Category Archives: Memories

Aging, Anoka County, Bees, Commentary on Religion, Family, Garden, Jefferson County, Memories, Minnesota, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Science, Shadow Mountain, The West, Third Phase

My Ancient Spiritual Trail

July 16, 2019 Charles Leave a comment

Summer and the Radiation Moon

My friend Rich sees mussar as a metaphysical, not a psychological discipline. It’s soul work, deeper and more consequential than therapy.

Over the last year and a half my skeptical view of soul has begun to break up, fade away. First, from the Cosmos and Psyche (thanks, Tom) insight: Skepticism is a tool, not a lifestyle. Second, from a spiritual realization that despite its implication in the arguments over, say, original sin, soul nonetheless points to a felt reality for me, a phenomenological knowing. Not a dogmatic or doctrinal one.

Big deal, right? You always knew this? Or, no way, dude. Either way, so what?

And, of course, you’re right if you follow this often used, little understood idea back to its sources in Judaeo-Christian thought. Its use either assumed-you always knew this, or, so mean and inhuman, eternal hell for a few years on earth-no way, dude.

The Judaeo-Christian understanding incorporated the Greek notion of psyche, “…the mental abilities of a living being: reason, character, feeling, consciousness, memory, perception, thinking” with a notion of immortality connected to behavior in this life.

I want to push back, back beyond this narrow conception of soul. There was an assumption among the ancient Greeks that soul had to have a logical faculty, and, that it was the most divine attribute of a human soul. ( The current scientific consensus across all fields is that there is no evidence for the existence of any kind of soul in the traditional sense. Wiki.)

First I want to speak for the trees. Let’s call it the Loraxian understanding of the soul. The lodgepoles in our yard, crawling up Black Mountain, growing along Brook Forest Drive as it winds down the mountain. They have souls. They are both alive and animate, creatures with a telos, or end goal. They interact with their environment and grow strong or weak, tall or short, but they remain lodgpole pines, trees with a particular role in a montane ecosystem, a role which they give all they have to fulfill.

The same is true for the mule deer, the mountain lion, the marsh marigold, the elk, the bear, the fox, the squirrel, the dandelion, the cheatgrass, the Indian paintbrush, the mountain trout, the raven and the magpie. Are their souls more or less than ours? Wrong question. Are their souls more like ours or more unlike? Don’t know. I just know that living things on the planet share the wonder of life, an independent spark. That spark gives us organic matter that moves and does so with intention.

I’ve felt this way about the world for a long, long time. Taoism, Emerson, the Romantics, gardening, the Celtic Great Wheel. The mystical moment on the quad at Ball State. Oneness. With it all. I’m even willing to entertain faeries, elves, duendes, daiads, Gods and Goddesses. OK, I know I lost a lot of you with that one, but I’m going with my gut, my revelation to me rather than the dry dusty bones of theirs.

But. I want to push one step further. I believe in the spirits of the mountains. They have visited me here on Shadow Mountain, the mule deer on Samain, 2014, and the elk on my first day of radiation. The mule deer and the elk were angels, that is, messengers of the mountain gods, dispatched by the careful, slow, deliberate entities that are the Rocky Mountains.

I believe in the vitality of rushing water in Maxwell Creek, Cub Creek, Blue Creek, Bear Creek, the North Fork of the South Platte. I believe in the entity that is Lake Superior, that is the great deposit of ores on the Minnesota Iron Range, the ebb and flow of the Oglalla Aquifer.

I believe in Mother Earth, the great Gaia, a living system of ecosystems, biomes watered by rains and the snows, irrigated by streams and rivers, planted by Boreas and Zephryus, and given power to change by the true god, Sol.

Neither animals nor plants can grow without the sun’s energy or the food locked in minerals and vitamin: “Our soils support 95 percent of all food production, and by 2060, our soils will be asked to give us as much food as we have consumed in the last 500 years. They filter our water. They are one of our most cost-effective reservoirs for sequestering carbon. They are our foundation for biodiversity. And they are vibrantly alive, teeming with 10,000 pounds of biological life in every acre. Yet in the last 150 years, we’ve lost half of the basic building block that makes soil productive.” Living Soil film

As it appears, I am an animist, a pagan, a person who has found his spot in the great scheme. I’m a moving instance of matter formed in the great fusion furnaces of stars. I’m a temporary instance, holding together a few atoms for a human lifetime. I’m a significant instance of meaning created by the universe observing itself, throughout my short path, as the dynamic, interlocked, soulful reality that it is.

