Category Archives: Shadow Mountain

Mountains, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Sport, The West, Travel, US History, Weather +Climate

No Loyalty

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Spring and the Purim Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: My Lodgepole companion, Needles again covered with Snow. A cold Mountain morning. Remembering Andover (see header image). Being where you are. Wendel Berry. Regenerative Farming. Loving the place. Knowing the place. Where the Mule Deer come. Where the Creek blasts down the Mountain in Spring. Where the Dogwood blooms. Where Fawns and Calves move up and down the Mountains on wobbly legs.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Moisture on the Mountain and the Forest

One brief shining: You know I looked out at the Snow yesterday, falling sometimes gently, sometimes vigorously, and I thought beautiful, then when I saw the same Snow coming down on my driveway I screamed enough, no more, we’ve had plenty thank you very much, however; I did not mean it, I meant bring as much moisture as long as you can and I will be grateful.

 

Yes. Cabin fever time. That moment when what looked serene and beautiful a few short months ago now scrapes across the seasonal blackboard like bad chalk. Up here it produces a split personality. One tired of the cold, the Snow, driving on Ice, huddling up all about hygge. Wanting to run outside in a t-shirt, arms spread wide, soaking in Great Sol. The other remembering summers past when the Smokey the Bear sign pegged Extreme Fire Danger. Snow as far into April, hell, even May as you want. In fact, Snow until the Monsoons return. Please.

I’m cutting a middle ground between these two. Gonna take off for San Francisco at the end of the month. See a lot of art, maybe a Redwood or two, visit my cousin in her native habitat. Eat. Sleep. Test my back in a safe environment.

Of course. I would for sure wear Flowers in my hair if I had enough left. Gonna ride the Amtrak route between Denver and SFC. Really, Oakland, then a bus. Or, Diane. With a roomette. See the Rockies and the intermountain West without having to drive.

A way to discover if I can travel, probably back to Korea again. Maybe to Israel if this war ever ends. Perhaps this year for both.

 

Just a Moment: Caitlin Clark. Wow. 41 points. Final Four. Iowa! Once more, with feeling: Go, Hawkeyes! Iowa feels like Minnesota’s younger sister. Which would make Caitlin our niece? Always nice to see family doing well.

45. His $175 million dollar bond. His legal peril. Or, from the MAGA perspective, the persecutions not prosecutions.

Brother Mark asked if Trump won how would I be the loyal opposition?

I wouldn’t. Be loyal. Though I would be in opposition. Loyal opposition as an idea implies mutuality, a framework in which political opponents serve as testers of ideas, as citizens of a shared form of government. A form of government which all sides agree has the best interests of a nation as its true purpose.

Trump is not a politician in that sense. He is a politician though, one of the oldest kinds. A brute seeking total power. Power with which he can punish his enemies and reward his sycophants. Kings, Queen, Pharaohs, and Emperors, autocrats and dictators all are this sort of politician.

Loyalty has as its sister virtue respect. No respect for pussy grabbers, for those who provide safe harbor for white supremacists, misogynists, anti-Semites. No respect for insurrectionists, for anti-constitutionalists. No respect for frauds, for payers of hush money, for election deniers. Therefore. Q.E.D. No loyalty.

 

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Judaism, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation, Shadow Mountain

Wakin’ up mornin’

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Spring and the Purim Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Spirited Away, my biopic for the Ancient Brothers. Dawn and the longer days. Spring in an adagio, playing slowly toward its late April, early May crescendo. A short season in the Mountains. Each living thing up here, the Wild Neighbors, the Humans, all the Plant life, the Fungi and Lichen, the Soil Microbes, Streams and Rock Faces, Boulders and Talus has begun to respond, to anticipate the changing temperatures, to give birth, to run a little fuller, to find more light and the increased warmth of Great Sol each day.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: That great wakin’ up mornin’

One brief shining: What in my inner Shadow Mountain needs to have the stone rolled away from its tomb, what dark and hidden fear or regret or failure has lain too long on the stone slab of its occultation, waiting for an Easter morning of the nefesh, a push toward consciousness of that shard of my past buried because its edginess could not be accommodated in a forgotten moment of psychic pain?

