• Category Archives Feelings
  • Coulda. Shoulda.

    Imbolc and the Purim Moon

    Monday gratefuls: Clogged sinuses. MST darkness. The Night Sky. Orion. Aquarius. Betelgeuse, ready to go Nova. James Webb. SpaceX. Odysseus, tilting on the Moon. That day in July when Neil Armstrong stepped off the Moon lander. JPL. Caltech. MIT. Engineering. Putting science to work. Tom. Bill. Helen. Veronica. Arjean. Tara. Hebrew.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Old movies on the Criterion Channel

    One brief shining: Put on my old guy velcro Snow boots, gathered up one of my Leki hiking poles, and set off on a Snowy adventure, would I make it all the way to the garage, lifting my feet, then setting them down in Snow to my waist, up down up down until I reached the door, yes, made it!

     

    I will not be able to go to the garage for a while through the sewing room door. I went out to it yesterday to retrieve the garage door opener so I can get in and out through the sliding garage doors. Shouldn’t be too long since we have 50’s in the forecast this week.

    Feeling a bit diminished by not being able to handle the Snow myself. That silly guy thing. I wouldn’t have been able to do it even if the snowblower worked. Heavy, wet spring snows clog it up. Not to mention my SOB issues. No, not that. Shortness of Breath=SOB. Besides, I already have a snow plow guy. So why?

    Oh, you know. What I could do. What I used to be able to do. I used to be able to run. I used to be able to power all the work in my garden with my legs and my upper body. I used to be able to handle a chain saw. Move slash. Buck trunks. I was a guy in the still strong days. So why not now? I don’t want to be only a mind on two legs. My self critical self wrecker says, nah. You coulda. Shoulda.

    Guess this is one with the questions I posed the last week or so. I need to flip the kayak. Get back to the oxygen in my life as it is. Right now. Here and now. A life filled with friends, ideas, wild neighbors, a willingness to go down that unexpected path all the way.

    Yes. Because. That guy, that strong younger guy, is my past. I’m not weak, not since I got back to resistance work, but I’m no longer that guy physically. That guy is the past. This guy with the yarmulke, reading the parsha, observing Shabbat, he’s my present. This guy who sees the yearling Does, feels the companionable presence of the Lodgepole out my study window, loves Great Sol torching the top of Black Mountain each morning. He’s my present.

    This guy, the one who plows through books about politics, about Jewish holidays, about the Rights of Nature, about Animal Wisdom. He’s my present. And this particular guy is a through line from the young one who like the deceased author David Wallace might get in a taxi and say, “To the library. And step on it!”


  • Snow and Colds

    Imbolc and the Purim Moon

    Shabbat gratefuls: Lighting the candles. Big Snow. Cold night. Cold recovery underway. My torah portion. Bechirah. Choice points. Kehillah. Community. Next MVP. Me. Rich Levine. Ron. Tara. Susan. Jamie. Joanne. Rebecca. Alan. Luke and Leo. Snow burden on the Lodgepoles already diminished. Snow all round the house. 3 feet for sure. Four in some spots.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: A very, very Snowy Mountain Morning

    One brief shining: Roll over after waking up, raise head to see out the window, and Snow above the window sill, look again, same, oh right the big storm, Snow stretching out beyond the window to the Lodgepoles and fences in back, driveway buried in front.

     

    Though compacted some by weight the Snow remains impressive here. According to neighbors, Conifer got hit more than the rest of the state. Not sure I believe that though we sure got a lot. One guy had 65 inches on his tape measure. I know I got over three feet, less than four. Think of the Wild Neighbors who still have to forage through all of this. They have to eat each day, too. The burden of life.

    My regular plow guy, Vince, had surgery a couple of weeks ago and is having a tough recovery. He texted me before the storm, said he and his backup guy would come checkout my driveway. Well. Texted Vince yesterday. The backup guy is stuck in his own driveway. Ah.

