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  • Grading Life on the U curve

    Posted on by Charles 3 Comments

    Beltane and the Greenhouse Moon

    Thursday gratefuls: Diane. Shadow. On the bed. Ethical concerns about her. Back and leg pain. SPRINT. MRI. PET scan. Kylie. Ruth in Alaska. Gabe reading. Mary in Seoul. Guru in K.L. Mark in Al Kharj. His summer school job. Shadow Mountain Rain. Cool night. Halle. Good at her job.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Natalie

    Week Kavannah: Wholeness and Peacefulness. Schleimut. Not in spite of but with pain

    One brief shining: Shadow I call not even seeing her Shepherd’s lantern white tipped tail and she comes, full speed, mouth open in a wide smile, her legs barely touching the ground. Good girl.

     

    Unrelenting stories of pain and suffering. Not material designed to keep readers coming back. Let’s engage shleimut today and find our wholeness and peace with it, but without focusing on it.

    Our lives, all of our lives, experience sine waves of calm, anxiety, gracious acceptance, and tense rejection of circumstances. There is no stable mood. We travel in a bath of feelings, some felt, some repressed, all having their moment to stand with our consciousness, color the terrain.

    Natalie says scent adds color to a dog’s world. In the same way feelings add color to our inner lives. Give it snap and rustle. Pop. No such thing as a bad feeling. Only a poor response to it. Also like the weather. No such thing as bad weather. Just inadequate gear.

    On the U curve we sink toward middle years of career stress, family complexity, striving, only to rise toward death with acceptance of our limitations, our inability to change the past, a broader understanding of joy, and what constitutes shleimut for us.

    A wonderful thing. Good news for the human spirit. Perhaps a long and strong message to all ages.

    What is the message? That life’s purpose does not lie at the office. That family can and does heal, provide a backstop. That friends and companion animals matter. That the world is trustworthy. That pain and illness are always temporary.

     

    As we learn these messages on our upward journey toward death our end gains context, breadth and depth. We move forward through aging with short intakes of breath as we realize our family loves us. Our friends complete us. That life’s purpose is found in living, not in dogma or ideology. That death is valuable, not awful.

    Once we embrace these learnings we can take in the various insults our body suffers and know them for what they are.

     


    Dogs Feelings Fourth Phase Mussar Wild Neighbors

  • A New Pope

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

    Friday gratefuls: Marilyn and Irv. Alan. The Cheesecake factory. Shadow, the night Hawk. Pope Leo XIV. A Chicago boy. Exhaustion. Ritalin. 12″ of heavy Snow. Melted. The Solar Snow shovel. That long nap yesterday. Cookunity.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: An American Pope

    Week Kavannah: Enthusiasm. Zerizut.

    One brief shining: After a late night from MVP, Shadow kept me up even later, past midnight, then licked my head and whined at her usual 5 am time leaving me more than exhausted yesterday and napping through the morning missing Diane and my class at Kabbalah experience.

     

    Also failed to pick up my ritalin, I realized. No wonder I crashed on Thursday. Gotta switch those meds to Safeway. Can’t get ritalin or tramadol through the mail. Controlled substances. Walgreen’s made sense when my doc was in Evergreen, but the clinic is moving here to Conifer.

    Anyhow Thursday was a washout, rest and relax day. Unintentional since Thursday tends to be my busiest day of the week with Diane, Kabbalah class, and Thursday mussar.

     

    How bout that Leo XIV? Chi town. A south sider. A naturalized Peruvian. Another Pope from Latin America. One with a bias toward the poor, the left out. The marginalized.

    An adroit move if the consideration went: Trump is a big problem for the world. For the poor. Look at USAID. Francis sensitized us to the needs of the marginalized as a world church. How about an American pope with strong ties to the Third World? Multi-lingual. And familiar with the Vatican and its ways. Prevost was that guy.

    He headed the Vatican department that vetted bishop candidates. A gatekeeper role for future church leadership. He also spent decades among the poor in Peru. While there he twice became leader of his order, the Augustinians.

    I’m heartened by his selection. We need more voices for the poor, for justice. No, I won’t agree with all of his views, nor he with mine; but, we share core values, too.

