Category Archives: Beyond the Boundaries

Aging, Beyond the Boundaries, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Humanities, Jefferson County, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Living Consciously

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Lugnasa                                                                              Harvest Moon

Two great quotes yesterday. One from our mussar group: I never saw a U-Haul trailer behind a hearse. The second from a comment on a NYT article on the meaning of life: You say No Matter, I say Never Mind.

Mussar. It’s September, the days are cooling down and years of Septembers have me getting ready to accelerate my study. This year a focus will be mussar.

mussar-path-of-w-logo1Mussar is defined here by Rabbi Ira Stone, of the Mussar Leadership Program: “The most accurate translation of the word mussar into English is “discipline,” defined in all three ways we use the word in English. Mussar defines a discrete area of study, like the discipline of physics. It describes a practice, as in “it takes discipline to practice piano every day.” It also describes the act of correcting behavior, as in “you must discipline the child.””

In our study of the Way of the Just, begun yesterday at Congregation Beth Evergreen (CBE) and led by Rabbi Jamie Arnold, we talked about the purpose of life. Rabbi Jamie offered what he said was a traditional Jewish perspective: Experience happiness fully. Experience sadness fully. And in the times between be content. Works for me.

It feels good to have some anchors in Evergreen now. Our work with Bear Creek Design will introduce us to the contractors who do work for them. Kate’s study of Hebrew and our mutual study of mussar has begun to open up relationships at CBE for CBE. This means Evergreen is no longer a destination only for restaurants and shopping, but also for community.

 

Beyond the Boundaries, Faith and Spirituality, GeekWorld, Myth and Story, Science

Juno Comes Back to Jupiter

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Summer                                                                        Moon of the Summer Solstice

The half summer solstice moon hangs high in the morning sky today. Friend Tom Crane sent a link to the NASA Juno mission webpage. The first NASA video gives you an overview of the mission. The second shows the earth and the moon dancing with each other as Juno sped by in October of 2013 on its way to its July 4th insertion in Jupiter’s realm.

Aging, Beyond the Boundaries, Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Feelings, Memories, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Mystic Chords

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Beltane                                                                               New (Running Creeks) Moon

The mood here. Still subdued, still gathering the reality of Vega’s death around us. When Mom died, now 52 years ago, the ongoingness of life surprised me. Cars still rattled down Canal Street. Lights went off and on in houses. School was open, teachers teaching and kids squirming at their desks. The sun rose and set. Dogs barked. We needed sleep and ate breakfast.

This no longer amazes me. The feelings of absence, of missing, of longing do not disappear however, though they can get submerged in the running creek of life. I still miss my mom, not in that acute, gut twisting way of 52 years ago, but longing for her, for her presence remains.

Abraham Lincoln called these threads of feeling and remembrance, their resonance, the mystic chords of memory. Yes. Part of their function, a paradox, lies in the quickening of our daily life, jimmying us out of the cracks and ruts we fall into. We realize a life time has bounds.

As the writers of the Hebrew scriptures often said, this background music is a blessing and a curse. It can become a cacophony, a dirge we cannot shut off. A mental tinnitus. Yet, it is the dead, as much as the living, often more, who shape us, create us-sometimes to our exasperation, other times to our joy.

With Vega the only source of pain is her sudden absence. The rest, the memory of her, the mystic chords she sets off, are joyful and loving. And those will persist.

 

Beyond the Boundaries, Family, GeekWorld, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Science

Out There

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Beltane                                                     Wedding Moon

Ruth and I went to the Fiske Planetarium in Boulder on Saturday night for a program on black holes. Ruth had never been to a planetarium. The lights went down and the night sky appeared on the dome above us. The southern night sky. So, right away the wonder of the star machine. Then, the night sky over Boulder with the constellations. The astronomer talked about their correlation to the ancients who relied on them for agricultural purposes. It is reportedly spring. Somewhere.

