Category Archives: Judaism

Mussar, Plants, Shadow Mountain

Honoring the Aspen, Tree #1

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

This is the first entry in my honoring the Tree mussar practice. I will post these as I do them.

My kavanah, my intention, is to enhance my capacity for honoring all things, all Earthlings. Including humans. In this honoring means paying attention, close and uninterrupted attention. Seeing the other for what they exhibit, to imbibe their uniqueness and their interconnectedness. This uniqueness has many names: Buddah nature, soul, highest potential, essence, wholeness, image of God. In seeing the sacred reality of this Aspen I am in turn seeing my own sacredness in the process of seeing the Aspen.

 

When we first moved here on the Winter Solstice of 2014, this Aspen had no leaves. Tiny shoots of its clones were hidden beneath the Snow cover. But they were there.

Nine and a half years later I went out today, out front since this Tree is in the front. As I walked up to it, I noticed its Trunk’s variation between a smooth gray Bark and a wrinkled black Bark. As if the Tree could not make up its mind. I’m curious now as to the purpose of the two different types of Bark. A Spider and an Ant crawled over both smooth and rough, unconcerned.

My hand found the change in textures though they seemed more graduated with touch. The smooth Bark had some grippiness to it and also contained small raised bumps of the rougher black Bark. When I walked around the Tree, I noticed at its base a large scar, black Bark that looked like a Fire scar. Doesn’t make sense to me, but it’s a distinctive feature of this Tree and a reminder that its journey has not always been easy.

Looking straight up the Trunk toward the Leader reaching for the Sky the Bark got smoother and smoother as it went up and the Trunk got smaller. Could it be that a certain girt stretches the smooth Bark far enough that it separates and allows the rougher Bark to form? If so, why?

The most striking feature of this tree for me, on this sunny Colorado Mountain morning, danced on the ends of short stems, quaking this way and that. Throwing shadows on the Leaves behind them, then fluttering out of the way. Leaves in groups of five opened and closed each others access to Great Sol’s brilliance.

The interplay of light and shadow these Leaves put on would make a great Calder sculpture. The shifting moving Leaves were beautiful. As beautiful as any work of art in a museum.

While being beautiful, they also perform Mother Earth’s true miracle, light-eating. Turning photons into sugars. The sine qua non for all complex life on this planet.

Asia, Judaism, Politics, Sport

Rebels

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Beltane and the Bar Mitzvah Moon

Friday gratefuls: Shabbat. Bar mitzvah decisions. Regaining confidence. Purpose. Shekinah. Trees. Great Wheel. Great work. Rabbi Jamie. Zornberg. Mordecai Kaplan. Mah Tovu. Mussar. Luke and his passion. Leo. A long immersion in matters Jewish. Alan and First Watch. Diane and the Sea Lions of Fisherman’s Wharf. Mark and Bangkok. Familiar turf for him.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Mordecai Kaplan

One brief shining: We sat there around his circular table, his library wall filled with texts in Hebrew as well as English, Rabbi Jamie and me, he showed me the Haggadah by Mordecai Kaplan, this one got him excommunicated, oh, my attention piqued, I’ve got to have one I said because I love stories of rebellion and its consequences.

 

Finished reading all 2,000 plus pages of Romance of the Three Kingdoms. A significant classic of Chinese literature. And a good read. Took a while. One takeaway from it. Rebels are the bad guys. The guys who support the Emperor are the good guys. This was an important learning for me since we Americans valorize the rebel, the American revolutionary. Our country was born in rebellion whereas China’s civilization honors it long, continuous history.

The mandate of heaven takes the place of the rebel. So long as an Emperor could claim the mandate of heaven*, he could rule. But, if he lost the mandate of heaven**, it became the people’s responsibility to overthrow him and usher in a new dynasty. Even in this case though the rebel served the new dynasty to be born from the old one. No experimentation in political form.

I admire Mordecai Kaplan and his willingness to follow his own thinking, to de-supernaturalize Judaism and to demote tradition from decider of all questions to a factor with a vote but not a veto. I love the expectation of debate, of doubt, of honoring the other’s perspective. Kaplan and my kind would not fare well in Chinese culture. Either under the old dynastic pattern or under the very similar Chinese Communist Party. Rule from the top down is the Chinese way.

