Category Archives: Judaism

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism

The Monk Comes Alive

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Samain and the Choice Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Mezuzah’s hung. Rabbi Jamie. A nice evening. Dead battery brought back to life. These newfangled autos. Cold night. Sesame Tomato salad. Ham with Ruth and Gabe. Jen and Barb. New windshield! Finally. Reading more in the Tanakh. Jacob’s story. His ladder. His wrestling with the angel. His deceit and cunning. His name change. My Hebrew name: Israel. Shaddai. A feminine word for the sacred. New US plant hardiness zone map. Climate change.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Sacred Thresholds

One brief shining: Jamie took out his drill, widening the holes in the mezuzahs so they would fit the nails, we said the blessing for affixing them and I snapped the front door mezuzah in place, the back door mezuzah took a bit longer, but snap and crossing my own thresholds had an affordance for the sacred journeys of going out and coming in.

 

Odd. Finding that the more practices of Judaism I adopt, the more I find comfort and resonance in them. The Sabbath. Services on a more regular basis. Hanging the mezuzahs and having them there when I go in and out of the house. Studying mussar. Reading the parshas, studying them.

A part of me, a not insignificant part, yearned for a long time to be a monk. To have nothing else to do but study, pray, do some manual labor. I loved women so that was never a true option for me, but the secluded life of the monk, the hermit spoke to something important in my soul.

The Hermit. Herme. My neon major arcana. My introverted, scholarly, slow side now enforced by the loss of Kate. Alone. In the Mountains. Though I would have her back in a heartbeat, a strong part of me stood ready to blossom and has. She did not suppress it. No. We allowed each other the space to live our separate lives, coming together when we had matters in common, sewing and writing and working and logging when we did not.

Yet now. Alone. Perhaps becoming a secular monk, a Jewish monk. Almost an oxymoron. But not quite.

Judaism now encourages me to have the regular discipline offered in a monastery. Sabbath candles. Services. The sabbath itself. The shema on my doorposts. Reading the parshas, studying them. Holidays to lift up liberation, the harvest, the Torah, learning, memory of the Holocaust, to search deep into the soul and to mend relationships, for the trees, for Esther. Appointed times for nourishing, feeding the soul.

Could I have done these on my own? Maybe. But. I haven’t in the decades this monk has lived inside of me. Today he feels nurtured and honored. A definite and realized part of my life. I needed the structure of tradition, of community, of friendships.

In one sense you could say that becoming a Jew offers me the same rhythm I had with Kate. I live my separate life, but come together with CBE when we have common matters like worship, holiday observances, breakfast, or lunch.

Health, Judaism

Cancer Dancer

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Samain and the Choice Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Dr. Eigner. Retiring. Testosterone. Rising. Thanksgiving. Urban Farmer. Ruth and Gabe. Tomorrow. Tom. Diane. Alan and Joan. Today. Rabbi Jamie. Tonight. Mezuzahs. Learning the shema in Hebrew. Snow. Driving Mountain roads in Snow. 76. Mountain life. Wild Neighbors. Adapted to the Snow and cold. Humans, in our artifice. Vince and his girls. Fixing the strip in the lower level.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Good medical care

One brief shining: Not often, no, but yesterday hunger rumbled my stomach as I drove to my appointment with Dr. Eigner, the last one, and I pulled into Wendy’s, got a Dave’s single and a chocolate frosty, finished the hamburger in the car before I went inside, the frosty when I came back to the car. Not my preference, but. Fast. Food.

 

Dr. Eigner walked in looking fit. You’ve seen your numbers? Yes. They’re good! He’s always cheerful at any apparent good news.

PSA .04. Undetectable. Testosterone. 31. You see your testosterone is increasing? Yes. The good news is you’ll have more energy, gain some muscle, maybe some weight. (I don’t want to gain any weight.)

And, the bad news is that the cancer has food. How long will it take for my PSA to go back up? When do you treat me again?

Great question! The question. And I won’t answer it.

Oh.

