Category Archives: Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Aging, Family, Health, Holidays, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Truth

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Winter and the Moon of the New Year (and, Christmas Eve)

Thursday gratefuls: Alan. CBE. Jamie. Marilyn. Tara. Kate. Rigel’s clean bowl this morning. Christmas Eve. Our best present only 27 days away! Nordic Advent Calendar. Santa Claus. Magic and wonder. Young children. Another big present only 7 days away. 2021.

 

Kate’s had a long Sjogren’s flare. Started on Monday or so. Low grade temp. Fatigue. Little nausea, which is good. Drains away energy, leaves the slows. Unusual for it to last this long, often gone in a day.

We had a tough, sad, necessary talk on Tuesday. It came after a scam call about our Amazon account, after Rigel’s refusal to eat, after Kep threw up, after Option Care failed again to deliver the bags Kate uses for her tube feedings.

Pierced my calm. Frustration leaked out. Not angry. Momentarily overwhelmed. Got us to talking about this new normal. What we can reasonably expect of each other.

The tough and sad part. I’m not getting better.  It’s taken me months to accept that, to accept this. She put her hand up, indicated a long, slow decline.

I know. I just… I know, too. Wu wei. We flow with this. But, it makes me sad.

Me, too. I used to wonder which of us would die first. Now, I know.

Maybe not. Heart attack. Stroke. Car accident.

Maybe not. But, probably.

There it was. On the table. The dining room table, where, I imagine, most of these conversations happen. Laying things out, saying what’s been unsaid. Right where the plates and the knives and spoons and forks go.

Acceptance, though. Has its own power. Increases intimacy. Clears the haze away. No one is dead. No one is dying quickly. And, we’re all dying anyhow, every day closer.

OK. Not a cheery Christmas message. Maybe not. But the divine with us came out and walked the room while we talked. Reminded us of evanescence. Of the joy of being together. Of the time we have, rather than the time we don’t have.

Brought us together, appreciating each other even more. A gift of a long ancientrail, marriage and love and steadfastness.

It came upon a midnight clear, that glorious night of old.

Garden, Great Wheel, Holidays, Humanities, Myth and Story, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Green

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Winter and the Moon of the (highly anticipated) New Year

Tuesday gratefuls: The great conjunction of Jupiter-Saturn. Bertilak de Hautdesert. Gawain. Morgan Le Fay.  Arthur. The Celts. Germans. Swiss. English. Irish. Joseph’s new job. Hawai’i. Maps. Friends.

 

 

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight summary.* This long poem is part of the Arthurian tales, perhaps the best known outside of Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur.

The Green Knight is the most important figure in the poem for our Solstice purposes. Sir Gawain takes on the heavy burden of showing the contradictions between courtly love and chivalry. His role is less significant for Solstice thoughts.

Here a few lines from the poem itself.

“Great wonder of the knight
Folk had in hall, I ween,
   Full fierce he was to sight,
And over all bright green.
the hair of the horse’s head was of green, and his fair, flowing locks clung about his shoulders; and a great beard like a bush hung over his breast, and with his noble hair was cut evenly all round above his elbows, and the lower part of his sleeves was fastened like a king’s mantle. The horse’s mane was crisped and gemmed with many a knot, and folded in with gold thread about the fair green with ever a fillet of hair and one of gold, and his tail and head were intertwisted with gold in the same manner, and bound with a band of bright green, and decked with costly stones and tied with a tight knot above; and about them were ringing many full bright bells of burnished gold. Such a horse or his rider were never seen in that hall before…” wayback machine

He and the horse he rode in on. Green. Green. Green.

At Camelot the great New Year’s feast only awaits the exchanging of gifts to begin. The knights of the round table, Arthur, and Guinevere sit at long trencher tables, chatting and drinking. Their anticipation fades when a commotion erupts. A knight on horseback has ridden into the hall on his horse.

Arthur, not wanting Camelot to look cowardly, agrees to the Green Knight’s challenge after silence in the hall. Cut off his head tonight. In a year and a day find him and offer your neck in return.

Sir Gawain, not wanting Arthur to put his kingship at stake, takes his place. Off comes the Green Knight’s head. It rolls toward the head table and after a bit of searching the green, headless body finds it, and jumps gracefully back on his saddle.

On New Year’s day a year hence Gawain, after a long search starting on All Saint’s Day, finds the Green Chapel. I am known as the Green Chapel Knight, he told Gawain.

