• Category Archives Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

  • Sacred. So Sacred.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain and the Choice Moon

    Thursday gratefuls: Choice made and sealed. Gas. Retro, good ol’ gas for Ruby’s engine. Tinned fish. Morning darkness. Holimonth. Now, for me, November 28th. Choice Day. Part of my holimonth. Jacob at the Jabbok Ford. Wrestling with a man, an angel, God, himself. 311 E. Monroe, its kitchen. Mom. That Garden Spider. Finding the sacred at the breakfast table. Immersing in the holy Waters of the Mikvah of East Denver. Being with my sacred community tomorrow night.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Water

    One brief shining: Each morning I crank shut the window, stop my alarm, pick up my blinking save my life please pendant, turn off the oxygen concentrator, and wander out onto the oriental carpet Kate bought for her long ago condo, lie down, do my back exercises, pick up my hearing aid, oh more sound, then make my way to the kitchen for a can of cold water and a cup of cold coffee, climb the seven stairs to my office, sit down and start to write as I’m doing right now.

     

    A word about ritual.* If you read the short piece about ritual below, you will notice that it confidently ascribes the term sacred to the transcendent realm. If I have an original contribution to make to this millennia long conversation, it is this. No to transcendence. I know this would shatter my former UU heroes of the American Renaissance like Emerson, Thoreau, perhaps Emily Dickinson, but I find the idea of transcendence a fallacy of misplaced concreteness as Whitehead would have said. The very notion of a sacred realm beyond our experience, especially one transcending the universe or material existence, drains the magic from the world around us. The sacred is not here with us, it’s in that other place, far away or almost impossible to reach.

    No. I do not believe that. Might there be a realm beyond this one, different in nature and purpose? Of course. May there be one and may I have the good fortune to visit it some fine day after this life finishes with me. But it is not the location of the sacred. Or, at the very least, not the only home of the sacred. Not the home of God or the Gods or the spirits or the daemons. No. That home exists here with us, within our reach and accessible to our senses.

    Place your hand over your heart. The pulse of sacred life beats beneath your palm. Take the hand of a friend, a beloved and feel their warmth, both physical and emotional. The spiritual reality of the sacred exists next to you and within you. The Cat that walks across your lap, perhaps deigning to stay. The Dog, eager and loving, tail wagging. Greeting you when you come home. The Tree in your favorite park or along your route to work. The Lodgepole out my window. Sacred. And witnesses to the sacred for those who can see what they’re looking at.

    Transcendence carries with it a host of problems not the least of which is a hierarchical view of the universe. Think the old three-story universe. Hell below. Earth. Heaven above. No. The Sky above, the liquid center of this Planet below, and our surface world on Land, not even the dominant form of matter on the surface. That would be Water. We inhabit a sacred realm, right here, right now.

    Plant a Seed. Watch Birth. Experience an orgasm. Feel the warmth of Great Sol on your face. Embrace this sacred world for what it is, not for what it is in the reflection of a separate reality. We so need to do this. Right now.

    Well, got away from ritual. Another time.

     

     

    “Ritual behaviour, established or fixed by traditional rules, has been observed the world over and throughout history. In the study of this behaviour, the terms sacred (the transcendent realm) and profane (the realm of time, space, and cause and effect) have remained useful in distinguishing ritual behaviour from other types of action.” Britannica entry


    Commentary on Religion Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Reimaging revelation

  • Still buzzing

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain and the Choice Moon

    Wednesday gratefuls: An added identity. A son of Abraham and Sarah. Still buzzing from yesterday. That full Choice Moon visible on the way to Evergreen yesterday morning. Great Sol painting the Lodgepoles with energy. A blue white Sky. A great sleep. Witnesses. Ritual. Blessings. Joan. Wild Neighbors. The Arapaho National Forest. Shadow Mountain. The Mikvah. Its Water.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Israel

    One brief shining: Exhale, Rabbi Jamie said, after in my first immersion I bobbed back to the surface and hit my head on the beautiful tiles that make up the mikvah-gently, oh I said, so the next time I did exhale, the second immersion, and I sank to the bottom proving why a good Jew should trust his Rabbi.

