Category Archives: Fourth Phase

Aging, Ancient Brothers, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Judaism, Shadow Mountain

Awe as life slowly draws to a close

Leave a comment

Imbolc and the Snow Moon

Sunday gratefuls: DST. Ha. Shadow and her toys. Stubbornness. Seoah and her study of English. Joanne. Cool nights. Talmud Torah. Sefaria. Jamie. Luke and Leo. Computer help. Cookunity, Blackened Shrimp and Creamy Grits. Ways of eating. Regret. Remorse. Poets. Wendell Berry. Regenerative agriculture. The Andover years. Kate, always Kate.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Sunseen

Week Kavannah: Yirah. Awe.

One brief shining: Shadow moves her neck in the familiar prey killing way, holding tight and shaking hard, again, again, as she burrows her way into her brand new bed, filling the area around her with soft fluffs of white filler and small bits of cutup rubber foam. Another foe vanquished.

 

Joanne called last night, after Havdalah, to thank me for her Shabbos meal, bean and vegetable and chicken soup. Kind of her. We talked about compost Worms, ninja weeders, and the joys of Mountain living.

 

I’m up early, earlier than I want due to the imperial clock and its demands on my time. The air-fryer clock and the turtle clock have now returned to the correct time. You might have one or two such clocks. Most make the transition thanks to computer based chronoworkings. Some don’t. A couple I never change so they return to instant utility on these great wakin’ up mornings once a year.

Most of you know my feelings on this matter so I won’t bore you.

How can I keep from yawning?

 

My practice for regret and remorse goes like this. Watch through the day for actions I regret, omissions of action, too. Name them and acknowledge the regret. Example: yesterday I didn’t work out. I regret that choice. What comes next? Remorse. OK. If I don’t want to repeat that regret, what could I do? I chose lean into netzach, perseverance and grit. When I consider working out today, I will raise netzach up, too. A reminder.

My practice for yirah. Sit quietly. Close my eyes. Breathe slowly. Pay attention to the sounds. Shadow chewing on her toy. The mini-split fan. A car passing on Black Mountain Drive. Open my eyes. See Shadow move toward her food. Begin to eat. Lodgepoles in the back with Snow piled up around their Trunks. The Oriental carpets. My hands curved over the keyboard.

Acknowledge the wonder, the intricate dance that is my immediate world.

 

Just a moment: Ancient Brothers today on end of life planning. Not a fun topic, but an important one. Why? Because good end of life planning frees up life right now. No worries about who’s responsible for what. What will happen as health deteriorates.

Surprised me by being both a pragmatic prod to each of us and a way of joining hands as we walk this final ancientrail together. We are not alone.

How many of us have a context where we can discuss a topic like this in a sober, respectful fashion? Not many, I image. Gratitude to Bill, Tom, and Paul for sharing their work to date.

 

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

Awe

Leave a comment

Imbolc and the Snow Moon

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

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Vince as a friend

Week Kavannah: Yirah. Awe.

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

― Abraham Joshua Heschel

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

Classic doljabi set

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

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

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

 

*The Soul of Seoul

** Items For A Traditional Doljabi Table

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

The Making of a Social Justice Warrior

Leave a comment

Imbolc and the Snow Moon

Monday gratefuls: Shadow. Amy. Snow. Vince. Deep clean for Shadow Mountain Home. Cook Unity. Training Shadow. Studying the New Apostolic Reformation. Working my purposes. Ruth’s 19th birthday meal early. Sushi Den. Gabe and his Ph.D. in theater. Kate, always Kate. Rigel. Kep. Vega. Gertie.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Atlantic Ocean

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: The crunch and push of metal on asphalt belies the soft and fluffy nature of the Snow the blades of the orange Jefferson County snowplows move off the roadways to keep us Mountain folk mobile, safe. Grateful for them.

Rembrandt-style painting depicting 1950s union workers, 1960s civil rights activists, and anti-war protesters standing together in unity.

During the Ancient Brothers meet yesterday morning I had another aha about my childhood, another throughline. The grooming of a social justice warrior. I realized there were three key drivers, maybe a fourth, that led me to spend my early and middle adulthood working for social justice.

First, my dad. As a journalist, a columnist, an editor, his job was to be clear eyed about what happened in my hometown. Then to write about it, decide what stories needed exposure. And, crucially for me, to have an opinion about the fairness, the justness about some of them.

Second, my church. The United Methodist church we attended had a strong social justice element to its ministry. This came directly from the work of John Wesley, who organized coal workers in the coal mines of nineteenth century England and believed Jesus mandated work on behalf of the poor and disadvantaged.

