Category Archives: Shadow Mountain

Asia, Family, Health, Mountains, Plants, Politics, Shadow Mountain, US History

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Samain and the Yule Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Rabbi Jamie. Ginny and Janice. Luke and Leo. Torah. Aviva Zornberg. Art Green. Rami Shapiro. My Lodgepole Companion and their Companions. My son. Shabbat. Bereshit. Brother Mark in Bangkok. Mary in Oz. All Dogs. That Buck.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Perception

Kavannah: Joy and Enthusiasm (zerizut)

One brief shining: What’s that, over there by the neighbors, my eyes caught movement in the Lodgepoles, Branches moving, but no Wind, wait, wait, wait, oh, yes, there he is, that eight point Mule Deer Buck, the one whose photograph I posted; he comes often, always majestic, proud.

 

Often I am reminded of our hominid ancestors, how their life on the veldt trained them to pick up on the slightest motion, the smallest movements of Grass, twitches in Leaves. A something out of sight, almost, at the very periphery of our vision. My ancestral brain lights up as it did yesterday when I saw a disturbance, not in the force, but in the Lodgepoles next to my neighbors.

First check. Are other Branches moving? Could be Wind. No. No Wind. What then? Nothing was visible. It was moderately high up from the ground. Maybe a neighbor? No. The movement seemed to press forward without stopping and a human would have been scratched, bothered, maybe hurt. Wait.

I stood there at my kitchen window. A spot where Kate and I still look out to our front on occasion. As we used to when she was alive. She would have wanted to see this. I waited and in his slow, purposeful way the Buck emerged, his rack having caused the Lodgepole Branches to sway. This is his Land, his Mountain. And he displayed that with each careful, but not hesitant step he took. Unlike the Does that come he did not scan his environment often, confident in his years and his weapons.

Thanks again, Kate, for finding this spot on Shadow Mountain. In the Rocky Mountains and the Arapaho National Forest. Kate, always Kate.

 

Just a moment: Following the Korean weirdness with less detachment than the usual American. Daughter-in-law Seoah has expressed her contempt for the current President, Yun Suk Yeol, comparing him to long red tie guy. She’s not alone among her compatriots as can be seen in the many photographs from Seoul featuring protesters in the streets.

Also my son works alongside Korean military personnel. They’re not ones likely to get called out to enforce martial law, but they are under the overall command of the South Korean President.

Yun survived his impeachment vote, but only just. His political power is gone. Will be interesting to see what happens next.

 

Also following the continuing uproar over Brian Thompson’s murder and the virulence toward the whole health care system it has unleashed. Heather Cox Richardson’s post of December 5th placed the shooting in a long historical context which included this paragraph:

“Today provided a snapshot of American society that echoed a similar moment on January 6, 1872, when Edward D. Stokes shot railroad baron James Fisk Jr. as he descended the staircase of New York’s Grand Central Hotel. The quarrel was over Fisk’s mistress, Josie, who had taken up with the handsome Stokes, but the murder instantly provoked a popular condemnation of the ties between big business and government.” Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American, December 6th, 2024

Once again, I condemn the taking of a human life. Yet. I also hope that a cleansing movement might arise from this shooting, a total restructuring of our oh so broken health care system. So many lives end too soon, come to debilitation because our health care system lacks transparency, empathy, and rationality. And again, I remind us that violence does not only come from a gun. It can also come from a letter in the mail, we have denied this procedure, that medication.

Denver, Family, Fourth Phase, Shadow Mountain

Thanksgiving Down the Hill

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Samain and the 2% crescent of the Moon of Growing Darkness

Friday gratefuls: Water Grill. The Spiny Lobsters. Fresh Oysters. Thanksgiving with Ruth and Gabe. Jen. Gus. LoDo. Denver. Down the Hill. Shadow Mountain Home. Ruby. With her Snow shoes on. Cold night. Living alone. Kate, always Kate. Talking to her. Ruth potentially on the Dean’s List. Her next semester classes. A history minor.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Gabe’s hug

Kavannah: Perseverance and chesed

One brief shining: Only a brief while before it swam in a large aquarium with many other Spiny Lobsters, then it boiled in a pot, got cleaved in half, plated with liquid butter and coleslaw, given to a server, and delivered to my bibbed presence where I took the small fork and deftly lifted most of its meat out of one half, dipped a chunk in butter, and the great circle of life went on.

