Category Archives: Feelings

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Hebrew, Judaism, Memories, Science, Travel

Teshuva. Bar Mitzvah. Earth Rise.

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Beltane and the Bar Mitzvah Moon

Shabbat: Shavuot. Moses. Torah. Rain. My Lodgepole Companion. Great Sol. Photosynthesis. Chlorophyll. Trees. Ruth and Gabe. Tom and Paul. Joanne. Clouds. The West. Less than 20 inches of Rain a year. Climate change. The Great Work. The Great Wheel. Shekinah. The Sabbath Bride. Caitlin Clark. Angela Reese. Sports. Election 2024. Reading

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Narrow mind, spacious mind

One brief shining: Fear leaked out of some antediluvian part of my subconscious, reminding me with the certainty born of angst and nail-biting that no you can not sing, you can not chant, you will never learn the Hebrew, you are not able to, remember that time, what time, oh you know that time.

 

Still turning over the toxic combination of cabin fever, melancholy, and little boy acculturation. It had me. For maybe March and April. Did not lift until I rode the train to San Francisco and back. Finally, like a dog shaking off water after a swim, I woke up.

Teshuva accomplished. I had returned to the confident, can do it Self. The one I had moved away from in a subtle way, missing the mark of who I really am. This is a constant cycle for most of us. Forget, Turn away. Sink down. Somehow submerge the gift that you are to this world. Then, a moment of felt love, of self compassion, of changing perspectives and there. you. are. Welcome home prodigal Self. Here is a feast for you!

Perhaps today is a teshuvah day for you.

 

Practice for the Bar Mitzvah. This morning at ten. A run through for us all. The whole morning service. After meeting with Rabbi Jamie on Thursday, I now know what my parts are. And I’m able to handle them.

I have a couple of introductions to make. One to the Mah Tovu. A prayer said on entering the sanctuary. It was a lesson about the Mah Tovu that prompted my conversion. I’ll read it in the transliterated Hebrew. The second to the Shema. The daily prayer said on rising and on going to bed. Also the prayer said when you are dying. Each mezzuzah contains the text of the Shema. Here’s one way of saying it in English:

Hear, God-Wrestler. What was/what is/what will be is God. What was/what is/what will be is one.

The four of us: Veronica, Kat, Lauren, and I will read two stanzas each of a Marge Piercy poem. I will read Psalm 118 as translated by Rabbi Jamie and another poem of my choosing.

I’m glad for the practice. I need a rehearsal. Going to wear my new clothes from Bonobo’s. Why I bought them.

 

Just a moment: Bill Anders is dead. Who, you may ask, is Bill Anders? An astronaut who took a photograph during the Apollo 8 mission. This is the photograph:

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Plants, Writing

Scanned

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Beltane and the 1% crescent Shadow Mountain Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: IV’ed. Radioactivated. Scanned. Freddie’s. Being kind to myself. Wild Trees. Coastal Redwoods. The tallest Trees on Earth. Steve Sillet and Michael Taylor. Timber cruisers for the Trees. Marie Antoine. Climbing Trees like an arborist. Treeboats. Forest-Canopy science. Redwood Crowns. Whole Biomes. My Lodgepole Companion. Pinus contarta latifolia.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Shekinah

One brief shining: A butterfly I.V. attached to a vein in my forearm, saline introduced, then a closed lead canister opened, and a syringe pulled out with 5 milliliters of liquid radioactive agent in its barrel, connected to the IV, a push, and $13,000 worth of a cancer discovery tool went into my bloodstream, after that I sat back and read Wild Trees while it distributed throughout my body.

me and the machine

 

See my tilt? Spinal stenosis. My t-shirt got a laugh from the P.E.T. scan nurse and tech. I told the tech doom and gloom would not get me through all this. But humor sure helps.

Proud of myself. I fought the phobia and the phobia didn’t win. This machine is optimal for me in that its doughnut hole is relatively short in length and the top of the hole leaves room above my head. Most important for me: I could see out the whole time. (ha) I ran through several iterations of inner dialogue about fear. The only thing you have to fear… Thanks for that, Winston. Face your fear. I am. I didn’t take drugs. Yeah? Then open your eyes. I did. The doughnut hole was above me, but I could see the room beyond. And I felt calm. A major advance for me.