I need no human word to guide me. I need no idea, no rule. I am and I am within all this. The Arapaho National Forest. The Rocky Mountains. Our nuclear family. Our extended family. The community of folks at CBE. The United States. The Mind of God.

My soul and that of Kepler, Rigel, and Gertie dance with each other. In Andover Kate and I danced with bees, fruit trees, perennial flowers, vegetables, raspberry canes. Here we dance with the mountain spirits.

Long ago I set out on a spiritual journey that went down and in rather than up and out. That is, I would not find validation somewhere outside of myself whether Torah, Gospel, Constitution, or political ideology. I would not privilege the idea of transcendence, or a three-story universe. No god is in heaven, and yet all’s right with the world. My ancient spiritual trail has been to turn within for the source of my revelation. And, I have not turned back.

Memories, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Writing

2,000,000 Words

May 27, 2019 Charles 3 Comments

Beltane Cancer Moon

Half of Ancientrails on the right, both stacks. Missing, Superior Wolf, and Phantom Queen out for editing

A long quest for me has ended. I’ve been searching for a way to print out Ancientrails for a couple of years. Not an insignificant undertaking at well over 2,000,000 words. Found a plug-in for WordPress, the software I use (thanks, Bill) called Print My Blog. Prior to Print My Blog the only way I had discovered to print posts was a repetitive process of copying each blog post and then pasting it into a Word document. With over 10,000 total posts that was enough to make the process difficult and time consuming.

Print My Blog has its problems. It only allows starting at the beginning of your blog and printing sequentially from that point. If you have a printer or software issue, as I did twice a couple of days ago, Print My Blog resets to the beginning. Sigh. I was at February 22nd, 2013 on Saturday when I got a printer error. That was about half of the total pages I needed to print. That was the good news. The bad news was that if I wanted to finish I’d have to start all over again, at the beginning. And hope nothing would interfere.

Then it hit me. I can run Print My Blog, get its formatting of all of ancientrails and its content, do a select all, and copy the entire blog into Word. Which I did yesterday. Easy peasy. Printing is much easier in Word with multiple ways to divide a document. I may finish printing it out today. Then, I’m going to get thirteen notebooks, 2007-2019 and have those pages three hole punched at Staples. There will be a written copy of my work on ancientrails except 2005-2007. They exist somewhere in the cyberether, but I can’t find them anymore.

Why are you doing this, Charlie? Kate asked. I have three reasons. I have a cloud backup of Ancientrails using Updraftplus and I’m grateful for that. If my web host crashes or I get attacked by a hacker, I can restore everything. But, when I die, it’s probable that no one will pay my web host and/or no one will be able to use the backup because they don’t know it exists. I’ll leave instructions, but after my death protecting my blog won’t be a top priority. A printed copy solves that problem. If, that is, anyone wants to keep it.

Second reason. My cousin Diane thought some folks might like to read what I’ve written here. At 2,000,000 plus words no one, not even me, has that much interest. A volume devoted to Ancientrails will require editing. A lot of editing. WordPress is good software for writing and posting on the web, that’s what it’s for, but not so good if you want to go back and read, then edit, multiple entries. Pretty clumsy. Reading ink on paper and marking it up? Easier. This is a long term project, but one made simpler by the hoary art of printing.

Third reason. I want to see it printed out. Very satisfying to see all that work in one physical location. The cyber copy of it all is invisible, most of it. Hard to reify. This will make it real in a Velveteen Rabbit way.

Anyhow I’m pretty far along with this now. Word pushes pages out of my laserjet printer even as I write this. The written word has occupied me for the last thirty years. Still does. This is one not so small part of that focus.

Holidays, Memories, Sport, US History

The Greatest Spectacle in Racing

May 26, 2019 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Cancer Moon

Today is the Indy 500. The 103rd. A long time. I’ve written here before about this race. Growing up in Indiana there are two sporting events that create a life-long spot in the heart, the Indy 500 and basketball, especially high school basketball. At the beginning of May the Indianapolis Star would start running articles about the racers, the crews, their preparations. The build up would peak pre-race on qualification day.

On race day those who didn’t get tickets would gather around their radios to listen. If you chose to go to the race, you already knew about the horrific traffic jams ahead of your trip to Speedway.