The Green Chapel though is no church building. It’s a green mound with openings, like a burial mound. The Green Knight appears.

After three swings, two missed, and one knick on the neck, the Green Knight declares Gawain’s pledge satisfied.

I see two related, but different, relationships to the Winter Solstice in this story. The first, perhaps obvious, perhaps not, concerns the turning of the Great Wheel.

The Green Knight comes to the festive hall on New Year’s eve, not long after the Solstice. The world is still cold. The sun low. Plant life browned and enervated. Chopping off the head of the Green Knight corresponds to the harvest. Even after losing his head, his body, his roots, can find it. He lives yet. Just as plants whose bowed stalks and brown leaves live on underground, ready with stored food for the coming of spring.

All the eating, even the feasting, of the fallow time cannot kill the vegetative life represented by the Green Knight. On the Solstice we stay in the depths, in the darkness, but we also know that on the coming night the light will begin to overtake it. Slowly. Gradually. Until all the Green Heads previously fallen pick themselves up again.

The second correspondence concerns Morgan Le Fay, the withered woman contrasted to the fresh young wife of Bertilak de Hautdesert. A witch and half brother of Arthur, it is Morgan Le Fay who turns Bertilak de Hautdesert into the Green Knight.

Magic. Earth Magic. The green covered burial mound is a chapel. The place of Morgan Le Fay, and the Green Knight may represent the older, nature focused magic, a magic that honored the chaotic reality of the natural world. A magic that confronts the civilized world of revels and knights and governments and agriculture. The organized world. Which can only understand death as finality, not as part of an ongoing cycle.

Christianity adopted a linear view of time. You can see it in a world ending second coming somewhere in the distant future. You can see it in the ominous nature of death. A time of testing, of being sorted, wheat from chaff. Fearing death makes sense if eternal judgment awaits.

Earth magic and the vegetative power of renewal that the Green Knight displays remains in the cyclical world of the Great Wheel. Death. Then, life. Life. Then, death. Decomposition and decay as a good, a way of transforming death into a process, a part of the ongoingness of the Great Wheel.

In both of these interpretations a more ancient, wilder world stands against human conceit. Buildings. Honor. Kings. Not necessarily to displace them, but rather to disrupt them. To remind them of the context of their lives.

Whatever layers we create that push away from the natural world: skyscrapers, airplanes, medicine, family and corporate farms, highways and cars, the natural world is always foundational. Inescapable. The necessary in a contingent world.

Maybe this New Year’s, at a feast near you, a Green Knight will ride in on his Green Horse asking you to cut off his head. What will you do?

 

 

 

 

*The Green Knight came into Arthur’s hall and asked any one of his knights to trade blows.

Sir Gawain accepted this challenge and he was allowed to strike first. He cut off the Green Knight’s head. The latter calmly picked it up and told Gawain to meet him on New Year’s Morning for his turn.

On his way to this meeting, Gawain lodged with a lord and each agreed to give the other what he had obtained during each day of Gawain’s stay. On the first day, when the lord was out hunting, Gawain received a kiss from his wife which was duly passed on. On the second day, he received a brace of kisses which were also passed on. On the third day he was given three kisses and some green lace which would magically protect him, but only the three kisses were passed on.

Having left the lord’s residence, Gawain arrived at the Green Chapel where he was to meet the Green Knight. He knelt for the blow. The Green Knight aimed three blows at Gawain, but the first two did not make contact and the third but lightly cut his neck.

The Green Knight turned out to be the lord with whom he had been staying and he said he would not have cut Gawain at all had the latter told him about the lace. The Green Knight was called Bertilak and he lived at Castle Hutton.

Great Wheel, Holidays, Humanities, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Wintertide is Coming

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Wintertide  December 21 to February 1

Conifer. Evergreen. Pine. Get it? We live in Conifer, often shop in Evergreen, and I pass through Pine once a month on my way to the Happy Camper in Bailey. Though a bit on the nose, if you visited our mountain towns, you would see how these small communities got their names. Lodgepoles. Ponderosa. Spruce. Dominant here. Greening mountain sides. Out my loft/studio window Black Mountain rises up to 10,000 feet, almost a thousand above our home on the peak of Shadow Mountain. The shadows make it appear Black right now, but in other times of day it is green with the Lodgepoles that cover it. Our backyard. Lodgepole.