Still couldn’t do a bone scan without drugs. The distance between face and machine is much narrower and the slot for the body is much longer. And the procedure is very slow. Hopefully no more bone scans.

I don’t like to do drugs because they require that I have a driver. It’s a long time for a friend to wait and someone has to clear their schedule. Though. Alan did say I was very amusing after my first P.E.T. scan. Valium, if I recall correctly.

Results in two or three days. Have to get signed up for Rocky Mountain Cancer Care’s online patient portal. Then I can see the radiologists report for myself. Don’t talk to Kristie until next week.

Oh, the places I’ve been.

 

Just a moment: Been reading Wild Trees. A wild Tree is, in the slang of arborists and tall-Tree climbers, a tree that has not been climbed. Up until the 1990’s that included all the Coastal Redwoods. Climbing these tall Trees requires a high degree of technical climbing knowledge plus athletic climbers. Until Steven Sillet climbed Nameless, no one had ever been in the Redwood Canopy. His rash and dangerous efforts not only made him the first, but started him on a career as a Forest-Canopy Botanist. He and his wife Marie Antoine, also a climber, teach at Humboldt College in Arcata, California to this day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Great Work, Hawai'i, Health, Mountains, Travel

P.E.T. Scan

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: P.E.T. Scans. Radioactive tracers. Bar mitzvah. Torah portion. Service prayers and blessings. Thyroid blood draw. Euclid, a wide sky deep space telescope. James Webb. Hubble. Our local cluster. The Milky Way. Its outer arms. Our home there. Three Body Problem. Wild Trees. Trees as my way in. Colorado Trees. Shadow Mountain Trees.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Universe. (and, thanks for all the fish!)

One brief shining: Sometimes my mind wobbles when it considers the Universe, this vast interconnected web of all things to which we are intimately yet often over unimaginable distances connected, then I have to turn to the Lodgepole out my window, those Mule Deer munching on Dandelions, the astonishing human body, this Mountain on which I live and my mind says, oh, I see, and steadies itself.

 

June 2019

P.E.T.* scan today. An injection sends a chemical that binds to prostate cancer cells and carries a radioactive signal readable by the positron emission tomography machine. Where it lights up. Metastases. If it finds some, a new treatment plan will follow. Possibly back on the familiar Orgovyx and Erleada. Possibly radiation. Depends. Might find nothing right now though we know some cancer has begun to grow again due to my rising PSA. If nothing lights up, I’ll stay off the drugs for now. Probably another scan if and/or when my PSA goes up further.

Scanxiety. Who knew? It’s a real thing. Any cancer patient is familiar with it to some extent. That tingle that comes with another lab draw, waiting for the results. Or, imaging. Hunting for tumors. Mets. Like I’m having today. I have scanxiety. It’s mild. But not feeling something would seem weird to me.

Who wants to have metastases confirmed? Sure, it helps identify treatment modalities that will extend my life, but… Who wants to need treatment to extend their life? My rational self knows ignoring my cancer would bring certain death. Not soon, but certain. As a result, I’ll get in my car and drive to Sky Ridge Hospital once again. Wait 45 minutes for the tracer to circulate throughout my body. Lie down and let the highly sophisticated machinery take a look.

A week from Thursday I’ll talk to Kristie, see what the results mean. Whatever the scan shows, it will not result in a cure. That’s settled. But prostate cancer is manageable. And this is the way that happens.

 

June 4th Kilauea eruption and the Milky Way

Just a moment: Kilauea erupts! Again. It’s one of the most active Volcanoes on Earth. Kate and I stayed at Volcano House for two weeks, a National Parks Hotel in Volcanoes National Park. We became acquainted with this vast Shield Volcano, with Halemaʻumaʻu, the caldera home of Pele, the Hawai’ian goddess of fire, with the offerings native Hawai’ians left on its rim. Flowers. Alcohol. Shells.

May I say that this photograph soothes my scanxiety. This vastness and our living Earth. Together. As they and we are.

