Category Archives: Plants

Aging, Anoka County, Coronavirus, Denver, Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, Friends, Great Wheel, Health, Jefferson County, Kabbalah, Mountains, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Our Land and Home, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, The West, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

At Her Funeral

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Beltane and the Moon of Sorrow

Thursday gratefuls: Gauze sponges. Wax o-rings for Kate’s leakage. Stoma powder. The chance to care for Kate. A forty degree morning on Shadow Mountain after 92 degrees in Denver on Monday. That silly Rigel, not acting her age. At all. Kep, the serious. Dog groomer today. The Kabbalah class. Folks liking my presentation. Workout yesterday.

Pine pollen season. Yellow streaks on the asphalt. Pollen lying on wooden tables, adding some color. The winds rushing through the Lodgepoles, shaking loose enough for a yellow storm. Part of the turning of the Great Wheel. That I could do without personally. But, how would we get baby Lodgepoles otherwise? Sneeze and bear it.

Wildfire danger remains high. Dry, Windy. Yesterday the Humidity in the loft was 2%, outside 6%. The arid West. A positive note. It was 80 degrees up here and a slowly rotating fan was all I needed to stay cool. Rigel, we’re not in Andover anymore.

A woman in my kabbalah class wants my Grammar of Holiness read at her funeral, “…whenever that may be.” A strong positive reaction to it from the class. Rabbi Jamie’s going to reprint in the synagogue newsletter, the Shofar.

Always thought my reimagining faith project would be a book, a radical theology with chapters and footnotes and acknowledgements. Nope, two pages. There it is. It feels said to me. We’ll see if I continue to feel that way.

After reading several pieces about Covid and underlying medical conditions, Kate and I have decided to become coronavirus hermits. Our hermitage, Shansin, on top of Shadow Mountain. We’ll ride it out with as little flesh and blood contact as we can stand. Would sound bleak, but Zoom helps, and we’re introverts, happy with each other, ourselves, and our dogs.

And, given recent news, I will add: white, privileged, financially secure, and aging with good medical care.

Still no word from the Singapore government. Seoah may fly there next Tuesday. May not. Covid has impacted lives in so many different ways. This is just one of them, but it’s personal, right here.

From Shadow Mountain, where the sun is rising and the morning is cool.

Dogs, Family, Friends, Health, Jefferson County, Mountains, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, The West, Third Phase

Sanshin Speaks

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Beltane and the Moon of Sorrow

Sunday gratefuls: Two Elk bucks, eating dandelions in our backyard. Kep, stepping on my eye in his surprise at seeing them. Seoah, bleary eyed, “I got video!” Sanshin reminding me of the reassurance he sent last June, just before I started radiation therapy. Reassuring me now. Wild neighbors. Who go where they want, when they want. For whom humans are at best a nuisance. For my heart, which follows my wild neighbors

Kep likes to get up, then lay down on me in the morning. It’s part of our getting up ritual. When he does, though, he can see out our bedroom window. This morning he let out a bark and lunged forward, putting his right foot on my right eye. Ouch. Good thing eyelids move fast.

As I let Rigel and him outside, I saw what had caused Kep to react. Two Elk bucks stood on our drainage field, eating dandelions. Talk about the web of life. They are huge, as big as the Cow Moose I saw last week, perhaps a bit bigger.

Neither Rigel nor Kep barked at them. The two Dogs and the two Elk eyed each other. Kep and Rigel went off to pee and wander around the yard. The Elk continued eating dandelions. Elk Bucks, healthy ones anyway, can fend off Wolves and Mountain Lions, so Kep and Rigel were no threat to them. Kep and Rigel seemed to get that, too.

At first I thought these couldn’t be the two who came last June 17th to reassure me before my radiation therapy started. One of those had only one antler. Then. Oh. Yeah, the horns grow back each year. Could well be the same two, back to their secret stash of the yellow flower. Right now they’re resting among the lodgepoles in the northeast corner of our property. Last year they stayed the night.

Yes, the radiation has been on my mind. It was a year ago this month that my imaging work was complete, the new diagnosis finished. I knew the radiation would start, but I wasn’t sure quite when.

These two Elk, come again for our dandelions, have also come again to soothe the part of me that remains anxious, uncertain. No definitive news on the effectiveness of the radiation until November. Dave died last week and a needleworker friend of Kate’s died last week, too, also of glioblastoma. Cancer always wants to kill you.