 

Yes, it’s Easter morning. The most famous Jew in the world has his special day. Resurrection. What a splendid piece of mythology, one we need, have always needed. Will always need. It is not blasphemy to recognize that resurrection need not be a historical event for it to be a profound reality. Its mirroring of the vegetative cycle, of course. But also its blatant affirmation of the human journey from inner darkness to enlightenment.

What do you fear about the course your life has taken? Did you shame your parents? Push down your gifts in service of the material God, Mammon? Hurt the one you loved? Loved the one you never had the courage to talk to? Which death bed in your life shook your inner world, perhaps opened a crack into the abyss? Steal or commit fraud or murder? Sure, it could be that tenebrous.

All of these and so much more we tuck away, morticians for our own pain, placing rock after rock over the fearful and shameful. Like Jews even when we visit the grave we put yet more rocks on. Can’t let that get out. Gotta keep that crucified part of our past away from the living parts of ourselves. Because it could ruin everything. Couldn’t it? Wouldn’t it? Shouldn’t it?

That Shadow Mountain of yours, how many sites does it have? Perhaps a mausoleum? Two? The ashes of your past still preserved in small urns of repressed memory.

Here’s the Easter sunrise service promise. Humanness is glorious, all of it. Even the moments of pain and shame. I left my dreamed of college, Wabash, for a state school. Ball State. A teacher’s college. I drank myself through my early twenties. I had two marriages and a sort of third. Judy. Tina. Raeone. I went to seminary because I needed a trade, a place away from the papermill. I couldn’t bear the sight of Kate’s corpse, of Vega’s pleading look. And so much more. All put away in the mountain that is my Shadow. Yet as I have called these and many others to the light, as I have put my shoulder to the stone once rolled across their tombs, I have become more not less human.

We are not only good. We are not only the worst things we have done. We are now the result of all those moments pushing against each other, shaping and forcing our growth. All of my previous marriages prepared me for the ancientrail of intimacy I found with Kate. And ensured that I know how fortunate I was. At Ball State I majored in two disciplines, philosophy and anthropology, which had few majors. The result? A close and careful journey through two departments with full professors. Both Kate’s corpse and Vega’s pleading reminded me of the limits of my own ability. An oh so important learning about aging. And death.

 

 

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Shadow Mountain

Surrender

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Spring and the Purim Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Ruth and Gabe here for spring break. Blood pressure. This laptop. Ancientrails. Black Mountain and Great Sol. A Mountain morning. Herme. The Monsoons in K.L. The Desert and the white Camel Bull in Hafar. That Mule Deer Doe back again yesterday. Hunting for Grass beneath the Snow. Simple Pinto Beans. Pretty good.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Grandkids

One brief shining: Soaked the Pintos for six hours, drained them, covered them with Water, added a Bay Leaf, slab bacon, and half an Onion, hit P for the power setting on the stove, brought the Water to a boil, then backed it off to 3, a gentle simmer, one hour later added Salt, Cayenne, and Paprika, waited another hour, stirring occasionally, the beans softened, chopped the bacon into bits, returned it to the Beans. Tasty.

 

Cooking more and more with Beans. Easy. Freezable. Lower on the food chain. Fire up my Zojirushi Rice cooker at the same time. Rice and beans. Filling and nutritious.

I make most of my meals, some as easy as lox and cream cheese on English muffins, some more difficult, but not much. The freezer lets me extend a batch of Beans, some Greens, even hamburger into many meals.

Rarely eat out by myself anymore. Breakfasts and lunch with friends maybe two, three times a week at most. Once in a while I’ll get a Subway or food from Fountain Barbecue or the Evergreen Market. But not often. The way life has evolved. I enjoy either reading or watching TV while I eat and both are easier at home.

 

Suppose this goes back to the bechira points question of yesterday. Am I hiding out or living comfortably? Feels like the latter. But is it?

Also relates to the broader implications of surrender. Not resignation. Not submission. More wu wei, the Taoist notion of going with the flow, not trying to control events but to discover their patterns and to move with them.

Perhaps, too, it relates to thoughts about chi, love, the sacred consciousness, becoming as the underlayment of the universe. If I am surrendering to the flow of chi in my life, to the patterns of becoming, leaning into love of self and others as my prime directive, then how I’m living is fine. That is, it matches the movement of essential energies intersecting and shaping my day to day existence.