     

    Meanwhile on Shadow Mountain. Shadow of Shadow Mountain has regressed in her coming in and going out. Unpredictable. I may have to open the door for her several times before she feels comfortable coming in the house. Why? I have no idea. If I did, I might be able to figure out a solution.

    Too, the twelve inches of heavy, wet Snow that fell on Tuesday and Wednesday has melted off roads and driveways. Still some patches in my north facing backyard. Enough to move Smoky’s hand from high fire risk to low.

     

    Just a moment: I’ve been pondering a view of the human from the stand point of mussar and Jewish thought.

    Here’s some preliminary work. The neshama, the pristine soul, our link to the whole, still must engage the world. That’s what the nefesh does. Spurred by the pristine connected neshama, the nefesh moves me out into the world through desire. Desire for food, for safety, for love, for education. Desire without valence.

    Our yetzer hatov, our good inclination, and our yetzer hara, our selfish inclination, try to influence how we live our desires. Our will recognizes both the desires and the yetzer’s attempt to direct our action. That is the bechira point, the moment when we actively choose to satisfy a desire following a healthy, just path, or a selfish, self involved path.

     

     

     


    Commentary on Religion Dogs Health Mussar

  • A Busy Thursday

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

    Friday gratefuls: Alan. Snow. Ruby’s all season shoes. On Monday. Plus many fluids. Back pain. PSA blood draw. Cancer. And other fancy stuff. Shadow and the marrow bones. Tom’s portrait of Shadow. Lake Superior. The Boreal Forest. The Arrowhead. Grand Marais. Thunder Bay. Up North. Parashat Tazria-Metzora

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Being a student

    Week Kavannah: Persistence. Grit. Netzach.

    One brief shining: The Mountains rise up and slope down into Valleys, our roads here in the Rockies thin slices of asphalt or gravel following the rising up and the sloping down, the changes in direction commanded by rocky prominences and Snow melt filled Streams carrying the Mountains themselves downstream ever so slowly, slowly.

     

    Yesterday. Seems so far away. So far away. Diane reminded me to ask for help. To set up ways to get to appointments-not only when I’m being sedated. I know this transition has to occur. Yet I’ve gone so long now on my own. I need, yes need, to let others do for me what I would do for them.

    Irv and Paul and I discussed the nature of evil, whether it exists at all or is just a human construct.

    At the Kabbalah Experience we continued our exploration of the story of Adam and Eve. This time wondering about our ability to live outside the givenness of our lives, to see what we cannot know exists.

    Dave Sanders offered the Truman Show as an example. A simulacrum. Where is the edge of our learned world? Do we need a stage light to crash through the set for a big reveal?

    His point? The Garden of Eden as Seahaven, the village in Truman’s life. A small paradise filled with every needful thing. The stage light, the Snake and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Bad. The expulsion as Truman’s daring escape on the sail boat.

    Later Rabbi Jamie and our Thursday afternoon mussar group discussing the middah of bushah, most often translated as shame. Not in Jamie’s translation of the Orchot Tzaddikim. He uses self-consciousness or conscientiousness.

    Bushah arises when we realize we have been less than who we see ourselves to be. Shame comes when we see ourselves not as less than we see ourselves to be, but when we see ourselves as less than intrinsically. Shame, in other words, is an extreme, even perverted instance of bushah. Guilt, embarrassment, chagrin may represent the mid-point of this continuum from shyness to shame, the healthy feelings that encourage us to investigate our behaviors, then act to change them.

    After all that I drove over to Evergreen Medical for a blood draw, another PSA. My every three month peek into the status of my cancer. Waiting for the hormone resistant shoe to drop. Wish I could allay that feeling, expunge it. Just wait and see.

    But I know that’s the next phase of this journey, that it marks a more treacherous road ahead. A part of me wishes we’d just get on with it. Go down the chemotherapy path or other treatments for hormone resistant Stage 4 prostate cancer.

    I don’t want that, not really. I want to stay where I am as long as I can. Androgen deprivation therapy, my current protocol, always fails. Not whether, but when. The waiting though carries its own cost. Will this blood draw be the one?

    Living with this uncertainty and the insidious effects of back pain can create moments of intense darkness.