    Onto Next Door Neighbors. Guys with heavy equipment have posted, one on Shadow Mountain. I’ve messaged them, maybe they can dig me out. Not a big deal really. Plenty of food, house is warm. And in true Colorado fashion this will all melt during the next week anyhow. Still, I’d like to get out and see the sights.

     

    My cold has faded away, leaving me fatigued and feeling off. Haven’t got the bounce back jolt of energy yet. Looking forward to it. For now, shabbating anyhow.

    When ill, at least for me in the acute phase, my world narrows. I become the slight fever, the runny nose, the aching body and not much else. Maybe hunger sneaks in around the margins. There’s even a sense that my eyes have a more compact field of vision. Everything contracts.

    So the experience of recovery becomes a widening, a gradual reembracing of thought, of other concerns like that to do list on my phone. Marveling at Great Sol on the vast expanse of white Snow. Letting the world beyond my own skin back into visibility.

     

    Just a moment: I have pictures of the Snow but due to technical difficulties, I can’t post them yet. Too unnecessarily complicated to explain. But soon.

     

     

     


  • Storms inner and outer

    Imbolc and the Purim Moon

    Friday gratefuls: SNOW. Guessing 4 feet here. Shadow Mountain home. Keeping me hygge. Heat pumps stealing heat from 20 degree air. Rice maker. Zojirushi. Black-eyed Peas. Mixed Greens, southern style. Lox and English Muffins. Storms of March. Good moisture for us. Generator. Diane. Riley. Richard. Zoom. Sue Bradshaw. Medicine.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Snow Storm

    One brief shining: Sent Ron a note about free will, he wrote back, “I’m in awe of the storm,” Susan sent out a note to us all in the MVP, “I’m in awe of the storm,” and I looked out the window with snow higher, a good deal higher, than my bedroom’s window sill and thought, “I’m in awe of the storm.”

     

    Great Sol awaits our turning toward his face so I cannot yet see what the night added to the Snow visible yesterday evening. This was a big one. Made me think of be the change you want to see in the world. Each Snow flake alone would melt on contact with the ground in March. Many, thousands, millions, cool the surface and make it survivable for those Snow flakes on the way, each alone as they drop from the Sky. Over time they build soft new shapes, white mounds of frozen water, altering the landscape for as far as can be seen. Changing the world.

    My Lodgepole companion has become visible now. Their Branches hang heavily with the Snow burden. Earlier Snow, less moisture dense, slides off as the Branches bend toward our Mother, this denser Snow adheres. Needles can only be seen from underneath the Branch.

    Finished, the Snow has moved on, leaving us with this beauty, this wonder.

     

    My cold followed the storm. I’m left with fatigue and some clogged sinuses, but otherwise feeling well. Glad it was mild.

    More disquieting than the cold was its capacity, as I wrote in Flip the Kayak, to turn my mood sour, headed toward self-pity and self-doubt. I fought it with rounds of Tal’s acting warmup: How do I feel? And, stepping back a bit, looking in toward the part of me oh so willing to find the negative, the downbeat, the self-critical. Oh, that guy. He’s back? Short-timer. He’ll leave soon. Worked. Most of the time. A persistent fog, cold and heavy lingered hinting at the long slide into the Shadow I could take.

    The body. The lev. The soul. All wrapped up in each other, each effecting the other, pulling each other sometimes in synchrony sometimes with dissonance. My soul remains calm beneath the swampy ebbs and flows of a tired, sick body and a lev which has forgotten compassion. Did Jamie just disregard me? Why didn’t Marilyn sign on to the post about how good I was at leading the group? Did those who did mean it or are they just knee jerk complimenters? Likely the latter my lev said. And the body agreed. Sank a bit behind the eyes where fatigue and emotional weariness drag down my clarity of vision.

     

    Just a moment: The Trials of Donald Trump, or, Devils in America. Coming to a Broadway stage in this the year of our Lord 20toodamnedhot50.

