Category Archives: Mussar

Dogs, Health, Judaism, Memories, Mussar, Sport

Shadow and Healing. And, Basketball!

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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!

 

 

 

 

Commentary on the news, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Judaism, Korea, Mussar

Awe

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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 Religion, Judaism, Memories, Mussar

Regret. Remorse. Teshuvah.

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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.
Dogs, Kabbalah, Mussar, Plants, Science

Growing My Soul

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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, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Judaism, Mussar

Dream Time

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Imbolc and the Birthday Moon

Friday gratefuls: Big Snow. Shadow, the good Dog. Murdoch. My son. Seoah. Vince and Snow plowing. Feeling well rested. Pain doc. Chocolate. Hawai’ian dark chocolate with Macadamia Nuts. Chocolate coffee beans. Mary in Oz. Diane, healing. The rise of autocracies. King Donald. A third term. Prostate cancer.

BTW: If you are new to Ancientrails or have forgotten, we Jews are grateful for everything that happens since it is all part of the One. Doesn’t mean we like all of it or don’t want/need to change it. But even King Donald is part of our wonderful, amazing, grace filled World.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: My sacred community of family and friends

Week Kavannah:  Persistence and grit.  Netzach.

One brief shining: I looked up and noticed Shadow returning to her food bowl, first licking up crumbs, then trying to eat the yellow and purple Crocuses off the Portmerion pattern, digging her puppy teeth into the porcelain with a grinding sound, going after those flowers, puzzled by their intransigence. I will get her a raised set of stainless bowls, but not right now, so she’ll have to deal.

 

Here is your illuminated manuscript-style illustration, capturing the essence of the Stable Rock of Shadow Mountain, Maxwell Creek, and the sacred wildlife in a medieval bestiary aesthetic with golden detailing.

Dream last night: I had moved to a new city and decided to follow a long dirt road that wound far away from town, visible for a long way until it turned right around a low hill. Didn’t get very far because I hadn’t checked the gas gauge. E. I pulled to the side, got out and walked over to a rocky cliff.

Began to climb. I got the top after some effort and found a place that looked like it would have a gas can. When I went in, grandson Gabe was with me. Together we looked through a lot of different shelves, finally locating a gas can which I bought.

We walked back outside to fill it up and where I thought there would be gas pumps, there were none. Oh, well. We began walking, asking people if they knew where we could get gas. That’s all I remember.

 

Saw the pain doc on Wednesday. Rode up in the elevator with a guy saying he was heading in for the pain and torture spot. Turned out we were both going to Mountain View Pain Medicine. He to p.t., me to an initial consult.

When I explained my lower back pain, how it drastically limited my mobility and gave me excruciating pain after my drives to Boulder and back, the P.A. went into a dialogue that confused me at first.

I’m a rule follower, she said. If we’re going to work with you, you’ll have to do conservative therapy and come in here once a month. Then, I tumbled to it. Can my primary care doc manage my tramadol? Oh, yes. All the hesitation dropped away. This was a continuing, and welcome, echo of the oxycodone addiction crisis. No pain doc will risk their practice by giving away narcotics.

She suggested an MRI which I agreed to. Sometime in the next two weeks. Get to the root cause of my pain. Yes. What I’ve wanted for a while now. Admit to a little anxiety about incidental findings with this so careful an imaging tool since the source of my pain and the areas of my metastases coexist. Might find more cancer. Hope not.

 

Just a moment: Got into a funk yesterday. Ached. Pain less well controlled after no more Celebrex. Maybe a little tired. Fatigued by whatever: uncontrolled hyperthyroidism, very low testosterone, the effects of my cancer drugs. Wondering if the shortness of breath, weakness meant (against current evidence) my cancer was advancing. Thought about not going to mussar, too tired. Too much effort.

Nope. My kavannah, netzach, said, get up and go anyhow. What a good choice. I’d only missed two sessions, but I got some glad you’re backs. Geez. Also, my funk disappeared in the solvent of friendship, study, seeing and being seen.

Had a time afterward with Rabbi Jamie looking for a text to use for MVP in two weeks. We laughed a lot together. A good friend.

On the way home I remembered, as I sometimes have to do, that I am alive and loved today, in this February 21st life, no matter what the future holds. Be gone, funky thoughts!