This is their season. When they stand green while the Aspen and the Willow and the Ash put away their leaves for the winter. Now, as far back in human history, these trees seem to carry on through the cold and Snow of Winter, ever living, their needles green.

Think of it. The Sun sank lower and lower, the nights grew longer, the air colder. The Maple and the Oak and the Elm and the Willow and the Ironwood all lost their leaves, seemed to shrink into themselves. The gardens had only dead stalks of Beans, Tomatoes, Cabbage. They would stick out, above the first winter Snow, sad and fallen. Dead. The Grasses were brown, bowing to the coming of the Winter King. Nothing that bore food lived. Or, so it seemed.

Except. Conifer. Evergreen. Pine. Maybe a Douglas Fir, a soaring Redwood, a Sequoia. A Jackpine. Still green. Yes. These cold fallow days were not all powerful. Even though the sun had begun to disappear, these trees braved the elements. Still green.

Since Summer’s End, Samain, the time of the last harvest, until Imbolc, February 1st, celebrating the coming of the Ewe’s Milk, there would be no new nourishment from the land, from the world of plants. Even the game in the woods grew thin, suffering the death of the green things as humans did. Fish required chopping through thick ice. Standing in the cold.

Bring in the tree. Bring in the Pine, the Conifer, the Evergreen. Bring them into the house to celebrate the hope, the wish for a new growing season. We need them in the house before the Winter Solstice, when the night and the dark have their victory, light vanquished for as long as it will be all year. Maybe we put stars on them as a Martin Luther tale suggests he did after a Christmas season walk. Or, maybe tree lights remind us of Adam, the first human, who put flaming sticks in the ground for 8 days starting on the Solstice. By the 8th day he trusted the sun would return.

And, bring in a log. A thick one. One that can burn a while. A Yule log. We’ll put it in the fireplace, light it, then put it out each night. At the end of the season we’ll save enough of it to start the fire for the Yule log next Wintertide.

Go outside. Bring in the slash from tree cutting. A few thicker logs. A bonfire! Crackling, sending sparks in the air, up toward the heavens. (not here right now though. wildfires.) Fire. Evergreens. In the fallow time.

Those Romans. Hey, they were something, weren’t they? Saturnalia. Celebrated Jupiter’s overthrow of his father, Saturn. A new world order. It ran from December 17th to December 24th. A lot of decorating,gift giving, feasting, singing songs, giving each other candles to celebrate the eternal light. No Rudolf or Reindeer. Later on.

Lots of other links to these holidays. If you’re interested, find a copy of The Winter Solstice: the Sacred Traditions of Christmas, by John Matthews. Also, good suggestions for celebration.

This winter. This particular winter. Wintertide 2020/2021. So much struggle and pain. So many broken promises. So many damaged homes and souls. And, worsening. Right now. As Wintertide comes into its own. Cases in the quarter million or so a day. Deaths over 370,000. Trump still swinging the wrecking ball. Proud Boys in the streets of D.C. Climate change reappearing. Demands to heal centuries of injustice still heating up the body politic. A divided nation. Oh, my.

So what’s Wintertide all about? Those evergreen Trees that live in the cold and fallow months. Conifer, Pine, Evergreen. The Yule log that burns this year and the next. The long journey into darkness finally comes to a climax. The children of wonder whose births have come to be celebrated now: Attis, Mithras, Baal, Tammuz, Apollo and Dionysus, Jesus. All those architectural monuments to the Winter Solstice: Chichen Itza, New Grange, Stone Henge.

each birth, always

They congregate now, in the fallow time, as human markers of lived hope. Look, the Evergreens can survive! Here’s the piece of the Yule log from last year. Last year! This will end.

Happy birthday baby gods. Reminding us that the true power lives in each of us humans. The sun coming through great hall of New Grange to light up the spirals for seventeen minutes. Kulkukan, the feathered serpent, visible on the steps to the top of the temple at Chichen Itza. We’ve been here before. And made it through.

Trump will leave. We’ll gather round to work on our nation together. The vaccines will arrive and Covid will get pushed back into the ranks of a seasonal flu at most. You and I will see each other. Give those hugs and kisses and handshakes and wiggles that have waited through this benighted year. That’s what Wintertide is all about.

So bring in the mistletoe. Hang some green boughs. Light some candles. Make some glog. Sing songs. Read poetry. We’ll be ok.