Because there are three variables. How high is your testosterone? How much did the PSA increase and how long did it take to get there. So. If we said we’d treat you at 2 and your PSA stayed at 1.9 for three years, then went up to 2? We wouldn’t treat you because it took a long while to there. If, on the other hand, you come in next time and your PSA has increased to .4? We’ll probably treat you.

With what?

Orgovyx and Erleada. The same ones you were on.

Well, I guess this is good-bye.

Yes. I wish we hadn’t met, better for you. But since we did, I’ve appreciated the time I’ve known you. You’re a good man, Charlie.

You, too, Dr. Eigner.

I now understand this dance. With advanced prostate cancer the idea is off the drugs until the cancer recovers, then back on them or something new that’s come on line. Thus, cancer as a chronic disease. A new world for cancer patients. Living with the disease rather than dying from it. As long as possible. Kathy. Diane. Judy for five years. Mike. Dave. People I know.

 

Breakfast with Alan and Joan this morning. Rabbi Jamie comes tonight to hang the mezuzahs. I’m going to get a cheese pizza. He eats eco-kashrut.* Doubt I’ll get there though I get it and it would be better for me.

Looking forward to having these markers of my added identity put up. I like the way they honor the concept of thresholds and liminal places, reminding me to make going out and coming in a sacred moment.

Gradually adding practices to reinforce and deepen my choice.

 

 

 

 

*Eco-Kashrut, also called the Eco-Kosher movement, is a movement to extend the Kashrut system, or Jewish dietary laws, to address modern environmental, social, and ethical issues, and promote sustainability.[1]

This movement began in the 1970s among American Reconstructionist Jews, and eco-kashrut or eco-kosher approaches enjoyed a resurgence in the 1990s with the work of Reconstructionist rabbi, author, and activist Arthur Waskow. A third wave of the eco-kashrut or eco-kosher movement began in the mid-2000s, spurred on in part by a series of kosher production facility scandals.[2]

…More recently the movement has been championed by other Kosher-keeping Jews who strive to eat only food that has been ethically and sustainably produced, and ideally, locally sourced.[6] Eco-Kashrut also finds expression in the sharing of sustainable shabbat meals.  wiki

 

GeekWorld, Judaism, Wild Neighbors

The Animal Shall not be Measured by Man (sic)

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Samain and the Choice Moon

Monday gratefuls: Snow. Cool night. Gray-white Sky as Snowflakes glide past the Lodgepoles. The three Mule Deer Bucks in the yard yesterday. One with a magnificent rack. Thanksgiving week. Urban Farmer. Ruth and her new (to her) Subaru. Gabe. Mia who calls me grandpa. Mezuzah hanging tomorrow. The Iliad. Hector and Paris and Menelaus. Helen. Agamemnon. Ajax. Odysseus. Achilles. Troy. Reading. Sangfroid. Veronica. The mikveh. Canceling Starlink.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Snow

One brief shining: On Snowy days I’ll load a fire in the fireplace, get a cup of coffee, and pick up the current book, right now the Iliad, and take off into the world of Troy, of men who lived for war, of women so beautiful they were worth fighting and dying for, of the wine-dark sea and the rage of Achilles.

 

No more Starlink. In my reason for cancellation I quoted Musk’s comment on X.* Back to DSL and Centurylink.

 

Those three Mule Deer Bucks in the back yard yesterday reminded me of the three who greeted me on Samain 2014. I had come to Colorado for the closing. They were in the back, like these three, grazing calmly. I walked out of the lower level, not sure what to expect. I was brand new to the Mountains. We stayed a respectful distance from each other while staring intently into each others eyes. After a few minutes, we broke off. They returned to grazing and I went back inside. Altered.

As I reflected on it later, and as I’ve said, I came to believe they were three Mountain spirits come to greet me, say it was all right for me to live here. That began my ongoing experience of my Wild Neighbors, of their world in which I’m just passing through. They come and go on their own schedules, according to their own needs and desires. Sometimes I am fortunate enough to see them, usually not.

