• Category Archives Asia

  • Keep Them Close

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

    Shabbat gratefuls: Ginny and Janice. Annie and Luna. Pad thai. Luke and Leo. Shadow. Opener of doors, gnawer of beds, furry alarm clock. Sciatica. Back pain. No country for old Presidents. Chewy. Natural Balance. Early morning Mountain chill. Shadow finding her voice. Ruth in her I love NYC t-shirt at my son and Seoah’s apartment. Zoom. This family, together, yet far, far apart. Gabe. Ukraine. Gaza. Israel. Russia. The Middle East. Asia.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Annie and Shadow playing.

    Week Kavannah:  Zerizut. Enthusiasm. III for p.t., resistance

    One brief shining: My usual rides gone to Puerto Rico, Las Vegas, going down the list of folks willing to drive me from Shadow Mountain to the heart of Denver while I’m loopy on Ativan so I can survive another MRI, this one of my hips; if I can’t find someone, it will have to wait and let the PET scan speak alone.

     

    Here’s one of the barriers to medical care for me. From time to time I have to have a procedure that requires some sedation. Like Thursday’s MRI when I will be on Ativan for my claustrophobia. Rich is in Puerto Rico. Alan in Las Vegas. Making these appointments difficult to keep. Yes, I have more folks on my list and I’m asking them one by one, but if I can’t find anybody I’ll have to cancel. Do it another time. Not optimal for my visit with Dr. Buphati (medical oncologist) on June 2nd. Which I just noticed is before my PET scan. Oops. Gets complicated.

    It would be nice to have a personal assistant who could stay on top of these things. Wouldn’t it?

     

    Talked to my son and Seoah yesterday with a cameo appearance by Ruth! And, Murdoch. They were in Seoul yesterday, seeing the Buddhist Monastery and the big convention hall which has so many restaurants. Alert readers will remember that I saw the Seoul Biennale there when I went in 2023.

    Jang family money has been let loose into the world financial system, headed toward my checking account. I’ll pay preliminary costs like airline tickets, air bnb reservations, baseball tickets using this money. Three way split on expenses: my son and Seoah, Seoah’s family, and me. Once in a lifetime for the Jangs. Worth it. Family first.

    My son took Ruth to the DMZ, that live border between two countries still technically at war under the terms of an armistice. She’s having an amazing time.

     

    Just a moment: On resistance. Seed-keeping. My primary actions right now. Keep my friends close. Especially those friends in vulnerable communities. Strengthen our bonds. See to each other’s safety in outright anti-Semitic, homophobic, racist, misogynistic times. How? Play dates among Shadow, Annie, and Luna. With their moms, Ginny and Janice. Having Luke and Leo up for a laundry, conversation afternoon. Stay in weekly touch with Marilyn and Irv, Alan, Joanne. Ruth and Gabe. Ron, Jamie, Susan. Keep all these seeds for a new, pluralistic tomorrow.

     


    Asia Family Feelings Fourth Phase Friends Health Korea Seed Keepers Travel

  • Ruth Goes to Korea

    Posted on by Charles 1 Comment

    Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

    Ruth’s first meal in Korea

    Monday gratefuls: Ruth. In Korea! Seoah’s note. Ruth’s journey. Rich. Doncye. Mary. Her journey. Minneapolis to Singapore to K.L. to Incheon. My son’s journey from 9/11 to command. Shadow and her journey. All ancientrails. Each and every one.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Love

    Week Kavannah: Enthusiasm. Zerizut.

    One brief shining: Messages came in: In Calgary, the people are so nice here and things are cheaper; Currently walking to board the plane, the big plane; I’m flying over the long archipelagoesque part of Alaska; I don’t know what the cause is, but it got dark in like two minutes. Then came the picture from Seoah.

     

    Ruth getting Kate’s little black bag for her 19th birthday

    Our all dean’s list all the time Ruth has vaulted through the heavens on a great circle route taking her far to the north before returning to Earth at Incheon, South Korea. Now a world traveler, far from Northdale High and CU-Boulder.

