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A Pagan’s Way

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Spring and the Corona Luna

Wednesday gratefuls: Ed Smith. His hands. Kate’s new feeding tube. Getting there on the leaks. Slowly. Glacially. But, getting there. Seoah’s concern, love for Kate. Her helpfulness. Rigel and Kep, always. Masks. Gloves. Those who hope the coronavirus will lead us to rethink society. Among them me. Mountain Waste Removal. Mt. Evan’s Home Health Care. The snow pack above average.

The spirit of 2019. An urgent doctor visit yesterday. The balloon that holds Kate’s feeding tube in place collapsed. Back to the surgeon. He put in a new, slightly larger tube and said anytime Kate had trouble to come see him. This was our first urgent visit since Bloody January though it was the norm in 2019. The gaps between visits are longer. May they continue and lengthen.

Since we went to a medical building I put on mask and gloves. Kate had a mask. These were the smaller masks, but Seoah’s sister’s husband found 50 NS95 masks for us. Just because. Her sister mailed 8 of them to us yesterday. The Korean government allows 8 a month to be sent out and then only to family. She’ll keep sending them as long as the crisis and her supply continue.

Can you feel the irony here? The world hegemon is getting medical supplies from South Korea. It’s a sixth of our size. And, can you feel the love? Family. Across oceans and cultures.

Hard to be sure but I think the newly administered Lupron, my third, has weakened me some. I had a tough time on my workout Monday. I had a two hour nap yesterday, then slept an hour or so long last night. We’ll see about my workout today. The hotflashs have been somewhat more frequent. Life in the chemo lane.

Been reading the book Braiding Sweetgrass. It’s the first book in the Rocky Mountain Land Library’s book club. Robin Wall Kimmerer is the author, a botanist and a member of the Potawatomi nation. Kate Strickland worked, I believe as an intern, at Milkweed Editions when they were publishing this book and got to know Ms. Kimmerer well. It’s a compilation of short think pieces, not quite essays, closer to memoir.

In the human narrative class with Rabbi Jamie we’re reading the last section of Art Green’s book, Israel. In it Green talks about the relationship between a people and the land. In wondering what I could learn from this chapter, I decided I would focus on how a people, all people, relate to the land.

That brought to mind both the Rocky Mountain Land Library and its unusual mission and my episodic work on reimagining, reconstructing faith. Increasingly this reenvisioning has come to focus on how to articulate my pagan way, not as the way, but as a way, one that might guide more folks back to the literal source all life, the sacred marriage between the sun and mother earth. And, in so doing, spur them protect our mother, or, more accurately, protect a space for humankind here.

I decided to read the four books in the Land Library Book club over the time of the Israel kabbalah class, which runs into June. I added a couple of other books I have, the Lunar Tao and Becoming Native to This Place.

A chapter in an often imagined book about my pagan way will be my presentation for the class. It’s tentatively titled, Becoming Native to This Place. Something to do while the world sinks into itself.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, Health, Judaism, Memories, Politics, Third Phase, US History, World History

A Jew

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Spring and the Passover Full Moon (Corona Luna)

Friday gratefuls: For the lupron injection I’m about to receive today, I thank you. For an appointment with Dr. Eigner today, rather than April 17. For a memorable passover with Seoah, Kate, and 53 virtual guests. For Rabbi Jamie, whose soul shines. For the passover meal from Zaidy’s Deli in Denver. For that time, mythic and therefore real, when Hebrew slaves left bondage, crossed the Red Sea, and began 40 years of wandering in the desert.

If you find the passover the central story in your life, then you’re a Jew. Art Green. I’m a Jew. May as well claim it if this is the criteria.

Throughout my life liberation from oppression has been core to what I’ve done. Whether that oppression was modest as in the case of Juniors at Alexandria High School who couldn’t go to prom unless invited (we created a junior prom) or deep and pervasive in the case of women, the poor, sexual preference outliers, my instinct is to oppose it and if possible end it. Lots of Red Seas to cross.

