Category Archives: Memories

Commentary on Religion, Judaism, Memories, Mussar

Regret. Remorse. Teshuvah.

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Imbolc and the Snow Moon

Thursday grateful: Shadow. Regret. Remorse. Teshuvah. Selam. Marilyn. Rich. Joanne. Jamie. Kabbalah Experience classes. Exploring Religion and Its Radical Roots. A New Story for the Evolution of Human Consciousness. Training Shadow. Training myself. Love. Michelangelo’s 550th birthday. Art. Negative Space. Poetry.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Joanne’s mind

Week Kavannah: Patience.  Savlanut. When I rush, slow down. When I want to speak, wait. When my inner agonizer arises, calm him, move on

One brief shining: We gather around the table, some drinking wine, others water, eating the always random collection of food-I brought turtles from a Valentine gift-and settle down to discuss matters of the soul, baring ourselves to each other as we’ve done for over nine years, learning the Jewish soul language of mussar.

 

Gonna come back to the NAR. Just this for now. The top leadership in this “non-hierarchical” movement, prophets then apostles at the helm. They rely on revelation to the prophets and apostles who act as Peter, Paul, and Mary might have for Jesus.

This means new revelations can respond to the daily news stream. And be funneled through fallible human vessels. The apostles sort through them, decide how to interpret them. See the problem here? All the various cognitive biases are in play.

 

Another way. Two Jews, three opinions. Commentary on the Torah that uses non-rational techniques for interpretation Different readings delight all, insight coming from the many voices, no one trying to claim Biblical or ecclesiastical authority. All searching for truth, that layered and nuanced notion, all knowing definitive truth lies outside our ken. And are thankful for it.

Last night at MVP we discussed regret, remorse, and anger. We shared our earliest memories of regret. Mine? Age 12 or so. New fancy slingshot. In my bedroom at home on Canal Street in Alexandria. A car pulled up on the street outside. A man got out and walked to our house.

I thought. Huh? Wonder if I can hit his windshield? I could. Got caught immediately. Mom and Dad sentenced me to do the dishes, at twenty-five cents an hour until I’d paid off the window. Smart parenting.

Here’s an example of the kind of thought triggered by these evenings. From Rabbi Jamie:

“…in an attempt to understand why the author of Orchot Tzaddikim (Pathways of Moral Leadership) paired the two midot of regret (charatah) and anger (Kaas), I offer the following “definitions”:
Haratah / regret is the productive emotional responses to an encounter with the gap between my lived conduct (action or inaction) and my ideal or aspirational conduct.
Kaas / anger is the productive emotional response to an encounter with the gap between the real world such as it is and the ideal world, such as it ought to be, e.g. unfairness or injustice, disinformation and deceit, etc.”
Now I have to come up with a practice for the month. Right now: Become aware of regret. What comes next? Need to get a more focused idea.
An important group in my life.
Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Memories, US History

The Making of a Social Justice Warrior

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Imbolc and the Snow Moon

Monday gratefuls: Shadow. Amy. Snow. Vince. Deep clean for Shadow Mountain Home. Cook Unity. Training Shadow. Studying the New Apostolic Reformation. Working my purposes. Ruth’s 19th birthday meal early. Sushi Den. Gabe and his Ph.D. in theater. Kate, always Kate. Rigel. Kep. Vega. Gertie.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Atlantic Ocean

Week Kavannah: Patience.  Savlanut. When I rush, slow down. When I want to speak, wait. When my inner agonizer arises, calm him, move on

One brief shining: The crunch and push of metal on asphalt belies the soft and fluffy nature of the Snow the blades of the orange Jefferson County snowplows move off the roadways to keep us Mountain folk mobile, safe. Grateful for them.

Rembrandt-style painting depicting 1950s union workers, 1960s civil rights activists, and anti-war protesters standing together in unity.

During the Ancient Brothers meet yesterday morning I had another aha about my childhood, another throughline. The grooming of a social justice warrior. I realized there were three key drivers, maybe a fourth, that led me to spend my early and middle adulthood working for social justice.