I’ll finish today with a quote that if I ever had a tombstone big enough I’d want to include on mine.

“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein do we err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”
― Henry Beston, The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod

 

*”An X post Wednesday afternoon said: “Jewish communties (sic) have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.” The post also referenced “hordes of minorities” flooding Western countries, a popular antisemitic conspiracy theory.

In response, Musk said: “You have said the actual truth.”” CNN.com

Judaism

A Jewish Home

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Samain and the Choice Moon

Sunday gratefuls: The Ancient Brothers. Sangfroid or not. All those happy for my choice of Judaism. Rabbi Jamie. CBE. The power of community and friendship. Beit din. A drop of blood. Mikveh. A deep sense of belonging. Darkness. Orion. Pleiades. Hercules. The Great Square. The Great Bear. Polaris. Sirius. Rigel. Vega. Kep. Gertie. Kate, my beloved. A cold night.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Studying the parsha for the week

One brief shining: Part way to celebrating the sabbath yesterday after attending services Friday night; I stayed home, read Genesis: 25:19 to 28:9 about Isaac, Esau, Jacob, Rebekah-the birthright gained by manipulation and a patriarchal blessing by deceit-then a fascinating commentary on it by Avivah Zornberg, made it till three in the afternoon with eating, reading, working out, reflecting, then I turned on the TV. Too much seriousness.

 

Don’t have the right mix yet for the sabbath. A day of rest, of focusing on family, spirituality, learning, pleasure. I find the traditional restrictions too narrow, my own too broad. I’ve wanted to observe the sabbath since seminary. Yes, the Jewish sabbath. Even then. Just never found the traction for it in my weeks and months. With the prod of becoming Jewish I now have a considerable impetus.

Rabbi Jamie asked me during our session on the Jewish life cycle how I planned to create a Jewish household. I’m no longer married, raising no children, not working. Not the usual context for starting a Jewish home, he said. He’s right, of course. I do have ideas though.

On Tuesday evening Jamie’s coming over to hang two mezuzahs, my front door and the door I use most going to the garage. That’s a start. My Jewish identity will be visible to me and to others who come to my house. I have ordered a set of candle holders since I also plan to light the sabbath candles which mark the beginning of the sabbath on Friday night. If I can figure out how to get a loaf of challah or an equivalent, I will have it, too.

I’m already saying the Shema when I go to bed and when I wake up. Though. The wording is still not quite what I want. Since I’m not a theist. Working on this.

The grandkids and I celebrate Hanukah together. There is that electric Menorah that Kate and I have put in our front window since our marriage. I’ve continued that. I doubt I’ll ever do a Seder though. Other ideas will occur to me.

I plan to observe the sabbath, the full day, but before I do I have to reconstruct it so it makes sense to me and fits into my life. I have some resources on the way and of course there’s always Rabbi Jamie. Part of the sabbath is attending Friday night services which I have long avoided. Not anymore. As often as possible, I’ll start the sabbath at the synagogue.

Though not part of creating a Jewish home, I do have other observances. Except. Not sure I’ll go to the High Holy Days. They seem, I don’t know, too stiff. Too long. The month of Ellul, which precedes them though, a month of self-reflection, yes. Sukkot, Simcah Torah, Passover, Tu B’shvat, Purim, Shavout. For sure. Yam Hashoah, important for historical memory. There are others.

Of course, my mussar classes, seeing my friends, staying in touch with the lives of those I’ve come to love at CBE.

Denver, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism

A bit more on choosing Judaism

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Samain and the Choice Moon

Friday gratefuls: Alan. Tara. Joann. Rabbi Jamie. Mezuzah hanging. Spiritual autobiography. Beit din. A drop of blood. Three immersions in the mikveh. Luke 4:18-19. The Devil. The crossroads. Robert Johnson. John Lee Hooker. BB King. Muddy Waters. Howlin’ Wolf. Etta James. Billie Holiday. Strange Fruit. Racial justice. The South. The West. The Midwest. The East. The United States of America. Democracy. Its enemies in our midst. Its champions. The old pale males.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Immersion in the mikveh

One brief shining: Check your doorframes, are they wood or metal, I’ll need a hammer, nails or screws, we’ll talk about thresholds and liminal spaces, going out and coming in, there’s a prayer, we’ll get the mezuzah’s hung.