    Ruth, in some ways, feels more like a daughter to me than a granddaughter. Since my son was my only child. It fills me up to watch her post-high school self take wing. Literally yesterday. She texted messages all the way along on her flight. (see one brief shining)

    We shared many breakfasts and lunches at CU-Boulder over her freshman year. Our relationship has deepened over this time and it touches a part of me that blossomed only with her. That’s the part that feels more like a daughter. A female to nurture on a growing up path. Different than a son.

    Seeing her eating a bowl of what I imagine is bibimbap, in Korea. Oh, my. To see the world anew, to see Asia for the first time at 19. To confidently travel abroad. To go with the sense that life has only begun to unfold, that these new experiences have begun a journey, not ended one. I can feel that again through and with her.

     

    Took Mary to the Federal Center RTD stop in Lakewood. She boarded the train headed to the same airport where, at 7 am, Ruth had caught her first of the three flights that took her to Korea.

    I need a map with LED avatars to keep up with my family. I’m the still point, high up on Shadow Mountain. In a week most of those avatars would be clustered in Osan for my son.

     

    Just a moment: Joe and me. Here’s an NYT explainer that details what it’s like now for those of us, including Biden, with stage 4 prostate cancer.

    What applies to him in this article applies to me as well. We’re both in the hormone sensitive condition which means androgen deprivation therapy-knocking out testosterone production-still stops the cancer from spreading further.

    The new drugs the article mentions are there when androgen deprivation therapy no longer works. Those drugs are the 5-7 year life span extenders. And neither one of us are on them yet.

    My cancer is not particularly aggressive, just durable, meaning it beat the best treatments available for curing it. I’ll know more about my status in early June after a new MRI and a new P.E.T. scan.

     

     

     

     


    Asia Family Feelings Fourth Phase Health Travel

  • A New Credo

    Posted on by Charles Comment
          Hercules wrestling Thanatos

    Driving to Lone Tree this morning. Spine injections. Struck by the notion of Israel Harari. The Mountain man who struggles with God. Of Jacob/Israel as an archetype. The trickster transformed into wounded man of faith. Peniel-where I saw God face to face.

    I’ve focused on Israel, on the struggle, but not considered or not fully considered the after moment, when Israel, newly named, limps away having seen God. Who names this ford on the Jabbok river after his realization.

    So I decided to do that. I’ve struggled with God since I was young. Too small. Too violent. Too obscure and ineffable. Dead. I don’t experience God. What good can God be? And this stupid, stupid idea of a seventy year life as a test for residing in Heaven or Hell for eternity? No.

    Then, the last 30 years or so, pass. Focused on the Soil, the Seed, the growing miracle of Plants, Dogs, grandchildren, love. No need for God. I feel the sacred when I amend the Earth. Pluck Onions and Carrots from their hidden places and spray them off with a hose nozzle. Food. The true transubstantiation.

    What if I felt my way into the Goddess? Her Earth. Me as part, yet not part. Unique, but not unique. A Wave above her Ocean, ready at all times to return. What if I admitted to myself that my  feeling of separateness is the original sin. The hubris of independence. Of individuality.

    What if. The yetzer hara, the selfish inclination, speaks to us of separateness. Of our needs. Of our unique demands. While the yetzer hatov speaks to our interdependence, our awareness of the needs of others, of the World around us.

    Could I find the sense of support, of sustenance, of forgiveness, of grace, of embeddedness in the whole, the One? Could I pray? I drove on, watching the Trees, the Hogback, remnants of the orogeny that preceded the rise of the Rocky Mountains. Striated. Weathered. Shrunken. But still there, millions upon millions of years after its emergence.

