Beltane Rushing Waters Moon
I’ve found the Colorado equivalent of Minnesota’s Scientific and Natural Areas (SNA’s). Here they’re called Colorado Designated Natural Areas. “Designated Natural Areas contain a wide representation of Colorado’s rare plants and animals, unique plant communities, rich fossil locations, and geological features.” I enjoyed visiting these areas in Minnesota. Sounds like they’re a little more diverse here. Road trip!
Beltane Rushing Waters Moon
Fog this morning over Black Mountain. It comes in and out of view as the mist moves toward us. Now it’s gone altogether. There’s a thin scrim of icy snow on the solar panels. Colder last night.
My Japanese informed aesthetic often finds resonance here in the mountains. The ponderosa pines that surround Beth Evergreen’s synagogue present heavily crenulated bark, twisted branches and a sturdy calm. From the sanctuary, looking south and east, one window pane has an especially crooked branch that reaches up like a hand. When the snow comes, it looks like a portion of a Kano school gold screen. Ravens and crows land on these branches, too, also emulating the scenery that inspired so many Japanese painters and printers.
Moon watching, a Japanese pastime, has its analogue here as well. The moon rising and setting among the mountain peaks, clouds placing a thin gauze in front of it, the stars as its context, emphasize the moon’s romance. I can stand on my deck here off the loft and watch clouds cross the moon’s face. Its silvered light makes beautiful shadows of the lodgepole pine.
Big eared mule deer and thick, tall elk come down to Maxwell and Cub creeks, lapping up the cold fresh melted snow. Mountain lions slip noiselessly through the undergrowth, lie prone on rock cliffs waiting for them to pass nearby. Bears root up tubers. Minx, bobcats, pine martens, smaller predators, hunt for prey. Rabbits and squirrels and mice feed, look over their shoulder. The web of life is vibrant.
Ichi-go ichi-e is a Japanese phrase often associated with the tea ceremony. The tea master arranges art in the tokinama, chooses teas and sweets, decides which tea bowls and tea pots and tea utensils to use, then greets their guests as they arrive, often no more than one or two. He does this to create an ichi-go ichi-e, a once in a lifetime moment or for this moment only. It connotes the treasure of each meeting between or among people.
Each moment of the day Black Mountain offers ichi-go ichi-e to those of us who live near it, if only we stop and look. To appreciate ichi-go ichi-e though we need to pause, or as mussar teaches us, put a space between the match and the flame. If we slow down our glance, our gaze, let it come to rest, if we take a breath and consider what is right there in front of us, then we find once in a lifetime moments happening throughout our day.
These do not, as you might think, cheapen or dilute over time, rather they enhance our experience of the world. We recognize the fleeting nature of life, of this moment and that moment, of the unique and precious and irreplaceable flavor to each encounter. Nothing is old, all is new, always.
In fact, to the extent that we can gain an appreciation of ichi-go ichi-e, then we never age.
Spring (last day) Rushing Waters Moon
The last day of spring. Solar panels covered. Roof covered. Driveway plowed. 16-24 inches of new snow Friday night through yesterday. Delightful, but hardly springlike. In our spring fantasies, that is. The ones that have tulips and iris and crocus and lilacs and wisteria in them. For a mountain spring though, welcome and not unexpected.
Kate and I are still recovering from our three days of cooking and helping out at Beth Evergreen. Geez. Still, we have the time and the dogs have the patience. This pack anyhow. Vega would not have let us sleep in like Kep, Gertie and Rigel do. She had very clear ideas about when to go to sleep and when to wake up.
We spent most of yesterday admiring the falling snow. A snow globe day, refreshing and beautiful.
Still learning the mountains, how they change. Snow. Light. Rain. Fall. Flowers. Rapidly flowing streams. Clouds. Freeze and thaw. Fire. The animals they nurture move in and around and on them. Night and day. The stars and the moon. The sun as it arcs across the sky. All wonderful, all different.
In one of the sessions with Rabbi Jaffe a member of the board referred to the Beth Evergreen folk as mountain Jews. I liked that. I’m a mountain pagan, a mountain docent, an old man of the mountain. And a fellow traveler with the mountain Jews. Welcome to the journey.
