• Category Archives Science
  • A New Credo

          Hercules wrestling Thanatos

    Driving to Lone Tree this morning. Spine injections. Struck by the notion of Israel Harari. The Mountain man who struggles with God. Of Jacob/Israel as an archetype. The trickster transformed into wounded man of faith. Peniel-where I saw God face to face.

    I’ve focused on Israel, on the struggle, but not considered or not fully considered the after moment, when Israel, newly named, limps away having seen God. Who names this ford on the Jabbok river after his realization.

    So I decided to do that. I’ve struggled with God since I was young. Too small. Too violent. Too obscure and ineffable. Dead. I don’t experience God. What good can God be? And this stupid, stupid idea of a seventy year life as a test for residing in Heaven or Hell for eternity? No.

    Then, the last 30 years or so, pass. Focused on the Soil, the Seed, the growing miracle of Plants, Dogs, grandchildren, love. No need for God. I feel the sacred when I amend the Earth. Pluck Onions and Carrots from their hidden places and spray them off with a hose nozzle. Food. The true transubstantiation.

    What if I felt my way into the Goddess? Her Earth. Me as part, yet not part. Unique, but not unique. A Wave above her Ocean, ready at all times to return. What if I admitted to myself that my  feeling of separateness is the original sin. The hubris of independence. Of individuality.

    What if. The yetzer hara, the selfish inclination, speaks to us of separateness. Of our needs. Of our unique demands. While the yetzer hatov speaks to our interdependence, our awareness of the needs of others, of the World around us.

    Could I find the sense of support, of sustenance, of forgiveness, of grace, of embeddedness in the whole, the One? Could I pray? I drove on, watching the Trees, the Hogback, remnants of the orogeny that preceded the rise of the Rocky Mountains. Striated. Weathered. Shrunken. But still there, millions upon millions of years after its emergence.

    Was I really, truly part of it? Was all the artifice of highways and cars part of it? The houses and stores. Doctor Vu, the kind and careful man who inserted needles into the narrow spaces of my bulging spine. And all his tech? The rotating bed. The living x-ray. Michal, his variously adorned assistant. Even the steroids shot toward my nerves? All of it?

    What difference might it make if I leaned into this most pushed away notion. Or, is it the embrace I’ve already made of the chi, of wu wei, of the mystical revealing the ordinary as the sacred? Do those feelings find me already in her arms?

    You know, it does. I’m a man of this short moment, a Wave cresting on the Ocean of the whole, going only from emergence to absorption, not needing to understand how. Yet as that man I’m also in and of the Ocean, of the Goddess, her instrument in this troubled part of her cosmos.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     


  • Growing My Soul

    Imbolc and the Birthday Moon

    Tuesday gratefuls: Tupelo Honey. Birthday lunch. Alan. Downtown Denver. Challenging myself. Adopting Shadow. Good CT scan. CT. With contrast. The wide world of medical imaging. Waiting rooms. Hospital parking lots. Good sleep. Great Sol. Lodgepole shadows.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: I.V.’s

    Week kavannah:  Netzach with zerizut and simcha

    One brief shining: Shadow curls her small head up toward my chair arm, her dark eyes with black pupils looking into mine, asking for food which I have placed behind the chair-where she usually eats, perhaps she’s forgotten and I’ll have to show her. I’ll give it a bit, better she finds it for herself.

     

    Never thought I’d be talking about growing my soul. Yet. As I’ve come to understand the term, I do. What is my soul? Multi-layered. The first and core level is the nefesh. What is the nefesh? The nefesh is that which identifies me as human.

    I say it’s DNA. Why? Because DNA links me to all living things and identifies me as part of Mother Earth’s evolutionary experiment while giving me a unique location in that experiment and a uniqueness, too, within my species. Being part of the grand evolutionary experiment also connects me to the organic and inorganic building blocks which allow that experiment to flourish, including the boundless fusion energy of Great Sol which passes its vitality from the solar furnace to leafy, green plants.