 

 

*How does it work? PSMA, short for Prostate Specific Membrane Antigen, is a protein found on the surface of prostate cancer cells. The “imaging agent” consists of a chemical that binds to PSMA, honing in on prostate cancer cells wherever they are in the body. Attached to this binding chemical is a radioactive “reporter.” Patients are given a one-time injection of this combination molecule into the bloodstream, “tagging” prostate cancer cells. The patients are then given a scan with an imaging camera that “lights up” areas where the molecule has accumulated—i.e., sites of prostate cancer (see photo above).

PSMA PET imaging may help guide your treatment plan.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Great Wheel, Great Work, Holidays, Humanities, Judaism, Letters, Literature, Myth and Story, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation, Tarot

I’m Into Something Good. Oh, yeah…

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Cool night. Elk. Mule Deer. Fox. Great Sol. The Great Wheel. The Great Work. The Jewish Year. Wild Trees. Ancient Forests. Sequoias. Coastal Redwoods. Bristlecone Pines. Kabbalah. Shekinah. The Sabbath Bride. Emergence. Lodgepoles. Aspens. Jewitches. Love. Justice. Compassion. A direction, a purpose. A way to live.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Emergence

One brief shining: Before the closing of the door and before I even open it, I stand hand over my eyes repeating the shema, declaring that I, god-wrestler, find the one to be all and the all to be one, which we might call god or not, but we can call it for sure the interdependent web of all things, all becoming things, everywhere there is a where, stretching from me in front of my bedroom door to the other reaches of this universe, passing by the Crab Nebula and the Horse Head Nebula on its way to a boundary where there can be no boundary.

 

I’m into something good.* Said this this morning during the Ancient Brothers. An exciting burst of serendipity, synchronicity, plain old enthusiasm. Heading toward eudaimonia. Wow. Sounds manic as I write it. Has some of that flavor. The shovel that uncovered this new path? A dream. And the Dreamers’ response to it.

And… Here we go. I’m going back to Wabash College. At least that place I was when I was there. Serendipity note: the Herman’s Hermits song below was released in 1964, the summer before my last year of high school, and before my mother’s death in October. Another serendipity note: Herman’s Hermits.

When I went to Wabash, I had competing emotions, both so very strong. The first. Grief. Unresolved, not understood, in no way dealt with. Mom was dead. I left home to go to this school, at the time highly competitive, and bare my small town intellect to so many others so much smarter than me. Grief and uncertainty. Toxic at best.

The second. Finally! A liberal arts education. A chance to get into the cultural deposit of the West. (It would be many, many years before Asia showed up in my life.) Philosophy. History. English Literature. Languages. A chance to grow beyond my autodidact years, guided by professors and stimulated by fellow students. Hard to convey the excitement, even relief, I felt at starting college.

Then German happened. I wanted to read Hegel, Nietzsche, Kant in the original. So I signed up. And floundered. Bad. Got c’s and d’s on quizzes and tests. Where this headed was clear. Abject failure. I did not do the brave and movie worthy thing. Face up to it and overcome. No. I dropped German like a hot potato masher hand grenade.

At the end of the year summer jobs were hard to find and Wabash was expensive. I decided to go further. Leave Wabash altogether. I’m not big on regret, but this is one of them for me.

The dream. Said. Go back. Be who you intended to be. The one that got lost along the way. So who was I going to be, the 18 year old version of this 77 year old. I wasn’t sure of anything but my desire to dive headlong into the deep waters of the liberal arts. Where would I come out? No idea. Didn’t want to know. I only wanted the journey. No destination.

I’ve made a journey, but got off the path of liberal arts, shunted aside by politics and religion. By alcohol and women. By travel and jobs. All ok, all good. Yet not where I wanted to be.

Now. The tarot card, the Hermit, hangs rendered in neon over my breakfast table. Herman’s Hermits remind me of the year before college, feelings accelerating, ground speed increasing. I’m also reminded of my first response to Kate’s death. I’m going to be a hermit. Hence, the neon. Last year I wrote a one-act play introducing Herme, the Hermit, and Cold Mountain’s poetry. And the dream says, go. Teshuvah. Return to the highest and best you.

