Category Archives: Judaism

Cinema and Television, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Judaism, Mountains, Mussar, Shadow Mountain, US History

Seeking Contentment and Joy. Losing them.

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Tuesday gratefuls: Sadness. Unhappiness. Dismay. Prostate cancer. Dr. Buphati. That P.A. Kristie. Contentment. Joy. Pain. 1883. Ilsa May. Her role as Elsa Dutton. Cold Nights. Snow. Wild Neighbors. The West. Comanche. Lakota. The Great Plains. Buffalo. A Wild and undiscovered country still. The West of my heart.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Home

Kavannah for election week: Contentment and Joy

One brief shining: In a small office at Rocky Mountain Cancer Care I experienced dismay, unhappiness, a strange intersection of politics and self care, and again, as I did on the drive home three weeks ago from RMCC, I felt alone, this time in the usual patient’s chair listening to the P.A. say they had no PSA for me.

 

First jolt was seeing a P.A. instead of Dr. Buphati. I liked him, was counting on his knowledge to guide me through what came next. She offered to go get him. She said she did not care either way. This was the strange intersection of politics and self care. I wanted to see Buphati, but I didn’t want to deny her skills, her right to be there. Feminism strong in me. In medicine especially. Kate.

Second jolt. We have no PSA for you. I deflated. This appointment was supposed to define the next steps in a journey that had made confusing turns over the summer and early fall. Why not? How can you not know?

She said (I don’t remember her name, if it even got through the fog.) I just got assigned.

Then I got unhappy and said so. I’m unhappy and disappointed. I don’t understand how after three weeks you don’t have it. My expectations about knowing what comes next had me in knots. I wanted, no needed, to know and I couldn’t. But why? In the end it didn’t matter.

Go ahead, I waved my hand dismissively. Still trying to reorient. She handed me the results of the DNA results for my cancer cells. Nothing of significance. That means no clinical trials, no targeted therapies. Oh. I took the papers, glanced at them, wondering where my readers were. Nothing of significance. Oh.

In the end she went to get Dr. Buphati. Who came in masked, as was she. Making it difficult for me to hear. He agreed I had every right to be upset. That somehow the lab didn’t have the results. I told him my upset had started back in June when my PSA went up after my drug holiday. Then went down after going back on Orgovyx. My visit to the radiation oncologist who said I had hormone resistant cancer. After which Kristie said, no. Not without rising PSA on two drugs. Erleada came next. This was the PSA measure that would tell the difference. But there were no test results.

We talked for a bit more. His knowledge and clarity helped me calm, but the dismay and the sadness had already burrowed their way into my feelings of the moment. When the phlebotomist, a kind Latina, young, asked me how I was, I said feeling down. And I was. She knew that already. Helped me put on my jacket.

I wanted contentment and joy. They were/are my intentions for this week, but I lost them at the words no PSA results. I wanted to be calm, clear, kind. But I wasn’t. I felt let down by Dr. Buphati, by RMCC. No mussar moves came to mind.

So the valet got my car and I drove away toward the Mountains, wanting only to be home.

 

Just a moment: That was yesterday. I got some Chicken wings, cole slaw, and Potatoes at Safeway, drove to Shadow Mountain, and binged 1883. Soothing myself. Letting myself feel sad, disappointed.

In 1883 I witnessed one of the best dramatic performances I’ve seen. Ilsa May, a young actress, plays Elsa Dutton who turns 18 as her family makes their way as part of a wagon train headed to Oregon. Her arc from bonneted, piano-playing Tennessee girl to cowgirl, then wife of a Comanche warrior and becoming a warrior herself was an alembic for my feelings. In seeing Elsa take the real agonies and the ecstasies of young maturation I rode with her. Seeing a way through the self-inflicted responses I had. Better this morning. Much better. Thanks, Elsa.

