Category Archives: Third Phase

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Health, Memories, Minnesota, Our Land and Home, Retirement, Third Phase

Delights and Horrors

March 21, 2017 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Anniversary Moon

rumi The third phase, that phase after the career and nuclear family focused portion of our life has come to an end or is winding down, has its own delights and horrors. Auto-didacts, those with pleasurable, but challenging hobbies, those with adequate funds, those with a close network of friends and family have a good chance of enjoying the third phase more than any other part of their life. It’s a time when the pressures of achievement and child-rearing recede. They may not disappear, but their initially critical significance shifts to the margins.

This leaves the possibility of centering on who you truly are, expressing the soul/Self, the unique you created when sperm hit egg all those years ago. A rich time, filled with creativity and exploration, can be the result. It certainly has been that way for Kate and me. We’ve traveled, gotten closer to our kids and grandkids, gardened, raised dogs, moved to the mountains. She’s quilted, sewn, cooked and finally taken up the spiritual journey she started so long ago with her conversion to Judaism. I’ve continued to write and study, my primary passions. We’ve both nourished friendships from our Minnesota life and begun to develop friendships here in Jefferson County, Colorado.

It is also in the third phase, however, when the body begins to signal its eventual end. Even if there are no presenting issues of the moment, the third phase, by its very definition occurs as our age passes into the mid-60’s and beyond. The implications of this becomes clear when we make the calculation about doubling our life span so far. At 50 it’s just possible to conceive 100; but at 60, 120 is a stretch. At 70 the notion of reaching 140 is ridiculous.

will-testament_audible-wisdom-org_CC With prostate cancer two years ago and a total knee replacement last year my body has given notice that its sell-by date is approaching. Yes, both of those have resolved well, at least so far, but they are concrete proof that I will not live forever. Something, sometime. Now it seems to be Kate’s turn to face her mortality. She has a cluster of medical issues that are challenging, making her low energy and too thin.

The horrors I mentioned above are not these, these are normal, though disconcerting. We age. Our bodies break down, then stop. Hundreds of thousands of years worth of hominid deaths makes this all too common.

20170310_174900 The horrors are the loss of the one you love, the person whose life has become so entwined with your own, not enmeshed, I don’t mean here a situation where life going on without the other is inconceivable, but the loss of a person whose life has been a comfortable and comforting fit with your own, a bond of mutual affection. Imagining life without Kate leaves me with a hollow feeling.

This loss, too, is common. Just read the obituaries and see the list of “survived by.” It is different from your own death because your life goes on with a big hole. I know this feeling too well. My mother died when I was 17. This is horror. Is it survivable? Of course. But life after the death of a spouse is a change none of us who are happily married seek. Yet, it seeks us. It is the nature of two finite creatures bonded through love. One leaves first.

These matters are on my mind today as we try to hunt down and fix what’s ailing Kate. I’m not ready, will never be ready, for life without her. May it be far in the future if it happens for me at all.

Faith and Spirituality, Health, Jefferson County, Judaism, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase

The Masque

March 16, 2017 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Anniversary Moon

By I, Sailko, CC BY-SA 3.0, — Franz Messerschmidt, sculpltor, (photo) Sailko, CC BY-SA 3.0,

Masks. The sample session about kabbalah has had me focused on masks I wear. Here are a few: grieving son, angry son, abandoned son, skeptic, philosophical analyst, anxious son, anxious man, friend (I think each friendship might prompt a different mask), loving husband, anxious husband, devoted and loyal husband, protective husband, father, proud father, step-father, grandfather, cousin, brother (again, a different mask for Mary and Mark), dog lover, grieving dog lover, gardener, beekeeper, greenman, mountain man, 60’s radical, weary 60’s radical, writer, anxious writer, fearful writer, reader, blogger, Celt, German, Minnesotan, Hoosier, Coloradan, member of Beth Evergreen, anxious member of Beth Evergreen, hiker, traveler, traveler for fun, traveler for self-knowledge, meditator, translator, Latin student, mussar student, fellow traveler of Judaism, driver, angry driver, meditative driver, commuter man, docent, art lover, art critic, poet, exerciser, reluctant exerciser, healthy man, dying man, sick man, indulgent man, poor eater man, healthy eater man, home maintenance scanning man, home maintenance securer, worker supervisor (home maintenance), father-in-law, theater and movie goer, chamber music lover, jazz lover, politically dutiful man. Well, it’s a start.

