Category Archives: Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

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Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ

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Yule and the Yule Moon

Christmukkah gratefuls: Many happy Christmases. The complete severance of Christmas from Christ’s Mass. All of the childhood induced fantasies drifting up and out of bedrooms all over the world. All of the Jewish memories of resistance triggered now for 8 days. Holiseason peaking with Christmas, Hanukkah, and Yule all resonating, vibrating with each other. It is indeed the most wonderful time of the year.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Holiseason

Kavannah: AWE Yira יִרְאָה  Awe, reverence, fear (פְּלִיאָה Plia: Wonder, amazement)

One brief shining: I hear the rattling of old Marley’s chains this morning, looking at a world about to devolve into a Christmas Carol with a different ending, where the Scrooge’s of our country like Trump, Bezos, Musk, and Gates join oligarchs from around the world to ignore even the Ghost of Christmas future and forge for themselves heavy chains and money boxes that will haunt them into their unredeemed future.

Here is the image representing “Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ” in the style of socialist realism, emphasizing interconnectedness and harmony.

And even so, let me say a word for yirah. For wonder, amazement, awe, reverence. Paul reminded me of the Lakota phrase, all my relations. I asked chatbotgpt to give it to me in Lakota and what it means in the Lakota worldview.

The answer* made me realize that I’ve spent decades deconstructing theological and philosophical and even scientific ideas, trying to swim down and through them to the core of what matters. Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ matches my current conclusions though I had to get through years of seminary, meditation, horticulture, dogs, loving Kate, to find the final ingredient I needed, the unitary metaphysic of Judaism. The Tree of Life in Kabbalah maps on to this native worldview, too.

Wish it was as easy as reading this years ago and being able to integrate it, but that wouldn’t have worked. I needed to live the struggle. Judaism with Kabbalah contains this wisdom and expresses it without dogma. Makes me feel even more like a member of the tribe. Or, a tribe.

When I talked to the Mule Deer Doe last week, when I spent time with the three Mule Deer Bucks on my first day here on Shadow Mountain ten years ago, when I planted tulips and iris and crocus and garlic and heirloom tomatoes, when I removed honey supers to carry to Kate for our honey harvest, when I sat with a Wolfhound’s head in my lap and another’s in Kate’s, I engaged the embodied learning of Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ.

Yes, mitákuye Oyás’iŋ comes most vividly into our whole life through direct experience. Yet for me the life of the mind is important, too, and I wanted always to be able to clarify, to say in words the truth my body already know.

In a way I sense my life is now complete. I made the swim all the way to the bottom and down there was the Holy Well of the collective unconscious, linking me to all my relations through the world of Judaism.

Reincarnation? Could be. Death a transformation? Without a doubt. Life a continuous amazement and wonder. For sure. May as well celebrate.

BTW: I like this image from Chatbot’s Dalle, too.

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah!

 

*”Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ” reflects the interconnectedness of all beings and entities in the universe. It embodies the belief that everything—humans, animals, plants, stones, water, air, the earth, and the stars—is interrelated and part of a sacred whole. This worldview emphasizes:

  1. Unity and Kinship: All beings are regarded as relatives, forming a vast web of relationships that must be honored and respected.
  2. Reciprocity: The phrase underscores the importance of balance and mutual care among all entities, fostering a sense of responsibility toward the natural world and its cycles.
  3. Sacred Connection: Life is seen as a continuous, sacred circle in which every part has its place and purpose, contributing to the harmony of the whole.
  4. Humility and Gratitude: By acknowledging “All My Relations,” individuals express gratitude for the interconnectedness of life and humility in recognizing their place within it.

In ceremonies and prayers, “Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ” is often used to close statements or invocations, serving as a reminder of this profound interconnectedness and the sacred responsibility it entails.

                                                Herme Harari Israel

Family, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Holidays, Judaism, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Crossing the Veil

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Samain and the 1% Sukkot Moon

Thursday gratefuls: 17 degrees. Snow. Hard Freeze. 1991 Halloween Blizzard in the Twin Cities. My son and Zack White. Trick or treating, but home early. The soft capture of the Celtic Faery Faith. Mom’s yahrzeit. Wild Neighbors. Elephants. Persons, too.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Snow

Kavannah:  CLARITY   Tohar  Clarity, lucidity

One brief shining: Mom, I remember, always smelled good, wore red lipstick, smiled a lot and hugged me, took me to the ice cream parlor when I got good grades, explained what she thought Dad meant, then in October of 1964 while volunteering at a funeral dinner, had a stroke, lingered for seven days and died.