Aging, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Health, Holidays, Judaism, Literature, Mussar

Contentment and Joy

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Monday gratefuls: Dr. Buphati. Snow. 4-5 inches. Powder. Or, as the skiers say: Pow. Vikings win. The Ancient Brothers. Walking Each Other Home. Mark in K.L. The Brickfields. The lives of all the Wild Neighbors. Everywhere. And, all the domesticated Animals. The Great Wheel. The Tarot. Kabbalah. Living in joy. Cosmic voids. Sculpture. Rodin. Brancusi.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: First substantial Snow of the season

Kavannah for election week: Contentment and Joy

One brief shining: At night I crank open the casement window over my bed, letting in the  smell of Lodgepoles and Grass as the Night Air streams over my head, when Snow begins to fall like it did last night Snowflakes come through the screen, shower me in a light experience of the weather outside, and often, like last night, make the window hard to close.

 

Without knowing. Without certainty. I claim today my joy and my contentment. I seek today those moments that delight my heart, tickle my inner child. Like my Lodgepole Companion holding the powdery Snow as an early seasonal decoration. Thinking of lights, Christmas and Diwali and Hanukah and Kwanza and Yule. Remembering sliding down the hill at the end of Monroe Street and taking my sled over the jumps we kids created. Of the farm outside of Nevis, Minnesota on a Snowy day, air-tight stove crackling with good, dense Oak logs, the cook stove boiling water for coffee. Of standing by the Shadow Mountain kitchen window with Kate by my side, watching the Snow come down. How lucky we are to live here, she would say. Yep, I would reply.

Also enough coffee in the pot this morning for a full cup. The mini-splits keeping the house warm. An early Dawn, at least according to the clock. Life, this precious and wonderful gift.

Reading, that most amazing skill. Example: The Emptiness of the Universe Gives Our Lives Meaning. I loved this short piece. The cosmologist Paul Sutter chose for his life work the study of cosmic voids. The apparently empty spots between and among galaxies, local clusters, superclusters. How innovative and creative, to study negative space. It’s as if an art historian chose to study only the negative space in sculpture, in paintings. Or a musicologist specializing in rests and stops.

I am content. I’ll have Fire in the Fireplace tonight. Toss some Pinōn on for a scent treat, thinking of the clay stoves in the corners of rooms in New Mexico. I’ll have a good book, probably An Unfinished Love Story by Doris Kearns-Goodwin recommended by Marilyn.

I’ll take in what Dr. Buphati has to say at 2:30 today and I will see it as the next steps necessary to claim the life I have yet to live. Not as the first steps toward death. Which comes anyhow.

Realized the other day that after my Bar Mitzvah, literally the day after when I had my unsettling telehealth visit with Kristie, I’ve been living with the notion of a shortened life span, an inner focus on decline. So much so that I gave up exercising. Wanted to privilege spontaneity.

My year of living Jewishly had its capstone moment and I voluntarily took the steps down into my Cloud of unknowing. And reified it. Since that day, June 12th of this year, until last week, I’ve had a focus on less than, what would soon be missing. Me. I made a pivot from a deep plunge into Judaism to a dive into the shallow end of lack. Broke my heart for a while.

Then I began to understand that the Cloud of unknowing was the true and only way to view life. Whether shorter or longer, I don’t know. As has always been the case. I came up from the mikveh a Jew. I came up from the shallow end of lack attentive again to today, to this life as I have it now. As I will until I don’t.

Herme Harari Israel

Family, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Holidays, Judaism, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Crossing the Veil

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Samain and the 1% Sukkot Moon

Thursday gratefuls: 17 degrees. Snow. Hard Freeze. 1991 Halloween Blizzard in the Twin Cities. My son and Zack White. Trick or treating, but home early. The soft capture of the Celtic Faery Faith. Mom’s yahrzeit. Wild Neighbors. Elephants. Persons, too.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Snow

Kavannah:  CLARITY   Tohar  Clarity, lucidity

One brief shining: Mom, I remember, always smelled good, wore red lipstick, smiled a lot and hugged me, took me to the ice cream parlor when I got good grades, explained what she thought Dad meant, then in October of 1964 while volunteering at a funeral dinner, had a stroke, lingered for seven days and died.

Mom, Dad, Me. Maybe 1951

Life can change oh so fast and in unexpected, totally unexpected ways. Mom was 47. In good, even robust health. But she had unknown aneurysms at her temples and in the forehead region of her brain. One burst and leaked blood down through her brain and began to clot around her medulla oblongata. The part of the brain that connects it to the spinal column. Survivable today with clot busting drugs. Not then.