Speedway is a western suburb of Indianapolis which, according to Mapquest: “The town of Speedway was developed as a city of the future. Meant to be a testing ground much like the famed race track which is its namesake, Speedway was designed to be a city that was hospitable to the car. In a time when Indianapolis streets were often narrow orange brick thoroughfares… the town had homes with garages for cars.”

On the F1 circuit, the winner stands on a podium with the second and third place drivers, opens a bottle of champagne and sprays his fellow drivers and the crowd gathered around. It’s a media event. At the end of the 500 the winning driver is alone in pit row, like a thoroughbred at the end of the Kentucky Derby, which runs not far away in Louisville, Kentucky. Also like the Derby the 500 winner gets a floral sash.

This Indiana dairy farmer will present today’s winner with an ice-cold bottle of milk

The 500 is a race with agricultural roots, a car race held about as far south from Detroit as it is north of the Derby. A blend. Nothing shows that more than the winner posing with the huge Borg-Warner Trophy and chugging down, not champagne, but a quart of milk. From a glass bottle.

In 1965, the same month I graduated from high school only sixty miles from the speedway, Jim Clark and his Lotus changed the look and feel of the race forever. Jack Brabham brought the rear-engine European designs from F1 to Indy in 1961. 5 years later Jim Clark won in his Lotus-Ford. After that rear engine cars dominated the race. And still do.

Beyond the Boundaries, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Health, Memories, Minnesota, Myth and Story, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase

Baptized in the Underground Stream

May 7, 2019 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Cancer Moon

20190506_131302 Lots of Catholic kitsch in the Mother Cabrini giftshop. I mean, lots. In fact, that’s almost all they have. St. Expeditius here is my favorite, especially his arms.This is a refrigerator magnet and there are others. Including St. Gregory the Wonder Worker invoked in desperate situations.

But, there’s more, so much more. I may pick up an action figure of St. Michael since I find Michaelmas an important holiday. The springtime of the soul, September 29th.

Mother Cabrini action figures, too, some of them very well made. Crucifixes. Prayer cards for particular ills and problems. Mugs with www.anamazingparish on them. Mother Cabrini shrine mugs. Medallions. Jewelry. Lots.

Wandered through the gift shop on the way into the refectory. Good food. Fish, rice, vegetables and a wonderful cherry pie.

The first segment of the workshop is over. It’s called Life Context. The Progoff process plows up the unconscious, kicks up into consciousness both bits from your own unconscious and from what Progoff calls the underground stream. Progoff studied under Jung and the Jungian collective unconscious seems to have influenced him in a profound way.

Another exercise, I mentioned steppingstones yesterday, is inner wisdom dialogue. Progoff wondered, after his time in the army during WWII and the holocaust, what would happen if all the sacred texts disappeared. We would, he decided, write others. After all, we wrote the first ones and that knowledge has to be out there still. Or, better, in here.

Each intensive journal, Progoff believed, is a sacred scripture, a bible of the writer’s own creation. Why? Because it draws on the same source as the Koran, the Torah, the New Testament, the Tao Te Ching, the Diamond Sutra-the underground stream. This is a radical claim, but comports well with, say, Buber, the mystics, Emerson.

The inner wisdom dialogue predicates the underground stream. Each of us made our own list of as many wisdom figures as we could. These wisdom figures can be living or dead, mythological or literary, organic or inorganic. Among mine were Lao Tse, Emerson, Herman Hesse, Shadow Mountain, and the tree I used to visit at the Boot Lake Scientific and Natural Area. It abutted the Carlos Avery Wildlife Reserve in Anoka County.

After entering into a twilight state, a way of getting below the intellect to tap into the unconscious and the underground stream, I wrote my dialogue. I spoke with my tree. It’s a back and forth, leading wherever it goes. The pen follows the deeper you, not the rational mind. At least if the exercise is working well. Mine did.

That tree, with a curved, forked trunk, got passed by when the lumberjacks came because it was not straight enough for lumber; a tall white pine, it grows on an earthen island between two marshy areas. Boot Lake is largely marsh. I scattered Tully’s ashes, some of them, there. I snowshoed to this tree in the winter, walked to in the spring, summer, and fall. I often sat with my back up against its trunk, nestled between two thick roots.

It spoke to me of rootedness, of choosing your place, of reaching deep for what you need, of climbing high for the energy from above. I asked my tree about cancer and it answered. Trust your arborist. Follow through on your treatments. The tree knew of its kindred who have died due to the pine bark beetle. We know illness and death, the tree said.

