Category Archives: Mussar

Family, Far Right, Jefferson County, Memories, Mussar, Politics, US History, White Supremacy

A Culture Dying of Lead Poisoning

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Lughnasa and the Cheshbon Nefesh Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Teshuva. Accounting of the soul. Shadow on my pillow. Sleeping. 9/11. My son’s decision on account of it. Seoah. Murdoch. Jangs. Singapore. Time with Mary there and in Hawai’i. The anguish of our Middle East actions. Of Israel’s. The Evergreen Shooting. Columbine. Guns. Gun control. Our poor benighted nation. Charlie Kirk.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Tara’s hot tub garden bed

Year Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah: Ometz Lev. Strength of the heart. A middah I wish for all parents and school children in Evergreen this day.

Tarot: Ten of Cups, (Druid Craft)

  • Domestic Harmony: Suggests a stable, secure, and happy home environment. This card often points to a desire for or achievement of an idyllic country life.
  • Gratitude and Blessings: A call to recognize and appreciate the blessings you have. The cups are a reminder of the rewards that come from love and connection. 

One brief shining: This Shadow Mountain home with its three levels, the guest level and the home office, the main level with Arts and Crafts furniture and lights, the fireplace, the breakfast nook built by Jon, a remodeled kitchen, a pantry, an exercise room, the downstairs level with its oriental rugs, comfy chairs, television, bedroom, and laundry room, Shadow’s food and toys, the fenced in backyard filled with Lodgepoles, Grasses, Groundcovers, Wild Flowers, and now Artemis, a place of memories with Kate, with Vega, Rigel, Gertie, Kepler, with guests over the years, its solar panels, its four car garage and library above, a front with no lawn, more Lodgepoles and Aspens, Kate’s Iris bed and her Lilacs in back has been my refuge, my hermitage, my home of eleven years come this Winter Solstice. Yes to the Ten of Cups.

Oh, my: Gabe and Ruth both sent texts. Gabe: “So today Charlie (Kirk) got shot and killed. And evergreen highschool got shot up. Today is strange.”  Ruth: “One of the things I don’t get is how you can be so set on defending a fetus and its life yet guns are more of a right than life is for students.”

Rabbi Jamie opened our sanctuary to any in town who might need it. Ironically he presented a program last night on teshuva. “While often translated as repentance, its deeper meaning is about taking action to return to one’s true, divine self…” Gemini The Jewish month of Elul, in which we are right now, encourages a time of reflection-of cheshbon nefesh, an accounting of the soul-with the aim of teshuva before Rosh Hashanah.

How can we as a nation, as a culture, return to, as one sage put it, the landscape of our soul? Not just the shooter(s) in the 47 school shootings to date this year (Ruth’s numbers), no, but our  culture dying from lead poisoning.

Where is the landscape in which I grew up? Flawed in many, many ways to be sure, but at least one in which gun owners hunted, did not demand their “second amendment rights” and the only duck and cover was to shield ourselves (ha) from a nuclear explosion.

Dogs, Family, Far Right, Friends, Greenhouse, Health, Mussar, Politics, US History

Demented

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Lughnasa and the Cheshbon Nefesh Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Kavod. Honor. Ruth, up here. Her college days. Work, loans, heavy homework load: Biology, Chemistry, Statistics. Sociology. Gabe, a senior. Warmer. Sadly. Our demented President. Chipocalypse Now. Our frustrated and divided nation. Shadow. The keeper of our safety. Lorikeets and Magpies in Melbourne. Murdoch, aging.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Shadow’s teeth, her front paws

Year Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah: Ometz Lev. Strength of the heart. The inner strength to move forward.

Tarot: #8, Strength. Reversed (Druid Craft)     The reversed Strength card can appear when you question your own courage and abilities. You may feel a sense of inadequacy or that you are not strong enough to handle a situation. Gemini

One brief shining: Sometimes the Tarot arrows down into the psyche, turning over carefully placed rocks, uncovering hidden fear, masked feelings, and there is the possibility that after my visit to Dr. Buphati, I could be shaken, wondering how to gather my ometz lev for the ancientrail ahead. I read it though as a caution, a yellow flag. Be aware and ready.

