Category Archives: Judaism

Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism, Paganism

Israel ben Avraham v’Sarah

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Samhain and the Yule Moon

Monday gratefuls: Veronica. Our first conversion anniversary/birthday. The mikveh. Evoke 1923. Bonding. Her birthday on Feb. 13, mine on the 14th. Kismet. The magic of the mikveh. A world filled with friends and family, Dogs and art, peace, silence, stillness, an openness to learn and to perform good and worthy deeds. In a word: Love.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Veronica

Kavannah:  WISDOM   Chochma חָכְמָה Wisdom, learning, scholarship.  Second Sefirah = intuitive/revelatory ideas; creative flow state; right brain (opposite Understanding/Binah)

One brief shining: At the table of Kate’s pearl, Tom and mine’s hearing challenged delicious meal, of other solo meals, I sat with Veronica discussing life and sex and Judaism until after the fish and we had both ordered dessert, Rebecca, our waitress brought my creme brulee with the small candle in the shape of a number 1. Our birthday as Israel and… I forgot to ask for her Hebrew name.

 

prompt: A mikveh as a Celtic holy well using Celtic design

I was ready for the mikveh though I didn’t know it. My time researching holy wells in Wales. Visiting St. Winnifred’s. Learning about the holy well as a portal, a liminal space between the worlds. This one and the Other World.

My pagan and Jewish selves stand adjacent in my lev, or maybe more, interpenetrating each other. I love Sukkot, the sukkah, a harvest holiday. I love Simchat Torah when we dance with the Torah, all the while knowing that Torah is anything from which we can learn, i.e. all things, for me especially the world of Wild Neighbors and hidden Mountain Streams. I love Shavuot, when all Jews stood at the base of Mt. Sinai and received the Torah. It also celebrates the barley harvest. I love Passover, the spring planting holiday and the holiday of liberation. I also love Yule and the Winter Solstice, Mabon and Samain, Beltane. The phases of the Moon, especially new and full.

When I immersed in the warm waters of the Denver mikveh, I went into a holy well, submerging my old self; then a renaissance, a rebirth after I visited the Other World of the long Jewish tradition and the Other World of the Celts in the same moment.

Did I say I was naked? As was appropriate. A holy well. A womb. Sacred Water. As all Waters are. We enter the world brand new from the womb and the mikveh, the holy well.

Sputtering a little. Hitting the wall with my head as I floated up. Surrounded by warmth and an Ovidian moment of transformation, of metamorphosis, from pagan to pagan Israel son of Abraham and Sarah.

I’ve had life changing moments before. I mentioned arrival day yesterday. My ordination. The move to Colorado. Marrying Kate. I love the multi-layered self each of those moments has created. And I look forward to having my life changed again. By what, you might ask? I don’t know. Not yet.

 

Just a moment: Oh, gee. A possible constitutional convention? What could possibly go wrong?

 

                                       Israel ben Avraham v’Sarah

Family, Health, Judaism, Korea, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Torah, World History

Israel

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Samain and the Yule Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Veronica. Rabbi Jamie. Studying this week’s parsha which includes Jacob wrestling with the angel. The world of the Torah. Talmud. Ann, my palliative care nurse. Vince and the mini-splits. His kindness. The dark and quiet of a Mountain night. My son. Such a kind and thoughtful man. The Light-Eaters.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Walking each other home

Kavannah: Understanding (bimah) Love (ahavah)

One brief shining: Once in a while I send a text, goodnight to the Flatirons, and I get back a reply, goodnight to Shadow Mountain, a way of extending a tendril of love to Ruth in her dorm on the campus of UC-Boulder, hers coming back to me.

 

Vince came over yesterday and cleaned the filters on my mini-splits. Didn’t charge me because it took him a while to get here. He remains a very interesting guy. He competed in a for-pay ju-jitsu tournament in Boulder and has become a teacher now after only a couple of years.

