Fall Harvest Moon
A couple of weeks ago I went in for cataract and glaucoma exams. Then, Wednesday, my hearing aid stopped working. I’ve also been a little short of breath, not unusual up here at 8,800 feet and my oxygen saturation is ok. The good news is that neither my cataracts nor my glaucoma have worsened and my hearing aid got unblocked by the folks at Hearing Rehab. And the shortness of breath does seem to be a response to altitude and not a failing heart.
These are what I call mortality signals. None of them, in themselves, are fatal; but, like my sudden hearing loss at 38 in my left ear, they are blinking yellow lights, caution, fatal error ahead. Birth is a mortality signal, too, of course.
Instead of pushing these signals into the background of my mind I like to embrace them, take the hint of life’s progress towards its entropic end. Nope, not gloomy or depressive, in fact, the opposite. Energizing, gratitude producing. I’m still here and functioning. Happy to have awakened this morning, happy to have a day ahead with Kate and the dogs, happy to have my loft, happy to be in the mountains. Joyful, even.
There’s a message about prayer here though I’m not clear yet on what it is. In response to Rabbi Jamie’s focus on prayer for the High Holy Days, I’m trying to reimagine prayer from a spot outside the Jewish tradition, reconstruct the concept of prayer without the Talmud, the Torah, the long history of Jewish prayer books.
Here’s where I am so far. Prayer is, at its most basic, communication. Important communication, significant to the prayer on the most critical matters in the life of the spirit. Prayer is also, at its most basic, the creation and sustaining of a relationship.
There are many sorts of prayer: supplication, petition, praise, anguished, thankful, angry, loving, contemplative, meditative, even constant. There are also communal and intercessory prayers, prayers of commitment and prayers of repentance.
So the question is prayer from whom to whom? Or, from whom to what? What is the relationship that prayer nurtures, why do I want to sustain it? Why is that relationship important? How is prayer different from other forms of communication, of other ways of creating and sustaining relationships? Or, is it different?
A work in progress.
Sites of Los Angeles
“That’s us,” he said, sweeping his hand around the room. Of course, it’s not me, but I took the point. Israel, those Jews in the sanctuary at Beth Evergreen and in Rosh Hashanah services around the world last night, and those Jews not in the services, too, is a community which celebrates its most important memories every Sabbath with a parsha reading, a segment of the Torah.
This is reconstructionist Judaism, an explicitly non-supernatural religion that nonetheless adheres to the traditions and customs of Jewish civilization, including Torah study, sabbath observance, comforting mourners, repairing the world and doing acts of loving kindness.
The last night of the Eclipse Moon, a disastrous month for North America from the eclipse to its waning moment. The wildfires are still burning in the West from the state of Washington to California, in Oregon and Montana and Idaho. Harvey and Irma related disaster cleanup has only begun. The same in southern Mexico for the victims of the 8.1 earthquake. Jose is still pounding around in the Atlantic and Maria, now a category 5, has just shattered Dominica, Guadeloupe, and is headed for Martinique and Puerto Rico. It’s not the apocalypse, no, but for those whose homes and forests are on fire, under water, battered by wind or destroyed by the movement of the earth, it may as well be.
Yesterday I traced the funk back to an e-mail I sent out late Saturday night thanking all the main participants in the Evergreen Forum. Two folks responded quickly, thanking me, too, and I realized, as I searched for the source of the mood, that I wanted more of those and when they didn’t come, I wondered why not? It was that wondering that created the bad mood. In others words I had poisoned my own well, then drunk from it. Well, I realized, that’s silly. Take the compliments, move on. So, I did.
Kate was nervous about her food, but it was received well, its disappearance a testimony to its yumminess. Especially the jack fruit. Kate found it at King Sooper this week. She bought a 20 pound one, then she and Ruth performed a fruitectomy on it to retrieve the sweet yellow flesh. This southeast Asian fruit is unfamiliar to most North Americans, but I had it for the first time when preparing to board a water taxi on the Chao Phraya in Bangkok. If you haven’t had it, really good.
Albert Camus. One of my favorite theologians. It occurred to me that the abyss Camus mentions may be what gets crossed when we experience awe. Somehow we let the absurd in, or the mute world gives us a shout.
What all of these ideas suggest, I think, is that a gap exists between an individual and the really real. An important religious question is what is beyond that gap, or what constitutes the gap, or what is the significance of the hidden for our spiritual lives.
The mind and heart, so wonderful, so necessary, so amazing, but also so fragile. Take mine for instance. Yesterday was a full day, beginning, as my days do, around 4:45 am. I got the dogs fed, ancientrails written, Jennie’s 750 words written and went downstairs to eat breakfast and make two sugar cream pies.
Today is a busy one. Once I’ve finished my writing, ancientrails and Jennie’s Dead’s 750 words, I’m going to make two sugar cream pies. One is for home, the other for the mussar leadership group that meets tonight. Sugar cream pies are a distinct cultural marker for the Hoosier state, but more than that, they’re really delicious. Why I don’t make them often.
Had a nightmare last night. Not often I have those. This one involved a gradual decompensation from ordinary life to forgetfulness to a social worker coming to help me as a vagrant, finding me in a dilapidated house with some others, also disoriented. Frightening. Might have been instigated by a pun game I played last night at Beth Evergreen. I wasn’t very quick, sometimes had nothing. I felt a bit embarrassed, slightly intimidated. It had been a long day, I was tired and the games went on past my bedtime, so it wasn’t the best circumstances for me. Still.