    Was I really, truly part of it? Was all the artifice of highways and cars part of it? The houses and stores. Doctor Vu, the kind and careful man who inserted needles into the narrow spaces of my bulging spine. And all his tech? The rotating bed. The living x-ray. Michal, his variously adorned assistant. Even the steroids shot toward my nerves? All of it?

    What difference might it make if I leaned into this most pushed away notion. Or, is it the embrace I’ve already made of the chi, of wu wei, of the mystical revealing the ordinary as the sacred? Do those feelings find me already in her arms?

    You know, it does. I’m a man of this short moment, a Wave cresting on the Ocean of the whole, going only from emergence to absorption, not needing to understand how. Yet as that man I’m also in and of the Ocean, of the Goddess, her instrument in this troubled part of her cosmos.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     


    Asia Judaism Myth and Story Paganism Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Reimaging revelation Science Torah Wild Neighbors Writing

  • Tao De Jew

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: Shabbat. Torah. CBE. Sacred community. Where everybody knows your name. Shadow and the canoe cut marrow bone. Cold Night. A Mountain Dawn. Great Sol shines again. Being able to buy seeds and plants again. Easter. Matthew. Mark. Luke. John.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Gabe at 17

    Week Kavannah: Sensibility. Daat.

    One brief shining: In their waning years Taoists left behind their jobs in the court bureaucracy for small dwellings in the Mountains where they practiced calligraphy, played the Qin, wrote poetry, studied the sages, and lived close to the natural world.

     

    Tao De Jew. With a dash of Alinsky and street focused organizer. The Reverend Doctor Israel Harari. That would be me. With a domestic side of Gardener, Beekeeper, and Docent.

    Try to work with the flow of chi, the energetic and transformative aspect of our oneness and our sense of uniqueness. Look for the path that emerges, that asks and invites. Follow it. This ancientrail, then that one. With the ease of Water running toward the Ocean.

    Find the moment when chi has found you. Act with its already organized aim. If Shadow gnaws the bed at 5:20, get up and let her out. Saves cleaning up. Makes her happy. Gives the day an hour head start.

    Reconstructionist Judaism, Paganism, Taoism.  Sacred Community, Mother Earth, and a follower of the Way. When the Mule Deer comes. When the bull Elk bugles. When Fawns and Calves play. As the Mountain Lion strikes. As the Bear paws a Bee hive. Yes. When tender shoots break through the soil. When friends gather over breakfast. When Torah study opens new human insights. When the Breeze through the Lodgepoles whispers follow me. Yes.

     

    Have you been following the Adventures of Trump Tarrific? I know I have. Sort of. There was the all tariffs all the time moment. Then there was the oh wait not on tech stuff moment. Now there’s, what is it again? 10% on everybody and a whole lot on China. Yeah, I don’t get it either. Lucky I’m not alone. Business leaders. Economists. Inflation wary members of the Fed. For a start.

    Then there’s Trump the Depo Man. Proving his masculinity by using the military, ICE, and millions of dollars to sweep people off college campuses, out of their janitorial and dishwashing jobs, making a mistake or two along the way, but hey that’s ok, omelets and eggs, eh, and not getting many folks deported except the most vulnerable.

    That what it says in the Gospels: find the poor, the stranger, put them on a plane and send them to prison in El Salvador. Oh, Jesus. Oh.

     

    Just a moment: Yes. It’s Easter. Easter eggs. Chocolate and marshmallow Bunnies. Ham. Cute dresses and boys in ties. All the holiday essentials. Wonder how that whole egg business has worked this year, the year of Bird flu?

    Remember Ukrainian Easter Eggs. Wonder if anybody’s on that this year? Or will Putin target little old ladies with eggs and candle wax.

     

     


    Asia Fourth Phase Holidays Judaism Paganism Politics Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. US History

  • Passing on Passover? The Jangs.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: Second day of Passover. Kate, always Kate. Shadow the toy mover. Her zooming in the back yard. Liberation. Freedom to choose. Egypt. The many Egypts we are heir to. Tara. Arjan. Robbie and Deb. Sandy and Mark. Eleanor. Kilimanjaro. Jungfrau. Black Mountain. Shadow Mountain. A Mountain night.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Liberation

    Week Kavannah: Joy. Simcha.

