• Category Archives Minnesota

  • It still exists

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer and the Greenhouse Moon II (Full)

    Thursday gratefuls: Shadow, the outdoor girl. Artemis ready to receive plantings for a fall garden. Halle. Capybaras. Marmots. Nutria. Mice. Cool morning Breezes. Mezuzah. The ritual for hanging them. Monism. Squirrels. Tarot. The Forest Lovers. Wild Neighbors screeing. Rain incoming. What did the idiot do today?

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Wind and Rain

    Year Kavannah: Wu Wei

    Week Kavannah:  Hearing on the side of merit

    Tarot pick: Forest Lovers, #6 of the major arcana

    One brief shining: This morning I shuffled the Wildwood deck, cut it three times, and asked the deck what I needed to do about Shadow, my mystery girl, and it gave me this card, the Forest Lovers, the male and female energy present on Beltane, the start of the growing season.

     

    Dog journal: A hot night. Mid sixties. Shadow outside yet again. Once again challenging my vision of our relationship. How it should go. At night in particular.

    Last night we were having a hug on the small patio stones outside my back door. We shifted our stance a bit and I stepped on her left rear back paw. She yelped and ran off. No way she was coming in last night. No words, no apologies. I hurt her. She left. Fast.

    Better this morning. I think she knew it was an accident, but her love of freedom and being her own Dog wouldn’t allow an immediate reconciliation. Damn it! Neither of us needed that.

    The Forest Lovers. Drawing this card made me see that as I’ve wondered and as Tom suggested yesterday the wu wei here, the flow of the chi, may entail letting her stay outside at night.

    I need to get an assessment of how much danger Natalie believes Shadow is in at night. From Mountain Lions. I believe the threat is low, but the consequence of being wrong is catastrophic.

    We are yin and yang. I need her feminine energy in my life and she needs my masculine energy. Together we can bring out parts of ourselves that would lay dormant otherwise. The most confounding experience I’ve ever had with a Dog.

     

    Life insights: A family of teachers. Mom. Mary. Mark. Several cousins. I’ve often wondered why I didn’t become a teacher, too. When graduate school slipped out of the picture, I never pursued teaching again.

    Except. As an organizer, it was my job to teach people how to live into their power. When unemployment had reached crisis levels in 1988 Minnesota, I along with others recruited church leaders, union activists, and unemployed people across the work spectrum.

    Once in a room together, with an 18 month old Joseph on my hip, I drew from them their anguish, their anger and frustration. This was the fuel for them to come together against a common foe: an unfair labor market.

    Once we identified those emotions, we moved to  using our various strengths. The moral power of the church. The organizing power of the unions. And the willingness to put it all on the line of the unemployed.

    The Jobs Now Coalition came into existence. Together we convinced the Minnesota Legislature to pass M.E.E.D. The Minnesota Emergency Employment act which funded half of a new hires pay for their first six months.

    It still exists:  Jobs Now Coalition.

     


    Dogs Family Fourth Phase Memories Minnesota Politics

  • The Great Work

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer and the Greenhouse Moon II

    Tuesday gratefuls: Paul. Findlay. Sarah. Max. Claire. Kate. Michael. SPRINT referral. P.T. Halle. Shadow, outside again last night. World Allergy Day today. Morning darkness. Ukraine. Iran. Israel. Palestinians. Artemis. Planting. The fan. The heater. A full Moon in two days.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Clouds

    Year Kavannah: Wu Wei. the watercourse way

    Week Kavannah: Hearing on the side of merit

    One brief shining: That first bitter taste as coffee hits the tongue, the body remembering, starting to unveil itself from the gauze of sleep, knowing from experience though not yet this day, the effect of caffeine on the eyes and ears, the mind as it changes attention from the realm of dreams to the realm of ever becoming apparent reality.

     

    Artemis: Awaiting a couple of garden tools before I plant my midsummer seeds. Probably fussing too much but I want to do it my way.

    Planting seeds during the hottest month of the year is new to me. I’ve discovered a guide to planting a fall garden which might involve cold frames over my outside raised beds. Perhaps new seeds.

    I did order two bulbs of Music Garlic. I have to reserve space for them when I plant because they go in the ground in late September/early October. Love Garlic’s against the grain ways.

    Artemis must live, mostly, according to the rhythms of seasonal change. And I love that. I say mostly though because the greenhouse part of Artemis allows me to push the outer limits of first and last frost.