Straight outta the waters of Southern California.

 

The Water Grill. A fancy, and by that I mean expensive, Sea food restaurant. It has a Seahorse sculpture over its door, but no signage visible from the street. My second Thanksgiving in a row eating a Thanksgiving meal down the Hill in Denver.

With two downtown Thanksgiving’s literally under my belt (ha) I’m curious about the number of people who no longer cook a meal for friends and/or family. The reason? Both times all street parking has been full and the restaurants I saw had packed tables.

The Bib

The Water Grill has many tables and booths, a big place with glass buoys made into chandeliers, old boat propellers and coral behind the booths. Full. And stayed full over the two hours Ruth, Gabe, Jen, and I ate there.

Don’t know about the others but my excuse is I no longer have the stamina, the standing in one place capacity to cook a full meal. When the bill came, I paid it, thinking about what I had really purchased. Sure, a meal. But that was secondary. What I really paid for was the two hours spent eating by Ruth’s side, talking to her about college, talking to Gabe. Jen.

Remember that Thanksgiving we ate at the Water Grill? When I was a freshman at UC-Boulder? We had Oysters and Spiny Lobsters! Oh, right. I remember.

I’ll remember the sudden and unexpected Bear hug I got from Gabe, from behind, as I got up to put my coat on. Heartfelt. And, from Ruth after that. A brief hug with Jen.

Brought to mind the Ira Progoff seminar in Tucson, April of 2014, when I realized we needed to move to Colorado to support the kids. The fruits of that decision as well as my decision to stay here, not move to Hawai’i. Which I could easily do now if I wanted.

Love is a verb and it becomes real, Velveteen Rabbit real, in moments like these.

Drove home into the Mountains as Mother Earth turned her other face toward Great Sol, the early Night fully fallen when I pressed the garage door opener and drove Ruby into her stall.

 

 

 

Humanities, Politics, Shadow Mountain, US History

An Ontological Oncologist

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Tuesday gratefuls: Marilyn and Irv. Paul. Mark in K.L. Gettin’ stuff done. Snow. Cold. Back to working out. Aches to prove it. My Lodgepole Companion. That young Buck with the spike Antlers. Visiting again. Mary getting ready for Summer. My son, Seoah, and Murdoch. Thanksgiving in Songtan. His generosity. The Water Grill. 2:15. Ruth, Gabe, Jen, and me.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Thanksgiving

Kavannah: Perseverance and chesed

One brief shining: Opening a book and beginning to read starts a journey into the unknown, what if this paragraph changes my life, oh no, he didn’t, picked up one yesterday recommended by NYT conservative columnist, Ross Douthat, a dialogue between Olympian Gods favoring an idealistic, almost Bishop Berkeleyan, metaphysic in which all is mind or forms as mind pushes itself into forms. Or something like that.

 

Got my house cleaned yesterday. Ana wielding her dust cloth, vacuum, and other tools of her trade to give me that spiffy home feeling. Not cheap but Furball Cleaning, owned by my friend Marina Harris, shows up and on time, and does better than average work. Hard to calculate how much psychic difference a clean house makes, but it’s a lot.

 

That book I opened yesterday is All Things Are Full of Gods: The Mysteries of Mind and Life. Haven’t read a philosophy text in a while. This one is thick, thick, thick. As near as I can tell David Bentley Hart wants to make the case for something like Bishop Berkeley’s: Esse est percipi. To be is to be perceived. A solution, Hart believes, that could solve the four hundred old mistake in Western culture most often blamed on Descartes: The mind-body split.

I agree with Hart’s definition of the problem. And, how you define is how you solve so we’re halfway to agreement from the start. I might even agree with a version of his solution, but not one that ends up providing a comfortable berth for old fashioned Thomistic theology. Which is where I suspect he is headed.

My agreement with Hart lies in his insistence on a unitary metaphysic, it’s all one, and a rejection, because of this, with dualisms as final expressions of the nature of reality. My difference with him so far? I suspect him of having a static ontology. I may be wrong about that though. I’m a Whiteheadian, Jewish fan of the notion of all becoming new, every moment, in every instant.