mask The idea here is to know your own masks without judgment, then order them from core masks to peripheral. What masks can you not take off without removing some skin? Those are core (actually near core) and the most resistant to change. The core itself, the I am, is pure awareness and has no mask. I have an issue here with the kabbalah, not sure how a soul, a self, the core of me, can put on a mask. The donning of a mask seems contradictory to pure awareness, how would the motivation to mask up occur? How could it be actuated? This is important to my philosophical analyst mask though, as Jamie pointed out, the practical application of these ideas doesn’t require an answer.

The ultimate goal is to be able to take off and don masks appropriate to each moment. To do this, of course, we have to be self-aware, we have to know what mask we have on. This will take practice.

Faith and Spirituality, Jefferson County, Judaism, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase

Kabbalah

March 15, 2017 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Anniversary Moon

Kabbalah. Last night at Beth Evergreen we dipped our toes in an ancient lake, one so esoteric that information about it was not written down until the time of the Spanish Inquisition. The kabbalah, it was felt, needed nuanced interpretation and written down it could be read by those who might misunderstand its teachings. Kabbalistic_creator

But during the Inquisition so many scholars were killed that many were concerned the teachings might be lost, so books began to be written. The Zohar is the famous Kabbalah text, a central work on Jewish mysticism.

Isaac Luria, a rabbi of 16th century Safed, a town in Galilee, at that time in Syria, is a key figure in contemporary Kabbalah.

Years ago Kate wanted me to go to Hawai’i with her for a continuing medical education event. I said, no thanks. She insisted. I went. My expectations were completely wrong. I had a cheesy hula dancer dashboard ornament, loud shirt, noisy American tourist understanding of Hawai’i. We went to Maui and the Big Island that year. I wanted to stay.

My sense of kabbalah comes from a teeny understanding of it as mysticism and the fact that Madonna got into it some time back. Its popularity among celebrities at that point made me avoid it then and colored my anticipation of what Jamie would have to offer. Last night I wanted to stay.

happy-sad-masks-called_69da22b2d1aa3fe0

In kabbalah parlance in both instances I donned a mask of cultured (actually ignorant in these cases) sophistication. This mask has its advantages as it helps me avoid wasting time on matters I don’t consider important. But the instance of Hawai’i and kabbalah teaches me that this mask also excludes rich experiences if I know too little about them.

A key point of kabbalah is awareness of the masks (personas) we use and being able, eventually, to take them off and put them on when appropriate. Sounds like a long ride.

Family, Feelings, Friends, Jefferson County, Judaism, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Journeys

March 11, 2017 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Anniversary Moon

20170310_174900 The full anniversary moon lit up our way home from Bistro Colorado. It was the 27th time we’ve celebrated our wedding day and it was peaceful, funny, thoughtful. With flowers and chocolate.

I’ve been moving and reorganizing stuff in my loft. A favorite activity. This time though I can see the end. After Jon installed the walnut shelving, it was possible to replace and rearrange stuff I’d had lying around on the floor. Now that’s done and the art cart has been cleared. That means I can put the bankers boxes on it and sort through the files in them, putting them in translucent plastic file bins. Part of my idea with them is to have my files easily accessible and readable. The other is to unify the look of the file holders.