 

You know, as I’ve been writing here, as often happens a crystallization of thought, of learning has precipitated out onto the page and in my heart. My current life of friends, family, Judaism, and a rich home life does feel right and good.

Even when I decide to stay home rather than go to an event. Those events are not the key moments. Not anymore. Probably never were. No, the key moments find me in a booth at Aspen Perks or Primos, or the Bread Lounge, or the Parkside, or Thai 202. With Ruth and Gabe, Ginny and Janice, Marilyn and Irv, Tara, Rebecca, Alan. Or on zoom with Tom, Diane, the Ancient Brothers. Or talking with my son and Seoah. Going to mussar, not the event so much as the time with the people there.

Other key moments find me painting, writing, reading, cooking by myself. This is me. Now. Walking myself, my friends, and family home.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Judaism, Mussar, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

Choice

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Spring and the Purim Moon

Monday gratefuls: 9 degrees. Yet more Snow. The Dark. The Quiet. Ruth and Gabe coming up for Spring Break. Chamber Music. Inertia. Ginny and Janice. Bechira points. Kehillah. Mark still in Hafar. Exercise. The rain in K.L. Torrential. Travel. Pleasure. Guilty pleasure. Nuts. Pistachios. Salted peanuts. Alan and BBQ. Reney. Shiva.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: What’s App

One brief shining: Said to my friends I’m done with winter but winter is not done with me and sure enough around three pm yesterday the Snow came again, hard, like rain in straight lines, the cold came too as the temperature fell into single digits making the night perfect for more Snow; in bed I felt Snow melt on my head, my window still slightly open.

 

Open Snow and Weather5280 keep me informed. Open Snow has a handy feature that gives a Snow to date number for very specific areas. Intended for skiers tracking powder and the best Mountain conditions, it also works well for Mountain microclimates like Shadow Mountain. As of last night’s storm, we had 11 inches of new Snow bringing our running total to 136 inches for the year so far.

Down in Denver they had blizzard warnings. Ruth and Gabe had planned to come up today and stay through Thursday. They’re on spring break. Probably not gonna happen today. Maybe tomorrow. April is their mutual birthday month with Ruth turning 18! on April 4th and Gabe 16 on April 22th. This is Ruth’s last semester of public school. College next fall.

Beautiful, yes. I can see that. Yes, I’ve stayed too long without a break. Not the winter’s fault.

 

Which brings me to bechira, a Hebrew word for choice, especially as choice signifies free will. Mussar tradition talks about bechira points, choice points where we can exercise free will. According to Jewish tradition they’re not as common as you might think, though they’re not rare either. A bechira point occurs when the yetzer hara, the selfish inclination, and the yetzer hatov, the good inclination conflict. That is, when we choose between a selfish course of action, one we know is not the direction we need to go, and a good choice, one that enhances our life and the lives of others. In that moment we know, are conscious of, a choice. It is that knowing, that awareness that makes it a bechira point.

Let me give you two examples. Yesterday I had a ticket for a chamber music concert at St. Laurence Episcopal. Which is about as close to me as possible. Less than ten minutes. And I love chamber music. At 2:30, the concert was at 3:00, I looked at the Snow. I thought about parking in a small lot, being crowded into a small sanctuary. Sank back into my chair and continued watching a not very good movie.

The night before. The Purim speil at CBE. 7 pm. I wanted to go, intended to go. But as the time approached the same concerns cropped up, parking and a crowd. Added to that night time driving. I stayed home. Again.

In and of themselves neither choice was a big deal. It’s the pattern, the bechira point pattern, that matters. These choices reinforce my inertia, my Covid hangover fear of crowds, my I like it here where everything is comfortable tendency.

Here’s another way to consider this. I’m making choices that make sense for this time of my life, for my vulnerability as a cancer patient, for my safety. I need to consider the valence to give these choices, don’t I? They are still bechira points. The question becomes whether they are moving me forward in my life or hindering me. Right now I’m not sure I can tell.

Making clear and healthy decisions drives our lives forward, advancing our capacity to love ourselves and to bear the burden of the other. It is the awareness of choice points that allow us to exercise free will. Otherwise we have become habitual, conditioned, acculturated.