BTW: This might be the place for Paul’s addition to my stable of oncologists: urological, radiation, and medical. Paul thought I should add an ontological oncologist. Perfect. Static ontologies are the cancers of a process metaphysic.

I know. I’m sorry. But it’s what I’m thinking about today.

 

Just a moment: So. 25% on Mexico and Canada. 10% on China. Tariffs. First day in office. Dictator day if I recall. Whatever. As the teenagers say. Or, said. Probably a while ago.

As a seed-keeper, I’ll continue reading Thoreau and Emerson, Dickinson and Melville. Madison and Monroe. Throw in a little Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

 

Fungi, Great Wheel, Jefferson County, Mountains, Plants, Shadow Mountain, The West, Wild Neighbors

Visitation

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Shabbat gratefuls: Alan and Joanne. Book recommendations. Breakfast at the Parkside. Medical oncologist appointment. Mark getting stuff done. Mary. Her help. Family huddle. Distance. Zoom. Saudi. K.L. Oz. Korea. Rocky Mountains. San Francisco. Life in the age of instant, visual, very long distance communication.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: A simcard and a call

Kavannah: Perseverance

One brief shining: Walking on the black asphalt of my driveway to get the mail while three Mule Deer Does graze nearby, glancing up from time to time, the first year Buck with his spike of an antler looking around, eyeing me, then the does, not eating as often, his role; yesterday, opening my front door and seeing these two, the Doe right by the door and this mature Buck a bit further away, greeting them, taking their pictures.

 

 

 

Mountain spirits continue to visit me. The yin energy so evident in the soft demeanor of the Doe, the pensive and a bit melancholy look in her eye. The Buck’s confident yang gaze at her, his 8 points ready for either his or her defense. Reminding me that I, too, have a Doe and Buck. A confident, ready for the battles of the psyche and the world Buck with 77 points and a vulnerable, sad Doe that looks at the Buck within and knows his vulnerability, too.

Wild Neighbors come to my yard unbidden to eat Grass still green under the white cover of Snow, or the Bearberry, a low growing Evergreen plant that spreads over many sections of my unlandscaped property. The Mule Deer always have a gentle presence, seeming to know that even the strange two-legged means them no harm; that they don’t have to scurry away. I vacillate between being excited to greet them, telling them to enjoy the Grass and other food and wanting to chase them away, make them afraid of humans. Usually my greeting instinct wins the encounter.

I don’t approach them, but I speak in a normal tone of voice, welcoming them and assuring them that sharing food with them is one of my life’s great joys.

Some people think and I sometimes say that I live alone, but it is not true. Mule Deer and Elk. Moose. Mountain Lions and Black Bears. Beaver. Marmots and Squirrels. Corvids: Magpies, Ravens, Crows. Fox. Raccoon. Skunk. Brook Trout and Brown Trout. All live here in these Rocky Mountains. We try, all of us, to live harmoniously because harmony best enables us to go about our time here as we want.

This is not to mention, of course, the Lodgepoles, the Aspen, the Willows and Dogwood, Bunch Grass, Bearberry, White Pine, Ponderosa lower down. All the photosynthesizers, the light-eaters. And the Mountain Creeks and Streams with their fish. Amphibians. Fungi. The whole blooming buzzing confusion of a Mountain eco-system.

All held in the loving and stolid embrace of Mountains and their Valleys. My home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Health, Politics, Shadow Mountain

This and That

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Friday gratefuls: Shabbat. Alan and Joanne. Australia and New Zealand. Richard Powers. Rick. A large mussar gathering. Treyf. The New York Times. The Washington Post. Axios. Colorado Sun. Ground News. Nexus. Almost done. Resistance. Working. Medical oncologist today.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Family

One brief shining: Staring into the abyss, the abyss staring back. A love story.

 

Yet another oncology appointment. In Littleton this time, no longer within visual distance of Swedish Hospital, its tenth floor where Kate died. Another blood draw. Far less angst now. I know the direction we’re headed. More orgovyx and erleada. More blood draws. Maybe a replacement at some point for erleada.