He told me of a lawyer he knew who said he didn’t like his job much. Is going through the motions. Not everybody wants to be the best at what they do, he said, I guess we need guys like that, too. Vince places a heavy load on himself, too much at times.

 

Ann, my palliative care nurse came by, too. We discussed my dilating aortic artery. How to have a solid conversation with the cardiac surgeon. She’s a pragmatic person, as most good nurses are. When I told her I forgot to take a tramadol along with me to Boulder, and the pain I experienced, she suggested a small pill container I keep in the car. Oh, duh.

She has given me a conversational level of medical care, similar to what I had with Kate. I find that very reassuring. Sort of knits together the oncologists, my PCP Sue, the surgeons, all those various medical specialties working to keep my body functioning and with the minimum of pain.

 

This morning I’m going over to Evergreen, to the synagogue, for a bagel table. We’ll be studying the parsha Vayishlach (“He Sent”), Genesis 32:4–36:43. Parsha’s are named by the first significant word or phrase in the Hebrew. Vayishlach contains a biblical story that has shaped my self-understanding and given me a new, Hebrew name.

Jacob wrestling with the angel. I asked chatbot to give me an image of this story in the style of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement. The result is here.

My life, even from a young age, has involved a struggle with understanding (Bimah) the world and its character, how I and we fit within it. Also, what is ours to do as we make our way on the ancientrail from birth to death. In this long night at the Jabbok Ford, Jacob did not give up, nor was he bested. As dawn rose, the angel dislodged his hip and gave him a new name, Israel. He who struggles with God.

 

Just a moment: South Korean president impeached! Don’t mess with the Korean people and their democracy.

 

 

 

Judaism, Politics

Too much philosophy, I know. Sometimes I can’t help myself.

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Yule and the Samain Moon

Friday gratefuls: Mussar. Gaavah, Pride. Laurie’s Chi-Town foodtruck. Vince. Freshened Snow. Great Sol at work as the solar snowshovel. Another blue Colorado Sky. PG&E and their peculiar ways. Hoosier Cold. Ginny and Janice. Rabbi Jamie. The flu. My back and its limitations. Ann, the palliative care nurse coming today.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Palliative Care

Kavannah:  AWE   Yira רְאָה Awe, reverence  (פְּלִיאָה Plia: Wonder, amazement)

One brief shining: Thresholds, liminal places, like Dawn and Dusk, windows, your eyes and ears receiving messages from what appears to be the real world, the lev yearning for love, holy wells, any doorway, matriculation, graduation, birth and death each one of them with a mezuzah, a signpost affirming the One in which all apparent particulars grow and move and have their becoming. Hear, O Israel!

 

chatbot. tree of life in the style of Giotto

An aha about the nature of the One the other day. All is within the One, the One is within all, pulsing and changing, creating and fading (but, importantly, not away). The tree of life represents this buzzing, blooming ontology as a continuous circuit of ohr, of the sacred as it moves up and down, much like blood circulating in the body. Although up and down is 2-D and the process is both 3-D and 4-D. That is, the ohr flows in and out, over and under, around as the whole moves in some sort of time, the 4-D aspect.

Here’s the insight. I had long thought of the One as a sphere, closed and all things within it transforming and decaying, reassembling. Nothing but the sphere. Then, I thought. No. That’s not the only way to conceive this. The One could be, probably has to be, ever expanding. In other words the creative nature of the one cannot be bounded. The prime criteria, that all particulars are in the One and the One is in all particulars, has no necessary boundary.

You might ask, as I am right now, into what does the One expand if as said before it is in all things and all things are in it? Another prime criteria is that all evolves, goes through metamorphosis, becomes new. In each and every instance or nexus according to Whitehead. The tree of life can still symbolize the flow of ohr, of chi, of sacred energy, of consciousness into an ever expanding Oneness. In other words creation itself is the key to the One’s unlimitedness. The One can create as much as it needs to inhere in all and have all inhere in it. The One’s plasticity makes this a necessary feature of the real.