 

Just a moment: A bit about the Caitlin Clark story. Yes, she’s a whitebread Midwesterner playing in a state, Indiana, that has not been celebrated for its moves towards racial justice. Yes, she’s touted as the next big thing that will push the WNBA higher up in the world of professional sports. And, most important, yes, the media has portrayed her first games as a pro with the breathless and hyperbolic ideas that often accompany writing about a new sports superstar.

She’s getting knocked around, shoved, posted hard. Many of those playing her like hockey enforcers are black. So villainous? Right? How dare they play hard against the white savior of their sport? Isn’t that self-defeating for women’s basketball as a whole?

No. The opposite is true. Were Caitlin given kid glove treatment she would never have the chance to mature into a true star. This hazing, some no doubt with malice, shows she’ll get no special favors on the court. That her game has to take over at a high level or she’ll remain a journeywoman player.

Should intentional fouls be called? Of course. There’s no excuse for casual violence in any sport. Well, ok, MMA. Otherwise, let everybody play their game.

 

 

*…the Mandate of Heaven was that although a ruler was given great power, he also had a moral obligation to use it for the good of his people. If a ruler did not do this, then his state would suffer terrible disasters and he would lose the right to govern.  World History Encyclopedia

**The sign that the mandate had been lost would be made evident by all kinds of calamities including natural ones: earthquakes, storms, solar eclipses, floods, drought, famine and plague. Other signs could be a more personal evidence from the emperor’s own behavior: cruelty, corruption, military defeat and incompetence. These were all interpreted as signs of the displeasure of heaven. To rise in rebellion when these signs occurred was justified. ChinaSage

Mountains, Mussar, Plants, Shadow Mountain

Kavod. Honor.

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Beltane and the Bar Mitzvah Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Eleanor, Tara’s new dog. What a cutie! Tara. The last practice with Tara. Using a Yod. MVP last night. Joanne’s new tooth. Rich’s weight loss. Honor. Seeing the Buddha nature in another. Seeing the sacred image in another. And in yourself. Honor the other and your self with complete attention. Early finish for my 150 minutes this week.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Going down the Forest path

One brief shining: Reach out a hand, feel the roughness, the curvature, perhaps put a finger into one of the fissures, sap or resin may stick to it, may have the scent of a Pine Tree, a Pinus contarta perhaps, or one of the Ponderosa Pines a bit lower down the Mountain, their Bark their persona their face to the world, a point of contact between the inner and the outer Tree.

 

My mussar practice for this month: honor as many of the trees growing around my house as I can. That is, see each of them as an individual, stand with them, look up, feel their trunks, note the marks of their individuality, their uniqueness. Honor the journey of that Tree from seed to maturity. Honor the work they do above and below ground. Remain in their presence. Listening. Smelling. Touching. Seeing. Hearing.

The Branches as they wave up and down in a morning breeze. Their rampant Strobilus ready to send pollen out to the female flowers. The green Leaves (I know, needles. But this is what botanists call them.) growing in brush like clusters up and down each Branch. Their stillness. Their occupation of one spot for the duration of their life. The Bark, protecting. How the Branches may stretch out only in one direction. The Trunk sways in the Wind. Their height. Even the Lodgepoles are taller than my house, my garage.

Working on my new purpose. Reading. Observing. Thinking. Not sure where it all will lead. The fun in it.

Noticed last night driving home late from my MVP group at the synagogue. Trees. The same Trees that were there on my drive down. The Arapaho National Forest. Mostly Lodgepoles. Realized how difficult the density of the Lodgepoles would make a night time hike. How instead of welcoming they became menacing. Barriers to easy travel. Trees change character for Forest dwellers depending on the time of day.

 

Just a moment: I’ve made a couple of decisions. First, I will sell this house when I’m 80 and move to an apartment somewhere close to Joe and Seoah. Why? They finish up in Korea the year I turn 79. I want to be close to them as I head further into the thicket of aging.