We also did dialogues with persons important to us, our body, and our creative work.

Today we start the Depth Dimension segment.

Art and Culture, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Health, Judaism, Memories, Mountains, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, The West, Weather +Climate

The Velveteen Rabbit aspect of human identity

March 23, 2019 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Recovery Moon

Bat and Moon, 1930s Takahashi Bihō. MIA — Bat and Moon, 1930s
Takahashi Bihō. MIA

The Recovery moon illuminates Black Mountain this morning. The ski runs carved out on the mountain are white strips reflecting back moon shine. A light breeze moves the lodgepoles and a thin dusting of snow covers the solar panels. Early spring in the Rockies.

Kate made a salad last night. We bumped into each other in our galley kitchen for the first time in months. She also tossed her friendship quilt from the Bailey Patchworkers into the washing machine. She’s beginning to emerge from a long time in the chrysalis of illness. Wow.

Since the recovery moon seems to find us both on the uptick, my doctor’s nurse called with lab results, actually a second call due to confusion there occasioned by a weeks long problem with their computer systems. The first call came when I was still pretty sick and I didn’t pay close attention. This time I did. My PSA has moved up from .o1 to .012. Doesn’t seem like much, but when your prostate’s gone, it’s supposed to stay at .1, which is effectively .0. A recurrence is defined, for those of us who had our prostate’s removed, when the PSA hits .2. Concerning, but not yet a problem. Further testing required.

Rabbi Jamie called last night, wondering how we were. We were both steady and frequent attenders of things at CBE up until Kate’s bleed on September 28th. I continued until my own illness which began in early February. Since then, I’ve only been back for the chicken soup cook-off. Our sudden disappearance from the synagogue’s life caused him to say last time he talked with Kate that the schul isn’t the same without us. Kate was on the board and I was teaching religious school. We both attended mussar on Thursdays. We went to services less frequently, but showed up at education and special events, too. We’ve woven ourselves into the fabric that is CBE.

Chapter House from Notre-Dame-de-Pontaut,12th century French MMA

Community, like friendships, is reciprocal. You put your left foot in, then your right foot, then you shake it all about. With others doing the same thing. Over time we get to know each other, see each other, acknowledge each other. The line between thee and me is both more and less than we usually think. It’s more in that we don’t know our own selves well, our own depths eluding even the most introspective and life examining of us. How could others see into that, then? It’s less in that our perception of ourselves is constantly poked and prodded by interactions with others. In fact, much of our personhood gains definition as we sit down to coffee with someone, engage in critical thought, listen to music, sing with them. In community, in friendships, in family we become who we are.

At CBE, as with the Woolly’s, the docents, the political folks I’ve worked with, and our family, who I am has been in dialectical tension with both individuals and the collective. I’ve had to consider how Frank Broderick’s anti-Catholicism fits into my mostly positive assessment of religious life. I’ve offered ideas at CBE and had them put into action, changing myself and others in the process. As I got to know my fellow docents, I observed how they related to the art, to the art history we learned, to the museum visitors we guided on tours. And, how I was as a docent shaped itself in response.

Woolly Mammoths instructed in glass blowing

In the instance of the Presbyterian ministry the two millennia plus history of Christianity was a body of thought and actions within which I had to find my particular place just like the thousands of year old history of art demanded I find a personal patch of ground on which to stand in relation to it. Both interactions shaped me and I, in turn, in small, individual ways reshaped both Christianity and the history of art. Not making a big, hubristic claim here, just observing that the dialectical tension affects both parties though not in equal ways.

This is, I suppose, the Velveteen Rabbit part of human identity formation. We rub ourselves up against people, animals, things and in the process we become real. And, we serve that same role for others. It’s an awesome responsibility. How do I, in my interactions, encourage the best in others? Or, do I? But that’s a question for another day.

Cooking, Memories, Sport, Weather +Climate

Snow. Soup. Go.

March 14, 2019 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Recovery Moon

20190314_050257 — Steps up to the loft this morning

Wow. Bombogenesis! As the weather guys said, “We achieved bombogenesis.” I think they may be a bit too close to this whole thing. Anyhow this storm socked us in. 18 inches or so. Wet snow. Heavy. In fact the power lines sag under its weight and as a result the snowplows can’t work the mountain roads. Black Mountain Drive, usually cleared many times during a big storm saw no plows, no scraping along the asphalt. Nothing. Just snow and the very occasional pickup truck. Even our plow guy had trouble moving around so he could clear driveways. I told him it was ok if he came this morning. We weren’t going anywhere yesterday.

