Beltane and the Moon of Sorrow
It’s Memorial Day tomorrow on Shadow Mountain. The beginning of Summer. As you might expect, our solar panels have a white covering and the Snow has begun to mount up, falling in great, fat flakes from a gray Mountain Sky.
Closed due to Coronavirus A-Basin plans to reopen on May 27th. This is Jon’s favorite ski hill. The vagaries of mountain weather.
Beltane and the Corona Lunacy II
Thursday gratefuls: Kate, sewing. Seoah, laughing. Rigel, sleeping hard. Kep, eager to get up, get breakfast. 34 degrees this morning. High Winds, low humidity, lots of sunshine=red flag warning. Masks. The Lodgepole blown over yesterday. Equanimity. Mussar. Kabbalah class yesterday. Missed opportunities for exercise. Dave and Deb.
High Winds yesterday. Up to 40 mph, gusting lasted most of the day yesterday and Tuesday. Both were red flag days. Occurred to me that these are the original red flags. When they show up, those of us surrounded by the Arapaho National Forest pay attention. Not a metaphor.
A Lodgepole pine blew over in our backyard. Pines tend to have shallow roots. Fortunately it blew over away from our house. It could have hit the upstairs balcony had it gone south instead of north. An unintended consequence of fire mitigation, I think. Lodgepoles grow close together up here, an area clear cut for Denver early last century. I removed this Individual’s companions, left it to deal with the gusts of Wind all on its own.
Gotta get out the limbing ax. There’s other limbing work to be done on Trees felled last fall. And, there are still Trees to remove. Shallow roots are a good adaptation to thin Soil, rocky Soil, but they do have their risks. Wondering about other reasons for shallow roots.
In people shallow roots can lead to problems, too. The strong winds of the coronavirus can lead to a fall. The middah of equanimity, the topic for MVP mussar next week, is the psychic equivalent of deep roots. When life pushes us hard, say isolation or lockdown for an indeterminate number of weeks, equanimity can keep us upright. We will feel neither the need to run out and fill up the car with toilet paper, nor will we hunker down, go still, bury our fears.
Judaism has a clear view of the human experience: “Your spiritual experience will give you many gifts, but don’t expect it to relieve you of your human nature.” (Everyday Holiness, Alan Morinis, p. 99) Yes, practice equanimity, but don’t be surprised when life sends you a fire, or a virus, or a serious illness and you lose it. Notice that, congratulate yourself perhaps on a less severe reaction than you might have had in the past, and learn what you can from it. Mussar is an incremental practice that does not have an endpoint.
Beltane and the Corona Lunacy II
Friday gratefuls: Beau Jo’s pizza. A rain cloud creeping down Black Mountain. What’s your fire? Ode’s question for Sunday. Mussar folk. Silence. Clean speech. Jews. CBE. Alan on zoom yesterday. The Denver Post. The Washington Post. The New York Times.
Charlie. You’re a druid! That was the Reverend Doctor Ackerman, my spiritual director. He was on staff at Westminster Presbyterian, the big downtown church in Minneapolis. He was my second spiritual director, the first being a nun in St. Paul.
The nun, whose name I don’t recall, had me write a gratitude journal. She told me that gratitude was the root of all spirituality. I’ve heard similar things many times since, but she was the first one to open my eyes to that important link between spirit and gratitude.
Ackerman was a psychologist as well as clergy. By the time I got to him I’d had many years of Jungian analysis with John Desteian, a rich and transformative experience. Jung understood better than any other psychotherapist/psychotheoretician the link between the religious journey and individuation. Going into the ministry and marrying Raeone (in the Westminster chapel) had evoked deep fissures in my psyche, places where my old, wounded self pulled apart.
The deepest rift lay between my 17th year, when mom died, and the adult persona I had crafted. I did not face her loss. I ran into the black abyss of her absence and hid there, afraid to venture out, fearful something new and awful might happen. Over that abyss I built bridges to the adult world.
The most obvious one and the easiest for me was academics. I plunged into philosophy, anthropology, geography, theater history, and later the vast intellectual world of Christianity. When I was in a library, with books on the shelf of a carrel, head down, pen in hand for notes, the anxiety disappeared. The world of ideas both excited and distracted me. This bridge still stands, the sturdiest and least pathological.
The most unconscious bridge construction came in my freshman year at Wabash College. Mom had just died. I was in a school where many of the 200 other freshmen were also valedictorians, leaders in their high schools. I was, for the first time in life, among intellectual peers. Wabash was tough.
We had to pledge a fraternity. Upper classmen got first choice on dorm rooms, filling them. Freshmen had to live on campus. So. I became a Phi Kappa Psi. Drinking, smoking. That’s what I got from being a Phi Psi. They slipped into my life, those two, and I would spend my twenties captive to both. I also picked up philosophy there, a companion for my life pilgrimage.