A semi-hermit, a sometime recluse, a happy loner. But one with the permission to study, to write. To go back into the liberal arts and see if, as Israel: God-Wrestler, I can add to the world my own learnings.  About the Great Wheel, the Jewish liturgical year, trees and plants, about process metaphysics, about religion, about poetry and literature, about transformation and metamorphosis. These are the lenses through which I have learned to see the world.

Next. Organizing my days, weeks, months, years around this Fool’s Journey. After that. On to the diving board, spring up and down. Out into thin air.

*

Dreams, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Great Wheel, Great Work, Jefferson County, Mountains, Politics

A Summer Evening. Dreams

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: A summer night. My Lodgepole Companion swaying gently, soaking up Great Sol’s singular gift. A Light Eater. (just got this book) Dreams. Dreams suppressed but not forgotten. The dream group with Irene: Irv, Sandy, Jane, Clara, Susan. Zoom. Chinese food. Evergreen. Its evolution. Changing demographics. Felonious guilty, guilty, guilty.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Hush Money Jurors

One brief shining: Like you, I imagine, I looked at the headlines, typefaces bold and big, pressing up from the mast head, yes, yes, yes, at last a verdict, a consequence for this man, one venal, shallow, desperate man, who has been my President but never my President, and yet, and yet, a man nonetheless, one with the same generous gift granted us from the long arc of evolution, this body and mind, this ensouled flesh.

 

OK. As much fun as it is to chart the long voyage of Felonious Sinsbad, I’m gonna stop. For now.

 

Most of all I want to acknowledge a summer night. Last night. I drove over to Evergreen for a meal at the Coal Mine Dragon restaurant with Joanne, Rebecca, and Terry. A good time was had by all. Around 8 pm we finished and I drove home in the uneven light of a Mountain evening. The temperature hovered in the mid-60’s, gradually declining as I went up in altitude from Evergreen on Brook Forest, then Black Mountain Drive.

Green Grass, Aspens lit up with chartreuse leaves not yet mature, Willow’s golden with new branches, Red Osier Dogwood bright against them both. The various Creeks and Streams flowed peacefully, calmer now following the powerful runs from last week’s rain. The Lodgepoles of course as backdrop for them all, climbing each Mountain I drove past. The trees of the Arapaho National Forest all well-watered and ready for a season of growth.

Dusk finds Mule Deer and Elk out for a late meal though I saw neither on the way home.They were enjoying the evening, too, somewhere else in the Mountains.

Driver’s side window down I drove my usual speed, slower now than in the past, what I consider a speed safe for my Wild Neighbors. The muted light, Great Sol already obscured by the Mountains, but not gone, the comfortable temperature, the Mountains climbing above me, the Creeks and Streams flowing beside the road.

 

Earlier. Another session with those Irene calls The Dreamers. A collection of folks spread out: Santa Fe, England, Half Moon Bay, Evergreen, Conifer. This time only Sandy and I had dreams. Irene put them in a bowl and drew my name so I started. This one was old, May of 2021, but one that has never left my consciousness. I had never discussed it before yesterday.*

Not gonna say a lot about it here except to note that the conversation about it has, I think, pushed me much further along the trail. Feeling the latter day purpose of my life growing clearer. I have been trying to give myself permission to lean into study, serious study. And more writing. Perhaps in an Ancientrails style, perhaps fiction. Both? Yes, lifting the veil. Seeing a rich and powerful next chapter emerging.

Will require more thought, organization. Some decisions about focus. Yet I can feel all of that beginning to surface. At last.

 

*”The Dream. This was at Wabash, my first college: Several women, including a dean, asked me to return, finish my studies. The men in the dream were rigid, angry. In general and at me. Following the lead of the dean, I said yes. I remember calculating in the dream, “Yes, even now after 56 years.” I can still study, write, learn.

At a gateway out of the administrative offices a German Shepherd lunged at me from beneath a cloak and proceeded to lick my face. After passing through the gateway, I was put in a fiery chair with some other men. It burned them but was cool to me.

I had a strong sense of longing, a keen desire to go back, be a scholar/student again. A writer.

