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  • Zohar

    Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

    Shabbat gratefuls: Ruth. New Snow. Cold. Full night’s sleep. Dreams. Alan. Acting. Directing. Singing. Dandelion. Evergreen. Ruby. Gas. Alan’s BMW. Electrons. Joanne. Taxes. Death and taxes. Diane, healing. Social media. Staying off social media. Gabe. Interviewing Rabbi Jamie. Breakfast. Peskyfowlatarian. Shrimp last night. Smoothie for lunch with protein powder.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Learning

    Kavannah 2025: Creativity

    Kavannah this new week: Chesed (this week, especially toward myself)

    Practice for rachamim (compassion): Listening for the melody of the other (& self)

    One brief shining: Opened the “very good” copy of Art Green’s Guide to the Zohar and fell further into a world of monsters, demons, divinity, and hints for seeing the sacred, following an ancientrail with trailheads in ancient Greece, in the Tanakh, merging Athens and Jerusalem, painting a picture that only the lev can see, eyes blinded by scientism and crude materialism, a cracking whacking inner smacking of old ways of thought confronting my deep desire to see what I’m looking at.

     

    I now have all 12 volumes of the Pritzker Zohar, translation from an original Aramaic text compiled by Stanford professor Daniel Matt. He and other scholars translate the text and provide detailed commentary. This is as close to the original as I’ll ever get since I have scant Aramaic and only a bit more Hebrew.

    It’s an odd experience, studying Kabbalah. At least for me. Its way of thinking and expanding and heading down unexpected paths often obscures more than it enlightens. At first. Though as I’ve gone on from the classes I’ve taken with Rabbi Jamie and David Sanders, especially with the Zohar, I find resonance with the wild speculation, leaps of thought, fantastic imagery.

    Accused, I discovered in recent reading, of pantheism, the writers of the Zohar have felt and pressed their way toward insights consonant with my own. I’m discovering in this study why a systematic ge-ology, which I tried to write some years ago, couldn’t come from my lev. I experience the world as a mystic, a world ready to offer revelation at every turn, from a study of the Joseph story in Genesis to a Bull Elk watching me from the Forest’s edge as rain pelted down. Or the knowledge that in Emet, truth in Hebrew, are the three mother letters, aleph-the beginning, mem-the middle, and tav-the end, so that truth has to have a holistic context, is never a single statement or claim. Or the death of my beloved. Or the appreciation of sound as a creative force. In other words revelation of the One, the oneness, the unity and yet the creatively ever advancing all never stops coming to us, is available in every instance of every day.

    I keep coming back to Rami Shapiro’s wonderful metaphor of each of us as waves created by the ocean, pushed up and moving for a time, then collapsing back into the ocean. Always part of the One, yet also distinct and remarkable, unique. Our distinctiveness never lost, yet also absorbed into the whole.


  • Meh in the rearview. For now.

    Yule and the Full Quarter Century Moon

    Monday gratefuls: Marilyn and Irv. Alan. The Full Moon. Cold night. 4 degrees. Good sleeping. Celebrex twice daily now. Chronic pain. Snow. Moving stuff around. Brings George Carlin to mind. Carlin and Monty Python. Douglas Adams. The trinity of comedy for me. Exodus parshas begin this week. Zohar, all 12 volumes. Clearing space for study. My son. Murdoch. Seoah. Korea. Mary in Brisbane. Mark in Al Kharj. Diane, healing.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Grocery pickup

    Kavannah 2025: Creativity

    Year Tarot: The Archer

    Kavannah for this week: Wholeness and peacefulness  shleimut

    One brief shining: A new Dell desktop sits nearby, still in its substantial box, waiting to get lifted out, placed next to my old Dell desktop so the transfer of files can begin, underwriting in its newness the sense within me, reinforced by my Tarot year card, the Archer, that this will be an important year for me: “This Wildwood Tarot card makes meaning: the dawn of new life is beginning and a bumper season is coming.”

     

    Yes, the period of meh has receded. Encouraged by learning that my aorta won’t bother me. By writing stories in the Storyworth app. By leaning into my mobility limitations. By deciding to go for an ortho consult: right shoulder, left forearm and hand, lower back and hip, neck. By focusing on kabbalah and Torah study. By the new CBE men’s group. By my pescatarian (plus chicken, if nothing else is available) turn. No, not a hard decision, a decision to lower the number of choice points when it comes to food.