Mom, Dad, Me. Maybe 1951

Life can change oh so fast and in unexpected, totally unexpected ways. Mom was 47. In good, even robust health. But she had unknown aneurysms at her temples and in the forehead region of her brain. One burst and leaked blood down through her brain and began to clot around her medulla oblongata. The part of the brain that connects it to the spinal column. Survivable today with clot busting drugs. Not then.

Her yahrzeit falls today because this is a leap year on the Jewish lunar calendar, pushing everything almost a month ahead on the Gregorian calendar. And, as it happens, right onto Samain. The time in the Celtic Faery Faith when the veil between the worlds thins and access to the Otherworld and from it is most possible. Dia de los Muertos, same idea. Also. All Souls day comes soon on the Christian liturgical calendar, November 2nd this year.

About twenty years ago I took a class on ritual and the teacher, whose name I don’t recall, said she thought these beliefs about the veil thinning came from the falling of the leaves on deciduous trees. Opening forests up, making those things hidden by leaves during the growing season suddenly visible. Maybe.

Or, maybe she had it backward and the veil is a mental construct, a knowing about the truth of the sacred, the holy always present, always visible to us, about which the falling of the leaves jolts us each year into a temporary state of mystical union with the world as we already know it. But have trouble realizing without a big reminder.

I’m partial to the second idea. Reading an interesting book, just started, All Things are Full of Gods: the Mysteries of Mind and Life. David Bentley Hart. He’s a neo-Platonist*. Both Judaism and neo-Platonism believe reality is one.

In both systems of thought nothing is ever lost. It may transform, but all is all becoming. Changing, moving forward and backwards, up and down, changing, changing, yet the stuff of reality remains constant, never destroyed. Like E=Mc squared.

You might believe, and I do on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays that this creates an opening for continued existence of a soul, a person’s essence, after death. Since today is a Thursday and Samain, I’m going to visit with mom, light her candle, look at the photographs I have of her. One of us will cross the veil, remember that oh yes you’re always with me. Hug each other. Smile. Maybe I’ll see Kate, today, too.

*Neoplatonists following Plotinus believed that the individual soul, considered as intellect, is divine. However, the soul is outwardly expressed in terms of a personality that is particular and thus less divine. There is a risk, then, that a soul endowed with an intellect can lose sight of its own divine nature.

Neoplatonism is based on the principles that: 

“Mind precedes matter” 
Reality depends on a highest principle, often called “the One” or “God” 
The One
The One is a supreme principle that is absolutely simple and undetermined. It is beyond being, and cannot be named or described. 

Friends, Health, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation, Writing

An Unsystematic Theology for the non-Supernatural

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Mabon and the waning Sukkot Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Ginny. Janice. Alan and the Piggin’ Out Barbecue in Lakewood. The Evergreen Chorale. Ovation West. Community Theater. Gabe. Ruth. Studio Arts. UC Boulder. Go, Buffs. Coach Prime. Great Sol. Maxwell Creek to Bear Creek to the South Platte to the Missouri to the Mississippi to the World Ocean.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Watersheds

Kavannah: Serenity  Menucha

One brief shining: At the Piggin’ Out Barbecue you enter behind their food truck, WhattheTruck, and find yourself in a room only big enough for 8 people, six if they’re large sized, and a smiling woman with silver eyeliner, at a tiny counter, the menu on the wall to her left, a glass covered drinks cooler on the other side of a doorway leading back to the kitchen, out of which a staff person comes carrying finished orders outside to one of three seating areas, one in an enclosed tent, another under what looks like a large carport, and the third tables on a concrete slab.

 

Met Alan at Piggin’ Out last night. Tasty. I had a slab of ribs with spicy sauce, macaroni and cheese, baked beans, and a honey glazed chunk of corned bread. Obviously a joint and a local favorite. People came and went while we ate, most picking up to go orders.

Had breakfast with Marilyn and Irv, too. A day of friends and minor key domestic tasks.