Spring Rushing Waters Moon
Missed yesterday. A very busy two days for both Kate and me. A visiting scholar at Beth Evergreen, Rabbi David Jaffe, came into town on Thursday morning. His first event was a potluck, then a mussar (Jewish ethics) session. Kate and I went early to set up.
Then, that evening Rabbi Jaffe walked the board and other leaders of the synagogue through what he called a soul curriculum for the organization as a whole. I resonated most with this presentation. Kate and I were there because I’m a member of the Adult Education committee. Both of us contributed soups to the soup and salad meal. I made chicken noodle soup and Kate made Vietnamese Pho.
After getting home around 9:30 (our bedtime is 8pm) we got up the next morning and drove into the Denver Performing Arts Center to see grandson Gabe perform in the Denver Public Schools Shakespeare Festival. This ended up taking longer than intended, but we got home in time for a nap before returning to Beth Evergreen yesterday at 4:30. This time we helped set up for Rabbi Jaffe’s lecture, preceded by a congregational meal.
After helping set up tables, arrange flowers, distribute utensils to each place, we attended the James Taylor shabbat. Rabbi Jamie Arnold, Beth Evergreen’s rabbi, is a talented musician who does covers and writes his own music. He often modifies familiar songs with Jewish prayer book language and writes Hebrew verses for them, too.
The meal, catered by Ali Baba, a Golden Lebanese restaurant, and paid for by a generous congregant, fed about 80 people. The tables filled the social hall plus a table set up in the entry way. It was exciting to have that many people together, eating and sharing stories.
Afterward Rabbi Jaffe gave a lecture on mussar. It was more sparsely attended than it might have been due to the heavily falling snow and the predictions-now fulfilled-of around a foot of accumulation.
We again got home around 9:30pm. Late to bed twice in a row. Harder and harder these days.
Today was the People’s Climate March in Denver, which I intended to attend, but the roads going down the hill are icy and snow covered. Climate change is, as I said in an earlier post, once again the focus of my political energy so I’ll only miss the gathering, not the action.
This late spring snow challenged our Rav4 on the way home last night. Hwy. 78, aka Brook Forest Drive/Black Mountain Drive/Shadow Mountain Drive winds up the mountains from Evergreen. It was snowing hard, the roads were not plowed and the shoulders are narrow. No sudden plummets, but sufficient curves and changing elevations to make the drive interesting. Plus, I was ready to be asleep an hour before we left Beth Evergreen.
Today, though, and the next week, too, we have a quieter time. No grandkids this weekend and only one scheduled event in the next week.
Spring New (Rushing Waters) Moon
Today I’m making chicken noodle soup and Kate’s making Vietnamese pho. We’ll serve this at a Beth Evergreen leadership dinner for Rabbi David Jaffe, author of Changing the World from the Inside Out, a Jewish Approach to Social Change. Along with our friend Marilyn Saltzman, chair of the adult education committee, who is making a vegetarian squash soup, we’ll provide the soups for a soup and salad meal. I really like this low key involvement. It feels manageable.
Although. I am hoping that Rabbi Jaffe’s time here at Beth Evergreen, tomorrow through Saturday as a visiting scholar, will spur the creation of an activist group focused on some form of response to the Trump/oligarch era. In that instance I’m willing to move into a more upfront role, though I would prefer to remain a follower.
Then, there’s the Sierra Club. I wrote here about my excitement with Organizing for Action, Conifer. That was back in January, I think. Lots of people, lots of energy. Good analysis. I thought, wow. Here’s my group. Then, I never heard from them again, my e-mails went unanswered. Weird, but true. Weird and disqualifying for a group that’s organizing political work.
So I renewed my effort to connect with the Mt. Evans’ local group of the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Sierra Club. Colorado seems to work more through these regional clusters than as a whole. There are nine of them, covering the entire state. The Mt. Evans’ group includes our part of Jefferson County, Clear Creek County and a northern portion of Park County. It’s titular feature, Mt. Evans, is a fourteener (over fourteen thousand feet high) which has the highest paved road in North America leading to its summit. According to locals here it’s also the weathermaker for our part of Conifer.