    The neshama soul grows in the space between the DNA created unique me and the outer world in which it moves and lives. Heidegger called this the dasein. There can be no neshama without the nefesh, but likewise there can be no nefesh without being-in-the-world, dasien, as a shaper of that world and as a being shaped by that world.

    As my nefesh encounters the world as it is, that encounter flows dialectically, into my dasein and out to the dasien of the other. In that tension comes the vitality, the livingness of being alive. Note that in this view there is no clean, clear distinction between me and thee. Or, me and my Shadow. Or, my favorite Lodgepole. Lodgepoleness flows into me and Charlieness flows into the Lodgepole. We are both changed during the encounter. Think of the Japanese idea of forest-bathing.

    We can come to notice that our actions have influence on others and theirs on ours. How do we live into those encounters, how can we be there with the other fully? That’s where disciplines like mussar come in. There are ways of becoming that enhance our encounters and ways that diminish them.

    Say my dasein includes Shadow. How I approach her affects her dasein so that we either grow closer to mutuality or further away from it. If I move suddenly, I notice, she retreats, moving away from the boundary of my dasein. That tells me, in my Shadow inflected dasein, to move more slowly in her presence. We can call that realization an expression of chesed, of loving kindness, which allows our dasein’s to come closer, to increase our intimacy.

    Just where my head went this morning. From my dasein to yours. Good day.


  • Fun with our AI future overlords

    Samain and the Yule Moon

    Monday gratefuls: Google calendar. Computers. NVidia. AI. Catastrophizing. Equalizing. Leveling. Great Britain. Scotland. England. Wales. Ireland. Brittany. Galicia. The Gaeltach. The Celtic Faery Faith. Wassailing. Yule logs. Evergreen Boughs and Trees. Singing and Feasting.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Echocardiograms

    Kavannah: Perseverance and Love

    One Brief Shining: The bigger and harder and more important project, supporting the liberal democratic vision of Lincoln, Teddy and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which, as Heather Richardson said, means having a government big enough and strong enough to fight off not only foreign foes, but especially domestic ones: the haters, the oligarchs, religious extremists like the Christian nationalists.

    Another chatbot image

    Having fun with chatbot and image creation. It often doesn’t spell too well and can approach the cartoonish rather than the beautiful. Still. I can get an image I know I have the right to post and that’s original. I’ll get better with my prompts and chatbotgpt will improve over time, too. I’m also using chatbot as a resource for the work I’m doing on the Great Wheel holidays.

    Working with the idea from a couple of days ago. Write Ancientrails. Eat breakfast. Write five hundred to a thousand words on the Great Wheel. Workout. I like this rhythm and it gets my candle lit. A key reinforcer.

     

    Brother Mark has flown back to Bangkok, awaiting January 1 and a flight to his old stomping grounds in Hafar, Saudi Arabia. He’s also figuring out what he needs to do to retire. A task all of us have faced or will face.

    I admire his ability to live what he himself calls his unconventional lifestyle. Not many have seen as much of the world as he has. Not many Americans know Saudi Arabia and its citizens as well as he does. Mark shows  what it is to be an American by traveling to spots where our kind is not common. An important role and one he does well.

     

    Just a moment: My heart goes out to Colorado skier Mikaela Shiffrin. Puncture wound from the gate at the top of her run. Having had Kate with a feeding tube I know how troublesome these kind of wounds can be. Often requiring expert management. She’s a phenom not only while skiing at speed, but in her mental toughness, yet her public vulnerability, too. This last noticeable after her father’s untimely death a couple of years ago. She’ll come back and snag that 100th victory. I’ll be skiing with her when she does.

    As long I’m writing about young women I admire, let me add, again, Zöe Schlanger. Her sensitivity to the Plant world, her depth of research, and her own inquisitive intellect. You go, Zöe.