First, my dad. As a journalist, a columnist, an editor, his job was to be clear eyed about what happened in my hometown. Then to write about it, decide what stories needed exposure. And, crucially for me, to have an opinion about the fairness, the justness about some of them.

Second, my church. The United Methodist church we attended had a strong social justice element to its ministry. This came directly from the work of John Wesley, who organized coal workers in the coal mines of nineteenth century England and believed Jesus mandated work on behalf of the poor and disadvantaged.

By the time I was twelve I had visited poor neighborhoods in Chicago, New York City, and Washington, D.C. on see-it tours sponsored by the church. And the United Nations, Congress, even the Russian consulate in D.C.

Third, and not least by any means, Alexandria served as a home for hundreds of men, almost all men at the time, who worked in General Motor’s factories nine miles away in the county seat of Anderson, Indiana. Delco Remy and Guide Lamp. Or, Guide and Delco as we knew them.

That meant they belonged to the UAW. The United Auto Workers union. At the time strong and forward looking. My friends families owned their homes, bought cars, took vacations, and could afford to send their kids to college. If the UAW went on strike against General Motors, Alexandria felt it. Yet the salaries, health care benefits, and generous pensions these men, most from the South and most not high school graduates, earned made Alexandria a vital, wonderful place to grow up.

Put those three together. Seeing taking a stand against injustice, unfairness, as a personal responsibility, feeling a religious calling to stand with the poor and disadvantaged, and understanding the positive role unions and economic justice could make for all of us prepared me for a lifetime of seeing injustice and doing something about it.

The fourth element I mentioned would be this. Growing up in a small town-John Cougar Mellencamp is a Hoosier-gave me a sense of what it meant to live as part of a community, one where I knew some people well, some less well, and others only in passing, but I did know them. And what happened to them. Justice, love, and compassion become real, tangible in such a setting. There was, I think, a balance between the individual and the community.

 

Dogs, Dreams, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Memories, Minnesota, Shadow Mountain, Wild Neighbors

Call of the Wild

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Imbolc and the Snow Moon

Monday gratefuls: Shadow. Eating. Marilyn and Irv. Eleanor and Tara. Snow on its way. March of the big weather. Ritalin. A bit more energy. Mary’s truffles. Yum. My son. Murdoch. Seoah. Teaching Shadow. Ancient Brothers on freedom and communal responsibility. Mountain Jews. Shadow immersion. Study. Reading.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Sit, Down, Touch

Week Kavannah: Patience.  Savlanut. When I rush, slow down. When I want to speak, wait. When my inner agonizer arises, calm him, move on.

One brief shining: In the far away and long ago my buddy Dave and I settled into his red VW Beetle for a drive from Muncie to Detroit, headed to Canada, Toronto, to pick up information about emigrating from the Toronto anti-draft folks; got stopped because of our long hair, so we turned around, went back into Detroit and bought white shirts, stocking caps for our hair, crossed the bridge again, and were admitted for our Canadian vacation. Ta dah.

 

Thought of a through line I’ve never mentioned here. Reading and Minnesota, Shadow Mountain. As a young boy, I read so much. Certain things impacted me. A lot. Always wanted to see Peru after the Silver Llama. Like many boys, I imagined myself as James Bond. Sherlock Holmes. Robinson Crusoe. Fighting in the War of the Worlds. Building robots with positronic brains beholden to the Three Laws of Robotics.

Jack London though. He changed my life. I read Call of the Wild. I admired Buck. Yes. The description of the Canadian wilderness. Buck’s journey into his wild nature. Pine Trees. Lakes. Wolves. Wolverines. Cold winters. Surviving in the north.

Central Indiana. Flat. Paved. Industrial and where it wasn’t industrial carved up into mile square sections of farm land. Small towns every 5 or ten miles in all directions. The opposite of the wilderness where Buck finds his true identity.

When I married Judy Merritt, her home state of Wisconsin triggered my long dormant desire to leave a place where, as I saw it, there was no there there, all domesticated by human artifice. We moved to Appleton, Wisconsin to be near her family. Imagine my disappointment when I found a city and region filled with paper mills and dairy factories. Nope.