Climate change is different, you say. Who’s oppressed by climate change? Living things, especially humans. And, as with the coronavirus, the catastrophe will fall often and heaviest on those too poor to adapt and with too little power to affect change.

This opposition of mine to oppression seems instinctual. Doesn’t seem to have an origin story in my psyche. I was neither abused nor oppressed as a child. I grew up with white privilege, white male privilege as my inheritance. The passover story, a universal one like Easter, puts liberation at the center of life. Until all are free, none are fully free.

Today I am a Jew, a pagan whose identity, whose soul, shares much with the tribes of Israel, their collective story and journey. Enough that I’ve become part of them, though not converted. I’m a close friend of the tribe, maybe, by Art Green’s definition, an actual member.

On a related but different topic, inspired again by Art Green, it occurred to me how Judaism and Christianity are complementary, very much so. Judaism differs, he says, from its close relatives Christianity and Islam in its communitarian essence. The message of god, of the one, listened to through Jewish tradition, is one which creates a people, a community. This is true at CBE and is a strength of Judaism invisible to me until I became part of this community.

Christianity and Islam, he says, deliver their message to the individual. God’s love heard through those traditions focuses on healing the soul.

Judaism puts the inflection on community, on liberation, while Christianity and Islam put the inflection mark on the soul; its need for wholeness, for realizing the one is that of which each of us is a part, while, paradoxically, being wholly within each one of us. These two inflections are not a reason for differentiation, but for mutuality. The world needs to know how to live in just communities; individuals need to find their way back to the one, to realize the oneness within them. These are not differences, they are parts of a whole.

I’m on a third path, but I’m coming slowly to recognize how it intersects with other paths.

Commentary on Religion, Commentary on the news, Coronavirus, Judaism, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Weather +Climate, World History

We’ll See

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Spring and the Corona Luna

Monday gratefuls: Ruby, the red Rav4. Filled up. Wearing a masque in public. This time an obvious one. The clerk at the liquor store. The clerk at the Safeway. The guy from the Pho place, bringing our order outside. I gave you some extra! A trip to Evergreen with Seoah and Kate. Sunday zoom. Woolly friends, old friends. Deep story.

If god lived on earth, all his windows would be broken. Yiddish saying.

You can see why. Pogroms in Russia. The holocaust. Virulent anti-semitism throughout European history. But not just Jews. The plague. Earthquakes. Wild fire. Volcanoes erupting. Hurricanes and tornadoes. Pedophiles even among God’s supposed ambassadors. Wealth and status inequalities all over the globe. Racism and sexism.

This is the old, old problem of theodicy. If god is omnipotent, omniscient, how can he (yes, this is the he-god.) let bad things happen? Good question, as it turns out. Some of the most convoluted theological thinking of many bright theologians have never found a satisfactory answer. IMO that’s because there is no satisfactory answer.

Does this mean that god is an intentional doofus when it comes to ruling the universe? No, it simply means that those of us who invented him and his ways, all of the hims and hers of the religious over history, have projected ourselves or our monarchs onto the sky. Turns out we’d be no good if we were omniscient or omnipotent. That’s a relief, at least to me.

There is a more radical approach to the conundrum, one that at first makes no sense. Monism. The universe is one. You can call the one god, if you want. Or, you can call it the one. The implication of monism for the question of theodicy is, well, hard to grasp.

Let’s say you choose to call the one, god. That is, the unique entity that is all stuff together is god. Some do this. Spinoza, for example. Art Green for another. There are flavors to this monism idea, but right now we’ll let those be. If the one is god, then all things, bad and good, are of the one. Volcanoes. Plagues. Hurricanes. Tsunamis. Murders. Rapists. The coronavirus. as well as, of course, love, justice, compassion, warriors, mothers, fathers, nurses and doctors.

I know. It seems like a violation of common sense. How do we get away with attributing the worst and the best to this god, this one? Short answer: we have no choice. This is the god who’s windows would all be broken, isn’t it? I mean, what sorta god…?