On Thursday I stayed after mussar to attend the adult education meeting at Beth Evergreen. After the meeting both Tara Saltzman, director of life-long learning, and Marilyn Saltzman (not related as far as I know), chair of the committee, made it clear that I was part of the Beth Evergreen community. Just how I can’t quite articulate, but it was an immediate, warm feeling of acceptance. And I felt very good about it. Another mile marker on the ancientrail of becoming Coloradan, of supporting Kate in her journey further into Judaism and of my own spiritual journey.

Aging, Great Wheel, Myth and Story, Third Phase

Swinging

February 27, 2017 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Anniversary Moon

I confess the pendulum powering my inner life has begun to move in eccentric ways since the emergence of the Trump. It swings in its plane, as it always has, tick tocking its energy into the engine of my inner world. Yet the rotating sphere of my inner life, which processes around the poles of birth and death, as the earth rotates around its north and south poles, normally keeping me from stasis in a place where time and space have no purchase, seems to have altered.

This is, for me, a dramatic change and one I have not yet learned to accommodate. The whole circle which the pendulum scribes moves through these points: love, family, nature, writing, reading, travel, dogs, house, mountains, politics, art, science, friends, sleep, body, mind. In its completeness, as its plane touches the ancientrails of my soul/self, I experience those aspects of my inner me that are my unique identity.

But now, there is some magnetic pull when the plane of the pendulum finds underneath it the ancientrail of politics. The silver ball wobbles slightly, pulled out of its determined arc across the rotation beneath it. It has, so far, always righted itself, the dynamics of its swing returning it to its usual course, but it feels as if the ancientrail of politics has been altered in some dramatic way, as if its path no longer relates to the world in the ways to which I’m accustomed.

In that place, the place of the political, something new has emerged. It is part fear, a new feeling for me relative to the political; it is part anguish, not new, but intensified; it is part disorientation, definitely new; it is part earthquake, the terra firma of the political moving under my feet, all new feeling. The combination of these changes is trying to alter me, to change the rotation which is, really, my life.

In this extended metaphor my life is the rotation of my Self as it processes around the poles. It does not, in other words, move forward or backward, but in a repeating circle which might from the outside look like a spiral moving from Duncan, Oklahoma, where I was born, to that unknown point where, as far as I know, the sphere implodes and the pendulum stills.

How this will affect me, I don’t know.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Jefferson County, Judaism, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Travel

In, but not of

February 24, 2017 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

In, but not of. Yesterday at mussar, a spiritual/ethical system within the Jewish tradition, I had a complex moment. We were discussing truth and mercy, the relationship between them. To compare mercy and truth I defined mercy as suspension of judgment. Truth though is a sword and a judgment. If that’s correct, then not all truth is merciful. Rabbi Jamie started to dispute that, but had to leave for his daughter’s wisdom teeth extraction.

In the conversation that followed afterward my use of the sword metaphor was identified as a Christian trope, “I come to not bring peace, but a sword.” I’ve been working very hard over the last year to bracket my mode of theological thinking while absorbing a Jewish style of thinking. This requires effort because though I abandoned Christianity over 30 years ago, my seminary education and professional life as a clergyman reinforced my already strong Judaeo/Christian enculturation. Christianity does still define much of how I think and feel about matters religious and secular.

While that’s obvious, I still felt a flush of embarrassment at being identified with a New Testament informed concept. That flush, as mussar teaches, is an important signal about where growth is necessary.

On the way back up to Shadow Mountain I described my situation to Kate as similar to traveling. “I love to go where the culture is very different from mine, where I’m a stranger. It helps me know my self.” Kate’s journey is one of a Jew deepening her own understanding, her own identity as part of a religious world. My journey is closer to travel, “It feels like I’m traveling on the inside.” In this case no geographic change is necessary for me to be a stranger.

travel

This inner travel exhilarates me, but it also confuses and, in a mild sense, scares me. I’m trying to gain wisdom and personal growth from Beth Evergreen while maintaining my own identity as a pagan. But, not only that. My life as a pagan is not divorced from my enculturation as a Christian. I’m a cultural Christian in many ways. That means I encounter many shocks to my inner world, shocks that wake me up, like a Zen koan, but that also and in the same instance disorient me.