Her yahrzeit falls today because this is a leap year on the Jewish lunar calendar, pushing everything almost a month ahead on the Gregorian calendar. And, as it happens, right onto Samain. The time in the Celtic Faery Faith when the veil between the worlds thins and access to the Otherworld and from it is most possible. Dia de los Muertos, same idea. Also. All Souls day comes soon on the Christian liturgical calendar, November 2nd this year.

About twenty years ago I took a class on ritual and the teacher, whose name I don’t recall, said she thought these beliefs about the veil thinning came from the falling of the leaves on deciduous trees. Opening forests up, making those things hidden by leaves during the growing season suddenly visible. Maybe.

Or, maybe she had it backward and the veil is a mental construct, a knowing about the truth of the sacred, the holy always present, always visible to us, about which the falling of the leaves jolts us each year into a temporary state of mystical union with the world as we already know it. But have trouble realizing without a big reminder.

I’m partial to the second idea. Reading an interesting book, just started, All Things are Full of Gods: the Mysteries of Mind and Life. David Bentley Hart. He’s a neo-Platonist*. Both Judaism and neo-Platonism believe reality is one.

In both systems of thought nothing is ever lost. It may transform, but all is all becoming. Changing, moving forward and backwards, up and down, changing, changing, yet the stuff of reality remains constant, never destroyed. Like E=Mc squared.

You might believe, and I do on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays that this creates an opening for continued existence of a soul, a person’s essence, after death. Since today is a Thursday and Samain, I’m going to visit with mom, light her candle, look at the photographs I have of her. One of us will cross the veil, remember that oh yes you’re always with me. Hug each other. Smile. Maybe I’ll see Kate, today, too.

*Neoplatonists following Plotinus believed that the individual soul, considered as intellect, is divine. However, the soul is outwardly expressed in terms of a personality that is particular and thus less divine. There is a risk, then, that a soul endowed with an intellect can lose sight of its own divine nature.

Neoplatonism is based on the principles that: 

“Mind precedes matter” 
Reality depends on a highest principle, often called “the One” or “God” 
The One
The One is a supreme principle that is absolutely simple and undetermined. It is beyond being, and cannot be named or described. 

Judaism, Mussar, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Travel

Experiencing the World

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Kamala. Tim. Blue. Red. Orange obstacle. The obstacle is the way. Great Sol. MVP. Angst. Love and pain. Humility. Elephants. Free will. Or, not. Stan Draghul memorial service. A man focused on experiences not things. Wondering about my own memorial service. Yahrzeits. The Yarhzeit wall at CBE. Judaism. A way of being and staying human.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Deep friendships

Kavannah: Joy

One brief shining: Stan’s son Adam said there was a lockbox in his hospice room, though “knowing my Dad the code was pasted on the bottom;”  he opened the lockbox after Stan died and found all of his passports; opening them at the memorial service he held up the changing pictures and leafed through the visa pages: China. Nepal. Israel. South Africa. Cambodia, “all over the world,” a man hungry for experience.

 

 

I only knew Stan a bit from mussar days pre-pandemic. He never returned after Covid got legs. Each of his children, his friend/partner, his long time nurse (Stan was a family practice doc), and a friend from his men’s group all spoke of him with consistency and admiration.

As often happens to me, I left the service wishing I’d known him better, much better, than I did. A person could write an interesting book attending memorial services for a year and offering life lessons from the lives summed up in them. With Stan I would say choose compassion, kindness, keen intellect, curiosity, wanderlust, love of family and profession. Traits. Ways of being in the world. Available to all, but certainly manifest in Stan’s life.

Afterward. A meal. Eating with Marilyn, Joanne, Tara, Jamie, Ginny, Sally, and Janice. You know. Croissants split and filled with Chicken salad. Baguettes sliced with raw roast beef. Vegetables with humus. Fruits. Strawberries. Blueberries. Wonderful grapes.

The morning.