    One brief shining: The Haggadah had wine stains; the seder plate had a kiwi because we can; we dipped the parsley into salt water, tears for the suffering of the slaves, of all oppressed people, spread dots of wine or in my case grape juice for each plague, retelling each part of the passover story as if we were there, as our story.

     

    Talmud Torah in the morning. (Torah study) A focus on the maggid, the telling of the passover story in the Haggadah. Complete with midrash, interpretation and expansion.

    Later, around 4, over to Kilimanjaro Drive. Tara’s house. Steep driveway with cars parked at various spots along the way. All the way up to the top where I found a spot in front of a Tesla.

    Thirty minutes before I had almost chosen not to go. Coming home in the dark. General inertia. A long standing aversion to parties. But this was Passover. At Tara’s. I’d be happy once I got there.

    So I went to the liquor store, picked up a bottle of mid-range red wine and drove past Evergreen Meadows and past Evergreen Funeral Home where both Jon and Kate lay after death, down curvy N. Turkey Creek Road to the Mountains and roads leading to her house.

    And I was happy to be there. Until we sat down to the table. Then the noise level, the angle of the voices, the general clash and clamor of a meal with eighteen other people. I began to recede. Off in my own quiet room of acoustical challenge. Nodding and smiling. Trying to keep up. Too often failing.

    Now having to rethink even Passover, at least in people’s homes. Where it means the most. Where my friends want me. Where I want to be. The congregational Passover has round tables, more distance among the guests. Kate and I usually attended. I may need to go to it just so I can hear.

     

    Talked to my son and Seoah on Friday night. Murdoch’s getting crate training. Seoah’s running, happy. We talked about Kate, her death, her wonderful life.

    My son and I discussed details for the Jang family visit this summer. Money is, as you can imagine, an issue. 5 adults and two children. Seoah’s Mom and Dad, her brother, her sister and her two kids. Airfare, lodging, transportation. Food. That’s what we’re working out now. Need to make some decisions soon because Air BnB’s begin to fill up for the summer in this time frame.

    Will be the trip of a lifetime for the Jang’s. The U.S. The Rocky Mountains. Deepening connections with my son’s side of the family. Myself, Ruth, Gabe.

    Stay tuned.


    Asia Family Feelings Fourth Phase Friends Holidays Judaism Mountains Shadow Mountain Travel

  • Love

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc and the Birthday Moon

    Shabbat gratefuls: Shadow. My son. Seoah. Ginny and Janice. Gabe. Happy Camper. Shabbat. Talmud Torah. Kabbalah. Cold weather. Snarfs. Ruth. CU-Boulder. Integrative Physiology. Jetplane to Incheon. The Jang family visit. My son’s promotion. Treats. Dogs.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Families of choice

    Week Kavannah: Perseverance and Grit    Netzach

    One brief shining: At 3 am while I slept Shadow Mountain emptied out with my son and Seoah headed to the airport, Gabe back home with his student I.D., Shadow sleeping outside the bedroom for the first time.

     

    Too short a visit. In on Wednesday after a full day of travel, Casa Bonita, then Boulder with Ruth yesterday, home around 7 pm, then gone in the wee hours. My son and Seoah whom I saw last in September of 2023.

    Here is your family portrait in the style of Hindu temple art with a Valentine’s Day theme

    And yet. Yes to any amount of time. Hugs. Quiet conversations. Laughing. Creating new memories together. This all American family in which I have no blood connection. I was Jon’s step-father, so no blood with Ruth and Gabe. Joseph came into my life 43 years ago by plane from Calcutta. Seoah in 2016. Yet we love each other as any family does. Blood ties and love have no necessary connection. Just as ties with no blood and love have no necessary connection. Only the love we develop and nurture over years and decades.