It puzzles me how snow discombobulates Coloradans. Sagging powerlines that might electrocute a driver or take out power to a whole neighborhood are one thing, but our pulmonologist’s office called last night late and said the practice was closing today due to inclement weather. They are in Littleton which got, as near as I can tell right now, about 8″.

Snow totals aren’t the whole story. The winds created blizzard conditions. We couldn’t see Eduardo and Holly’s house just across Black Mountain Drive. Drifts. Snow slides. Avalanches. These last not so much around here, but further into the Rockies. We’ve had over 2,000 avalanches this year, several deaths.

In terms of degrees below zero and general misery Colorado winters are wimpy compared to Minnesota, especially this Minnesota winter. Throw in the mountains however and the difficulties multiply quickly.

It was a perfect day to make soup. My entry for the CBE CNS competition is in the frig, flavors blending. The competition is on St. Patrick’s Day. I have to be there at 3:30 with my soup and my instant pot. Plus a ladle. Wish me luck.

We need Sgt. Preston of they Yukon. Remember him? He delivered medicine to the Eskimos by dog sled. Well, Kate’s on her last bag of tpn nutrition. The delivery was due yesterday. Didn’t make it. They have until 4 pm today or Kate’s gonna have to start eating her meals rather than having them pumped in.

While making the soup, I watched several episodes of Formula 1: Drive to Survive. It was a recap of the 2018 season, timed appropriately since the 2019 season begins, as Formula 1 always does, in Australia. This weekend is the first race of 21. I’ve been a fan, off and on, since I was young. Getting back into it over the last couple of years.

This a sport that requires millions, for the big teams like Mercedes and Ferrari, hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Each team has hundreds, in the larger cases, thousands, of employees. Yet the total number of seats, literally seats in F1 cars, is only 20. Each team has two drivers. Ten teams. That means the competition is intense at all levels and the stakes in each of the 21 races high.

I suppose it was growing up in Indiana. We supplied many things to Detroit, lights, batteries, and alternators in the instance of Guide Lamp and Delco near Alexandria. These two factories alone employed 25,000 when I was growing up and most of my friend’s fathers worked at one or the other. Then every May, the greatest spectacle in racing: The Indianapolis 500. Cars and racing were prominent.

My subscriptions to Road and Track and Sports Car Magazine have long lapsed, but during middle school and high school I followed motor sports closely. Yes, as you can tell, my interests lay somewhat askew of the Indy 500, leaning more toward European cars and races. F1 is my interest now.

Looking forward to the Australian Grand Prix.

Art and Culture, Colorado, Family, Health, Jefferson County, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, The Move, Third Phase

Became Native to This Place

February 28, 2019 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

we're waiting to transition to a feeding tube placed in the jejunum — we’re waiting to transition to a feeding tube placed in the jejunum

UPS delivers vitamins and bags of nutrients for Kate. On Tuesday we got a box with a styrofoam container, two gel packs to keep things cool, bubble wrap filling the container, about 12x12x12. Two vials of vitamins. Next day, two more boxes, same size, syringes, nutrient bags, batteries (a fresh 9 volt goes into the pump every day), saline flushes, heparin locks, tubing for the pump that connects to Kate’s picc line.

The logistics of this tpn feeding are remarkable. Not only do they have to ship us the right amount of stuff, it has to get here on a timely basis. And, the nutrient bags have a mixture that is tuned according to Kate’s labs, which can change on a weekly basis. Somebody has to coordinate all that and make sure the counts are right, the nutrient’s up to date, and that it gets here so we can use it. But, you can’t send too much at once because the tpn might be stopped, or certain things, like the vitamins and nutrients might spoil.

tpn4 It’s no wonder medical costs are high. All of these things are one use only: syringes, nutrients, saline flushes and heparin flushes (each in their own individual packing), batteries, tubing, alcohol wipes, even the packaging for the deliveries. The need for sterility drives most of this. Kate’s picc line ends near her heart in the superior venous cava, which means there is a direct link between the outside, non-sterile world and that vip organ. Even the tiniest mistake in sterile procedure could have disastrous, catastrophic results. No pressure, eh?