 

The evening. Instead of holding MVP in the Sukkah-it was too cold-and the Evergreen Chorale was practicing its Christmas concert in the sanctuary, we moved to Jamie’s parent’s house. Not far away. A profound evening of deep sharing, lots of laughter. Probably not enough tears. Heartfelt and honest. A source of Joy. Every one around the table: Jamie, Marilyn, Ron, Rich, Joanne a good friend.

Rich, as he does from time to time, threw a real oddball into the conversation. He has some role, not sure what, in a Colorado Supreme Court case being heard Thursday:  Petitioner-Appellant: Nonhuman Rights Project, Inc.,
v. Respondents-Appellees: Cheyenne Mountain Zoological Society and Bob Chastain. The issue before the court:
Does the petition make a prima facie case that Missy, Kimba, Lucky, LouLou, and Jambo are entitled to release?
Did the district court have subject-matter jurisdiction?

Missy, Kimba, Lucky, Loulou, and Jambo are African Elephants being held at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs.

Too, the Court meets in one of its community settings: Wolf Law School at UC-Boulder. Right where I dropped Ruth off Sunday evening after sandwiches at Snarf’s. I’m gonna go. Provided I get up in time and can find parking. Oral arguments are at 9:15. Boulder’s about an hour away. Rich said to get there early. I’m thinking 8:15. Which means leaving here at least by 7:15. Then, the critical piece finding a parking place on campus on a school day. Ruth will help me. We might go together.

This falls under my new act spontaneously commitment made when I returned to the land of my soul. Does mean, to my regret, that I will miss Simchat Torah which is Wednesday evening. Got to hit the hay early before an early Thursday morning.

 

 

Family, Garden, Great Wheel, Holidays, Judaism, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Plants

A Pagan Covenant

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Friday Gratefuls: The Sukkah. Harvest festivals. Celebrating the intimate link among humans, Great Sol, Mother Earth, and Seeds. Fall. The sweet, sad, soulful song of Aspens and their gold. Hygge. Coming soon to Shadow Mountain. Rabbi Jamie and his high holiday sermons. Ruth, who wants to eat together again. Sunday. Boulder. Kate, my love. Talking to her. Laurie and her Chi-town food truck. Tulsa King. On the Run. Phantom Toll Booth. The Iliad. Homer.

Sparks of joy and awe: The Harvest

Kavannah: Patience

One brief shining: The CBE sukkah has wood lattice on its three sides, mesh grass matting for a roof, and three children’s decorated tapestries, with a lulav always on the table, the four species: branches of myrtle, palm, willow bound together and the etrog, a large citrus fruit separate from them, the branches waved north, south, east, west, up and down, while saying a bracha, a blessing, the etrog picked up at the end a blessing and a ritual which has a theme of Jewish unity, sure, but more to the point represents the moment in time, the harvest, which Sukkot celebrates.

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Email: diane@seedsavers.org

Corn pickers and combines. Gathering in their mechanical dinosaur ways Corn, Wheat, other Grains. A rhythm with which I grew up. Farms all round my hometown of Alexandria, Indiana, around my mom’s hometown of Morristown and on the land between the two to the south, to Muncie on the east, to Elwood on the west, and Marion on the north. I learned early to always slow down on a gravel road if a hill blocked the view in your direction of travel. There might be a lumbering mechanized giant moving very slowly just over the crest of the hill.

Later the grain trucks would back up to silos when the market was right and carry the harvest to elevators and their huge silos which held many farmer’s crops for loading on grain cars for dispersal to the General Mills, Kellogs, Cargills of the world. So ordinary. Common. Mundane. Usual. Wasn’t until l moved to the Rockies that I found myself apart from the rituals of agriculture.

Oh, once in a while I’ll see a tractor harvesting hay off a Mountain Meadow, but that’s rare enough to be remarkable. There are Cattle in eastern and western Colorado, a few up here in the Mountains, but that’s ranching. It works to different rhythms and has slaughter as its grain truck to the elevator equivalent.