Ruth watched and listened carefully. The short film on black holes was not easy, covering the birth of black holes, their peculiar physics and their role in the cosmos. After it was over, the astronomer walked us through some of the recent findings related to black holes, the most notable being the discovery of gravity waves at the LIGO observatory. The relation to black holes is that the gravity pulse detected at LIGO began in a black hole.

sloan image

It’s been a while since I immersed myself in matters astronomical. My fine grained understanding of the evening was not great. The hey now moment came at the end when the astronomer pulled the dome’s display further and further out until the entire Sloan Survey covered only the center of the dome.

The rest of the dome then represented the edge of the knowable universe. Out there the astronomer showed what he called the light wall, a here cooler, there warmer barrier of early light, earliest light, really. This light wall, a new idea to me, represented, he said, the exterior wall of the black hole within which our whole universe lives! Wow. Immediately sped past my understanding. Just did a little quick research on this and found nothing. Could be my hearing. Yet another sensory limitation when it comes to learning about the universe.

On the way out Ruth said she was expecting something like that at the end. Why? Because in the film they had presented black holes as violent, destructive forces, so in the end they’d need to show their good side. Not a scientific conclusion, but still a damned good one. I missed the setup and it was there. Ruth is 10.

Beyond the Boundaries, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Dawn

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Yule                                                                                      Stock Show Moon

Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.  Rabindranath Tagore

 

Reframing is such a powerful tool. Tagore reframes death. Whether or not he’s right, and how can we know, the notion is a powerful one. The possibility of a new dawn after this life, what could it mean? No way to assess it. But just the idea is intriguing, especially when put against the judgmental metaphysics of most major religious traditions on the one hand and the nihilistic over confidence of latter day positivists like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens on the other.

The so-called new atheists are really metaphysical curmudgeons, still entranced by the bracing notion of nothing beyond this reality. They conclude that because the matter of metaphysics is beyond measurement, beyond sensory authentication that it is, ipso facto, non existent. This is a peculiar claim. That is, claiming the non-existence of something you cannot access admits, in and of itself, that the way of knowing that produces the conclusion is wrong for the question. Like the metaphysics of heaven and hell, moksha or nirvana, non-existence is not provable either. So, the big metaphysical question requires an agnostic position.

Tagore’s idea, like the analogy between life and death and the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly, depends on no dogma. It simply states an alternative possibility. The Otherworld in Celtic mythology had another existence beyond death, though characterizing it as a new dawn would not fit. It was more like a pale version of this world. Still, the hope that death is a doorway rather than a black hole has captured the imagination of countless humans over thousands of  years.

Who knows? Perhaps your dying day will include a wakin’ up mornin’. It’s ok with me.

 

Beyond the Boundaries, Faith and Spirituality, Original Relation, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

The Gate of Chan

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Yule                                                                            New (Stock Show) Moon

THE GATE OF CHAN

As a result of unwavering diligence you arrive at the gate of Chan. Before the gate stands a gatekeeper who says, “First you must put down your weapons.” Being determined to pass through the gate, you give it no second thought, so you drop all your defenses. After that the guard says, “Next you must take off all your clothes.” You think for a moment, and then you drop all your remaining attachments. Then the guard says, “Now you have to put aside your body.” You have been working hard for a long time so you decide that enlightenment is even worth dying for, so away goes the body. Finally, the guard says, “You still have your mind; that too must go. There can be nothing left of you when you enter.” Because you are determined to succeed, you agree to this final demand. The instant that you let go of your mind, the gate disappears. There was in fact no gate to pass through and nothing to enter.

–Song of Mind by Sheng Yen, pages 69–70
http://www.shambhala.com/song-of-mind.html

Aging, Beyond the Boundaries, Faith and Spirituality, Quotes, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase, Travel

Live in the Whole Ocean

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Yule                                                                         New (Stock Show) Moon

 

 

“Kay Cottee AO is an Australian sailor, who was the first woman to perform a single-handed, non-stop and unassisted circumnavigation of the world. She performed this feat in 1988 in her 37 feet yacht Blackmores First Lady, taking 189 days.”    Wikipedia

When Jessica Watson, in 2009, set sail for her southern hemisphere circumnavigation of the world, she was 16. I don’t recall how, but I found her website on which she posted as she sailed alone in her boat, True Spirit. There was something about her, something fresh and brave, youth, yes, but something more, perhaps it was true spirit.