 

 

Mussar, Politics

Incremental Change

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Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Tom. Paul. Cold again. Working on my week kavannah. Not going well. Borzoi. Irish Wolfhounds. Whippets. Akitas. German Wirehairs. Coyote Hound/IW mix. Dogs of all sorts and sizes. Dogs I’ve known and loved. Dogs I haven’t known but would love if given the chance. High Mountain Winds. Shirley Waste. School Bus Drivers. Snow Plow Drivers. Rural Mail carriers. Doing jobs that make our lives easier.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: History

Kavannah 2025: Creativity

Kavannah this week: Appreciation of Differences   Haarecha shel machloket

One brief shining: How to see the humanity in the inhumane, how to see kindness in the cruel, how to see truth in the liar, how to know the faith in the hypocrite, how to find justice in the unjust, how to do all these things without losing a sense of outrage and personal conviction about inhumanity, cruelty, lies, hypocrisy, injustice will be the challenge not only of this week’s kavannah, but a work of the next four long years. At least for me.

 

I freely and without reservation admit that yesterday’s post did not advance my appreciation of the differences I find between my own values and cousin Donald and his crew. Satire is not kind. Can be cruel. At best, even if it is these two, it neither lies nor is unjust.

When drill, baby, drill becomes a battle cry, I can acknowledge my own complicity in our fossil fuel supported economy. When a flat, uninformed dictat like: From this day forward there are only two genders, male and female, in America comes out of the mouth of a President on inauguration day, I can hear the pleading for a simpler, easier to understand relational world. When racial justice will occur in a color-blind, meritocratic society, I can feel the fear of the other advancing, gaining traction. When the leader of the law and order party pardons those who assaulted officers of the law, well, you got me here. How do we square that circle?

What I’m trying to say is this. Even in the darkest of his and his minions purposes, there lies a sentiment or conviction I can find within myself. In this way I can stay in touch with the humanity of Stephen Miller. Bannon. The Q-Anon shaman. Does this change my direct opposition to their actions, their intended actions? Not at all.

We serve different gods. My god lives and acts only through human and natural life, through the processes and systems of the natural word. My god opposes inhumanity, cruelty, injustice, lies, and hypocrisy. But not the humanity of those caught up in these acts.

Not knowing this is the abyss of which Nietzsche spoke, the one that stares back. And the monster that when fighting you do not want to become.

Mussar suggests small, incremental changes get us where we need to go. This is my small change today. Acknowledging the need for this sort of reflection about our public life. Amen.

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Judaism, Mussar

Rachamim

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Yule and the almost full Quarter Century Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Vince and his friends. Their muscles. Moving day for my home gym. A couple of chairs. My new computer. The complete Pritzker Zohar. My classroom for the next few years. Year Tarot: The Archer, #7. Life Tarot: The Wheel, #10, and a shadow card, The Wanderer, #1. Wildwood Tarot. Going deeper, yet staying on the surface. Ruby and her Mountain ways. Talmud Torah

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Leaning in to mobility limitations

Kavannah for 2025: Creativity

Year card: The Archer, #7  “The Archer is located on the spring equinox, March 21. The time this card represents is sunrise. The Archer belongs to the Air element, bringing creative energy and inspiration. This Wildwood Tarot card makes meaning: the dawn of new life is beginning and a bumper season is coming.”  TarotX.net

Kavannah for this week: Wholeness and peacefulness  shleimut

One brief shining: Seeing my son over the thousands of miles, listening to him describe his life and work, hearing his melody loud and clear, a strong man, dedicated, caring, loving, thoughtful, a tune marked by doggedness and intelligence, commitment, warrior energy.

 

Here is the illustration in the style of an ukiyo-e print, visually interpreting the nurturing and generative qualities of compassion.

This new practice for the month, listening for the melody of the other, has proved challenging to recall. Its purpose is to train my rachamim muscle, my compassion, over against my din muscle, my justice muscle. Justice somehow got wired into my soul from a young age. Always ready to judge and enter the fight on behalf of others. Compassion came later, or at least in much smaller emergences than my desire to stop the war, further women’s rights, block capitalist greed, build affordable housing.

As I’ve aged, compassion (rachamim) has pushed its way forward. Perhaps because I have needed more compassion. Perhaps because aging can induce, and has for me, vulnerability. Life contains fewer and fewer chances, contains more and more tragedy and chaos. Reduced energy, at least for me, plays a role here, too. I don’t have the get up and struggle sort of vitality, physically, that I used to have. Also friendships and acquaintances have risen to top priority in my life. Following only family. To retain and sustain relationships compassion must show up first.

Did that shoulder slump? Is her head slightly tilted down? Is there a tightness in his voice? That foot tapping. Clock watching. Smiling without sarcasm. She leaned her head suddenly on to my shoulder. What do I know of the composer? What’s likely influencing this melody? Is it one I’ve heard before? Is it new? Is it shrill? Or is it like morning Bird song? My eye can be, must be my ear.