    Fourth Phase Friends Health Judaism Kabbalah Mussar

  • It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

    Shabbat gratefuls: Talmud Torah. CBE Men’s Group. Ritalin. Shadow. Less gnawing. The Shema. MVP. Paul. Tom. Irv. Diane. Easter. Passover. Kate, always Kate. Isaiah. Leviticus. The Mishkan. The Golden Calf. Our orange demiraja. My son’s liver. Less fatty. His long month of exercises.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The tongue that says Good Morning, Dad!

    Week Kavannah: Wu Wei (yes, still)

    One brief shining: It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, several inches of new white Snow, significant chill in the air (15 degrees), Shadow zooming, leaving trails of white behind her, small paw prints near the door.

     

    When Kate and I returned from my son’s and Seoah’s wedding, April 16th, 2016, four feet of Snow had fallen the previous day. Four feet! That’s my mental marker that big Snows are possible here until mid-May.

    We got 6 inches overnight which makes 107″ for the season. A bit less than usual so far. I think our average is around 120″.

    With Mountain roads this all means the best Snow tires for Ruby. Blizzaks so far, but I may shift to a Hankook studded tire for next winter. Want to give myself the best odds possible the older I get.

     

    Conversation with Ellie, palliative care nurse, led me to a decision on treatment options for my back. Going to try the steroid injections first. See what relief I get from them. If it’s not enough, or doesn’t last long, I’ll try the radio-frequency nerve ablation.

    I needed some time to get past my fear of needles in my spine. I still have it, but the tradeoff of fear and reward balances toward trying rather than not trying. Still working on setting up physical therapy, which I look forward to.

     

    You might be interested in my practice for ratzon this month. Ratzon means will, wish, desire, pleasure in Hebrew. At MVP we locked onto the instinctual nature of desire and the conscious choice implied in will.

    Desire impels us toward some action, some theme in our life. Like ambition, love, greed, generosity, wisdom, pancakes versus eggs and bacon, get up or stay in bed. This partner or that one.

    Which desire we choose to follow when we summon our will and act determines the path of our life. This rhythm never leaves us. Day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute we choose to act on this desire or that one, accumulating in those acts habits and trends in our lives.

    My practice for this month involves looking through my acts each day to see what desires I’ve chosen to reinforce, which ones I’ve said no to.

    For example. Yesterday I got up with Shadow as her gnawing became more and more insistent. I chose her needs over my desire to remain in bed. Our new habit of my sitting on the ottoman while she snuggles into me followed.

    I wrote Ancientrails, a longstanding habit of over twenty years then got myself breakfast. Lox and cream cheese on crackers. A choice. While eating, I watched a TV show, let Shadow outside after she finished eating her breakfast.

    I decided, for the fifth day in a row, that I would wait on the physical therapist to start exercising again. Spent the rest of the morning in Talmud Torah on Parsha Vayikra, reading the first five chapters of Leviticus and Zornberg’s commentary.

    At 11 I talked to Ellie, the head palliative care nurse at Denver Hospice. We discussed the Ritalin and its effects on my fatigue, my MRI results and the treatment options.

    After that Shadow and I took a long nap. When I got up, my Cookunity order had been delivered. After horsing it into the house, I put the meals in the refrigerator, finished unloading the dishwasher, and added twenty-four cans of seltzer water to the fridge’s pullout door.

    And so forth. I reinforced my desire to be a good dad to Shadow. Several times. I reinforced my 2005 decision to write Ancientrails every morning. I reinforced television as a companion while eating. I reinforced Talmud Torah on Fridays before Bagel Table. I reinforced good selfcare by talking to Ellie and by taking a nap.

    I did not reinforce exercise, lighting the Shabbat candles.

    So. Who was I yesterday. A good dog dad. A Jew. A writer, self-explorer. A man aware of his health, though not always acting on that awareness. A man who watches television in part as a companion. A reader of fiction.

    Today more choices. More desires. More chances to shape my life. Trying to figure out how wu wei fits with this approach. Later on that one.