Cancer, as Scrooge might say: Bah, humbug.

 

Tis the week before Thanksgiving and all through the house no one’s talking politics, not even a mouse. Not a problem for me since my Thanksgiving will involve Ruth, Gabe, and Jen. Gloating predicted to be a problem for red visitors to blue homes. Just you wait sentences spilling from the mouths of blue guests to red homes. Whatever happened to this once upon a time refuge for glutting instead of gloating, for football instead of nah nah ne nah nah.

Maybe Native Americans will smile.

 

Had my septic system pumped yesterday. It had been a while. My equivalent of your city sewer system. Since 1994 I’ve lived off the city water and sewer grid. A leech field. A well for water. Had to replace the pump a few years back. Not cheap. Neither was pumping out the septic tanks. That means, BTW, I haven’t had fluoride in my drinking water for thirty years.

In Colorado, when you sell your home with a septic system, you have to pay $800 or so to have it certified as functional. Gives the term deep dive a different inflection.

 

Just a moment: So. Was Gaetz a Trojan horse to let Hegseth and Gabbard in? Was this the plan all along? Cunning, baffling, and powerful. This red tie guy and his minions. Some see Gaetz’s withdrawal as an early win for the Senate. I’m not so sure.

 

How bout that Netanyahu? Now an indicted war criminal. He’ll have to seek asylum in the homeland of his buddy, 47. Maybe get sanctuary in the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem? He’s got indictments at home, too. Like you know who. What a pair.

 

I stand by my Seed-Keeper mode for the next four years. Some of us have to remind others that this is an experiment, these Untied States. No, not a misspelling. If we’re not vigilant, the constituent parts of the United States might well become untied. And, no, not even his long red tie will be able to put us back together again.

Perhaps this Thanksgiving instead of party politics we might try to find common ground on what freedom means. Liberty. On how different paths might lead to justice for all.

And to all a good night.

Asia, Family, Health, Politics, Shadow Mountain

Could Get Ugly

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Monday gratefuls: Ancient Brothers and chesed. Coffee. Coffee mugs. From the Gunflint Trail. From Kate and mine’s 25th anniversary. With Dogs. From the Polar Express. World’s Greatest Grandpa. Southern Poverty Law Project. Memories in ceramics.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Another wakin’ up mornin’

Kavannah: Perseverance

One brief shining: Turn on the coffee grinder with dark roast beans, fill the coffee pot with filtered water, tighten the lid on the pot, separate out one filter for the coffee basket, measure two-thirds of a cup of ground beans, place the basket in its holder, pour the water into the reservoir, close the lid. Minutes later. Ahhh.

 

Morning rituals like making coffee. Saying the Shema. Touching the mezuzah. Breakfast. Reading the news or a morning book. Waiting a half an hour before exercise. Get my day off to a good start. The golden hours from waking up, around 6 these days, until 2 or 3. A life.

 

In Nexus Harari points to stories as those things that can connect us, many, many of us, in a shared enterprise: family, state, nation, passenger on spaceship Earth. Becoming human. I agree with him. Even family, which we take as a given, easy to define and know depends on the kinship story that our cultures teach us. In the U.S. we have pared down the family through our emphasis on individualism. The nuclear family tends to be the hub until the kids get older, then even family can narrow further to a couple or a single person. All held together by increasingly thin cords of memory and affection.

Ruth on her own at UC-Boulder. Gabe and Jen. Me on Shadow Mountain. My son and Seoah and Murdoch in Korea. Mary in Southeast Asia. Kate and Jon dead.

This frays the old patterns of families caring for their aged memories. This is a crisis, too, even in traditional societies like China and Japan where birth rates have plummeted, marriage is suspect, and adult children there often want the kind of freedom American culture offers. Especially mobility and choosing their own partners.

I’m lucky in that Kate left me enough money to sustain my life on my own. That I have good, close friends here and far away. I can manage. But my circumstances are not shared by many, perhaps not most of my age peers. Culture changes more slowly than jobs do. Than desire and ability to live a life of your own making does.

Again, my family. Mary and Mark in Asia and Saudi Arabia for much of their adult lives. Me in Minnesota, then the Rockies. Far from the Sycamores on the Wabash. Far from Madison County. Alexandria. As my analyst Jon Desteian put it: an atomized family.