 

 

 

 

 

Colorado, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Jefferson County, Judaism, Minnesota, Mountains, Plants, Shadow Mountain, The West, Travel, US History, Wild Neighbors

New Identities

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Spring and the Purim Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Yet more Snow! Today. Blue Colorado Sky with scattered white Cumulus Clouds. The Ancient Brothers. Hafar. K.L. S.F. Maine. Minnesota. Jackie in Bailey. Aspen Roots. Kissing Frogs. Movies. Nights. Days. Resurrection. A new life. The Shema. Full days. Travel. Dogs. Marilyn and Irv. The Socrates Cafe. Meeting new people.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Questions

One brief shining: Each month I drive eight minutes from Shadow Mountain to Aspen Park, going by the new bakery the Wicked Whisk and my old personal trainer at On the Move Fitness, past the physical therapists who got me through knee surgery, to the never in my time up here full suite of offices and business that contain the Pinball place, the massage folks, a live theater, Thai 202 which makes the wonderful Crying Tiger, and hop up the stairs to Aspen Roots where Jackie cuts my hair and tells me she loves me which I say back.

 

Long enough now. Long enough for relationships to have come and gone. And for some to remain. My tenth year on Shadow Mountain, begun last Winter Solstice. This is where I live, a Coloradan, a Westerner, a Mountain dweller. All distinct identities created by geography and geology and the human imprint on both.

As a Coloradan I inhabit a former red hate state, transitioning to a blue progressive state. As a Westerner, I have heeded Horace Greeley and gone west though not as a young man, but as an older one. Greeley, Colorado* is named after him. The Western identity has a good deal of complexity to it as does Mountain dweller.

To be a Westerner means to enjoy the benefits of manifest destiny, of the push west of the frontier, the railroads, those seeking gold, those fleeing law or custom or poverty in the the East. Of those who slaughtered the bison and the indigenous populations who lived here before we arrived. Those who clear cut the Front Range to build Denver and the many, far too many, hard Rock mines that pollute the Creeks, Streams, and Rivers here. The Western U.S. We who arrived later are not innocent. Yet no one is innocent. Either here or there.

What happens now. What we do today. Who we are in this moment matters, too. We are the stewards, the fellow travelers in this magical wide open place. We are responsible for what happens here as are the Wild Neighbors, the Forests and Streams. The descendants of all those who lived here long ago and all those who altered the landscape not so long ago. We must build the sustainable way for humans to live here for as long as human beings can live.

The Mountain Dweller is the most personal of these three identities and the most narrow, representing that place where I live and love and have my becoming. Each day my eyes open to the top of Shadow Mountain, to the taller prominence of Black Mountain, to the Lodgepoles and Aspens that cover them both. My lungs take in the scarce air of 8,800 feet as I set aside my nighttime oxygen canula. Often Mule Deer will be around, hunting for grass.

To go anywhere. To see Jackie at Aspen Roots. To get groceries at Safeway. To breakfast with friends. To the synagogue. To the doctor. I drive on Mountain roads. Two lanes, blind curves, sudden changes of altitude, vistas opening and disappearing.

Mountains whose names I do not know rise on either side, the Streams that drain them flowing often near the road itself. Sometimes I am up high and able to see for miles, then I go down into constricted views of only Rock and Trees. All the while, not far off the road Wild Neighbors living their wild lives. Beavers damming Streams, their Ponds. The Mountain Lion on a rocky shelf waiting for Elk or Mule Deer to walk below. In my own way I appear and disappear from view around curves, into a valley, only to suddenly reappear in Evergreen.

How have these three identities changed me from the sea level view of life that was my birthright as a Midwestern boy? I’ve become more of a spectator of life outside of the Mountains. Back east. Or on the coasts. They are not close to me, and their struggles seem far away. My world has become more focused. There are fewer people out here, less urbanization, less agriculture. In those senses the Colorado/Western/Mountain world was unfamiliar to me.

I live within a smaller world altogether. My fourth new identity, that of a Jew, makes this world, this more narrow and circumscribed world, a friendly and friend full one. As has the nine years plus of living here, making connections like Jackie. And now the Socrates Cafe. This is important because, like most of us who live up here, going down the hill is not appealing. And that’s where the bon vivant of urban life plays out. Even for those things I enjoy I have to factor in a long drive in and a long drive back. Most often the positive gain is too weak to justify the hassle.

For me. Today. This Colorado guy, this Western guy, this Mountain Man has found his spot and become one with it.