I’ve gotten more facile with the various steps required to change out Kate’s nutrient bags. She draws the vitamins out of their vials using syringes. She and Julie, the home health nurse, make that look easy, but my fingers don’t find it so. As Kate said, my dexterity is in my brain, not my fingers. The rest of it, I can do. I could figure that one out, too, but with Kate’s expertise, why?

20181230_064700 Grieving now. Looking at things around the house with that critical, ok what do we need to do with this in order to sell the house eye. Driving up the mountain considering how many more times I’ll be able to see Black Mountain on my left as I climb Shadow Mountain to our home near its peak. Not anxious about it, just sad.

Place is very important to me. Andover taught me that. Even though we lived there twenty years I never made my peace with the suburban blandness. No there there, was the way I put it. Oh, yes, our property had a definite sense of place, but it was set in a context that numbed the mind. At least my mind. Here, the opposite is true. I love the mountains, the vistas, the curves in the road. The weather. The ever changing face of Black Mountain.

As the John Muir quote on my e-mails says, “You are not in the mountains, the mountains are in you.” It’s an aesthetic sensibility. Over my years at the MIA I learned how important aesthetics were to me. Always have been. Deep in my soul. Perhaps it’s even the root of my pagan leanings, the aesthetic link I feel between myself and the natural world.

Memories, Music, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Overcome

February 20, 2019 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

A question for the Woolly Mammoth meeting of this Monday: “…think back over time – older and newer – was there a piece of music, a song, or a musical video that had an impact on you, or that shaped your thinking, or who you are in some way, at some important juncture in your life, or time in your life.” Scott Simpson

Here’s my reply:

I can still hear the others singing, feel the resonance of my voice joining theirs, marching, marching, marching. So many times. The song was the old spiritual, We Shall Overcome. I sang it in protests again Vietnam, in labor solidarity rallies, on the occasional Sunday morning. I sang it alone, in the shower, driving in the car.

Whenever I hit the line, we shall over come someday, and even writing this, I tear up.

This song could be my heart’s theme song. It’s a musical answer to Shakespeare’s famous query, “To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them.” I’ve always been on the take arms side.

Though, parenthetically, I’m also a follower of the Tao which suggests wu wei, or non-doing as an answer. Both seem true to me. In the end I cannot just let things happen to me, or to the people and the society that I love.

Asia, Family, Great Wheel, Health, Memories, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase, Weather +Climate

A seed

February 3, 2019 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Waxing Moon

20180828_185716 The waxing moon has not brought the weight gain I’d hoped. Maybe next month. We talked yesterday about eating disorders and their relevance to Kate’s situation. Through a combination of aversive conditioning, nausea and cramping triggered by eating, the dry mouth issues of Sjogren’s that can make food unpalatable, a generally depleted musculature that makes it difficult to work up an appetite, and a feeling of malaise we’ve not been able to shake, eating has become problematic. Sounds like an eating disorder. If it quacks…

One sobering reality driven home by my illness (on the way out, but not gone) is how much the two of us depend on me to live in this house. If I got to Kate’s level of dysfunction, we’d have to move. When I was sick, especially Wednesday and Thursday, my body tingled. Arthritis in my left hand, thumb, knuckles, finger joints and the thumb of my right hand got bad enough that I couldn’t unlock the front door or open a package of sliced turkey. My stamina was almost nonexistent and I had no hunger. This lead me to the conclusion that my workouts are now a matter of marital necessity. They keep me strong, agile, healthy. We need to protect my schedule so I can always get them in. I’m sure this moment comes for many couples as they age, where one partner’s fragility makes their mutual independence more at risk.

abyss Much as I like the dark, the cold, the snow, I also love the growing season. Imbolc, Feb. 1st, (or, as for all Celtic holidays, a full week of markets and dances), marks the turn from winter, the season just past, toward spring, or Ostara, which we celebrate on the spring equinox. That’s what Groundhog Day celebrates, Imbolc, and a European belief that if a furry rodent saw it’s shadow, there would be six more weeks of winter. In Germany it’s the badger that is the predictor. The Pennsylvania Dutch apparently shifted to the groundhog.

Whichever, shadow or not, and usually not accurate, the attention to mother earth while snow’s still on the ground, occurs because the Great Wheel has turned past the Winter Solstice, allowing light to begin it’s slow increase, culminating in the heart of mid-Summer on the Summer Solstice.