Commentary on Religion, Coronavirus, Health, Judaism, Mountains, Mussar, Our Land and Home, Plants, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

A Red Flag

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Beltane and the Corona Lunacy II

Thursday gratefuls: Kate, sewing. Seoah, laughing. Rigel, sleeping hard. Kep, eager to get up, get breakfast. 34 degrees this morning. High Winds, low humidity, lots of sunshine=red flag warning. Masks. The Lodgepole blown over yesterday. Equanimity. Mussar. Kabbalah class yesterday. Missed opportunities for exercise. Dave and Deb.

High Winds yesterday. Up to 40 mph, gusting lasted most of the day yesterday and Tuesday. Both were red flag days. Occurred to me that these are the original red flags. When they show up, those of us surrounded by the Arapaho National Forest pay attention. Not a metaphor.

A Lodgepole pine blew over in our backyard. Pines tend to have shallow roots. Fortunately it blew over away from our house. It could have hit the upstairs balcony had it gone south instead of north. An unintended consequence of fire mitigation, I think. Lodgepoles grow close together up here, an area clear cut for Denver early last century. I removed this Individual’s companions, left it to deal with the gusts of Wind all on its own.

Gotta get out the limbing ax. There’s other limbing work to be done on Trees felled last fall. And, there are still Trees to remove. Shallow roots are a good adaptation to thin Soil, rocky Soil, but they do have their risks. Wondering about other reasons for shallow roots.

In people shallow roots can lead to problems, too. The strong winds of the coronavirus can lead to a fall. The middah of equanimity, the topic for MVP mussar next week, is the psychic equivalent of deep roots. When life pushes us hard, say isolation or lockdown for an indeterminate number of weeks, equanimity can keep us upright. We will feel neither the need to run out and fill up the car with toilet paper, nor will we hunker down, go still, bury our fears.

Judaism has a clear view of the human experience: “Your spiritual experience will give you many gifts, but don’t expect it to relieve you of your human nature.” (Everyday Holiness, Alan Morinis, p. 99) Yes, practice equanimity, but don’t be surprised when life sends you a fire, or a virus, or a serious illness and you lose it. Notice that, congratulate yourself perhaps on a less severe reaction than you might have had in the past, and learn what you can from it. Mussar is an incremental practice that does not have an endpoint.

Coronavirus, Dogs, Family, Health, Mountains, Plants, Shadow Mountain, Talmud, Third Phase

To Rigel

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Beltane and the Corona Lunacy II

Tuesday gratefuls: Rigel, our amazing 11 year old. “She could pass for five,” said the vet at her physical yesterday. Cool mountain nights. Blue Colorado sky. Being home, having a home. Rocks piled up high, high, high. Streams racing to the leave the Mountain top, to carry its message to the sea.

Busy Tuesday morning. 7 am meeting of the Clan. Clan Keaton. We celebrate and continue my mom’s family. Right after I took Rigel back to the vet for another tooth removal. Cracked. She comes home in about an hour. High intensity workout. Read Talmud. Nap. The morning.

Kate goes in tomorrow morning to see the reconstructive surgeon who worked on her fingertips. The scars have mostly healed, but they hurt at the tips and her sensitivity there has not returned. She can sew, but with less dexterity.

A Mountain spring is here. The forest service moved our wildfire danger from low to moderate. There have already been two smaller fires in Conifer. Covid will impact fire response crews. Those fighting difficult fires are often bunked close together, share equipment, and dining space. Not to mention exhaustion, dehydration. Whatever the impact it will not be positive.

Another clue about spring. The fine yellow mist shaken from new Lodgepole pine cones has begun to spread on Mountain Winds. There’s a faint layer on my computer keyboard. Animacy is in the air.

Mark and Mary have finished their terms, but there’s a two week grade challenge window which keeps them at work. Grade challenge window? Geez. Education has changed, eh? Diane’s choral music class from San Francisco’s Community Education program has moved online. She seems resigned to eventually getting Covid. She tested negative in a community testing program last week. The clan wends its international way through this international pandemic.

