Category Archives: Memories

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Memories, Travel

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Shirley Waste. San Francisco. Waymo. Ruby. Kate, her Creek and Valley. Ruth, the graduate. Gabe. Jen. Sarah. Mia. Mia’s mother. Kep. His yahrzeit last month. A foggy cap on Black Mountain. Blue Sky above. Must be cloudy to the east. Great Sol. Muted. See’s chocolate. Michael Strassfield. His 3rd Jewish catalog. Mary in Melbourne. Guru.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Fog

One brief shining: This morning Fog creeps down Black Mountain obscuring its view from my window, the Lodgepoles have a mysterious, shrouded, yet also illuminated look, the interplay of Great Sol and the dewpoint, which my in-home scientist, Kate, explained to me so I understood.

 

Kate was so quick with math, with scientific knowledge, and medical knowledge of course. She could explain difficult ideas so I could understand them. I miss that part of our relationship. Along with many others. She was also my cooking consultant. My cribbage partner. Traveling companion. Garden planning and maintaining co-worker. Dog lover. Bee work assistant. Grandparent and parent. Most of all, a soulmate whose life meant as much to me as my own.

In this photograph, taken in Songtan, Kate’s continuing her three years of work on a counted cross-stitch I bought for her in Washington, D.C. It says Love is Enough. Hangs in my lower level now. Also had t-shirts made with a print of it for her birthday celebration the year she died. An amazing woman on so many levels.

 

Weird, looking back over the last two or three months. It’s like there was a shroud over my sense of self. I felt overwhelmed by the work for my conversion and bar mitzvah. Enough that I had real anxiety about it. Something I’m free of most of the time these days. I also reached into my bag of oh what a bad boy am I memories and ongoing concerns. Especially health and aging wise. Nope. You’re no longer able to take care of the house. Of feeding yourself. Too lazy. Too weak. Too inattentive. The back. Ouch. I’ll never travel again. That food poisoning. Showed how weak I am. Cancer. PSA blood draw yesterday. Probably mets everywhere. I’m in my tenth year after all.

Gosh. Gee whiz. How am I able to get up in the morning?

Then, much like the Fog slowly burning off Black Mountain as I write, the shroud faded away and I found myself back. Exercising. Confident about my daily life. My Torah portion down. Learning parts of the Morning Service that I can offer as my contribution on June 12th. Reaching back out from myself toward others.

Another thing. My trip now has a golden memory. Gone are the stretches where my back taught me its lessons. Gone is the lingering emotional and physical residue of the food poisoning. Left in their place are time at the Asian Museum. The Redwoods. Japantown. Buying chocolate at See’s. Laughing and eating with Diane. Meals at Sears Fine Food and nights at the Chancellor Hotel.

Why did this change occur? I think it was the trip. I needed a break from the seriousness that had become life. I needed some fun. A lesson in there. I’m pretty sure.

 

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Memories

This time for Ruth

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Sky. Earth. Mountain. Stream. Deer. Dog. Elk. Moose. Bear. Mountain Lion. Fire. River. Lake. North. South. East. West. Life. Rock. Rain. Snow. The elementals. Joy. Sadness. Grief. Mourning. Feelin’ Good. Contemplative. Peaceful. Calm. Anxious. One. Echad. Bees. Honey. Kate. The Journey. Ancientrails. Writing. Living.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Awakening

One brief shining: Each morning I wake up under the Sky, my home resting on Shadow Mountain not far from the headwaters of Maxwell Creek which flows full and strong right now, joining in this new life all those who will pray at least once during the day to whatever Gods may be that Fire will once again withhold itself from the Forest, leaving us to cook breakfast and wash our floors.

 

Age 9

Let me tell you. It was 1965, another century, another millennia. May. The end of high school. For me. 59 years later it’s May. The end of high school. This time for Ruth. Who I held as a baby. Who declared to me at age 3, on a shuttle bus to the Stock Show, that, “I want my mommy!” One whose entire life, like her Uncle’s, my son, I have seen reach this point. This time for Ruth.