    My life has been rich in loving. And expands even now. My friend Luke. My friends Ginny and Janice. Shadow. Leo. Annie and Luna. Always Mark, Mary, Diane. The Ancient Brothers. The MVP group. Alan.

    Not sure how I got so lucky. Found Kate. Together we loved so many dogs. Gardens. Bees and Trees. Places on this wide earth. From Gwangju, Korea to Inverness, Scotland. Each other.

    A Valentine’s Day life in so many ways. And so grateful for each love. Every love. All of them.

     

    Shadow would not come out of the bedroom yesterday. Too many people around? A regression? Both? Don’t know. Anyhow she slept outside the bedroom last night for the first time. I want/need to be able to interact with her and if we’re playing hide and seek all day that’s very hard.

    Right now she’s comfortably beside my chair as I write this. We’ve greeted each other, nuzzled. She’s gotten treats and awaits her 8 am feeding. The consensus from my son, Seoah, Gabe, and Ruth is that she will be happy dog once she settles in. How long that will take? Uncertain. I’m willing to go the distance.

     

    Just a moment: So. The American Vice-President, JD Vance, sits down with Germany’s Nazi’s OK! far right party, the AfD. Even pushes for them to be included in Germany’s parliament. The German chancellor said this: “A commitment to ‘never again’ is not reconcilable with support for the AfD,” NYT, 2/15/1025

    That’s a spectacle that beggars history. The head of a German government chastising an American Vice-President for support of Nazi sympathizers. WTF?

    No wonder American Jews feel threatened and American white supremacists feel emboldened. Putting a substantial nick in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

     

     


    Asia Dogs Family Feelings Friends Politics US History World History

  • A comma, not a period

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

    Wednesday gratefuls: Jon Bailey. Detailing my car. Seoah is coming. Casa Bonita. Valentine’s Day. #78. Fitbit. Charlie H. Ruby clean inside. Avocado Toast. Lox and English Muffins. Ruth’s excitement about her new Astronomy class. Gabe. Coming up Saturday to interview Rabbi Jamie. Sue Bradshaw. Josh. Kai. Evergreen Family Medicine.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Marilyn and Irv

    Kavannah 2025: Creativity

    Kavannah this week: Rachamim, compassion.  Practice-listening for the melody of the other.

    One brief shining: Looking about the same except for a moon face, wondered if it was prednisone, my fellow traveler on the ancientrail of cancer sat in his chair, bookcases behind him, his lake out the window, and exhibited compassion, his melody a bit jagged after a year of death and illness, yet still poetic.

     

    First iteration. A recruiting poster syle illustration of Mary Oliver’s quote

    When Charlie H. said he was in remission, his surveillance pushed out to four months from the usual three, a sign of dramatic improvement, I felt an uncharitable son of a bitch why him and not me? I didn’t begrudge him at all the good news. No. Happy for him, but wondering why my cancer has proved so damned intractable.

    Especially wondering today because yesterday I had four vials of blood drawn, one of which goes for testosterone and PSA lab work.

     

    Reminded in that conversation of Paul’s online session with poet Jane Hirschfield. He reported two arresting sentences: Death is not a period, it’s a comma. And. Attention is your life.

    second iteration after asking Chabot to correct the spelling of precious

    A comma. “…a punctuation mark (,) indicating a pause between parts of a sentence.” Oxford Languages. Interesting to wonder about that sentence, the one in which your life this time might be an object or a subject, a life acted upon or a life acting on its own. What is the verb in the sentence? Verbs? Was there an adjective for this life of yours? Strong, passionate, weakened, vulnerable, clever, unusual? What is the cosmic sentence which the universe, in its polyvalent, multivalent way, has written that is yours and yours alone? It may be the work of a hundred lifetimes, learning how to read your own sentence.

