Category Archives: Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Great Wheel, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

A Thought for the Longest Night

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Samhain                                                                       Christmas Moon

“No matter what situation we find ourselves in, we can always set our compass to our highest intentions in the present moment. Perhaps it is nothing more than being in a heated conversation with another person and stopping to take a breath and ask yourself, “What is my highest intention in this moment?” If you can have enough awareness to take this small step, your heart will give you an answer that will take the conversation in a different, more positive direction. With simple steps like these, you can behave in ways that at least will not fuel your difficulties—or anyone else’s.

Whatever your difficulties—a devastated heart, financial loss, feeling assaulted by the conflicts around you, or a seemingly hopeless illness—you can always remember that you are free in every moment to set the compass of your heart to your highest intentions. In fact, the two things that you are always free to do—despite your circumstances—are to be present and to be willing to love.”

Adapted from A Lamp in the Darkness: Illuminating the Path through Difficult Times by Jack Kornfield © 2011. Reprinted with permission of Sounds True.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Holidays, Jefferson County, Mountains, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase

Lights by the Lake. With Latkes

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Samhain                                                                 New (Winter) Moon

Watched several different people, a rabbi, a politician, a cantor, a newspaperman and a Chamber of Commerce woman struggle with lighting a menorah on the shore of Lake Evergreen. We’ve had chinooks for the last few days and though muted at night they still made the bic auto-match flicker and the temporarily burning wicks blink out.

The politician, Tim Neville, is a conservative Republican. He had real difficulty getting the shamas lit. It was as if the winds were saying this one has no light within him. To be fair, others had difficulty, too.

This was a pan-Judaism event with Beth Evergreen, where Kate and I have attended educational classes, Judaism in the Foothills and B’Nai Chaim reform synagogue collaborating. It was not a huge crowd, maybe 75 to a 100 people: a few boys with prayer shawl fringes dangling beneath their t-shirts, two rabbis and a cantor, tables with Hanukkah gelt, dreidels, a two table set up for the latke cookoff* and an adorable two year old girl whose body posture said she was ready to rule the world.

The evening was enough for Kate to say, “I want to join.” She means Beth Evergreen.

I was happy the event took place to a giant fir tree festooned with many lights. That’s my religious tradition, Germanic paganism.

*Kate’s latkes are superior, in every way, to the ones I tried last night.

 

Commentary on the news, Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase, US History, World History

Sad

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Samhain                                                                       Thanksgiving Moon

Routine disrupted. My loft computer is now downstairs where I can hook it up to the internet. On Monday I have a serious computer service company coming out to create a wi-fi or hardwire setup. Calmed down after I made a decision to get it done once, then forget about it. My problem is that I obsess about these things until they get taken care of. If I’m trying and failing to fix things, then I keep obsessing. Tiring.

Sad about guns, about the killing, about terrorism, about the obtuse beliefs of NRA fanatics, about climate change deniers, about the too slow pace of change toward a sustainable future. Angry, too. Yes, angry. In the past sadness and anger have pushed me into political work. Got started when I was a freshman in high school and found the school itself a barrier to learning.

Today, though, I find myself on the sidelines watching a circus where the acrobats miss the trapeze, where the fire eater gets consumed by his element, where the animals smash the cages and trample the crowd. The world has once again sunk into madness.

Yes, the world is always mad. War began thousands of years ago. Slavery, too. People without power did terrible, unthinkable things to break free. So, in a way, the diagnosis of madness, of chaos and insanity, is a tautology. The world is. The world is mad.

It’s also true that any one action, any one person, even any political movement has little chance of creating change systemic enough to bring sanity. Yet, as Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” It might be this action, this person, maybe you. It might be this political movement, this one you choose to support.

Where am I going here? What I want to say is that the only way to avoid despair is to choose to act in some way. I won’t be on the sidelines much longer, the projects of our making this home ours will finish and I’ll find somebody to team up with. Somebody to shake a fist with. To make what strangled sort of cry we can. Fatalism just doesn’t work for me. Might be about the third phase and our lives in it.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Friends, Great Wheel, Holidays, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Weather +Climate

Black

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Samhain                                                             Thanksgiving Moon

At 4:30 this morning the Thanksgiving moon hung to the north of Shadow Mountain, obscuring Orion and most of the stars. Luna was the first light polluter. The lodgepoles glisten faintly, the snow on their branches catching a bit of the moonlight. It’s quiet, too, a Saturday on a holiday weekend, so few cars on Black Mountain Drive.

Black Friday has been on my mind. Maybe yours, too. This morning I contrasted the peaceful moments I have looking up at the night sky with those, who at the same time of day, waited in line in the cold for the chance to save big on some item or another.

It’s an easy target, Black Friday. The crazed shoppers banging carts to get there or there or there, first. The notion of a “holiday” devoted to retailers finally easing out of the red into profitability. The mission creepiness that caused Black Friday to ooze backwards into Thanksgiving Day. Trying to find a connection with the holiday of the incarnation or any of the wonderful celebrations of Holiseason.