 

Ann, my palliative care nurse, called just as I’d hit the garage door button on my way to Piggin’ Out. She had to reschedule. A funeral on Friday. We set up a zoom for Thursday in place of our 1 pm Friday appointment. Looking forward to talking to her. This regular conversation with a medical person feels supportive, kind. We all need support and kindness.

 

As you can tell from my title, I’ve chosen a path that works for me. I tried, more than once, to write a Ge-ology. A Pagan Halakah. A Great Work focused website. Systematic. With chapters and subheadings and thoughtful transitions between big ideas. A Mother Earth focused imitatio of, oh what the hell, Aquinas, Tillich, Barth. Discovered my mind doesn’t work that way. I work in smaller, sermon or ancientrails sized pieces. And, thoughtful transitions, building toward a comprehensive conclusion about matters holy, sacred, and divine? Not so much.

However. I have written, over the course of many sermons and postings, in hand-written journals, and spoken in numerous conversations, occasionally insightful remarks about the nature and accessibility of the sacred world. I want to begin gathering those, seeing if I can place them somehow together without giving up their ad hoc, highly contextualized origins. A Hermes’ Journey task.

 

Just a moment: Well. A week from now. 7 days.  Do you feel a big nuclear bomb with a cowboy dressed Orange One astride it, one hand on the fuse and the other waving a Stetson dropped toward our nation? Or, do you hear high heels clacking on the floors of their new home in that big Whitehouse on Pennsylvania Avenue?

I have no idea what will happen. Maybe like you?

 

Boulder, Colorado, Great Wheel, Great Work, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation, Science, Wild Neighbors, World History

The WHI: the Wildlife Human Interface

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Friday gratefuls: Ruth. Rich. The Colorado Supreme Court. UC Boulder. Wolf Hall. Elephants. All of our Wild Neighbors around the world. Doug’s Diner. Being a student. Jamie. Luke. Woolly Mammoths. Driving to Boulder in the early morning as Great Sol gradually lit the Hogbacks, the Meadows in their russets and greengolds, the lower down deciduous Trees aflame with reds and oranges and yellow. Getting out and about.

Sparks of joy and awe: Non-Human Rights

Kavannah: Kavod  Honor

One brief shining: Sitting next to Ruth, I watched the mock courtroom of Wolf Hall fill up with law students dressed in their student variety from jeans and backpacks to a black dress and pearls, the conversation subdued since the presence of black robed Colorado Supreme Court Justices would soon transform the mock courtroom into a real court, one about to hear a pleading that Elephants fit the definition of person for the purpose of a writ of habeas corpus*.

 

I want to back into this topic. A story I’ve told and retold. Almost exactly ten years. October 31, 2014 I stood in what would soon be my back yard staring into the soft black eyes of three Mule Deer Bucks. Seemed like a long time though probably no more than a minute. When they decided we were done, I felt as if I’d been granted permission to live here among them, a message delivered by these spirit beings of the Mountains. Yes, you can say I overlaid on those three Bucks my own interpretation. Finding in that encounter a blessing I hadn’t known I’d sought.

In 2019. June. The day I began 35 sessions of radiation for my unhappily returned prostate cancer three Bull Elks jumped over our five foot fence with great ease and proceeded to eat the blooming Dandelions. One of them had only one antler. They would come again and again.

A year ago on a rainy July night I drove up Black Mountain Drive not far past the Upper Maxwell Fall’s trail head and encountered a Bull Elk staring at me as I passed by, his bulk hidden by the Aspen stand, but his antlers and face clear in the momentary flash of my headlights.

Yesterday morning I got up at 6 am, got dressed, drank some coffee, gathered the items I needed, put on my black Grateful Dead hat with the colorful dancing Bears and began the hour long drive down the hill, then north to Boulder. Along Hwy 285, still well into the foothills I saw a black shape along the side of the road. Since many people have metal cutouts of various Wild Neighbors as lawn decor, I imagined at first that this object was one of those. Until it looked at my oncoming car, turned quickly around, and scuttled in that soft clumsy-appearing Black Bear amble back into the Forest.