     


    Dogs Fourth Phase Health Judaism Mussar Shabbat Weather +Climate

  • Something’s gnawing at me

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

    Thursday gratefuls: MVP. Desire. Jealousy. Will. Willingness. Ron. Rich. Joanne. Marilyn. Susan. Laurie. Kaathe. Tara. Loving friends. The crescent Wu Wei Moon with Jupiter below. The Night Sky. Shadow. Ana. Clean House. CookUnity.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Cosmic Void

    Week Kavannah: Wu Wei

    One brief shining: Gnawing, chewing, Shadow announces the coming of early morning, still dark, still fast asleep until the grinding of wood on Dog teeth, what is that, that noise, I want to sleep, no she says, stopping only for a moment, oh fine you win and I stumble out of bed after a late night.

     

    Dog journal: Yes, I have a new alarm clock. Not a welcome one at the hour she chooses. Yet I left her alone last night while I went to the synagogue and she was fine.

    She doesn’t clock the lateness of the hour when I return. Doesn’t adjust her waking to my sleep deprived brain.

    She’s throwing her weasel in the air, squeaking it, chewing, twisting her head and the weasel in the predator’s death grip, breaking the spine. Mine aches in sympathy.

    Her life and mine, intertwined and growing closer by the day, the hour. She will not chew on the bed, the nightstand, and the baseboard forever. Thank Dog.

     

    Got my ears lifted, as we used to say in Indiana. Jackie’s letting her silver sneak out of her blondeness. Just a bit in front.

    Rhonda sat cross legged on her chair, eating a lollipop, and laughing at meme’s on her phone. A budding thespian cured under the hair dryer, having asked Jackie at the last minute for a twenties hair-do. With finger rolls, whatever that it is.

    I’m seeing Jackie every three weeks now, keeping my hair and beard under tighter management. Plus I get to see Jackie and Rhonda every three weeks.

    (The weasel squeaketh yet. Now the skunk.)

     

    MVP: To get at will and desire as core to our soul and our growth, I invented an exercise. After asking folks to use their best centering techniques to get into a calm place, I offered two instructions: first, pick a time period of significance: might be a day, a month, a year, a decade. Consider what challenges, barriers, joys it presents. They had time to settle into that.

    Then. Imagine you are in a white room, sitting in a chair. A long wooden table is in front of you. I’m asking you to imagine five objects on it: a pile of cash, a book and a pen, a thread, a pair of scissors, and a tiny globe.

    Once you have those objects clearly in mind, pay attention to which one attracts you. After you’ve done that, as you wish come back to the room.

    When every one had returned, I asked them to imagine how the object they chose might help them during the time period they selected.

    One person had chosen the time period between now and high school graduation for their grandkids. Their object was the thread which they saw as connecting them to their grandkids and to their extended family.

    Another had chosen retirement and the book and pen. He talked about the challenge of getting to retirement so he could once again focus on his creativity. His writing.

    Surprised the hell out of me that the exercise worked so well. Everybody enjoyed the explanation of it, too. The table was a doljabi table which Koreans use on a child’s first birthday to gauge the child’s future. I wrote about this a few weeks ago.

    An evening of deep, intimate conversation. I felt so good when it was done.

     

     

     

     


    Dogs Fourth Phase Friends Mussar

  • Will to have no will

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

    How about letting the River flow by, twisting here, pooling there, rushing over dams and Rocks and Boulders, always soft, brushing against its Banks, taking a bit of the Soil, other Organic matter, blending it with the Waters of Mountain Streams and Creeks, seeking a path to the World Ocean.

    Of course. Really. No choice. The way it goes anyhow. Only difference? Twisting and turning no more. Set in the kayak that holds my life, using the paddle to stay in the current. Let go. Let be. Unloose. Set free.

    Cannot shake this desire, this ratzon. This will for my life. Irony. Will to have no will. Desire to have no desire.

    It scares me. Unmoored, tethered no more. A Pebble, a speck of Sand carried by forces invisible. Give up the rudder? Who does that? At any age.

    Shadow runs through her day. She takes food and water when they come. She rolls and jumps and zooms. Plays. Presses the squeaker on her toys until she wears out. Then she sleeps. Wakes up. Again, the day as it comes.

    We Americans, like all advanced civilizations, pride ourselves on bending nature, talent, life, even love to our intention. Manifest, damn it! Our stubbornness, our drive, our will to power create sharp angles, boxes where nature has fractals and curves.