The addiction bridge, a destructive way to navigate the fissure, both helped to assuage the anxiety and to increase it. That bridge began to break down in my late twenties, but not before I’d decided to finish seminary and, later, marry Raeone. Both were mistakes.
Ackerman caught me as the Christian bridge, a potholed one from the beginning, had begun to crumble. About three-quarters through the Doctor of Ministry program out of McCormick Seminary in Chicago I had discovered fiction writing. I already knew then that I had to get out of the ministry.
The last bridge to adulthood I had built was marrying Raeone. Not her fault my construction project wasn’t about her, but about a need to have someone in my life, someone close. When I got sober, both the Christian and Raeone spans began to have structural problems.
To feed my growing interest in writing fantasy novels I decided to look to my past, my family. Richard Ellis had come to this country in 1707, his father a Welsh captain in William and Mary’s occupation of Ireland. The Correll’s were famine Irish. Celtic. It was the Celts who changed my life forever.
Celtic Christianity, a branch of Christianity that preceded the Roman Catholic Church in Britain, welcomed the folk religion of the Celts, incorporated it. An odd thing happened when I met, through the Celtic Christians, this ancient Celtic faith. I switched sides. It took a while, but the concept of the Great Wheel of the Seasons came to make more sense to me than any redemption or resurrection narrative. Discussing these realizations with Ackerman lead to his, You’re a Druid!
Later, after divorcing Raeone and leaving the ministry, detonating those bridge behind me, Kate and I began to build adult lives that did not need the bridges over our pain. I was sober when I met her. My mistake with Raeone had been acknowledged. With Kate I began to write, to garden, to keep bees, live with many dogs, cook, be a better father; and, much later, to wend my way with her into the large world of Jewish civilization.
That’s my adult life, this last paragraph. The only bridge remaining from the frenetic years after my mother’s death is academics. I still love it, still read, think, write. Judaism honors the academic, the intellectual. The members of CBE have gathered both of us in and hold us close.
Here’s the punchline. Following my academic inclinations, I’ve been studying Kabbalah with our very bright rabbi, Jamie Arnold. He knows me now after several years of collaboration and classes. In class on Wednesday he referred to the four covenants: the Noachic, the Abrahamic, the Mosaic, and the Davidic. These identify different aspects of Israel’s relationship with the One: between Humanity and the One, between the seeker and father of faith and his descendants, between Israel and the law, between Israel and the monarchy, the nation. We need a fifth now, Jamie said, one between us and the earth. This is the endpoint of Art Green’s argument in Radical Judaism.
“I’ll join up with that one,” I said. “Oh,” Jamie said, “I think you’re already a priest of that one.” Still buzzing in my head. More on this in another post.
Spring and the Corona Lunacy II
Wednesday gratefuls: Garbage men and women. King Sooper pick up today. Tony’s meat bundles that I collect on May 4th. Kate’s problem solving with her sewing machine. Rigel climbing up on the bed and plopping down right between us. Her head on my pillow. The cool night. Balmy days. The pine pollen to come. The coronavirus. What has it revealed today?
In dog news. Rigel tried for a daily record, scoring three loft treats in one day. Last night I brought Mark’s stimulus check up to the loft for safe keeping. I rarely go upstairs after supper, but Rigel was there, going for a third treat, a triple dip she rarely accomplishes. As house meany, I didn’t let her in the loft. She doesn’t know how expensive those treats are. All rabbit dog treats are not cheap.
Seoah gave us a reprise of her wonderful Swedish meatballs. Not even Ikea or the Swedish Institute in Minneapolis does a better meatball. These are really, really good. May have eaten a couple too many.
We still have snow in the backyard. Less and less everyday, but a yard cleanup is getting necessary. Like Minnesota, when the snow melts, detritus slowly sinks toward the ground. When I looked out the back window this morning, I saw an orange leg with green feet. Part of a dismembered dog toy. We see now what the dogs managed to smuggle outside during our winter snows.
Today in Kabbalah we’ll discuss soul. A tough topic. Bound up with centuries, even millennia of freight. I’ve begun using the word again in the last year after decades of setting it aside as too gnostic, too three-story universe, too weird. In the moment I believe soul refers to the whole of you, the best you, your buddha nature. With Art Green I believe soul represents the link between what seems to be the individual and the one. How all that works, I still don’t know.
Art has a nice piece on it. He shares my misgivings and also puts the afterlife aside as an unknown. The soul is God’s breath which gives us life. The last breath before we die returns to the one and afterward we offer up our elements to the elements. My paraphrase.
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.
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.”