Second. No more doom and gloom about the orange one. Or MAGA. Or the convinced. No. I’m 77. Life’s gotten a lot shorter. I’m going to continue living my life no matter what happens politically. I may engage or I may not. What I will not do is succumb to despair, constant anger, bitterness.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Great Wheel, Great Work, Holidays, Humanities, Judaism, Letters, Literature, Myth and Story, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation, Tarot

I’m Into Something Good. Oh, yeah…

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Cool night. Elk. Mule Deer. Fox. Great Sol. The Great Wheel. The Great Work. The Jewish Year. Wild Trees. Ancient Forests. Sequoias. Coastal Redwoods. Bristlecone Pines. Kabbalah. Shekinah. The Sabbath Bride. Emergence. Lodgepoles. Aspens. Jewitches. Love. Justice. Compassion. A direction, a purpose. A way to live.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Emergence

One brief shining: Before the closing of the door and before I even open it, I stand hand over my eyes repeating the shema, declaring that I, god-wrestler, find the one to be all and the all to be one, which we might call god or not, but we can call it for sure the interdependent web of all things, all becoming things, everywhere there is a where, stretching from me in front of my bedroom door to the other reaches of this universe, passing by the Crab Nebula and the Horse Head Nebula on its way to a boundary where there can be no boundary.

 

I’m into something good.* Said this this morning during the Ancient Brothers. An exciting burst of serendipity, synchronicity, plain old enthusiasm. Heading toward eudaimonia. Wow. Sounds manic as I write it. Has some of that flavor. The shovel that uncovered this new path? A dream. And the Dreamers’ response to it.

And… Here we go. I’m going back to Wabash College. At least that place I was when I was there. Serendipity note: the Herman’s Hermits song below was released in 1964, the summer before my last year of high school, and before my mother’s death in October. Another serendipity note: Herman’s Hermits.

When I went to Wabash, I had competing emotions, both so very strong. The first. Grief. Unresolved, not understood, in no way dealt with. Mom was dead. I left home to go to this school, at the time highly competitive, and bare my small town intellect to so many others so much smarter than me. Grief and uncertainty. Toxic at best.

The second. Finally! A liberal arts education. A chance to get into the cultural deposit of the West. (It would be many, many years before Asia showed up in my life.) Philosophy. History. English Literature. Languages. A chance to grow beyond my autodidact years, guided by professors and stimulated by fellow students. Hard to convey the excitement, even relief, I felt at starting college.

Then German happened. I wanted to read Hegel, Nietzsche, Kant in the original. So I signed up. And floundered. Bad. Got c’s and d’s on quizzes and tests. Where this headed was clear. Abject failure. I did not do the brave and movie worthy thing. Face up to it and overcome. No. I dropped German like a hot potato masher hand grenade.

At the end of the year summer jobs were hard to find and Wabash was expensive. I decided to go further. Leave Wabash altogether. I’m not big on regret, but this is one of them for me.

The dream. Said. Go back. Be who you intended to be. The one that got lost along the way. So who was I going to be, the 18 year old version of this 77 year old. I wasn’t sure of anything but my desire to dive headlong into the deep waters of the liberal arts. Where would I come out? No idea. Didn’t want to know. I only wanted the journey. No destination.

I’ve made a journey, but got off the path of liberal arts, shunted aside by politics and religion. By alcohol and women. By travel and jobs. All ok, all good. Yet not where I wanted to be.

Now. The tarot card, the Hermit, hangs rendered in neon over my breakfast table. Herman’s Hermits remind me of the year before college, feelings accelerating, ground speed increasing. I’m also reminded of my first response to Kate’s death. I’m going to be a hermit. Hence, the neon. Last year I wrote a one-act play introducing Herme, the Hermit, and Cold Mountain’s poetry. And the dream says, go. Teshuvah. Return to the highest and best you.

A semi-hermit, a sometime recluse, a happy loner. But one with the permission to study, to write. To go back into the liberal arts and see if, as Israel: God-Wrestler, I can add to the world my own learnings.  About the Great Wheel, the Jewish liturgical year, trees and plants, about process metaphysics, about religion, about poetry and literature, about transformation and metamorphosis. These are the lenses through which I have learned to see the world.

Next. Organizing my days, weeks, months, years around this Fool’s Journey. After that. On to the diving board, spring up and down. Out into thin air.