I finally made it to a meeting a couple of weeks ago. When I came back, Kate said, “You seem energized.” I did. And, I hadn’t noticed. Something about that small group plugged me back into my reigning political passion of the last six or seven years: climate change. Oh, yeah. With OFA I’d tried to head back toward economic justice, my long standing motivation for political work, dating back to the UAW influences I picked up as a teenager in Alexandria. Guess the universe understood me better than I understood myself. Not much of a surprise there.
My mind began ticking over, running through organizing scenarios, figuring out how we could (note the we) raise the visibility of the Mt. Evans group, gain more members, influence local policy. This is my brain on politics. I might be willing to play a more upfront role here, too, though I want to explore other ways of being helpful first.
Anyhow, between these two, I’m sure I’ll get my political mojo working in some way. And that feels good. Want some soup?
Spring Passover Moon
Under the full passover moon Kate and I drove over to Mt. Vernon Country Club for a community seder. There were about 60 people there, sitting in groups of 8 around circular tables. The dining room looked out to the south and east. As the sun set, the lights of Denver began to sparkle around Table Mesa in the distance.
The tables had platters of oblong chunks of gefilte fish, a bowl of haroset (a sweet mixture that symbolizes the mortar used by Hebrew slaves in Egypt), a small bowl of pink grated horseradish, a stack of matzo covered in a linen napkin, and a seder plate with the traditional passover items: lamb shank, boiled egg seared over a flame, parsley, haroset and maror (horseradish). And an orange. The orange is a recent addition to the passover plate-at least for Reconstructionists-and it symbolizes the fruitfulness of women’s contributions in Jewish history and in the present.
The haggadah, the telling of the story, contains all the prayers, readings, songs and explanations for the evening. The seder (order) of the passover celebration has 15 steps, symbolizing the 15 steps that led up to the Temple in Jerusalem. The Temple passover celebration had two priest on each of the fifteen steps and they sang the passover ritual as worshippers brought up their lamb for sacrifice.
The evening followed this ancient ritual, commemorated in Christian churches as the last supper and ritualized among them as communion or the eucharist.
As Kate and I got out of the car at Mt Vernon, a young woman asked, “Is this the place for the seder?” It was, I said. Her name was Leah. We walked in together, past the slightly ridiculous pretension of the lobby, its fireplace and the sitting room with the observation deck like windows. Down a set of stairs was a lower level under the sitting room.
We chatted casually with Leah. The room was almost empty then, not many had come. We were early. I went out on the big deck that overlooked Table Mesa and Leah followed. She knew Rabbi Jamie in the synagogue he served previously in Buffalo, New York.
“I’m bi-polar and I went on a road trip, trying to find someplace new. I went to Florida, drove all over and came this way but decided I couldn’t cross the mountains in the winter, so I ended up working in Boulder.”
Oh. I have bipolar illness in my family. Two aunts hospitalized, one died in the state hospital, another came out, but under heavy medication. “Oh. That’s good. Well, I mean it’s not good that you have bipolar in the family, but it’s good you understand.”
And I do. It was as if this ancient ritual, one that gathers the tribe across the world to honor its release from bondage, had found a member of that tribe who also belonged to mine. Leah sat next to me and we dipped our little fingers in the wine, the parsley in the salty water, the tears of those in bondage, ate our matzo with haroset and made our Hillel sandwiches, haroset and maror between two slices of matzo.
The ways the universe conspires with us: it lets us paddle along the river of time for a bit, then puts us through some rapids, lets us drift into a clear pool, but always moves us forward through the Grand Canyon of our life, and sometimes helps us to land on shore for awhile, perhaps in a spot that looks familiar, yet is always new. At 70 the river which carries me is much closer to the Gulf of All Souls than it was in my twenties, but unlike then, I can see through the translucent canyon walls to the canoes of my friends, family and new acquaintances.
There are even moments, like an April passover meal in the Rocky Mountains, when we come together on the strand of our common journey, our lives and our rivers joined for a moment. We travel apart but we are not alone.
Spring Passover Moon
The birthday girl is here. 11 years old now, officially (I learned yesterday.) a tween. She’s a reader, an artist who now works a lot with wire, a double black diamond level skier, a gifted student, a good friend, a thespian and our granddaughter. Ruth.