I don’t see many Bears. This is the third one I’ve seen since I’ve lived up here though they live all around us. A few years ago walking not far from my house a large Black Bear crossed the road not thirty feet from me. Last year I saw a Bear near the intersection of Brook Forest Drive and Hwy 73. That’s all of them.

In each of these three instances the Bears turned away from me, hurrying into the shelter of their wild home, the Forests and Mountains.

All this means I live in the WUI. The Wildlife Urban Interface. Again, yes, you can argue we shouldn’t be here. Maybe not. But we are. Even the cities outside which the WUI exists were once encroachments on Wild habitats, too. Like the Animals of the Mountains we too have to live somewhere.

Not an apologetic. A statement of fact.

My friend Marilyn Saltzman told of a safari she was on a few years back. Their guides took them to a Watering hole somewhere in the Bush. A herd of Elephants drank from it while a number of other Animals waited. Some Elephants left, then came back, others left. Not until the last Elephant had gone did the other Animals come to drink. As she told this story, I thought, who is the true monarch of the Jungle?

Finally, you might say. Seated in the mock courtroom made real, like the Velveteen Rabbit, Ruth and I listened to two lawyers make oral arguments that the five elephants: Missy, Kimba, Lucky, LouLou, and Jambo deserved release from their confinement in the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. Yes, that Cheyenne Mountain.

The Non-Human Rights Project had entered a writ of habeas corpus claiming they did have that right under a writ. The Cheyenne Zoo had counsel as did the five Elephants. This article in Colorado Politics is an excellent summary of the proceedings.

It was like watching yesterday and tomorrow. The gray haired, dismissive and at times arrogant attorney for the Zoo, represented the status quo. Basically: We’re a really, really good zoo. The younger, much younger lawyer for the Elephants represented the growing awareness of the blurry, blurry line separating us from our Wild Neighbors. Sure, Elephants. Big brain. Social. Emotional. Sensitive. Like Primates and Whales and Dolphins and other clearly intelligent animals, even Corvids, to mention another class of Animals, Elephants in zoos represent an obvious case of anthropocentrism used as a rationale to dominate, entrap, and enslave other Animals.

Through the Rights of Nature movement, see my March 4 of this year post, not only Animals but Rivers and Forests have been granted legal rights and protections. Zoos and those defending them are on the wrong side of history. It will take years and many more legal proceedings but somewhere, sometime the thin edge of the wedge will hold open the door to a world where humans live as part of the Interdependent Web of all beings (defined as widely as you wish) on Mother Earth. When this happens, it will have Earth shattering, no let me amend that, Earth healing consequences.

This Mabon morning in Colorado, yesterday, I saw one more track being laid down toward this too far off day.

 

 

*Although there have been and are many varieties of the writ, the most important is that used to correct violations of personal liberty by directing judicial inquiry into the legality of a detention.  Britannica

Great Work, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Shortie

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Elephants. Non-human rights. The Nature rights legal movement. Tom. Diane in Uzbekistan. Mark and Mary in K.L. My son now 43. Songtan, South Korea. Murdoch. Seoah. Rich Levine. Ruth. Gabe. Colder weather. Red flag day. Insurance. Car. House. Yikes. Ruby. Ready to roll. Wolf Law. Boulder. Today. Colorado Supreme Court.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Wild Neighbors

Kavannah: Justice Tzedek

One brief shining: Ding-a-ling, ling ding-a-ling my hand reached across my pillow to find my offending phone, positioned near my right ear so I would not miss its call to action, yet when received I wanted it to stop ding-a-ling, where is the damned thing, ding-a-ling hear them ring soon it will be me on the road to Boulder. Ah. Found it.

 

Yes. For those of you who might wonder about my getting up this Elephant’s rights morning. I did it. A bit bleary eyed maybe. Coffee made yesterday ready. English muffin. Peanut Butter. Honey. One celecoxib. I’ll leave in about ten minutes. Should get there around 8 am. An hour and a quarter ahead of the arguments. Ruth is going. We’ll have breakfast after. We’ll see Rich.

Feels good to be doing this. Spontaneous decision Monday to go. Liking this. Renders the questions I raised yesterday to a more acute level.

 

Brother Mark stuck in ESL desert, his departure for Saudi Arabia pushed back once again. Frustrating for him.

 

Well. Time to pick up keys, wallet, and sunglasses. See you around the waterhole.