This dream feels important, more so than many of the others I’ve had recently. Not gonna conclude much about it right now. Any ideas, impressions: welcome.”

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Jefferson County, Mountains, Park County, Shadow Mountain, Travel

Desiderata Days. Mountain Nights.

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Desiderata days. Cool, good sleeping nights. Colorado. Guanella Pass. That jerky store. The Cutthroat Cafe. Happy Camper. The Waterfall. Geneva Creek. The Continental Divide. The Shaggy Sheep. Jefferson Lake. Ruby and her new shoes. Taking a day. Letting it just be. Mountains. Forests. Streams and Creeks. Bridges and trails: The Abyss and Burning Bear Creek Trails. Square Top Mountain. Mt. Blue Sky. Mt. Rosalie. Square Top Mt.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Rocky Mountains, my home

One brief shining: Great Sol, my inner ohr, has begun to peek over Mt. Grief and Mt. Inertia, encouraged by the trip to San Francisco where we/I/us let go of the Lilliputian ropes with which we’d bound ourself to one place, Shadow Mountain, and to one journey, becoming a Jew, and to the dark arts with which death enthralls our psyche, let go of them and got out, on the train, let go of them and went on a trip.

 

Yesterday. Ah. Well.

At last. After too many years. Too much thinking and sitting. Yes. I did it. I went on a short but profound adventure, never leaving the familiar confines of Jefferson and Park Counties. Here’s how it went. With pictures.

Before. A while ago. I named Tuesdays as desiderata days. Go anywhere days. Let the day unfold. Rather than directing it: Write now. Eat now. Study Torah and bar mitzvah portions now. Sleep now. Watch TV now. Workout now. Do work-a-day things to manage my life. Pay bills. Write e-mails. Contact my docs. No. Not on a Tuesday. On Tuesdays I would set aside all that, get in Ruby and head out.

Problem was. I never did it. Oh, I went on a few hikes last year. But not on Tuesdays. Just never let myself experience the freedom I put in my calendar. I even have the Tuesdays named on my Google Calendar: Desiderata Days.

Until. Talked with Tom. The Florida Panhandle has a different understanding of Mountain than we do here. They even put up this mural and named a road and businesses after Blue Mountain:

64 feet. The highest point on the Gulf of Mexico. Photo Credit: Tom Crane, retired.

After I finished talking to Tom the day could have devolved into a usual Tuesday. But it didn’t. I put on my jeans, my LL Bean vest, got my car fob and tiny wallet, a hat, got in Ruby, and left the house. First to King Sooper for the ATM. Cash for the Happy Camper. On to 285 headed south and west toward Pine, then Bailey.

Bought some edibles. Still can’t believe this is legal. Always feel a bit furtive.

Down Crow Hill and it’s 7% grade into Bailey and the Cutthroat Cafe. Passed the Smiling Pig Saloon and Smokehouse where I hope to take Tom, Irv, and Paul in a couple of weeks. Breakfast outside. Oatmeal and Italian sausage. Coffee, sourdough toast. Over for a look at the Sasquatch Outpost. They’re all in on Sasquatch tourist items. From t-shirts to action figures, signs and blankets. Plus footprints.

Faced a decision. Go home or go to Guanella Pass? A desiderata day. Guanella Pass. On Highway 285 through the Platte River Valley, past Shawnee, the Orvis ranch and fly fishing destination, Villa Marie, the Shaggy Sheep, and onto tiny Grant. Turn right.

The Continental Divide
Upper Geneva Creek
Turned Around here

I only drove part way up the 11,700 foot Pass which leads to the old mining town of Georgetown, also accessible from I-70. I had gone on a whim with no water bottles or camelpak. No sunscreen. Plus, it rained much of the time. No raingear. No such thing as bad weather only inadequate gear.

On the way back down I stopped at the jerky place I’ve driven past many times. The owner, a luxuriantly white bearded old man with an oxygen canula, said, “It’s a tiny shop. Just look.” He pointed to the signs above the racks: Salmon jerky, Beef jerky, Alligator jerky, Buffalo, Elk, local beef. I paid with cash and when I did he pointed to a sign, no tax with cash. Cheating the taxman, I imagine. Especially since above this sign was a $1,000 bill with a head shot of our criminal ex-president. The Mountains.