This Saturday. At Denver University stadium. The Northfield High School class of 2024. She will be there engowned and under a mortar board as so many of us have done so many times. Taking what may be in some ways the biggest step away of her young life, from public education, from childhood, from home.

Do you remember? The eagerness. The fear. The ancientrail of adult life stretching out before you, unknown for the most part. So wanted. Yet so uncertain. Would I be good enough? Strong enough? Enough? Yearning to break free from the known constraints of childhood. To live into the arms of your Self and its future.

Sure, there’s a path ahead for some of us. College. That factory job. Apprenticeship. But it is a path so far untrodden, so far innocent of our effort, our strength, our resolve.

Ruth’s feet. Her art. Her hopes. Her memories of her dad. Of her struggles. That backpack filled with the detritus of divorce, death, anguish. Heavy on her back. Her path. She goes off to college carrying that backpack, perhaps at times slumped over because of its weight, at other points, hopefully more and more often as time goes on, buoyed up by her ability to have weathered its burden and chosen life.

Her grandma. Her dad. Her dead. Will walk with her. Will receive her diploma, too. Will smile and their hearts will swell with pride. As will her mom’s. Mine. Most important of all, her own.

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Dogs, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Memories, Travel

Oh, the Times We Had

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Beltane and the Moon of Shadow Mountain

Monday gratefuls: Great Sol now lighting us up earlier and earlier. My Lodgepole Companion happy, Needles up, swaying a bit in Mountain Breezes. Inner weather. Internet returns. Learning about halakah, how to live a Jewish life. Learning my Torah portion. Learning how to pronounce parts of the morning service. Ancora imparo. Ichigo-iche.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Exercise

One brief shining: Years ago in the casino on the Amsterdamm, somewhere between New York City and Ft. Lauderdale, I got on a winning streak, blackjack, a game which I played every afternoon five days a week as long as I carried newspapers in Alexandria, thousands of hands, this time in honor of Merton’s brother, Kate’s uncle who had died just before we left on this post-retirement cruise around Latin America, dedicating any winnings to a charity he would have approved, not much, maybe $150, still, and the folks crowded around me, brushed my back, wanted my luck which was more leavened by skill than in most gambling.

 

Oh the times we had. Seeing Europe by Eurail. The Sistine Chapel. Red checkered tablecloths in Vienna. The Botticelli’s in the Uffizi. The Grand Canal from the rail terminal. That first view of the Pacific when entering the lobby of the Mauna Kea. Dinner at Mama’s Fish House. Going twice through the Panama Canal. Harvesting honey. Swatting off bees as we ran the honey harvester. Kate in her bandana, trowel in hand, Ninja Weeder! Quiet evenings with the dogs around the fire pit. Doing our laundry in Paris. Seeing heather and tartan making in Inverness. Cooking together. Holding hands.

We went to Greece and Turkey, Korea and Singapore, most of the way around Latin America, enjoying each other, laughing and having frustrating moments. We worked together as a team, making Andover a spot better than it was when we got there. A place fruitful with Apple Trees, Cherry Trees, Plums, Pears, and Currants. A sweet place with hives of Honeybees working hard. A place filled with fresh Vegetables and beautiful Flowers all season long. A place we nurtured that nurtured us back.

We cared for, played with, and cried over so many Dogs. Over Jon and Joe. Over Mark that one year. And finally we uprooted it all and carried the festival of our life to Shadow Mountain. Where life became merged with Mountains, Wild Neighbors, Judaism, and the grandkids. Yes, she’s been dead for three years. But neither gone nor forgotten.

 

Just a moment: After the food poisoning and for much of last week, I fell into a slump. I mentioned this when I talked about how my psyche can suffer when my body feels bad. After some self therapy, literally, after the nausea fading not even into memory but away, after reengaging the bar mitzvah work yet to be done and prepping for my final conversion session with Rabbi Jamie, my strong self has returned. Able. Caring. Dedicated. At work and at play. Wish I had a way to alert myself when I head off the rails since the self I condemn then is in fact the same self I now applaud.