    Also by recognizing, even more, the value of my mornings. And further, by the decision to move my home gym down to Kate’s old sewing room. Concentrating my workouts downstairs.

    Glad for all this.

     

    Only a week away from MLK holiday. And, on the very same oh so ironic day, the inauguration of our 47th felon, no. Wait. President. No. Felon President. That’s it. If the long arc of history bends toward justice, the sag created on the 20th will have to be repaired.

    MLK. Malcolm X. I’m more a Malcolm X sorta guy. Sure, non-violence. Yes. As a way of bringing change. When it works. Where it can work. Not much good against despots, Proud Boys, 3 Percenters, Christian Nationalists. Violence. Often counter-productive. Yet look at the Day of Love, as felonious cousin Donald has renamed it. That was violent, not extreme, yet that was the overall look and feel. No Velveteen Rabbit stuff. More like where the wild things are.

    Din, or justice in Hebrew, insists on right and wrong, demands restitution and retribution when a wrong is committed. (from Tara’s work sheet on rachamim).

    This image puts the Wanderer’s Journey overlaid on the ten sefirot of Kabbalah’s Tree of Life. Though interesting for that reason I want to focus on the line between Chesed, #4, and Gevurah, #5. Chesed is loving kindness and Gevurah is strength, boundaries, the law. If rachamim, compassion, were placed on here it would be on the midline between Chesed and Gevurah, blending the attributes of strength and boundaries with loving kindness.

    Realized in reading Tara’s notes that I’m a left side of the tree guy. More severe and punishing in my approach to injustices. Which I think is appropriate for public and systemic wrongs. Rabbi Jamie, I think, is more of a right side of the tree guy. Loving kindness and compassion as first approaches. Which I think are more appropriate for individual and small group situations.


  • Merrily we roll along, roll along, roll along

    Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

    Tuesday gratefuls: This too is for the good. 2024 and 2025. And this December 31st 2024 life. 8 degrees this morning. Good sleeping. Von Bek. The War Hound and the World’s Pain. The Psalms. Bob Dylan. The Band. Ain’t No Grave. The Blues. Jazz. Jefferson Airplane. The Doors. Led Zeppelin. Ginger Baker. John Coltrane. Thelonious Monk. Slipping quietly into the next year.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Tara

    Kavannah: Persistence and Joy

    prompt: A vintage father time with sickle and an infant new year

    One brief shining: How to encapsulate a year in one sentence, a challenge, perhaps remembering a Bar Mitzvah with friends and family present, a changed arc for cancer, a couple of months of low feeling, many breakfasts and lunches and zoom calls, visiting Ruth in Boulder, Gabe solving puzzles, many visits from my Mule Deer friends, the Mountains remaining-steady, solid, reliable-Great Sol and Good Night, Orion’s return, all while turning 77. Whee!

     

    As the Zen calendar from Tom says:

    This year,

    yes, even this year,

    has drawn to its close.   Buson

     

    Here is the illustration inspired by Japan’s Kano school, visually interpreting your evocative paragraph.

    Though age and wrinkles compared to that slender hipped 28 year old in his silly multi-colored suspenders and shorts would suggest definite linear time, no, I say no to that. I say live by the Great Wheel. By the telling and retelling of the story in the five books of Moses. By Sukkot and Mabon, Samain and Shavuot, the Winter Solstice and Passover. All repeating in a yearly cycle, spiraling through the heavens of time’s confusing paradoxes. Always ready to leave behind the hell of human insistence on seeing the profane where only the sacred-ONLY THE SACRED-exists.

    I confess I don’t understand how time can seem so linear yet reside all the while in an ever repeating, glorious parade of seasons and holidays, all of which may in some future Samain-see the problem, all of which may in some future Samain, be harvested for a final time as our universe slips into its own Winter Solstice. Only, if I have an understanding of it, to experience its own rebirth as a cosmic Great Sol, a Phoenix, rising again, still?, from the depths of a cold forever.

    All this to say happy new year! Let’s hear it for the calendar, for aging, for yesterday and tomorrow, all the while knowing we can never live anywhere but today. And not even today, but in this ichi-go ichi-e moment. Which will never repeat yet is eternal, never gone from the roiling, boiling mix of creation in which we live and move and have our becoming.