     

    May it last. This feeling of inner peace. I slept soundly. Woke up with no hurry, no rush to accomplish anything. To get anything going for the day. Felt good in my own skin. Not that I don’t usually, but this feels pervasive. And, a result of the ritual yesterday. Yes, I had already chosen. Yes, for me it was a confirmation of that choice. Yet the attentiveness, the kavanah, the intention of all parties involved, including those who raised the money for the mikvah, designed and built it. Yes. The drop of blood. Yes. The beit din. Yes. The Waters of the mikvah. Yes. Immersion. Yes. The new name. Yes. Changed.

    Joan said during my beit din that before WWII converts used to be looked down on in Judaism in America. Second class Jews. After the holocaust. Things changed. These were people who will stand with the other members of the tribe. By choice. The potential consequences of that choice driving the change.

    Rabbi Steve warned me with a story. A man he married had converted. Shortly after his conversion he was in an airport and talking with his sister, a Lutheran minister, about it. Loudly. His sister asked him where he was. He told her. She said stop this conversation right now and we’ll discuss why when you get home. This was shortly after October 7th. You’ve had, he said, until now, the cover of white male privilege. Your new identity comes with dangers.

    Yes, I said, I may be stupid about that. But I’m not going to give into those forces. Screw’em. I fight. I fight for those I love. But he’s right. There are real this world consequences to being Jewish. Perhaps perversely but probably not surprisingly to those who know me well, I embrace them.

    After the ritual, we all had lunch at a Middle Eastern place. Good gyros, generous portions. Alan came and celebrated with us. It was a nice and gentle way to end the morning.

    Joan invited me in for coffee when we made the long trek up her narrow driveway to take her home. I agreed. Rabbi Jamie said he’d be back for me after his staff meeting. Joan and I talked for two plus hours, ranging wide. She’s only participated in two other beit dins, long ago, and both for women. A real honor to have her there. She’s a friend.

     

     

     

     

     


    Feelings Fourth Phase Friends Judaism Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

  • Israel. A bit more

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Fall and the Harvest Moon

    Thursday gratefuls: Israel. Blinken. Biden. Hamas. Hezbollah. Iran. Mark in Saudi. Diane. Tom. Rain, cold Rain. News. Korea. North Korea. South Korea. Seoah and her family. My boy. Mary in K.L. Songtan. Osan. Shadow Mountain. Starlink. Creative Audio. Newspapers. Justice. A many splintered thing. Spinal stenosis. P.T. Mary. Murdoch. Kepler and Rigel. Gertie and Vega. Kate, always Kate. Jon. Ruth. Gabe.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: P.T.

    One brief shining: When an American Secretary of State says I come here as Jew and as a Jew who lost family in the Holocaust, when he says Israel will never stand alone, when the President of the United States declares the acts of Hamas evil and sends an aircraft carrier support group, when Jews lie dead in their home victims of ideologically sanctioned murder, then we know the enemy, the ones who hate Jews, hate Israel, and will not allow their own humanity to impede their actions.

     

    Got a note from Expedia today. Your travel to Israel may be affected. Go to your airlines website. I did. Yep. Can cancel with no charge for travel between Oct. 7th and December 4th. Also. No flights until December 5th at the earliest. Well, that about does it for the trip. I’ll wait until Sunday to cancel my flight, see what others plan to do, but if we can’t fly there we can’t go. What that means for the Keshet trip? Uncertain. Probably postpone. Maybe cancel instead and rebook.

    Having the trip planned. Hamas’ invasion. Reading Jewish newspapers. Learning about Golda Meir and other Israeli leaders during times of military peril. Studying Israel and Zionism for my next session with Rabbi Jamie on the 19th. Dancing with the Torah on Friday night as Hamas readied its fighters. Meeting yesterday morning with Geoff and others who also planned on this trip. An immersion in Jewish life. In the dark and lonely side of what it means to be a Jew. A heightened and deepened inner knowledge of the dream of Israel and its physicality, its critical importance for Jewish life in the diaspora.

    Oh.