     

     

     

     

     


  • Flip the Kayak

    Imbolc and the Purim Moon

    Wednesday gratefuls: Snow already falling. 3 feet! predicted. Whoa. Jackie and Rebecca, both canceled. Haircut and a friend lunch. March in the Mountains. Tom. The tire pressure sensors. The cold. Making a come back. Sleep. Naps. Tired. Anemia. Snow plows and their drivers. The roadgrader, too. Shadow Mountain and Black Mountain. Storm.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Lotta Snow

    One brief shining: Illness and its changing of the inner atmosphere, like a cloud scudding across the fearful ego; moods altered by digging down below to find dirty gems, sad regrets, remnants of life, of past mistakes, of old fears, a comprehensive muck raking that can destabilize the heart sending it spinning out, out, out faraway from its real home.

     

    Guess I didn’t pay attention when Kate was alive. 7-10 days for the common cold. Tom knew that. I thought I was getting better yesterday. But no. Still tired, sneezy, and drippy. (guess I’m one of the 7 dwarves) Fortunately I have almost no obligations right now, especially over the next few days. Should see me through this insult.

    Went to the doctor yesterday to talk about my bleed. She prescribed more of the suppositories because they seem to help. Having them on hand gives me a bit of security when my situation turns ugly. I went to a Walgreen’s to pick them up and experienced an oh my I’m old moment.

    As I got ready to pay, a phone number popped up on the card reader’s screen:  303-674-xxxx. Tell me the last four numbers for security purposes. Nothing. It simply wasn’t there. I was sick anyhow and this task overwhelmed me. I don’t have that phone anymore, I said. I lied. And regretted that, digging my hole deeper. The clerk put in my cell phone number, which I know. The minute she did what popped in my head? 5398. Yes, those four x’s.

    I recount this to show how, instead of going from strength to strength, we can, when old, go from weakness to weakness. Already sick I doubled down by freezing on that phone number. Which I instantly read as a sign of senile brain. Only later did I realize that the unexpected nature of the request combined with a number I already had trouble remembering (address-9358. last four numbers-5398) was the issue. Not memory.

    My reaction time when surprised has declined significantly. It’s not my mental capacity which continues vigorous and strong. It’s about capacity to adapt quickly to the unexpected. Don’t give me command of anything that requires sudden decisions. It’s also part of why I don’t like to drive at night anymore. My reactions are already compromised and the darkness amplifies them.

    How we can turn on ourselves, give ourselves short shrift. I needed some time and some distance to sort all this out. A fortunate aspect of aging is our capacity to see things for what they are, to not be fooled by momentary or unusual circumstances. To be able to flip the kayak underwater, then flip it back up to the surface where there’s oxygen again. Can’t say it always happens instantaneously though.


  • No Brass Ring

    Imbolc and the Purim Moon

    Tuesday gratefuls: Cold already receding. Tired. Hebrew homework. This new day. This new life. Resurrection from 1/60th of death. Ramadan. Mary and Mark both in Muslim countries, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia. Reading the Quran. Fasting from sunup to sundown. Breaking the fast at the mosque. The Soul. You. You as only you. Taxes today.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Taxes

    One brief shining: The tax preparer resides in its envelope, questions and boxes to fill in with numbers from the various reports: Vanguard, Presbyterian Pension, Social Security, the oil well proceeds, mortgage at Wells Fargo, you know the paths and the pencil pushing: I approve of taxes, of sharing responsibility for my county, my state, and my nation.

     

    Sometimes the heart, or better, the lev wants to splash itself on the path of my life, say somethings happening here, but it’s not exactly clear. Don’t mind the fog. Don’t mind the man with the sign over there. Listen to that wisp of she’s not afraid of sadness. The jiggle of Jeff Koons’ work on Odysseus. The casual bump of Joe Pickett’s latest well written adventure. Those moments when encounters speak to the pilgrim soul in me, the one that sets out on paths with no particular goal, no particular rationale. Except something lightly felt that struck deep anyhow.