 

 

                              On Tuesday morning the 28th of November. At Temple Emanuel in Denver. Its mikveh.

 

 

A bit more on the ritual of becoming a Jew. The beit din, court of judgment, takes about 40 minutes. The three people involved Rabbi Jamie, Joan Greenberg, and a second rabbi read a spiritual autobiography I’m in the process of writing. At the court they ask questions of me based on it and on my awareness of matters Jewish. They confer, make a decision about admitting me to the tribe. After that a drop of blood from my private parts. Then, the mikveh.

Three immersions. The first one, with all body parts in the water. Floating, feet off the bottom, fingers spread. Water needs to touch all exposed flesh. After the first immersion, I’m a Jew. The second immersion is one I have to do as a Jew because it is a commandment that I didn’t have to follow until the first immersion. A prayer is said. Then, the third immersion. I repeat the Shema. Dry off. Get dressed.

A naming ceremony. I have chosen Israel for my Hebrew name. It means struggles with God which names my inner life. It is also the name Jacob gets after wrestling the angel at the Jabbok Ford, the parsha I chose. I will be given my Hebrew name which will be Israel ben Abraham and Sarah. All Jews by choice have Abraham and Sarah as their direct Jewish ancestors.

Walk out with a new name and an old community now different for me. I will be a part of it forever and a day.

A big morning.

Appropriate to the Shema which starts with Listen, Israel, I have a 1 pm appointment with my audiologist that day, too.

I’m excited and happy. Can’t say why but I feel I’m stepping into a civilization, a culture into which I fit and which fits me. Never intended to do anything like this again. Ever. Yet here I am.

Veronica Grunig will go through the ritual the same morning. We’re sponsoring an oneg, an after service celebration on December 1st. We will also get called up during the service to hold the Torah for the first time and lead the congregation in prayer. This is an aliyah, an honor available only to Jews.

 

 

 

 

Humanities, Judaism, Literature, Politics

Dissonance and the Classics

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Samain and the Choice Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Echocardiograms. Dilation and dysfunction. PSA not there. Testosterone still low. Medicine. A nuisance until it’s not. Early trauma. Myth of Normal. Tom. Diane. Mark and Mary. Computers. This old desktop. The laptop. The phone. Starlink. Brother laserjet. This digital life. Zoom. The internet. Chatbotgpt. AI. Altitude and Tea. Weak Tea. Mary for p.t. today. Mussar. Pamela. BJ. Sarah. Anne. Jewish life cycle with Rabbi Jamie today.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Pamela

One brief shining: Put filtered water in my red Tea kettle, pushed the button for P-power on the induction stove, waited until the whistle, poured boiling water over a tea bag given to me by Diane and Dan in Korea, took it upstairs in my World’s Best Grandpa cup, and drank a weak and almost unidentifiable beverage because altitude boiling sucks.

 

Went to Jackie’s for a cut and a beard trim. It was dark! 5:30 pm. First time I’ve ever had a haircut after dark in 76 years. That Jackie. A sweetheart. She always gives me a hug and says she loves me. Ronda, too. Extended community that makes life rich, buoyant. The Mountains. A special place. Kate introduced me to Jackie.

