Samain and the Choice Moon
Saturday gratefuls: Gabe. Legos. Night 2, Hanukah. Lighting the candles. The electric menorah. Snow. lotsa Snow. Spaghetti. That free car wash. Blizzaks. Big O. Starbucks. Evergreen. Ruby in the Snow. Kate of blessed memory. Jon, who would have been 55 tomorrow. Mussar. Books, all books big and small. Stacked and unstacked. Read and unread. Reading. What a joy.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ritual
One brief shining: That Arcosanti bell Kate got so long ago on a visit to her Dad in Phoenix, the one we decided to use as a memorial bell for all of our dogs which now rings in the high Winds of the Mountains for her, too, and Jon, has a large white cap of Snow in the quiet weather of this morning.
This holimonth I’ve been getting gifts from strangers. The Thanksgiving meal at Urban Farmer. Yesterday the car wash. An attendant flagged me through saying I didn’t have to pay right then. The owner said, I’m ok with free. However. Just looked up on my credit card and I did get charged. Well, it was nice when I thought it was free.
Had my new Blizzaks replace the 4 mm tread tires on the back. Good thing. Right now there’s more than 5 inches, maybe more like 8, of fresh new Snow. Have to head over to Safeway for a pickup order which is delayed. I imagine fewer staff with the Snow.
Spent a lot of time reading yesterday. Finished Zornberg on the week’s parsha, the story of Joseph and his brothers, part 1, in which they toss him in a pit, imply to Jacob that he’s been killed, and he gets sold into slavery, bought by Potiphar. That one. Zornberg’s commentaries lean toward the mythic and the psychoanalytical. She sees themes of dismemberment and the power of blood in these stories. I do, too, after reading her.
Torah study is very different from the higher criticism I learned in seminary. In higher criticism the aim is to find the truth of a passage using language, history, the history of tradition and ritual, textual comparisons, how a text was originally received, to get at what was originally meant, then using that original meaning to comment on today.
In Torah study the search is not for the truth, but for the prismatic truth each parsha contains. That sort of truth depends on the interpreter, on what they see or don’t see in the text. Different points of view are not only expected but cherished. Commentators on the Torah argue with each other and their arguments often take on a status equivalent to the parsha itself. The mishnah records Torah commentators since the fall of the second temple.
In the Joseph and his brothers story for example Zornberg uses some of the mishnah as actual Torah text to make her arguments. And this is not unusual. The result is a playful approach that looks for things hidden, things inferred, things that have meanings because they intersect with the ordinary lives of Jews then and now.
The patriarchs are far from perfect. Isaac gives Jacob his birthright blessing and underwrites it even after he learns he’s been deceived. Jacob fears his encounter with his now grown brother Esau whom he cheated out of both birthright and inheritance. Jacob’s sons dislike their brother Joseph so much that they try to get rid of him. These are not, in other words, exemplars of truth and wisdom, but people faced with difficult decisions and sometimes, even often, choosing poorly.
This approach makes Torah study a much more human endeavor, not requiring the power of revealed truth, rather requiring careful and attentive reading done with both living company and the thoughts of long dead Rabbis.
Sunday gratefuls: Shabbat. The Morning Service. Rabbi Jamie and his grief. The Minyan. The Snow. The cold. Rigel and Kep try to understand the kitchen remodel. Jon. His long nap. Gabe. Ruth. Sarah and Annie. BJ. Tom. The Ancient Brothers and the gift. Herme. The kitchen. Lower Gas bill.
No chicken pot pies. Yep. Not at Conifer Safeway or the Evergreen Safeway. My favorite. Marie Callender. Confirmed this on the way home from CBE after the Shabbat morning service. Laying in a supply of frozen entrees as the kitchen remodel goes into a caesura while more cabinets get made and the quartzite fabricated.
At one point a note suggested we think of a person who loves us and imagine ourselves loved by them. I chose Kate. It helped me. Seeing myself through her eyes gave me a sense of breadth to my life, a sense of what loyalty means to a woman betrayed, a sense of my possibilities as real, rather than hoped for.
At 4:20, after feeding the dogs, I took off for Gaetano’s and Jon’s 53rd birthday dinner. Still feeling a little rough, but much better than Thursday night and Friday. Got there about 5:10 after a puzzling traffic delay on i-70 and surprisingly good memory about how to get to the restaurant without navigation aids.
Same on the way home. I drove back up Brook Forest and Black Mountain. It was cold and there was snow on the ground. Returning from Evergreen at night in the first couple of weeks we were here. Kate and me. I reached over to her seat, held her hand for a while, felt sad.
Good exercise yesterday. Cardio. Not yet on the HIIT, gonna plan it a bit more. Had more than half of the time near heart rate max. What I need more of.
For a long time I’ve wondered about mentors and teachers. Everybody I know seems to have at least one that affected their direction in life. That saw them, identified something others didn’t see. Not me. I appreciated the Gaither’s casting me as the lead in Our Town. And, Miss Hull’s calling in chits to make me President of the 1965 Model U.N. for Indiana. But neither one changed my life. Greg Membrez was a wonderful Latin teacher, gentle and understanding. But, no.
In his tutelage I’ve become a less combative learner, (less, not passive), willing to hear the sentences of the Orthodox Jew on Jewish values and find the middot there. He has subtly reinforced my own beliefs, by supporting me when I express them in his classes. Since I’m a goyim in a synagogue, pagan me finds this amazing.
Jodi from Blue Mountain comes with the cabinetmaker at 11:00. I want to live in a beautiful space. I’m doing the things I can to make that happen. Pruning. Staining the house. Installing ac for a delightful indoor climate. Remodeling the kitchen. Planning to rearrange all the furniture, create conversation areas, reading areas. TV space. Probably paint some inside walls, definitely rehang art.
Lughnasa and the Michaelmas Moon
Monday gratefuls: Rigel eating and running. Mary’s pictures from the Van Gogh show and the Beach. Hsieh Ling-yun. Shan-shui poetry, creative sensibility. Wabi sabi. Fermented foods. Korea. The United States, as a vision. The United States, broken.
Fathers were different. More individual in our telling. More difficult, sometimes, but also more formative. My father, from whom I was estranged most of my adult life, gave me a willingness to express contrary opinions in the public square. A willingness to use analytics to solve problems, to understand political life. A tendency to wander, to find the curious and the unusual. A conflicted version of hard work. That is, he modeled hard work. Always. But he expected it of me just because he was my father.
We all agreed though that whoever we are now, in the elder stage of life, came through choice, intentionality. We are not the sock puppets of our parent’s gifts or their curses. Yes, they shaped our lives, no doubt, but how we use compassion, a sense of humor, a genius for invention, gentleness, a hard-edged approach reflects how we have chosen to incorporate them in the now long stream of our life.
The Lovers. A sequelae. As a change, a transformative wave, pulses through my life, as it creates difficulties, struggles, it does point toward a new creation. What will that new creation be like? Not sure yet. My sense, if I have to choose between important and unimportant (see below), I’m thinking of the difference between the Chinese literati role model and the engaged political and religious life I have known. Perhaps between passive and active. Learning and doing. Which will inflect my next path more?
Will I try to rebuild my past life, only at a different age and place? Will I listen to the murmurings in my soul? Will I follow what I believe to be the deeper path for me? Deeper at this moment in time. The Lovers card suggests I will need to choose. Are these the choices? Not sure. Are these the best choices? Again, not sure.