We start by recognizing that all of our judgments are just that, our judgments. It’s the human mind that separates events and people and their actions into good and bad. I’m not suggesting that there is no difference between good and bad. I’m just identifying them as artifacts of our minds trying to assess our world in terms of helpful and unhelpful.

Monism requires us to pause a moment and see that goods can become bad and bad things can have good results. Monism forces us to look beyond our blinkered vision, to turn around as we see, to take in the full 360 degree view.

Here’s an ancient parable, told in many cultures, that illustrates this point:

“Once upon a time, there was a farmer in the central region of China. He didn’t have a lot of money and, instead of a tractor, he used an old horse to plow his field.

One afternoon, while working in the field, the horse dropped dead. Everyone in the village said, “Oh, what a horrible thing to happen.” The farmer said simply, “We’ll see.” He was so at peace and so calm, that everyone in the village got together and, admiring his attitude, gave him a new horse as a gift.

Everyone’s reaction now was, “What a lucky man.” And the farmer said, “We’ll see.”

A couple days later, the new horse jumped a fence and ran away. Everyone in the village shook their heads and said, “What a poor fellow!”

The farmer smiled and said, “We’ll see.”

Eventually, the horse found his way home, and everyone again said, “What a fortunate man.”

The farmer said, “We’ll see.”

Later in the year, the farmer’s young boy went out riding on the horse and fell and broke his leg. Everyone in the village said, “What a shame for the poor boy.”

The farmer said, “We’ll see.”

Two days later, the army came into the village to draft new recruits. When they saw that the farmer’s son had a broken leg, they decided not to recruit him.

Everyone said, “What a fortunate young man.”

The farmer smiled again – and said “We’ll see.”

Moral of the story: There’s no use in overreacting to the events and circumstances of our everyday lives. Many times what looks like a setback, may actually be a gift in disguise. And when our hearts are in the right place, all events and circumstances are gifts that we can learn valuable lessons from.

As Fra Giovanni once said:

“Everything we call a trial, a sorrow, or a duty, believe me… the gift is there and the wonder of an overshadowing presence.””

This is a monistic perspective. And, in its vein, I’d ask you to take the rock out of your hand for a moment, quite breaking god’s windows over the coronavirus, and say to yourself, “We’ll see.”

Commentary on the news, Great Wheel, Health, Politics, US History, World History

AC/DC

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Spring and the Leap Year Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Snow pellets hitting me as I walked out for the newspaper. Blue gray sky as the sun rises behind clouds. Corned beef and cabbage. The equinox, today. Brother Mark, learning new skills. Seoah taking Murdoch for a walk. Kate, a strong woman as friend Debra said. Our world, changing.

First. Welcome Spring! Welcome. We have never needed your message of renewal, growth, emergence more. Even after fallow times, even after the cold and the dark of winter, even after the longest night, you come. You come in the midst of what will be a long darkness, perhaps a long fallow time. You mean, you are, the direct, the tactile hand of mother nature reaching out to each one of us sheltered at home. You will bring us flowers and green leaves and birds singing and fields being planted. Thank you.

More crucial. You will demonstrate for the us the cycle of life. Again. Still. Always. We are uncertain. We don’t know what this afternoon will bring. Tomorrow? Even murkier. But we do know that light follows the dark. That even the longest of winters give way to the gentle spring. So it will be with this virus.

Renewal can take many forms, however, and what the renewal after the coronavirus will look like may surprise us all. Here are two articles that I found useful. Our New Historical Divide B.C. and A.C. by Thomas Friedman in the NYT, and, We’re Not Going Back to Normal by Gordon Lichfield of MIT’s Technology Review.