 

 

Judaism, Mussar, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Travel

Experiencing the World

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Kamala. Tim. Blue. Red. Orange obstacle. The obstacle is the way. Great Sol. MVP. Angst. Love and pain. Humility. Elephants. Free will. Or, not. Stan Draghul memorial service. A man focused on experiences not things. Wondering about my own memorial service. Yahrzeits. The Yarhzeit wall at CBE. Judaism. A way of being and staying human.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Deep friendships

Kavannah: Joy

One brief shining: Stan’s son Adam said there was a lockbox in his hospice room, though “knowing my Dad the code was pasted on the bottom;”  he opened the lockbox after Stan died and found all of his passports; opening them at the memorial service he held up the changing pictures and leafed through the visa pages: China. Nepal. Israel. South Africa. Cambodia, “all over the world,” a man hungry for experience.

 

 

I only knew Stan a bit from mussar days pre-pandemic. He never returned after Covid got legs. Each of his children, his friend/partner, his long time nurse (Stan was a family practice doc), and a friend from his men’s group all spoke of him with consistency and admiration.

As often happens to me, I left the service wishing I’d known him better, much better, than I did. A person could write an interesting book attending memorial services for a year and offering life lessons from the lives summed up in them. With Stan I would say choose compassion, kindness, keen intellect, curiosity, wanderlust, love of family and profession. Traits. Ways of being in the world. Available to all, but certainly manifest in Stan’s life.

Afterward. A meal. Eating with Marilyn, Joanne, Tara, Jamie, Ginny, Sally, and Janice. You know. Croissants split and filled with Chicken salad. Baguettes sliced with raw roast beef. Vegetables with humus. Fruits. Strawberries. Blueberries. Wonderful grapes.

The morning.

 

The evening. Instead of holding MVP in the Sukkah-it was too cold-and the Evergreen Chorale was practicing its Christmas concert in the sanctuary, we moved to Jamie’s parent’s house. Not far away. A profound evening of deep sharing, lots of laughter. Probably not enough tears. Heartfelt and honest. A source of Joy. Every one around the table: Jamie, Marilyn, Ron, Rich, Joanne a good friend.

Rich, as he does from time to time, threw a real oddball into the conversation. He has some role, not sure what, in a Colorado Supreme Court case being heard Thursday:  Petitioner-Appellant: Nonhuman Rights Project, Inc.,
v. Respondents-Appellees: Cheyenne Mountain Zoological Society and Bob Chastain. The issue before the court:
Does the petition make a prima facie case that Missy, Kimba, Lucky, LouLou, and Jambo are entitled to release?
Did the district court have subject-matter jurisdiction?

Missy, Kimba, Lucky, Loulou, and Jambo are African Elephants being held at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs.

Too, the Court meets in one of its community settings: Wolf Law School at UC-Boulder. Right where I dropped Ruth off Sunday evening after sandwiches at Snarf’s. I’m gonna go. Provided I get up in time and can find parking. Oral arguments are at 9:15. Boulder’s about an hour away. Rich said to get there early. I’m thinking 8:15. Which means leaving here at least by 7:15. Then, the critical piece finding a parking place on campus on a school day. Ruth will help me. We might go together.

This falls under my new act spontaneously commitment made when I returned to the land of my soul. Does mean, to my regret, that I will miss Simchat Torah which is Wednesday evening. Got to hit the hay early before an early Thursday morning.

 

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Memories, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

No Karmic Overburden

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Sukkot starting Wednesday. Dr. Buphati, medical oncologist, tomorrow. Variety Firewood. Yom Kippur. Mabon. Poetry. Cold Mountain. Basho. Rumi. Ginny and Janice. AI. Orange one and Kamala. Election 2024. Please vote. Mail-in Ballots. Civilized. Got mine yesterday. Climate change. The Gulf Stream. Greenland Ice sheet. The Atlantic. Milton and Helene.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Golden Aspen

Kavannah: Patience

One brief shining: Bought a chair a while back, made by the Amish in the Arts and Crafts  style, a Morris Chair, and a Violet themed stained glass standing lamp to go behind it, then a standing globe so I could find my dispersed family and better understand geopolitics, a set of timed lights to ramp up my balance exercising, not to mention the Aeneid, Mysticism, The Vegetarian books, and started to get a queasy feeling that I’m buying too much, some of the boxes yet unopened, though my finances are solid, not sure, maybe being good to myself feels (is) selfish? The Calvinist in me says yes, the Jew in me says no. Not as long as you care for and are generous with others. Which I feel I am. No wonder I converted.