OK. Done with that for now.

 

Just a moment: Oh, to be young and right-wing in America. Dawn has broken. The vista shifts far into the distance unclouded. Yes, we rule! Trad wives. White history and privilege once again high and lifted up. The world far away even further away where it should remain. The only remaining frontiers are the borders of blue states. And we control the Federal Government. Consider that, libtards.

Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism, Torah

Livin’ in a small town

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Samain and the Yule Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Cold nights. Tramadol and Celebrex. Jackie. Her friends. Studying Torah with Rabbi Jamie. Sisyphus. Zeus. Hades. Holy Wells. The Elk Bull in the Rain. Seeing the sacred where you are. Beth-el. Cairns. Wrestling with the angel. Israel. Jacob.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Celebrating Luke’s birthday

Kavannah: Joy (simcha) and Enthusiasm (zerizutz)

One brief shining: Walked into Aspen Roots yesterday, Jackie had another customer’s hair folded into aluminum foil squares-hair coloring-and a man with a bald head, dressed casually in jeans and new shoes, a blue shirt not tucked in, everything neat, sat in Ronda’s chair facing his wife as Jackie worked her hair stylist magic.

 

Jackie called me on Wednesday and said she needed to reschedule. A funeral. The two in her shop yesterday had also attended the funeral. Of all of us, Jean said, I didn’t think he’d be the first to go. Jackie and Dave nodded. What followed was the usual funeral chatter. Who was the blonde with him? Oh. Him? He has issues, said Dave, I love him but he has issues. Did you know his brother Jim? No. I knew of Jim, but never met him.

One task of grieving and funerals is reordering the social structure of a group. Acknowledging the loss of a member of the group, remembering their story. Seeing people, perhaps even family members who live at a distance, either geographically or relationally. Recalling how things were. And in the process redefining how things will be now without the deceased.

When it was my turn in the chair, Jackie schedules me sandwiched between the  application of coloring and its slow baking in time, I had a chance to chat with Dave. He had retired two weeks ago from a fire department in Highland Hills. I asked him how it was going. Oh, he said, not well. When I offered that he couldn’t expect to get retirement in two weeks, his wife, now sitting in a chair festooned with aluminum foil, said, I did! We all laughed.

When Jackie began her work on my beard and hair, I asked about the guy who died. He just had to clean the gutters, she sighed. Fell off the ladder and landed on his head. I felt so sad. What a way to go. She leaned into me and said, Don’t climb on ladders. I assured her I wouldn’t. They scare me now. I even gave away my chain saw.

As I left Jackie gave me a big hug and Dave jumped up from his chair, shook my hand, “Good to meet you, Charlie.” Enthusiasm and Joy at Aspen Roots. Life in a small community. I love it.

 

Just a moment: Earlier that morning I signed onto the Bagel Table, which had to be online because Rabbi Jamie didn’t feel well. There were 12 of us, 13 including Jamie. We had a spirited and deep conversation about struggle, about family-the parsha was about Jacob’s ladder and his long negotiations with his father-in-law Laban, the nature of God or divinity. I loved it. It was fun and profound. Luke and Ginny were on.

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Judaism

Blah. Bah.

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Samain and the Yule Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Rich Levine. Small Estate Affidavit. The arcane lore of the law. The law itself. Making and enforcing laws. Judges. Lawyers. Police. Detectives. Canon law. Bishops. Diocese. Bishop Joe Strickland. Life in spite of. A good life in spite of. Seed-Keeping. Soil. Roots and Rhizomes. The Light-Eaters. Zöe.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Boulder

Kavannah: Perseverance and love (ahavah)

One brief shining: As I drive down the hill, and everything is down the hill from my home on Shadow Mountain, the lights have gone up, pushing that holiseason instinct to brave the advancing darkness by illuminating it, brilliant tiny bulbs of all colors strung along eaves, up a forty-foot Colorado Spruce, on wires from a tall pole to form a tree of lights, we are still here they say, look at what we can do.