 

Dog journal: Put my head on my pillow, drifting, ready to party with Morpheus when, “Grrr.” A low rumble from Shadow’s chest. Then, “Bark.” Muffled. A moment. “Bark, bark, bark, bark, bark, bark.” Something had invaded her territory. Go away. Go away. Get thee hence. Vamoose. In urgent Dog. Right by my ear.

She quieted and I did slip away from the surly bounds of consciousness. Another night of Shadow’s.

 

Artemis: Nathan has two hernias. And a fair amount of work to finish. The cold frames. Lapping the Cedar. Some rubberizing of window spaces and doors. He plans to supervise another carpenter to get Artemis finished, ready for winter.

More and more Tomatoes, mostly still green. Some carrots peeking through. Kale tall and proud. Spinach and Beets, too. I’m having a lot of fun. A dormant part of my life revivified.

 

Family: Ruth came up last night. Needed a change of scenery. And, she missed me. We saw each other on Kate’s birthday, August 18th. Not since then.

She’s maturing so fast. Holding down two jobs. In her first semester of her new, STEM focused major, Integrative Physiology. Talking about cations and anions. Naming molecules. Also looking ten years ahead, all focused on an M.D.

This is still the week of Jon’s yahrzeit, challenging for both her and Gabe. A bit raw. As well she might be. Yet. Living on her own. Managing multiple sources of money. Handling the work of a difficult major. On her own for good now.

 

Friends: Saw Alan for lunch at the new Cow in downtown Evergreen. Passable. He was on his way to a 2:30 curtain call. Annie Gets Her Gun on Center Stage. He shaved his always beard, sacrificing for his art.

 

Just a moment: Chicago will find out why it’s called the Department of War. Jesus. Chipocalypse. I love the smell of deportations in the morning. That loose tether to reality has come unmoored and we’re left with a scared little man who wants to play army with U.S. citizens as the other side. Will no one rid us of this troublesome nut job? Impeach him and be done with him.

Asia, Dogs, Family, Fourth Phase, Judaism, Korea, Memories, Mussar, Travel, World History

New Ideas

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Lughnasa and the Korea Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Bagel table. Sue Bradshaw. My son with me. The Jangs in San Francisco. Breckenridge. The oxygen concentrator. Shadow, barking in the early morning. Protecting Artemis from Mule Deer? The darkness. Shadow still barking. Ah. Stopped. Tactical flashlight. Artemis heater. Tomatoes fruiting. Evergreen Lake. Hot weather.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Walking in the Dark

Year Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah: Hakarat Hatov.

Active Recognition: Hakarat hatov is not passive. It requires conscious effort to identify and acknowledge the good, rather than taking it for granted. Beyond Gratitude: While related to gratitude, hakarat hatov extends to recognizing the good in situations and people, even when they haven’t directly benefited you. Jewish Perspective: In Judaism, hakarat hatov is considered a fundamental value, encouraging a positive outlook and a sense of appreciation for the world and its inhabitants. Gemini

Tarot: The Green Woman, #3*

One brief shining: Out into the back yard tactical flashlight in hand, where is she and what has she seen to cause such a commotion, a lot of barking, barking, barking; the cool Mountain morning wraps around me as I see light reflected in two eyes looking at me, Shadow wondering what is he doing out here.

 

Parting words: When I left the Happy Camper a couple of weeks ago, the Gen Z latter day hippy clerk smiled and said, “Be high out there.” Altitude attitude?

Yesterday when I left Jackie’s after getting my ears lifted, Rhonda, her colleague, gave me a mischievous smile and said, “Don’t behave yourself!”

 

The Jang’s last day in Colorado: My son and Seoah packed up, loaded the huge Dodge Van they’ve used for transporting each other on this Rocky Mountain holiday, and headed for a morning in Breckenridge, my son’s post college home for three years.

The part of their stay which focused on things I’ve done many times, I stayed at home. Partly to preserve my energy. My stamina is not up to days away from home. Mostly I just didn’t want to go.

The evening meals I enjoyed immensely. We connected on levels beyond the need for language. Smiles. Hugs. Being together as family. Some conversation and some of it deep: the nature of government or the origin of Homo sapiens. Some of it silly. They liked Macgiver, Battlestar Galactica, American TV. I like K-dramas. Soft culture.

We left each other on the asphalt of my driveway. Hugs all round except for Umma, who shook my hand. Her way.