She’s now only 2 years away from her Bat Mitzvah. This is about the time for her to get her preparation underway. Lots of Hebrew to learn.
Divorce has been tough on the kids, Ruth and Gabe both. Things do seem to be settling down right now, so I hope the two of them can begin to get on with their elementary school lives. Gabe turns 9 on the 22nd of this month.
We took them both to Wildgame, a restaurant and entertainment place in Evergreen. They have an arcade (see picture), a bowling alley, a pool table, bocce ball court, ping pong tables and a stage for live music. The counter guy told Kate to come before 5 pm because, “It gets pretty crazy after that.”
Had we been prescient the divorce alone would have been enough reason for us to move out here. We weren’t, but we’re certainly glad we’ve been here for the whole family. Even Jen. Divorce with young kids, a reality both Kate and I have known, is just plain hard. I’m sad Ruth and Gabe have had to experience it.
Dogs and kids. I never want to have a life without either of them.
Spring New (Passover) Moon
Writing can lay bare something hidden, perhaps something that needed excavation or something attached to a thread, even a flimsy thread, by which it can be pulled from the inner world. Things get lost in there, pushed behind stacks of unused memories or stored with a faulty label. Sometimes ideas once full and vibrant get partially severed from their context, crucial links of thought go missing and the idea fades away.
“I’ve continued to write and study, my primary passions.” March 21, 2017 This sentence is an example, a recent example. It stares back at me, rather baldly. Oh. Well, that’s right, isn’t it?
I love to read, follow an idea through its growth and changes, learn about something in depth, wonder about it, tease out of it new implications or old truths.
I love to write. I don’t know why. Might be an inheritance from my newspaperman father. Might just be long established habit. Whatever the reason writing is my painting, my sculpture, my photography. I have to do it to feel whole.
Which, speaking of ideas, then links to the idea of the third phase. That quote comes from recent thoughts on the third phase. A primary wondering for me, I think for all third phasers, is this: what am I about in this last phase of my life?
The Trump catastrophe, a miserable wound of our country’s own making, pulled on the 60’s radical thread always near the surface for me. I’ve been trying to put that mask back on, to become the political activist I once was. I felt obligated. You know, if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.
But it hasn’t been happening. I just haven’t connected with other activists. I haven’t been doing much more than writing about it. (a clue here, by the way) Grousing and complaining, yes, sure. But not acting.
Writing and study. Third phase. Beth Evergreen. With Kate I’ve found a community that cherishes study, scholarship, a community that finds writing an understandable vocation. Right now I’m thinking, wondering. Should I lean into my primary passions? Stay with them. Dig deeper. That feels right.
Here’s a confession, too. I’ve never liked politics. The person I become, the masks I put on then, feel far away from my core Self. Why then have I spent so much of my life in one political arena after another?
Part duty. For whatever reason I came out of Alexandria with fully formed political ideas about justice, equality, fairness. They were strong, rooted in the powerful union movement among my friend’s parents who worked for General Motors, reinforced by the liberal politics of my Roosevelt Democrat parents and then pushed toward action in the turmoil of the 60’s.
Part ego. It feels good to lead, to have people hang on my ideas, to see change occur when something I’ve helped shape makes things happen. But this is part of what feels far away from my core, introverted Self. That ego drive also presses forward an angry, demanding, often insensitive persona. A persona I dislike.
Part religious conviction. The almost random way in which I ended up in seminary, then the ministry came from following political conviction away from graduate academics and toward an institution willing to pay me to organize, to act politically. There was a merger of political passion and the prophetic line of a certain strain of liberal Christianity, even radical Christianity.
No conclusions here. Not yet. Just more of the shifts and changes, movements in my soul. Something will come out of all this. Not sure what. Not right now.
Spring Anniversary Moon
Spring Anniversary Moon
Been thinking about predators, mountain lions in particular. About how difficult and demanding their life is: hunting for a next meal, finding prey that moves, that can fight back. Consider the plant eaters and how they thrive. Wandering over to the meadow, to the willow, to the shrub, scraping in the soil for roots. I admire the predator, the lonely vigilance their life requires, but to live like that? No thanks. I prefer grocery stores.
Here’s an amazing photograph taken by a Japanese space probe circling the moon.
And another one by Cassini.