    One more thought on the comma. Learning to read each other’s sentence would allow us to glimpse the narrative line running through your time. A series of short stories, linked by the main character of your Self which, when combined, would be a novel in many volumes. Can you imagine the shelves in that Library of Alexandria?

    What does that work require? Attention. To your own melody. To the melody of the other. To the moment, yes, of course. But also to the century, the year, the day, the hour. The millennium. Not different from the work of seeing. And hearing.

    “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Mary Oliver’s “The Summer Day”

     

    Just a moment: Welcome to the Year of the Snake. Although the Chinese zodiac correlates the snake as “simultaneously associated with harvest, procreation, spirituality, and good fortune, as well as cunning, evil, threat, and terror”, I can only see the last four in the American year of the snake.

     

     

     

     


    Asia Feelings Fourth Phase Friends Health Poetry

  • The Demon of Ignorance. In the long view

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

    Friday gratefuls: Alan. Jamie. Frederick Posner. Mindy. Ellen. Janet. Ginny. Janice. Luke. Findlay. Leo. Gracie. Murdoch. Warmer night. Still cool. My son. Rich. Seoah. Living will. Estate plan. Affairs. Light. Dark. Tao. Light in the dark. Dark in the light. Wu wei. Chi. Ohr. Shiva. Creation and destruction. In the long arcing spiral of existence.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Shiva

    Kavannah 2025:  Creativity

    Kavannah week:   Appreciation of Opposition

    One brief shining: Two brown paper bags at a time, crunching the snow on my driveway, I moved my Safeway pickup order from the back of Ruby, into the kitchen, yes you need to do these things, keep the muscles working, placing the bags on the  counter; after, I drove Ruby into her stall, gave her fresh oats and a quick rubdown, and returned to the house to put away my groceries.

     

    Here is the Shiva Nataraja depicted in the style of the intricate bas reliefs at Angkor Wat

    Hinduism helps me at a time like this. Tom reminded me of Shiva the other morning and I’ve stayed with that thought. Vishnu stabilizes the world; Shiva engages in constant acts of creation and destruction. Both acting over unimaginably long periods of time*, heading toward destruction, then renewal.

    Seen in the context of a kalpa, what is the four year presence of an avatar of the id, guided by fear and lust and greed, not unusual attributes found in humanity. Especially in the Kali Yuga, a portion of the kalpa under the destructive, yet cleansing influence of Kali.

    I suppose you could see this as the opposite of living in the moment. This way of understanding the cosmic cycle insists on embedding ourselves not in the here and now only, but also in the extended experience of kalpas and yugas. From this lofty perspective cousin Donald and his Clown Posse present as bit players, foils in a cyclic dance between chaos and order, a just world and an unjust world. Just as you and I do.

    Here is the depiction of Shiva Nataraja dancing atop the demon of ignorance, styled in the intricate and symbolic manner of Hindu temple art.

    In the Shiva Nataraja I have here at home Shiva dances on the demon of ignorance. We can imagine cousin Donald beneath Shiva’s feet. I’m even willing to imagine this demon of all thing’s petty as a cautionary tale in the oh so finite history of our United States. From the next century: Never again.

    When we focus on the moment, we lose the breadth and depth of history, of time in the sense of kalpas and yugas. This can be a serious problem in that we may universalize what’s happening in the moment and fail to understand the much, much larger context in which all events occur. A French historian looks at the longue durée. The long duration of history. I prefer the Hindu version because of its cyclical nature, but my primary point this morning?  As bad as he has been and will be cousin Donald does not write the long arc of history. None of us do.

     

    *The Cyclical Nature of Time (Yugas and Kalpas)

    • Hinduism views time as cyclical rather than linear. It is divided into vast cosmic cycles called Kalpas, each lasting over 4.32 billion years.
    • Within each Kalpa are Maha Yugas (Great Ages), consisting of four Yugas (epochs):
      1. Satya Yuga (Age of Truth) – the golden age of righteousness.
      2. Treta Yuga – a slightly diminished moral and spiritual state.
      3. Dvapara Yuga – further decline in virtue and wisdom.
      4. Kali Yuga – the age of darkness and chaos, characterized by moral decay and ignorance.