    Like many, perhaps most of Beth Evergreen fearing too for the Palestinians in Gaza. For the also dream of a Palestinian state. For a permanent and viable solution to this awful, unjust life for them, for Israel, for Jews everywhere. For justice.

    No to murder of civilians and the taking of civilian hostages. No to anti-semitism. No to terror. No to Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran in their hatred of Jews. No. No. No.

    How to hold both of these feelings at such a time? How? Both necessary, both just, both compassionate. The world has its contradictions, its pain, its seemingly unresolvable conflicts. Look for a moment at our own country. Red and blue. MAGA and the rest of us. Ireland. China and the Uighurs. Afghanistan. Armenia. India. Sri Lanka. I suppose in each of these situations there are those torn by loyalties that seem irreconcilable.

    Some must live with their hearts opened, their eyes clear, their minds knowing. Mustn’t they?

     


    Asia Fourth Phase Friends Judaism Politics Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Travel World History

  • Consider Oneness

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Fall and the Harvest Moon

    Monday gratefuls: Fat Bear Week. See this link. Rebecca in India. Mary in K.L. Mark in Hafir, Saudi Arabia. Me on Shadow Mountain. My son and Seoah and Murdoch in Songtan. Israel. Gaza. West Bank. Korea. Divided nations. Night Sky. Stars above and around the Lodgepoles. The coming darkness. A Mountain Morning. Aspen Torches, Trees of Ohr. The Tree of Life. Malkut to Keter. The Wildwood Tarot. Luke. Ginny. Jimmy. Murdoch, the silly. My son, the silly. Kate, who was also silly. Jon, who was not. Ruth. Gabe.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Fat Bear Week

    One brief shining: A bear stands on a rock facing downstream, salmon climb the ladder of flowing water headed to their clan home to spawn, one tight powerful snap and the journey ends.

     

    War. A son whose life lies in preparation and readiness for war. A nation, Korea, divided and still at war. Israel, my coreligionists fighting a war of their own creation. Oppression has a heavy price, paid too often, most often, in blood. Consider the violence of a nation that still relegates its native peoples to lands not wanted, depriving them of the lands that once sustained them. Consider the violence of a nation that systematically denies the vote, a decent education, good housing, well-paying jobs to persons descended from the enslaved. Consider a nation that denies an entire people, the Uighurs, even the crumbs of citizenship. Consider a nation, any nation, that allows its majority to wreck havoc on its minorities without conscience or care. Most nations.

    Consider all these things. We are human after all, all too human. Jealous of what we already have, greedy for what we might get. Israel did not invent oppression. Nor did China. Neither did the U.S.A., even when slavery was legal. No. We humans find love, justice, and compassion often beyond our grasp even if in our individual hearts we might feel it. Collectively we protect our families, our clans, our regions, our skin color fellows, our nations. And in protecting, a noble and worthy action, deny others what they need, a base and evil result. This is the original sin of our species. To love those we prefer and exclude those who fall outside of our love’s sphere. A sad, pitiful narrowness to our vision.

    Then consider the human body. Consider what the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead called the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. The often unfortunate result of a reductionist science that separates the heart as a consideration of medical care from the liver, from the gut, from grief and joy and stress and despair. That separates the teeth from the pancreas. The blood from the lungs. The thyroid from the feet. Treats each one as a thing sui generis when no. Cortisol bathes each organ, blood moves through and into and out of the lungs, the gut, the feet, the brain and into the kidneys. We are one.

    Of course we can learn and know about the heart when we dissect it, image it, palpitate it, treat its actions with chemicals of our own devising. Of course. But how did the heart come to have that blocked vessel? That flapping valve? That enlarged chamber? How does the heart function as part of the oneness that is homeostasis? How is that homeostasis affected by the smile of a child? The sound of a jackhammer? The death of a loved one? The denial at every turn of opportunity?

    More. Yes. My body is one. Yes, it is. But. It is one within a community, within an atmosphere. My body so individual and precious to me can last no more than a few breaths without the oxygen exhaled by plants nearby and faraway. My body so individual and precious to me cannot live more than a few days without food grown by farmers, caught by fisherman, sustained by healthy soil and oceans and skies. My body so individual and precious to me cannot last without the touch, the warmth, the smile, the greeting of others.