    These moments have changed my course many times. Over decades. There was that ill-fated one where I saw the Manhattan skyline in a movie and decided I had to move there. 1968. Draft eligible. Did it anyhow. Lasted three months when no one would hire me. I might get called up. Or a bit later that time when I took care of a young girl named Judy, she was sick. And I married her later on an Indian Mound to the sound of the Cream’s “I’m so Glad!”

    Even ending up studying Anthropology and Philosophy. Because they piqued my interest. The common thread to these moments is no goal, no real agenda, acting on impulse yet seeing things through at the same time. That feeling when I turned 32 that I had to have a child. Be a dad. Wowzer. That was a life changer.

    Going to seminary to escape the rag cutting floor at Fox River Paper. Ending up in the ministry. Gosh.

    Meeting Kate. Writing novels. Earning an AA degree in horticulture. Keeping Bees. The whole Andover experience over twenty years.

    Ira Progoff workshops. Listening to my lev, not in terms of what I’d like to accomplish but in terms of what I needed to do next. That one in Tucson, Arizona that opened me up. Followed by a visit to Colorado on the way back to Andover. Ruth running from the surprise of me at the door. Oh. We need to move to Colorado. On the Winter Solstice of that year we did.

    Living in the Mountains. Tuning into the Jewish signal from the heart of the universe. The Wild Neighbors. The Mountains ever changing nature. Friends. Never a real goal for my life. Following the chi as it flowed. At least I like to think that’s what I’ve done.

    This has been my life. No grand plan. No brass ring. Odd I never noticed this until recently.


  • Kate

    Imbolc and the Purim Moon

    Monday gratefuls: This damned cold. Heat pumps. Morning dark on Shadow Mountain. The lives of my Wild Neighbors. Ruby and her snowshoes. Taxes. Preparing and paying. Election 2024. Joe Biden. 45. 45 entertaining Orban in Florida. Gaza. Israel. Hamas. Judaism. Two state solution. Mussar. Kabbalah. Tree of life. Ed Walsh. Sheepshead. Games.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Chesed

    One brief shining: Formula One has begun its 2024 season with Max Verstappen winning the first two races; this sport so expensive, so fast, so global fires the dreams of go-kart drivers and a 77 year old on Snow tires in his SUV.

     

    My isolation here on Shadow Mountain keeps me mostly away from Covid, RSV, but not from the common cold. Achoo! Not sure how I caught it (shouldn’t it be the cold caught me?), maybe at Aspen Perks on Saturday or Mussar on Thursday. Anyhow interrupted sleep, lots of kleenex. Push fluids, Kate says. And rest. Yes, ma’am.

    As you know, even colds are nothing to sneeze at in your late 70’s. Another Kate saying from medicine of yesteryear: Pneumonia is the friend of the elderly. Meaning it can end suffering. Cheery thought.

    Kate. So smart. So knowledgeable. So sweet. Handy with a kitchen and a sewing room. Yesterday marked the 34th anniversary of our 1990 wedding in St. Paul. Joseph played the piano. BJ, Sarah, and a couple of hired musicians performed our wedding composition. Diane stood up with me. A lovely and meaningful start to our thirty-one years together.

    How can I say the depth of my feeling for her? Kate came into my life at just the right moment. I’d lost my faith in the Christian God, needed to get out of the ministry, but how would I pay the bills? Raise Joseph? Kate saw and understood my predicament, said yes when I asked her if I could quit. Said yes to my writing and cooking, caring for the dogs and the boys as my contribution to our marriage. She took a chance on me as I did on her.

    After our move to Andover, a Twin Cities exurb, well into what Kate and I called the pickup zone (where the bulk of the vehicles on the roads were pickups), our life together blossomed. Literally and figuratively. Flowers and Vegetables and a small Orchard. Bees. Dogs, so many Dogs. The firepit. We lived a life of horticulture, apiculture, and, as Jon called it, dog ranching.

    A mutual life. Kate extracting honey. Kate the Ninja weeder with her bandana. Charlie the Soil and planting worker. The beekeeper. The Dog feeder. Kate quilting. Me writing. Both of us hanging out with the Dogs. Prepping meals with our own heirloom Tomatoes, our own Leeks and Onions, Carrots, Green Beans. Honeycrisp Apples. Cherries and Plums.