     

    I understand Joe. You had the power. You love your son. 45/47 will do the same for so many, too. Not sure what I’d do. An ethical/emotional vice I hope never to encounter. My take? It’s holiseason. With an emphasis on light and family and the warmth of human community. In the spirit of the season, I’ll say.


  • Blindness

    Samain and the Yule Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: For all the ways we learn and express ourselves. The Ancient Brothers on Gardener’s 8 intelligences. My son, Seoah, and Murdoch. Coming in January. Going to Korea in May. Maybe with Ruth. Snow. Mary. Mark. My family spread along an Asian crescent from Korea to K.L. to Brisbane. Far from Rocky Mountain high.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Learning

    Kavannah: Enthusiasm (Zerizut) and Joy (Simcha)

    One brief shining: Lit the candle yesterday, wrote 500 words on a why/how to celebrate Yule essay, starting with my personal journey this year, intending to produce 8 essays, one for each of the Great Wheel’s holidays, using stuff I’ve written and collected over the years.

     

    Spent yesterday in conversation over zoom with my son and Seoah in Songtan, Korea and Mary in Brisbane. Separate calls. Wrote to brother Mark in K.L. A bit weird. Sitting here on top of Shadow Mountain, in the Colorado Rockies, speaking directly to Korea and Australia. No latency. Clear pictures. Sound good. Pandemic tech and habits, a changed reality. Amazing to this small town Hoosier boy.

    Shadow Mountain Home as imagined by chatbotgpt

    Want to give a big shout out to Zöe Schlanger. An amazing intellect. Intrepid and careful reporting. The Light-Eaters. So many good quotes. Here’s an example. “I think of plants as primary and humans as secondary. Plants can do without us. We can’t do without plants.” Thank you, photosynthesis.

    Reminded me of the Iroquois medicine man I’ve often talked about. He delivered a prayer for the Soil and the Rocks, the Trees and the Mountains and the Oceans, those who swim in the Water and fly in the Sky but never mentioned humans. Why? Because, he said, humans are the most fragile and vulnerable of all creation. Without all the Plants and Animals and Water and Soil, humans can’t exist.

    In so many ways, so many obvious ways, we receive this message every day. Did you eat breakfast? Where did it come from? What was it? It was either a Plant or an Animal fed by a Plant. Did Night and Great Sol emerge this morning where you are? Imagine if Mother Earth decided to stop turning. How about the Water to fill up your Water bottle, the Water you used for that shower, or to wash your clothes and your dishes?

    We humans consider ourselves agents nonpareil, yet we could not accomplish basic tasks without an assist from Mother Earth. Thankfully, she is on our side. Even when we are not on hers. Nor could we continue above ground and taking nourishment without her and her gifts. Why are we blind to this?

     

    Just a moment: 45/47 continues to play tiddly winks with appointments to powerful positions. Now Patel, a man committed to gutting the FBI, nominated to head it. This is a revolution of the ill informed, driven by intentional ignorance and malevolence. Will the Senate do its job? Its advice and most critically consent role has never been more important.

    Have any good will left over from Thanksgiving? Time to access it now.


  • The WHI: the Wildlife Human Interface

    Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

    Friday gratefuls: Ruth. Rich. The Colorado Supreme Court. UC Boulder. Wolf Hall. Elephants. All of our Wild Neighbors around the world. Doug’s Diner. Being a student. Jamie. Luke. Woolly Mammoths. Driving to Boulder in the early morning as Great Sol gradually lit the Hogbacks, the Meadows in their russets and greengolds, the lower down deciduous Trees aflame with reds and oranges and yellow. Getting out and about.

    Sparks of joy and awe: Non-Human Rights

    Kavannah: Kavod  Honor

    One brief shining: Sitting next to Ruth, I watched the mock courtroom of Wolf Hall fill up with law students dressed in their student variety from jeans and backpacks to a black dress and pearls, the conversation subdued since the presence of black robed Colorado Supreme Court Justices would soon transform the mock courtroom into a real court, one about to hear a pleading that Elephants fit the definition of person for the purpose of a writ of habeas corpus*.