Beyond the Boundaries, Commentary on Religion, Great Wheel, Holidays, Judaism, Letters, Memories, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Our Land and Home, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain

A Wandering Soul

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Samain and the Moon of Thanksgiving

Sunday gratefuls: Paul’s birthday. Mark Ellis. Mary. Diane. Rigel, keeping me warm. Dr. Bachtel. Cod fingers and steak bits. Onion and Cucumber salad. A Colorado blue Sky day. Colorado road builders. Jeffco snowplow drivers. Whoever invented concrete and macadam. Britain. Wales. Scotland. England. Isle of Man. Druids. The Holy Isle. Castle Conwy. Hawarden, Wales. St. Deniol’s residential library. Chester, England. Horse racing there.

I have my toe in the Christmas Spirit pond. Not fully there, but it’s coming. Feels wonderful. Getting ready to dive into some research on Yule and the Winter Solstice. Where most of the Christmas traditions originate. I love learning about Celtic and Northern European religious traditions. Their pantheons. Their myths and legends. Snorri Sturluson. Wagner’s Ring Cycle. Tolkien’s work. Beowulf. Not sure why but these traditions resonate with my inner life. As does Taoism and the lifeways of the Japanese. Much more so than the New Testament or the Torah. Seems strange that it would be so. But, it is.

Even Diwali and Holi. I’d like to experience Holi at least once. Throwing colored powder at each other to celebrate the riotous colors of spring and the triumph of good over evil? Yes. Messy, beautiful, ecstatic.

Buddhism doesn’t do it for me either. Except certain aspects of Tibetan Buddhism. Yamantaka. Bardo. Again, not sure why. Thin soup for me.

Those traditions that find animacy everywhere like Shinto, many Native American traditions. Yes. Roman and Greek myth, legend. Yes, not in a soul way, but as story, as ancient layers below this civilization in which we live.

Perhaps my soul never left the time into which it was born. Maybe during the journey out of Africa when all things were miraculous. When all things moved and lived and had their being right alongside those of us on pilgrimage to humanity’s future. Or, maybe some shamanic ancestor moved directly into this body. Wondering what it was like far from his or her time.

Whatever the explanation. Once I began to see, and then shed, the totalizing myths I’d been steeped in from birth… Well. I can’t unlearn the fragile and human created nature of them. The scent of fear in them, attempting to make certain an uncertain world. Building meaning for lives out of tissue paper and sealing wax. Like the Catholics who built their English churches over Celtic holy wells. Tried to absorb enough of the Faery Faith to draw the Celts away from their pagan practices. It worked. For a while. As Judaism and Islam work for a while, for many. Zoroastrianism.

Not sure about Hinduism. It seems to want those most early, most primal connections with this place. Great stories like the Ramayana and the Rig Veda. I don’t know it well enough. Maybe never will. The Mahabharata. Many mystical practices. Lots of color and fun. Also, the dark side of caste, of killing Muslims.

This month though, the time of deepest darkness, has inspired so much wonderful music. Story. Celebration. At least for those of us in the temperate latitudes. And, I revel in it. Going down with the longest night into the well of my soul. Coming out to light an evergreen tree, hang mistletoe, holly and ivy. Santa Claus. Elves. Snow. Cold. Icicles. Sleighs. Horses with halters. Fire up the yule log. Wish I could lift a glass of grog, or ambrosia, or single malt scotch. But, alas no.

Guess this is my Sunday unsermon. Leaving one way and seeking others.

Asia, Family, Humanities, Myth and Story, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Travel, US History, World History

Kakun

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Samain and the Moon of Thanksgiving

Wednesday gratefuls: Kakun, family precepts. This article. Ikigai. Ichi-go, Ichi-e. Cribbage. Card decks. Playing as the snow came down yesterday. Other cultures. Repositories of wisdom about how to be human. Ours, too. The snow on Black Mountain. The beauty here. Politics. Covid. Going, Going.

 

 

Japan. An old, sometimes conservative, sometimes radically modern place. So much to learn from them. The article I link to above: This Japanese Shop is 1,020 Years Old has three ideas that resonate (thanks, Tom, for reminding me of this idea). Kakun, family precepts. Many Japanese families have a motto, or a family saying that guides them. Like those quotes at the bottom of European heraldry, I suppose. “Live long, live healthy, die suddenly.” “As long as you strive to be popular, you will remain unpopular.”  “Boys must help with the housework.” Quotes from this website, SoraNews. It’s masthead reads: Bringing you yesterday’s news today.