    A complete and grounded life.

    Kate’s last years were spent on Shadow Mountain. Where, she often said, everyday was a vacation day. We loved living here, loving here. Our marriage continues. Ruth and Gabe. This house. The substantial IRA Kate left to me. Joe and Seoah, who loved Kate and was loved back by her. She is gone from this vale but not forgotten. Never forgotten.


  • Ontario

    Imbolc and the Purim Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: DST. MST. Songtan time. Hello, darkness. Stratford Festival. Mark’s reprieve until April 16th. Seoah and Murdoch and my son. Zoom. Janice and Ginny. Scott. Shabbat. Adar II. Leap years Gregorian and Jewish. Aspen Perks. Kat and Travis. Reading. My great joy. Computer glitches. Ancient Brothers. Mario and Babette on the road.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Stratford, Ontario

    One brief shining: Those trips to the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario involved camping on the shores of Lake Huron, listening to the long trumpets with banners blare out a fanfare for the start of each play, Shakespeare on the stage, the lovely Avon wandering near by and the Black Swan Coffee House where I first encountered criticism of the U.S. role in Vietnam.

     

    When having breakfast with my friends Ginny and Janice, both theater folk, we discovered our mutual affection for the festival in Stratford, Ontario. I haven’t been back since my honeymoon with Judy, my first wife. 1969. A long time. But in talking with Ginny and Janice I reignited my interest. Much as I did last week with my passion for creating a sustainable presence for humans on our only Planet. Guess I should start paying attention. The psyche is a changin’.

    Those were highlights for me with our family. Driving into Canada, a foreign country! Crowns on top of the speed signs. Familiar cars with unfamiliar grills and looks. Colorful money. Crowns again. It all felt very exotic to me. The farm houses in distinctive shades of blue and yellow. Kincardine. A Scottish town. Ipperswich Provincial Park. Provincial. Not state. Provinces. When our time in Stratford finished, we would drive on north to Tobermory on the Bruce Peninsula.

    There we would motor on to the Chi-cheemaun, a car ferry run by the Owen Sound Transportation Company, and cross the Georgian Bay. The Flowerpot Islands in the distance. No car ferries in Alexandria, Indiana. It was all wonderful. Strange. Not in the U.S. We traveled to a foreign country. I didn’t know anybody else at home who’d done that.

    Until the War. The Vietnam War. That bastard child of anti-communist fever dreams. Classmates began to disappear overseas. Dennis killed. Richard Lawson wounded. The Native American guy whose name I don’t recall right now killed. A few of us. Very few went to college. Exempted. The rest. Fodder for the meat grinder of an unnecessary war.

    This was the early 1960’s. They all blended together. Shakespeare. Coriolanus. The Black Swan. Lake Huron. The cranking sound of the Chi-cheemaun’s open maw closing. The quiet vanishing of young men my age. The end of high school. Mom’s death. The start of college. So long ago. So far away in time as to be of another century. Even another millennia.

    Which all segued into the movement. The anti-war movement. The days of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Which describes my experience well. As the Grateful Dead said, “What a long strange trip it’s been.”


  • The Cave of Fear

    Imbolc and the Ancient Moon

    Wednesday gratefuls: Great Sol. Illumination. Energy. A distant nuclear Fire. Space. Mercury. Venus. Earth. Mars. The Moon. Near Earth Asteroids. SpaceX. NASA. ISS. James Webb. Pioneer. Humanity. Curiosity. Planets. Exoplanets. Astrophysics. My son. Kepler, of blessed memory. Kate, always. Rigel. Shadow Mountain. Conifer and Evergreen.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: My son

    One brief shining: Used to be I’d walk out on the asphalt, see the early morning Sky, pick up the Denver Post, and return it to Kate who waited at the breakfast table to start the crossword.