Coronavirus, Family, Health, Jefferson County, Mountains, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Plants, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Science, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, US History, Weather +Climate, World History

A Pagan’s Way

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Spring and the Corona Luna

Wednesday gratefuls: Ed Smith. His hands. Kate’s new feeding tube. Getting there on the leaks. Slowly. Glacially. But, getting there. Seoah’s concern, love for Kate. Her helpfulness. Rigel and Kep, always. Masks. Gloves. Those who hope the coronavirus will lead us to rethink society. Among them me. Mountain Waste Removal. Mt. Evan’s Home Health Care. The snow pack above average.

The spirit of 2019. An urgent doctor visit yesterday. The balloon that holds Kate’s feeding tube in place collapsed. Back to the surgeon. He put in a new, slightly larger tube and said anytime Kate had trouble to come see him. This was our first urgent visit since Bloody January though it was the norm in 2019. The gaps between visits are longer. May they continue and lengthen.

Since we went to a medical building I put on mask and gloves. Kate had a mask. These were the smaller masks, but Seoah’s sister’s husband found 50 NS95 masks for us. Just because. Her sister mailed 8 of them to us yesterday. The Korean government allows 8 a month to be sent out and then only to family. She’ll keep sending them as long as the crisis and her supply continue.

Can you feel the irony here? The world hegemon is getting medical supplies from South Korea. It’s a sixth of our size. And, can you feel the love? Family. Across oceans and cultures.

Hard to be sure but I think the newly administered Lupron, my third, has weakened me some. I had a tough time on my workout Monday. I had a two hour nap yesterday, then slept an hour or so long last night. We’ll see about my workout today. The hotflashs have been somewhat more frequent. Life in the chemo lane.

Been reading the book Braiding Sweetgrass. It’s the first book in the Rocky Mountain Land Library’s book club. Robin Wall Kimmerer is the author, a botanist and a member of the Potawatomi nation. Kate Strickland worked, I believe as an intern, at Milkweed Editions when they were publishing this book and got to know Ms. Kimmerer well. It’s a compilation of short think pieces, not quite essays, closer to memoir.

In the human narrative class with Rabbi Jamie we’re reading the last section of Art Green’s book, Israel. In it Green talks about the relationship between a people and the land. In wondering what I could learn from this chapter, I decided I would focus on how a people, all people, relate to the land.

That brought to mind both the Rocky Mountain Land Library and its unusual mission and my episodic work on reimagining, reconstructing faith. Increasingly this reenvisioning has come to focus on how to articulate my pagan way, not as the way, but as a way, one that might guide more folks back to the literal source all life, the sacred marriage between the sun and mother earth. And, in so doing, spur them protect our mother, or, more accurately, protect a space for humankind here.

I decided to read the four books in the Land Library Book club over the time of the Israel kabbalah class, which runs into June. I added a couple of other books I have, the Lunar Tao and Becoming Native to This Place.

A chapter in an often imagined book about my pagan way will be my presentation for the class. It’s tentatively titled, Becoming Native to This Place. Something to do while the world sinks into itself.

Aging, Coronavirus, Family, Friends, Health, Mountains, Myth and Story, News of the Strange, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Woolly Mammoths

Mystery

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Spring and the Corona Luna

Saturday gratefuls: Nurse Michele from Mt. Evan’s Hospice and Home Health Care. A night without leaking for Kate!!! A new protocol for her feeding tube. Masks. Personas. No, masks, soft cloth masks. No, it’s all masks. Even our body. Mystery. The peaks of the mountains. Cirrus clouds racing high above them. Lodgepoles with hoarfrost. Woolly’s on Zoom.

Zoom. Zoom. Zoom. Talk about mysteries. How does this really work? I mean, seeing old friends, family members who are far away. Maine, Saudi Arabia, Singapore. Shorewood. Anoka County. Downtown Minneapolis. While up here on Shadow Mountain. Talking to them. They hear me and respond. I see facial expressions, room settings. All on zoom settings. Wow.

The O.E.D. Mystery. Definition #1: hidden from human knowledge or understanding; impossible or difficult to explain, solve, discover; obscure origin, nature, or purpose.

A psychonaut. This friend. He’s done psychedelics. He’s done ayahuasca, the shaman’s drug from the rain forest. Living in mystery, living into mystery, life’s mystery. What’s behind door number 3? Is there a wizard in oz or just a traveling salesman pulling levers and pushing buttons? He’s stayed level, working, drawing, imagining. Pushing himself, his art, his words as he ages. A beautiful thing to see. Inspirational.