 

Judaism, Memories, Politics, US History

IMHO

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Beltane and the Moon of Shadow Mountain

Friday gratefuls: Snow, a Winter wonderland. Good sleeping. Alan. The Parkside. Back to it. Groceries. Mail. Life beginning to knit itself back together. Gaza. Israel. Biden. Orange one. Trials of. Japan. Korea. Taiwan. Hong Kong. China. The Philipines. The South China Sea. Vietnam. Cambodia. Thailand. Australia. Micronesia and Polynesia. The Pacific Rim.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Oxygen in the blood

One brief shining: Great Sol illuminates this Snowy world behind a cold white Sky, clouds like opaque linen handkerchiefs, my Lodgepole Companion with Snow and Frost on their branches, they do not look surprised, only resigned, not a usual look for mid-May, but not unknown either, the Mountains have their own weather, always, often surprising, one of the joys of living at altitude.

 

Both Mary and Mark have asked me to comment, compare and contrast the anti-Vietnam protest era against this one. A blue book question for this year’s contemporary Civilization final. I’ll add to it observations about the long decline of what I consider the value of higher education. I believe they’re connected.

Let me begin with some stipulations:

  1. I support Israel as a nation. This is not the same as supporting its recent military decisions. Which I don’t.
  2. I support Palestinian statehood. This is not the same as supporting Hamas. Which I do not.
  3. I have ambivalent feelings about the U.S. support of Israel’s ongoing invasion of Gaza. That is, I appreciate the U.S. helping Israel defend itself against terrorism. But we went along too far.
  4. I absolutely support students on both sides of the divide in having a right to give voice to their anger, their political analysis.
  5. I do not support anti-Semitism of any sort. Like “from the river to the sea.” for example.
  6. I understand the heat of the moment and the narrowing of vision that comes with all in commitment to a cause. It does not absolve any one of the necessity for critical thinking. (One of the values of higher education, btw)

Vietnam was, imho, a simpler issue. We were interfering in a civil war, one that had nothing, nada, to do with the U.S. Except our latter day role as the new France of Indochine. And we played silly buggers with the policy at every step. Including and most consequentially the Gulf of Tonkin resolution.

When we decided to enter the war ourselves, no longer limited to military advisors and weapons sales, we reinstituted the draft. Oh, boy. The Vietnam protests, like the Gaza ones of today, had a crucial flaw. Their flaw was the draft and its exemptions. All of us who protested were covered by a draft exemption as long as we stayed in school. That meant the war and its U.S. victims were going to be poor white and people of color who couldn’t get to college.

The Gaza flaw is a bit more subtle. Championing the rights of Palestinians against the Israeli bombs and tanks and invasionary forces so easily slips over into anti-Semitism. This is not an either/or. It’s not either Israel is put down and Palestinians lifted up or nothing. No. The issue is how to create a Middle East that can be a safe home for all.

That’s another post. Here I’ll just say that when a consensus occurs and forces coalesce the result has the power to shake the foundations of society. But not necessarily in predictable ways.

I feel our protests were more innocent, more focused on culture change, especially as they went on. Hippies and radicals. Feminists. Labor unionists. Religionists. We wanted to stop the US war machine, not the US itself. Though a few of us may have harbored ambitions there, too. I get the sense that the Gaza folks want to eliminate Israel. That’s when the whole effort crashes over into rank anti-Semitism. And is a major difference from the 60’s.

More to say, but enough for  now.

Memories, Minnesota, Politics, Travel

Arriving

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Spring and the Moon of Liberation

Sunday gratefuls: Steve, the Uber driver. The Chancellor. Powell Street. Cable cars. The Moon of Liberation standing over the Hyatt Regency. Amtrak. My back and its pains. A good night’s sleep. Diane. Her town. Mission and Fremont. Traveling. Vacating. Seeing the U.S. West, then the Pacific.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Uber

One brief shining: Left Roomette #21 behind pushing my bag, down the stairs, off the train, pushing bag again, show ticket to shuttle bus driver, board the bus, cross the bridge from Oakland to San Francisco with the Bay rippling underneath us, Alcatraz brooding off to my right, get out at Mission and Fremont, call an Uber, get in and ride to the Chancellor on Union Square.