Back home I rested. Thinking. Yep, about a half a day’s energy. That’s my limit these days. Most important. I smiled. Desiderata days. After the bar mitzvah, a desiderata week. Off to Taos.

Feelings, Fourth Phase

Is It Happening Now?

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Beltane and the Moon of Shadow Mountain

Tuesday gratefuls: Happy Camper. Mary Jane. M.J. Hedstrom. Raeone. Judy. Carolyn. Tina. Women of my past. Relationships. Being radical. Even now. Bernie and Elizabeth. BLM. Pro-Israel. Pro-Palestinian. Anti-Hamas. Anti-Iran. Ready for national health care, affordable housing, enough food for all, education as often and as long as needed.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Seeing the establishment for what it is

One brief shining: Often these mornings I put a split English Muffin in the air fryer, get out the lox, cream cheese, and capers, butter them, slather on cheese, put two slices of lox on one side, capers on the cheese, stick my thumb in a mandarin orange and peel it, pour another cup of coffee, grab a mineral water, and sit down to learn what mischief the world has been up to while I slept.

 

Maybe Great Sol. Bright sunshiny days. Blue skies. Mountain air. The scent of Pines. Maybe the onrush of the bar mitzvah. Prep going well. It’s finish line time in two weeks. Then on to another focus. Maybe a waking up from the long sleep of grief, coming into this life, this 77 year old life as a widower, an introvert, an often hermit, a Jew. But coming into it as a whole and vital person, still engaged and alive, ready for today. Talking to Tom. Going to the Happy Camper. The Cutthroat Cafe. Maybe up the Guanella Pass. Resting.

I have false dawns. When I think I’ll turn and turn, wake up, and be ready for a brand new life. Well, not brand new, but one aimed in a new direction, new focus, new patterns, new dreams. But every once in a while, often years apart, an inner Great Sol will illuminate my inner world. A new path, usually a fool’s path, a beginner’s mind path will wind its way through the reaches of my soul. Divorcing Raeone. Judy. Getting sober. Deciding to go to, then finish seminary. Focusing on political work even in my ministry. Becoming a pagan. Meeting and marrying Kate. Writing. The Andover move. The trip to Southeast Asia. That horticultural associates degree. Moving to the Mountains. Kate’s decline and death. Becoming a Jew.

Now I can feel the heat of a new dawn, feel the coolness of a long night beginning to lift. But I’ve felt like this before. I have a doubt, a mild cynicism. Oh, you’re too old. Nothing new under this inner sun. You’re too weak, too damaged by various physical maladies. All those other dawns. What have they produced anyhow? Well. A lot actually. A whole life, one marked by this and that, up and down. A normal life, a good life. A satisfying life. Oh. Huh.

I need these break points, bechira points where the world behind becomes just that, a past, all well and good while it happened, but fading away, its hold over my talents and resources loosening so a new focus can emerge.

Perhaps this is a violation of the current scripture: be here now. Or perhaps it’s a perfect example. I don’t know. But I yearn to fall forward, or even leap forward. Is it happening now?

 

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Holidays, Memories, US History

Memorial Day

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Monday gratefuls: Cool night. Memorial Day. Decoration Day. Parades. School’s over and summer starts. The World. Its many Wild Neighbors. Mountains. Lakes. Ponds. Tides. Tidal Pools. Forests. Trees. Plains. Rivers. Streams. Creeks. Meadows. Valleys. Cultures. Long evolution. Its oneness. Its holiness. Its sacred nature. Our Hullian needs. Our need for fulfillment and satisfaction.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Warriors

One brief shining: Those parades when heat softened the asphalt on Harrison Street so it could accept treads laid down by the tank from the National Guard Armory, when the guys carrying the colors insisted on wearing their old uniforms, pale stretched skin showing where the buttons held, only just, when last year’s homecoming queen sat prim and straight on the folded convertible top of an impeccably restored 1957 Chevy, when we would stand along the parade route enthralled.