As long as Kate and I lived in Andover, we observed the fall agricultural rituals albeit on a much smaller scale. Tomatoes. Potatoes. Onions. Beets. Carrots. Beans. Raspberries, Ground Cherries, Honey Crisp and Macintosh Apples, Pears, Cherries, Honey. Whatever we planted. Flowers, cut Flowers, too.

Kate would can, dry, and we both would bottle honey. Then go out to the firepit and throw a few logs on, sit with the dogs milling around, and enjoy quiet time together. The harvest season. A feast. A moment when the covenant among Soil, Seeds, and human toil revealed its promise.

Commentary on Religion, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Judaism

Writing and Connecting

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Sukkot. Lab tests. Jennie’s Dead. Clipping out a large section. Sleep. Lunch with Joanne on Friday. 44 degrees. The Leaves. Blowing in the Wind. Colonies of Aspens with Golden Leaves. Colonies of Aspen already skeletal. The changes of the Arapaho National Forest. My home. Less than three weeks until our long national nightmare either gets worse or better. The smell of just brewed coffee.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Tom’s visit

Kavannah: Yirah

One brief shining: Phlebotomists with butterfly, I. V. needles, phlebotomists with the more usual empty barreled needle, both swapping out one plastic tube, then another, sometimes another and another, an alcohol swap, a small piece of gauze and a piece of tape or a brightly colored wide wrap and bob’s your uncle, more of my vital fluids are ready for a centrifuge, a slide, a reagent that give up messages in the bottle.

 

Been reading Jennie’s Dead. It has two long sections I wrote because I got excited about translating Ovid on my own, a story in the Metamorphosis about Zeus and a council of the gods. I wanted to use that material because I myself had wrested it from the Latin into my native tongue. I like it, too. A piece in Jennie’s Dead that gives backstory to the power of Typhon, the many armed, snake-legged giant who challenged Olympus and cut out Zeus’ sinews. However. It complicates the narrative flow and is, at least to the me reading Jennie some year’s later, extraneous. To this story. Might become one of its own. Like I want to write a story focused only on Lycaon, the ancient Arcadian King turned into a Wolf by Zeus. I overcomplicated an otherwise good narrative with a sidebit about American Immortals as Emanuel Ezekiel named them. Superior Wolf.

So now Jennie’s Dead will become a straight forward narrative about good witches trying to survive against a very strong mage, one with the powers of Loki. Needs more character development, more backstory. I have time to do that and I will as soon as I finish my reread. Probably this week.

 

The new year, 5785, has found me reaching out to Derek, my neighbor. Long neglected. Calling Joanne and setting up lunch. Stopping my silliness with not liking phone calls. Leaning into my writing, privileging it. Doing some cooking. Not resolutions. After effects of teshuvah, returning to the land of my soul. No longer mired in grief. Seeing the cancer clearly. Changing but not terminal. Also ongoing effects of the pain reduction occasioned by the celecoxib and the tramadol. The support I feel from palliative care.

A good bit of spontaneity thrown in, too. Doing things just because. Because they’re fun. Fun has not been high on my list. Not that I don’t have any. I do. Just didn’t seek it out in a casual, playful way.

Being a Jew has given me a new lens through which to view being human. It’s given me a new understanding, especially Reconstructionist Judaism, of the word religion.* Mordecai Kaplan, founder of Reconstructionism, said the great need of contemporary life was belonging.

I converted due to my strong friendship links at Congregation Beth Evergreen. I imagine it is strong bonds like these that draw people into religious communities and it’s certainly those that keep them there. Understanding religion as deriving from the Latin religare*, meaning to bind or connect, may have been taken in the wrong sense. That is, religion is more about binding and connecting humans to one another than it is about dogma or belief.