    Our original sin. To misplace the apparent concreteness of our skin color, our tribe, our class, our nation as worthy of dominance over others. No. We are one. The Eternal One only knows unity. Only sees togetherness. Insists in its nature on love, justice, and compassion. It has ever been so, and has ever been denied. Our fault, our most grievous fault.


    Great Wheel Health Judaism Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Reimaging revelation Science US History Wild Neighbors World History

  • The Last Journey

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa and the Herme Moon

    Tuesday gratefuls: Ruth struggling again. Still. Gabe and the last Rockies game of the season. Marilyn and Irv. A pale blue Sky. A cool night, but warmer weather coming. Kristie today. Robbie Robertson of The Band. Levon Holmes. Bob Dylan. Coltrane. Parker. Bach. Mozart. Hayden. The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. Sarah and BJ. Kate, always Kate. Jon, a memory. My son, Seoah, and Murdoch.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Studying

    One brief shining: Rolled my chair to the built-in desk, turned on the study lamp, took out the sheet of questions for my first class with Rabbi Jamie, this one on Jewish Identity, began to read from Art Green’s Radical Judaism, Joseph Telushkin’s Jewish Literacy, and George Robinson’s Essential Judaism and noticed how much I still enjoy studying, writing answers, thinking deeply.

     

    Now it’s getting personal. Judaism, that is. No longer following the thought pathways the ancientrails of the Talmud and the Torah as an outsider, a camp follower. Reading about Jewish identity as one who will wear the kippah. Makes a big difference. Who is a Jew? What is common among all forms of Judaism? How does Israel define a Jew for the aliyah, the right of return?

    This is my third, and last, venture into the inner life of a distinctive religious community. Seminary at United Theological Seminary in New Brighton, Minnesota gave me four solid years of church history, biblical studies, ethics, homiletics, pastoral care, and a bit of Hebrew and Greek. Much later, in the early 90’s I did a self-study course in Unitarian-Universalism that took two years. This doesn’t count the four years I spent earning my Doctor of Ministry degree from McCormick Seminary in Chicago.

    In both of these earlier excursions I was not wholly engaged. All during my work as a Presbyterian minister, I felt apart from the main congregational life of the denomination. Because I was. My ministry was political and only became involved with congregations near its end when I worked as an organizational consultant for congregations in the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area. The UU time was a regression, an attempt to retain my ministerial role by switching to a less theologically restrictive community. In the end I found the UU movement too diffuse in its religiosity. And learned, again, that the role of minister did not fit me.

    Conversion to Judaism is different. This is something I want. As Joan Greenberg said, it just feels natural. No real dogma to cleave to. So many Jews identify as atheists or agnostics. Yet, a rich and old tradition of considering life’s most difficult questions. How do we live a human and a humane life? How do we connect with the call of the natural world, as Art Green puts it in his wonderful book, Radical Judaism?

    Kate found this path when she was 30. She led me to it. And my friendships at CBE have made it real. Here’s a secret wish I’ll put right out here in print. If it turns out I’m wrong and there is a heaven, I certainly want to be in the Jewish section where Kate is.


    Judaism Memories Myth and Story Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

  • Revelation

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer and the Herme Moon

    Friday gratefuls: Rebecca. Diane. Mussar. God is Here. Metaphors. Revelation. That Bull Elk, the face of God? Speaking to me of the world I do not know, but in which I live. Ruth and Mia. Introversion. On display last night and this morning. Slept long. More Rain and Hail. Computer Chip with built-in human brain cells. !!? Mountain life. Cool while the World burns.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Revelation to us, not the history of theirs

    One brief shining: Convergence beginning to happen for me after a lifetime of religious and spiritual orienteering revelation it may all come down to revelation the revealing of the sacred in this life in my presence and palpable to me.