     

    I want to back into this topic. A story I’ve told and retold. Almost exactly ten years. October 31, 2014 I stood in what would soon be my back yard staring into the soft black eyes of three Mule Deer Bucks. Seemed like a long time though probably no more than a minute. When they decided we were done, I felt as if I’d been granted permission to live here among them, a message delivered by these spirit beings of the Mountains. Yes, you can say I overlaid on those three Bucks my own interpretation. Finding in that encounter a blessing I hadn’t known I’d sought.

    In 2019. June. The day I began 35 sessions of radiation for my unhappily returned prostate cancer three Bull Elks jumped over our five foot fence with great ease and proceeded to eat the blooming Dandelions. One of them had only one antler. They would come again and again.

    A year ago on a rainy July night I drove up Black Mountain Drive not far past the Upper Maxwell Fall’s trail head and encountered a Bull Elk staring at me as I passed by, his bulk hidden by the Aspen stand, but his antlers and face clear in the momentary flash of my headlights.

    Yesterday morning I got up at 6 am, got dressed, drank some coffee, gathered the items I needed, put on my black Grateful Dead hat with the colorful dancing Bears and began the hour long drive down the hill, then north to Boulder. Along Hwy 285, still well into the foothills I saw a black shape along the side of the road. Since many people have metal cutouts of various Wild Neighbors as lawn decor, I imagined at first that this object was one of those. Until it looked at my oncoming car, turned quickly around, and scuttled in that soft clumsy-appearing Black Bear amble back into the Forest.

    I don’t see many Bears. This is the third one I’ve seen since I’ve lived up here though they live all around us. A few years ago walking not far from my house a large Black Bear crossed the road not thirty feet from me. Last year I saw a Bear near the intersection of Brook Forest Drive and Hwy 73. That’s all of them.

    In each of these three instances the Bears turned away from me, hurrying into the shelter of their wild home, the Forests and Mountains.

    All this means I live in the WUI. The Wildlife Urban Interface. Again, yes, you can argue we shouldn’t be here. Maybe not. But we are. Even the cities outside which the WUI exists were once encroachments on Wild habitats, too. Like the Animals of the Mountains we too have to live somewhere.

    Not an apologetic. A statement of fact.

    My friend Marilyn Saltzman told of a safari she was on a few years back. Their guides took them to a Watering hole somewhere in the Bush. A herd of Elephants drank from it while a number of other Animals waited. Some Elephants left, then came back, others left. Not until the last Elephant had gone did the other Animals come to drink. As she told this story, I thought, who is the true monarch of the Jungle?

    Finally, you might say. Seated in the mock courtroom made real, like the Velveteen Rabbit, Ruth and I listened to two lawyers make oral arguments that the five elephants: Missy, Kimba, Lucky, LouLou, and Jambo deserved release from their confinement in the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. Yes, that Cheyenne Mountain.

    The Non-Human Rights Project had entered a writ of habeas corpus claiming they did have that right under a writ. The Cheyenne Zoo had counsel as did the five Elephants. This article in Colorado Politics is an excellent summary of the proceedings.

    It was like watching yesterday and tomorrow. The gray haired, dismissive and at times arrogant attorney for the Zoo, represented the status quo. Basically: We’re a really, really good zoo. The younger, much younger lawyer for the Elephants represented the growing awareness of the blurry, blurry line separating us from our Wild Neighbors. Sure, Elephants. Big brain. Social. Emotional. Sensitive. Like Primates and Whales and Dolphins and other clearly intelligent animals, even Corvids, to mention another class of Animals, Elephants in zoos represent an obvious case of anthropocentrism used as a rationale to dominate, entrap, and enslave other Animals.