By the time I was twelve I had visited poor neighborhoods in Chicago, New York City, and Washington, D.C. on see-it tours sponsored by the church. And the United Nations, Congress, even the Russian consulate in D.C.

Third, and not least by any means, Alexandria served as a home for hundreds of men, almost all men at the time, who worked in General Motor’s factories nine miles away in the county seat of Anderson, Indiana. Delco Remy and Guide Lamp. Or, Guide and Delco as we knew them.

That meant they belonged to the UAW. The United Auto Workers union. At the time strong and forward looking. My friends families owned their homes, bought cars, took vacations, and could afford to send their kids to college. If the UAW went on strike against General Motors, Alexandria felt it. Yet the salaries, health care benefits, and generous pensions these men, most from the South and most not high school graduates, earned made Alexandria a vital, wonderful place to grow up.

Put those three together. Seeing taking a stand against injustice, unfairness, as a personal responsibility, feeling a religious calling to stand with the poor and disadvantaged, and understanding the positive role unions and economic justice could make for all of us prepared me for a lifetime of seeing injustice and doing something about it.

The fourth element I mentioned would be this. Growing up in a small town-John Cougar Mellencamp is a Hoosier-gave me a sense of what it meant to live as part of a community, one where I knew some people well, some less well, and others only in passing, but I did know them. And what happened to them. Justice, love, and compassion become real, tangible in such a setting. There was, I think, a balance between the individual and the community.

 

Dogs, Dreams, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Memories, Minnesota, Shadow Mountain, Wild Neighbors

Call of the Wild

Leave a comment

Imbolc and the Snow Moon

Monday gratefuls: Shadow. Eating. Marilyn and Irv. Eleanor and Tara. Snow on its way. March of the big weather. Ritalin. A bit more energy. Mary’s truffles. Yum. My son. Murdoch. Seoah. Teaching Shadow. Ancient Brothers on freedom and communal responsibility. Mountain Jews. Shadow immersion. Study. Reading.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Sit, Down, Touch

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: In the far away and long ago my buddy Dave and I settled into his red VW Beetle for a drive from Muncie to Detroit, headed to Canada, Toronto, to pick up information about emigrating from the Toronto anti-draft folks; got stopped because of our long hair, so we turned around, went back into Detroit and bought white shirts, stocking caps for our hair, crossed the bridge again, and were admitted for our Canadian vacation. Ta dah.

 

Thought of a through line I’ve never mentioned here. Reading and Minnesota, Shadow Mountain. As a young boy, I read so much. Certain things impacted me. A lot. Always wanted to see Peru after the Silver Llama. Like many boys, I imagined myself as James Bond. Sherlock Holmes. Robinson Crusoe. Fighting in the War of the Worlds. Building robots with positronic brains beholden to the Three Laws of Robotics.

Jack London though. He changed my life. I read Call of the Wild. I admired Buck. Yes. The description of the Canadian wilderness. Buck’s journey into his wild nature. Pine Trees. Lakes. Wolves. Wolverines. Cold winters. Surviving in the north.

Central Indiana. Flat. Paved. Industrial and where it wasn’t industrial carved up into mile square sections of farm land. Small towns every 5 or ten miles in all directions. The opposite of the wilderness where Buck finds his true identity.

When I married Judy Merritt, her home state of Wisconsin triggered my long dormant desire to leave a place where, as I saw it, there was no there there, all domesticated by human artifice. We moved to Appleton, Wisconsin to be near her family. Imagine my disappointment when I found a city and region filled with paper mills and dairy factories. Nope.

Judy and I decided to split and an odd chain of circumstance led me to seminary in Minnesota. At least there were lots of Lakes. Once I found my way up north the Boreal Woods and the Glacial Lakes matched my fantasy. Minnesota became home. For forty years.

Kate and I moved to Colorado to be in the grandkids lives, but we never considered living in Denver. Had to be the Mountains. For both of us. Our Andover life had prepared us for life with Wild Neighbors, Lodgepoles and Aspens, Mountain Streams and trails, by holding us close to Mother Earth.

In that sense, and it’s a far from trivial one, Jack London and Call of the Wild changed the trajectory of my life by igniting a desire to live in cold lands, where Wilderness and humans could cohabit.