     

    So many used to be’s in any life at any point. Living in Indiana. Going to Wabash. Going to Elementary School. Going to Wisconsin, Minnesota. Married to Judy. Married to Raeone. Married to Kate. Able to Garden, take care of big Dogs, organize a movement. Able to believe in Jesus. Living on flat land. Used to be. Though. The experiences of those used to be’s remain. Not only remain. They shape. Me. My current experience even 70 years removed. From, say, first grade. Or my paper routes. Or having a living mother. Father.

    Faulkner, so true: The past is never dead. It’s not even past. Only the future has a blankness, an unshapedness. Even in the Zen so treasured moment we are never only in the moment. We are vessels and agents of memory, unable to escape our past, unable to know our future, yet always moored to the moment.

    Another quote that fits in here:  Where you stumble, there lies your treasure. The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for.   Joseph Campbell.   On the Zen Calendar for March 6.

    When Kate died, BJ came to get me and we drove through midnight down highway 285. I pushed the elevator buttons for my last time to see Kate. Walked in the room. Her corpse lay in the distance. My heart seized. I could not go to her. I was afraid. This is the past, the used to be that surfaced when I read the Campbell quote this morning.

    Oh. My precious. My sweet. I feared. When I thought I would not. I was ashamed, struck down by fear. I could not, would not, go to her. Surely the very cave I was afraid to enter lay open then. And. I. Did. Not. Go. In.

    This morning, this March 6th, 2024 morning, almost three years after that moment, I’m ready to go into that cave. Dark in here. So dark. The dark of oblivion. The dark of will never find my way back. The dark of she will never find her way back. The darkness of being alone. For both of us. Separated now by that ultimate mystery. The dark of oh my god I do not know what to do next. The dark of life without. Her. My Rock. My partner. My love. My one true love. Oh.

    Human. Only human. Both of us. Her now dead. Me a frightened old man of 74. So fucking hard.

     


  • Not Taco Tuesday but Peopled Thursdays

    Imbolc and the Ancient Moon

    Friday gratefuls: Quiet in my body. Beauty out my window. Calmness in my soul. Great Sol brightening a Shadow Mountain Morning. A day filled with friends and family. First, Diane and all the news from San Francisco. Then Tara and her happiness in Costa Rica. Mussar. Then, Luke and Leo. Finally, Joanne. Home as Great Sol disappeared behind this spinning World.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Conversation and its power to heal, inspire, deepen

    One brief shining: Drove past the Alpine Rescue Team and its museum, over I-70 and past the County garage until the hand made sign warning of a hidden driveway, turned right onto a one lane dirt road with shoulders eroded from its steep incline, went on to a left turn, drove a bit more but not all the way up the driveway to avoid having to back down any further than I had to, got out, walked up to Joanne’s door and knocked.

     

    Thursdays have morphed into my busiest day of the week. I start the day with one of my longest relationships, Diane, my first cousin, who lives on Lucky Street. Always a good way to start the day. She’s well informed about the world and our family. A good source of practical information, too. I learned a couple of weeks ago that she makes a mean lasagna.

    For lunch I met my Hebrew teacher and friend, Tara, at the Marshdale Burger joint. We had lunch and discovered that my audiologist, Amy, has been her friend since she and Arjean moved up here over 25 years ago. Tara and Arjean came back a week or so ago from Costa Rica. She had pictures. Riding horses on the beach. Sunsets. A gated ex-pat community.

    From Marshdale I drove to CBE for mussar. We’re beginning to wrassle with the strange, yet obvious to me idea that nothing is static, everything always becomes something new. The book we’re reading challenged us with Alfred North Whitehead’s idea of God as the creative advance into novelty. Not omnipotent. Not omnipresent. Not even necessarily sentient. Rather God as the impulse toward novelty in all things, always making all things new, always and everywhere. A God who must by definition change as the creation changes, becoming new, different in each moment with each “drop of experience.” His phrase.

    Yet. Still a God in whom we can place our faith. We can hold in our lev confidence that this, too, will change and that if we work with it, we can help guide that change, maybe call it the moral arc of the universe, leading us toward justice, love, and, yes, Downtown Council of Minneapolis, compassion.