Shinise. This term connotes a business that has been in business for a really long time. 19 for over a thousand years. 140 over 500 years. 3100 over two hundred years and 33,000 with over a hundred years. In this last group are Nintendo and Kikkoman. These businesses, especially the older ones, have opted out, really probably never participated in, the notion of maximizing profit, expand all you can. Seems like an idea that might be important in late stage capitalism. The more shinise, the more stable the economy.

Kakun + shinise = Ichiwa. Family precepts, or values, married to a shinise approach to business, can yield stability and security that lasts. Makes me wonder about our individualistic, upwardly striving, materialistic culture. But, as a counter point. A useful reminder that there are many ways to be human.

As I age, I find myself more interested in family, about what mine means, about the message, the kakun, that is implicit in ours. Not sure what it is, but I think there is one. One thing that’s a part of our kakun is service as a calling. Teachers. Warrior. Doctor. Organizer. Writer. Journalist. Maybe you can think of others? Pass them along if you do. Perhaps another is: Learn. Lottsa graduate level education. Travel? Read?

In a mixed economy shinise might play a disproportionate role. While the necessary matters like housing, medical care, and sufficient income for food and education would be governmental responsibilities, there are plenty of opportunities for businesses that have kakun and shinise at their core. In Bangkok, 2004, I visited a small community of folks whose only product was Buddhist begging bowls. The bowls required several different steps, all done by hand, and the steps got distributed among families. Bought one and it sits nearby.

We’re so binary. Liberal? Conservative? Which are you? Well, on this, I’m liberal. On this, conservative. On this, maybe, neither one. Are you an individualist or a communitarian? Are you gay, straight, trans, bi? Life requires nuance. Ideology is good for critiquing, but not so good for planning.

It might be that a conversation around these values is what we, the USA, needs.

Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, US History, Weather +Climate

Iran. The Supremes.

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Samain and the almost full Moon of Thanksgiving

Saturday gratefuls: Sleep. A two hour nap yesterday. Peak TV. That beautiful Thanksgiving Moon. The stars this morning. Black Mountain. All the family and friend connections made and reaffirmed (while spreading Covid.) Pictures of Trump walking away. Political perspectives. Differing. The flag. Other symbols of our nation. BLM. AOC. CDC. The Rocky Mountains. The Laramide orogeny. Plate tectonics. Super Novas. The origin of life. The miracle of life. Death. Yes, it’s a miracle, too.

 

Checking on the idiot is coming to a close. I hope. What happened to his promise to leave the country if he lost? I know. I know. Power. How he handles his smaller monarchy, reigning over GOPland, may have a lot to do with how our country moves forward. If he insists on demagogic rhetoric delivered to thousands of unmasked adoring subjects, without pause, we may be in for a bad four years. 2024? Oh, god no. Let’s hope as a Christmas present to his fellow gutter Christians he decides to focus on building towers in Wuhan.

Iran’s top nuclear scientist killed by gun. Live by the bomb, die by the gun. Assassination. A dangerous implement for a state. When one seeks revenge, first dig two graves. Middle East volatility. Problematic since the end of the Ottoman empire and its continuance insured by the long war against terror. If this is Israel trying to provoke even more direct action against Iran by the orange excrescence, OMG. A full out war between our ally Israel and its powerful enemy, Iran, could push us into a war. Of course we would and should side with Israel, even if it is the provocateur, but… Glad our boy is headed to Hawai’i.

Not sure what a war would mean for Saudi Arabia where brother Mark teaches. Riyadh. Iran and Saudi Arabia are toe-to-toe enemies, too. With only the Persian Gulf separating them. And the o.e. has sold Saudi Arabia many sophisticated weapons. The lame duckness of a defeated President may be more like a game of Angry Birds. What can he do in the waning days of his administration? Plenty. Watch out.

That Supreme Court ruling against New York’s restrictions on churches, synagogues, mosques, and other religious gathering places? Hmmm. I’m torn. Should religious freedom trump public health? The ideal would be a situation in which religious leaders, and their faithful, say, oh, we don’t want to die in large numbers, so let’s follow the recommendations of scientists. And, science itself.

The question is, can a government, any government, constrain people from gathering to worship in the fashion they prefer? I can follow the reasoning that says this is such a basic right under our constitution that the answer must be no. I would not want a similar prohibition on the right to assemble, for example.

Yet. The prohibitions in question did relate to all religions, so nothing there about government picking religious sides. The danger is obvious. And, may not exist for much longer. Why not equivocate, or just not rule? Why not err on the side of public safety? The government’s most significant role, it seems to me, insures just that.