 

Memorial day. Mom and Dad. Veterans of WWII. Uncle Riley, too. That generation that gave so much. War. A human horror engaged too often for too little reason. Though WWII was not one of those. To have had that great world spasm followed by the never finished Korean War and the unnecessary Vietnam War, then Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya has sullied the warrior class, making them too often pawns of geopolitical maneuvering by oligarchs, dictators, and short sighted politicians.

Yet. They persist. Often frustrated and hemmed in by those who misunderstand their role. As I once did. Warriors and priests. Old, old roles in human cultures around the globe. Both often abused. Both in my immediate family.

Easy to forget the purpose of the Lt. Col. who is my son. The USAF. Defense. Not offense. Oaths taken to defend the U.S. against all enemies domestic and foreign. Obedience to civilian authority delivered through the Commander in Chief, the President.

The military does not define who the enemies are. That’s a civilian responsibility. Often lacking in both reason and ethical justification, yes. But it is the civilian authority who aims and then empowers our military. Only then can they engage.

Warriors place themselves in harms way to defend their tribe, their people, their nation. This is an ancient and honorable role. Indigenous people in the U.S., in spite of their history, sign up in disproportionate numbers because the warrior class holds such high esteem in their cultures.

Yes, war is terrible and often, perhaps most often, wrong. That is, engaged not for defense but for seizing land, control of another people, for vengeance. For reasons of profit and misguided fears. For this last think the domino effect.

The warriors themselves continue on. Learning, training, readying themselves for what might be, for what even they hope may never be. Yet when called they will respond and respond with all that they have.

I’m not thrilled to have a warrior son. Though I recognize the selflessness of his choice. And the values which led him to choose service to country. I wish he could have become a social worker, a lawyer, a physician. He was pre-med before turning to the Air Force after 9/11.

Yet over the years I’ve come to appreciate the sacrifice in life-style, income, and personal freedom. I’ve met many of his colleagues and to a person they are warriors, too. Global politics are anarchic and still ruled by might makes right in the minds of many. We need a military, citizens willing to defend us.

They are who we honor today. Especially those who died as a result of their service.

All year after the parade we would drive over those tank treads, hardened into a feature of our main street. The slight rumble would remind us.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Memories, Politics, US History

Old Self Surfaces

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Ancient Brothers. Socrates Cafe. Irv. A cool night for sleeping. Candles. Rituals. Sabbath. Writing. Hanukah. Yahrzeit. Kate, always Kate. Politics. Justice. A just society. Could happen. My Lodgepole Companion waving their Branches, soaking up Great Sol. Presidents. Politicians. Self-driving cars. Teslas. Electric cars. The old kind. Change.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Electric cars

One brief shining: Whoo, boy, every once in a while I put my foot in and forget to take it right back out, like yesterday at the Socrates Cafe when I, much to my surprise, felt a need to defend the reality of injustice and collective effort to remedy it, not my best foot to put in for the first time I showed up in person.

 

Underneath it all I’m still a pretty unreconstructed ’60’s radical. The establishment has the power, oligarchs and millionaire politicians make policy that fits their needs and fail to address the systemic nature of racism, sexism, classism, ageism, and the Great Work itself. The only way to alter systemic problems lies in the realm of politics, something even the MAGA folks seem to intuit. But not the folks at the Socrates Cafe.

This self, this radical self, mostly lies quiet these polarized days. Painfully gained higher emotional intelligence signals me when a situation will not be made better by my political analysis. And they are many. Something I often failed to notice in my working days. Yesterday though.

All my mussar work, all my realization of appropriate venues for political discourse got shunted aside when the majority of folks in the group took up the position that there is no such thing as right or wrong, justice is always personal and contextual, by which they seemed to mean relative to a specific, interpersonal situation.

I’m not used to having to defend the fact of injustice. Skin color for some was irrelevant. (Everybody was white.) It’s not possible to know the positive or negative effect of remedying injustice. (I have some empathy for this perspective, yet it’s an action killer.) Slavery didn’t matter. There was just nothing you could do unless you did it personally.