Imbolc then, is the first season of a new agricultural year. Imbolc, in the belly, referred to the freshening of ewes whose pregnancies would finally bring some long awaited milk into the family larder. The lambs also add to the flocks. It was a signal that the fallow time that began back in October of the previous year at Samain, summer’s end, would again be followed by a fertile season. The growing season itself doesn’t begin, on the Great Wheel, until Mayday, Beltane. But Imbolc assures us that there will be food produced this year, even if the days are still dreary and cold.

What is freshening my soul these days? What seed has been fertilized and begun to grow? Imbolc is important; even when the world seems to have gone fallow for us, we find the Great Wheel still turning, still pushing us toward the next growing season.

Kate’s bleed happened on September 28th, the day before Michaelmas, Steiner’s “springtime of the soul.” The sequelae has lasted through the last of Fall (Mabon), through Samain, through Winter, and now into Imbolc. Imbolc suggests that somewhere buried in the detritus of ten units of blood, bowl resection, rehab, multiple imaging studies, the stent placement, and continuing insults from Sjogren’s and weight loss lies a lamb, or at least a ewe’s egg. Finding it will not be, hasn’t been easy; but, I believe it’s there, that the Spring Equinox will find us moving forward into a new growing season for Kate’s soul and her body. May it be so.

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Feelings, Memories, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain

Dark Vessel Rising

January 14, 2019 Charles Leave a comment

submarine Winter Waxing Moon

Encountered something yesterday, a dark vessel that rose up from 33 years deep. Grief. I’d forgotten. When I lost my hearing in my left ear at the age of 39, it happened suddenly. Over a period of six months it waned, then was gone. At the time I was doing a bible study in Horn Towers, an affordable living senior high rise on the West Bank in Minneapolis. The women there, probably of my age now, helped me through this first mortality signal. That was the first insult. My body, which had worked just fine up until then, could fail. And, not in minor ways, but in ways that effected my life on an ongoing basis. (polio was a memory more than an experience.)

Since then I’ve dealt, sometimes well, sometimes poorly with the disability. Three years ago the hearing in my right ear began to diminish enough that I required a hearing aid. One good thing about that deaf left ear, I only needed one hearing aid. Cheaper! The hearing aid, while light and unobtrusive, is still a foreign object on my ear. It gets in the way of my glasses, sends sharp feedback noises if I put my watchcap on over it, requires batteries and maintenance. It helps. Not as much as I’d like, or need, but it does help. Even so, I don’t like wearing it.

deaf When I went downstairs yesterday after a hard day at the easel (hah), I had my hearing aid in, but still didn’t hear something Kate said. I asked her to repeat it. She waved me off dismissively. Most of the time, I get it. It’s no fun having to repeat yourself. It can feel like I’m not paying attention or being respectful. Over and over. For some reason though, the dark vessel constructed in those first days of my deafness in my left ear, a vessel built to carry the notice that my body would someday fail me altogether, surfaced.

33 years I’ve had to contend with an invisible disability, one that manifests, for others, only briefly. A huh? Or, ignoring you if you’re speaking to me from my left. Or, if there’s a lot of people, or waterfall like noises, or a loud air conditioner, a plane overhead. It screams at me occasionally when an unheard or misheard emergency vehicle suddenly appears as if out of nowhere.

Most of the time, as with most disabilities I imagine, it’s background, forgotten for me. Up here in the loft, for example, I rarely wear my hearing aid. No one to listen to, a quiet room. When driving, I often reach up and turn it off because a whooshing noise gets amplified into an annoying cascade of sound.

gods hades In the wake of Kate’s dismissal 33 years of grief, of annoyance, of having to explain, of being handicapped-always, broke into consciousness. I felt overwhelmed by the accumulated sadness, anger, discomfort. Didn’t know I carried within me this complex. I’m imagining a black submarine navigating the seas of my inner world. When its bow first broke through the waters of my attention, it stunned me. Knocked me back. I took it out on Kate. Not good.

Calmed down. We talked. Got through that maelstrom. Happens once in a while. Surprised by the freight.

I’m sure we all have our dark vessels, a divorce still knifing away at the gut, a lost job, an embarrassing public moment, a failed opportunity. When they surface, these dark vessels, chthonic gods James Hillman would call them, demand our fealty. Maybe even sacrifice. Taking the Jungian approach these vessels carry gold, keeping it to themselves, for themselves, but when they pierce the barrier of consciousness, that gold can be recovered, reclaimed, salvaged.

Not sure quite yet what’s in the chest I took off the sub, but I suspect it will become clear. Someday.