All this now put in the alembic of an unserious man and his many hatreds, his colleagues yearning to reshape reality in an even more atomized direction, hoping to dismantle the New Deal, strip away the thin gruel offered by Medicare, Social Security.

Could get ugly.

 

 

Art and Culture, Asia, Family, Fourth Phase, Friends, Great Wheel, Judaism, Korea, Mountains, Shadow Mountain

Herme’s Journey

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Sunday gratefuls: Tom’s safe trip. My son, Seoah, and Murdoch coming January. Then, a trip to Korea in May. Followed by the Jang family visit here in late summer. Snow. Whippets. Irish Wolfhounds. German Wirehairs. Akitas. Breeds I love. Asia. Korea. Malaysia. Australia. Thailand. Cambodia. Saudi Arabia.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Leftist politics

Kavannah: Perserverance

One brief shining: A Mountain retreat, a home on granite, gneiss, and schist, raised above sea level by 8,800 feet, overlooking Black Mountain with its ski runs, Lodgepoles and Aspen colonies, in the Arapaho National Forest and drained by Maxwell Creek to the north and North Turkey Creek to the south, home to my day-to-day life in these middle years of the 2020’s.

 

On a lighter note today. Current TV favorites: Tracker, Sealteam, Fire Country. Reading anew Nexus by Harari. Also, Emily Wilson’s translation of the Iliad. Best movie I watched recently: hmm. None come to mind. Oh, Late Night with the Devil. Weird. I can no longer understand dialogue in movie theaters so I have to watch what’s available on streaming services with closed captions. Favorite meal last week, filet mignon with Tom at Evoke 1923 last Friday.

Herme’s Journey. Still on this path. I’ve finished another reading of Ovid. Also, the Odyssey. Am in the fourth book of the Iliad. I’m reading the parsha of the week most weeks along with commentaries. Also books that challenge me like Nexus. Keeping mental knives sharp.

My commitment to regular times with family and friends has increased. I zoom, breakfast, lunch, and on the rare occasion eat dinner with them. Also expanding my circle of friends, not by much, but adding Veronica for example.

The lunar calendar of Judaism meshes well with my pagan sensibilities and my focus on the Great Wheel. Trying to integrate the two in meaningful ways. An ongoing project.

Am working on a new meditative practice, focusing on a work of art for ten minutes or more, then reading art historical material about it. An NYT idea.

And more. All this is to stimulate, reinforce my lifelong journey. See what bubbles up.

 

Just a moment: Talked with my son and Seoah yesterday. There is a sweetness, a visceral joy in seeing them, hearing them. My heart lifts and my sense of well-being, already good, increases. Murdoch hears my voice, but does nothing. Nothing to smell here, so meh.

That sense of well-being. I’ve noticed Luke and Jamie initiate hugs when we see each other. There’s something about that that fills my soul, too. Ron and Rich. Tom. Ruth, Gabe. I hope the others feel the same way about my participation. Hugs are a way of claiming intimacy and saying yes to it.

Will not know for some time what the most abhorrent of adventures will look like, feel like. Cabinet picks? An unserious man taking an unserious approach to the job in the whole world that has the most economic and military power.

Committed to the seeds of decency, honesty, love for the other. Still and always.

 

Colorado, Dogs, Family, Friends, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, The Move, The West

The Doggie Drive

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Samain and the Full Moon of Growing Darkness

Shabbat gratefuls: Tom. Conversation with him. His kindness. The Truth. A CBD ointment for aching joints, pain. Worked on my trigger fingers. Happy Camper. Evoke 1923. Mt. Rosalie covered in Snow. 13,575′. Long tie guy and his in your face appointments.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Friendship

Kavannah: Perserverance

One brief shining: Sitting at the table where I found my pearl, in what is no longer the long time Bistro now the Evoke 1923, Rebecca took our orders, delivered a tasty filet mignon tartare, a beet salad, and our entrees: duck for Tom and filet mignon for me while we struggled to hear, especially after the piano player started up, two old guys trying to parse the future of A.I. largely overwhelmed by the clink of silverware on porcelain, happy chatter from the table of six, the limits of hearing aids reached and exceeded.