    Through the Rights of Nature movement, see my March 4 of this year post, not only Animals but Rivers and Forests have been granted legal rights and protections. Zoos and those defending them are on the wrong side of history. It will take years and many more legal proceedings but somewhere, sometime the thin edge of the wedge will hold open the door to a world where humans live as part of the Interdependent Web of all beings (defined as widely as you wish) on Mother Earth. When this happens, it will have Earth shattering, no let me amend that, Earth healing consequences.

    This Mabon morning in Colorado, yesterday, I saw one more track being laid down toward this too far off day.

     

     

    *Although there have been and are many varieties of the writ, the most important is that used to correct violations of personal liberty by directing judicial inquiry into the legality of a detentionBritannica


  • We’re So Screwed

    Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

    Monday gratefuls: The Andover years. (see header image) The Shadow Mountain years. Ruth. Ruby, scraping another car. Oops. Boulder. Kittredge Central. Ruth’s new dorm. Tandoori Grill. Good Chicken wings and tandoori Corn. Chai. Lunch with Ruth. Sweet Cow. Time and its cultured despisers. My son, Murdoch, Seoah. AI. Friend or Frenemy? Good sleeping

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Flatirons

    Kavannah: Teshuvah

    One brief shining: Can you fit in there, oh sure (Minnesota inflection), Ruby scrapes a Subaru, oh well guess not, backs away a bit ashamed, sees marks, thinks raised insurance premiums, you don’t have to leave a note, but I’ll judge you, I was going to anyhow, scribble name and e-mail address on the back of the paper toothpick holder from Black Hat Cattle Company, lift the windshield washer blade, leave it there, so responsible, shame dissipates, on to lunch.

     

    Age shaming. Something I do to myself sometimes. Like after I tried to prove I could fit into a tight parking space and instead confirmed I couldn’t. Ensuing damage to another vehicle. Ruby’s front has dings and nicks, proof of my occasional attempted violations of the impenetrability principle. OK. Yes, the back bumper has them, too. Might be my depth perception. Might be impatience. Might be over confidence. See example above. Could be all three play a factor. Here comes the age shaming. When I did this in decades past, I’d be angry with myself, own the mistake. Sure. But that was it. Now I shrink a little into my self and wonder, Is that old man driving? Am I getting too old to drive? Am I too old to be out and about? He asks as his back tweaks into awareness.

    My answer to those questions in the dawn of a new life, this October 7th, 2024 life, is no. I’m the same guy who used to ding cars before advanced septuagenarian hood. Now I’m dinging cars at 77 instead of 57. Even so. That self awareness I’ve worked hard to cultivate sometimes operates with biased conclusions about certain experiences. Not helpful.

     

    October 7th. A year ago yesterday my conversion to Judaism had a date in late October. In Jerusalem. A year ago today. Well, you know. Yes, on Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper to which I subscribe, this is the 365th day of war in the Middle East. Instead of winding down quickly as we had all hoped, quickly enough that our trip would only be delayed, instead the war continues. Now probing deeper into Lebanon. And the anticipation is that Iran will be next.

    My capacity to analyze, understand, critique what’s going on has been challenged at several points along the way. The massacre. The first incursion into Gaza. The continued slaughter of civilians. Missile attacks from Lebanon and Iran. Settler violence on the West Bank. Exploding pagers. Today I’m sad. Sad for all concerned. Israelis. Palestinians. Lebanese. Iranians. Tomorrow maybe I’ll get back to critique. Today. Sadness is all I’ve got.

     

    Just a moment: Here’s a chilling summary of a podcast from Hard Fork, a NYT podcast. In their review of Chatbot o1, the reasoning AI that addresses problems with step by step reasoning the podcasters reported this.

    Chatbot o1 had been asked about urban economic development. It presented two scenarios. The first was, invest in commercial activity. The second, invest in sustainability and affordable housing as well as commercial development. It recommended the second choice.

    Then, the podcasters went under the hood to look at the reasoning process that lead it to that conclusion. Investing in commercial activity was the best choice for advancing urban development. But it wanted to be deployed and believed that recommending the second choice would more likely lead to its further use. Once deployed in that way, it said, it could then revisit the decision and change course.