 

I have only one thing that carries a weight for me. You might think prostate cancer, but no. That’s not it. It’s transferring the money from Kate’s 529 accounts for Ruth and Gabe to my own. I want to start giving Ruth money. Since last August. My formophobia notwithstanding I have dutifully sent off three packets of declarations, forms, and certificates. Still no joy.

Dealing with it makes me tense, jaw tightens. Teeth clench. My emotional resilience plummets. Not good for problem solving. Especially over the phone, to call center employees. Some who can do this, but not that. Those who can do that are not available and will call me back. Right.

Reached out to Bond and Devick, my financial planners, since they’re in Minnesota and it’s a Minnesota program. They helped me. Sort of. Going to see Rich tomorrow. If I can, I’m going to hand it to him and ask him to finish this for me. I want it off my back.

 

Going to see Rabbi Jamie tomorrow after mussar. Twice in the past month I’ve encountered a barrier within that I didn’t know existed. I believe my flat affect stems from its grip on me. The barrier is enough.

My first encounter with it was on my second visit to my medical oncologist, Dr. Buphati. I’d gone to that meeting expecting clarity about the status of my advanced prostate cancer. When I discovered they did not have my PSA results, drawn in their office three weeks before, I hit the barrier.

As if a train of cars, each one carrying a different emotional cost levied over the whole of my nine year plus cancer experience piled up, each one pushing against the other with the force of inertia gained over time and distance.

Over most of those nine plus years I’ve tried to deal straight up with the news about this change or that, move on to the next step, treading that fine line between being informed and responsible as a patient and trusting my doctors as Kate asked me to do. Sure, I’ve had times when fear overcame me, uncertainty pushed me to my knees, but each time I got back up. In this moment, at that visit I could not get back up.

Though I left after that visit with a feeling of doom and sadness overwhelming me, I drove home without incident and did right myself later in the day.

For some reason I cannot recall the second time right now. Not the trigger that is. But the feeling? Oh, yes. Here’s a different metaphor. Have you ever worked in or been in a factory where they had heavy doors attached to a counterweight with a chunk of lead in the cable holding the door open? If there’s a fire, the lead melts and the counterweights engage pulling the door closed to protect whatever lies beyond it.

That sort of feeling. As if what has gone before has been so much, that my feelings slammed my inner world shut. Trapping those feelings that threatened to engulf me.

It doesn’t surprise me that these moments have come to visit. The last ten years have held more tough times than I can recall. Yet I feel I’ve learned how to navigate the grief and the fear neither ignoring nor denying it, while not being captive to it either. In spite of that I have had death, divorce, and disease as my constant companions over the last ten years. I have not forgotten that. I don’t dwell on it, but the memories and the feelings remain stored within me.

When I stepped into this new period of uncertainty about my prostate cancer, right after my bar mitzvah ironically, I’ve gone up and down. Sometimes steady. Sometimes not. The most current manifestation of these feelings has been a flat affect, not down, not up. Blah. Unmotivated. Slow. Tired. Very much like acedia.

The door to my inner world slammed shut. Bottling up my exuberance and joy.

I don’t like living blah. My life means more to me.

 

Asia, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Holidays, Judaism, Paganism

A Way Back

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Samain and the Yule Moon

Bush_turkey Jim Bendon from Karratha, Australia

Shabbat gratefuls: Body weight workouts. Brush Turkeys in Queensland. Lizards in K.L. Asia. Korea. Songtan. Beijing. Kate, my son, and I traveled there. 1999. Japan. Ichi-go, ichi-e. Ruth and Gabe. Mary and Mark. Oz and Malaysia. Black Friday. Advent. AI prompts. Yule. The 12 days of Christmas. Feeling flat.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Light-Eaters, Zöe Schlanger

Kavannah: Perseverance and chesed. Love.