    Starting seeds early in Spring inside the Greenhouse will allow for transplanting as soon as a particular plant can tolerate Spring temperatures outside. Keeping the greenhouse warm and within a fairly tight temperature regime will give my Tomatoes the full growing season that they need to produce fruit. That means extending the growing season beyond the likely date of the first frost.

    When living in short growing season climates, certain vegetables are unobtainable without a greenhouse. Now I have one and will able, in a very limited manner, to grow things year round.

    This is as far as I want to go with juking soil and seeds. The only unnatural aspect lies in controlling, to the extent possible, temperature. Hence, the heater and the exhaust fan. I could work with humidity, too, but I choose not to. At least right now.

     

    Great Work: Thomas Berry’s little book, The Great Work, identifies our era’s Great Work as developing a sustainable presence for human beings on Mother Earth.

    On a trip to Denver from Minneapolis several years ago, I went north to Cody, Wyoming to visit the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. I finished the Great Work at night in the Holiday Lodge. Berry convinced me that rather than focusing on economic justice work as I had done most of my life that I needed to shift my energy, right then, to the Great Work.

    A climate change conference put on by PSR, Physicians for Social Responsibility, at the University of Iowa, gave me even more reason. That conference inspired Kate and me in our Andover years, growing vegetables, fruit, nuts, and flowers. Taking care of bees.

    Now the clown car that is MAGA and Trumpeting not only ignores climate change, but actively denies it. Right in the time period when drastic and difficult action must happen. Very. Bad. Timing.


    Garden Greenhouse Memories Minnesota

  • 249 Years

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer and the Greenhouse Moon II

    4th of July gratefuls: Cousin Donald. Hyper Masculinity. The Commander’s Cup. Seoah. Murdoch. Songtan. The United (?) States of America. Oklahoma. Indiana. Wisconsin. Minnesota. Colorado. Judy. Raeone. Kate, always. Shadow. Her chewed leash. Work yet to do. Planting. Seat cushion for Ruby. CBE Men’s group. Suffering. Luke. Rebecca. Leo. Tara. Eleanor.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Long time friends

    Year Kavannah: Wu Wei. Find the flow of life’s force, follow it

    Week Kavannah: Savlanut. Patience.

    One brief shining: Walked up the slight rise past the wonderful Ponderosa and the jagged Granite Boulder, pre-schooler rendered chalk drawings on the sidewalk, and pressed the doorbell necessitated by the oldest hatred to join my friends discussing the mussar virtue of self-confidence.

    The 4th of July. On the 249th birthday of this country I sit on Shadow Mountain, in purple Mountain majesty above the fruited plains. Somewhere below amber waves of Grain ripple in a morning Breeze.

    Meanwhile, faraway in the land of broken toys a mean-spirited tyrant and his too loyal minions prepare concentration camps for immigrants who came here seeking a better life: ICE prepares detention blitz with historic $45 billion in funding.

    The Elk Cow and her Calf that crossed the road in front of me Wednesday night do not know this. Their world continues, following a thread of ongoing life rooted millions of years in the past, honed to the ways of Mountain life, to seasonal change, to knowing the ways of predators.

    Nor does Shadow know. As we work out our life together, a struggle and a joy for both of us, she too follows a path begun thousands of years ago when friendly Wolves joined human encampments for shelter, food, and joint protection.

    How I wish I could be a non-human animal, wild or domesticated. I could live according to the ancient rules of nature. Eat. Reproduce. Play. Rest. Die. Not live according to the cruel rules of human society, the unnatural ways of my often thoughtful, loving, compassionate species.

    The Elk do not shun their own, round them up and move them out. Sure, animals may contend over territory for survival, but we humans contend over territory for power and for purposes driven by fear and hatred.

    This fourth of July I join many Americans who no longer find great pride in their country. National Pride in the U.S. Sees Dramatic Decline. Or maybe not quite.

    The Mountains and the Plains. The fertile fields of the Midwest. The great Boreal Forests. The Atlantic Coast and the Pacific Coast. Redwoods. Sequoias. Bristle Cone Pine. Wolves and Grizzlies. Wolverines and Lynx. Squirrels and Marmots. Fishers and Pine Martens. Rabbits and Chipmunks. All the Wild Neighbors. I take great joy and, yes, pride in living among and with all of these. America the Beautiful.

    I also stand with all the humans, all of them, who live here with love, justice, and compassion in their hearts. Who know that the word neighbor has no color, no gender, no religion, no national origin. Who know that the warm and beating heart of this historic experiment in self-governance cannot be stilled by the cold dead hands of those without mercy.