Acting justly in interpersonal situations? Of course. A minimum as far I’m concerned. Yet. Imagining that even the golden rule will change systemic, historical imbalances in our culture is naive at best and a form of denial at worst.

These folks all knew each other and have been doing this Socratic cafe twice a month since 2003. Afraid I violated their group norms. Didn’t mean to. But justice is a flash point issue for me.

All began because my question was chosen. The method is this: whoever has a question writes it in on an index card and turns it in. Jannel reads the questions through once. Then, the one who wrote the question explains how they came to it. After those explanations, yesterday there were six submitted questions, a show of hands votes each question up or down. 15 people in attendance. My question was: Is a just society possible? The consensus, btw, was a resounding no.

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Socrates Cafe today. Tara lesson today. Torah and the morning service. Rami Shapiro. Judaism without Tribalism. Ruth and Gabe. Mark in Hua Hin on the Gulf of Thailand. Three Body Problem trilogy. Breakfast at Aspen Perks. Picking up shirts at USA cleaner. Groceries today. Pickup again. Got hot dogs for Memorial Day. A very rare treat.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Lodgepoles of Arapaho National Forest

One brief shining: Have taken no shirts to a dry cleaner/laundry since Kate died, not sure why, but last week I took in my new shirts and my flannel shirts, the new ones to have a wash and an ironing, the flannel shirts for a seasonal dry cleaning, ready now to store in the closet until the next Winter, and it felt like a splurge. So expensive. BTW: I did wash my shirts in the washing machine. Just so you know.

 

A good workout week. Hit my 150 minutes again. Moving up on weights. Always feel better when I get all my workouts in. Think of Diane headed up Bernal Hill on her jogging route. Ode in the gym gettin’ buff. Watch the red meat, eat fruits and vegetables, more fish and chicken. Workout. Live longer, healthier. Maybe. No phone call yet about my P.E.T. scan. Part of it, too. Mind the cancer.

 

Got a new set of all-seasons for Ruby. Big O. They know the double entendre, I’m sure, but using it on a tire retailer? Seems odd. To me anyhow. Oil change, too. Synthetic. 10,000 miles between. Feels luxurious after a life time of 5,000 mile oil changes. Course those of you with the electrics. Don’t they beat all when it comes to maintenance. I like leaving as many dollars up here in the Mountains as I can. Help the local economy.

 

Led mussar on Thursday. Always fun to lead a group temporarily. Considering another dive into the educating realm. Right now I’m in a havruta with Gary Riskin. Traditionally talmud torah, torah study, was done in pairs. Read a text. Summarize it, analyze it. Sharpening each others thought process. A lively back and forth. Probably where the quip, two Jews, three opinions, came from. We meet every two weeks over zoom. We worked on Cain and Abel last session. The only class I’m in right now.

But. Having just finished Rabbi Toba Spitzer’s excellent God is Here, and halfway through Rabbi Rami Shapiro’s Judaism without Tribalism, with Rabbi Michael Strassfield’s latest, Judaism Disrupted: A Spiritual Manifesto for the 21st Century, ready after I finish Shapiro, I may consider creating a class using these three books. Plus maybe one of Mordecai Kaplan’s, the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism. The work in Toba Spitzer’s book and Rami’s show the power of Reconstructionist thought. I find them working the same vein as Emerson.

That is, how can we use the spiritual deposit of the ages while maintaining an open, even skeptical attitude toward religion as an institution? I found Unitarian-Universalism too broad and too thin a tool for this quest. Paganism worked better for me. Until I found a group committed to the same rigorous approach to religion as Emerson and myself and committed to community at the same time. Reconstructionism.

I find Spitzer, Shapiro, and Strassfield working at the outer edges of what Shapiro calls Judaism without tribalism. Calling into question the very way we understand the sacred, Spitzer’s work on metaphors, and Shapiro’s focus on Judaism’s two key moves: teshuvah and tikkun.

Teshuvah, or return, means in his thought returning to who we really are after jettisoning other’s expectations, and being dead honest about who we are. Tikkun means repairing the world: the physical world, the political world, the emotional world. These are, according to him, the mission of Jews. To embrace our true selves and repair a damaged reality. Works for me.