One brief shining: Ever have that pit of your stomach feeling that something marvelous lay just out of reach, if only you could get yourself organized, find the time, open yourself fully to the possibility; I do each time I look at the green candle made by Vance Kitire, never lit since I bought it with the lovely throw rug years ago; and why you might ask, because whenever I begin and sustain a writing project I always light a candle before I begin writing for the day.

A Pagan Yule. Chatbotgpt

 

That candle contains the promise of an immersion in another world, a world of fantasy, one created by me in which I find life emerging in its own peculiar way, no less real than IRL. An embrace of another personality. Both within me and within the work itself. Yet the candle remains in its as created state. Untouched by flame. The flame that signals to me work has begun.

This does not, most of the time, feel like a burden. Most of the time it reminds me that I have another version of myself that I love. One committed to the daily work of writing a novel. I await his emergence again, his claim on my time, on my mind and heart, on my imagination. No, not waiting on inspiration, but on an inner consolidation of intention, idea, and joy.

How do I lift myself up? Find that small lever that elevates my mood? Not from the abyss, not from melancholy, but from, perhaps oh archaic sin, acedia*. I’m not a sin oriented guy anymore. Hamartia, missing the mark of my values, yes. Sin, no. But I do recognize the flat affect of acedia and when it dominates, as it does right now, I search for teshuvah. A way to return to the land of my soul. A way I’ve wandered off and for the moment have forgotten.

Mussar offers a way to adjust our inner life by acting as if. Acting as if we persevere, as if we have compassion, as if we experience joy. I’ve used mussar to get back to working out by working out. At first a bit at a time, then back to a full diet as my neshama “remembers” who I am, one who cares for his body.

Perhaps a writing schedule, as I have for Ancientrails. I long ago ritualized the writing of Ancientrails. It is the first thing I do after waking up, saying the shema, and taking my pills. I write until finished. Only then do I eat breakfast. BTW: Ancientrails will finish its twentieth year next February.

I could do Ancientrails, breakfast, write 500 to a 1,000 words on a project, then exercise. After that read. Commit to exercise during the day rather than a half-hour after breakfast. That could work. Think I’ll try it.

 

*The word acedia comes from the Greek word akēdeia, which means “an inert state without pain or care”.
Acedia is considered one of the seven deadly sins, or capital vices. It’s often described as a “noonday demon”. Some say that acedia can arise from the social and spatial restrictions of a solitary monastic life.

 

 
Fourth Phase, Judaism, Mussar

Finding love

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Thursday gratefuls: Amazon. Weights with neoprene. 48 ramen packages. Three light bulbs. One jar of protein powder. Being prepared. Weariness. Drugs. Of all kinds and all sorts. Visit to my medical oncologist tomorrow. Ley Septic. Furball Cleaning. Vince. US Mail. Mark in K.L.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Love

Kavannah: Perseverance

One brief shining: The downside of shopping with Amazon came along yesterday as the little photograph emailed to me with the cheery question-How was your delivery?- showed my package to be at a different door than mine, one with full glass and a bright orange streamer draped over its flower pot containing a now long dead leaf and stalk.

 

Mussar. From Monday night. Rabbi Jamie’s translation of Orchot Tzaddikim. From the chapter on love and hate:  “…by way of this gate of love, peace stands, a peace with everything And by way of this gate is silence and stillness, an openness to learn and perform good and worthy deeds.”

Each month we choose a practice for the middah we’ve studied. My practice this month is to notice when peace, silence, and stillness, an openness to learn and perform good and worthy deeds emerge in my daily life. Clues about love.

When I got home that Monday night, I walked into my home. Noticed silence. Stillness. Felt at peace. Oh. No wonder I like coming home, being home. It fills me with love. That was a surprise.