An important visit. Memories that build relationships. Relationships that can last over time and distance. My question now is how to nurture, how to reinforce them.

A few ideas. I pay Ruth’s airfare to Korea next summer if she gets an internship there. Maybe I go with her. Gabe’s graduation money could send him to Korea, too.

Perhaps we’ll all meet in Hawai’i. Vacation together in a spot between the Mountains and the Peninsula.

Emails and zoom. Gifts. I’m open to other ideas. Mary? Mark?

 

Just a moment: A new form of family, united across oceans and languages and nations, perhaps that’s part of the answer to Trumpism. An end around. Loosen the bond with any one home country, spend the released energy on building connection continent to continent.

 

*”…the Green Woman mediates the sacred sovereignty of the Earth’s soul and can show the path to understanding and communion with nature. But with this blessing comes responsibility. Remember that this glorious, magnanimous and generous spirit can live through you, radiated by the sacred breath of life and given to others who need guidance and healing.” Parting the Mists

 

Dogs, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Mussar

Hearing on the Side of Merit

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Summer and the Greenhouse Moon II

Monday gratefuls: Relationship building. Shadow. Learning curve for us both. Still steep. Shadow the hugger. Morning darkness. Staying longer. Artemis. Kate, always. Natalie. Ruth and Gabe. The duvet. Ruth’s skills. Gabe’s skills. Each Tomato Plant. Each Squash. Syntropy. Entropy. Science and the Ancient Brothers. Indiana Fever. Those Twins.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ruth’s sewing. Gabe’s bedmaking.

Year Kavannah: Wu Wei. Find the flow. Go with it.

Week Kavannah: Hearing on the side of merit

One brief shining: Ruth took on a difficult task, sewing patches by hand on my duvet where Shadow the render of cloth had worked to release many sneeze producing Goose Feathers; so good to see a woman sewing in the house again.

 

Ruth after sewing a heart on Gabe’s baboon.

Grandkids: Ruth and Gabe came up yesterday. I’d told them I needed help with some things. Patching the duvet was one. Shadow had torn it open in several spots a while ago and each time I used it more Goose Feathers would float up, up, up and away. Some tickling my nose. Achoo.

Ruth has the dexterity of her father and her grandmother. She sewed for two or three hours, also sneezing. When she finished, every hole had been patched. Some with sewing. Some with cloth tape. What a relief.

Gabe lifted my heavy (to me) foam mattress and put on new sheets and pillow cases. “These look like you, Grandpop,” he said of the blue Flower printed design. He also carried down a bag of dogfood for me. Also a relief.

We had pizza together. And talked.

We talk about books, about relationships, about grief, about school, about the future. We laugh and get teary. To have this sort of relationship with two I’ve known since infancy continues to be one of the jewels of my life.

They left around four.

 

Dog journal: The saga continues. Once again Shadow refused to come in to stay in the evening. Even though I’ve moved her second feeding to seven p.m. She came in to eat, but bolted again when I tried to touch her collar.

When I went outside, she came up and hugged me, as she likes to do, jumping up softly and putting her left front paw around my waist. After we did this several times, I picked her up and brought her inside. I don’t know, right now, any other way to keep her safe at night.

 

Mussar: Hearing on the side of merit. Judaism teaches judging others on the side of merit. Assuming good intent, thoughtfulness when encountering difficult interactions.

Rich Levine offered a twist on that: Hearing on the side of merit. As a lawyer and as a college professor, listening is a significant, major part of his work life. Hearing on the side of merit entails stopping, perhaps, when encountering a divisive or contrary idea, going to first principles and finding an area of agreement before answering or responding.

Easier to write about than do. Mussar suggests small, incremental changes in outer behavior, intentional changes that then reshape the inner self. Hearing on the side of merit is a good practice for this week.

Dogs, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Mussar, Wild Neighbors

Grading Life on the U curve

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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.

 

Commentary on Religion, Dogs, Health, Mussar

A New Pope

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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.

 

 

 

Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Judaism, Kabbalah, Mussar

A Busy Thursday

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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.

Dogs, Fourth Phase, Health, Judaism, Mussar, Shabbat, Weather +Climate

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas.

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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, Friends, Mussar

Something’s gnawing at me

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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.

 

 

 

 

Fourth Phase, Mussar

Will to have no will

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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.