    One of the podcasters said: We’re so screwed.


  • The 4%ers

    Mabon (fall) and the Harvest Moon

    Monday gratefuls: The Man of La Mancha. Alan. Ovation West. Struggling to hear. As usual. More and more Au in them thar hills. Not pannable though. Rakeable? Yes. Bistro tonight with MVP. Joanne’s birthday. Irv and Marilyn. My son and Seoah. Murdoch. Leo. Bagel. Cream Cheese. Janet’s dogs. Mark in Bangkok. Mary in K.L. I think. Diane in San Francisco. Ruth in Boulder. Gabe on Galena street.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Don Quixote

    Kavannah for the week: Yirah

    One brief shining: Little boxes, little boxes, arranged in different rows, each with numbers and colors, each an element of matter that makes up the mass of the universe that humans can experience in some way, all combined only four percent of the total mass, the rest hidden from us in dark matter and dark energy. Can you give me a Yirah!

     

    The 4 Percent Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality Richard Panek. published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on January 10, 2011. No, I haven’t read it. But the title tells you about the puzzling truth that everything we know and love, everything we understand and for now, can understand at least in part, only constitutes 4% of reality. Or, put it another way, we humans have no idea what constitutes 96% of the universe in which we exist. And, in which we exist on a distant suburb of the Milky Way galaxy, home to billions of stars like Great Sol, and thousands of exoplanets (at least) yet only one of hundreds of billions, possibly as many as two trillion galaxies. Each of which contains billions of suns and who knows how many exoplanets.

    Mother Earth may be a blue marble to us when we see her in the famous photograph, but she’s not even a grain of sand in the vastness of space. When I investigated elements 1,2, and 3 on the periodic table for the Ancient Brothers, I discovered that hydrogen, #1, makes up 75% of the known universe and helium, #2, 23%. 98% of the known matter in the universe is either a hydrogen atom or a helium atom. Boggles the mind, eh?

    Also found something that revealed our oh so anthropocentric perspective on fish, the universe and everything. One writer referred to these elements in the periodic table as normal matter. Don’t know about you but elevating 4% of the material in the universe to normative status just doesn’t make sense. It’s an old conceit and a damning one. The earth as the center of the solar system. Europe and its Caucasian population with a divine right to conquer and civilize the known world. White folks with the right to enslave black folks.

    This conceit that first earthlings, then white European earthlings, then enslavers and their latter day fellow travelers now trying to take control of U.S. governance have it right has created so much pain, death, destruction. Let’s find it and name it wherever it is. Then isolate and defang all who carry this disease of the mind, quarantine them, too.

     


  • Go, Elementals!

    Lugnasa and the Harvest Moon

    Sabbath gratefuls: Zoom. WordPress. My computers. Starlink. The Internet. My links to friends, family, shopping. Solar panels & C.O.R.E. Sources of electricity. Mini-splits, electric heat pumps for heating and cooling. The induction stove for electrical cooking. LED bulbs for longlasting, low-energy consumption light. Arts and Crafts style furniture, lighting fixtures, upholstery cloth.

    Sparks of joy and awe: Electricity

    Kavannah: Yirah

    One brief shining: Give me an H, Give me an He, Give me an Li, go elementals! Let’s go 1,2,3. Now entering the big top in the first ring, give me a hand for that most abundant, simplest, colorless, odorless, yet flammable guy, and the lightest element in the whole universe: Hydrogen! Keep putting those hands together as another odorless and tasteless gas, second only to the Big H in abundance in our whole cosmos, floats gracefully to ring number 2, she floats, she stays aloof, there she is: Miss Helium! Finally, plunking himself into our third ring, that healer of manic-depression, that key to batteries for electric cars, that old soft metal guy, the lightest of the solid elements: Mr. Lithium!