    The current era is believed to be Kali Yuga, considered the final and darkest age before renewal.

    End of the Kali Yuga

    • At the end of Kali Yuga, it is believed that the world will undergo a period of destruction and renewal.
    • Kalki, the tenth and final avatar of Vishnu, will appear. Kalki is described as a warrior on a white horse, wielding a sword of divine justice. He will restore righteousness (Dharma) and end the cycle of Kali Yuga.

    3. Pralaya (Dissolution)

    • After the end of a Kalpa, the universe undergoes Pralaya, or dissolution.
    • Pralaya can occur on different scales:
      • Naimittika Pralaya: The end of a day of Brahma (the creator deity), where the physical world is dissolved but the subtle world persists.
      • Prakritika Pralaya: The dissolution of the entire cosmos into its primordial state.
    • After Pralaya, Brahma begins the process of creation anew.

    4. Shiva’s Role: Tandava Dance

    • Shiva, as the cosmic destroyer, plays a crucial role in the end-of-the-world concept. His Tandava dance symbolizes the cosmic cycles of creation, preservation, and destruction.
    • This dance is both destructive and regenerative, reflecting the cyclical nature of existence.

    5. Philosophical Perspective

    • The “end of the world” is not feared but is seen as a necessary phase in the eternal cycle of creation and renewal.
    • From an Advaita (non-dualist) perspective, the physical universe is ultimately illusory (Maya), and the dissolution is a return to the unmanifest reality (Brahman).

    Hindu eschatology emphasizes the impermanence of material existence and the eternal nature of the soul, offering a profound perspective on time, change, and cosmic renew


    Art and Culture Asia General Politics US History World History

  • Merrily we roll along, roll along, roll along

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

    Tuesday gratefuls: This too is for the good. 2024 and 2025. And this December 31st 2024 life. 8 degrees this morning. Good sleeping. Von Bek. The War Hound and the World’s Pain. The Psalms. Bob Dylan. The Band. Ain’t No Grave. The Blues. Jazz. Jefferson Airplane. The Doors. Led Zeppelin. Ginger Baker. John Coltrane. Thelonious Monk. Slipping quietly into the next year.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Tara

    Kavannah: Persistence and Joy

    prompt: A vintage father time with sickle and an infant new year

    One brief shining: How to encapsulate a year in one sentence, a challenge, perhaps remembering a Bar Mitzvah with friends and family present, a changed arc for cancer, a couple of months of low feeling, many breakfasts and lunches and zoom calls, visiting Ruth in Boulder, Gabe solving puzzles, many visits from my Mule Deer friends, the Mountains remaining-steady, solid, reliable-Great Sol and Good Night, Orion’s return, all while turning 77. Whee!

     

    As the Zen calendar from Tom says:

    This year,

    yes, even this year,

    has drawn to its close.   Buson

     

    Here is the illustration inspired by Japan’s Kano school, visually interpreting your evocative paragraph.

    Though age and wrinkles compared to that slender hipped 28 year old in his silly multi-colored suspenders and shorts would suggest definite linear time, no, I say no to that. I say live by the Great Wheel. By the telling and retelling of the story in the five books of Moses. By Sukkot and Mabon, Samain and Shavuot, the Winter Solstice and Passover. All repeating in a yearly cycle, spiraling through the heavens of time’s confusing paradoxes. Always ready to leave behind the hell of human insistence on seeing the profane where only the sacred-ONLY THE SACRED-exists.