Judy and I decided to split and an odd chain of circumstance led me to seminary in Minnesota. At least there were lots of Lakes. Once I found my way up north the Boreal Woods and the Glacial Lakes matched my fantasy. Minnesota became home. For forty years.

Kate and I moved to Colorado to be in the grandkids lives, but we never considered living in Denver. Had to be the Mountains. For both of us. Our Andover life had prepared us for life with Wild Neighbors, Lodgepoles and Aspens, Mountain Streams and trails, by holding us close to Mother Earth.

In that sense, and it’s a far from trivial one, Jack London and Call of the Wild changed the trajectory of my life by igniting a desire to live in cold lands, where Wilderness and humans could cohabit.

Memories, Minnesota, Politics

Trump, Trump, he’s so cruel

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Yule and the 78th Birthday Moon

Friday gratefuls: Vince. Alan. Rabbi Jamie. Rick. Rebecca. Veronica. Helen. Engineers. Tom. Bill. Jon Bailey. Mountains. Elk Cows. Moose. The Night Sky. Vega. Rigel. Luna. Cernunnos. Lugh. Arawyn. The Other World. Arthur. Avalon. The Grail. The Fisher King Wound. Chicken wings. The Lazy Butcher.

Sparks of joy and awe: Taxes

Kavannah this week: Rachamim, compassion    Listening for the melody of the other

One brief shining: In this libertarian, oligarchic inflected age, a time, as sister Mary found in an Australian news article, of the morbidly wealthy, it may seem like heresy or apostasy or blasphemy to like taxes, but I do: property, income, sales taxes all of which express a profound understanding of the political raison d’etrê, caring for the common good, like dues at the synagogue.

 

You probably don’t remember the PATCO strike. I do. I rode on a bus with members of the Minnesota AFL-CIO to a protest in Washington, D.C. 1981. Reagan, Reagan, he’s no good, send him back to Hollywood. We played poker, gin rummy, talked politics. Reagan won. He broke the air controller’s union. We returned to Minnesota.

Leif Grina invited me along. An organizer for the Hotel and Restaurant Workers Union. (Now UNITE HERE, combined with the Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Workers Union) Leif and I were good friends.

At the time, the early 1980’s, I worked with the labor movement, church social justice arms, and community organizers to create the Jobs Now Coalition^, which still exists, working on its mission of advocating for policies that promote job creation and economic justice. I did this organizing with Joseph on my hip.

In 1983 we wrote, lobbied for, and passed the Minnesota Emergency Employment Act (MEED)* I consider MEED and the creation of Jobs Now as a key highlight of my work as an organizer.

We have allowed labor unions to wither in the years since Reagan. This was/is a mistake. All this came top of mind reading the story this morning about the understaffed control tower which contributed to the helicopter/passenger jet collision over the Potomac. Reagan, Reagan, He’s no good. Send him back to Hollywood.

Trump, Trump, he’s so cruel, send him off to chesed school.

 

^ The Jobs Now Coalition was founded in Minnesota in the early 1980s as an advocacy organization focused on job creation, fair wages, and economic justice. It emerged during a time of high unemployment and economic distress, particularly following the recession of the early 1980s. The coalition played a significant role in pushing for policies that promoted employment opportunities and living wages for low-income and unemployed workers.

Key Aspects of the Jobs Now Coalition

  • Advocated for job creation programs, such as the Minnesota Emergency Employment Development Act (MEED).
  • Pushed for living wages and fair labor policies.
  • Conducted economic research on wages, employment trends, and workforce issues in Minnesota.
  • Partnered with labor unions, social justice groups, and community organizations to improve economic opportunities.
  • Promoted public and private sector investment in sustainable job growth.

The Jobs Now Coalition was influential in shaping Minnesota’s progressive labor policies, including wage laws and workforce development initiatives. It played a key role in ensuring that job growth benefited working-class and marginalized communities.

 

*The Minnesota Emergency Employment Development Act (MEED) was a jobs program enacted in 1983 during a period of high unemployment in the state. It was designed to create temporary jobs for unemployed and underemployed Minnesotans while stimulating economic development.