Friedman, of the St. Louis Park Friedmans, places some hope in advanced biotechnology, but admits it’s not yet ready for a rapid enough response to make a big difference. He quotes a friend, University of Maryland professor, Michele Gelfand on the difference between tight and loose cultures. Tight cultures, with many rules and punishments already in place, think Singapore, Austria, Korea, China, can lock in a broad response quickly and expect that it will be heeded. (She does not mention the bureaucratic paralysis of China.) No parties in the Asian equivalent of Bourbon Street. Loose cultures like the U.S., Italy, Brazil have a tougher time putting responses together and a tougher time enforcing them. She and Friedman believe our political culture may have to change.

Lichfield is clearer on the dilemma. Even though mitigation can help, it’s severe restrictions on movement that will do the most. There are problems. Severe measures are hard to enforce and get harder over time. ICU admissions, a rough metric, can give us a sense of the effectiveness of mitigation or restriction. As admissions trend downward, some loosening of the restrictions can happen. But. New cases will emerge and the spike in hospital admissions will start up again. Until it starts to go down again thanks to reimposed restrictions. According to the study he cites from London’s Imperial College response team, this will happen again and again in waves for 18 months!

It is both the length of time to resolve this, as much as 18 months, and the economic shocks inevitable over that time (and already red light flashing visible now) that will forge a new way of being together. Will you choose to help guide that new world order or resist it?

Health, Politics, US History, World History

Why are we so vulnerable?

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“When this current pandemic subsides, and we can catch our breath, we need to ask: Why are we so vulnerable?’’ said Michael T. Osterholm, who is director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. wapo

Osterholm was the state epidemiologist in Minnesota for a long time, now he’s quoted often on the pandemic. He’s a trustworthy guide in this time of frustration and mild panic. We must answer his question since one facet of climate change involves new disease vectors and new diseases.



Beyond the Boundaries, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Great Work, Judaism, Memories, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., World History

Ancientrails

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Imbolc and the Leap Year Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Alan, recovering from pneumonia. Brenton and Corrine who have both contacted us through DogsonDeployment. We see Corrine on Thursday in Boulder. The gentle aches in my body, the sleeping in this morning that mean I had a good workout yesterday. The steer that gave its life for our ribeyes. Rocky Mountain Land Library.

Art Green’s book has done what he intended. I’m looking backwards, now even to Christianity, for a religious language that can express the deep moments, open up the inner world of the one. Hear oh, Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Over the next months, years I imagine this work will become easier.

Paganism and Christianity have many crossover points. Why? Because Christianity absorbed and integrated many pagan religious ideas. I’m sure you know about the Christmas tree (eternal life to Teutonic auld faith), the Easter bunny and Easter eggs (signs of fertility, again Teutonic). You might know about Lammas, the feast of loaves, which follows the Celtic Lughnasa, a first fruits harvest festival. Or, All Saint’s Day which recapitulates the Celtic Samain, the end of summer, and the time when the veil between the worlds thins. The Saturnalia, a Roman festival, “…was celebrated with a sacrifice at the Temple of Saturn, in the Roman Forum, and a public banquet, followed by private gift-giving, continual partying…” wiki. It ended on December 23rd and became the precursor of Christmas.

Ancientrails of the human condition all: the mystery of life and death, the wonder of pregnancy and birth, of seeds quickening, the relief at the first harvest, the longing for loved ones who have died, the need to brave the darkening over mid-winter with light and friends and food and gifts. We die. We make love and we plant. We hope for food sufficient to cover the long fallow time. We grieve, mourn, yearn. We wonder whether spring will ever come, whether the sun will return this time.

Green says each religion is a language, a language that speaks in the varied tongues of the one. Yes. I agree with him, though I can’t do what he did, that is, remain in the religious culture of his childhood. What I can do, though, is go back to Christianity’s pathways, its way of speaking the language of oneness, as I did yesterday with Jesus at the Mount of Olives and his resurrection. What I can do is stay in what I call paganism, perhaps a form of panentheism, and speak from within it about these ancient human trails. I say perhaps a form of panentheism because I do not share with Green the easy use/reuse of the God word. That word carries, again for me, way too much baggage: violent, misogynist, patriarchal, xenophobic. Maybe a panenpneuma? Panenpan? Panenohr? We’ll talk about these options tomorrow.