Many other unhappy ruling will surely come. His legacy. The o.e. and Moscow Mitch. Makes our work harder, but that much more important.

Day has come. The sun lights up the peak of Black Mountain and highlights the five ski runs built by a friend of my former doctor. Yes, you can own mountains. No, you shouldn’t be able to. But, then… Our house? Life’s complicated.

On the flipside.

Beyond the Boundaries, Coronavirus, Dogs, Family, Friends, Humanities, Letters, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase

Thanks for the Body Contact

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Samain and the Moon of Thanksgiving

Tuesday gratefuls: Kate’s good days. Cottage pie. Rigel in the bed. Her licking my hand this morning. Kep peeking over the edge of the bed, “Get up, Get up!” Charlie Haislet, may his treatments succeed. CBE. The blues shabbat this Friday. Chess. Stefan Zweig. His Dark Materials. Phillip Pullman. Vaccines. Covid. Sleep. Electric blanket. Cool nights.

 

The other night Kep got up, turned around three times, and laid down with his back snug up against mine. I know this is probably weird to non-dog people and that some dog people say my dog will never be in my bed. Fair enough. For me, however, it was an affirmation of the hug. Of love between species. And, it got me thinking. About hugs and sex and general body contact.

When I was in Seminary in the early 1970’s, all of us had to go through the University of Minnesota’s sex education seminar. No, it was not pictures of penises and vaginas with pointers and the guy who couldn’t teach anything else in charge. No, this was a week long event, the chairs were bean bags, and there was the “desensitization” morning where they showed multiple pornographic films at the same time. The idea was to produce clergy who were not afraid of either their sexuality or the sexuality of their parishioners. Not sure whether it achieved that lofty goal, but it did make conversations about sex and sexuality easier.

“Thank you for the body contact.” We learned to say this whenever we bumped into someone or accidentally brushed up against another person. I know. But, it was the 1970’s. The purpose of this phrase was laudable, imo. Normalize body contact, don’t fear the touch of another. Of course, boundaries. Of course. But don’t treat contact with another as if it meant they had cooties. Or, Covid. Yes, in today’s Covid infected world this advice would be anathema, but Covid won’t last. Hugs and touching will.

Anyhow, I went immediately, as you might imagine, to the concept of dasein. Heidegger’s idea of being there, of being in the world, reminds us that our place in this world extends beyond the limits of our body, beyond our skin, into the worlds of the other. In some ways this is obvious since our sensorium collects information from all around us, even from very far away. In a variation on this idea I’ve seen recent articles suggest mind is not limited to our body either, and for some of the same reasons.

Existence before essence*. Wherever you may stand on this philosophical chestnut, hugs and sex and hand shaking and accidental bumps into another affirm the existence of an-other. If you think hard about being in your own body, you can come to the conclusion, as the Sophists did, that you and your body is the only thing that matters. In fact, you can stretch it to include the idea that you might be the only thing in existence. That’s solipsism. You’ll just have to trust me that you can get there logically, unless you already knew that. I reject it, as I imagine you might, too.

Though we might not go that far, it is easy, especially now during the wear a mask, don’t touch, wash your hands moment we’re all having, to not contact another warm body. Spouses and dogs, children being the important exceptions. Feeling Kep’s 102 degree body heat radiating from his body to mine made his presence very real. As did the weight of him. More than that. It was love that prompted him to lie down next to me, close enough that we touched. Kep’s dasein and mine became entangled for that time.

In my world existence does precede essence. Your presence and how you show up is much more important to me than your “human nature.” As my presence and how I show up is more important to myself than whatever human nature I might be said to have. We need reminding though of the flesh and blood reality of the other. That they are like us in some fundamental manner even if it’s not something we can understand or access. Hugs. Sex. Handshakes. Crowded rooms. Or, the simple act of a dog, a friend, a life partner.

Thanks, Kep, for the body contact.

 

 

*The proposition that existence precedes essence is a central claim of existentialism, which reverses the traditional philosophical view that the essence of a thing is more fundamental and immutable than its existence.Wikipedia

 

 

 

 

 

Commentary on Religion, Family, Friends, Great Wheel, Holidays, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase

We are the people of Holiseason!