 

 

*Greeley began as the Union Colony of Colorado, which was founded in 1869 by Nathan C. Meeker, an agricultural reporter for the New York Tribune as an experimental utopian farming community “based on temperance, religion, agriculture, education and family values,” with the backing of the Tribune‘s editor Horace Greeley, who popularized the phrase “Go West, young man”.[7][8][9] wiki

Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

The Storm

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Spring and the Purim Moon

Finally solved the technical difficulties. Pictures of Shadow Mountain home during and after the storm. Somewhere between 3 and 4 feet of snow.


Arcosanti Bell

Garage and Loft

Looking toward Black Mountain Drive

Out my office window

Lower level, Snow well over windowsills

After

After

 

 

 

 

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism, Mountains, Mussar, Shadow Mountain

Not Taco Tuesday but Peopled Thursdays

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Imbolc and the Ancient Moon

Friday gratefuls: Quiet in my body. Beauty out my window. Calmness in my soul. Great Sol brightening a Shadow Mountain Morning. A day filled with friends and family. First, Diane and all the news from San Francisco. Then Tara and her happiness in Costa Rica. Mussar. Then, Luke and Leo. Finally, Joanne. Home as Great Sol disappeared behind this spinning World.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Conversation and its power to heal, inspire, deepen

One brief shining: Drove past the Alpine Rescue Team and its museum, over I-70 and past the County garage until the hand made sign warning of a hidden driveway, turned right onto a one lane dirt road with shoulders eroded from its steep incline, went on to a left turn, drove a bit more but not all the way up the driveway to avoid having to back down any further than I had to, got out, walked up to Joanne’s door and knocked.

 

Thursdays have morphed into my busiest day of the week. I start the day with one of my longest relationships, Diane, my first cousin, who lives on Lucky Street. Always a good way to start the day. She’s well informed about the world and our family. A good source of practical information, too. I learned a couple of weeks ago that she makes a mean lasagna.

For lunch I met my Hebrew teacher and friend, Tara, at the Marshdale Burger joint. We had lunch and discovered that my audiologist, Amy, has been her friend since she and Arjean moved up here over 25 years ago. Tara and Arjean came back a week or so ago from Costa Rica. She had pictures. Riding horses on the beach. Sunsets. A gated ex-pat community.

From Marshdale I drove to CBE for mussar. We’re beginning to wrassle with the strange, yet obvious to me idea that nothing is static, everything always becomes something new. The book we’re reading challenged us with Alfred North Whitehead’s idea of God as the creative advance into novelty. Not omnipotent. Not omnipresent. Not even necessarily sentient. Rather God as the impulse toward novelty in all things, always making all things new, always and everywhere. A God who must by definition change as the creation changes, becoming new, different in each moment with each “drop of experience.” His phrase.

Yet. Still a God in whom we can place our faith. We can hold in our lev confidence that this, too, will change and that if we work with it, we can help guide that change, maybe call it the moral arc of the universe, leading us toward justice, love, and, yes, Downtown Council of Minneapolis, compassion.

Think of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt. Before they could leave Egypt, they had to have faith that their situation could change. If they did not have that faith, Pharaoh did not need to use power to keep them to stay. They were unable to imagine, to dream, to feel a possible future free of Egypt’s oppression.

When this conversation finished up, Luke and Leo and I sat for an hour and caught up. Luke had planned to come up last Sunday but I had to say no after my lousy Saturday night. Luke was on his way up to Granby for a weekend at Rabbi Jamie’s place there. He had all of his art materials with him. Gonna be creative.

At 4 I went to Joanne’s and we had the usual far-ranging, deep conversation about the world and Judaism and liberalism and the slave trade and molluscs that spit out purple in the Aegean Sea, blue in Israel, and green in South America. She’s making me a tallit, a prayer shawl, and its fringes, called tzitzit, will be of blue yarn dyed with the recently rediscovered haustellum, a species of snail (actually a different species than the Indo-Pacific murex. New data.) that created the Tyrian purple of Roman and Greek fame and tehkelet in the waters off Israel, a sky blue. The murex of South America produces a green dye. It takes 120 pounds of snails to produce one gram of dye. So, precious.

As the sun disappeared and the always present night returned to visibility, I drove home, back up Brook Forest to Shadow Mountain.