    Even the Gods. We pray and create dogma. Box in the sacred. Give its revelation to ancient authors. To rituals. We run from the still small voice as if it were the battle cry of an ogre.

    When. If. We stopped for a moment to listen. To see. To wait. To feel the flow of the universe around us, to grant ourselves the freedom to become flotsam on the quantum foam. We would become one with the foam, one with the One. As we are already. No matter our beliefs or attitudes.

    I want, no, I will my life to have no will. No intention. No truth. No direction. Float with my Shadow, my home, my friends, my family. Where the River goes.


    Fourth Phase Mussar

  • Shadow and Healing. And, Basketball!

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Snow Moon

    Thursday gratefuls: Lashon hara. Mussar. Shadow. Twisters. Diane. Mark. Mary. My son and Seoah. Murdoch. Kate, always Kate. Cold night. Fair sleeping. Shadow’s toys. Our backyard. The fence. The shed. The deck. Rabbits. Voles. Chipmunks. Winter. Spring. The in between time. Imbolc.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Humans and Dogs

    Week Kavannah: Social Responsibility. Achrayut.

    One brief shining: Good news comes in, too, like the friend whose lesion seems benign, the shoulder with less pain and increased range of motion, Shadow calmer, happier, the Ritalin decreasing my fatigue, even Great Sol out for a longer Colorado blue Sky stint.

     

    Dog journal: Puppy hands. Small hematomas on the back of my hand. Eager Shadow, saying hi hi hi hi hi, I’m so glad to see you! So so glad! Old skin, young nails sharp and wielded with the muscles of an excited puppy.

    Shadow’s ears have finally lost their pinned back look most of the time. She still cowers and flinches sometimes and her ears go flat. I ache when I see that. Something happened to make that her response to a human. Don’t know what. Waning, though.

    She owns her space, plays with toys, greets me, no longer the shy, hypervigilant Dog under the bed.

    Blessings to her and those first inquisitive Wolves who coinvented Dogs.

     

    Finished mussar on zoom a second ago. Haven’t gone in person since adopting young Shadow. Today I wanted to have time to workout. Half hour there, half hour back. I would have been too tired.

    I mention this because I also know there is a healing energy I get from showing up. It’s substantial and balances the energy I get from my mostly private life. As do my various zoom calls, breakfasts and lunches.

    No matter how private, introverted, isolated we might be we are still creatures of community. You don’t have to look further than language itself to prove that. Language marks you as a member of this group or that one and even if you only use your language to process your own thoughts you remain part of that community always.

    I get healed and buoyed up as I hope to heal and buoy up others. Showing up, as my friend Paul likes to remind me, marks the other as important, significant, loved. Medicine we all have and we all need.

     

    Just a moment: It’s that most wonderful time of the year. Basketball tournaments everywhere, including March Madness. Cinderella teams. Juggernauts. NBA future draft picks. WNBA future draft picks. State level tourneys.

    A Hoosier thing. High school basketball. Sure, other states, but we always believed nobody else loved high school hoops the way we did.

    The Lion Sleeps Tonight. That song on the school bus radio as we pulled away from the Anderson, Indiana gym. Where only moments before tiny Alexandria had won the sectional by beating the Anderson Indians in the Wigwam. (yes. not that anymore.)

    I remember frost on the windows, seeing each other’s breath in the cold March air as we screamed into the night. What wonderful joy!

     

     

     

     


    Dogs Health Judaism Memories Mussar Sport

  • Awe

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc and the Snow Moon

    Shabbat gratefuls: Shadow. Night. Day. Leaves of Green. Lodgepoles. Regret. Remorse. Teshuvah. Parasha Tetzaveh. Jon. Kate, always Kate. Willows along Maxwell Creek. Osier Dog Woods, too. Rascal. Vince and his two girls. The heart. The liver. The pancreas. The bladder. The kidneys. The brain. And all the others that keep us alive, rebuilding us as necessary.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Vince as a friend

    Week Kavannah: Yirah. Awe.

    “Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. ….get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.”