 

Online discussion of Israel-Hamas war last night at CBE. By turns tedious, sad, boring, infuriating. No new light. The grind of a nation acting out, a nation we feel identified with and in some inchoate way responsible for. The awful news of casualties in the thousands. Pictures of Palestinians picking through yet another building reduced to rubble by Israeli airstrikes. Still smoldering anger at the murderous invasion which killed Israeli’s in their beds. Now watching Israel do the same. Over and over. The history. The Nakba, the catastrophe. First with the Jews fleeing pogroms in Russia at the turn of 19th century. Then in 1948 with the foundation of Israel. Palestinians feeling or actually displaced by Jews moving onto land they occupied. Jews feeling safe for once. A place a Jew can go and feel secure. At last. At long last. The might of Israel ensuring that safety and security. Then its discordant use for slaying thousands in the name of defeating Hamas. All bad news.

At the same time contemplating my choosing Judaism, my ritual on the 28th. Becoming an intimate part of this whole reality. What I want. I already feel the anguished split between love of Israel and justice for the Palestinians. Both, yes. Both. Without compromise. With liberty and justice for all. Now.

 

Enjoying a re-immersion in the classics. Started Fagles’ Iliad yesterday. Achilles. Agamemnon. Ajax. Patroclus. Odysseus. Troy. Priam. Hector. Helen. Menelaus. Hollow-ships and the wine-dark Sea. Ordered a hardback copy of Moby Dick. After the Iliad. May reread the Divine Comedy after that. I love these stories, their ability to challenge expectations, hold up and put down characters, run fast and hard, then calm down.

My reading chairs have different roles. Upstairs by the fireplace I read what I consider serious books. The classics, yes, but works on Judaism, philosophy, non-fiction. Downstairs by the wonderful map of the Island of Hawai’i that Kate got me I read non-literary fiction like Jack Reacher, Joe Pickett, and my current jag, a series about a land of fairies and high fae.

 

 

Judaism, Poetry, World History

Taking Sides

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Samain and the Summer’s End Moon

Saturday gratefuls: Ruth. Dazzle. Alan and a new car. The signs of aging. Come to us all. If we’re lucky. Mountain living. Shadow Mountain. Kep, no longer out in the Snow, still my sweet boy. Kate, my sweet gal. My son. His 77 on screen golf! Seoah. Murdoch. Okwga. Seoah’s mom and dad. Our wild neighbors. Aging in place. Fire insurance. Wildfire. Move or stay, my choice. Mountain Water. Mountain Clouds. Emunah.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Wizard of Oz

One brief shining: Oh the things we’ll see if we turn on the news, bombs bursting in air and on the ground, tanks and soldiers pushing, pushing, pushing, Gazans streaming toward the south, peace in shatters oh hallelujah says Hamas, Hezbollah and their Iranian allies, push, push, push until all Arabs push back, please please please stop all this.

 

For today’s post, I’m offering this poem sent to me by my friend Rebecca Martin:

 

Taking Sides

 

Today I am taking sides.

I am taking the side of Peace.

Peace, which I will not abandon

even when its voice is drowned out

by hurt and hatred,

bitterness of loss,

cries of right and wrong.

I am taking the side of Peace

whose name has barely been spoken

in this winterless war.

I will hold peace in my soma

and share my body’s breath,

lest Peace be added

to the body count.

I will call for de-escalation

even when I want nothing more

than to get even.

I will do it

in the service of Peace.

I will make a clearing

in the overgrown

thicket of cause and effect

so Peace can breathe

for a minute

and reach the sky.

I will do what I must

to save the life of Peace.

I will breathe through tears.

I will swallow pride.

I will bite my tongue.

I will offer love

without testing for deservingness.

 

So don’t ask me to wave a flag today

unless it is the flag of Peace.

Don’t ask me to sing an anthem

unless it is a song of Peace.

Don’t ask me to take sides

unless it is the side of Peace.

 

Rabbi Irwin Keller

October 17, 2023

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Judaism, Politics, World History

Health and War

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Samain and the Summer’s End Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Dr. Gonzalez. No new info on tests. Cardiology Now. Gammaglobulins. Too much medical stuff. A day of reading. Emily Wilson and the Odyssey. Righting myself. A good workout. P.T. exercises. Renaissance music. Early music. Jazz. Chamber music. Reading about Jewish life cycle events and conversion. Joan. Rice cooker. New red kettle. Cool nights. Good sleeping.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Darkness

One brief shining: Sat in the Stickley chair, opened Emily Wilson’s new translation of the Odyssey to where I left off on Sunday, dove into the world of Odysseus and his time with the Phaecians, including the beautiful princess Nausicaa whom the brilliant Japanese animation artist Hayao Miyazaki used to name his heroine in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.