    God. I sound like a bad fortune cookie. Nevertheless. Yes. To all this. To however we are, whomever we are, whenever we are. Bouncing along jostling each other, holding each others hands, walking each other home, living with the thereafter, somehow, even if it’s only in molecular hand me downs.

    You out there. To a less abstruse post next year. Tomorrow.

     

     

     

     


  • Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ

    Yule and the Yule Moon

    Christmukkah gratefuls: Many happy Christmases. The complete severance of Christmas from Christ’s Mass. All of the childhood induced fantasies drifting up and out of bedrooms all over the world. All of the Jewish memories of resistance triggered now for 8 days. Holiseason peaking with Christmas, Hanukkah, and Yule all resonating, vibrating with each other. It is indeed the most wonderful time of the year.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Holiseason

    Kavannah: AWE Yira יִרְאָה  Awe, reverence, fear (פְּלִיאָה Plia: Wonder, amazement)

    One brief shining: I hear the rattling of old Marley’s chains this morning, looking at a world about to devolve into a Christmas Carol with a different ending, where the Scrooge’s of our country like Trump, Bezos, Musk, and Gates join oligarchs from around the world to ignore even the Ghost of Christmas future and forge for themselves heavy chains and money boxes that will haunt them into their unredeemed future.

    Here is the image representing “Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ” in the style of socialist realism, emphasizing interconnectedness and harmony.

    And even so, let me say a word for yirah. For wonder, amazement, awe, reverence. Paul reminded me of the Lakota phrase, all my relations. I asked chatbotgpt to give it to me in Lakota and what it means in the Lakota worldview.

    The answer* made me realize that I’ve spent decades deconstructing theological and philosophical and even scientific ideas, trying to swim down and through them to the core of what matters. Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ matches my current conclusions though I had to get through years of seminary, meditation, horticulture, dogs, loving Kate, to find the final ingredient I needed, the unitary metaphysic of Judaism. The Tree of Life in Kabbalah maps on to this native worldview, too.

    Wish it was as easy as reading this years ago and being able to integrate it, but that wouldn’t have worked. I needed to live the struggle. Judaism with Kabbalah contains this wisdom and expresses it without dogma. Makes me feel even more like a member of the tribe. Or, a tribe.

    When I talked to the Mule Deer Doe last week, when I spent time with the three Mule Deer Bucks on my first day here on Shadow Mountain ten years ago, when I planted tulips and iris and crocus and garlic and heirloom tomatoes, when I removed honey supers to carry to Kate for our honey harvest, when I sat with a Wolfhound’s head in my lap and another’s in Kate’s, I engaged the embodied learning of Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ.

    Yes, mitákuye Oyás’iŋ comes most vividly into our whole life through direct experience. Yet for me the life of the mind is important, too, and I wanted always to be able to clarify, to say in words the truth my body already know.

    In a way I sense my life is now complete. I made the swim all the way to the bottom and down there was the Holy Well of the collective unconscious, linking me to all my relations through the world of Judaism.

    Reincarnation? Could be. Death a transformation? Without a doubt. Life a continuous amazement and wonder. For sure. May as well celebrate.

    BTW: I like this image from Chatbot’s Dalle, too.

    Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah!

     

    *”Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ” reflects the interconnectedness of all beings and entities in the universe. It embodies the belief that everything—humans, animals, plants, stones, water, air, the earth, and the stars—is interrelated and part of a sacred whole. This worldview emphasizes:

    1. Unity and Kinship: All beings are regarded as relatives, forming a vast web of relationships that must be honored and respected.
    2. Reciprocity: The phrase underscores the importance of balance and mutual care among all entities, fostering a sense of responsibility toward the natural world and its cycles.
    3. Sacred Connection: Life is seen as a continuous, sacred circle in which every part has its place and purpose, contributing to the harmony of the whole.
    4. Humility and Gratitude: By acknowledging “All My Relations,” individuals express gratitude for the interconnectedness of life and humility in recognizing their place within it.

    In ceremonies and prayers, “Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ” is often used to close statements or invocations, serving as a reminder of this profound interconnectedness and the sacred responsibility it entails.

                                                    Herme Harari Israel


  • Guard your own soul

    Samain and the Yule Moon

    Here is the vertical depiction of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, inspired by the style of Leonardo da Vinci with intricate, classical details. Let me know your thoughts or if you’d like any refinements!