 

It’s nearing 10 years since the long doggie drive of December 2014. Tom and I together with Rigel, Vega, and Kepler on I-90, then I-76, finally 285 to Shadow Mountain. 15 hours or so of conversation, attention to dogs and the eventual end of the Great Plains where they wash up against the hogbacks of a precursor Mountain Range to the Rockies. That was the first phase of the actual move, Kate arriving later with Gertie and that van we had packed in Andover.

On the Winter Solstice of that year our moving van came and promptly got stuck in a ditch. Eduardo and friends pulled it out. Snow fell and the temperatures hovered around zero. Not willing to try again the van driver took the whole load off Shadow Mountain to a more level spot, rented two u-haul trucks and shuttled the whole truckload from some spot on Hwy. 73. This lasted far into the night with dogs and movers crossing and intersecting.

From that day until the day she died Kate said she felt like she was on vacation living up here. Six and a half years of vacation. A good retirement for her. Glad she didn’t see the MAGmA overflow decency and justice. She would have been angry and disappointed.

Over the course of those years I’ve become Harari, a man of the mountains, now wedded to this place through location and intense experiences. Many, many memories. Some difficult, sure, but also many more intimate, fun, bound up with the wild nature of this place, with Judaism, Kate’s final gift to me.

Mountains. If I have my way-Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise-I’ll live out my final days here, too.

 

Just a moment: A life lived from, say mid-20th century to the first quarter or so of the 21st, has already passed, as few lives ever do, from one millennium to the next, the second to the third. We’ve also seen what may be the end of a political era begun under FDR. I’d call it whiplash, but the change has been more gradual than the crack of a whip. A new world is being born, but despite long tie guy’s next fast-food adventure on Pennsylvania Avenue, neither he nor his minions will define it.

This new world will emerge from the tension between the mindless governance of, as Kamala Harris rightly said, an unserious man, and cultures political, artistic, and economic which my generation assumed to be stable. Oh, my.

 

Aging, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism, Shadow Mountain

May you feel safe and secure

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Sunday gratefuls: Great Sol warming the Snow until it rises into Air. Lodgepole Branches almost cleared. Colorado Winters. A backyard though with 20″ or so piled around the Lodgepole Trunks. Headlines and shaking heads. Gathering ourselves for what must come next.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Jackie

Kavannah: contentment and joy

One brief shining: Studied Torah yesterday online with Jamie and Luke and Irene, Avram and Sarai leaving Ur of the Chaldeas and heading off into the unknown, Avram’s thoughts gathered from wondering about the Stars and their origins pushing them out of a place where Gods had faces and could be carried from place to place into a place and an encounter with a world and life unknown to them.

 

Yes, a dangerous, felonious, misogynist who runs with a crowd of would be Kluxers has changed again the double meaning of the White House. A brute fact as philosophers and scientists alike would say. Yes, he has shown the world a decided and never gone shadow side of American life. Some of us fear the other and when pressed hard enough by circumstance dire or perceived to be so we allow it to surface, even take control.

In this election both sides. Both sides feared. Feared the other and allowed our shadow sides to guide us through the political maneuvering that led to Nov. 5, 2024. Those of us who thought long red tie guy was the problem let our fear out as scorn, as dismissal, as heads shaking. No, it can’t happen. They’re too stupid and he’s too venal.

The other side feared us, too. Because they thought we might win again, continue pressing on them the things they feared. Symbolized by trans folks, LBGT folk, women who demanded control over their bodies and their lives, strangers piling across the borders hoping for some of what they held onto so tenuously.

The oligarchs had lessons in Europe about how to play their instruments. The cello of immigrants diluting and cheating. The oboe of women’s traditional roles. The drums of racial purity. The piccolo of blood and soil nationalism. Violin cadenzas of sexual normality.

And we stood aside, complacent in our truth. Holding onto disparagement of the ignorant others. Wrapped in our cloaks of decency and righteousness. In that sense true elites. An aristocracy bred of our ignorance of the economic lives of others.

We ignored economic hardship of those essential workers. Remember them? The grocery clerk. The convenience store worker. The bus driver. The Amazon warehouse employee. The police officer and the snowplow driver. The former factory worker turned Walmart greeter or holding down a McJob.