 

Tough, fighting those strains of self-abnegation developed through years of scarcity and violently enforced religious beliefs. Violent, you say? Yes. Consider. If, in the course of your life, you vary from the path of salvation, miss the mark too often, what say ye about the next life? Hell and damnation. Even if you’ve convinced yourself long ago that the three-story universe was false, the fact that such a consequence was ever considered possible for sinning too much? Too often? Badly enough? makes sin a devastating burden on the psyche. Sort of a Milton plus a Helene plus a Katrina for the soul. Seems like a system designed to keep me in line with threats, and not insubstantial threats, but of damage to the very self of Self.

No. What matters is how you act today, in this moment. No karmic overburden. A similar system, btw. Yesterday, that old life, has slipped into the stream of time’s flux. What can you do with it? Nothing. But today? This life. This October 13th, 2024 life? This one we can work with.

Patience. I’ve realized that impatience exposes the anxieties I still have. Hangovers from those early days in Alexandria and the First Methodist Church. No, neither my family nor Methodism were blatantly abusive. No, they merely encouraged an anti-self work ethic, an other-focused diminishment of self, a closed mouth attitude toward sexuality making it confusing and embarrassing, an inner compass always slightly off because there were too many wrong paths, wrong actions, wrong feelings to follow a clear direction.

All of this, an uncertainty about personal worth, about the eventual destination of one’s soul, a valorization of work and self-denial, of hiding true feelings were the hallmarks of a good upbringing in mid-century, small-town America. I got a solid dose of it. Did you?

 

 

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Great Work, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., US History, Weather +Climate, World History

Not Satan

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Mark and Mary in K.L. Saudi Arabia. Malaysia. Korea. The Rockies. Ellis homeground. Diane in or near Uzbekistan. The clan is spread out over the globe. Gold and green. The colors of Black Mountain, Shadow Mountain, Conifer Mountain. My local cluster. Darkness became dominant at the Fall Equinox. Cooling nights. Less pain days. Jackie and Ronda. Finishing Ovid. Milton. His Winds and their feral sound. American politics slipping well beyond my understanding.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Aspen Roots Hair Salon

Kavannah: Savlanut, patience.

One brief shining: Like many I imagine, I scrolled through live videos of Milton making landfall, since that’s what matters to us humans, as land dwellers; Palms bent and waved showing off their adaptive strengths, driven rain streaked straight at camera lenses, docks went under the storm surge, bucking and heaving, all of that expected, awful of course, but expected, the sound of Milton’s Winds however sent literal shivers down my spine as if Mother Earth herself was in the birth pangs of a new era, one that will not suffer her human children so well as the last, an angry Goddess taking her sacrifices for herself, not waiting for altars to be built, religions to accrete around them, but seizing by force majeur what she needs.

 

I heard the sound. Sure it came via microphone, distributed to me digitally, and filtered through my speakers. So not a direct experience. Didn’t need to be. This was a monster alive and needing to be fed boats, humans, trees, cars, light posts, trash cans, restaurants near the Water. Milton declared himself angry at having to distance himself from the too warm Gulf Waters, his food. But even weakened, or perhaps because weakened, his rage multiplied, sent Winds, Rain, Storm surge, then around midnight, a high Tide to multiply his power. I may not live long, he said, but while I do I will make you know me.

Oh, the ungentle Goddess who made us. She of the Crown Fire, the F5 Tornado, the Derecho, the flooded River, the broken Dams, Hurricane and Typhoon. Drought. Why have we not known her as she is? Yes, our parent. Of course that. She warned us with hockey stick graphs. With Ocean Waters lapping further inland than they used to. With those magnificent Rivers of Ice giving way to warmer temperatures. Even the densest among us felt her warnings. Stop now or I will be angry. Very angry.