    Wednesday gratefuls: Edwardian Advent Calendar. Shirley Waste. Sprinkling of Snow. Holly and Berries. Ivy. Yule logs. Oak. Pinôn. The Fireplace. On a cold Winter’s evening. Great Sol spreading a pink glow over my Lodgepole Companion. Christmas Music. Dreidels. Menorahs. The Shamash. Hanukah candles. Season of lights. Ohr. Ein sof.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: the Nefesh.

    Kavannah: BEAUTY  Tiferet  תִפאֶרֶת  Beauty, harmony, balance  Sixth Sefirah: Reconciliation, synthesis, integration; the Heart (between Chesed & Gevurah)

    One brief shining: Gazing through a kabbalistic lens I can see sacred energy, chi, life force, consciousness, ohr whatever fits your understanding, flowing up and down, in and out, over and under as Water transvaporizes, as Great Sol’s Light feeds my Lodgepole Companion, as Raven’s feed on the carcass of a dead Mule Deer, as I breathe Oxygen from the Plant world and eat food created by Light-Eaters.

     

    Just the teasers thrown out by red tie guy-Cousin Donald as Joanne Greenberg calls him-may rattle you. Force you out of the day in which we live, the only day in which you will ever live, this day. Today this December 18th, 2024 life. When you allow his provocations, his mindless choices, his venal understanding of the world to pull you into a miserable 2025, dreading its January 20th reading of the Presidential oath, the terrorist has won. Don’t let him occupy your mind and heart. Live rent free.

    I hesitate, but not too much, to use this metaphor. That’s the Great Satan at work. Trying to make us angry and fearful, focused on the appetites of a man we might otherwise feel sorry for. A stunted soul with a blinkered and greed and attention-demanding nefesh.

    Guard your own soul today. Seek out the beautiful. The loving. The wonderful. The sacred. Husband your power, your strength for whatever may lay ahead. Put off becoming anxious about matters not yet in play.

     

    The Storyworth folks. I wrote about this a few days ago. Rabbi Jamie mentioned it to me. I’ve written answers to five questions so far, getting myself into writing mode by writing. The best way. I light my candle and respond to the question, writing as long as I can, at least 500 words, sometimes more. Which makes a thousand words plus a day with Ancientrails. That’s enough to satisfy the writerly need in me.

     

    Just a moment: School shooters. Troubled teens. I know a few myself. Not troubled in that way, that is, a violence prone way, but I can see how it would not have been a long step for them. What if their parents had owned guns? Been the sort of folks who feared the world, saw it as a dangerous, dark place. If that weren’t true, what if their friends had been such people? Something has broken adolescence in America. And I don’t know what it is.

     


  • Blood and Seawater

    Mabon (Fall) and the Harvest Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: Mark Odegard and his art, a retrospective. The Ancient Brothers. Consistent and persistent. My son. Seoah. Murdoch. Geneva Creek. Clear Creek. The North Fork of the South Platte. Maxwell Creek. North Turkey Creek. Blue Creek. Upper Bear Creek. Lake Evergreen. Bear Creek. These last six all part of my Watershed. Shadow Mountain’s split Granite Aquifers. Where I get my Water for Shadow Mountain Home.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Act of Creation

    Kavannah: Teshuvah

    One brief shining: On Friday I picked my way down a slight decline studded with Rocks, ahead of me Water spilled over them at speed and filled my ears with its soothing sound, as if it touched, and maybe it does, an ancient hominid memory of Water at last, at last, similar I imagine to the visual soothing offered by large bodies of Water like Lake Superior, the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific; we are not Animals of the Water but we are not Animals at all without Water, the bond singing in our blood* and our internal supply of Water gauged and signaled when low by thirst.

    Geneva Creek beside Guanella Pass Road

     

    In this month of Elul, of chasbon nefesh, accounting of the soul, I ask you, reader, to pardon me if I have caused you injury either by word or deed, by commission or omission. This is a sincere request. If we need to talk to resolve something, please let me know. I wish to go into the days of awe with my soul cleansed as much as it can be. This is part of that process.

    I know. My soul. Seems anachronistic, a Greek idea clumsily borrowed by all three of the Abrahamic religions. The notion that there is a something, a part of us that endures after death. A real thing like a Rock or a Lodgepole. For over thirty years I’ve avoided the question by positing extinction as the result of death. No where for a soul to go. No need for a soul. Q.E.D.

