Lughnasa Waning Summer Moon
Slept in till nine yesterday. I was at Beth Evergreen from 3:30 to 10 pm. And, I was anxious/excited for most of it. Tuckered out back home, in bed finally around 11 pm. That’s really late for both Kate and me. Got up at 5:30 to feed the dogs since that’s what they expect, then went right back to bed. Unusual, but effective. Got up rested, though still feeling threads of exhaustion.
We had the mussar vaad practice group after religious school. That’s why the evening went so late. My practice for this month, for the middot (character virtue) of curiosity, is to greet judgement with curiosity. That is, each time I feel a judgement about another come up, I’ll add to that feeling a willingness to become curious about what motivated the behavior I’m judging, what might be the broader context? Am I being reactive or am I seeing something that does concern me? Or, both? Does my judgement say more about me than what I’m judging?
I tried this with a member of the mussar class. When I concluded that they were probably acting with little self-awareness from values instilled as a young child, I was still judgmental, wondering how a person could grow old and not gain insight into themselves. Apparently, in this case, quite easily. So that is who they are now. I pushed my circle of curiosity out a bit to ask the question, does our society need people with these attitudes, do we benefit in some way from them?
Important side note here. It’s not the values this person expresses that bother me, though I do disagree with most of them, but the apparent unwillingness to entertain error. No real dialogue can happen then.
When I consider society’s need, I find a different perspective. Since I disagree with most of the values expressed by this person, they make me give pause to my own unexamined ideas. They challenge me to remember the cliched, but valuable: Don’t believe everything you think. What’s the societal advantage here? No democracy can survive capture by one political perspective. That’s the problem with demagogues, autocrats. They represent a calcified political ideology that brooks no challenge, no matter what the ideology. So, the frisson between competing ideas keeps us from accepting the Putin, Xi Jiping, Kim Jong Un style of strongman leadership.
Like Charlie H. in the Woollies, this person threatened to leave the group. It struck me that both used their own intransigence and subsequent reaction to it as a means of manipulating the group into reinforcing their willingness to include them. I feel extorted in those situations, like I have to simply roll over and say, oh, please stay. In Charlie’s case I would not have done it, had I been in the Twin Cities and able to face the daily consequences of defying him. In the mussar group instance I only held my hand up half way when asked if we wanted this person to remain in the group. I felt similarly manipulated, but did not feel my cohesion with the group quite strong enough to withstand outright defiance.
In both instances my reaction is not, I’ll say this again, to the values underlying the reactions of these two people, but to the manipulative and my way or I hit the highway ultimatums.
We should question ourselves if another person’s values disturb us enough to want them gone from our presence, or our society. That’s not to say that there aren’t some values so abhorrent as to justify that. Criminal law is filled with examples. But in the political realm, so long as reasoned discourse can occur, then we owe it to ourselves to consider honestly those with whom we disagree. They might just know something we don’t.
It was the kickoff event last night for the religious school and it was well attended. Each kid came with one or both parents. Usual glitches. Somebody forgot to order food. Solution: Dominoes. I forgot the beachballs. Solution: listen. Facilitation was by committee. Alan did the introduction. Jen Kraft, the regional person from Moving Traditions, spoke about the development of the curriculum. Jamie facilitated a piece about what the sages thought was appropriate for ages from 5 to 100. Tara facilitated a group exercise in which adults and kids called out descriptors for child, teen, adult.
Getting back to five days a week exercise. Always feel better. Trying to regain my former high intensity workouts on the off days from resistance work. These workouts increase cardiac fitness, important especially in the mountains. In my case I do two five minute sets, varying speeds each minute from medium intensity (30 seconds), high intensity (20 seconds), and as fast as possible (10 seconds), with a two minute rest between them. I like high intensity because it’s effective and short in duration.
Looked into stamina after last week’s exhausting day at CBE with Alan. Discovered that I’m doing, mostly, what can be done. The part I’d let drift away was the high intensity workout. So, I’ll return to that. But, the real message is that stamina decreases with age, even with good sleep, decent diet and exercise.
I finally realized that a problem oriented therapeutic approach kept me trapped in a continuing circle of what’s wrong? What do I need to do? How can I change? In other words my life was always problematic. Like whack a mole for psychological issues. No relief, just unending work on what was wrong. What was wrong was me.
Kate and I, I think, are at a similar cross roads. We need to accentuate the resources, the strengths that we each have, and they are considerable. Loss of stamina and chronic diseases (which we both have) are part of our lives, yes, but they are not our lives. Our lives are about sewing, quilting, the board at CBE, old friends, grandchildren, sons, our life together. They’re about writing and teaching and hiking and reading. About filling our days with purpose and love. Death is a certainty, but we don’t have to reach for it. It will come for us, in its own time. Until then, carpe diem!
A yahrzeit wall consists of plaques with deceased member’s name, date of death, and a small light to the left of the plaque. Technology allows Leah, who manages the wall, to program the lights so that they come on during the month of the person’s death, following the Jewish calendar. Yahrzeit, literally year time, is the yearly anniversary of a relative’s death, during which mourners say the kaddish, or the mourner’s prayer, during services. I like this idea a lot. It keeps a relative’s memory alive and it honors the living by giving them certain knowledge that they will not be forgotten. Someday it may be Kate’s name will be up there, maybe mine, too.
The surprising part of all this, unpleasantly surprising, was that when I got home around 2 pm, I felt exhausted. Not just tired, but done in for the day. The degree of exhaustion seemed exaggerated. Yes, I’d been gone a long while (for these days), had no lunch and was on task the whole time. Even so. Kate reminded me that working with my hands wears me out. She’s right. The combination of careful, thoughtful work for two and a half hours followed by a roughly similar amount of time with a power tool resulted in sagging. Even a nap didn’t cover it.
We tried a Colorado cure for Kate’s nausea symptoms. She toked up yesterday morning, lighting one of the pre-rolled Jilly Belly spliffs. She took four hits. Result: nausea subsided, heartburn began. And, she said, I feel spacy. Which she didn’t like. So she went back to bed anyhow. A work in progress. Next time she’ll try two tokes. If it does reduce the nausea, we will get her a bong and use ice in the water to cool down the smoke. I told her she was one toke over the line sweet Jesus; then added, well, maybe better, one toke over the line sweet Moses.
In the packet that he offered, Ariel quoted Rabbi Abraham Heschel, a great friend to Martin Luther King: “There is immense silent agony in the world, and the task of man is to be a voice for the plundered poor, to prevent the desecration of the soul and the violation of our dream of honesty.” And, “Morally speaking there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the sufferings of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty while all are responsible.”
After mussar Kate and I went with many members of the group to a place called Go, Paint in downtown Evergreen. It was the start of an interesting local expression of an international movement called 
When we were at the Beth Evergreen teachers’ workshop last week, Tara asked us what we thought we brought to the classroom. “I bring a spirit of inquiry, of curiosity,” I said, then surprised myself by voicing an insight I didn’t realize I’d had, “I’ve always lived the questions, not the answers.” True that.