Spring and the Leap Year Moon
Friday gratefuls: Ted of All Trades for two pushes yesterday. A beautiful snowday. Mussar on Zoom. Kate on camera. Rigel, hip deep in the snow. Leftover cabbage and corned beef. Each of you. Isolation. A changing world. Internet. DSL. Black Mountain, Shadow Mountain.
And on we go together, separate. Sister Mary had planned to come for a conference this weekend. Canceled. Brother Mark has had two hours of instruction on Blackboard, an online instructional tool, and will start teaching with it soon. Good luck, Marko. We had over 10 inches of snow yesterday, snow all day. I cleaned the back deck seven times. Ted came and plowed us out twice.
Our Thursday mussar class was on Zoom. A good medium, fourteen signed on. Some technical glitches, to be expected. We were able to do our class, an hour and a half, read Rabbi Jamie’s clear, new translation of the Orchot Tzaddikim, and do our usual back and forth. I’m not sure this would have worked as well if I didn’t already know the others online. Or, maybe it would have been a different, but also rich experience. A self-quarantine positive note was Debra Cope’s presence from her new home in Maryland. Online the distance was not a barrier. Good to see her and hear her.
I have a new class with Rabbi Jamie starting in April, but this time I imagine we’ll all be on Zoom. Friend Tom Crane poked those of us who gather by zoom once a month. We’ll be meeting on Sunday morning to talk about what we’ll do during the present crisis. All of us are well past the at-risk age of 60. Leaning on this generation of online conferencing tools will help at least some of us.
The world has changed. But we don’t yet know how, or how much. I remember men on the moon. Yes, I’m that old. Even the first off-earth landing for a human doesn’t compare. We don’t where we’re headed. We’re not even sure where we’ve been. Ride it out. Wu wei for all.
Imbolc and the Leap Year Moon
Sunday gratefuls: An extra day in my birthday month. DogsonDeployment and the three folks who responded right away. Seoah’s careful scrutiny of the profiles. Kate’s help with Corrine, who called from DoD. Blue skies and warm temps. Atlas Obscura. The Rocky Mountain Land Library. Jon’s offer to stay with Kate while I take the kids on a road trip.
Just signed up for a Food and Land Bookclub. My real interest in it is its association with the Rocky Mountain Land Library in next county over Park County. When I bought the books for the book club, four in all, I found my powers returning. Oh, this is what I’ve got energy for my body said. Book titles: Mayordomo: chronicle of an Acequia in Northern New Mexico, Braiding Sweetgrass: indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants, One Size Fits None: a farm girls search for the promise of regenerative agriculture, and, The Seed Underground: a growing revolution to save food.
When we first moved here, over five years ago now, I wanted to garden, to learn the native plants, to hike the mountains, learn the land and streams and wildlife. Prostate cancer, bum knee then knee replacement, COPD. Kate’s various medical dilemmas later. Distracted. Accomplished little of these. Some hiking, not much thanks to the COPD and the bad knee. Gardening here required more physical energy than I have available. My first native plants class got interrupted by my prostatectomy. Life. Stuff.
I first discovered the Rocky Mountain Land Library in 2015, our first year here. It was only a dream then, an idea concocted by the former owners of Denver’s most loved book store, Tattered Covers. It now has a ranch in Park County, south of Fairplay, a bit over an hour from here. Buildings and projects have begun to come together. It wasn’t ready when I found it and, as it turned out, neither was I.
During Gertie’s last days I reflected again on my instinctual opposition to euthanasia for dogs. It’s no longer absolute because I saw its necessity as Gertie suffered, but it’s still strong. Were there any other instances in my life where I made choices from an instinctual level?
Instinct? Intuition? Deep inner guidance? Link to a source of knowledge I can’t access consciously? Instinct in any formal sense is probably wrong, but the feeling involved, a strong compulsion, a certainty that this path was mine, had that flavor anyhow.
Turns out there were other such choices. When I turned 32, I knew I had to be a parent. Got a vasectomy reversal. Didn’t work. OK. Adopt. First child, a girl, died in a salmonella outbreak at the orphanage. Raeone didn’t want to go forward. She’d just gotten a new job. My deep push made me agree to take care of the new baby myself, no matter what it took. I took him to work with me until he was 18 months old.
After an Ira Progoff workshop in Tuscon, an intentional stirring of my inner life, I stopped by Denver to see Ruth and Gabe. By the time I left I knew Kate and I needed to move to Colorado. She agreed and so we did. We wanted to live in the mountains and to be in our kids and grandkids lives.