It’s like being on Yaowarat Road in Bangkok on a weekend night. On Friday and Saturday night the sidewalks of Bangkok’s Chinatown, of which Yaowarat is the main street, fill up with small restaurants, often two tables, some chairs and a street vendor style kitchen with a wok, propane tank, utensils and a stack of plates and soup bowls. What food are they serving? I don’t know. I speak neither Thai nor Mandarin. Many people are there who do understand the food offerings, how to eat them, but I’m not one of them. I’m in, but not of the street life. Observing, yes, eager to learn, yes, but even after sampling some food and gaining some insight, I will go back to my hotel, a stranger traveling through.

I’m grateful to the folks at Beth Evergreen and Kate for putting up with my being present as a stranger and an inner traveler. A long journey, barely begun.

Family, Feelings, Holidays, Jefferson County, Memories, Mountains, Third Phase

At the Tallgrass Spa

February 23, 2017 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

tall grass spa

Tallgrass Spa on Upper Bear Creek Road. We had originally intended to go to Maui for my 70th birthday. We wanted to celebrate at Mama’s Fish House, where we’ve had both anniversary and birthday meals. The divorce and its impact on our time created a different focus for this February. Our plan was to celebrate our mutual entry into the 7th decade, Kate having preceded me, as she always does, in things age related.

We decided, instead, to combine our upcoming 27th anniversary (27!) with my birthday and Kate’s of last year by having a couples afternoon at the Tallgrass Spa in Evergreen.

As you drive in to the spa, this is the view toward the west. The mountains give any trip, no matter how short, a sense of majesty. The thirty minute drive from Shadow Mountain to Tallgrass is especially beautiful.

Upper Bear Creek Road begins at Evergreen Lake and continues for some miles. Along it are homes, many of them, that are big, stony or wooden, with elaborate grounds. This one sold recently for $2,300,000.

upper bear creek road

That was getting there. Once in the Spa we were given sandals to wear, shown to a room where we could change into Tallgrass robes (blue, one size fits all) and then taken to a quiet lounge area, beautiful with a fireplace, and a view of the mountains.

First, we had an 80 minute massage lying on tables next to each other with lots of hot oil, slippery hands, the scent of eucalyptus and mint and bergamot and, for me, a heated blanket, not for my Scandinavian wife.

In their relaxation of muscles the hands of the masseuse triggered memories, ones held in the body, not sure how they were resident there, but they were. An obvious one was her treatment of my knee, still somewhat swollen from the surgery. When her hands were on it, the journey of the last three months came forward. At another spot I remembered a moment in Rome on our honeymoon.

The biggest revelation though was the amount of tension, of anxiety I carried. As she relaxed me, I could feel my body tense, trying to get back to the state with which it had become familiar. We both knew the last nine months had been difficult ones for our family, but like all things, even that difficulty can become normal. On that table at Tallgrass my body told me so.

After this was a spa lunch, turkey sandwich for Kate, brie and fig sandwich for me. It was a pleasant time, sharing the lunch in the quiet lounge. We were creating a memory, probably the long time result, perhaps an alternative body narrative, too, for the last few months. That is, it was possible to relax even in the midst of family turmoil.

The last event of our day there was a pedicure. I’ve gone 70 years, literally, without ever having had a pedicure. The process fascinated me. In this room there were four throne like chairs lifted above the floor on risers, two steps up to them. Below the chair is a basin, a small sink, filled with soapy water. The pedicurist sits at the basin. Bare feet go into the water and the pedicurist cleans them, a very biblical, foot-washing moment and surprisingly intimate.

Did I want short or long nails? Short. She clipped my already short nails with a nail clipper. An implement somewhat like a dental pick but with a flattened end went underneath and around the toenails. Cuticle cream, tan and squirted on in small dabs, softened the cuticles, allowing Becky to clip my cuticles. I forgot the emery board which she used to smooth off rough edges.