*

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

Works for Me

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Socrates Cafe today. Tara lesson today. Torah and the morning service. Rami Shapiro. Judaism without Tribalism. Ruth and Gabe. Mark in Hua Hin on the Gulf of Thailand. Three Body Problem trilogy. Breakfast at Aspen Perks. Picking up shirts at USA cleaner. Groceries today. Pickup again. Got hot dogs for Memorial Day. A very rare treat.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Lodgepoles of Arapaho National Forest

One brief shining: Have taken no shirts to a dry cleaner/laundry since Kate died, not sure why, but last week I took in my new shirts and my flannel shirts, the new ones to have a wash and an ironing, the flannel shirts for a seasonal dry cleaning, ready now to store in the closet until the next Winter, and it felt like a splurge. So expensive. BTW: I did wash my shirts in the washing machine. Just so you know.

 

A good workout week. Hit my 150 minutes again. Moving up on weights. Always feel better when I get all my workouts in. Think of Diane headed up Bernal Hill on her jogging route. Ode in the gym gettin’ buff. Watch the red meat, eat fruits and vegetables, more fish and chicken. Workout. Live longer, healthier. Maybe. No phone call yet about my P.E.T. scan. Part of it, too. Mind the cancer.

 

Got a new set of all-seasons for Ruby. Big O. They know the double entendre, I’m sure, but using it on a tire retailer? Seems odd. To me anyhow. Oil change, too. Synthetic. 10,000 miles between. Feels luxurious after a life time of 5,000 mile oil changes. Course those of you with the electrics. Don’t they beat all when it comes to maintenance. I like leaving as many dollars up here in the Mountains as I can. Help the local economy.

 

Led mussar on Thursday. Always fun to lead a group temporarily. Considering another dive into the educating realm. Right now I’m in a havruta with Gary Riskin. Traditionally talmud torah, torah study, was done in pairs. Read a text. Summarize it, analyze it. Sharpening each others thought process. A lively back and forth. Probably where the quip, two Jews, three opinions, came from. We meet every two weeks over zoom. We worked on Cain and Abel last session. The only class I’m in right now.

But. Having just finished Rabbi Toba Spitzer’s excellent God is Here, and halfway through Rabbi Rami Shapiro’s Judaism without Tribalism, with Rabbi Michael Strassfield’s latest, Judaism Disrupted: A Spiritual Manifesto for the 21st Century, ready after I finish Shapiro, I may consider creating a class using these three books. Plus maybe one of Mordecai Kaplan’s, the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism. The work in Toba Spitzer’s book and Rami’s show the power of Reconstructionist thought. I find them working the same vein as Emerson.

That is, how can we use the spiritual deposit of the ages while maintaining an open, even skeptical attitude toward religion as an institution? I found Unitarian-Universalism too broad and too thin a tool for this quest. Paganism worked better for me. Until I found a group committed to the same rigorous approach to religion as Emerson and myself and committed to community at the same time. Reconstructionism.

I find Spitzer, Shapiro, and Strassfield working at the outer edges of what Shapiro calls Judaism without tribalism. Calling into question the very way we understand the sacred, Spitzer’s work on metaphors, and Shapiro’s focus on Judaism’s two key moves: teshuvah and tikkun.

Teshuvah, or return, means in his thought returning to who we really are after jettisoning other’s expectations, and being dead honest about who we are. Tikkun means repairing the world: the physical world, the political world, the emotional world. These are, according to him, the mission of Jews. To embrace our true selves and repair a damaged reality. Works for me.

 

 

 

Health, Judaism, Kabbalah, Mussar, Talmud

Mussar and Kabbalah and Talmud

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Tara. Covid. Chill pills. Great Sol. Bringing the morning. Good workout. Studying Perkei Avot, Chapters of the Fathers to present in mussar today. Practicing torah portion. Reading Judaism without Tribalism by Rabbi Rami Shapiro. Wow. Finishing the third book of the Three Worlds Problem trilogy. Cooked last night.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Summerweight Comforter

One brief shining: With a twinge of guilt I separated the one pound of lean beef into patties, hit the induction button and turned it to 8 under my Lodge cast iron skillet, waited a bit and tossed the seasoned patties on its hot metal, yes, a steer killed by proxy for me, yes, red meat with cholesterol, but oh every once in a while a burger sure tastes good.

 

My workouts go well. I’ve figured out how to navigate cardio and resistance with my back. Can do as much as I need without having to quit. Mostly. If I do feel my hip beginning to ouch very much, I will stop, having learned that if I don’t things get worse quick. Now using oxygen in the evenings as well as at night. Waiting on a call for a new P.E.T. scan.