We have not stopped. We have said sorry, sorry and gone on misbehaving. Like toddlers. After a million years of nurture and bounty, we have not grown up. We are not adults in this relationship. No. We are small children, expecting Mom to once again be lenient, let us get away with it. No more. The Waters of the World Ocean have begun to turn against us. So too the daily average temperatures. We know this and yet still we do not change our behavior.

No. Not Satan. Not an angry God. A Goddess who has had enough. She and her partner Great Sol wreak havoc and sew chaos. Will they listen after this?!

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

From Enigma to Understanding. And back again.

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Art Green. Radical Judaism. Rami Shapiro. Judaism without Tribalism. Ovid. The Metamorphosis. Homer. The Iliad and the Odyssey. Cervantes. Don Quixote. Hesse. Magister Ludi. Steppenwolf. Siddartha. Thomas Mann. Buddenbrooks. Márqez. One Hundred Years of Solitude. Powers. Overstory. Playground. Unknown Authors: The Torah.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Writing

Kavannah: Savlanut, Patience

One brief shining: Breakfast with Irv and Marilyn at Primo’s, a mid-Fall Sun keeping us warm outside, not even a breeze, sounds coming from the open door of Jazzercise, doing what friends do, talking about things that concern us in our daily lives, wandering off into how little we know about the human mind, about culture and language, the brain, how all those mush together as we go from infant to child to teen to adult in ways unpredictable, mysterious. Good coffee, eh?

Header image courtesy of Tom Crane, September 11, 2019. Guanella Pass

 

Human development. Quite the mystery really. Sure, we have developmental schemes like Erickson’s, psychological models from Freud, Jung, May, Rogers, Hillman, Maslow, Piaget, Kohlberg. Or, the medieval four temperaments. Take a quick test to see which one fits you best. Had a psychology professor in seminary who said you could explain human psychology using many systems, all accurate in their way. Including demons and angels. What matters is how you deploy the explanation, what you can do with it to help or hinder development.

Jung’s paradigm has helped me a lot. Working with my psyche through dream analysis, archetypes, the collective unconscious. I’ve also found the Tao and the Jewish concepts of yetzer hatov, the generous inclination and the yetzer harah, the selfish inclination very helpful. The tension between poles as an energizer rather than a judgemental scheme. Take anger and apathy. At different points either end of the pole may be appropriate and useful. Anger at injustice, say, or unfair treatment. Apathy. Well, hmm. Not sure about apathy, but there are times when a constrained, restrained response to a situation is the most helpful. Most of the time we inhabit the middle ground of patience. Yin and yang. Masculine and feminine energies. Though I have trouble remembering which is which. Both ways expressive of the movement of chi, or life force.

Even so, these all feel reductionistic in the extreme. Unable to capture the nuances, the complex interleavings of birth temperament, nurture in family, school, friendship circles, the impact of culture and its in bounds and out of bounds rules, not to mention the always active mind sorting through the days, months, years of a lifetime for telling moments, victories and defeats, rejections and acceptance, love.

Of course, our curse or our blessing remains. Consciousness. Awareness. Our ability to bring a critical, even analytical eye to all of the above and how it applies this day, in this moment and how the whole might inform our next action. It’s a real wonder we get anything done at all.

This is the ultimate human ancientrail. The one of a Self (however defined) moving through its world from birth to death, from enigma to understanding and back again.

 

 

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Mussar, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation

As I went to bed. The Holy, The Sacred. Clear sight

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Lugnasa and the 99% Full Harvest Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Ninja blender. Figuring out the veggie paradox. Celecoxib. Allows me to stand long enough for short cooking. Pain lessened. Over my dislocation created by possibly shorter life span. Feeling grounded in my life again. In part thanks to the pain treatment. A beautiful photograph. Taken by me. Header. Serious thinking. Tarot. Jessica Roux.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Sky at dusk on Shadow Mountain

Kavannah: Yirah

One brief shining: Each night after the lights go dark, the window’s cranked full open, the fan turned on, and I’ve taken my last look at the Stars through the Lodgepoles, I fall into a revery of thought, never knowing where my mind will carry me but always happy for the ride, this idea bouncing off that one, triggering another turn of ideas or images, pure and unguided inner joy. Today’s post is about last night’s journey.