 

Emily Wilson’s new translation of the Odyssey is so good. I’m excited all over again about Homer, Telemachus, Penelope, Odysseus, the Greek pantheon, Olympus. What a treat.

 

No news on the medical front. I sent an e-mail to Dr. Gonzalez this morning wondering about it. I’m not liking the accumulating medical news. The enlarged aorta found by the Korean family practice doc. A need for an echocardiogram. A thickened heart muscle. And then the whole immunoglobulin thing. Not to mention my damned back. Gettin’ old. Older. So much stuff to keep track of, to follow up on, to treat. I need a medical secretary.

Wondered after this last round of medicine if the statistics about caregivers have begun to catch up to me. I thought I handled my role well, that is with the least stress possible, but perhaps I was wrong. Kate’s final illness was stressful, no doubt, for her and for me. And it did occur co-terminously with my own treatments for cancer. I suppose all of that could have made my body more vulnerable, less able to fight off insults.

Whatever the causes, I’m now wrestling with more of this and that. I feel good. I feel healthy. Go figure. My mood is good. Not melancholy. Not fearful. Going on with the day to day. The way I want to live. Live until you die. That’s my mantra.

 

Pro-Palestinian, pro-Israeli, anti-Hamas. I feel Israel’s response is disproportionate, violating the rules of war, and of human decency. It is not, however, genocide. Israel is killing civilians in a military operation against Hamas. Not. The. Same. Thing. That slogan inflames an already flammable debate.

Another slogan: From the river to the sea, we want equality does suggest if not genocide, then a full elimination of Jews from the Middle East. It is anti-semitic and dangerous. The idea beggars history. Leaves out why the world thought Jews needed a homeland and a homeland in an area where their history lies. Why the U.N. and the U.S. supported Zionists. Leaves out the fact that the Palestinians have time and again said no to a two-state solution. It is this frustration with a long and bloody history that drives Israeli’s anger and pushes them past the point of reason.

I’m not excusing the Israeli government’s behavior. Not at all. But this Hamas instigated war has not occurred in a historical vacuum.

 

 

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Judaism, Music, Myth and Story, Shadow Mountain

Aural Prompts

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Samain and the Summer’s End Moon

Monday gratefuls: Val. Who I think may have been hitting on me. Bless her heart. Zojirushi rice cooker and its first brown rice. Equanimity. Silence. Faith. Middot. Mussar. Emunah and Clouds. Hearing the Voice of the Wind, of the Snow, of the Wild Neighbors, of the Storm. Life in its immediacy. Life as a temporary gift. To cherish. Renaissance music. Cool nights. Gregorian chants. Chiropractors. Ellen and Dick. Heidi. Mountain Jews, my community

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Right now

One brief shining: The crucifix, bronze and distressed, hung high above the five singers dressed in white tops and black bottoms, two good friends, Irv and Joan, both Jews, joined I learned later by at least one other Jew, as they sang, paradoxically, a high mass from the time of Queen Elizabeth the First, the haunting medieval music somehow transcending time and faith to place us all outside the Episcopal Church in which they performed and in that pure realm of music’s ethereal and ephemeral reality.

 

Went to St. Laurence Episcopal yesterday to hear the 27 minute performance of Irv’s Renaissance singers. One of its members referred to what they did as serious fun. I’d forgotten how much I enjoy medieval music, early music. Reminded as they sang evoking both a time long ago and yet a time relevant to the present moment. This music is, to my ear, sparer than most later music, focused on a spirituality, not only tonality. I could feel as I listened the voices of the thousands, millions perhaps, that had sung and will sing about the world we rarely see because we know not what to look for. Tibetan and Buddhist chants. Throat singing. Jewish services. Black choirs. Voices raised in cars and at home. We need these aural prompts to sharpen our sight, to encourage us to see what we are looking at.