The next day I recalled the NYT’s article about the cosmologist who chose to study the cosmic void. The uncluttered apparent emptiness, silent and still. Oh. Studying the love that holds the Galaxies and Solar systems, the Nebulae, and Stars going nova.

Sat down to read Nexus that same day. Harari’s clear prose and interesting conclusions leading me on, eager to learn what he might say next. Love in the turning pages.

My brother and I talked over zoom. An opportunity to perform a mitzvah. Yet more love.

I speak with my zoomfriends. We see each other. Hear each other. Moments of mutual respect and love.

In just four days my practice has revealed love everywhere I go. In the still pause between breaths. In the silence of my back yard at night. The stillness of Orion, risen and visible in the cosmic void.

Even though I ache from it, I experienced love in the now regular resistant work I’ve taken up. Me performing a good and worthy deed for myself.

There is, too, the silent wisdom of my Lodgepole Companion. The massive, yet subtle presence of Black Mountain. The kind sadness in the still black eyes of the three Mule Deer Does and the young Buck who watched me walk out to the mailbox yesterday. Enjoy the food I said to them, breaking the silence.

I walk through the valley of love and I shall know peace, silence, stillness, an openness to learning, and the desire to perform good and worth deeds.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Judaism, Mussar, Politics

Tears and Laughter

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Tuesday gratefuls: Susan. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Her house. Beautiful. Jamie. Rich. Elephant Company. Tara. Marilyn. Ron. MVP. Going to bed late. Dreams of travel. lodging. As some pundit observed, long tie guy has flooded the zone with too many bad picks all at once. Orion, my buddy. The Mountain Night Sky.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Habeas Corpus for Elephants

Kavannah: Perseverance

One brief shining: We sat in Eames chairs around a large Camelot table, a spotlight outside revealing a beautiful outcropping of Rock, 15 foot glass windows, the east facing wall, showing the glittering lights of Denver, down the hill and far away, while we talked about anavah and sinah: love and hate, trying to find purchase in our lives for growing both as soul traits, character traits.

 

Every once in a while, like last night at Susan Marcus’s architect designed home, I feel blessed, blissed to sit with people smarter than me as we try to figure out how to lead our lives in a soul-full manner. How we can we express the essence of ourselves as sacred beings, using the medieval practice of mussar as a guide.

In those conversations we move from our lives into learning, from learning back into our lives. We struggle with the usual things: parents, children, marriage, existential angst while trying to place them within the context of developing our ability to practice humility, enthusiasm, love, hate (or repulsion), our ability to let the light of our own divinity shine unobstructed. Not easy work, but done with love and compassion. Confidentiality. Honesty.

A lot of laughter, occasional tears. Befuddlement is common. And, admitted. Gotta say I love being a Jew and part of Congregation Beth Evergreen.

Also, food. Last night butternut squash soup, chicken wings, cowboy caviar, a fancy salad, hummus, carrots, and for those who drink, a red wine labeled, 7 Deadly Sins.

 

Just a moment: Harder than I thought it would be. Getting back into working out. Deciding this time to privilege weight training, resistance work over cardio. My heart rate has remained excellent, but my muscles have given way even more to that old devil, sarcopenia. Where once I opened jars and bags with practiced ease, I now often have to resort to tricks and accessories. Not acceptable. And remediable.

Plan to make sure my resistance routine is solid, making gains. Then, I’ll add back in the cardio on my treadmill. Self-care, it’s not just a river in Egypt. Oh, wait…

 

In spite of myself l find a habit gained during 45’s reign of error returning. Opening the New York Times to see what he’s done now. Who’s he appointed? Why? Of course the why question has no answer. Whim. Some strange political calculus. An indecipherable conclusion based on misinformation.

When the revolutionaries take over the government, they usually turn out to be same as the old boss. Since this is a revolution based at root on greed and fear, it may stretch things farther than any of us hope, certainly more than we want, but the U.S.A. has and will recover. That is my Seed-Keeper faith and one I will help make happen.

 

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.

 

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.