    Think of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt. Before they could leave Egypt, they had to have faith that their situation could change. If they did not have that faith, Pharaoh did not need to use power to keep them to stay. They were unable to imagine, to dream, to feel a possible future free of Egypt’s oppression.

    When this conversation finished up, Luke and Leo and I sat for an hour and caught up. Luke had planned to come up last Sunday but I had to say no after my lousy Saturday night. Luke was on his way up to Granby for a weekend at Rabbi Jamie’s place there. He had all of his art materials with him. Gonna be creative.

    At 4 I went to Joanne’s and we had the usual far-ranging, deep conversation about the world and Judaism and liberalism and the slave trade and molluscs that spit out purple in the Aegean Sea, blue in Israel, and green in South America. She’s making me a tallit, a prayer shawl, and its fringes, called tzitzit, will be of blue yarn dyed with the recently rediscovered haustellum, a species of snail (actually a different species than the Indo-Pacific murex. New data.) that created the Tyrian purple of Roman and Greek fame and tehkelet in the waters off Israel, a sky blue. The murex of South America produces a green dye. It takes 120 pounds of snails to produce one gram of dye. So, precious.

    As the sun disappeared and the always present night returned to visibility, I drove home, back up Brook Forest to Shadow Mountain.

     

     


  • Rustin

    Imbolc and the Ancient Moon

    Wednesday gratefuls: Tom. Cold night. 10 degrees this am. Canceling online subscriptions. Black Mountain, still 10,000 feet. Altitude. And, attitude at altitude. Dan. His gifts. Life. While it lasts. The Rights of Nature. Youtube. The Law. To whom it applies and to what. Rocky Mountain Land Library. Rustin. MLK. Civil Rights Movement. The March on Washington.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Fighting for what you believe in

    One brief shining: Watched Rustin last night, the story of Bayard Rustin’s role-he conceived and organized it-in the 250,000 person March on Washington at which Martin Luther King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech, while navigating not only internecine warfare in the Movement and the myriad challenges of organizing an unprecedented, and still unmatched, gathering of African-Americans and their allies, but his own life as a gay man in an unforgiving time.

     

    Movies that move me. Rustin tapped me in a deep place. My heart responds to people who choose to fight. Rustin fought for his sexuality, against war, for socialism, and against racism. This movie accurately displays the toll of a life devoted to justice no matter where or when. My admiration for the depth of Rustin’s commitment couldn’t be greater.

    Some of you know the story of the Leadership Minneapolis moment in which I participated. Here’s the short version. Leadership Minneapolis was (is?) a program of the Downtown Council, a Chamber of Commerce for downtown Minneapolis. Somewhat like Rotary each year’s class picked young leaders from specific fields: the police, religion, banking, medicine, corporate life, the arts, education, civil rights. Not sure I’m remembering this exactly right but I think we met monthly with an expert in some field of leadership. The idea was both to hone our skills and create a network of folks we could tap as we continued our careers.

    My then close friend, Gary Stern, and I headed up a committee, a committee devoted to the vision for us. With consultant and now long time friend, Lonnie Helgeson, we created a definition of leadership. Leadership we said was love, justice, and compassion. Not sure at this remove, this was the mid-1980’s if I recall correctly, how we differentiated love and compassion.

    This effort and its full acceptance by those of us who created it led to the firing of the entire Leadership Minneapolis board. Goes to show you. A nationally syndicated columnist for the Washington Post, Neal R. Pierce, wrote a column on our effort, a positive one. So there Downtown Council.

    OK. He said a bit chagrined. Enough about me.

    My point? Rustin epitomized leadership as love, justice, and compassion. So did King. Watching this movie reignited my passion, at least for a moment, made me cry. At what? At the power of the powerless gathering themselves and pushing for change. At the power and working without a net nature of political organizing. At my memories of those times, of the times that came later. At the slow but certain bending of the arc of the moral universe. So slow. Too slow.