 

No Wifi on train so my first trip posts will be above this one. Wrote them on Scribener and will import them when its update gets finished. Write now I’m in room 1304 of the Chancellor, a boutique hotel on Union Square. Writing now, too.

The back is an issue, but not a deal breaker for travel. Slower and with more management of pain. Sorta like home.

Steve, my Uber driver, was from Phoenix, now married to a S.F. gal. He drove a white Tesla and showed up within a minute of my booking. A critical move for my back. In times past I would have preferred to walk the 19 minutes to the hotel; now I know that level of effort would stress my hip and set me back.

My original flaneur idea, when the back flared for the first time in Korea, is the right one. Go slow and easy. Keep up the exercise. Do pain management.

That’s ok. The buzz of the new and the different still feeds my soul.

 

Yesterday as the train made its slow, delayed approach through poor suburbs, boulevards and underpasses filled with the makeshift homes of the unhomed, I got that sense of unease that always accompanies evidence of our failed political economics.

Then we came to Grizzly Island Wildlife Area. Egrets and Blue Heron. The Marsh. A Fox loping along for an evening meal. Wild Neighbors for San Francisco and its burbs. Calm returned to my soul. Not because there were no trailer parks, burned out cars, Target shopping carts, but because this felt like my place, a home away from home. Here I knew what to notice, how to exist.

In the so sad introduction to a major world metropolis my heart clogged up, the scenes of poverty’s devastation boiling my blood. Agitating me. Wanting to make me scream. So much so that I looked up M.I.C.A.H., the Metropolitan Interfaith Coalition for Affordable House. Yes, still there, almost 40 years now. And the Minnesota Council of Non-Profits. Fancy website. Couldn’t find Jobs Now though it may have morphed into something else. It was there the last time I wondered if what I’d done really mattered.

Yes, economic injustice and its tragedies are and will be with us. But so will those whose lives are spent trying to change them and if change can’t happen right now, ameliorate their effects.

Commentary on Religion, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Holidays, Judaism, Memories, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation

A Great Wheel look at Easter

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Spring and the Purim Moon

Friday gratefuls: That white Water Buffalo in Bangkok. The museums of San Francisco. Amtrak. Ruth and Gabe. Mussar. Ginny and Janice. A week of meals with friends. Upcoming. Warmer weather. Still plenty of Snow on Shadow Mountain. Korea. Birth rates. Climate change. Dawn. Bechira and Kehillah. Jesus. Good Friday. Easter. Pesach.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Resurrection

One brief shining: Mussar yesterday with Ruth on my left and Gabe on my right both participating, Gabe read, Ruth said you had to choose among your expectations of yourself and the expectations of others, not let either one have authority over the other, out of the mouths of teenagers.

 

Brother Mark asked if I had any reflections on Good Friday.* Made me wonder what was good about it. See below. Not sure why I didn’t know that already, but I didn’t. The crucifixion. No thoughts on the crucifixion make sense without consideration of the resurrection. Related by blood.

Let me put this out there, then go on. Good Friday and the New Testament account of it has led to most of the anti-semitism experienced in history. Jews in these accounts, the High Priest in particular, not only participated in the crucifixion but caused it. The crowds want Barabbas. Jewish authorities ask Pilate to crucify Jesus for blasphemy. These stories have shaken Jewish communities throughout Europe and the West. Deicides. God killers. Unfortunately the history of Jews in the West has taken place in parallel with the history of Christianity, so Jews have always been considered over against the Christian story. Wonder what the cultural reception of Jews could have been without this.

OK. Bracketing those thoughts. It’s a profound and important religious mythology, the story of the dying and rising God. Osiris. Inanna. Dionysus. Jesus. The vegetative cycle writ in mythological tales. The death of the fallow time. The rising to new life of Spring. The growing season and its devolution toward harvest and the next fallow time.