 

Prepping right now for mussar class this afternoon. Perkei Avot. The Chapters of the Fathers. For example:

Pirkei Avot 1:14

(14) He [Rabbi Hillel] used to say: If I am not for me, who will be for me? And when I am for myself alone, what am I? And if not now, then when?

Pirkei Avot 2:16

(16) He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say: It is not your responsibility to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.

Pirkei Avot 4:1

(1) Ben Zoma says: Who is the wise one? He who learns from all men…

Who is the mighty one? He who conquers his impulse…

Who is the rich one? He who is happy with his lot…

Who is honored? He who honors the created beings…

 

Not sure what tact I’m going to take with all this. Traditionally studied in the six weeks between Pesach and Shavuot. Passover and the giving of the torah at the foot of Mt. Sinai.

 

Also this period includes counting the omer. I mentioned this a while back. The omer, the grains, counted between Pesach and Shavuot, are a kabbalistic ritual involving blessing the omer each night and correlating those nights with sefirot from the tree of life.

For example, today is the gevurah of hod. Gevurah is the recognition of limits and boundaries. It is strength to enforce godly values. With its immediate counterpart, Hesed, loving kindness, Gevurah recognizes the power to enforce justice.

But today is the gevurah of hod. Hod is humility. Taking up the right amount of space. The strength of humility, the gevurah of hod, lies in our ability to be in the world as we are, not as other people or our culture believe we should be.

Somewhere in all this there’s some kind of lesson. Right?

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Judaism, Mountains, Shadow Mountain

Gettin’ Real

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Shirley Waste. Great Sol yet again. All the Water falling down the Mountain toward Bear Creek. Reconstructionist Judaism. Irv and the Ancient Brothers. Taxes. Tom and his test. Ruth and her gift. Domo. I-70, experiencing Crash Week. David. Kristie. Learning Hebrew. Learning the Morning Service. Pushing on through to the other side. New tires Thursday.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Driving in the Mountains

One brief shining: Velveteen Rabbiting so many things: that Stickley couch with naps, the Stickley chair with books of all sorts, the living room with its Garden Path paint and Jerry’s painting, Joseph’s self-portrait, Ruby with every nick and scrape, Judaism with each Hebrew word and phrase I learn, Great Sol and my driveway, my lev each time I write a post or go see a friend, becoming, changing participating in the One.

 

“God is that aspect of reality which elicits from us the best that is in us and enables us to bear the worst that can befall us.” Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, Reconstructionist Prayerbook

 

Shadow Mountain. Rubbing it each time I drive up and down the hill, each time I get up in the Morning, say the Shema, touch the mezzuzah, cook a meal, read a book, see it whole from the Safeway parking lot. It is the literal foundation of my world. Its rocky, knobby forehead posed toward the West, its long flank running from my house all the way downhill to Hwy. 73, and then, too, toward the north and the Valley of Cub and Blue Creeks. Its broken Rock Aquifer holds Rain and Snow for the Lodgepoles, the Aspens, and my shower, dishwasher, toilets and sinks, and boiler. Shadow Mountain also lifts me up to 8,800 feet above sea level. Making Oxygen less available. How big it really is I do not know for it shades into Black and Conifer Mountains. Mountains, at least in the Front Range, do not live isolated lives, rather they brush against each others’ Valleys, Meadows and often join together below the surface, stand together in runs of Peaks and Valleys. Yes. It is Shadow Mountain Home.

Kate’s Creek and Valley: Also shabby from an abundance of love. Where I first dispersed some of Kate’s ashes, where I later distributed them all. A spot I’ve used for hiking for several years in all seasons. I know where the Strawberries and Raspberries and Wild Roses grow. Kate’s Creek Waters its banks. A White Pine grows straight and tall. Perhaps a ship’s mast in another century.

Congregation Beth Evergreen. Rubbing shoulders. Literally. Mussar. Evening Services. Outdoor performances. B’nei Mitzvahs. Classes of all sorts. So many years with Kate. She rubbed it, too. And is part of what has become real, alive for me there. Breakfasts and lunches.

The loft. Where I workout. Where I paint, store my books, most of them, read and used to write. Everyday for so many years until Kep’s illness. A place made real.

What, I wonder, are you Velveteen Rabbiting right now?

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Judaism, Mountains, Plants, Wild Neighbors

Life. Challenges to it.