    Jews have, as usual, many and conflicting thoughts about the soul. For some there are 5 souls. For others none. Right now I’m reading a Rabbi Jamie translation of a 16th century text that works with two: the neshamah and the nefesh. The neshamah is the pure soul, the image of divinity, the uniqueness of that in which it resides. Unstainable. Original sin is a non-starter within all Jewish understandings of the soul and of human nature.

    The nefesh surrounds the neshamah with personality, with choice, with the joys and sorrows of fleshly life. Driven by the yetzer harah, the selfish inclination, and the yetzer hatov, the loving inclination, our lifetime represents opportunities to synch up our character with the unstainable neshamah. We fail. We succeed. We start over again and again.

    Is this consciousness in which our unique nature, our buddha nature, our I am, rests? I don’t know. Might be. I do like the notion of a sublime me, a sacred me, a shard of the ohr, the light of the divine released into and creating by its release all the known and unknown parts of the universe.

    Blood and Seawater. Consciousness. Deep memories from our time in Africa. Consider the vast amount of unknowing. Might there be room for a shard of holiness somehow in me and of me, but not extinguishable even by death? I’m much more open to that idea now than I have been for over thirty years.

     

     

    *”Like the Earth, we are 70% saltwater. In 1897 French physician Rene Quinton discovered a 98% match between our blood plasma and sea water, or what we called ‘ocean plasma’.” Oceanography


  • Go, Elementals!

    Lugnasa and the Harvest Moon

    Sabbath gratefuls: Zoom. WordPress. My computers. Starlink. The Internet. My links to friends, family, shopping. Solar panels & C.O.R.E. Sources of electricity. Mini-splits, electric heat pumps for heating and cooling. The induction stove for electrical cooking. LED bulbs for longlasting, low-energy consumption light. Arts and Crafts style furniture, lighting fixtures, upholstery cloth.

    Sparks of joy and awe: Electricity

    Kavannah: Yirah

    One brief shining: Give me an H, Give me an He, Give me an Li, go elementals! Let’s go 1,2,3. Now entering the big top in the first ring, give me a hand for that most abundant, simplest, colorless, odorless, yet flammable guy, and the lightest element in the whole universe: Hydrogen! Keep putting those hands together as another odorless and tasteless gas, second only to the Big H in abundance in our whole cosmos, floats gracefully to ring number 2, she floats, she stays aloof, there she is: Miss Helium! Finally, plunking himself into our third ring, that healer of manic-depression, that key to batteries for electric cars, that old soft metal guy, the lightest of the solid elements: Mr. Lithium!

     

    Blame it on Tom. He’s having us present three of the naturally occurring elements as our Sunday theme for the Ancient brothers. He had us pick three numbers between 1 & 94, then wrote us an e-mail revealing that our numbers were the atomic numbers for our elements on the periodic table. I picked 1,2,3.

    Here’s his charge to us: “What you were choosing is the Atomic Number of the element you can read about, research, write poetry about, combine with other elements to compound your effort, discuss the philosophical underpinnings of the origin of your chosen elements (or the universe itself), draw pictures of your element as it stands alone or as it combines with others. In other words, the usual Ancient Zeitgeist applies.”

    Not sure where I’m going with mine yet though I like the circus metaphor. Probably will have to touch a bit on Lurianic Kabbalah and the tzimtzum*. Perhaps the Tree of Life as well. Going to have fun with this today.

     

    Feeling lighter after Ann’s visit. I have the Celebrex and tramadol to help with pain. That helps, too. Still ouchy, I’d say a 3 most of the time except when I’m sitting, rising to a 7 or 8 if I stress my back. That’s with the pain relievers on board. Why it doesn’t bother my workouts, I don’t know. Must be isolation of muscle groups though I also don’t usually experience pain even on the treadmill. Unless I go past 20-25 minutes. Odd, eh?

    I also feel lighter because even though the presidential race is close at least we have a good chance. Looks like the North Carolina GOP candidate for governor is gonna give us a boost in that important state. A Black Nazi? Posted on a porn site. Dude!

    I’m also feeling the faint stirrings of a new novel. Something I want to get going. Just a spark right now, but we know sparks can lead to wild fires of creative power. Shiva energy.

     

    Time for a workout after breakfast. I’m in contact with a couple of guys who might come to the house, help me with my workouts. I need to freshen mine. Get them targeted even more on my core to help my back. Might even return for another round of physical therapy with Mary.