Both rachamim and the Hebrew word for womb share the same root. What can we imagine from this? Does compassion have a generative quality, creating a womb-like space for another’s soul to grow? Does compassion nurture over time, making it a necessary element of every interaction with another? Frequent exposure to your compassion may be the fertile Soil another’s soul needs to flourish.

Sometime I’ll write about din. Which sets aside compassion in the interests of equity, fairness, fighting oppression. Not today.

Health, Judaism, Mussar, Torah

Listen to the Melody of Others

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Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Talmud Torah. CBE. New Dell tower. Warmer. But not too warm. Salmon. Asparagus. Baked Potato. Better. Ann, palliative care nurse. Leaving. New nurse in February. Sore shoulder and left forearm. Arthritis in my right hip? Diane and her shoulder. Mark in Al Kharj. Lodgepoles and Aspens in Winter. Mule Deer and Elk. Fox and Mountain Lions. Bears hibernating. Humans with higher heating bills.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Personal Computers

Kavannah for 2025: Creativity

Kavannah for the 7 lifetimes in this January 11th life-January 18th week: Wholeness and Peacefulness – shleimut

One brief shining: A knock on the door, a young East Indian man in a Federal Express shirt holding up a small screen for my signature, where do you want it, and he carried my new computer upstairs to my home office, solving the first problem I would have had with it.

 

Here’s the updated illustration showing the stressed physicians in a medieval illuminated manuscript style, now highlighting their anxiety and overwhelming work conditions.

In the way of the medical world these days. Ann, my palliative care nurse whom I’ve seen four times, resigned her position. Moving on. As did Kristen, my former PCP. And Lisa and Susan, other former PCP’s, and Eigner, my urologist, and Bret, the young ophthalmologist who went back home to North Carolina during Covid. And Charlie Petersen before all of them, moving to Colorado, and Tom Davis after him.

I had one doctor my whole childhood. Dr. Gaunt. Whose son Mike was in my class. When I left Alexandria, he was still at work in his office, in a converted house; I remember it smelled of alcohol, he had a nurse in white with the little cap, glass jars of cotton bowls and syringes so big.

Not today’s medicine. Hospitals are understaffed. Physicians find working for corporate entities like Kaiser and Optum and Allina stressful. No longer able to practice medicine, rather having to practice assembly line healing, pushing patients through in shorter and shorter visits. Revenue capture now the main goal, not health.

I get the churn in this environment. Again, though I am anti-murder-as we all should be-I understand Luigi Mangione’s frustration. He is not alone.

 

Here is the image in the style of Albrecht Dürer, illustrating the concept of active, caring listening through harmonious interaction and natural surroundings.

Today we’ll study the last parsha in Genesis: Vayechi, He lived. The story of Jacob’s death and Joseph’s, too. A story full of pathos as Jacob blesses his sons, claims Joseph’s sons as his own, then, “…is gathered to his ancestors.” The last line of the book of Genesis: “Joseph died at the age of 110 years, and he was embalmed and placed in a coffin in Egypt.”

There is no mention in the Joseph story of slavery. This is odd since the next book in the Torah is Exodus. In other words the story goes from saving Jacob and his sons, patriarchs of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, by a big move to Egypt and then to the story of their enslavement and later liberation that defines the Jewish people down to this day.

You may recall my practice from the last month, to say, “This too is for the good.” especially in situations I might consider negative or even bad. One way to look at the book of Genesis, from the Garden of Eden and eating from the tree of good and evil, down to Joseph placed in a coffin is as a sequence of this too is for the good moments.

BTW: my practice for this month is to first listen to the melody of others.

Commentary on the news, Friends, Great Wheel, Health, Judaism, Mussar, Politics, US History

Toxic. What else can you say?

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Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

New Year’s Day gratefuls: Tara. Ron. Ruth and Gabe. Veronica. 5 degrees this morning. Good sleeping. Snow. A new year. Kinda. The Realm. Von Bek. The Grail. Snowplows. Another Mountain Day, another Mountain life. Ruby in her winter shoes. MVP tonight. Family. Love. A new Zen calendar. Enlightenment. Not hard. Not easy. See what you’re looking at.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The feel of a fresh slate

Kavannah for 2025: Yetziratiut  Creativity

For January 1 life: Wonder, Malchut

One brief shining: Sitting with Tara over sausage patties, home fries, eggs over easy, and sourdough toast, coffee steaming, the noise almost too much, I felt yet again love, again chesed, again the presence of one who sees me as I am and accepts me, as I see her and accept her.

 

I promised something less abstruse today. Here it is.

Carried the three largest split Oak logs in with the intention of burning them last night, starting a new tradition, burning Yule logs on New Year’s Eve since I missed the Winter Solstice. As in love with the night as I am, I no longer experience as much of it. I go to bed early, too early I felt for burning the Oak. Or, maybe I’m just too set in my ways. Whatever. I didn’t do it. Again. That’s twice.