Since then, I subscribed to her facebook page so I can keep very loose tabs on her as she grows older. Just curious about how true spirit manages adulthood. Wonderfully, as it turns out. She’s inspirational to Australian girls, an advocate for sailing and a modest celebrity down under.

She posted this quote from her idol, Kay Cottee. She means us to take it, I think, as literally intended, a comment on the nature of voyages alone. It is, however, too, a way of understanding the ancientrail we call life.

 

Beyond the Boundaries, Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Holidays, Our Land and Home, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, The Move

Happy New Year!

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Samhain                                                                   Moon of the First Snow

The Celts began the New Year at the end of the harvest season celebrated on October 31st. In the old Celtic calendar there were only two seasons: summer and winter and today marked summer’s end or Samhain, the end of the growing season. So for the ancient Celts the year began in the fallow season, the season of senescence and death.

As I’ve watched the run up to Halloween this year, I’ve been struck by its emphasis on horror, scares and fear. As a direct, but altered version of Samhain, Halloween emphasizes certain aspects of the original holiday, for example the thinning of the veil between this world and the Otherworld, the land of faery and the dead.

This year Kate and I celebrate the thinning of the veil between Minnesota and Colorado. Exactly a year ago today we closed on Black Mountain Drive. That closing brought Minnesota and Colorado so close to each other they could touch. For us.

Three mule deer bucks were in the back that morning, eating grass. I approached them slowly and they let me get very close, watching me with round brown eyes, attentive but not nervous. They were the spirit of Shadow Mountain welcoming us home, a trinity of mountain dwellers.

Black Mountain Drive is a Great Wheel home. We closed on October 31st, Samhain, and moved in on December 20th, the Winter Solstice, the day that Samhain ends. The holiday of the longest night, Winter’s Solstice, is my favorite holiday of the year, so to close on Samhain, the New Year, and to move in on my favorite  holiday gives our home a special frisson. It occupies a space not only on the physical Shadow Mountain but on spirit Shadow Mountain, too.

IMAG0773Our home participates not only in the massive rockness of the mountain, but in the essence of the Rocky Mountains, their wild majesty, their sudden emergence from the Great Plains, their uncivilized character. These mountains are home to elk, mule deer, fox, bear, squirrels, pika, mountain lions, human beings, dogs, cats, lodgepole and ponderosa pines, Colorado blue spruce, fast running streams, waterfalls, quiet ponds and small lakes.

It is a Samhain home and a Solstice home, forever for us, infused with the old energies of these two seasons. Our years within it begin on the Celtic new year and grow deep with the long night, the two poles of our start here.

So this year we celebrate both home and holiday. Blessed be.

Beyond the Boundaries, Faith and Spirituality, GeekWorld, Memories, Myth and Story, Science

Not Even Gone

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Mabon                                                                     Moon of the First Snow

It is so beautiful here around 5 a.m. when the sky is clear, which is most mornings. The stars leap out of the sky, reminders of the power they had when the only light pollution was an evening’s campfire. Orion stands high in the south, moving toward Black Mountain. The Big Dipper disappears behind the roof of the garage in the east, but the pointer stars are visible, showing the way to true north. Cassiopeia, that unhappy queen, extends her jagged W, a slash of stars.

Time travel has been with us since the first human looked up in wonder at the stars. What we see unaided and what we can see with telescopes comes to us from the distant, distant past. So distant that the miles come in units of time. Perhaps, in a way, our lives are like the heavens, still shining after long years, even after death, radiating out from our small sector of space-time to the far away future.

So you might go out and look at the stars and consider the bright lights in your life, still strong and beautiful, wonderful. And remember that someday, you too will shine for others. Not gone, not even absent.