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Samain and the Full, Blue Moon of Radical Change

Saturday gratefuls: Dr. Eigner. Undetectable PSA. The Great Wheel. Taoism. All us pagans. Samain. The fallow season. Holiseason. Darkness. A return, however brief, to time sanity. The big snow that tamped down the Cameron and East Troublesome fires. The American Way. The American Dream.

Samain. Again. The Celtic New Year. The Great Wheel turned now for a full orbit around the sun since last Samain. Though I embraced the Jewish New Year in September, 5781, as a way out of 2020, it never seemed to stick. That is, 2020 kept crashing back over the dike of even as ancient a tradition as that one. Gonna try again.

The Celtic New Year puts the beginning of a new year at the beginning of the fallow time. Samain in ancient Gaelic means Summer’s End. In the most ancient Celtic calendar that we have, the Celts recognized two seasons. Beltane, now on May 1st, marked the season of fertility, growth, harvest. Samain, now on October 31st, is the final harvest holiday. The growing season finished villages prepared for the difficult time of year to come, a cold time when people lived off their stores. Interesting to me that the Celts chose such a time for their New Year.

The veil thins during this time, the veil between this world and the Other World. The Other World is the land of Faery, the land of the Gods, the land of the dead. The thinned veil meant ancestors could cross back into this world, as could the Faery folk. Since the Faery folks sometimes kidnapped children and ancestors could be ornery, it was a scary transition from growing season to the fallow time.

Contracts ended or began during the Samain market week as they did for each of the Celtic holidays: Beltane, Lughnasa, Samain, and Imbolc. Always a festive time of year Samain like the others, saw trading and feasting, late night dancing around bonfires, visiting family. The Celts also celebrated the two equinoxes and the two solstices: Ostara, Midsommar, Mabon, and Yule with market weeks.

Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophist, and radical thinker of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth, says Michaelmas, the Saint Day for the Archangel Michael, September 29th, is the “springtime of the soul.” Along with the Jewish New Year which always falls near the same time, we’re encouraged to go deep into our selves. I marry this idea to the increasing darkness, the gradual lengthening of the night that began at Midsommar and reaches its maximum at Yule, on the Winter Solstice. Samain invites us to not only go inside, but to also open ourselves to that Other World, the Unseen One, that lies just out of sight. Might be a multiverse, might be a dimension not understood by science or reason.

The Great Wheel teaches us about the link between our inner journey and the seasonal changes. The seasonal changes themselves can teach us about the world beyond our lived reality. We can avert our attention from the screens and pages and indoor rooms of our lives and take our attention out of doors. We can wonder what lies beyond that mountain, beneath that lake.

It teaches us Covid too shall end. And, makes us aware as well, that it will both end and return again. Though I hope we don’t have to have another Trump. Please. Don’t make authoritarianism and rampant stupidity laced into cupidity a renewing moment. Please.

Holiseason begins now. The term is not mine-I found it in the Oxford English Dictionary-but I apply it to the time between today, Samain, and January 6th, the Epiphany, the day after the Twelve Days of Christmas.  Holiseason includes so many, many holidays: Samain, Thanksgiving, Divali, Hanukah, Advent, Posada, Winter Solstice, Yule, New Years Day, Boxing Day, Kwanza. Add ones that you know.

We bathe ourselves in light and darkness, spend time with family, often giving them gifts. Holiseason is a time to sing songs, make the tables groan with food, decorate the house, the city, the nation, hug friends and family, acknowledge all the ancient spiritual trails we follow,  cue ourselves in to the soul’s journey, move deep into the caverns of our own inner life.

If you open yourself to its richness, holiseason will alert you to the fullest potential in yourself and those you love. It will remind you that the whole globe seeks for wisdom, for love, for light. Traditions come alive in song, in movies, in books. Poetry. We need not despair, even with Trump, even with Covid, even with hurricanes and wildfires. We are the people of the Holiseason. Joyous. Alert. Loving. Singing. Diving deep into our own souls to turn them inside out and know others through them. Blessed be.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Springtime of the Soul

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Fall and the RBG Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Thoracentesis. Valet who got our car from a distant garage. The imaging employee who found an unused machine for Kate’s catscan. Phase two of the three stage plan done. Remembering to take out the blue foam. Clear vision. Michaelmas yesterday. Cool morning.

Michaelmas. The Saint’s Day of the Archangel Michael, he of Lucifer ejecting mythic fame. God’s great warrior. Also the name of the first term in British colleges and universities.