All the while conversation was going back and forth among Kate, her pedicurist, Becky, me, and the woman getting her feet done in the chair next to Kate. The woman next to Kate was having a spa day paid for by her employer. Her husband was a chef. “I only make reservations,” she said, a line she’d obviously used before.

The talk turned to animals, llamas, dogs, mastiffs and rescues and bulldogs. Kate’s pedicurist, whose name I don’t recall, had a pitbull mix that had been attacked by a mountain lion a month and a half ago, but survived. She and Becky both live in Bailey. Sobering. Kate, whose throne was in the middle, could see out into a meadow across from Tallgrass where a herd of mule deer and several elk bucks wandered.

Exfoliation with a salt scrub came next. Becky rubbed a gently scratchy substance onto my feet, one at a time, sloughed it off with water, foliation and hydration with oil followed.

Touch, human touch, was the theme of the whole day. Where the massage was quiet, the pedicure was chatty, friendly and the lunch was just for us two. I’m now launched into my seventh decade, partnering with Kate as she walks the path, always ahead of me.

Family, GeekWorld, Health, Myth and Story, Third Phase

The All Clear

February 21, 2017 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

20170129_112922 Kate’s clear, up and down. Endoscopy and colonoscopy show no problems. That’s a relief. When we came out of Swedish hospital (I know, the Scandinavian touch was right for these two former Minnesotans), the day was one of those gifts Colorado gives frequently bright blue sky, luminous sun, even a bit warm. As in the weather, so in our hearts.

Now, a short rant. Televisions. Every damned where. Waiting rooms, airports, bars, the cafeteria at the hospital. They’re a drug. And, they’re loud, not to mention filled with drivel. Muzak became ubiquitous, too, but noisy colorful images positioned in places where I want peace is an invasion of my inner world and not a welcome one. OK. Rant over. Well, not quite. Plus now most people are looking at their phones while the tv blares. I left the waiting room for a much quieter seat in the hallway. The hallway!

20170204_181447 Jon’s grown weary of all the moving, as well he might. Moving stuff carries a physical cost, but even more, it carries a psychological cost. There’s the velveteen rabbit in reverse grief, the burden of baggage, the repetitive actions, but most of it comes from the constant reminder of a huge change. Even when the move is voluntary, the psychological cost is high. When the move has the additional overlay of divorce and animosity, the cost can sometimes exceed our capacity to absorb. That can leave us depleted in heart and body.

Ruth has a phone. She got her dad’s old one when he replaced it. This means I can reach her by text now. She and her friends have a group text that they use a lot sending selfies, pictures of their meals, comments about their day. This is the world of the digital native and it’s different than the one in which I grew up. The communications 20170129_110437 aspect of it is a cultural transition similar I imagine to the introduction of the telephone in its impact.

But, oddly, instant communication often interferes with the personal, the immediate, as even when they are together, heads and hands are all too often directed towards the phone and away from the flesh and blood presence. Not sure what the implication of this is, but it feels icky to me.

We’re already getting prepared for the Renaissance Fair. We all plan to go in costume. Ruth’s working on her’s. I’m growing my beard and hair so I can be a credible wizard. The Colorado Renaissance Fair is in mid-summer, so it’s a ways away, time for the sewing to get done and my beard to extend.

Family, Politics, Third Phase

February. Rushing By.

February 19, 2017 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

February Les_Très_Riches_Heures_du_duc_de_Berry_février — February, from the Très riches heures du Duc de Berry

February always seems to scoot by so fast. It’s the 19th and there are only 9 days left, this not being a leap year. I suppose one reason February seems to move so fast to me is my birthday is in the exact middle of the month, except for those leap years.