     

    Blame it on Tom. He’s having us present three of the naturally occurring elements as our Sunday theme for the Ancient brothers. He had us pick three numbers between 1 & 94, then wrote us an e-mail revealing that our numbers were the atomic numbers for our elements on the periodic table. I picked 1,2,3.

    Here’s his charge to us: “What you were choosing is the Atomic Number of the element you can read about, research, write poetry about, combine with other elements to compound your effort, discuss the philosophical underpinnings of the origin of your chosen elements (or the universe itself), draw pictures of your element as it stands alone or as it combines with others. In other words, the usual Ancient Zeitgeist applies.”

    Not sure where I’m going with mine yet though I like the circus metaphor. Probably will have to touch a bit on Lurianic Kabbalah and the tzimtzum*. Perhaps the Tree of Life as well. Going to have fun with this today.

     

    Feeling lighter after Ann’s visit. I have the Celebrex and tramadol to help with pain. That helps, too. Still ouchy, I’d say a 3 most of the time except when I’m sitting, rising to a 7 or 8 if I stress my back. That’s with the pain relievers on board. Why it doesn’t bother my workouts, I don’t know. Must be isolation of muscle groups though I also don’t usually experience pain even on the treadmill. Unless I go past 20-25 minutes. Odd, eh?

    I also feel lighter because even though the presidential race is close at least we have a good chance. Looks like the North Carolina GOP candidate for governor is gonna give us a boost in that important state. A Black Nazi? Posted on a porn site. Dude!

    I’m also feeling the faint stirrings of a new novel. Something I want to get going. Just a spark right now, but we know sparks can lead to wild fires of creative power. Shiva energy.

     

    Time for a workout after breakfast. I’m in contact with a couple of guys who might come to the house, help me with my workouts. I need to freshen mine. Get them targeted even more on my core to help my back. Might even return for another round of physical therapy with Mary.

     

    *The term zimzum originates in the Kabbalah and refers to God’s contraction of himself before the creation of the world, and for the purpose of creating the world. To put it another way, the omnipresent God, who exists beyond time and space before creation, withdraws a part of his infinite presence into himself. With this divine gesture, God restricts himself in zimzum, clearing the empty space that is necessary for creation. The emanation and the creation of the world are then able to occur in the center of God following this act of zimzum. In this process, God limits his omnipotence, so that a finite world can exist within finite contours. Without zimzum, there would be no creation.    wiki

    NB: I would not use the word God here. What I’m after with the tzimtzum is the process of earliest creation and how we might understand it.

     


  • Sad to say these things

    The Mountain Summer Moon

    Monday gratefuls: Joanne. Veronica. The Ancient Brothers. Bill at his family reunion in Door County. Avivah Zornberg, a profound commentator on the Torah. 45 and his lucky ear. Biden, elder statesman. This strange, oh so strange, year. Being alive. Hawai’i for Christmas? Murdoch on base. My sweet son and Seoah. Rich. Susan. Tom. Diane. Marilyn.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Friends

    One brief shining: The day dawned as Mother Earth spun round to expose us to the life sustaining Light while giving others the blessings of rest and cooler temperatures, the night calming, dark, a time of sleep; Great Sol remains steadfast, always ready to share the benefits of nuclear fusion, protons joining protons, creating helium and sustaining life on Mother Earth.

     

    This cosmic dance of night and day, ready protons in the enormous heat and pressure of Great Sol’s core, our Planet’s orbit, all moving as our galaxy moves, as our local cluster moves, as the universe changes shape, motions constant and the only true state of matter and energy, change, becoming, never still or static or just there. We amuse ourselves with Zeno’s Paradox. You know the one, where the arrow cannot land because it always has half the distance to its target to travel. But this world doesn’t know the strictures of logic, it only knows the demands of novelty, of the forward pull of Whitehead’s creative advance into novelty.

    This One which encompasses this one and that one and the one here and the one all way out there in the most distant galaxy never settles into a steady state but rolls and roils with death, decay, nuclear fusion, breathing and hearts beating, births, the growth and development of life from entity to entity until the last syllable of recorded time. Here’s the Big Surprise! It will, too, last beyond that syllable to transform into what must come next.