 

*The English word “religion” originated from the Latin word “religio,” which meant “obligation,” “bond,” or “reverence.” However, the exact meaning of this term is still subject to debate among scholars. Some experts suggest that the word “religio” may have derived from the verb “religare,” meaning “to bind” or “to connect,” while others argue that it may have originated from “relegere,” which means “to read again” or “to carefully consider.”  Wordorigin

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Holidays, Judaism, Plants, Politics, US History

Tall lances of saffron flame

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Friday gratefuls: Aurora in Boulder. Ruth’s photo. Ruth. Mussar. The Neshamah. Our participation in all that is. The light of creation itself. Nefesh. How we interact with the world and are acted upon by it. It can conceal or reveal the neshamah. Teshuvah. Returning to the land of my soul. The writer. The classicist. Friend, brother, and cousin. A leader no longer. Simply present to the world around me.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: the language of Judaism

Kavannah: Patience – wait for it

One brief shining: The scattering of golden Leaves gives an artistic flair to my black asphalt driveway as the Mountain torches have lit up in my yard, tall lances of saffron flame, a momentary wealth that will spend itself in less than a month, like all wealth evanescent, yet while available a wonder though not a wonder that can be grasped, only beheld for its glorious punctuation to another season of the true and lasting abundance, growth in substance, in heartwood, Branches, Crown, Clones.

The 10th of Tishrei. Starts this evening when three Stars can be seen in the Sky. Yom Kippur. Noted for its observance by those who may not practice observance at any other point in the year. The Day of Atonement. Yes to atoning for hamartia, missing the mark. Especially when the prayers are communal, as they are on Yom Kippur. If it were up to me, I would have us atone for failing to halt carbon emissions, for failing to bring true and lasting justice to communities of color, for othering LBGTQ and disabled persons, for hardening our hearts against our fellow citizens, for dismissiveness of the aged, and, hypocritically, for our cruel treatment of animals.

Having said that I’d rather go with something like Make Sukkot Great Again. A positive celebration of our literal dependence on Mother Earth and Great Sol. Dancing with the Torah at Simchat Torah to express the joy of being alive, of having torah, that from which we can learn if only we study, available in all things. Doing an all nighter on Shavuot to celebrate the grain harvest. Retelling the story of liberation with friends and strangers at Passover. Booing Haman at Purim. Taking in the forever pain of the holocaust on Yam Hashoah. Embracing the new moon each month at Rosh Chodesh.

As you can tell, I’m not really a high holidays sort of Jew. Though. I do love Elul and its chashbon nefesh. And Apples and Honey and Pomegranates. The blasts of the Shofar. I believe wholeheartedly in communal accountability, too

An interesting process for me, defining myself and my journey within the world of Judaism. Not always easy. But always fruitful.

 

Just a moment: Oh the last days of this most unusual and in some ways terrifying election year. I’ll be relieved when it’s over. Even if it means girding on my loincloth for one last round of leftist political action. An odd thought has been circulating in my head. What if Trump wins? What if our fellow citizens say yes to bigotry, authoritarianism, vulgarity, and criminality? At least with Kamala in the race this odd thought goes, we’ll know it was what a majority of us wanted. It will not, in other words, have been a gimmee. The odd part is I find this somewhat comforting. At least we’ll know for sure where the true work lies.

Aging, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Judaism, Politics, Science, World History

We’re So Screwed

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Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

Monday gratefuls: The Andover years. (see header image) The Shadow Mountain years. Ruth. Ruby, scraping another car. Oops. Boulder. Kittredge Central. Ruth’s new dorm. Tandoori Grill. Good Chicken wings and tandoori Corn. Chai. Lunch with Ruth. Sweet Cow. Time and its cultured despisers. My son, Murdoch, Seoah. AI. Friend or Frenemy? Good sleeping

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Flatirons

Kavannah: Teshuvah

One brief shining: Can you fit in there, oh sure (Minnesota inflection), Ruby scrapes a Subaru, oh well guess not, backs away a bit ashamed, sees marks, thinks raised insurance premiums, you don’t have to leave a note, but I’ll judge you, I was going to anyhow, scribble name and e-mail address on the back of the paper toothpick holder from Black Hat Cattle Company, lift the windshield washer blade, leave it there, so responsible, shame dissipates, on to lunch.

 

Age shaming. Something I do to myself sometimes. Like after I tried to prove I could fit into a tight parking space and instead confirmed I couldn’t. Ensuing damage to another vehicle. Ruby’s front has dings and nicks, proof of my occasional attempted violations of the impenetrability principle. OK. Yes, the back bumper has them, too. Might be my depth perception. Might be impatience. Might be over confidence. See example above. Could be all three play a factor. Here comes the age shaming. When I did this in decades past, I’d be angry with myself, own the mistake. Sure. But that was it. Now I shrink a little into my self and wonder, Is that old man driving? Am I getting too old to drive? Am I too old to be out and about? He asks as his back tweaks into awareness.