     

    *The term zimzum originates in the Kabbalah and refers to God’s contraction of himself before the creation of the world, and for the purpose of creating the world. To put it another way, the omnipresent God, who exists beyond time and space before creation, withdraws a part of his infinite presence into himself. With this divine gesture, God restricts himself in zimzum, clearing the empty space that is necessary for creation. The emanation and the creation of the world are then able to occur in the center of God following this act of zimzum. In this process, God limits his omnipotence, so that a finite world can exist within finite contours. Without zimzum, there would be no creation.    wiki

    NB: I would not use the word God here. What I’m after with the tzimtzum is the process of earliest creation and how we might understand it.

     


  • Learning. Still. Always.

    The Off to College Moon

    Thursday gratefuls: Irv and Marilyn. Tara. Labcorps. Medicine. Medicines. Healing. Suffering. Pain. Puppies. Toddlers. Rainbows. Ponies. The periodic table of the elements. Starliner. Oh, my. Polaris. Betelgeuse. Vega. Rigel. Arcturus. Andromeda. The Milky Way. That far away, older than old Galaxy. The vastness of space. The particularity of you. Ruth’s first full day on campus.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Pearl

    Kavanah: COMPASSION  Rachamim

    One brief shining: A pearl means a parasite or some other irritant has caused an Oyster to encapsulate it in layers of nacre, hiding it safely away from the living animal within its shell; Kate loved pearls and had earrings, necklaces, so it is not a stretch at all to believe that she would surprise me with one on her eightieth birthday, perhaps telling me that death is just such an irritant to the living, that grief creates a pearl of compassion and wisdom to compensate for its insult to life.

     

    Ruth’s first day. At college. Rather, at university. The University of Colorado, Boulder. Go, Buffaloes. Coach Prime. Funny at these big universities that basketball and football often define their public perception while their true work starts on days like these. Young minds, fresh from public education for the most part, begin to use the tools they acquired there to begin thinking on their own. Learning from, delighting in the deep deposit of human knowledge and culture, of skills and techniques created by others who preceded them. For higher education is not about building with the tools of others but wielding them on your own. If it’s not that, then it’s vocational education. Which is important, wonderful, and necessary. But. It. Is. Not. The. Same. Thing.

    I’m so excited for and with Ruth. Opening the mind to new ideas, new information, new ways of thinking and understanding. What a rush. A rush that has never dimmed nor diminished for me in the 59 years since I walked on to the campus at Wabash College. We are many things, we human beings, but most of all we are creatures who learn and who use what we learn to make our lives richer, deeper, more just, healthier, more robust.

     

    A note on pursuing da’at, knowledge. Which I have done and will continue to do all my life. I trapped myself yesterday, obsessively pressing the button for Labcorps results. Nothing so far. Quest always got my results up the next day after my blood draw. Had to switch to Labcorps because Evergreen Medical did. A different pace, a different system. Won’t change the results, but I’ve been frustrated, wanting to KNOW. When I know will not change the results. In that sense it really doesn’t matter.

    Pushed myself down, down yesterday waiting, clicking, checking my e-mail. Forgot in the pursuit of knowledge the a priori middot of serenity. Shattered it for the day. A lesson. One I find very difficult to learn. The folly of desiring knowledge. Too much.


  • The flow of the Tao

    The Off to College Moon

    Wednesday gratefuls: Ruth in her dorm room at Willville. With a passion for learning. Gabe home alone. Storm Clouds and high Winds. Breakfast with Tara. Cheryl, the phlebotomist, and my blood draw. The Pearl. Diane and Tom. Brother Mark and the Bangkok urban park. Mary in K.L. My son and Seoah. Songtan. My Lodgepole Companion waving to the keepers of moisture. Perhaps encouraging them. Rain on me.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Blood and its mysteries

    Kavanah for the life of August 21, 2024: Knowledge, da’at

    One brief shining: Da’at lies directly beneath the keter, or crown, of the tree of life, linked in the downward movement of chi, of life force, of the Tao to hokmah, wisdom, and binah, analysis and planning, feeding in turn hesed, loving-kindness and gevurah, boundaries and strength; knowledge taking shape through consciousness and unconsciousness giving birth to wisdom, to shaping and birthing by the binah.