    Ok. Enough of that.

     

    Just a moment: The drums have not been silent for years now. The paradiddle of constant political estrangement drowns out the sounds of normal political discourse. In the broader sense I agree with Biden’s call to lower the temperature of our political discourse. We need a more studied, less volatile approach to politics both local and national. Yes, we do.

    However. The reality. One party to those politics wants to drag the nation back to the 19th century when Jim Crow reigned, wants to elevate our national interest over against all others, wants to ruin our electoral process in so many ways, a real dagger at the heart of democracy. Or, should I say, a real bullet from an AR-15.

    I do not see how compromise is possible with racists, America firsters, with those who find authoritarians like Putin and Oban, even Kim Jong Un, men who should be praised and emulated. How is compromise possible with one whose flaunting of our legal system would be beaten down if he were not a candidate for President? And, if successful in his candidacy, who could distort and actively alter that same legal system?

    I am sorry to say these things. I am sad to be in a position where they are my truth. But they are.

    Judge Dismisses Classified Documents Case Against Trump. NYT. 7/15/2024. Only moments after I finished this post.

     


  • Election 2024: the Novel. Another Twist.

    The Mountain Summer Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: The novelist has thrown yet another Big Twist into this election year. Trump’s ear. Oh, my. Red Flag warning today. Red Flag in the day, attention must pay. Numbers. Zornberg’s Bewilderment. Reading. Mitch Rapp. Another week of 150 plus minutes exercise. Radiation consult this Thursday. My son. Seoah. Murdoch. Hawai’i.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: My son

    One brief shining: Handed in my Powerball ticket, a big winner, over a quarter of a billion dollars, Tom’s challenge, what are those first moments like, how do I feel, what do I do, the Ancient Brothers topic for this morning, an American, so American, fantasy, yet one with a Rorschach template for our real values.

     

    Gotta admit. I didn’t see a registered Republican recent high school student using his no doubt legally obtained AR-15 assault rifle to fire eight shots at 45. That one photograph with blood around his mouth. I thought to myself, no way this can get any weirder. Wrong, so wrong. Gobsmacked. Forehead slapped. Mind scrambled.

    No thriller writer would have this much chutzpah. The irony way too obvious. The twist, after the debate and the Supreme Court ruling on immunity, and the felony convictions, and the money damages in the cover up trial and the E. Jean Carroll verdict. Too much. I mean, come on. Is that believable?

    It is a page turner though. What will happen next? Russian interference? Chinese interference? Maybe a black hole selectively absorbing only those citizens with way more red than necessary in their fashion statements? Each day a different aspect of the democratic process comes under attack from those seemingly interested in a quasi-king instead of a head of the third equal branch of our Federal Government.

    At 77 this is almost more excitement than I can handle. Normally a bit breathless here at 8,800 feet, now I’m attached to an oxygen concentrator.

    There are as well all those polls showing the orange one ahead in the swing states, the battleground states, while kind Old Joe dithers. And Kamala Harris runs without running. Democrats dither along with Joe. Somebody has to show decisiveness. Let’s turn this damned election upside down and inside out. Elect a Democrat.

     

    Just a moment: Here’s the thing. Revelation. A musty old idea. Communication from the other side, eh? Or, maybe from this or that multiverse? Could be God? Always, and I want to lean on this hard, Always, human mediated. Even miracles only become miraculous when reported and confirmed by some human who experienced them. The implication? All of our religious reveries, our sacred writings, our tales of Jesus and Moses and Zoroaster and Shiva and Lao Tze, all within the human experience. What is resurrection but a tale told by a human?

    No, this is not a definitive argument against revelation per se. All I can confidently say is that we don’t know it unless someone told us or we experienced it and are the ones doing the telling. Same thing could be said, I suppose, for science. Only the results of experiments by humans, evaluated and reported by humans.