In other words all those good Friday services with the sorrow, the black cloth over the crosses, the recollection of the crucifixion itself, can be read as a ritual reenactment of plant death as winter approaches. Then, like Persephone Jesus descends into the fallow time, into death, into the soil, only to have a glorious waking up morning in late March or early April just as Spring arrives in the temperate latitudes.

I find it interesting to see these holy days for Christians through this lens. Why? Because it underscores the powerful hold the cycle of vegetative life has on both our bodily life and on our mythic imagination. This is “real” religion, of course, not the pagan Great Wheel. Right? But what if it is the same story told with different actors?

 

 

*’Good Friday’ comes from the sense ‘pious, holy’ of the word “good”.[10] Less common examples of expressions based on this obsolete sense of “good” include “the good book” for the Bible, “good tide” for “Christmas”… wiki

Commentary on Religion, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Memories, US History

Makes me sad

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Spring and the Purim Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Vince and his helpers. Jill the needler. Acupuncture. Safeway and pickup. Furball Cleaning. Mailing taxes. The Equinox. Spring. A good Winter. Ruby in the deep Snow. The occasional frozen dinner. TV. Young Sheldon. True Detective with Jodie Foster. Deadly Tropics. Bull. The Furies. Alexandria First Methodist. Hometown memories.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The calm after the Storm

One brief shining: Take off all my clothes, get up on the table with the clean sheet, stick my face in the round bit built for it, wait for Jill, soon needles go in on my feet, along my legs, clustered on the right side of my back, this time some of them connected to an electrical device that sends current into my body, twitching and tapping my muscles greet it.

 

 

The church I grew up in. Sold as a venue for events and making art and whatever else occurs to the new owners. Makes me sad I wrote to Mary and Mark. Sister and brother. Don’t expect the video will interest too many of you, but the very first part does show the church as it was before this woman and her husband bought it. The sanctuary is still mostly intact. My family sat in the third pew about halfway in under the large stained glass window of Jesus at Gethsemane.

Another mid-America tale this one not so much the rust belt apres the foreign cars story as an older one of faith and sexuality gone toxic. Used to be the big church in town. The woman in the video says it has 24,000 square feet. I believe it. Alexandria First Methodist had the largest church building in town and probably the largest membership while I was growing up in the 50’s and 60’s.

It survived Rev. Clayton Steele’s oh so stereotypical fleeing to California with the organist or choir director. It survived the tumult of the late 1960’s and early 70’s. But it did not survive the question of ordaining queer folk. Ironically one of the key supporters of LBGTQ+ ordination was the son of Clayton Steele, a local dentist. The entire Methodist church, once the biggest denomination in the U.S., fractured, too. So not odd that Alexandria’s franchise went as well.

As a result, the church was on the market.

I had Boy Scouts, Sunday School, Sunday worship in this building for the years I lived in Alexandria. Which were all but the one and a half I lived in Oklahoma as an infant. Through 1965. When I left for college. My mother had her stroke in that building. While helping serve a funeral dinner. Confirmation. Communion. Tenebrae services. Christmas Eve and Easter. Regular, weekly attendance. As significant a part of life as school.

Once a month we had a church supper in the basement. To this day I remember Mrs. Stafford’s grapes. Green grapes coated first, I think, with egg white then rolled in sugar. Of course, fried chicken and mashed potatoes and peas. Jello, too, with a variety of foodstuffs embedded. My least favorite? Olives.

Now that I see this video I understand for the first time desacrilizing a church building. The building is not the church. No, it’s the people. However. Over time, like the Velveteen Rabbit, if enough people love a building, worship and pray in it, experience weddings and funerals there. the building becomes real, too. And when discarded, as Alexandria First now is, its reality continues adhering to that pew, those lights, those night time immersions in darkness during the Tenebrae services.

Protestants, with the exception of the Episcopalians, don’t desacrilize, but I wish they did. It would make this easier on my heart.