 

 

Cinema and Television, Great Work, Politics, Shadow Mountain, US History, World History

The Rights of Nature

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Imbolc and the Ancient Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Tara. Joanne. Jamie. Ginny. Janice. Scott. Wild Mountain Ranch tenderloin. The Rights of Nature. New Zealand. Maori persistence. The Whanganui River. Its legal rights. Constitutions that protect the rights of nature. My Lodgepole companion. Tree huggers. Regenerative farming. Land as itself, not property. Shadow Mountain. Its rights.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Rights of Nature legal revolution

One brief shining: So I tried the Pomodoro method yesterday, work intensely for 25 minutes, 5 minute break, do that three times, take a 30 minute break, and found it helped me keep reading and not get distracted by oh, an e-mail, wait I’d like something to eat, maybe I should put that new light for zoom together; it’s for working on a longer project requires focus.

 

No. I’m not going back to the work world. I like to increase my productivity if I can though and will try different methods from time to time. Right now I’m trying to get this book, The Rights of Nature, read by Saturday for the Rights of Nature bookclub. Sponsored by the Rocky Mountain Land Library it’s in the sweet spot of my passion: our world and how we humans can live within it. Over time.

If you want to feel better about our species, you might find this book worth a read. It summarizes the theoretical (jurisprudential?) movement of the same name. This legal movement is active in many nations around the world including the United States and Canada. It tends to gain ground through individual lawyers and certain types of NGO’s like the Community Environmental Defense Fund and GARN, the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature, though in some places like Ecuador mass political movements have played a role, too.

New Zealand has made important advances in their legal system by giving personhood to the Whanganui River and a former National Park with the unusual name of Te Urewera. It means burnt penis in Maori. Apparently a chief rolled over onto a fire and died there. Both the Whanganui and Te Urewera now own themselves and have human advocates who can file lawsuits and speak on their behalf to the New Zealand government. Imagine if the Mississippi had the same rights as a corporation Which is also a legal person in the U.S. Or, Shadow Mountain. Or, Lake Minnetonka. Or, Lake Superior.

You might recognize that this movement has roots in the lifeway of indigenous people. It does. The Maori played a key role in changing New Zealand’s laws. A Maoriiwi,tribe, championed the Whanganui river personhood because the river is central to the iwi’s identity.

Gonna add certain of these NGO’s to Charlie’s List. I’m beginning to see a web of interrelated ideas, actions, and groups that are already at work building a sustainable human presence here on Earth. For the future of humans as a species this is work that has to be done and done now.

 

Just a moment: On Netflix. The anime series Blue-Eyed Samurai. This is a story of Shogunate Japan when Japan had closed itself off from the world. The plot follows a blue-eyed Japanese child, a pariah because of the child’s Portuguese father, one of four white men in Japan at the time. He raped the child’s mother. Revenge drives the story.

For anyone familiar with the Ukiyo-e woodblock prints of the same era in Japan, you will see the careful attention the animators have paid to them as they created this series. Japanese puppet theater also gets a central moment.

This is adult fare and a complicated, compelling story rendered in the most beautiful anime.

Judaism, Shabbat, Shadow Mountain

Prepping

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Imbolc and the Ancient Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Pan-psychism. The Sacred. The Divine. Consciousness. Chi. Prana. Ruach. Neshama. Soul. Life force. A Mountain Night. The Moon casting light on the Snow, shadows of Lodgepoles. The neighbor’s security light. Cassiopeia. The Great Bear. Pleiades. Orion. My friend. The Mule Deer and the Magpie. Love.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Shadow Mountain Night Sky

One brief shining: Each night I arrange my cache of blankets just so, switch on the electric one, wiggle in and wait for everything to warm up, while doing that I look up out my window to the northern sky and see Cassiopeia peek out from behind the same Lodgepole and find that comforting, some stability, predictability before entering sleep when, the rabbi’s say, your soul is taken from you which is why we Jews pray a prayer of gratefulness when we wake up, thanks for returning my soul. Resurrection.

 

Preparations for the B’nai Mitzvah service began yesterday. The four of us studying the morning service together, the liturgy we will use on Shavuot. I attended by Zoom, wish I’d gone in person. Everybody was there but me: Rabbi Jamie, Kat, Laura, Veronica, and Laura Berman. Kat, Laura, Veronica, and I will celebrate our b’nai mitzvahs together. B’nai mitzvah = children of the commandments. Reflecting of course its more usual occurrence at puberty.