    Colorado Memories Minnesota Mountains

  • Gilbert lies in state

    Posted on by Charles 2 Comments

    Summer and the Greenhouse Moon II

    Shabbat gratefuls: Nathan. His Husky, Dakota. Pollen. Plant sex. Lodgepole yellow. Shadow, loves to see me outside. Back and leg pain. Labrum tear treatment. SPRINT. The Greenhouse, very close. Tara and Eleanor. Luke and Leo. Tom and Max. People and their familiars.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Animal Companions

    Week Kavannah: Wu-Wei. work the with flow of chi

    One brief shining: Taking part in the Sloan-Kettering trial for a better way to help folks over 70 with cancer cope with life, finding most of the material not exactly trite, but obvious at least to me. Disappointed.

     

    Dog journal: Shadow and I have a dance. We make progress. Our relationship is happy and loving. She joyfully runs across the whole back yard to throw herself at me. She rests now beside my chair. When she sleeps inside, she spends most of the night on the bed.

    However. She dodges the leash. And, she has not come in at night for three nights now. Challenges. How to work with her since we are in a good place with each other. Natalie returns next week. Those will be the main two issues to resolve.

    Nathan’s dog Dakota has an intestinal blockage. Multiple thousands of dollars. His old Jack Russel who lived with his Dad died two weeks ago. And, his partner, who runs a Dog sitting business, got bit twice this week after eight years with none.

    Our Animal companions burrow their way into our lives, sneaking into soul connections, heart bonds tight. When they’re in trouble, so are we.

    Thinking of Dakota who had surgery yesterday evening and has an extended recovery ahead of her.

     

    Back and leg pain: Well. Gosh. Now even a short drive puts me in enough pain that on returning home I have to lie down. This in spite of improving strength through p.t. and three times a day dosings with tramadol.

    Around the house my pain has ameliorated. Much better. Not sure what it is about driving. But I don’t like it. Come on, SPRINT.

     

    Just a moment: In other Dog news, Gilbert, state senator Melissa Hortman’s Golden Retriever, lies in state with Melissa and her husband, Mark, at the Minnesota Capitol. I knew Melissa a little bit from Sierra Club work at the Capitol.

    All three were shot by Vance Boelter, a man with strong connections to the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). I’m two thirds of the way through Matthew Taylor’s “The Violent Take It By Force” which investigates the NAR’s role in the January 6th insurrection.

    I plan a series of posts about this book when I finish it, but one noteworthy piece of information from it may help us understand Boelter’s actions.

    Cindy Jacobs, a prophet in the New Apostolic Reformation, added a layer of interpretation to the familiar verse from the Gospel of Matthew cited often by missionary focused Christians: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations…”

    Missionaries inspired by this command have long traveled the Earth seeking converts and building churches. Jacob’s saw another level of interpretation.

    She wants the NAR to make disciples of nations. Not just individuals. This raises the stakes of what the NAR calls spiritual warfare. The metaphors are violent and now, with Jacob’s new approach, apply to whole nations.

    The title of Taylor’s book, in fact, comes from Matthew 11:12: “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.”

     


    Dogs Health Minnesota Politics US History

  • Living, not dying

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane and the Greenhouse Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: Israel. Iran. The Middle East. War and peace. My son. Father’s Day. Korea. Commander. Seoah. Murdoch. The Jangs. Shadow. Our relationship. Dogs. Kate, always Kate. Evergreen Rodeo. Tourists. Maxwell Creek.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: CBE Men’s Group

    Week Kavannah: Week Kavannah: Bitachon. Confidence.  “A feeling of self-assurance arising from one’s appreciation of one’s abilities or qualities.”

    One brief shining: Touched the framing of the greenhouse, sturdy, and began to imagine the Garden beds filled with Lettuce, Radishes, Beets, Peppers, Tomatoes, Marigolds, a favorite salad ingredient, Nasturtiums, and standing inside a heated greenhouse in the Winter, Snow piled up outside and tending to the raised bed with Lettuce, Peppers, Radishes, Beets, Flowers growing in pots.

     

    Life, tactile and warm, Shadow and the greenhouse, living, not dying. Nurturing life other than my own, right here at home. As I’ve been used to doing for the last 40 plus years.

    This is walking upright in the world. For me.

    Yesterday I attended the CBE men’s group. Rabbi Jamie said, “I’m seeing you in person.” I finished a ten session zoom class with him on Wednesday, and I haven’t been to the synagogue in several weeks though I’ve attended Thursday mussar on zoom many of them.