 

 

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Memories

Coulda. Shoulda.

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Imbolc and the Purim Moon

Monday gratefuls: Clogged sinuses. MST darkness. The Night Sky. Orion. Aquarius. Betelgeuse, ready to go Nova. James Webb. SpaceX. Odysseus, tilting on the Moon. That day in July when Neil Armstrong stepped off the Moon lander. JPL. Caltech. MIT. Engineering. Putting science to work. Tom. Bill. Helen. Veronica. Arjean. Tara. Hebrew.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Old movies on the Criterion Channel

One brief shining: Put on my old guy velcro Snow boots, gathered up one of my Leki hiking poles, and set off on a Snowy adventure, would I make it all the way to the garage, lifting my feet, then setting them down in Snow to my waist, up down up down until I reached the door, yes, made it!

 

I will not be able to go to the garage for a while through the sewing room door. I went out to it yesterday to retrieve the garage door opener so I can get in and out through the sliding garage doors. Shouldn’t be too long since we have 50’s in the forecast this week.

Feeling a bit diminished by not being able to handle the Snow myself. That silly guy thing. I wouldn’t have been able to do it even if the snowblower worked. Heavy, wet spring snows clog it up. Not to mention my SOB issues. No, not that. Shortness of Breath=SOB. Besides, I already have a snow plow guy. So why?

Oh, you know. What I could do. What I used to be able to do. I used to be able to run. I used to be able to power all the work in my garden with my legs and my upper body. I used to be able to handle a chain saw. Move slash. Buck trunks. I was a guy in the still strong days. So why not now? I don’t want to be only a mind on two legs. My self critical self wrecker says, nah. You coulda. Shoulda.

Guess this is one with the questions I posed the last week or so. I need to flip the kayak. Get back to the oxygen in my life as it is. Right now. Here and now. A life filled with friends, ideas, wild neighbors, a willingness to go down that unexpected path all the way.

Yes. Because. That guy, that strong younger guy, is my past. I’m not weak, not since I got back to resistance work, but I’m no longer that guy physically. That guy is the past. This guy with the yarmulke, reading the parsha, observing Shabbat, he’s my present. This guy who sees the yearling Does, feels the companionable presence of the Lodgepole out my study window, loves Great Sol torching the top of Black Mountain each morning. He’s my present.

This guy, the one who plows through books about politics, about Jewish holidays, about the Rights of Nature, about Animal Wisdom. He’s my present. And this particular guy is a through line from the young one who like the deceased author David Wallace might get in a taxi and say, “To the library. And step on it!”

Memories, Minnesota, Politics, Weather +Climate

Big Storms

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Imbolc and the Purim Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Snow. A lot. More on the way. The generator. Good sleeping. Mountain late winter. The cold. Still there. Tired. Less sneezy. Mostly fatigued. Reading. New Joe Pickett novel. Jewish holidays. Come and Get It by Kiley Reid. Politics. So consequential, so out of whack. My storm larder. Bean soup. Pork steaks. Plenty of food for body and soul.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: A Winter Storm

One brief shining: Sure enough, around noon Snow started off and on, tailing off around three, coming back an hour later in a steady, straight down imitation of a good drenching Rain, continuing all night with today predicted to add 9-13 inches and tonight another 6-10 both on top of the overnight last night total perhaps putting us past even the predicted three feet.

Nota bene: At 7:30 am I took a yardstick out to my deck. I measured 21 inches of Snow.

 

Around 3 am I awoke to jazz and my medical guardian announcing that it was “charging”, something it does each time I put it in its charging cradle at night. The rumble of the generator going off told me what had happened. Power had gone out, perhaps twice, and when it shifted this time back to the grid the guardian figured it had just been plugged in and the cd player with a Dave Brubeck disc in it somehow turned on. Late Winter/early Spring Snow storms with their wet, heavy snow often take out Mountain electrical lines. Not unexpected.

Even so, the cool sound of Brubeck’s jazz confused me as did the mechanical voice repeating, “charging.” It took me a minute to orient myself to the storm and the generator.