    I confess I don’t understand how time can seem so linear yet reside all the while in an ever repeating, glorious parade of seasons and holidays, all of which may in some future Samain-see the problem, all of which may in some future Samain, be harvested for a final time as our universe slips into its own Winter Solstice. Only, if I have an understanding of it, to experience its own rebirth as a cosmic Great Sol, a Phoenix, rising again, still?, from the depths of a cold forever.

    All this to say happy new year! Let’s hear it for the calendar, for aging, for yesterday and tomorrow, all the while knowing we can never live anywhere but today. And not even today, but in this ichi-go ichi-e moment. Which will never repeat yet is eternal, never gone from the roiling, boiling mix of creation in which we live and move and have our becoming.

    God. I sound like a bad fortune cookie. Nevertheless. Yes. To all this. To however we are, whomever we are, whenever we are. Bouncing along jostling each other, holding each others hands, walking each other home, living with the thereafter, somehow, even if it’s only in molecular hand me downs.

    You out there. To a less abstruse post next year. Tomorrow.

     

     

     

     


    Asia Fourth Phase Great Wheel Holidays Kabbalah Paganism Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Reimaging revelation

  • The Times They Are A Changin’

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain and the Yule Moon

    Tuesday gratefuls: Paul. Joanne. Vietnamese food. A long lunch. Snow. Ruth. Thai food and ice cream. Finals week. Remember finals? Alan on the Tasman Sea. Shadow Mountain Home. Warm. Mini-splits. Solar panels. Electricity. Quantum computing. The future accelerating back toward us.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Fresh Snow

    Kavannah: Love (ahavah)

    One brief shining: Driving in the Mountains after a Snowfall has an adventure around every curve, forty years of Minnesota Winters making me alert to tiny movements in the tires, relaxing if they slip, recovering easily, Blizzaks gripping, gripping, living in the moment because the situation requires it.

     

    As an old man driving in the Mountains in the Winter, I’m grateful for the wonderful teacher I had. Minnesota Winters. Where the Snow is not so much compared to my Colorado home, but it stays and gets slick. I am familiar with the movements of a car on Winter roads. Not to say I haven’t had my moments. I have. But always on Ice. And even then, not panicking, staying away from the brake and the accelerator pedal. Gently, gently.

    The Mountains after a new Snow have slopes of flocked Lodgepoles, their Aspen colleagues looking cold and skeletal without their leaves. A beautiful transformation that we get to see often in the changeable weather of Colorado. Snow. Sun. Snow. Snow. Sun and blue Skies. A different sort of Winter from Minnesota. Less brutal. More episodic in its dramatic weather. Much, much more Snow.

    If it were not for the threat of Wildfire, Shadow Mountain would be an ideal home. In the midst of beauty in all seasons, cool Nights, dark Skies, silence, Wild Neighbors, and Rock, so much Rock, cold Streams. The gift of Wildness at every juncture. Reminders of the ongoingness of Mother Earth everywhere. Which in turn remind me of the temporariness of my own Life. No American immortals up here.

    Today is Jon’s birthday, he would have been 56. I’m going over to Boulder to have lunch with Ruth. She’s come a long, long way since he died two and a half years ago. Now a college freshman, living on her own for the first time. Loving her classes, learning. Facing down fears and the anti-Semitic tonality of so many college campuses right now.

    She still misses “her person” and has rough moments, sometimes sobbing and despondent. But I can see her resilience take hold now, acknowledging the feelings, managing her response. Bouncing back. Grief is a journey and one that never completely ends.

     

    Just a moment: How bout those Syrian rebels? Striking when no one expected it. Shifting, yet again, the volatile stew of Middle Eastern nations. How will their ascendance change the politics of the Middle East? At least one thing sticks out to me, the rebels are Sunni and therefore not disposed to support Iran, Hezbollah, or Hamas. Probably not keen on Israel either, of course.

    Not to mention. Turkey is part of the Middle East, too. Look north from Turkey’s northern shores and nothing but the Black Sea separates you from the Ukraine.

    In the immortal words of Bob Dylan: the time they are a changin’.

     


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