Key Features of the MEED Program

  • Provided wage subsidies to employers willing to hire unemployed workers.
  • Aimed to reduce unemployment by incentivizing private-sector job creation.
  • Focused on economic recovery during a recession by addressing job shortages.
  • Often targeted disadvantaged workers, including those facing long-term unemployment.
Art and Culture, Fourth Phase, Memories, Mountains, Tea, Wild Neighbors

Seeing, not looking

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Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Ruth. Snow. More. Another full night’s sleep. In a row. Art Green’s Guide to the Zohar. Mysticism. Art. Lascaux. Venus figurines. Minoan. Grecian. Phoenician. Early Christian. Egyptian. Hittite. Babylonian. Roman. Celtic. Norse. Anglo-Saxon. Qin, Han, Tang, Song dynasties. Goryeon. Kang school in Japan. Ukiyo-e. Nayarit. Jalisco. Benin. Early Hindu. Nepalese. Tibetan. Nahuatl. Mayan.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Art

Kavannah 2025: Creativity

Kavannah this week: Chesed (loving-kindness)

Rachamim practice: Listening for the melody of others

One brief shining: Love that kid, my now 43 year old son, seeing him across 9,000 miles, his hair a bit longer on top, a fade on the sides, talking about Seoah at the gym, Murdoch staying on base for their trip, Hawai’i-a mutual dream, his transition to command, the nod to the Vikings living up to expectations, a visit to Minnesota to see his mom, old friends, skiing and his racing turns, sore legs.

 

No. Got that out of my system yesterday. Mystical me. Today, let’s talk literature. Nah. How about art? Haven’t gone on that ancientrail for quite awhile. Chatbotgpt and I have had fun over the last few weeks co-operating on image making. I provide the idea, 4o provides the image. With wildly varying results, as you’ve already seen.

Here is the depiction of a 60-year-old version of you in a room filled with traditional Japanese teaware, capturing a serene and tranquil moment.

A bit of nostalgia. Trafficking in the past these days as I continue to write stories in the Storyworth app. 14 so far. Story is too grand a word for these 500 words or so excursions on roadways back into the last millennium. The last century. More like lightning flashbacks, brief illuminations of moments of a life.

Thinking this morning about those Monday mornings as a guide, a docent in training, then a docent when I could go in for a lecture in art history by an expert in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts lecture hall. After. I loved the in depth, detailed way of looking that art historians and curators brought to specific objects.

Never thought of it this way before but a lot of my life has been about seeing, really seeing, what was in front of me. Yesterday I discussed the revelation I find in each and every instance I encounter. Sometimes I see clearly, sometimes, most often, through a glass darkly. Perception clouded by bias, distraction, assumption, all those ills to which the human sensorium is heir to.

Anthropology offers a sort of x-ray vision into human behavior, how culture shapes us, defines us, supports and limits us. Philosophy sees questions where others see answers.

Here is the portrait inspired by our conversations, rendered in the dramatic and textured style of Francisco Goya, reflecting your life and connection to the Rocky Mountains.

Radical politics means looking into the truth of our economic and political relationships with one another and seeing the patterns, the flaws that create distortion, inequity. Gardening opened my eyes to the language of plants, how they express themselves, tell us what they need. Our long interrelationship with them. Having so many Dogs over the years opened my eyes to their distinctiveness, their majesty as fellow creatures, my deep love for them.

Living in the Mountains has turned me toward Wild Neighbors, toward Rock. Pines. Aspens. Fox and Moose. Beaver and Marmoset. Toward Mountain Streams in their dramatic seasonality.

Judaism has given me new lenses for viewing friendship, metaphysics, history, tradition, and myself.

Kate. In a true love affair which helped her understand herself in new ways, to see herself, not just her profession as she helped me see and be my whole self.

 

Fourth Phase, Memories, Travel, Writing

Ancientrails. Almost twenty years old.