    Driving has become such a literal pain that even a trip to Evergreen makes me uncomfortable. Working on it. SPRINT device in July sometime. A visit to an orthopedist on Wednesday for the tear in my right hip’s labrum.

    Glad I have Halle and her spirited work, her sage advice. One hour then up. A walking meditation. Dog training. Making breakfast, lunch. Getting the trash ready. Yes. Agency.

     

    Father’s Day: Talked to my son yesterday. His Sunday morning. Father’s Day. Being a father in my particular way began with my commitment to feminism. Doing my part for birth control. I had a vasectomy at age twenty-six. The Rice Street Clinic in St. Paul.

    As a result, when the need, and that’s what it was, the need to become a father hit me, quite unexpectedly, at age thirty, I had to have a reversal. Which never woke my little guys back up. Low motility.

    Which left adoption. Raeone and I worked with an adoption agency in Minnesota to find a baby who would die if they were not adopted. At the time, the late seventies, that meant India.

    Women in rural Bengal would find themselves pregnant in their eighth month due to malnutrition. The would go into Kolkata to give birth, then the babies were discarded.

    Unless. International Mission of Hope had arrangements with several of the “hospitals” that took in these women. In those instances the babies were taken to an IMH orphanage and made available for adoption.

    Our first referral, a girl, died due to a salmonella infection that rampaged through the orphanage. It took another year for a new referral, little Jang Deep, four pounds and four ounces, delivered in a wicker basket by blue and white garbed nuns at the International Arrivals section of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

     


    Ancient Brothers Dogs Family Fourth Phase Greenhouse Memories Men Minnesota

  • My Sweet Kate

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc and the Snow Moon

    Tuesday gratefuls: Luke. Leo. Shadow. The flying hearing aid. Cool nights. Great Sol. The hard time in the Mountains. Little food, hidden under Snow. Predators hungry. Hibernators beginning to move around in their slumber. Temperatures careening between Winter and Spring. Snow sliding off the solar panels. Sit. Down.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Finding my hearing aid

    Week Kavannah:  Yirah. Awe.

    One brief shining: Puppy paws and puppy claws plus puppy bouncy energy hooked my hearing aid, sent it in off on a long flight, hunting for it, needing it even more than my phone, where could it be oh god what if it’s gone what if she smelled the ear wax and ate it, lost things get found by a search pattern, ok here, there, wait, underneath the dumbbell? That’s it! Whew.

    Kate. Yes. Always Kate. My ninja weeder. Quilter. Clothes maker. Physician. Traveler. Keen intellect. But most of all, my sweet Kate. The woman of possibility and promise. Music lover. Grandmother. Stepmother, but really second mother to my son. One who would not quit. Dead next month for four years.

    Yet also here. In her quilts. In the Turtles and the small troll with the Norwegian flag. In the bronze Horse statue from Camp Holloway. In the art from our time in Mexico City, Paris, Hawai’i. In her Judaica which I use. Most of all in my memory, nestled in with all I most cherish, never to leave.

    Thirty-five years from our marriage in St. Paul’s Landmark Center. Thirty-five years from our wonderful honeymoon following Spring from Rome to Venice, Paris to London, London to Edinburgh, Edinburgh to Inverness. The first of many journeys we made together.

    Circumnavigating Latin America. Korea and Singapore. Greece. The Greek Islands. Kusadasi and Ephesus. Istanbul. Maui many times. The Big Island and Kauai. NYC. New Orleans. Mexico City. Oaxaca. Merida.

    The journey we made from St. Paul to Andover. The Gardens. The Dogs. The Bees. The Orchard. Then on to Shadow Mountain. The Mule Deer. Black Mountain. Congregation Beth Evergreen. Ruth and Gabe. Sadly, Jon.

    Her own last journey. In and out of emergency rooms, hospital beds, surgery suites. A gradual, but inexorable decline. Yet always working the NYT crossword each morning. Always engaged with the politics of the day. Always engaged with me. Precious time together.

    Now in the four years since she crossed the vale between life and death still vital and present in my heart.


    Feelings Fourth Phase Garden Memories Minnesota Shadow Mountain

  • Call of the Wild

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    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.


    Dogs Dreams Feelings Fourth Phase Memories Minnesota Shadow Mountain Wild Neighbors

  • Trump, Trump, he’s so cruel

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    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.

    Memories Minnesota Politics

  • Yesterday’s Lives

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    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?

     

     


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

  • The Skein of our Lives

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    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.


    Family Feelings Fourth Phase Literature Memories Minnesota