Family, Health, Politics, Third Phase, US History, World History

Changing World

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Imbolc and the waning sliver Shadow Mountain Moon

Saturday gratefuls: Kate’s stitches out. Her toughness. Seoah cleaning. Rigel, grieving. Chinooks (snow eater winds). Gabe, who comes at 10. Jon and Ruth skiing at A-basin today. My Aeron chair. The split key-board I use. This Dell computer. The engineers and laborers who designed and built all three. The pretzel factory. Lodgepole evolution that allows them to withstand heavy snow and high winds.

Took Kate in for hand therapy. It’s a burn and reconstruction clinic, directed by Benson Pulikkottil. I thought at first he might be Finnish, given the last name. When I saw his burnt umber skin, however, I was pretty sure that was a wrong guess. Looked him up. Kerala. A state in India with 100% literacy.

He looked at Kate’s fingers, said they were doing well. Take the stitches out. A nurse came in and removed them. Kate winced and teared up. Unusual. She’s stoic, so the pain must have been exquisite. Made me wince, too.

Quieter here on Shadow Mountain. A good thing, but also strange. Both of us have the sense that we have too few dogs. Two. Just not enough. Unsure whether we’ll do anything about that, though a puppy or two would enliven the house.

Rigel has been subdued since Gertie died. When we’re not around, she’s also regressed to grabbing things off the table and moving them to her spot near the fire place. Kep’s tail is down more than up. The pack has changed and they don’t know why. Murdoch disappeared, too. Dogs don’t like change.

Speaking of change. The Munich security conference, a gathering of world diplomats had as its theme, Westlessness. A play, I suppose, on restlessness since organizers meant attendees to consider a world without the West as a dominant force. China’s rise spurred the conversation though Trump’s abdication of global leadership made it bite. The concern lies in diffuse centers of influence both in Asia and in the Middle East. The article points to Russia, Iran, and Turkey as core figures in Middle East politics now.

Wow. If dispersed centers of power become the norm, the post-WWII world will vanish like human space travel did. A wondrous achievement winking out. Not sure how I feel about this.

The US led West has dominated world politics since the end of World War II. Over 70 years. My entire lifetime. History though is the record of these tectonic changes, some taking hundreds of years, think the rise and fall of Rome or the changing dynasties of China, India, some taking much shorter times. The end of the cold war. The invasion of Turtle Island. Indian independence.

A world shaped by the U.S. and its odd brand of imperialism: We’re invading you to make you free. Oh, and here’s a ticket to an American capitalist economy, too.

My fellow leftists and I have been and are critical of these policies. Election interference, for example. Take a ride down south to Latin America. We’ve been engaged there for years. Meddling in the politics of others has been a hallmark of our “soft” control.

In that sense I’m happy to see other centers of power emerge, grow strong. We will have neither the responsibility nor the burden of global hegemony. It would, however, be a dramatic and drastic change. It is though a direct result of an America First policy, a policy wedded to xenophobia and white supremacy.

A world in which we are a valued member, one among many, not America First, but America With, would be my preference. Perhaps we need to go through Westlessness to reach this place. But. It can’t happen as a denial of a world already connected in so many ways. It needs to happen as a result of our humility, not our arrogance.

Cinema and Television, Commentary on Religion, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., World History

Watch and Learn

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Winter and the Future Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Alan is back from the Bahamas. Our regular breakfasts. Rabbi Jamie’s clear explanation about Judaism as a vehicle for mystical consciousness. Our Thursday afternoon mussar class. A lot of good friends in that one. MVP tonight. Friends there, too.

Got the new vegetable chopper. Ready for the next round of Israeli salad or pico de gallo.