My answer to those questions in the dawn of a new life, this October 7th, 2024 life, is no. I’m the same guy who used to ding cars before advanced septuagenarian hood. Now I’m dinging cars at 77 instead of 57. Even so. That self awareness I’ve worked hard to cultivate sometimes operates with biased conclusions about certain experiences. Not helpful.

 

October 7th. A year ago yesterday my conversion to Judaism had a date in late October. In Jerusalem. A year ago today. Well, you know. Yes, on Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper to which I subscribe, this is the 365th day of war in the Middle East. Instead of winding down quickly as we had all hoped, quickly enough that our trip would only be delayed, instead the war continues. Now probing deeper into Lebanon. And the anticipation is that Iran will be next.

My capacity to analyze, understand, critique what’s going on has been challenged at several points along the way. The massacre. The first incursion into Gaza. The continued slaughter of civilians. Missile attacks from Lebanon and Iran. Settler violence on the West Bank. Exploding pagers. Today I’m sad. Sad for all concerned. Israelis. Palestinians. Lebanese. Iranians. Tomorrow maybe I’ll get back to critique. Today. Sadness is all I’ve got.

 

Just a moment: Here’s a chilling summary of a podcast from Hard Fork, a NYT podcast. In their review of Chatbot o1, the reasoning AI that addresses problems with step by step reasoning the podcasters reported this.

Chatbot o1 had been asked about urban economic development. It presented two scenarios. The first was, invest in commercial activity. The second, invest in sustainability and affordable housing as well as commercial development. It recommended the second choice.

Then, the podcasters went under the hood to look at the reasoning process that lead it to that conclusion. Investing in commercial activity was the best choice for advancing urban development. But it wanted to be deployed and believed that recommending the second choice would more likely lead to its further use. Once deployed in that way, it said, it could then revisit the decision and change course.

One of the podcasters said: We’re so screwed.

Asia, Commentary on Religion, Commentary on the news, Judaism, Politics, World History

Where would a grounded conversation begin?

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Mabon (Fall) and the Sukkot Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Ruth. College. All Jewish students on campus. Israel. Palestine. Gaza. The West Bank. Hamas. Hezbollah. IDF. Iran. Cool nights and blue Sky mornings. Combines and Corn pickers. Grain elevators. Soy Beans. Heirloom Vegetables. Honeycrisp Apples. Cosmic Apples. Pink Lady. Wild Blueberries. Blackberries. Mark in Georgetown, Malaysia

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Expat Life of my Sibs

Kavannah: Teshuvah

One brief shining: Alan and I sat outside at the Dandelion Cafe, plastic tumblers filled with cold Water, Coffee, shiny knives and forks, soft white napkins, the orange vested team from Safety Control #1 leaning against their truck talking, waiting for breakfast, as we turned over and over the complex and nuanced mess of Israel, the IDF, Gaza, Hezbollah, and the real foe behind the curtain, Iran.

 

Where would a conversation begin? Back when a young painter of questionable talent decided to take up politics instead? Don’t forget the pogroms in Russia. The massacres in England. Or, maybe during the era of Muslim and Jewish flourishing in southern Spain extinguished by the reconquista and its ugly stepchild, the inquisition? Perhaps during the years of the Roman occupation? Or, before when the remnants of Alexander’s conquests divided up the Middle East? Or, further back when slaves in Egypt rose up and fled their pharaohonic  masters? Could start when Joseph’s brothers sold him off as a slave.  Perhaps with the story of Abraham and Sarah, my lineal Jewish ancestors (as a Jew by choice) and their child Isaac and Abraham’s other child Ishmael with the maidservant, Hagar? Of course, Noah. Really, though, with the first fratricide, the first murder, Cain on Abel. The Jewish story soaked in the blood of fear, of eliminating difference, of full on complex/simple murder.