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Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Sunday gratefuls: -8 degrees. Yet more Snow. Winter. Introspection. Diane, healing. Mark, all dressed up and ready to teach. Mary in the Florida of Oz. My son and Seoah, coming for my birthday. Talmud Torah. Exodus’ strong women. Moses. Yod Hey Vav Hey. Hashem. Adonai. I am. I will be who I will be. The burning bush.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Writing Ancientrails

Kavannah 2025: Creativity

Kavannah for the week: Appreciation of Opposition   Haarecha shel machloket

One brief shining: All through the nation MAGA folks will go to sleep tonight ready for their big day on Monday, Martin Luther King’s day of service, and cousin Donald’s hand on the bible, John Roberts presiding; I’ll give them their moment, but not my country.

 

Here is the image inspired by Caspar David Friedrich, capturing the nighttime scene in Bangkok’s Chinatown as described.

Want to lift a glass to Ancientrails. Early in February it will end its 20th year of daily existence. Started, oddly, in Bangkok. On a nighttime visit to a 7/11 I rushed across a side street and in the dark missed a gutter in the street. My right leg stayed still while my body kept moving. Thought I sprained my ankle. Hobbled on to the ATM, took out $100 in bahts, and limped across Yaowarat, Chinatown’s main drag, to my modest hotel. 2004.

Had about a week left before my flight home. Not wanting to miss the city, I drug my leg around, not worried because, hey, it was just a sprain. The nice lady at the physical therapist felt my leg and said, “Oh, that’s not a sprain. You’ve ruptured your Achilles tendon.” Well. Shoot.

Surgery. January 2005. Two months no weight on the right leg. What the hell am I gonna do? Cybermage William Schmidt set me up with Frontpage, a Microsoft app, and I began to write. I shifted, again with Bill’s help, to WordPress in 2007. Somehow the first three years got lost in the old bits and bytes shuffle.

I write every morning, no matter where I am, with few exceptions. Kate had her crossword puzzles and I have Ancientrails. Over 2 million words a few years ago. Probably closer to three now.

What I had decided to do was to take my journaling online. A blog. An anachronism now. Who writes blogs? Who reads them? Always had a thin hope that Ancientrails might take off, but frankly it never has. Oh, yes. There’s you, faithful reader, and I appreciate you more than you know. But a mass audience? Nope.

I get it, too. There’s no through line here except my life and opinions. Occasional theologizing, political opining, even art criticism though that’s fallen away for the most part. No telling what I’m going to be up to because I rarely know until I start typing.

Once in a while something fills my attention, like Ancientrails’ approaching double decade anniversary, and I remember to write about it. Most often, it’s a riff.

While I know it’s no masterpiece, I have added a codicil in my will to continue paying my cloud based service, Ionos, and its predecessors to keep Ancientrails on line after my death.

It is, at least, a piece of Americana. My peculiar America.

 

 

Commentary on the news, Holidays, Memories, Minnesota, Politics, US History, World History

Yesterday’s Lives

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Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Reconstructionist Judaism. Judaism as jazz. My White Pine companion at Boot Lake Scientific and Nature Area-Minnesota. Those elms I had to cut down and debark in Andover. Emma’s fallen cottonwood. The Seven Oaks out my study window. The dead Ash Tree where the Morel’s grew. The Ironwood that was so tough to cut. Honeycrisp. McIntosh. Plum. Pear. Cherry. Trees in our Orchard.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Mountain Winds

Kavannah for 2025: Yetziratiut  Creativity

For this January 2nd life: Netzach  Perseverance and grit

One brief shining: A hand on her back, a flinch, you scared me, oh wondering what could have made her flinch since she knew I was there, right behind her, sad that touch took her into flight mode, the snow blew busily across my driveway.

 

We’re almost done with Holiseason. I count January 6th, Epiphany as the end of this wonderful time of year that began on Samain, October 31st. Here’s a connection I’d not made before. January 6th, day of the insurrection, when MAGA stormed the Capitol building carrying weapons and looting like vandals. January 6th, day of the Epiphany, which celebrates the visit of the three Magi bearing gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Sorta different, eh? Now wedded by history.

