicycle cards shuffled and dealt thousands of times everyday. Probably millions of times.

Luke and Jamie suggested drawing a single card each morning, looking at it, considering its meaning, then doing an internet search for interpretations.

One way of reading Tarot cards involves an intuitive consideration of the art on the card. There are many, many decks designed over centuries and Luke’s guidance invited us to pick a deck whose illustrations speak to us.

The three decks I own, a reproduction of a very early deck, the Tarot of Marseilles, an Aleister Crowley designed deck, and one whose origins I don’t know, don’t appeal to me as reading decks. For example. I selected the six of cups from the Marseilles deck. It has six medieval style chalices, three on side and three on the other, separated by an abstract floral motif. Didn’t send my imagination into overdrive.

The Rider-Waite deck, however, which I ordered yesterday from Amazon, has the delightful scene above. With just a gentle nudge from the interpretations online I can get going with it.

For example: “The VI of Cups is rooted deep in the past, but it is also a card closely bound to your happiness. It suggests that your family, your old friends, perhaps even past lovers, are in the process of adding greatly to the joys in your life.”

Or, “With the Six of Cups reversed, you can finally close accounts with the emotional undertow that has been part of your life. You can now revisit those wounded places calmly, without the fear that you will be drawn back in.

There is no lingering emotional residue or entrenched nostalgia remaining. You have finally digested those past experiences. They can now be put to rest.”

Whether the card is right side up or reversed influences the meaning. This morning I drew the six of cups reversed.

When I look at the Rider-Waite card with these ideas in mind, I see first the man walking away from the main scene, staff in hand. Perhaps the mature fool (the first card in the major arcana) setting out on a journey. He’s walking away from the pleasant associations in the foreground. A boy and girl enjoy a flower, a star shaped flower, perhaps one they grew together, as Kate and I used to do in Andover.

The man, a pilgrim?, has had to leave this wonderful memory behind and now walks alone. Perhaps not wholly alone though. The card suggests to me that as he’s leaving, it is this memory that he’s carrying with him. A pleasant, joyful one. A time of innocent love made clear through a link to the natural world, to flowers and stars and attractive scents.

He’s headed toward buildings of an antique style, but I imagine him only passing through them on a path. Perhaps they represent the past that innocent love created, a life of joy in small things. Flowers. Dogs. Music. Creating quilts and novels. Cooking. Traveling to foreign lands. A past he’s now able to leave behind, yet also a past that sustains his present and gives him joy.

What’s beyond the buildings? Unsure. A future though. One that sustains the joy of unconditional love in new ways and in new places and with new people, new events.

I find the notion of synchronicity, or no coincidences, difficult to swallow. My reason and logic say, hooey. On the other hand each instance in our life has a direct connection to whatever shows up in it.

That sounds obvious, is obvious, but it may obscure that these links are always known through our world of meaning. We interpret them through that world, our idiosyncratic web of associations. Each event and each particular in the event has meaning within our understanding, our way of making sense of this blooming, buzzing confusion we call consciousness. There are never any coincidences then, only new contexts for the worldview we take us with on our journey.

This six of cups card, drawn from a deck shuffled repeatedly, is not then a coincidence, but a direct link to my immediate past of mourning and grief, now resolving in favor of joy. A profound and innocent love, expressed often in our life together through nurture of the plant world, remains with me, sustaining me, as I head out towards an unknown future.

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
						1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30	31