But best of all, the springtime of the soul. Rudolf Steiner. The growing season has finished. The external world had its glorious moment at the Fall Equinox, the celebration of the harvest. The body will be fed.

We turn our attention inward after Michaelmas. The nights grow longer, the angle of the sun shortens, and the days grow cold. Courage and sadness. A touch of melancholy encouraged.

When we drove down the hill yesterday, golden leaved Aspens had burst out among the Lodgepole Pine green. Framed by a typical clear blue Colorado sky the beauty made me gasp.

The beauty, the chill in the air. We know its brevity, like the beauty of the young. Those Aspen speak from the sides of Black Mountain, Conifer Mountain, Shadow Mountain. We are done now. Good bye. See you on the flip side. Their golden glamor a farewell to summer.

We know it. Many falls. The outrageous, over the top color of a Midwestern fall. The remnant of the Big Forest, the one that stretched from the east Coast to the Plains. Before the modern era a squirrel could travel tree to tree from the Atlantic to the Great Plains without ever touching the ground. So much melancholy in those colors, the abstract landscapes of a vivisectioned ecosystem.

Piles of Leaves in the yard, on the Forest floor. Running, jumping, landing in the piles. Dogs racing into them, through them. Do you remember, as I do, burning Leaves in the street? An acrid smell combining with earthy wetness. A strong seasonal memory.

One day soon Winds driven by the Cold slumping down from the Arctic will strip them all, Maple, Oak, Ironwood, Elm, Ash, Locust, Hickory, Sycamore, dislodge their Leaves and the tree naked against the coming winter. The Aspen gold rush will disappear and only the ghostly gray-white of their Trunks and Branches will remain.

A woman I learned ritual craft from thought this denuding of the deciduous Trees might explain Samain and the Celtic belief that the veil thinned between this world and the next during the transition.

Kate’s sister Sarah married Jeremiah Miller. A painter. Before I met her, Kate bought two of his very large paintings. One hangs in our bedroom. In it the Sky is a gunmetal blue and its complement of cumulus Clouds show as reflections in a Pond. Both Sky and Pond show through a Forest of bare Trunks and Branches, a before Winter comes scene we see all year.

This turn of the Great Wheel follows the gradual waning of the Light until the longest Night, the Winter Solstice. What better time for introspection, for the Soul to rise?

May this season of the Soul’s Springtime give you what you need for the next months and years of your journey, your ancientrail.

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Paying the Price

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Fall and the RBG Moon

Monday gratefuls: Groveland. The Ancient Ones. The ancientrails of wondering and friendship. The Darkness. The Stars, now steady. Kate’s stoma site. Getting clear and healthy. Kate. Just Kate, always Kate. Exposure. Fear. 28 degrees this a.m. The Gold in them thar Hills: Aspen. Magwa, the hero Rat. The clan.

So what happens to me. I over prepare. I go deep but the subject has only so much time. I’m disappointed. Did I give them anything? Did I intervene too little? Was I defensive? Will they want me back? Especially yesterday with It’s Beyond Me.

Zoom of course. Perhaps my choice of style, a discussion rather than a straight presentation. The inherent ambiguity of the topic. Felt off when it finished.

Also, I need this. I need to try something new. Learn something new. Be in this zoom moment as an actor, not only a passive observer.

Watched Social Dilemma on Netflix. The second of three documentary recommendations from the ancient ones. Again, not much new. Still, disturbing. I’m writing this in Firefox, using duckduckgo as my search engine. I practice good hygiene on Facebook and still love the old friends and Irish Wolfhounds. I heard the young, bright manipulators, but did not hear the path forward. Unless it’s regulation. Which is a duh unless you hate regulation as evil government intervention. I’m for it.

As I changed Kate’s bandage yesterday, we talked. I’m wondering how we can lift ourselves out of, or away from, this medicalization? I mean, I don’t want to see you as a patient all the time, but with all these appointments and treatments, it’s hard. Our life is not that. Yet, it is.

Right then, Rabbi Jamie called, wondering how Kate was? She mentioned this thought I’d just had. He listened. He had some time before Yom Kippur and wanted to connect with some folks. They miss us. We’ve been absent even from zoom mussar for over a month.

Covid. Makes all this hard. Kate can’t go to Patchworkers or Needleworkers. We don’t go to mussar at CBE. Or, services. Or the occasional program. It will soon be Sukkot and the booth is up, but we’re not there to participate. Yes, this is life now. Yes, it has its price.

God, this is cheery.