I’m on episode 73 out of the 80 in the final season of Resurrection: Ertugrul. That means I’ve watched a whole lot of episodes. I’ve enjoyed the storylines, the immersion in an imagined Turkic tribal culture, and the sets, costumes. Are the plot holes in it big enough to swing a sword through without hitting anything? Oh, yeah. Is some of it melodramatic? Hmm. Yes. But as a story of a people committed to a cause, suffering for it, and succeeding, a good one.

Read a NYT article yesterday about M.B.Z., Mohammed bin-Zayed, ruler of the United Arab Emirates. His father, Zayed, was a pluralist and a believer in a tolerant, peaceful Islam. He opposed Islamists of all stripes. Mohammed, after a flirtation with Islamists, experienced 9/11 and converted to his father’s opinion.

MBZ sounds like a contemporary Erugrul. He has a particular perspective on Islam and has put his Emirates resources behind it. He fought the Islamists in the UAE, finding those who collabarated with bin Laden, three of the attackers were Emiratis. He had 200 Emiratis arrested and about 1,600 hundred foreigners.

He has lifted up women and the poor. He has fought in other nations for a more tolerant form of Islam. His troops are in Libya right now and have been a major force in Yemen.

Though the Saudi state is, as the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, said, “…the mother and father of political Islam.”, MBZ mentors MBS, Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi Crown Prince accused of ordering Khashoggi’s death. MBZ wants to temper the Wahhabi stream of Islam, the one married to the founding of the Saudi state and radical in its political ideas. Wahhabi funded madrasa around the Middle East and elsewhere in the Islamic world spread its violent propensities.

Resurrection: Ertugrul showcases the Islamic love of a strong leader, a Prophet, a Caliph, an Emperor who loves his people and will do whatever it takes to keep them safe and prosperous. MBZ, like Ertugrul, has an affiliation for Sufi’s and is a Sunni.

Americans, as democrats (small d) and individualists, children of the Enlightenment, will find both Ertugrul and MBZ, and MBS for that matter, suffocating. Like the clan chieftain he was Ertugrul relied on the leaders of his tribe, beys, for authority in decision making. They met in council and debated issues before the Bey, bey of the whole Kayi tribe, Ertugrul in the later episodes, made a final decision.

The councils were advisory, though. The Bey’s decision was the one that mattered. Same with MBZ and MBS. There’s a lot paternalism and patriarchy running through Resurrection: Ertugrul and the worlds of MBZ and MBS.

Autocrats. Much like Egypt, Syria, Iran. Erdogan in Turkey. Some benevolent. Some not. I suspect much of Resurrection comes from contemporary fantasies for a return to the noble Caliphate of Harun al-Rashid. It certainly glorifies the mujaheddin, the warrior of jihad, of Allah’s Holy War. And it glorifies the strong central authority figure, Ertugrul. It could be seen as propaganda for Islamist extremists though I don’t believe that’s its intent.

I’ll miss the antics of Bamsi, the ax of Turgut, the strong swordarm and wisdom of Ertugrul. Finishing this week. Wow.

Aging, Dreams, Family, Feelings, Health, Memories, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, US History, World History

Tears

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Samain and the Full Gratitude Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: The Geminid Meteor Showers, peaking on Dec. 13th. Kate. Always Kate. The cooling as we move deeper into December. Chickens and their eggs. Seeing, really seeing. Colors. Especially dark blues. Princeton paint brushes. Glass. A wonder on its own. [after finishing this. Lupron.]

As I wrote before, lupron clouds the source of my feelings. Here are three things this week that have moved me to tears.

  1. Most recent. Reading about the North Dakota capital’s county commission voting to continue admitting immigrants. Compassion trumps Trump.
  2. The videos of women singing the rapist is you (see video below) in protests across the world. Claiming your own power makes you powerful.
  3. A dream I had the other night in which my mother hugged me.

People coming down on the side of compassion instead of cruelty. My heart stands with them, wherever and for whatever reason. Right now the North Dakota vote says no to humans in cages, to separated families, to the cold hearts and small minds resident in the White House. When humans act like humans, I’m shaken in a good way.