At 77 I’m the oldest of the group by a good 10 years I’d guess. We’ve not exchanged ages. Initially, each of us would have had our ceremonies in Jerusalem, Veronica and me our conversions, Kat and Laura their bat mitzvahs. Now Veronica and I have been through the beit din and mikveh so we can proceed with our b’nai mitzvah.

My torah portion is coming along. I’ve gotten reading it down. With vowels. On the day of though the torah has no vowels, so there’s more learning yet to do. How to read the same text without the pronunciation aid of vowel markings.

Part of the preparation will involve choosing parts of the service we each will do in addition to our torah portions. I’m more than a bit nervous I might have to chant, or god forbid, sing. Not. My. Thing. I hope we can find a work around for me.

This preparation fit well into my shabbat practice which includes torah study and reading for my conversion classes with Jamie. Last night I lit the candles at 5:16 pm, five minutes later than the week before. I’ll have the blessing memorized by this week or next.

It may seem surprising that I’m as focused on ritual observance as I am, which is not very compared to what it could be. I find ritual does what it’s designed to do. Establishes a mood, separates a time or an event out from the mundane. After I light the candles, shabbat has begun for me. I settle into a quieter, more relaxed space. Immediately after I light the candles I go to my chair and read the week’s parsha. Perhaps some commentary. My shabbat has begun.

 

 

 

Denver, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism, Music, Shabbat, Shadow Mountain

Shtetl Life

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Imbolc and the Ancient Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: The Ark of the Covenant. The Tabernacle. The very detailed instructions from Hashem for it. Hoarfrost on the Lodgepoles. Thousands of flocked Trees within my field of vision. My companion Lodgepole glistens as Great Sol reappears on this cold Mountain Morning. Kai, Seoah’s nephew. His writing. Asia. Fan Kuan. Taiwan.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Hoarfrost

One brief shining: Family reaches across oceans, over national boundaries and time zones, does not diminish with distance: Mark writes from Hafar in the desert of the Arabian Peninsula, Mary from Kuala Lumpur, I see Seoah and my son, their dog Murdoch, in their 12th floor apartment in Songtan, Korea, I talk to Diane once a week from San Francisco, all these precious people so, so far away.

 

Breakfast yesterday with Alan and Joanne. Always a treat. I handed over Lamb to Joanne. She’s also reading, she says carefully, my copy of Emily Wilson’s Odyssey. We discussed Joanne’s upcoming warts and all early history of CBE which she presents next Wednesday night. She’s well known in the congregation for her wit and rightly so. Should be an entertaining experience.

Alan’s daughter, Francesca, who lives and works in Manhattan, returns to Denver Monday. She’ll be doing some work here, schmoozing donors for the Jewish charity she works for. I can’t remember its name. Something to do with organs and organ transplants, I think. Then on Sunday she will perform with a trio in the second of Alan and Cheri’s Inspire concerts held in their penthouse apartment on the 38th floor of Inspire Towers. All of the condos from the 38th floor to the 42nd received the appellation, penthouse. Marketing, eh?

Joanne and I will head down to what she calls the pandemonium for a second time to hear Francesca. Joanne tutored Francesca for her bat mitzvah and loved working with her. These are the sort of intricate and intimate ties that make synagogues so personal, more like a village. Or, a shtetl.

That may be, come to think of it, what appeals to me so much about CBE. It has characteristics familiar to me from growing up in a small town. I know some of the people very well. I know a larger number casually, some on sight only, yet there are times when see each other, acknowledge each other. The total number is not so big that I feel distance, at least not much.

Very similar to walking downtown in 1950’s/60’s Alexandria. I’d see folks I knew well. I’d wave at the parents of kids I knew. Some store owners, clerks. We were important to each other whether we knew it or not. Our faces, our bodies, even our repeated locations added stability and confidence to our day-to-day lives. We lived embedded lives, lives where we were seen and known. Sure, this has its downsides, too. Folks gettin all up in your business. Having to interact with folks you despised or, worse, that despised you for some reason. Perhaps forgotten. Never feeling off stage. Yet I’ve found over the years that I gravitate back to contexts that provide this sort of experience.