     

    Whee! Heading down the slide toward a big splash in the World Ocean of consciousness. Or, the Waters of the Collective Unconscious. Or, the inner cathedral. Anyhow. In the book God is Here by Tobia Spitzer we’re discussing metaphors for God. Her contention being that we’ve hung on to a few metaphors-King, Judge, Warrior-and neglected or ignored many others all found in Torah. God as Fire that does not consume, God as pillar of Smoke, God as living Water, God as Whirlwind, God as Malakh or messenger, Angel to name a few. Also Spitzer recounts recent work in cognitive linguistics that discusses how language shapes our world and therefore how the metaphors we use determine what we can see, hear, taste, touch, and feel. Let alone consider. Which is a secondary or mediated process after sensory input.

    Not sure that the word God is worth rehabilitating, but I’m finding the thought process while engaged in this conversation fascinating. Part of Spitzer’s point is that we often thrown out the Torah with the King/Judge/Warrior bath water. So we turn away from understanding God because we don’t like those metaphors, but that there are many others perhaps more compelling. God as lover for instance in the Song of Songs. Or God as the still small voice. Or God as Justice.

    Here’s what keeps buzzing through my head though. Why do we insist on trying to fill up the metaphor God with new wine, putting new wine in an old wineskin which means it’s likely to burst?

    Reminded me of Emerson’s line in his Introduction to Nature: “…(why should we not have) a religion of revelation to us, not the history of theirs.” This pushed me to what I now consider the essence of this interesting conversation. How do we know revelation when we see it?

    In other words, by dropping away from the Torah and/or the New Testament, too, we have also dropped away from considering how Emerson’s dream might come true: a religion of revelation to us, because we’ve rejected the history of their revelations as past tense, never to be repeated.

    Well, that has to be wrong. If we can accept that their revelations were real and profound, as centuries and millennia of folks like us have found them to be, then there must be equivalent experiences available to us right now. Of course you can deny the whole notion of the sacred or the holy or the divine, then there’s nothing more to consider. However, if you have even a small inkling that there is more in this world than is dreamt of in your philosophy… Well.

    What experiences might we have that conjure Rudolf Otto’s definition of the holy:

    “the transcendent [the holy]) appears as a mysterium tremendum et fascinans—that is, a mystery before which humanity both trembles and is fascinated, is both repelled and attracted. Thus, [God] sic can appear both as wrathful or awe-inspiring, on the one hand, and as gracious and lovable, on the other.”

    I have these experiences. As recently as this week. When thinking about Otto’s work and the concept of using new metaphors for God, I can easily call to mind the Elk Bull observing me from the Forest in a driving Rain. That was the face of the Holy, I’m sure of it. Holiness as Wildness. Holiness as the life of the other, the non-human. Holiness as a shock, an amazement. But here’s where I diverge from Spitzer’s work. Why call that God? Why not say it was a window, a moment of seeing into the numinous, a sacred moment which can inform my life long after the experience. Why not say the Holy is beyond our understanding, but accessible to our senses. Yes, by all means let’s use metaphor to describe it but do they have to point back to the Middle Eastern notion of a God? No. I say no.

    On the other hand. Yes. Let’s look to Torah to the New Testament for clues about how experience revelation. Let’s examine and learn from all the metaphors for God. Without having to use God as a reference point. Can we experience the Holy, the Sacred in Fire? Yes. In Water? Yes. In a Tornado? Yes. Does that mean there’s an entity which ties all these experiences together in a quasi anthropomorphic whole? No. Not at all. It means rather the world as we know it is only a sliver of the whole, a whole filled with wonders and treasures we can find. But only if we choose to see what we’re looking at.


    Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Torah

  • Nudges

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer and the Summer Moon Above

    Friday gratefuls: Kristen. An honest doc. And, sweet. Sammie, her nurse. A sweet young woman. Quest Diagnostics. My phlebotomist there, 50 years in the business. Also a sweet lady. Lucky me to have such a great team, along with Kristie and Dr. Eigner, looking after my health. Mussar. God is Here. Myths to Live By. Joseph Campbell. The book that made Jamie choose to become a rabbi. Tal. Herme. Janet. Rebecca. Ellen. Ann, a wonderful artist. Alan, breakfast at Joe Mama’s later this morning. Marilyn and Irv. Good friends. Brunch at their house yesterday. Licks and Lila, their two pups.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Friends

    One brief shining: Influences come into our lives often quietly unbidden sometimes unknown until they blossom into a nudge, a gentle tap on the shoulder or a dramatic push like Myths to Live By or that verse from Micah do justice love mercy and walk humbly with your God which took me from Appleton, Wisconsin to seminary.

