Spring and the Snow Moon

Friday gratefuls: Shadow. Digestion. Alan. Cool nights. Shadow’s toys. The Duck, almost rended. The Chipmunk. Unidentifiable. My nightstand. Gnawed. Puppies, eh? On liberation. And wandering. Tolkien. Moorcock. Britain. England. Scotland. Wales. Cornwall. Ruth and Gabe. Lox.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Shadow running with a nerf football

Week Kavannah: Ratzon. Will, desire, pleasure.

One brief shining: A paw, a lick, a pushup on her two hind feet and her butt Shadow greets me with a full body hug, mouth open sharp puppy teeth snagging my sweatshirt, eyes wide with love.

Several things flashing signs at me. Diane, “Your job is to stay healthy.” After retirement. That way others who need you can still find you above ground. A song as TV background, “You just gotta let go and everything will be all right.” Wu wei.

Began to think about my odd path to this age. Left the work force at 43. Kate, always Kate. Wrote 9 novels. Gardened. Cooked. Cared for Dogs. Did grocery shopping. Kept Bees. A Docent for 12 years. Living the life of a suburban housewife.

After our move to Colorado, I did all the fire mitigation: cutting down the Trees, delimbing, bucking, moving slash. Still shopping and cooking. Caring for the Dogs. Then, Kate. Her death.

Four years later Shadow and I reside here at Shadow Mountain Home.

Never really had that clean break with the work world most folks experience at retirement. My work became my daily life and the meaning, the purpose Dogs, Kate, grandkids. Writing.

Listening to my heart now. What is mine to do? The hermit life (with benefits-friends and family) has begun to appeal to me again. This time as an expression of the fourth phase, the spiritual wanderer, the Fool of the major arcana. Also as an expression of a retreat from my previous world of politics and action. My version of retirement.

I’m old enough. I’ve earned it with a life of action and service, by coping well with serious illness, by having a wonderful environment and home.

A part of me says no. No. Judaism runs, in some ways, across this decision. Rabbi Tarfon, “You are not duty-bound to finish the work, but on the other hand, you have no right to waste time from it…” Using age and infirmity as an excuse rather than a reason.

The activist in me says everything is political. Even this decision because it leaves the playing field to MAGA and the world of the autocrats. If everybody followed my choice.

Yet. I feel the need to take a breath. To lay down my sword and shield, down by the Riverside. To become the Taoist scholar of those wonderful Song dynasty paintings.

Let the hours and the days, the months and the years wash over me. Become. Live in becoming rather than doing.

My heart wants this. Long habit and a felt pressure from the Tarfon’s of this world (including and most telling, my inner Tarfon) pushes against letting go. Letting the world go on, in a sense, without me.

Imbolc and the Snow Moon

Monday gratefuls: Miralax. Rocky Mountain GI. Shabbos meal. Luke and Leo. Tarot. The Hermit. The Wanderer. The Fool’s Journey. Shadow and the outside. Shadow the intransigent. New computer. Getting help. Working out. Ruth. Korea. My son. Seoah. Murdoch. 35th anniversary.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Kate, always Kate

Week Kavannah: Yirah. Awe.

One brief shining: The shifted clock synchronizes us with the rest of the world, changes our time of reporting to work, of having lunch with friends, alters our bed times and our rising; it does not however change an animal’s feeding time because they do not know our clocks and rely instead on inner chronos, following their remembered patterns. So do we, if we listen.

Each time I read that Standard Time matches our circadian rhythms I want to shout out. No. Our circadian rhythms match the world. We think light bulbs and grocery stores change this. That we, masters of time, can choose whenness. But we cannot. Spring will follow winter. Day night. Our measuring instruments only conceal the limits of our true understanding. An understanding which our bodies do not forget no more than Shadow forgets when her feeding time is.

This is the deeper reason, the why of my dis-ease with this human all too human hubris. Enough. Live as your body needs. As your pet’s body needs. Just say no to  Saving Daylight.

Whether it’s a real Indian saying or not: Only the white man (rational man) would think that he can cut six inches off a blanket, sew it back on the other end and imagine he has a longer blanket.

The American Immortal* feeds off the same blinkered view of reality. This food. Eaten in this quantity. On this schedule. That workout. This choice of vitamins and probiotics. And, voila! No more death.

Or, as in the wonderful Netflix anime series, Pantheon, we can become an uploaded version of ourselves. Able to live forever in a cyber paradise. Will the last person to upload please pull the plug?

As one in the fourth phase of life, beyond 70 with a terminal illness, I can say that either alternative sounds miserable. Can there be disembodied life? Would a world in which no one dies be a world at all? Certainly it would be crowded, resource poor, mean.

Death adds life to life. An end to the ancientrail. Yours and mine. Which lets us know where we are on our inner journey, the far more important one. Shucking off this flesh. A necessary moment for any potential rebirth. Or, simply an end. I’m ok with either.

*”Why I hope to die at 75.”