Speaking of beautiful things. Michele, the Mt. Evan’s home health care nurse came yesterday. She showed us how to clean Kate’s tube feeding site with warm, soapy water and sterile pads. How to apply a zinc oxide cream below the disc. How to cut a gauze bandage to fit under the disc and one to fit over it. Since that time, around 11 yesterday, Kate’s been leak free. Hallelujah. Really.

A guy I knew at CBE, Howard, had a brain hemorrhage this week. And, died. Echoes of mom, that week in October. I spoke with him at Purim, the last time I was at CBE. Nothing apparently wrong then. No TIA evidence. Just normal Howard, talking about his wife’s leukemia and their tennis doubles. They played competitively even though she was in treatment. The cancer took her a while ago. It’s not only Covid-19 out there. It’s cancer and brain bleeds and feeding tubes, too.

My point here is not a gloomy one. It’s just that life, and death, goes on unrelated to the viral victory march. And will continue.

Beyond the Boundaries, Colorado, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work, Jefferson County, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Park County, permaculture, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, The West, Third Phase, US History, Weather +Climate

Deep Guidance

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Imbolc and the Leap Year Moon

Sunday gratefuls: An extra day in my birthday month. DogsonDeployment and the three folks who responded right away. Seoah’s careful scrutiny of the profiles. Kate’s help with Corrine, who called from DoD. Blue skies and warm temps. Atlas Obscura. The Rocky Mountain Land Library. Jon’s offer to stay with Kate while I take the kids on a road trip.

Just signed up for a Food and Land Bookclub. My real interest in it is its association with the Rocky Mountain Land Library in next county over Park County. When I bought the books for the book club, four in all, I found my powers returning. Oh, this is what I’ve got energy for my body said. Book titles: Mayordomo: chronicle of an Acequia in Northern New Mexico, Braiding Sweetgrass: indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants, One Size Fits None: a farm girls search for the promise of regenerative agriculture, and, The Seed Underground: a growing revolution to save food.

When we first moved here, over five years ago now, I wanted to garden, to learn the native plants, to hike the mountains, learn the land and streams and wildlife. Prostate cancer, bum knee then knee replacement, COPD. Kate’s various medical dilemmas later. Distracted. Accomplished little of these. Some hiking, not much thanks to the COPD and the bad knee. Gardening here required more physical energy than I have available. My first native plants class got interrupted by my prostatectomy. Life. Stuff.

I first discovered the Rocky Mountain Land Library in 2015, our first year here. It was only a dream then, an idea concocted by the former owners of Denver’s most loved book store, Tattered Covers. It now has a ranch in Park County, south of Fairplay, a bit over an hour from here. Buildings and projects have begun to come together. It wasn’t ready when I found it and, as it turned out, neither was I.

During Gertie’s last days I reflected again on my instinctual opposition to euthanasia for dogs. It’s no longer absolute because I saw its necessity as Gertie suffered, but it’s still strong. Were there any other instances in my life where I made choices from an instinctual level?

Instinct? Intuition? Deep inner guidance? Link to a source of knowledge I can’t access consciously? Instinct in any formal sense is probably wrong, but the feeling involved, a strong compulsion, a certainty that this path was mine, had that flavor anyhow.

Turns out there were other such choices. When I turned 32, I knew I had to be a parent. Got a vasectomy reversal. Didn’t work. OK. Adopt. First child, a girl, died in a salmonella outbreak at the orphanage. Raeone didn’t want to go forward. She’d just gotten a new job. My deep push made me agree to take care of the new baby myself, no matter what it took. I took him to work with me until he was 18 months old.

After an Ira Progoff workshop in Tuscon, an intentional stirring of my inner life, I stopped by Denver to see Ruth and Gabe. By the time I left I knew Kate and I needed to move to Colorado. She agreed and so we did. We wanted to live in the mountains and to be in our kids and grandkids lives.

Other less dramatic instances. Saw a movie while in college that featured Manhattan. Put my thumb out and spent the summer of 1968, the summer of love, not in San Francisco, but in Manhattan. Curator of Asian art at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Bob Jacobson, gave a lecture on Angkor. Specifically he showed the amazing stone bas relief sculpture that runs for a quarter mile around Angkor Wat’s great Hindu temple. And in particular the churning of the sea of milk where gods and demons struggle for a magical elixir. Had to see it. When my dad died and left me enough money to do some travel, I went.