     

    Got some insight on the two Charlies from yesterday’s post. Turns out I’ve become anemic since my last round of labs. Combine that with low T and my chemo drug. No wonder I’m dragging by mid-afternoon. No clear reason for it either. More labs drawn yesterday. The phlebotomist and I have become friends. I see her that often. Medical stuff. Necessary, but also a nuisance.

     

    At mussar yesterday Jamie talked about the one book that made him want to become a rabbi, Myths to Live By. A Joseph Campbell work. Haven’t read it so I ordered it. Put that book together with a Reconstructionist background and Rabbi Jamie comes into clear focus. A man driven by myth, the truest expression of human reality. A better and more solid, more lasting influence than mine. For sticking with the choice.

    Made me reflect on my own choice to go into the ministry. It wasn’t just this verse from the prophet Micah: Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God, but it was the core of the push. It was the beginning of the 70’s. The Vietnam War still raged its ugly way across that divided nation. While dividing ours, too.

    I met the Reverend Curtis Herring in Appleton. An insistent voice against the war in a very conservative section of Wisconsin [Joe McCarthy once represented this area in Congress and is buried in the Appleton Cemetery. As is Harry Houdini, btw] Reverend Herring convinced me to give seminary a try. I did.

    Like, I imagine, Rabbi Jamie once the decision to attend rabbinical school or seminary is made, no matter the original impetus, a certain amount of occupational socialization begins to occur. Yes, United Theological Seminary had a distinct and active left political student body. That drew me there and got me started, but the intellectual heft of a two thousand  year old tradition also captured my attention.

    Twenty years later I wandered out of the ministry in a haze, blessing the universe for having Kate show up at just the right time in my life. My initial impulse, a justice oriented ministry, had proved a great fit for me until I began to focus more attention on the church side of the equation. I no longer believed in the resurrection, the power of God, or the staying power of the church as an agent of social justice. In the Christian world that meant get out.

    Had I entered the ministry from Rabbi Jamie’s mythic impulse I might have stayed longer. Reconstructed the resurrection. The God metaphor. Found a way to ground the justice work more in local congregations. As it was, I had no choice but to leave an institution in whose root ideas I no longer had faith.


    Commentary on Religion Feelings Myth and Story Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

  • Herme and Religion’s Institutional Decline in the U.S.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer and the Summer Moon Above

    Wednesday gratefuls: Shirley Waste. Joan. Abby. Debbie. Alan. Marilyn. Tal. Rebecca. Cold Mountain. China. Chinese art and poetry. Asia. The arts of Asia. Song dynasty painting and ceramics. The Japanese tea ceremony. Ichi-go, ichi-e. Wabi-Sabi. Korean celadon. Ukiyo-e wood cuts. The temples of Angkor and Bangkok. Haiku. Zen. Chan Buddhism. Applause last night when I finished reading Cold Mountain poems. Keys on the Green. Beet salad and a Reuben. Coffee. With Rebecca Martin. Heated days. My fan, air purifier, oxygen concentrator, and mini-split on cool. All electric sleeping aids.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Spoken Word

    One brief shining: Last night I learned again how pleasant it is to have people clap for something I’ve done when all I did was read poetry by Cold Mountain out loud stopping between 10 poems for dramatic effect and interpreting his condensation of Mountain recluse scholar life.

     

    Herme, the character for my character study class, has begun to emerge. His first work has been identifying 8 to 10 poems of Cold Mountain to use as the core of his piece. I have at least two other components to add to the project. A way of introducing the Hooded Man of the Wildwood Tarot Deck as Herme himself. Then weaving into his major arcana characteristics the Celtic ways of the Old Grey Magician. I want Herme to blend the Hooded Man and the Old Grey Magician into one person. Following that I need to figure out a way for Herme to introduce himself and the poetry of Cold Mountain without becoming didactic. The obstacle I feel right now is the gulf between the world of the Celts and Tarot  and the somewhat hard edged, very Chinese world of Cold Mountain. The bridge is the reclusive nature focus. I know that much.