Empowerment, especially taking back power stolen by the patriarchy or whiteness or greed, reaches deep into me, makes me feel glad. Over againstness in the name of women, of people of color, of the poor is a sacred duty, a holy duty. When an oppressed group faces off against their oppressor, my heart sings, overwhelms me. Bless them all.

My mother died 45 years ago, her yahrzeit is in October. Since then, I can recall no dreams of her. I must have had some, but they disappear on waking. For the first time I remember in those 45 years, I dreamed of her. She was mute, curled in an almost fetal position, but awake and aware. She hugged me, smiled. I felt her warmth and her love. Her physicality.

She lay in a position very like the one in which I last saw her. We rode up together in an elevator for a surgery that failed to save her life. She was on a gurney. Her eyes looked away from me, but I could tell the stroke had made that the way she could see me best. Her lips moved and she said, “Son.” The last word I ever heard from her.

Tears come as I write this. The power of feeling her close to me, of her hug, so long gone. A dream long suppressed or repressed.

It felt to me as if the grief of her death had finally come to resolution, as if she were forgiving me and blessing me. Forgiving me for living on. Blessing me for living on. Breathtaking.

Maybe the lupron does not cloud the source of my feelings. Maybe it opens me, flushes out excuses I give myself for not being moved.

A confusing time for me. But. Not without its merits.

Cinema and Television, Commentary on Religion, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., World History

Only 200+ Episodes Left

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Samain and the Gratitude Moon

Saturday gratefuls: the inventor(s) of pho. SeoAh and I had pho in Evergreen last night. Trees lit with Christmas lights down Black Mountain/Brook Forest Drive. (though. Mule deer bucks sometimes get their racks tangled in these lights.) The snow that graces our yard, Black Mountain, the road to Evergreen. The cold, too.

3:30 pm. The sun has disappeared behind Black Mountain yet still lights up a cold blue sky.

It’s the Holiday Walk in Evergreen tonight. The touristy part of town will close their chunk of Hwy 74 for wandering carolers, Christmas tree lighters, stores with holiday cider and hot chocolate. SeoAh and I will travel past it to the Pho place near King Sooper’s in Evergreen. SeoAh loves pho. So do I.

Exercised. Read more about tzedekah, the Jewish equivalent of zakat, one of the five pillars of Islam.

4:30 am. Orion’s shoulders and head and bow have a misty cover this morning, but his boots and his loyal dog showed above Black Mountain. Headed west again, he’s a bit like Sisyphus, always chasing the hare that stays in sight, but can never be caught. The gratitude moon has reached the waxed gibbous stage, well more than half lit but not quite full. Its light surprised me by creating a shadow to follow my path as I got the mail.

Continuing my journey toward the creation of the Ottoman Empire with Resurrection: Ertugrul. This one and a few others like it have a huge Muslim following, as you might imagine. The deeper I get into it, I’m now in season 3, probably 200 episodes or so, the more it worries me.

Though the story has me hooked, obviously, the depiction of jihad, of Islam as the only way, of the daring lengths to which its warriors will go has me thinking of current day mujaheddin. They may (almost certainly do) see themselves in the depictions of Ertugrul and the Turkmen fighting Mongols and Christians. The unrelenting chants of allahu akbar (God is Great.) and death to infidels feel like propaganda. And, are probably received in that way.

The golden age of television has introduced us to writers, actors, locations, and narratives from many different cultures. I watch Korean and other East Asian dramas as well as Bollywood movies. This is a chance to peek behind the national/cultural psyche of these locales. I relish it.

In Resurrection’s case it has helped me understand some of the media that informs and influences Muslims. This show has powerful resonance, drawing us in not only to the lives and travails of its characters, but also showcasing a certain violent devotion not new to Islam. As I’ve written before, television now allows us some of the best parts of travel, not through travel shows, but through the unfiltered presentation of material deemed congenial to a particular culture.

Only 200 some episodes to go.