Other less dramatic instances. Saw a movie while in college that featured Manhattan. Put my thumb out and spent the summer of 1968, the summer of love, not in San Francisco, but in Manhattan. Curator of Asian art at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Bob Jacobson, gave a lecture on Angkor. Specifically he showed the amazing stone bas relief sculpture that runs for a quarter mile around Angkor Wat’s great Hindu temple. And in particular the churning of the sea of milk where gods and demons struggle for a magical elixir. Had to see it. When my dad died and left me enough money to do some travel, I went.
A related but less pressured decision came when I realized I was no longer Christian, that I had to leave the ministry. Had I not met Kate, this feeling would have been tested, but I met her and she allowed me a graceful exit.
Right now I’m feeling a similar push, perhaps not only to the Rocky Mountain Land Library, but to reawaken the me who woke up for twenty springs, twenty summers, and twenty falls glad for the chance to plant lilies, weed onions, harvest garlic, trim the raspberry canes. The me who woke up for several years and knew tending the bees was in the day’s labor. The me who came here excited about the West, about the mountains, about being in a brand new place. We’ll see where this goes.
Imbolc and the waning crescent of the Shadow Mountain Moon
Sunday gratefuls: Jen. Who called my attention to a lapse in judgement. King Sooper. Who will load my groceries this morning. Tony’s where I’ll get the pork schnitzel. The crescent moon above Black Mountain. The Storm Glass Ruth got me for Hanukah. Jon home from the hospital.
I reported something here said to someone else about yet another person. That was a lapse in judgement and I apologize to Jen for that.
Past the seventy-three marker and heading into another Aquarian year. Might be a good time to get my chart read again. Sorta put all that away after an initial burst of interest. Maybe an annual thing? Like an oil change and vehicle inspection? Time has slipped by, following the trails of Maxwell Creek, Upper Bear Creek, Cub Creek. Running toward the sea of souls.
In another liminal space, a large one this time. After Gertie. After Murdoch. As the wounds heal. Quieter, solemn. Rigel and Kep both subdued, following us, I suppose. No plans. One day in front of the other.
Even Trump seems far away, perhaps only an orange smudge floating out over the Atlantic. Our little family so dispersed. Atomic. Held together by the weak nuclear force. Yet, held together.
The two feet of snow melted in the warm days. Our roof not as layered. Our driveway almost clear. Another round coming, maybe today and tomorrow. Colorado.
This space between, a sacred place, a holy place. Happening on our mountain top. In the Rockies, in the West, in Colorado. The Midwest a humid memory. We’ll see what comes. Living. That’s it right now. Living.
Imbolc and the Full Shadow Mountain Moon
Tuesday gratefuls: Sleep, much needed sleep. Resolution for Gertie. A peaceful house. No doggy conflict, no tension. Another six inches of snow. Pho with Seoah yesterday. Murdoch’s happiness at seeing Seoah and me. The kindness of the staff at Bergen Bark Inn. Another heart to heart with Kate. Our life together. My healing. Orchid, beautiful and white, from Tom and Roxann.
The day after. Gertie is at peace. Murdoch in the kennel. For the first time in our married life we have only two dogs, Rigel and Kep. The house is quieter. Peaceful. Gertie is no longer suffering on her bed in the living room. Murdoch is no longer here, creating a constant possibility of violence. It feels, good.
Not glad Gertie is dead, but very glad her suffering and pain has ended. We couldn’t control it and that tore at Kate and me.
On Tuesday night last week Gertie still had enough will power to go outside to pee. She came in through the downstairs door and I decided to lift her up into the bed with us for the night. She slept between us for the whole night. At about 3 AM she woke up giving me lots of kisses. She kept at it for a long time. It was unusual. Now I imagine she was saying good-bye, letting me know how much she loved me. I will treasure that memory forever.
Yesterday lack of sleep and grief had me. Both battered my sense of self. Why did you let Gertie suffer? Why did you bring Murdoch into the house? Why did Kate marry me? Why am I such a screw up? Went down into that place we can all go, that dark place where our fears, our anxieties wait to trap us, hold us hostage.
Again, Kate came out, sat in my chair while I perched on the ottoman. We talked. In the way only those long together, long in love, bonded, can. She saw me. And in her seeing me I saw myself again. She challenged how I saw myself. And, then, so did I. Oh. The grief. The exhaustion. The last two years. Oh. Yeah.
Our talk allowed me to feel the peacefulness, the quiet in the house and to take some of that and put in my heart. The needle probe withdrew from my psyche.
This morning I fed two dogs. Went out for the paper. Not here. Snow always deters this delivery person from her rounds. Made coffee. Shoveled a path to the loft stairs. Came up here and wrote.
Final note. You might be interested to know that it was difficult for me, missing two days last week. Writing Ancientrails is part of my morning meditation, a freeing of my heart, a way to stay connected with a wide community of friends and family. So important. Glad to be back at it.