Last leap year we plunged over the cliff and down the snake hole into Trumpland. At least that can’t happen again this year; though we do have to navigate the never (we wish) land created by the Disney of political horror. Perhaps Trump is Peter Pan, the boy who would not grow up. If so, does that make Kellyann Conway his Tinkerbell? Even if she dresses like the toy soldier from the Nutcracker Suite?

Went grocery shopping with Ruth yesterday. First time I’ve gone in a while. It was fun having Ruth along. She finds many things that she needs, things not on the list. Yesterday one of them was a potato bagel that we shared on the way back home. Delicious.

divorce Jon moves the last of his things out of Pontiac Street today. I’m hopeful this will be a sharp demarcation point, maybe a turning point in the whole divorce process. His considerable work on that house made it a difficult place to leave and to be shut out of for the last nine months. The restraining order made it so. Finally removing the physical objects that bound him there will help him look forward, no longer tethered by dishes, records, bicycles, pots and pans and books still lodged, like something between the teeth, in his former home.

Our contribution will be taking care of Gabe and Ruth today.

Art and Culture, Colorado, Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Friends, Jefferson County, Judaism, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Park County, Shadow Mountain, The Move, The West, Third Phase, Travel, Weather +Climate, Woolly Mammoths

Becoming Coloradan

February 18, 2017 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

No snow. 10% humidity. A spate of small wildfires. Result: stage 1 fire restrictions put in place by Jeffco. In February. Winter has gone on holiday and the outlook for summer is fiery if we don’t get more moisture in March and April. Like death, oddly, I find the whole wildfire possibility invigorating. It motivates me to work on our lodgepole pine and aspen and it brings those of us who live in the mountains closer together. A common foe.

Lodgepole pine. From our bedroom window I look out and up to a jagged line of tree tops. On clear nights stars often align with the tops of the pines, giving them a decorated for Christmas look. Sometimes stars also align with branches further down, emphasizing the effect.

Which reminds me. Monday or Tuesday night of this week I looked up at the pines, as I often do before falling asleep. They were lit up with what looked like lightning bugs. What? The phenomena went on for quite a while, small specks of light flashing off and on. Obviously in February and up here on Shadow Mountain, no lightning bugs. A complete mystery.

While waiting on the Rav4 to finish its spa day at Stevinson Toyota I spent some time considering whether I had become a Coloradan yet. First thing. I left my prostate and significant portions of my left knee in Colorado. No flowers in my hair, but I do feel I’ve contributed in a meaningful, whole body sort of way. Then, living in the mountains. Everyday. Learning the rhythms of mountain seasons, the wildlife, the vast number of hikes and sights and sites to see. And we’re adjusted to life at 8,800 feet. A very Colorado and mountain thing.

Of course, there are Jon and Ruth and Gabe, family links to schools, synagogues, sports, life as a child in the Centennial State. Our dogs, too, as Dr. Palmini said, are mountain dogs now. Due to the spate of mountain lion attacks on dogs in the last month or so, I have a concern for their safety that is very Coloradan. In fact I bought a powerful LED flashlight and have my walking stick ready to do battle with a mountain lion if necessary.

Congregation Beth Evergreen, in addition to a religious community, also facilitates ties with people who live up here like the lawyer, Rich Levine, we saw last week. Many others, too. Kate has integrated quickly thanks to the two sewing groups she belongs to: Bailey Patchworkers and the Needlepointers. Her integration helps mine.

The town of Evergreen has many great restaurants, as does Morrison. We go to jazz and theater in Denver.

That’s the coming to Colorado part of the story. The other is my relationship to Minnesota. Of course there are the Wooly friends, especially Tom, Mark and Bill and the docent friends, many of whom I connect with through Facebook, but also through visits, e-mails, the occasional phone call. Those connections are still strong, even though attenuated by distance.

Minnesota will always occupy a large, 40-year space in my heart. That’s a long time, enough to become home. So many memories, good ones and bad ones. But, it is just that now, a 40-year space in my heart. I do not want to return. Life is here, now, and that, more than anything else, tells me that, yes, I have become and am a Coloradan.