On a related note: I was gonna go upstairs and hit 30 minutes on the treadmill. Thought about it right after I got back from breakfast with Tara. Almost. Knew it was my yetzer hara, my selfish inclination saying nah. You worked out yesterday. You can work out tomorrow. Take a rest already.

I read instead.

We make these sort of decisions at bechira points, choice points, and whichever way we decide we reinforce the likelihood of making that same choice again. I had two bechira points yesterday and chose the easy way. The good news here is that the yetzer hatov, the generous inclination, the possibility directed yetzer, will always have a chance to change that decision at the next bechira point, reinforcing the way that nurtures becoming.

Mussar expresses a medieval psychology, yes. But. Clyde Steckler, professor of pastoral care at United Theological Seminary, said you can explain the workings of the mind using any system of thought you want and still come up with useful, meaningful ways to understand it. Mussar exemplifies this idea.

I no longer live in a world of bad and good, right and wrong, but in a world of possibilities and potentials reinforced or thwarted. Maybe it’s that field that Rumi talks about. The one out beyond right and wrong. Where we can meet. My practice this month helps reveal this reality: this too is for the good.

 

Just a moment: Driving a pickup truck into a crowd of revelers on Bourbon Street. These newer pickups look like weapons to me. Their massive grills. Cabs high above the rest  of us tooling along in our SUV’s and sedans. And aggressive driving? Speeding. Impatience. Road rage. Seems baked into the I’m bigger and stronger than you are toxic masculinity cast in steel and named Ram. About to get stroked by the red tie guy. Who will attempt to make normative an unthinking, insensitive, domineering version of maleness.

 

Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Judaism, Mountains, Mussar, Politics

Night Driving. Mountains

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Samain and the Yule Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Salam. Marilyn and Irv. Ruth. Great Sol. Eleanor (Tara and Arjean’s new Dog. A real sweety.) Love and Hate. Tara’s house. Tara. Vincent. MVP. Rabbi Jamie. Air tight wood stove. Mussar. Friends. Mark. Mary. My son. Seoah. Murdoch.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Eleanor, a bundle of black fluffy puppiness

Kavannah:  MINDFULNESS   Metinut  מְתִינוּת  Mindfulness, presence, intentionality (literally to “move slowly”)

One brief shining: On dark Mountain roads curves everywhere, tumbling down always possible, night time creates challenges even for the most seasoned, no street lights on  Kilimanjaro or Jungfrau, driveways black with asphalt, yet I found my way to Tara’s house with only one misstep, caught by Marilyn, a journey I can make without thinking in the light of day. A metaphor here somewhere.

prompt: An image in the style of Carvaggio that shows how dangerous it can be to drive in the Mountains at night

There are two different seasons of driving in the Mountains, Day and Night. In the day landmarks and familiarity make the usual routes easy. Roads to places not yet visited can be a challenge though even in the light. Only one way in and one way out, no connecting, linking roads. Signs often obscured.

But at night. Whoa. Wild Neighbors cross the road. Curves bend and twist, often out of sight of headlight illumination. No street lights. At all. None. Driveways disappear. House numbers may be difficult to impossible to read. In the first couple of years we lived here, I would often drive past our own driveway after returning from a night out.

Then, throw in ice and snow. Nope. Not doing night driving under those circumstances except for desperate times, desperate measures. During the day snow is no problem for me; though ice, well, just say no to driving on ice.

You might think. Well. C’mon, dude. Why live there? I find the Mountains and the Wild Neighbors, the quiet and the beauty more than compensation. If I’m honest, the difficulties of night driving in the Mountains adds a note of wildness to the stew of Mountain life. A pleasing note, too.

 

I got home about a quarter of eleven last night. OMY! That’s Oh my, yhwh. Then I decompressed from the drive and our session on love and hate. To bed around 11:30. Last time I was up that late? Maybe New Years?

My good friends. Close as family. Rich. Jamie. Tara. Joanne. Ron. Susan. Marilyn. Now Laurie and Kaathe.

Seeing them once a month makes even Mountain driving at night worthwhile. The conversation, the food, hugs and smiles. Seeing and being seen. Hearing and being heard. Kate was part of this group. So was Judy Sherman. Both now dead. We’ve been through death, divorce, mental illness, and family dysfunction together. The bond is tight.

 

Just a moment: Luigi Mangione. Pharmacy Benefit Managers and the opioid crisis. NYT, 12/17/2024. Again. No to murder. Also again: WTF health system actors?! Money over health, conscience, decency. No wonder we shake our heads and hope our disease or condition will get treated fairly.