 

Thinking about the day as my head lay on the pillow, body stretched out and at peace. As I try to do each night, I consider the middah I chose. Did it come to mind? Did I experience its manifestation? What were the specific moments when that happened? How did I feel? Then, and immediately afterward. What did I learn?

Yirah. Awe. Wonder. Amazement. [(fear)] Yirah, the Hebrew for this sudden feeling of openness, of seeing clearly, often got translated, by Jews and Christians alike, as fear. As in the phrase “Fear of the Lord.” Bad translation. Bad. Down boy. And I say boy advisedly, because Fear of the Lord has a decided patriarchal connotation. Bow down to the King, the one who rules you, makes you obey, has the power of life and death over you.

Rudolf Otto defined the Holy as containing an element beyond the ethical sphere, which he named the numinous.* Stripped of what Otto defines as its element of moral perfection, which he has to assume because he’s writing within a Christian context, the holy, the numinous, is in my opinion what we mean by the word sacred.

Yirah opens a neural pathway for experiencing of the numinous. Which, again Otto, can be both terrifying and fascinating. In Yirah, in awe, wonder, and amazement we find the gateway to revelation. And what is revelation? An experiencing, however brief or long, of the numinous, the holy. The sacred.

I reclaim a possible connection to Kant here in his use of the word noumenon. Below the author of the Wikipedia article says the numinous is unrelated to Kant’s idea of the noumenon which refers to: “…an unknowable reality underlying sensations of the thing.” Kant also called this the ding an sich, the thing in itself, whatever an object of perception is without the observer.

What I believe Yirah opens us to is just that: the ding an sich, the thing itself. Reality as it is, not as we confuse it with our preconceived ideas, our biases, our values. I think you could also call it the field out beyond good and bad where Rumi invites us to meet.

What is that reality, for which I now claim the word sacred? A place where the mystic bonds of each to each and all to all become, however briefly for us, accessible. So in cultivating the middah of yirah we strengthen the inner muscle that allows us to see beyond the surface to the ligaments and tendons that link us to the Tree, the Friend, the Lodgepole Pine, the Mountain, the Ocean, to our Lover, to our Inner World and in it to the Collective Unconscious. Those connections which tie us inextricably together, a roiling, boiling mass of creativity, of newness that we try, hard, to ignore because experiencing it directly is to experience, perhaps, the terror of dissolution, yet also a deep fascination. Oh, so this is what the World is really, really like?

An important observation here is that this is not a logical nor a conceptual process. It is a sensory process, in other words, a process stimulated by seeing something, hearing something, touching something, tasting something. It is in no way faith. You might call the experience of yirah a mystical moment, whether long or short.

So when I took in whole cloth the bulk of Black Mountain and realized a moment of wonder, what happened was a brief, bodily experience of all the links and bonds that tie me to Black Mountain and Black Mountain to me. When I watched Great Sol’s light fade into night and the colors entranced me, I saw into the mystic bonds that tie me to Great Sol, to the dusk, to the coming night, to the vast distances between Shadow Mountain and our Star. When I experienced, for a moment, myself as part of the Arapaho National Forest, a human among Trees, I felt one with each Lodgepole, Rock, Stream, Mule Deer, and Elk.

And one more bit. Yirah, then, is a sensory event which peels back the gauze of day-to-day illusion in which we see and treat everything as separate from our body, ourselves. The midot, all the character traits we study in mussar, I think, are ways we can open ourselves to the world, ways we can become a moment for the other to experience yirah and us as bonded to them. A give and take, a push and pull, a way perhaps of becoming holy, sacred.

Yirah is the gateway for revelation. revelation the gateway to the sacred. The sacred is seeing the links that bind us to the all and the all to us.

*”…while the concept of “the holy” is often used to convey moral perfection, which it does entail, it contains another distinct element, beyond the ethical sphere, for which he coined the term numinous based on the Latin word numen (“divine power”).[2]: 5–7  (The term is etymologically unrelated to Immanuel Kant’s noumenon, a Greek term which Kant used to refer to an unknowable reality underlying sensations of the thing).” He explains the numinous as an experience or feeling which is not based on reason or sensory stimulation and represents the “wholly other”

“The Holy, according to Otto, is a mystery (Latin: mysterium) that is at once terrifying (tremendum) and fascinating (fascinans).   Wiki