 

Not sure why, but yesterday’s lives have begun seeping into my present. Not in a regret or shame or guilt way, but as a remembrance of time’s past. Could be the stories I’m writing in the Storyworth application. Maybe not though. At breakfast with Tara I told Ball State movement stories that I rarely tell. Today in my gratefuls Trees I had known in Minnesota kept coming to mind. A few days ago I took the Artemis Honey jar out of the cabinet and went into a combination of grief and joy, of remembering life with Kate and the persistent joy then which brought grief about its loss and about Kate’s death.

Most lives, like mine, are ordinary. Most lives, like mine, are extraordinary. Ordinary because they will sink under the burden of history, little known and less remembered. Extraordinary because only I could live my life which makes it, like yours, wonderful, another full-on, head down, legs moving experiment in what it means to be human.

May as well lean into it, the onrush of old lives. Seems to be what’s happening in my psyche.

 

Just a moment: That truck. Near Cafe du Monde. Jackson Square. ISIS? Geez, guys. Read the room. So yesterday. And the irony, the maybe intended irony, of an ugly Tesla cybertruck blowing up in front of a long red tie guy hotel in Las Vegas. Why can’t China or Russia be the great Satan? Or at least share the honor.

I can already feel the aggrievement wheels turning in cousin Donald’s meanness machine. What if he decides to turn the full weight of the U.S. military against Muslim terrorists? He’s capable of that. And trust me someone in his sphere of malevolence has probably recommended it already. What if?

 

 

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

The Skein of our Lives

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Yule and the 2% crescent of the Yule Moon

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

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Lev

Kavannah: Love (ahavah) and Persistence

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

 

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

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

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

 

Yes. We loved each other.

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

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

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

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

Bees, Dogs, Garden, Great Wheel, Hermitage, Holidays, Jefferson County, Judaism, Kabbalah, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Paganism, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation, Shadow Mountain, Wild Neighbors

Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ

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Yule and the Yule Moon

Christmukkah gratefuls: Many happy Christmases. The complete severance of Christmas from Christ’s Mass. All of the childhood induced fantasies drifting up and out of bedrooms all over the world. All of the Jewish memories of resistance triggered now for 8 days. Holiseason peaking with Christmas, Hanukkah, and Yule all resonating, vibrating with each other. It is indeed the most wonderful time of the year.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Holiseason

Kavannah: AWE Yira יִרְאָה  Awe, reverence, fear (פְּלִיאָה Plia: Wonder, amazement)

One brief shining: I hear the rattling of old Marley’s chains this morning, looking at a world about to devolve into a Christmas Carol with a different ending, where the Scrooge’s of our country like Trump, Bezos, Musk, and Gates join oligarchs from around the world to ignore even the Ghost of Christmas future and forge for themselves heavy chains and money boxes that will haunt them into their unredeemed future.

Here is the image representing “Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ” in the style of socialist realism, emphasizing interconnectedness and harmony.

And even so, let me say a word for yirah. For wonder, amazement, awe, reverence. Paul reminded me of the Lakota phrase, all my relations. I asked chatbotgpt to give it to me in Lakota and what it means in the Lakota worldview.

The answer* made me realize that I’ve spent decades deconstructing theological and philosophical and even scientific ideas, trying to swim down and through them to the core of what matters. Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ matches my current conclusions though I had to get through years of seminary, meditation, horticulture, dogs, loving Kate, to find the final ingredient I needed, the unitary metaphysic of Judaism. The Tree of Life in Kabbalah maps on to this native worldview, too.

Wish it was as easy as reading this years ago and being able to integrate it, but that wouldn’t have worked. I needed to live the struggle. Judaism with Kabbalah contains this wisdom and expresses it without dogma. Makes me feel even more like a member of the tribe. Or, a tribe.

When I talked to the Mule Deer Doe last week, when I spent time with the three Mule Deer Bucks on my first day here on Shadow Mountain ten years ago, when I planted tulips and iris and crocus and garlic and heirloom tomatoes, when I removed honey supers to carry to Kate for our honey harvest, when I sat with a Wolfhound’s head in my lap and another’s in Kate’s, I engaged the embodied learning of Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ.