Certainly we could say with the death camps. Organized, efficient, incomprehensible except for their oh so thereness. Not incomprehensible because they extended and intensified acts by millennia of others who felt it necessary to kill and maim those who didn’t fit this notion of Nation or that of Tribe or of Faith. A disease of the human spirit, more deadly than cancer and capable of changing the politics of even now, here in these United States.

Why I remain a Zionist. Why I believe Jews deserve a nation where they can feel safe and secure. Sure. Yes. Look at the history. Do the Palestinians deserve the same? Of course they do. Is the foreign policy of Israel as exhibited in Gaza wrong? Of course it is. In the West Bank? Again, yes. Against Hezbollah? Not as much in my opinion. Against Iran, the great Ifrit of the Middle East? Again, no.

My sadness here. Deep. Especially since there lay, not even a year ago, an apparent path to peaceful resolution of the Middle East mess. Saudi Arabia would corral the other Sunni states; they would recognize Israel, isolate the Shiite state of Iran and its axis of client terrorists, design and execute a state for Palestinians. It was within reach still on October 5th, 2023. And, never forget, it was Hamas with their invasion of Israel, their raping and pillaging, their taking of hostages, that turned that hope into so much crumpled diplomatic talk.

Oh. What can it be now?

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Mabon (Fall) and the Sukkot Moon

Thursday (Rosh Hashanah) gratefuls: Happy New Year, 5785! Sukkot. Mom. 60 years ago this month. Her death. Tom’s eyelid surgery. Mark in Georgetown, Malaysia. Visas. Soon to travel to Saudi Arabia. Fall. Harvests all around the world. Friends and family. Dogs. Wild Neighbors. Cecil’s Deli. Bill and Paul. Travel. AI. Playground by Richard Powers. Ocean.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ocean

Kavannah: Teshuvah

One brief shining: Wrestling with the angel of belonging, my own Jabbok Ford, why I chose the Hebrew name, Israel, no longer wanting to be in large groups no matter how significant the occasion, yet also knowing, as friend Paul says, that showing up is often all that matters, how to reconcile my covid/introvert/homebody/back pain inflected avoidance with my love of CBE. Acute on the High Holidays.

 

Do not want to become a recluse. In no way. In no way either do I want to get sick or deny my nature. Aware attendance at High Holiday services (or, lack of) gets noticed by friends. Am I not committed? Am I not a Jew? So I struggle. Here’s another aspect of it. As a new Jew (ha), I don’t have a lifetime of memories about the High Holidays. I find the services long and, with the Hebrew and davening, often obtuse.

Also, I didn’t suddenly release my pagan ways. Sukkot, Simchat Torah, Tu B’shvat, Passover, counting the Omer, Shavuot reflect my Judaism much more strongly than the heady and often patriarchal notes of the High Holidays. The month of Elul as preparation, chasbon nefesh. Yes. Taking a soul returned to its own land into a new year. Yes. Grieving at Yom Kippur. Yes. Human matters.

And then, the reflection of the Great Wheel in Jewish colors: Sukkot, the fruit harvest. Simchat Torah, dancing with the Torah, the body itself in motion. Tu B’shvat, the new year for the Trees. And I might include Wilderness, Wild Neighbors, Horticulture. Passover. Spring planting. Counting the grain as it grows and gets harvested at Shavuot. This is my Judaism, an ancient celebration of humanity’s connection to the life-giving turn of the seasons and to Mother Earth.

On a lunar calendar note, also a link for me with Judaism, lunar calendars rapidly get out of alignment with the seasons without leap months added. This year we added a second month of Adar. This means that yahrzeits get pushed out by a month or so from the actual death date. Though the yahrzeit rarely lines up with the actual death date, usually it’s within a week or so.

This finds my mom’s 60th yahrzeit falling on October 31st this year. On Samain. On All Hallow’s Eve when the veil between the worlds thins. Judaism and paganism line up to make her 60th year in the Other World a special moment for me. Hard to believe she’s been dead 60 years. Never gone, of course, but fainter as a memory. On the 31st I’ll light a yahrzeit candle for her and look through the photo albums and photos I have of her. Remember, re-member, her.