A related but less pressured decision came when I realized I was no longer Christian, that I had to leave the ministry. Had I not met Kate, this feeling would have been tested, but I met her and she allowed me a graceful exit.

Right now I’m feeling a similar push, perhaps not only to the Rocky Mountain Land Library, but to reawaken the me who woke up for twenty springs, twenty summers, and twenty falls glad for the chance to plant lilies, weed onions, harvest garlic, trim the raspberry canes. The me who woke up for several years and knew tending the bees was in the day’s labor. The me who came here excited about the West, about the mountains, about being in a brand new place. We’ll see where this goes.

Dogs, Family, Feelings, Friends, Great Wheel, Health, Memories, Mountains, Plants, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate, Woolly Mammoths

The Day After

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Imbolc and the Full Shadow Mountain Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Sleep, much needed sleep. Resolution for Gertie. A peaceful house. No doggy conflict, no tension. Another six inches of snow. Pho with Seoah yesterday. Murdoch’s happiness at seeing Seoah and me. The kindness of the staff at Bergen Bark Inn. Another heart to heart with Kate. Our life together. My healing. Orchid, beautiful and white, from Tom and Roxann.

The day after. Gertie is at peace. Murdoch in the kennel. For the first time in our married life we have only two dogs, Rigel and Kep. The house is quieter. Peaceful. Gertie is no longer suffering on her bed in the living room. Murdoch is no longer here, creating a constant possibility of violence. It feels, good.

Not glad Gertie is dead, but very glad her suffering and pain has ended. We couldn’t control it and that tore at Kate and me.

On Tuesday night last week Gertie still had enough will power to go outside to pee. She came in through the downstairs door and I decided to lift her up into the bed with us for the night. She slept between us for the whole night. At about 3 AM she woke up giving me lots of kisses. She kept at it for a long time. It was unusual. Now I imagine she was saying good-bye, letting me know how much she loved me. I will treasure that memory forever.

Yesterday lack of sleep and grief had me. Both battered my sense of self. Why did you let Gertie suffer? Why did you bring Murdoch into the house? Why did Kate marry me? Why am I such a screw up? Went down into that place we can all go, that dark place where our fears, our anxieties wait to trap us, hold us hostage.

Again, Kate came out, sat in my chair while I perched on the ottoman. We talked. In the way only those long together, long in love, bonded, can. She saw me. And in her seeing me I saw myself again. She challenged how I saw myself. And, then, so did I. Oh. The grief. The exhaustion. The last two years. Oh. Yeah.

Our talk allowed me to feel the peacefulness, the quiet in the house and to take some of that and put in my heart. The needle probe withdrew from my psyche.

This morning I fed two dogs. Went out for the paper. Not here. Snow always deters this delivery person from her rounds. Made coffee. Shoveled a path to the loft stairs. Came up here and wrote.

Final note. You might be interested to know that it was difficult for me, missing two days last week. Writing Ancientrails is part of my morning meditation, a freeing of my heart, a way to stay connected with a wide community of friends and family. So important. Glad to be back at it.

Anoka County, Colorado, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Friends, Garden, Great Wheel, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Myth and Story, Our Land and Home, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Death and Resurrection

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Winter and the Future Moon

Saturday gratefuls: The snow, coming down hard. The temperature, 17. All 8,800 feet above sea level. Two weeks of consistent workouts, 5 days, 3 resistance, two with high intensity training. Ruth’s being here. (she’s sleeping with Rigel and Murdoch right now.) The Hanukah meal last night. Hanukah. Whoever conceived and executed Resurrection: Ertugrul. The internet.

Been thinking a bit about resurrection. Not as in Resurrection: Ertugrul, which is about resurrection of the Seljuk state, but in the New Testament mythology. Birth, life, death, resurrection. Christmas, Ministry, Black Friday, Easter. The Great Wheel. Spring, growing season, fallow season, spring. Osiris. Orpheus.

Death is being overcome every spring. Life emerges, blooms and prospers, then withers and dies. A period in the grave. Spring. Resurrection is not only, not even primarily, about coming back from death. Resurrection is a point in the cycle of our strange experience as organized and awake elements and molecules.