Dogs, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism, Politics, Shadow Mountain, US History, World History

Jewish Men Together

Leave a comment

Imbolc and the Snow Moon

Sunday gratefuls: CBE Men’s group. Orion. The Night Sky. The 1% waxing sliver of the Snow Moon. Ritalin. Ruth and the Flatirons. Gabe and college. And guitar. Tara and Eleanor. A Shadow playdate. Safeway Pickup. Silver Bistro. Cook Unity. Conquering the experience of pain. Back to working out.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Shadow and Eleanor zooming

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: Tara brought Eleanor over, leggy curly haired and full of puppy energy Eleanor, who sniffed Shadow, Shadow sniffed back and the playdate was on as the two circled each other, smelling for information, then running full tilt in the back through Snow drifts, chasing, quarreling a bit, Shadow rolled over bared her teeth after saying I submitted now stay the hell away from me, a long conversation with my heart friend Tara as they played.

 

Dog journal: Shadow had her first playdate here. Not her last. I have a large fenced yard, almost an acre with Lodgepoles and an Aspen. Snow drifts that last throughout warmups because it faces north. In the Spring there will be Rabbits and Mice and Voles and Squirrels to chase. The occasional Mule Deer and Elk for Shadow to herd. A good place for Dogs. No Rocky ledges for Mountain Lions. Fence keeps out Coyotes. Safe enough during the day.

Like nanny’s at a Central Park Playground Tara and I let our Dogs run while we talked. Tara, like Marilyn, is part of MVP. She said yesterday that she and Arjan would take Shadow whenever I had to go somewhere. Limited prospects on that, but still, like the offer from my son and Seoah, appreciated.

 

CBE men’s group last night. We began to get down to it. We told some of our stories. Moving from Chicago. L.A. Florida. Minnesota. Buffalo. Dallas. To find our true home. Both in the Mountains and as Mountain Jews at CBE. Fleeing in-laws, a broken life, New York City. Looking for Mountains and trails. Quieter. Simpler. Often finding and not finding what we sought.

A question unique to this sort of group. How long can we stay here? Where will we go if things get bad? The question of 1930’s Germany. Of Babylon. Of Russia under the Tzars. Of the Inquisition era in Spain. As evil Donald continues to extend his poison from sea to shining sea and well beyond.

I felt for the first time that there may be a more important question than maleness, the nature of the masculine role in society for a men’s group. At least this men’s group.

Another factor. As Jamie observed, there aren’t that many Jewish men. In the world. What unique role might we have in a world bent on rushing headlong into a dangerous yesterday?

If these men commit, stay the course, this will be a fourth anchor point for me at CBE. Mussar/MVP. Torah study. Men’s group. Friends.

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Politics

Inner Gyroscope

Leave a comment

Imbolc and the Snow Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Snow. March. Shadow. Not quite potty trained. Great Sol. Toys for Shadow. Her food. Her wiggly happy greeting. Not allowing pain to rule. MVP. Seder. Venom’s Last Dance. Parsha Terumah. The Mishkan. Talmud Torah. Hanna Matsuri. Luau. My son. Seoah. Murdoch. Physical therapy. Amazon.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Doggy playdates

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: After my nap, my body ached, I didn’t want to get up to move to do this anymore this weakness this doldrum of the daily life; then it was right then I began to throw my covers off saying to this too old too soon guy that no this weakness this sapping of the life force did not represent my nefesh it was my fear and my doubt so get back to your workouts your smiles your Shadow. And I did.

 

A Da Vinci-style blueprint sketch of your inner gyroscope, complete with intricate mechanical details, rotating rings, and Renaissance-style annotations.

Another tough week at times. Mostly coincident with back pain. When tired and in pain, I find my inner strength weakens and the yetzer hara begins to take hold, dragging me back toward the slough of despond. Dredging up the what are you doings? The what sort of life is thises? The inner castigator. You should act politically. Write another novel. Stop watching so much TV. Be a man, not a patient. You know. That sorta thing.

Eventually my strong inner gyroscope rights from being pushed over by reactivity and shadowed understandings of reality. Puts these thoughts in context of my life, of my strong purposes now: Being a friend. Being a family guy. Loving Shadow. And myself. Learning and sharing about the New Apostolic Reformation. Writing Ancientrails. Learning Mussar. Studying Torah and other ancient texts. Sitting in the Mountain world, feeling its changes as Snow and Cold, Mule Deer and Elk gather round in their most ancient of all ways.

Life without a solution to pain challenges the soul. So does each day of our lives. It’s our task, and ours alone, to find the footholds on this technical climb and scale the rock face, as always with no rope.

 

Just a moment: How bout that live TV roast of former ally, Zelensky? The United States has become, in the scorching hot winds since January 20th, a thug nation. Extorting a nation when it’s down for its natural resources. Demanding them as vig for all the money spent on their defense.

If this government were an ordinary mobster on the streets of New York City or Philly, there would be a task force out to put them in jail. Instead they control the world’s most powerful military, led a hostile philistine take over of the Kennedy Center, and seem more focused on destroying governance than governing.