We’ve been prepped for this storm since last weekend. A big one. At first, maybe 2 feet of Snow! Then, no, more like 3. Giving what I’ve seen so far and what’s predicted we might exceed that. So many of the Snow forecasts this season have busted or been underwhelming. Not this one. We’ll remember where we were on March 14th in 2024.

Big Snow Storms are like irregular holidays. Anticipated with either eagerness or dread. Often preceded by trips to the grocery store. A reason to stay home from work or school. The bigger they are, the more memorable. That Halloween blizzard in 1991. Minnesota. If you were in the state then, you remember that one. Over 2 feet of snow. The arc of this storm is far from over so just how big it will be is still unknown. But it seems well on its way to the history books.

 

Just a moment: Well, my plea for Joe Biden to step aside fell on deaf ears. Mine included. He cinched the Democratic nomination. As has 45. We’re getting our dream matchup for the election that may determine the fate of democracy in the U.S. That dream, BTW, is, yes, a nightmare. A repeat of 2020. And the third time 45 has been on the ballot. Three times too many if you ask me.

My nudge to the President did come before his State of the Union speech. He caught some air with that. Still not sure he’s the right one to carry us past the golden haired boy. But I gotta hope so.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Humanities, Memories

No Brass Ring

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Imbolc and the Purim Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Cold already receding. Tired. Hebrew homework. This new day. This new life. Resurrection from 1/60th of death. Ramadan. Mary and Mark both in Muslim countries, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia. Reading the Quran. Fasting from sunup to sundown. Breaking the fast at the mosque. The Soul. You. You as only you. Taxes today.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Taxes

One brief shining: The tax preparer resides in its envelope, questions and boxes to fill in with numbers from the various reports: Vanguard, Presbyterian Pension, Social Security, the oil well proceeds, mortgage at Wells Fargo, you know the paths and the pencil pushing: I approve of taxes, of sharing responsibility for my county, my state, and my nation.

 

Sometimes the heart, or better, the lev wants to splash itself on the path of my life, say somethings happening here, but it’s not exactly clear. Don’t mind the fog. Don’t mind the man with the sign over there. Listen to that wisp of she’s not afraid of sadness. The jiggle of Jeff Koons’ work on Odysseus. The casual bump of Joe Pickett’s latest well written adventure. Those moments when encounters speak to the pilgrim soul in me, the one that sets out on paths with no particular goal, no particular rationale. Except something lightly felt that struck deep anyhow.

These moments have changed my course many times. Over decades. There was that ill-fated one where I saw the Manhattan skyline in a movie and decided I had to move there. 1968. Draft eligible. Did it anyhow. Lasted three months when no one would hire me. I might get called up. Or a bit later that time when I took care of a young girl named Judy, she was sick. And I married her later on an Indian Mound to the sound of the Cream’s “I’m so Glad!”

Even ending up studying Anthropology and Philosophy. Because they piqued my interest. The common thread to these moments is no goal, no real agenda, acting on impulse yet seeing things through at the same time. That feeling when I turned 32 that I had to have a child. Be a dad. Wowzer. That was a life changer.

Going to seminary to escape the rag cutting floor at Fox River Paper. Ending up in the ministry. Gosh.

Meeting Kate. Writing novels. Earning an AA degree in horticulture. Keeping Bees. The whole Andover experience over twenty years.

Ira Progoff workshops. Listening to my lev, not in terms of what I’d like to accomplish but in terms of what I needed to do next. That one in Tucson, Arizona that opened me up. Followed by a visit to Colorado on the way back to Andover. Ruth running from the surprise of me at the door. Oh. We need to move to Colorado. On the Winter Solstice of that year we did.

Living in the Mountains. Tuning into the Jewish signal from the heart of the universe. The Wild Neighbors. The Mountains ever changing nature. Friends. Never a real goal for my life. Following the chi as it flowed. At least I like to think that’s what I’ve done.

This has been my life. No grand plan. No brass ring. Odd I never noticed this until recently.