    ― Abraham Joshua Heschel

    One brief shining: To live in this world my eyes must see the Tree and the Rock and the Stream; my ears must hear the Magpie, the burble of Water, a friend’s voice; my hands must feel the soft fur on Shadow’s neck, the keys on my laptop, the roughness of my skin; my nose must take in petrichor, the smell of coffee brewing, the fresh, cold Air after a Snow, and my taste must blossom at the lox and cream cheese, the bagel around it, the capers.

     

    One thing no politician, no system of government can take from us: our awe. Even if Trump were to run for a third term, I can still wonder at the Mule Deer, the Moose, the Fox. Photosynthesis. Orion rising in the night Sky. Hugs.

    If we can stand amazed while a gentle Snow covers the land, we can imagine and create. Subversive acts. Imagination and creation. The soul overflows with desire for the beautiful, the just, the kind. That cannot be taken from us either.

    My predominant response right now to the Dance of the MAGAworld Faeries is sadness. A sadness arising from what could be and what is. He/They/It cannot have my memory of a world where fairness and kindness guided daily life. And he/they/it cannot make me live in a world where I don’t appreciate difference. I won’t let it happen.

     

    Thinking about my MVP night where I present on ratzon, will or desire or pleasure. When my son and Seoah got married, they rented a hall in a ceremonial space called Bliss. Bliss had five rectangular halls, one right next to the other, that could be reserved. The hall next to my son and Seoah’s had a first birthday celebration. Very festive, but also with an air of mystery. A Doljanchi.

    Classic doljabi set

    At a Doljanchi the foods offered have symbolic meaning, for example, “…5-colored rice cakes called osaek songpyeon (오색송편) represent harmony with one’s surroundings and are a wish that the child will grow and get along with different kinds of people and places.”*

    The part that captured my attention for thinking about ratzon, however, is the doljabi ceremony. “A variety of objects are put on a table or tray in front of the child and whatever the child chooses foretells his or her future.”* A table of traditional and contemporary items is below.**

    Where our will leads us, our desire, there will be our lives. It occurred to me that the doljabi ceremony continues throughout our lives. Our desires leading us to choose now the pencil, now the money, now the microphone. That’s why the focus and the strength of our ratzon is a powerful character trait.

     

    *The Soul of Seoul

    ** Items For A Traditional Doljabi Table

    • pencil/book (smarts)
    • food (won’t go hungry)
    • money (wealth)
    • thread (longevity)
    • needle (talent in the hands)
    • scissors (talent in the hands)
    • ruler (talent in the hands)
    • bow and arrow (military career)
    • Items For A Modern Doljabi Table
    • microphone (entertainer)
    • golf club/balls (athlete)
    • computer mouse (tech. adept)
    • gavel (judge)
    • stethoscope (doctor)
    • piggy bank/money (entrepreneur)
    • graduation cap/books (scholar)
    • science objects (scientist/inventor)

    Commentary on the news Feelings Fourth Phase Judaism Korea Mussar

  • Regret. Remorse. Teshuvah.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc and the Snow Moon

    Thursday grateful: Shadow. Regret. Remorse. Teshuvah. Selam. Marilyn. Rich. Joanne. Jamie. Kabbalah Experience classes. Exploring Religion and Its Radical Roots. A New Story for the Evolution of Human Consciousness. Training Shadow. Training myself. Love. Michelangelo’s 550th birthday. Art. Negative Space. Poetry.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Joanne’s mind

    Week Kavannah: Patience.  Savlanut. When I rush, slow down. When I want to speak, wait. When my inner agonizer arises, calm him, move on

    One brief shining: We gather around the table, some drinking wine, others water, eating the always random collection of food-I brought turtles from a Valentine gift-and settle down to discuss matters of the soul, baring ourselves to each other as we’ve done for over nine years, learning the Jewish soul language of mussar.

     

    Gonna come back to the NAR. Just this for now. The top leadership in this “non-hierarchical” movement, prophets then apostles at the helm. They rely on revelation to the prophets and apostles who act as Peter, Paul, and Mary might have for Jesus.

    This means new revelations can respond to the daily news stream. And be funneled through fallible human vessels. The apostles sort through them, decide how to interpret them. See the problem here? All the various cognitive biases are in play.