Note that here in the Rockies, not too from the Gulf of America, I’m writing this in the official language of our country, English, with no help from immigrant labor and a safe distance from those war-mongers in the Ukraine.

 

 

Art and Culture, Cinema and Television, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Politics

Morality Plays

Leave a comment

Imbolc and the Snow Moon

Friday gratefuls: Alan. Marilyn and Irv. Snow. March, our big Snow month. Shadow. Difficult nights sleep. Ramadan. Elon Musk, a real Bond villain. Mussar. Hana Matsuri. Torah study. Men’s group. Smart phones. The internet. The cloud. Clouds. NOAA. National Weather Service. Critical government services.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The sound of Shadow eating

Week kavannah: Netzach with zerizut and simcha

One brief shining: Driving up the hill Tuesday after lunch with Alan, Denver temperature 66 degrees, climbing on 285 past the Hogbacks, past Indian Hills, past Windy point, temperature in the low 50’s, by the time I reached Shadow Mountain Home the air was 47 degrees, 19 degrees cooler than Denver.

 

60 years ago I was a freshman at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana. In my first semester I joined the Scarlet Masque, a group of actors who put on plays for the town of Crawfordsville. Guerilla theatre had a moment in the mid-1960’s and we decided to perform medieval morality plays on the main commercial street of Crawfordsville.

Medieval morality plays convey straightforward messages about good and bad, sin and redemption. They present difficulties for actors because the lines rhyme. Here’s an example from the Castle of Perservance:

MANKIND:
What need I toil, or sweat, or strive?
Why should I labor, while I am alive?
Gold and silver will serve my will,
And I shall do what I like still!

BACKBITER:
Well spoken, my jovial lad!
Hold fast to pleasure, be never sad!
Why fret and fast, why should you care?
Eat, drink, and make good cheer,
For life is short, and death is near!

MANKIND:
Ha! By my soul, thy words are sweet,
And thus my heart shall take its seat.
A lordly life shall I pursue,
And bid those beggarly monks adieu!

This is, I admit, a long winded introduction to my real point. Over the last six months or so, I notice I’ve drifted in my reading and in my television watching to contemporary morality plays. I’ve read mysteries and thrillers. I’ve watched police procedurals, movies about assassins, the FBI, science fiction movies about alien invasions.

What do they share in common with the medieval morality plays? They present clear messages. Good Bond. Bad villain. Good police, bad criminals. Bad arms dealers, good assassins. Over the course of 45 minutes to an hour and a half, though the battle goes back and forth with the outcome often in doubt, in the end good triumphs. The vanquished bad actors get what’s coming to them.

Ah.

It took me until last week to realize why I felt soothed by these works. So much in the world and in the U.S. seems an inversion of values I hold close. US friends with Russia. Extorting Ukraine for precious metals. Gutting NOAA and the National Weather Service. Finding money for deficit increasing tax breaks in programs like Medicaid and food stamps. Not only are the bad guys not getting punished, they’re making front page news daily.

Not so in NCIS: New Orleans. That wife who poisoned her husband and brother with polonium. Behind bars. Or, FBI. The three terrorists who tried to bomb a baseball game in Central Park? Foiled and arrested.

BTW: Whose name could I have replaced Mankind’s with in the excerpt from Castle Perserveance?

Denver, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Politics

My Aching Back

Leave a comment

Imbolc and the Birthday Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Shirley Waste. Shadow. More out and about. Alan. Tupelo Honey. Ritalin. My aching back. Limiting. Good sleeping. 23 degrees. Some wind. Great Sol. Sunlight on the Lodgepoles. Taking out the trash. Vince. Marina. Ana. Sunny days.  The Mountains.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Shadow’s wiggly energy

Week Kavannah: Netzach with a dash of zerizut and simcha

One brief shining: Each night before I go to bed, my baby, I say the shema: Hear oh Israel, yod hey vav hey is (God), yod hey vav hey is One, touch my menorah and say I am content with what I have and I’m content with who I am, and immerse myself in this ancient faith made new by Reconstruction, by my own journey, by Kate’s, by its insights into the nature of this strange efflorescence of the universe knowing itself, humanity

 

Aversive conditioning. Wanted to try Tupelo Honey, a Southern restaurant in downtown Denver, a downtown I do not know well, having had few occasions to drive into it or park; I suggested it to Alan for my birthday lunch, he agreed; he could walk from his condo.

About noon yesterday my back ached. I didn’t know where I was. Mostly I wondered why the hell l had suggested a downtown location. Turns out I parked not too faraway from the restaurant, but my lack of familiarity with downtown Denver, and my silly attempt to use Google’s walking directions led me far away from my goal. Lunch with Alan.