    I toyed on the way home last night from acting class-driving up the hill between Shadow Mountain and Black Mountain-with doing the whole project as a one act play. My aim would be introduce the not well known in the U.S. Chinese tradition of Rivers and Mountains poetry to Mountain audiences. The reception of Cold Mountain’s work the two times I’ve read them has been wonderful. Part of it is Cold Mountain’s rendering of life in the Mountains away from the dust of urban life delivered to an audience of Mountain dwellers. Might be fun. A playwright? Why not?

    Acting calls on different aspects of my person than my usual reading and writing. Emotions. Body. Alertness to an audience. Ability to read the words of others in a manner that conveys meaning using all of those tools. I find the challenge energizing. Not looking forward to the memory work however. I have to get better at that. Somehow.

     

    How bout those Southern Baptists? Doubling down on, well, stupidity. Closing doors left slightly ajar that allowed women, oh the shame of it, to mount pulpits and lead congregations. This article in today’s NYT, The Largest and Fastest Religious Shift in America is Well Underway, is the most recent of four articles focused on the secularization of American life. A phenomenon already well played out in Europe. In the article they argue that those institutions with high barriers to entrance also have high barriers for leaving and have suffered less attrition than those like my previous religious home, the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. which were more liberal in their theologies. Yet they too have begun to decline, a long slow ride to virtual irrelevance as far as the broader culture is concerned.

    Many years ago in the 1980’s I got my Doctor of Minister degree. My thesis way back then was on the decline of the Presbyterian church and other liberal Christian denominations. I don’t even remember my arguments. I’ll have to get the thesis out and read it again. I used to be pretty knowledgeable about all this.

    Oddly I still believe in religious institutions but not ones with high barriers to entry and leaving. I believe in them as small communities where friendships can develop, where life’s big questions can be explored, where life’s transitions can receive ritual expression, and where the knowledge of the past can inform and leaven the present. Reconstructionist Judaism does it for me, at least in its CBE expression. But any religion could open itself in the same way. And I hope they do because religious life is an ur part of human life, one developed long before academics and politics and cell phones, and one with a vital human contribution to make.

     

     

     


    Acting Asia Commentary on Religion Faith and Spirituality Judaism Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

  • The Sacred

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: Trips becoming more and more real. Vince, my man. Kat. More connected, more grateful than ever. Tom. Mary. Sarah and BJ. Kate and the sweet picture with my daughter-in-law. Kep, my furry friend, a blessed memory. Rigel, too. Gertie, Vega. The Colorado companions. Cleaning off the art table. Getting back to painting. Sumi-e. Korean. Our journey around the sun, through the galaxy, and with the Milky Way itself. All the wild Babies out there right now, learning about life and its wonders, its perils.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Life finds a way

    One brief shining: Water amazes me in every way liquid solid steam all different the liquid and the steam states capable of powering engines, generating Electricity, carving Mountains, carrying nourishment from one Continent to another, aqua vita not only whisky but aqua vita, a metaphor for the flow of ch’i and the reality of the flow of ch’i, either fresh or salty a wonder on which to float, in which to dive, over which to paddle cradled in Lakes and Ponds and Rivers and Oceans, delivered by pumps and pipes, everyday necessary, water, wow.

     

    Had a down day in the afternoon again. Watching too much TV. Not tackling household tasks. Then I thought. Wait a minute. Yesterday I met with friends for breakfast (even though they didn’t show up, I did), had my car detailed, read many more Cold Mountain poems. Read some other poets of the Rivers and Mountains school of Chinese poetry. My character study began to take shape. Read two chapters in the excellent book God is Here. Made connections with Keshet (rainbow), the Israeli travel agency.

    Still on the old achievement treadmill once in a while. Maybe more than once in a while. Enough, already. And I mean ENOUGH already! I’ve done enough, have enough, am enough. Always. No matter what I do or don’t do. I am. Or better I am becoming. Without the lace and frills of degrees or salary or salutes or celebrations.