Yet. For all the blackness and greed and confused motives Black Friday seems more sad to me than blameworthy. The assumption that somehow, if only I can get it, that cheaper something will heal me or make someone else happy. The frantic desire of parents to find the it toy of the season for their kids. The real underlying issue, the squeeze of the 99% by the 1%. Then twisting that squeeze into a way to wring more money out of the 99% and funnel it to the 1%.

Feels more like desolation, despair. Bordering on hopelessness.

Give me the Thanksgiving moon north of Black Mountain. The forest covered in snow. Orion above the house. And the gifts that are my family, the dogs, my friends, this wild and stony place.

 

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Health, Holidays, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Not the Thanksgiving We Got Ready For

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Samhain                                                                 Thanksgiving Moon

20151117_070312And so, we spent Thanksgiving on Shadow Mountain, watching the snow come down in lazy lines, thinking of Gabe and his second surgical procedure in a week, the roast and the pies and rolls in the freezer. It was downbeat, too quiet for a holiday.

Kate the clinician, a person with a bias for action, stewed. She wanted to do something, fix something, but the snow came down and no roast could be cooked, no salad prepared, no engagement with the medical issues of her only grandson. Impotence, or the feeling of impotence, is a terrible burden because it shrouds the capacity to act with an inability to do so. So many revolutions have been borne. So many political movements.

Later, after Gabe’s delayed procedure was over in the late afternoon, she relaxed. Jon had called and asked us not to come. The snow. The stress of the day. All made sense to me.

The holiday hung in the air like a sneeze not completed. Thankful, of course, for the good outcome with Gabe’s procedure. Thankful for the snow and the flocked lodgepoles, snowy Black Mountain, the dogs running pushing muzzles into the snow, rolling. Thankful that Kate and I were together, playing Bethumped, talking.

I ate too much of the sugar cream pie I made. Really more like a delicious pudding. It didn’t set up. No matter. We had shrimp with Bookbinder’s sauce while we answered questions about word origins, eponyms, general history, homophones and pushed our plastic markers around the board.

It wasn’t the Thanksgiving we had prepared for, but it was the one we had. And it was a good one.

In fact, this year we’ll have two Thanksgivings, yesterday and the delayed meal on Saturday around noon. Now, there’s plenty to do. Gabe’s better. Kate will have tasks to be done. And that prime rib roast. Well, I’m looking forward to that.

Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., The West

What Is Life?

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Samhain                                                                        Thanksgiving Moon

What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the Sunset.

Crowfoot, a leader of the Blackfoot Nation

 

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Our Land and Home, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Shadow Mountain Monastery

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Samhain                                                                      Thanksgiving Moon

Noticing as I cut down the trees, move the limbed branches and get ready to cut trunks into fireplace size logs that my body looks forward to the work. A riff on the Benedectine ora et labora. My prayer (ora) is writing, reading, translating. It’s easy for me to get stuck at the computer, in a book and neglect the rest of my body.

Workouts aren’t the same since they are artificial, moving my body for the sake of moving my body. That’s different than doing physically challenging work. With the work there’s the exercise of the body, yes, but it meshes with the satisfaction of accomplishment.

There’s a couple to three months of lumberjack work left, maybe more when you add in stacking the logs for curing. That’s good. With the winter there’s also the occasional snow blowing time, shoveling off the deck. Good to be outside.

Might consider trail maintenance when spring comes. Similar work.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Anco Impari

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Samhain                                                                       Thanksgiving Moon

(Anco impari, Learning Still.) Goya’s small print with this title might be my third phase image.

Let me give you two very recent examples. In the first, granddaughter Ruth got a signal honor as one of ten students from her elementary school, named after Colorado astronaut, Jack Swigert, who got to meet the surviving Apollo 13 astronauts. The learning was this: Ruth wore a skirt. At 9 Ruth has her own fashion sense. It’s distinctive and one that includes neither skirts nor dresses.

Second, last night we took grandson Gabe to a Polar Express live event at the Colorado Railroad Museum. I had advocated this as grandchild time because Ruth, on a recent overnight up here, had watched the movie. But, Ruth’s astronaut event was the same night, so Gabe went without her.

He was not entranced with the Polar Express idea. He kept saying, “We don’t celebrate that.” That is, Christmas. He is a Hanukkah guy after all. Gabe had a book along, Goosebumps by R.L. Stine, and kept reading it during the evening. His diffidence and general orneriness irritated me. The whole night.

Later, out of the immediate context of the event, I had to admit to myself that I admired his willingness, in the way he could muster at 7, to stand up for his sub-culture, Judaism. We went to the event based on Ruth’s interest and I expected him to share it. Instead, he felt assaulted by things his family doesn’t emphasize. So, shame on me.

Then, this morning, as I worked up here, I heard clumping steps on the stairs. There was Gabe, smiling, rested and wanting to see Grandpop. Every day brings a new chance to relearn humility.

 

Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase

Self-Care for Future Corpses

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Samhain                                                                         Thanksgiving Moon

Eat right, exercise, die anyway. I loved this refrigerator magnet and I love this short article by Sallie Tisdale. Especially for us third phasers. No fear, as the bumper stickers say.

Sallie Jiko Tisdale @ Tricycle.com

Sallie Jiko Tisdale is a Tricycle contributing editor and a lay teacher at Dharma Rain Zen Center in Portland, Oregon. She has authored several books and many essays.