And we lost our way.

I hope the seed-keepers among us can call to mind the mother aghast at her supermarket receipt. The commuter who cringes at the cost of yet another tank full of gasoline. The renter whose housing costs rises into a choice between home and food. The anguish of one facing illness only to become burdened by regular unpayable bills showing up in the mail.

Long red tie guy has promised to cure these ills. He will not. He cannot because his fealty is to his narrow slice of peers, people who do not have these problems. He only played the Piper’s tune. The Billionaires March instead is what he hears and follows.

There are miles to go. Miles to go before we sleep and as we walk each other home let those miles be filled with love, justice, and compassion. Or, as a group of my friends presciently claimed years ago: Leadership.

 

 

 

Aging, Asia, Fourth Phase, Health, Judaism, Mountains, Seek-Keepers, Shadow Mountain, US History

An American Sannyasa

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Friday gratefuls: Snow, and more Snow on the way. Harris and Waltz. Liberals. And, radicals. Politics. Changing in big ways. History. Always moving and shifting. The One, taking it all in and forming a new world. Cold nights. Diane. Tom. Irv. Paul. My son. Seoah. Murdoch. Shadow Mountain. A Snow globe week.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Purpose

Kavannah for election week: contentment and joy

One brief shining: May have seemed odd to you that I chose contentment and joy as my intentions for election week, that most fractious and unhappy of weeks for one side or another, may have seemed odd especially to have continued with them after the elevation of an anti-liberal mean of our collective culture; yet, I have found them good for me, instead of being angry about a situation now beyond my reach, I have been able to draw to myself a lesson about my life’s purpose.

 

A while back I borrowed the idea of a fourth phase of life from the Hindus.* I don’t define it in the same way, but I find the idea of a stage after retirement-our version of the forest dweller stage-makes sense.

The commonality between my view and Hinduism’s lies in death and acceptance. Readiness for death and seeing it as not only somewhat imminent, but as welcome.

This week I not only learned that the orange one will be our next President. I also learned that my cancer is not aggressive, and not hormone resistant. Which gives me a longer possible lifespan. And, I’m glad. Even so. Death lies over the horizon, but not nearly as far as it used to.

I would not know if I was fully enlightened and I’m not detached. I may have some wisdom but that’s for others to know, not me.

The rise of a populist anti-liberal agenda, a rise that came with unexpected force, has clarified my fourth phase. Though I am a Forest dweller and though that remains a central part of who I am, I passed, as I said a week or so ago, into Sannyasa when diagnosed with prostate cancer. Over the almost ten years since then I’ve been conflicted at a core level.

Some of the conflicts. In but not of Judaism. No longer an activist but feeling like I should be one. Wanting to hike in the mountains but being constrained first by shortness of breath, now by a gimpy back too. Wanting to travel more. But. See s.o.b and back. Learning to live without Kate and without dogs.

Resolutions. Converted to Judaism. Election 2024 has made see my role in culture and politics. I am a seed-keeper, not an activist anymore. (If this isn’t cultural appropriation. I hope not because it fits so well.) Hiking and traveling. Can do some with good drugs and patience, but it’s never gonna be easy for me again. I have lived into a life without Kate and without dogs. Difficult, of course. At times it still is. Yet I have a Herme Harari Israel life defined now:  An introverted Mountain man who struggles with God. However you want to fill the God bucket. Or, even if you want to live it empty.

So I will continue to write. Continue to read. Continue to study mussar and be with my CBE friends. Continue to love them and my other friends and family. All this is enough for me. My fourth phase. An American Sannyasa.

 

*Brahmacharya The student stage, when one focuses on learning and gaining knowledge. This stage is the time before puberty and up until marriage.

Grihastha The householder stage, when one is occupied with family and household matters. This stage is when one starts a family and maintains a healthy marriage.

Vanaprastha The forest dweller stage, when one retires from business as usual.

Sannyasa The stage of renunciation, when one is wise and fully enlightened, detached from everything, and ready for death. A Sannyasi is a religious ascetic who has renounced the world by performing their own funeral and abandoning all claims to social or family standing.