    I’m OK, You’re OK. The World’s OK. To go back in time to the self-help cliches of the early 70’s. This is the day the big bang has made let us rejoice and be glad in it.

     

    God is Here takes our perceptions shaped by the word God and puts them through the metaphorical ringer. Changing them, adding to them, recognizing the metaphors as signals for new ways of approaching the sacred, the divine. Though I’m on board with new ways of describing what we mean when we use the word God or its other names like Elohim, Hashem, Adonai, YHVH, I still feel like we’re holding the wrong end of the stick. In other words I think we should talk about why water has a sacred valence. Air. Fire. Earth. Humans. Trees. Rocks. Dogs. Cows. Bacilli. Why do we need to fill in the vacuum created by the word God? Why not acknowledge the sacred nature of all things and learn how to talk about divinity itself in their terms. This is neither panpsychism nor pantheism nor panentheism. This is a version of animism.

     

    Holding some disappointment that the Elk Bulls have not come. At least not when I was looking. I’ve held off having the yard mowed to preserve their favorite food. I miss seeing them.

     


    Feelings Fourth Phase Judaism Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Shadow Mountain

  • The Hardest Problem

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: Kate, her memory, her sweet and blessed memory. Jon, a memory. Another cool Night, good sleeping. 41 this morning. Spanish Grand Prix. Nuggets game 2 tonight. Another gray Morning with Clouds slipping over the peak of Black Mountain. Reading the Bacchae and the Iceman Cometh for monologues. Dionysus. God as metaphor. Consciousness. The hard problem. The waning Shadow Mountain Moon. Ingenuity, the little helicopter that could. On Mars. American space exploration. Yes. The James Hubble.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Consciousness, hard problem or not

    One brief shining: So the brain takes in information from the senses to predict how to survive in the next few moments its job for millions of years and in the process has to build a map of reality-remember though the map is not the territory-and then move our enfleshed DNA to find food, hide from a predator, find a willing partner for reproduction all the while keeping track of its own reactions to better enhance its performance and in the process creating a narrator who can sift through and identify learnings, help in non-immediately crucial tasks like talking and laughing and wondering thus creating the Self?

     

    Been having lots of various ideas over the last week or so. One of them tentatively expressed above. A summary of this article in Quanta, What Is the Nature of Consciousness?. Then a building notion, one nurtured over years of skepticism tempered by yearning. About God. Got this new idea from a book I’ve bought but not read, God Is Here. By a Reconstructionist Rabbi. Its thrust is to update metaphors about God. Fair enough. They need it. But, I realized. What if even an update has the wrong end of the stick? Makes more sense to me that God is the metaphor. Satan, too, for that matter. As Shiva and Vishnu and Brahma and Ganesh and Kali. Allah. The Tao. Chi. Prana. Soul.

    Metaphors for this ages old dance between organism and environment. What is Fire? Water? Earth? Air? Death? Love? Sex? God as a metaphor for the wrestling organisms do with a problem even harder than consciousness, how to survive in an often hostile world, a world accessed only through the mediation of the senses, a world we cannot know directly-Kant’s ding an sich, the thing in itself-yet in which we must move and love and have our becoming. A mystery compounded of mystery. The ineffable world critical to our next action. Did that work last time? Why? Will it work again? Why? Is there a way to optimize my/our reactions to ensure our life? At least for now?

    One of my favorite Torah stories: Jacob wrestling with the Angel at the Jabbok Ford. Yes. Our moment to moment struggle. Leaning into behaviors that have served us in the past yet finding ourselves blocked by new circumstances, ones inscrutable based on our learnings to this point. Or Abraham and Isaac. What must we be willing to give up to continue. To make our next actions a bit more likely to avoid serious injury or death? And, critically for God as metaphor, who or what says this behavior is the right one? That is, the one most likely to advance our DNA into the future?

    Guess this work is appropriate to Sunday morning. Would not preach in a Presbyterian church, but a UU church or a Reconstructionist synagogue might hear it.


    Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Torah