     

    Another way. Two Jews, three opinions. Commentary on the Torah that uses non-rational techniques for interpretation Different readings delight all, insight coming from the many voices, no one trying to claim Biblical or ecclesiastical authority. All searching for truth, that layered and nuanced notion, all knowing definitive truth lies outside our ken. And are thankful for it.

    Last night at MVP we discussed regret, remorse, and anger. We shared our earliest memories of regret. Mine? Age 12 or so. New fancy slingshot. In my bedroom at home on Canal Street in Alexandria. A car pulled up on the street outside. A man got out and walked to our house.

    I thought. Huh? Wonder if I can hit his windshield? I could. Got caught immediately. Mom and Dad sentenced me to do the dishes, at twenty-five cents an hour until I’d paid off the window. Smart parenting.

    Here’s an example of the kind of thought triggered by these evenings. From Rabbi Jamie:

    “…in an attempt to understand why the author of Orchot Tzaddikim (Pathways of Moral Leadership) paired the two midot of regret (charatah) and anger (Kaas), I offer the following “definitions”:

    Haratah / regret is the productive emotional responses to an encounter with the gap between my lived conduct (action or inaction) and my ideal or aspirational conduct.

    Kaas / anger is the productive emotional response to an encounter with the gap between the real world such as it is and the ideal world, such as it ought to be, e.g. unfairness or injustice, disinformation and deceit, etc.”

    Now I have to come up with a practice for the month. Right now: Become aware of regret. What comes next? Need to get a more focused idea.

    An important group in my life.


    Commentary on Religion Judaism Memories Mussar

  • Growing My Soul

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc and the Birthday Moon

    Tuesday gratefuls: Tupelo Honey. Birthday lunch. Alan. Downtown Denver. Challenging myself. Adopting Shadow. Good CT scan. CT. With contrast. The wide world of medical imaging. Waiting rooms. Hospital parking lots. Good sleep. Great Sol. Lodgepole shadows.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: I.V.’s

    Week kavannah:  Netzach with zerizut and simcha

    One brief shining: Shadow curls her small head up toward my chair arm, her dark eyes with black pupils looking into mine, asking for food which I have placed behind the chair-where she usually eats, perhaps she’s forgotten and I’ll have to show her. I’ll give it a bit, better she finds it for herself.

     

    Never thought I’d be talking about growing my soul. Yet. As I’ve come to understand the term, I do. What is my soul? Multi-layered. The first and core level is the nefesh. What is the nefesh? The nefesh is that which identifies me as human.

    I say it’s DNA. Why? Because DNA links me to all living things and identifies me as part of Mother Earth’s evolutionary experiment while giving me a unique location in that experiment and a uniqueness, too, within my species. Being part of the grand evolutionary experiment also connects me to the organic and inorganic building blocks which allow that experiment to flourish, including the boundless fusion energy of Great Sol which passes its vitality from the solar furnace to leafy, green plants.

    The neshama soul grows in the space between the DNA created unique me and the outer world in which it moves and lives. Heidegger called this the dasein. There can be no neshama without the nefesh, but likewise there can be no nefesh without being-in-the-world, dasien, as a shaper of that world and as a being shaped by that world.

    As my nefesh encounters the world as it is, that encounter flows dialectically, into my dasein and out to the dasien of the other. In that tension comes the vitality, the livingness of being alive. Note that in this view there is no clean, clear distinction between me and thee. Or, me and my Shadow. Or, my favorite Lodgepole. Lodgepoleness flows into me and Charlieness flows into the Lodgepole. We are both changed during the encounter. Think of the Japanese idea of forest-bathing.

    We can come to notice that our actions have influence on others and theirs on ours. How do we live into those encounters, how can we be there with the other fully? That’s where disciplines like mussar come in. There are ways of becoming that enhance our encounters and ways that diminish them.

    Say my dasein includes Shadow. How I approach her affects her dasein so that we either grow closer to mutuality or further away from it. If I move suddenly, I notice, she retreats, moving away from the boundary of my dasein. That tells me, in my Shadow inflected dasein, to move more slowly in her presence. We can call that realization an expression of chesed, of loving kindness, which allows our dasein’s to come closer, to increase our intimacy.

    Just where my head went this morning. From my dasein to yours. Good day.


    Dogs Kabbalah Mussar Plants Science