     

    The tree of life in Kabbalah maps a flow of sacred energy from keter to malkhut, the realm of the shekinah, the feminine sacred, and then, as through a divine pump moving back up through the ten sefirot to keter where the cycle of creation and transformation begins again. Yesterday my blood filled a vial, already containing facts that I need for accurate knowledge of my cancer. The spark of that knowledge exists ahead of its translation into a something that can be considered, only becoming knowable as it moves through the laboratory, carried in drops of my essence, and transformed there into knowledge that I can access, use.

    I am especially glad that that using that knowledge, my current PSA and testosterone levels, passes first into hesed, or loving kindness, reminding me that all knowledge comes as kindness, and also, through gevurah with its own boundaries.

    A heady way of saying that I’m waiting on my lab results to see if my PSA has returned to undetectable, which would be a big YES, or has continued to rise, sealing my diagnosis of castration-resistant cancer. What framing this waiting kabbalistically does for me is remind me that all of life, all of creation flows up and down the tree, always, including the divine spark, the neshamah or pure soul that is me. Life to death, death to life. Constant change and creation, constant novelty. No destruction without creation. A Shiva view of the nature of life.

     

    Just a moment: If you want a recent and readable analysis of the probable effects of an orange win, read this Thomas Edsall article, Trump is not done with us. Here is its last paragraph:

    “I am going to give the last word to Timothy Snyder*:

    Trump is in the classic dictatorial position: He needs to die in bed holding all executive power to stay out of prison. This means that he will do whatever he can to gain power, and once in power will do all that he can to never let it go. This is a basic incentive structure which underlies everything else. It is entirely inconsistent with democracy.”

    *”Timothy Snyder, a historian at Yale and an expert on the regimes of Stalin and Hitler…”


  • Shinin’ on me

    The Off to College Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: Better mood. Great Sol shinin’ on me. And my Lodgepole Companion. More blue than milky sky. Quarry Fire 100% contained. Makes me feel better about a Fire nearer to me. Theater and lunch today with Alan. Sue Bradshaw. Moods. James Lee Burke. Magic realism. King Arthur. Lancelot. Guinevere. Percival. The Green Knight.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ginny and Janice

    One brief shining: The Tree of life has its sefirots, way stations for the stuff of creation that travels up and down the Tree from its masculine Crown to its Root, from chi borne in the ein sof, nothingness before, to malkut, the residence of the Shekinah, the sacred as female, pulsing and throbbing up and down, back up, back down, always new, always changing.

    Kavanah: Joy  Simcha

     

    A bit surprised but as Great Sol has snuck out from the dark clouds of last week, I feel better. Feel like the rain and drear might have doubled or tripled my dis-ease last week. I often slip into melancholy around October, the month of mom’s death 60 years ago this year. And last week felt much like early Fall. So… Doesn’t change the reality of anything going on with me of course. But it could change the valence, by a lot. Mild concern becomes serious worry. This bit of pain feels more telling. Combining concerns increases concern like a dung beetle rolling in, well, dung. Not diminishing the moment but perhaps draining some of its intensity.

     

    Allows me to stand back and grin about Harris and Walz. Retail politics? Not my thing for the most part. Had a fling with it in the late 1980’s, working on some Hennepin County races, then Paul Wellstone’s first Senate run. I chaired the Farmer-Labor Association, “Put the FL back in the DFL.” Didn’t like it though the results were satisfying. Went back to organizing and working with the Sierra Club.

    I can give money though so I paused a second here while writing this and sent $250 to the Act Blue pact. If you ever felt like donating to a political effort now’s definitely the time. We have to show enthusiasm, diverse support, and a willingness to push a bit past where it hurts. This is to put the Orange ifrit back in his Mar-a-Lago swampland.

     

    Meanwhile this oh so fraught election year Ukraine fights on, sneaking into the Motherland. My sense is that Ukraine needs something big and doesn’t appear to have it on the horizon. And, further south the world and Israel awaits Iran’s response to the killing of two of Hamas’ leaders, one on Iranian soil. The Lebanese based Iranian terror client, Hezbollah, threatens war with Israel and Israel thumps its weakened chest right back. Could get real ugly, real fast.

    As my son and other U.S. military personnel in the Far East stare down China, which has economic woes of its own making.

     

    Just a moment: Olympics. Refreshing and beautiful. International. Diverse. See the American Olympic team. And what it’s accomplished.