Afterward a wine and cheese reception at Marilyn and Irv’s. I got there a bit late because I went home to pick up a book for Joan, a contemporary Korean writer’s short story collection. When I walked in the crowd had already been hitting the wine, so the first hello Charlie got taken up by others, then everybody. Hi, Charlie! I felt well welcomed.

 

And, no. No news on the testing front. Still “in progress.” I’m prepared to live into any result, continuing my life until it comes to an end, either soon or late. No, not resignation. The opposite. I’m not letting go of this gift until it decides to leave my body.

 

Looking back a bit. Joan and Albert’s first yarhzeit. Seeing Lauren and Kat, the two bat mitzvah’s from Thursday. Their bat mitzvah service would have been on Masada, as my conversion would have been in Jerusalem. I missed it because of my appointment with Dr. Gonzalez. I gave them chocolate bars from Sugar Jones where I buy my weekly truffles. Ruth at the Blue Fin, smiling and laughing, caring. Irv and Joan singing. A buzzy happy crowd at the reception. A good weekend. A very good weekend. Not in spite of my lagging test results, but because of my life already under way.

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Judaism

Yikes

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Samain and the Summer’s End Moon

Friday gratefuls: Alan Greenberg’s yahrzeit. Joan. A salmon colored Cumulus Cloud over Black Mountain. Dr. Gonzalez. Her nurse. The phlebotomist. My heart and aorta. Considering the body as it decompensates. Shadow Mountain as a stable and supportive presence. Ruby. All Dogs, especially Kippur and Murdoch and Leo. My Wild Neighbors. Melancholy. Dawn. Evening. Liminal times, magical times. Doorways, thresholds. Mezuzahs.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The One

One brief shining: Opened up the test results from Quest Diagnostics and read my latest battery of tests with red fields and green, discovering that my doc has ordered a test for multiple myeloma, not completed yet, sending my anxiety titer (a Kate phrase) up, not high but noticeable, wondering if there will be more than my heart involved in this latest visit.

 

Oh, boy. Well. I freaked myself out back in July when I got low gamma globulin results. Hadn’t processed them or heard from my doctor, went straight to multiple myeloma. Kristin said I was fine. She sees these results all the time. I calmed down. Now I discover she’s running a test battery for just that. Yikes! The results are not in yet, though my other results are.

The possibility of multiple myeloma, a form of cancer, hit me hard because Dick Mestrich, a colleague of Kate’s at Allina, died of it after a long decline. She made him a friendship quilt which he wore often, may have been buried in it. My son and I played golf with him quite a bit when my son was in high school. I also learned recently that one of the Thursday mussar group also has it.

The thought of a second kind of cancer to add to my already existing one? Again, yikes!

All this is unknown right now and I’m pretty good at not getting excited before I know something for sure. Even then, I’m able to hold steady for the most part though melancholy can creep up on me. Understandable, too. Still. An uncomfortable moment for me. For sure.

 

Just ordered two mezuzahs, one for the front door and one for the door leading to the garage. Will have Rabbi Jamie come out and hang them. There is a ritual for it. Inside each mezuzah is a scroll with the shema hand lettered by a scribe on the treated skin of a kosher animal. Not cheap. From the Jewish Museum store in New York City.

 

At mussar yesterday afternoon another cancer survivor remarked about the love she experienced from her friends. They go to her appointments with her, help her in many ways. Nancy then mentioned Leslie who died of liver cancer two months ago saying, “Leslie had the same experience. What a wonderful way to die.” I said, “And, what a wonderful way to live. I’m experiencing that kind of love at CBE right now.” And from my longtime friends in the Ancient Brothers and my family. Knowing you are loved buoys the soul, helps it serve as the rock of your life. As long as you have it.