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Beltane and the Moon of Shadow Mountain

General Sherman

Tuesday gratefuls: Sarah’s back home. Her visit. Ruth tonight at Domo. Kristie today for update on my recent labs. Meeting David to talk prostate cancer. Great Sol beaming. All those Wild Neighbor babies and young ones. Good workout yesterday. Good practice for my bar mitzvah: torah portion and service leading portions. Ordering a few things: new laptop, new laptop stand, a summer weight comforter. Giving on Colorado Jewish Giving Day.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Enough to share

One brief shining: Can you imagine General Sherman under attack, the largest single Tree in the world, 274.9 feet high, 102.6 feet circumference at ground level, height of first branch above the base, 130.0 feet, by Beetles, Bark-Beetles, possibly aided by the climate tragedy; more, can you imagine being a researcher for the Giant Sequoia Lands Coalition climbing General Sherman this week, this great Wild Neighbor,  because “We really feel like it’s our duty as stewards to take a closer look.” I can.

Quote from Christy Brigham in a San Francisco Chronicle article by Kurtis Alexander, May 20, 2024. Courtesy of Diane.

 

I feel suddenly protective of these Trees, this Tree. The Redwoods, too. And the Bristlecone Pines. Taller than three blue whales. I mean…

Gonna add the Giant Sequoia Lands Coalition to my donation list. Just donated. What a good feeling. Loving sharing Kate and mine’s money with organizations living out our values. Southern Poverty Law Center. Wild Animal Sanctuary. Kabbalah Experience. CBE. ADL. The Land Institute. The Ancient Forests Society. Makes me happy.

No, we cannot make much of a difference, but we can add our names and our money to those spots of human activity where social justice, the Great Work, Judaism, the Land, and our Wild Neighbors get attention and progress forward.

Not sure why the heart connection with these Trees. Mostly Muir Woods, I guess. Standing next to, among. Shaded by. Overshadowed by. A wild amazement that such beings exist, life so strong and vital. Godliness found. Commitment to a location. Perseverance. Majesty. Silence. Love of place, of the Soil. Soul creation.

 

Today at 11 I talk with Kristie for the first time in a while. My PSA went up a bit, as I wrote before, and my testosterone down. PSA under 1.0 which is the point beyond which imaging can pick up metastases. So no P.E.T. scan. Still off the drugs with my drug holiday. Feeling a bit unsure, unsteady about cancer right now. Will be good to talk to Kristie and get her take, her advice about where we go from here. Back on the drugs, I’m sure. But when?

Almost all of the time I’m ok with the cancer, letting it go on its way, taking the steps my doctors recommend. Living today. When I get a bit anxious about it, I’m not sure what’s going on. Like now. Hardly crippling, yet also there.

 

Have supper with my favorite (and only) granddaughter tonight at Domo. There I’ll give her the present from Kate and me. Enough cash to travel somewhere interesting before starting college. Also, some chocolate. I am so proud to be her grandpop. Glad for her that she was able to complete high school and graduate with her class. CU-Boulder this fall. Studio Arts. Her Dad and Grandma are proud.

 

 

 

 

 

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism, Travel

Donner Party Picnic Area

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Ruth. The class of 2024. Denver University. High School. Still high school. Sarah. My son. Seoah in pink. Helping with the Rice planting in Okgwa. Graduation ceremonies. Rites of passage. Alan. His new Beemer. Electric. Venturing into adulthood. Airmen and women. My son as uncle or para-father.  The USAF. Radar. Islands.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Seeing and hearing my son

One brief shining: Stepped up to the cash register, ordered Bolognese Sour Dough Toast, a Lemonberry tart, a fancy pastry with a melted sugar halo, and a Cuban coffee, gathered in the number, 47, for the order and went back to the table in the Bread Lounge overlooking the Mountains west of Evergreen including the completely Snow covered Continental Divide.

 

Speaking of the Continental Divide. On my train ride to San Francisco the conductor, who came on speaker from time to time with historic or geographic points of interest, indicated the River flowing beside the train. The Colorado. I’d crossed it before on a long ago trip to Colorado from Phoenix, but never had a chance to really see it. Muddy with Spring runoff it flowed fast and full, a River of so many dreams. Las Vegas. Tucson. Phoenix. Even far away Los Angeles. Then. Wait it a minute. It’s going the wrong way. Jumped to the first time I crossed the Red River near Fargo. Same sensation.