Saw an analogy the other day. Twins in the womb. Talking to each other about whether there was life after delivery. How could there be, one said. What else is all this for, said the other. Do you believe in the mother? Yes, she’s all around us. I can’t see her, so I don’t believe in her. How would we get food after delivery? How would we breathe? I don’t know, but I believe we’ll do both.

We know, too, the story of the caterpillar, the chrysalis, and the butterfly.

Might resurrection itself be an analog of these ideas? Could be. Easier for me to comprehend is the death of a relationship, the period of mourning, then a new one, different from the first, but as good or better. The death of a dream. Having to sell the farm, a period of mourning, then a new career, different, but satisfying, too. The death of a certain belief system. Say, Christianity. A period of confusion and mourning. Then, a new way of understanding. The way things are. Consciousness and cycles. This comes; that goes.

A Minnesota life. Well lived and full. Dies. A period of mourning and confusion. A Colorado life. Different, but satisfying, too. The gardens of Andover. The rocks of Shadow Mountain. The lakes of Minnesota. The mountains of Colorado. The Woolly Mammoths. Congregation Beth Evergreen.

Are there other resurrections? Of course. Is there a resurrection like that of Jesus? Unknown. I choose to celebrate the resurrections that I know, rather than the ones I do not. The purple garden that emerged in the spring. The raspberries on the new canes. Those apples growing larger from the leafed out tree. This marriage with Kate, a notable resurrection of intimacy in both our lives.

What is dying? What are you mourning? What resurrection awaits?

Beyond the Boundaries, Commentary on Religion, Family, Friends, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work, Holidays, Mountains, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Painting, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Merry, Merry Meet

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Winter and the Gratitude Moon, waning sliver

Christmas gratefuls: the silence on Black Mountain Drive. Black Mountain itself. The stars above Black Mountain. Shadow Mountain. Our home. This loft, a gift from my Kate, now five years ago, and still wonderful. Kate and her increased health. The sacred side of Christmas. The pagan (also sacred) side of Christmas.

When I went out for the paper this morning, it was dead quiet. No dogs barking. No cars or trucks on the road. No mechanical noises. The sky was the deep black of the cosmic wilderness, lit only by bright lights: planets, stars, galaxies. Silent night, holy night.

Those shepherds out there tending their flock, sheep shuffling around. A baa and a bleat here and there. Visitors on camel back. All that singing. As imagined, probably not a quiet night.

Here though, this dark Christmas morn. The deer are asleep. The elk, too. Pine martens, fishers, foxes, mountain lions might be prowling, but part of their inheritance is silence. Black bears went to sleep long ago. Millions of insects are quiet, too. The microbes in the soil, the growing lodgepole pines, the aspen organisms, their clonal neighborhoods, bulbs, corms, rhizomes all alive, all quiet.

Silent night, holy night. Yes. Sacred night, holyday night. Yes.

I read this long essay on consciousness by the president and chief scientific officer of the Allen Institute for Brain Science. In it he says this:

” Yes, there’s this ancient belief in panpsychism: “Pan” meaning “every,” “psyche” meaning “soul.”…basically it meant that everything is ensouled…if you take a more conceptual approach to consciousness, the evidence suggests there are many more systems that have consciousness—possibly all animals, all unicellular bacteria, and at some level maybe even individual cells that have an autonomous existence. We might be surrounded by consciousness everywhere and find it in places where we don’t expect it because our intuition says we’ll only see it in people and maybe monkeys and also dogs and cats. But we know our intuition is fallible…”

Even silence, since it presumes an awareness of noise, is a proof of consciousness. All that consciousness around us here on Shadow Mountain. The trees and wild animals, grasses and microbes, dogs and humans, all here, all experiencing a self.

I take panpsychism a bit further than Koch with the kabbalistic idea of ohr, the divine spark, resident in every piece of the universe and the process metaphysical view of a vitalist universe creatively moving toward greater complexity.

This waking up mornin’ we can see the baby Jesus as an in your face message that, yes, of course we are holy. Yes, of course the universe sings to us from the depths of the sea, the top of the redwoods, and the person or animal across from us this morning. And, to get downright personal, from within the deep of our own soul.