Yes, mitákuye Oyás’iŋ comes most vividly into our whole life through direct experience. Yet for me the life of the mind is important, too, and I wanted always to be able to clarify, to say in words the truth my body already know.

In a way I sense my life is now complete. I made the swim all the way to the bottom and down there was the Holy Well of the collective unconscious, linking me to all my relations through the world of Judaism.

Reincarnation? Could be. Death a transformation? Without a doubt. Life a continuous amazement and wonder. For sure. May as well celebrate.

BTW: I like this image from Chatbot’s Dalle, too.

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah!

 

*”Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ” reflects the interconnectedness of all beings and entities in the universe. It embodies the belief that everything—humans, animals, plants, stones, water, air, the earth, and the stars—is interrelated and part of a sacred whole. This worldview emphasizes:

  1. Unity and Kinship: All beings are regarded as relatives, forming a vast web of relationships that must be honored and respected.
  2. Reciprocity: The phrase underscores the importance of balance and mutual care among all entities, fostering a sense of responsibility toward the natural world and its cycles.
  3. Sacred Connection: Life is seen as a continuous, sacred circle in which every part has its place and purpose, contributing to the harmony of the whole.
  4. Humility and Gratitude: By acknowledging “All My Relations,” individuals express gratitude for the interconnectedness of life and humility in recognizing their place within it.

In ceremonies and prayers, “Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ” is often used to close statements or invocations, serving as a reminder of this profound interconnectedness and the sacred responsibility it entails.

                                                Herme Harari Israel

GeekWorld, Health, Memories, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Writing

Chrismukkah

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Yule and the Yule Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Great Sol beginning to lighten the sky. My fingers and toes. Nose. Ears. Mouth. Eyes. Neurons. Synapses. Occipital Lobe. Frontal Cortex. Amygdala. Medulla Oblongata. Spinal column. Penis. Anus. Liver. Heart. Cancer. Aorta. All organs and fellow creatures riding this body I insist on calling mine.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Microbiome

Kavannah: Persistence

One brief shining: Hanukkah comes as late this year as it can ever come, this year on Christmas-Chrismukkah-and extending into the New Gregorian year; Hanukkah presents have begun to pile up in my living room just as all the heavy commercial breathing for Christmas loot reaches its peak.

Here is a photorealistic depiction of a cozy living room blending Hanukkah and Christmas with humor.

 

Finally. One I really like. Dalle, chatbotgpt’s image maker often sludges or mashes my prompts. I love this one though. I told chatbot I liked it, too. For some reason I say please and thank you to it and in this case the much abused (by me, to my chagrin) perfect.

For a guy with a curious bent to his life chatbotgpt outclasses Google search with ease. I use it often, and not as much as I intend to. Still figuring out how to best incorporate my new AI overlord into my life. Can Skynet be far behind?

Here’s a surprising use. You can upload medical findings and it will give detailed, thoughtful responses. Recommend questions to ask your doctor. Flesh out (ha) diagnoses. I’ve uploaded my prostate cancer notes, my echocardiogram results and gotten back helpful information.

This was not a random thought but one I took from Hardfork, the New York Times podcast on technology, often focused on AI. They interviewed a doctor who had finished an experiment, published in a JAMA product, that compared AI diagnoses with those of doctors with the same set of facts and using AI. Here’s an NYT article on that experiment, Chatbotgpt defeats Doctors.

Anyhow, it’s here and I’m enjoying messing around with it. Maybe you will or are, too.

 

Just a moment: Was gonna focus on the decade gone by, but couldn’t bring myself to do it. Not yet. Partly because I’ve made various comments about it in the last few months, anticipating this day, partly because just hitting the highlights could be dismal. How to write about it with honesty, with affection, without reliving the angst. Might not be possible. Anyhow. A task that will wait. Not today.

 

Seed-Keepers. My friend Janice has suggested I start a podcast, or a blog. Not sure I want to go that far, but maybe I do. The idea has merit. As does focusing on American history, American literature, especially the American Renaissance. Perhaps the two could come together? Not sure how to proceed from this point, or if I want to. Yet, maybe I need to. Rabbi Tarfon: You are not obliged to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.