What? Oh. The Continental Divide. This mud roiled river flowed west and south, toward the Baja, toward the great Pacific Ocean, not the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic. Even though I got this intellectually my brain kept feeling tricked each time I looked at the Colorado. My limbic system was not sure what to do with this fundamental change. One it did not understand.

Another odd point of interest. The Donner Party Picnic Area in the Tahoe National Forest. I mean, they had to know what they were doing when they named that, right?

At midnight on the 28th of April I woke up and wandered down stairs. The train, the California Zephyr, had stopped, and I wondered where we were. There in the distance was Salt Lake City. The Mormon Tabernacle. The angel Moroni. Twinkling in the intermontane night. A cool breeze came in from the open door of my sleeper car.

 

Just a moment: Alan, yesterday, said rather than being in a long Pause that I had moved into the inner Charlie. A student. A scholar. A friend. Living alone and loving it. Hmm. I think both are true. I have privileged my introverted, scholarly side, no doubt. And, as he pointed out, he and I have taken many acting classes together. So I was engaged. True. However, it’s also true that my life has had mostly external guide rails in spite of that. In the last year especially Jewish immersion, mikveh, sure, but Jewish home life, too, for example. Shabbat. The Shema. The mezzuzahs. And the classes with Jamie.

The Pause is a time of collecting experience, integrating it, letting it change me. Then, living the change. I feel like I’m moving toward that moment. Perhaps this year.

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Judaism, Memories, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Cookin’

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Friday gratefuls: Irv. Tom. The Ancient Brothers. Rabbi Jamie. The hidden me. Great Sol ablaze in morning glory. Kate, always Kate. Her Creek and her Valley. Kep, my sweet boy. The Redwoods. Bechira points. A long Pause. This Jewish life. Tara. Luke. Rebecca. Ginny and Janice. Back among my peeps. Alan and Joan this morning. Friendships. Music.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: a Pause

One brief shining: Driving down the hill toward Evergreen, Black Mountain Drive becomes Brook Forest Drive, a couple of miles after what used to be the Brook Forest Inn a shallow cutout, good for maybe two or three vehicles, provides parking for a short Valley with a small Mountain Stream carving its way through, White Pines and Ponderosas, Wild Rose and Wild Strawberry and Wild Raspberry grown along its banks and up the steep Valley sides, this is Kate’s Creek running through Kate’s Valley, where her last physical remains began their journey to the World Ocean.

 

Yesterday was session ten of ten conversion sessions with Rabbi Jamie. I will miss these. My Rabbi. There’s a phrase I would not have expected to come out of my mouth. Ever. Yet now I can’t imagine life without Rabbi Jamie in it. He’s a backstop. A validator. A friend. A guide.

He opened me up again yesterday. I shared my guilt. Jewish guilt? About being a hermit by preference these days. Not wanting to engage politically. Or in any way really that’s not personal. As he often does, he went to what appeared to be tangent.

“I researched creativity a couple of years ago. Prepping for a Kabbalah Experience class. I learned then that a creative block, or Pause, can be long. And you never know how long.”

I had used a string of phrases: Not over, Not finished, Not complete, Not done to describe how I felt about my life. While affirming my joy at being alone within a crowd of friends.

Slowly. Oh. I see. Kate’s illness intensifying in mid-2019. Her long, slow decline. Covid. Her death. Grief. Going this way into redecorating the house, that way into moving to Hawai’i, over there to empty the house of stuff, adjusting to my son and Seoah living so far away, taking the plunge into the mikveh and my year of living Jewishly. The trip to Korea and my back’s emergence as a limit. Feeling overtaken, if not overwhelmed, by all the learning, the focus required for conversion and my bar mitzvah. The trip to San Francisco.

Like a caterpillar in its chrysalis, an imaginal self reorganizes for renewal, reemergence. Its container the years of a   whole life-lived experience, vital nutrient for a transformed nefesh. This paused version of me lives day to day. Happy. Joyful. Yet unfocused. Unlike the Great Southern Brood I have no 13 year clock ticking; the timing is uncertain. This Pause. A moment. Now five years or so in length.

So freeing. So liberating. As Rabbi Shapiro said (I think.), “It’s all about freedom.”