I arrived after a tortuous route, twenty minutes late, my back screaming. No celebrex, remember? Turns out that part of downtown is known for its complexity. So, now I know, eh? Pain does not encourage a thoughtful or rational approach to problem solving. The body wants it to stop. That distracts the mental work necessary to, say, follow a confusing map in a no through streets part of the city.

Food was good. Not great. I expected the kind of fried Chicken my Aunt Mame used to make at the Copper Kettle in Morristown, my mom’s hometown. Nope. A thin skin with some sweetness in it. The rosemary and thyme crispy potatoes were good.

Walking back to the garage Alan went with me. I had already tumbled to the fact that it was much closer than my original route. My back had already gotten agitated and didn’t calm down until I was back home. If I go into Denver again, I may park, as Alan suggested, at a strip mall outside of downtown and Uber in.

Not gonna be anytime soon.

 

Just a moment: Talked to buddy Paul Strickland yesterday. He and his wife, Sarah, attended a conference in Camden, a Maine seaside town. Conference title: Democracy Under Threat. His thoughts after the conference have not yet congealed, but he did report some interesting facts.

One especially chilling number. Counting Russia, China, and India as authoritarian governments plus smaller countries like Belarus, Hungary and many others, some 71% of the people on earth live under authoritarian regimes. 71%. That means democracy serves less that 29% since some of those are monarchies, but not necessarily authoritarian. A sad day for our planet.

Dreams, Fourth Phase, Health

On Transition Road

Leave a comment

Imbolc and the Birthday Moon

Shabbat grateful: Torah study. Rabbi Jamie. Bev. Luke. Exodus. Manna. Palestinians. Gaza. West Bank. Israel. Amalek. The sins of the fathers. Whose fathers? Trump and Putin. Shadow. Sit. Shadow. Down. Shadow Mountain. The Shadow. Psyche’s Shadow. Great Sol. Conversation. Zoom. Connection. Democracy. Autocracy. Oligarchy. Gerontocracy. Kakocracy. Kleptocracy. Choose.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: A Puppy’s Eyes

Week Kavannah: Netzach

One brief shining: Wind pushes into the room behind my chair, the outside door open awaiting a small Shadow to come in from the cold, to trust that the inside has as much safety for her as the outside, her hesitation mirrors her mind, caught between risk and certainty, fear and trust, the past and the future. Savlanut.

 

Dream group yesterday. On my dream. Sort of a dry hole at first. Then, climbing up from the car with an empty fuel tank, up from the rich brown of a dirt road leading away, trusting that the cliff I climbed would lead…somewhere. Somewhere with more fuel for the road. Gabe was there. Gabe the grandson and Gabriel the angel. Quietly accompanying me in my new home, hunting for fuel after finding a gas can.

I came away with the sense of an after life. After the fuel runs out for me on this lower level, driving even then toward the unknown. My sense of curiosity carrying me up over the rocks of doubt waiting for a message from Gabriel about where to find my next fuel source. Trusting that it’s there in this new place.

 

Had to break off from dream group for a call from my palliative care nurse practitioner. A new woman on Zoom. Ele. I liked her. We talked about my, to me, puzzling and disconcerting level of fatigue. Each task I choose to do is a one-off. As much as I can handle. Unloading and loading the dishwasher. Rest. Go pickup groceries, put them away. Rest. Stand while prepping a meal. Rest while eating the meal. You get the idea.

I asked her about this and for the first time someone explained this fatigue to my satisfaction. Even though my PSA is stable, she said, the cancer is not gone. My body has to do all of its usual work plus absorb/resist the work load the cancer places on it, too. Add in a still uncontrolled hyperthyroid condition, low testosterone, and harsh anti-androgen drugs. Tired. Always.

 

No wonder I’m cycling through thoughts of dying, of places after death. No wonder at all. Even so. I’m alive and alert though perhaps not vivacious. My sacred community of friends and family, Shadow, Wild Neighbors and Mountains, Lodgepoles and Aspens keep me in this day, this February 22nd life, pull me back from a doom scrolling view of my future.

 

Like the Hebrew slaves who found themselves in a desert wilderness far from their Egyptian homes, without the minimal comforts they enjoyed there, it’s easy to want to go back to a latter day. A day when I could do home chores with ease. Yet I have been released from the bondage of performance and achievement. And, I don’t want to go back.

I want to learn the lessons of this time, this time before dying, no matter how long or how short that might be. Why? Because that’s all we can ever do. Learn today’s lesson. Celebrate these moments.

 

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

Dream Time

Leave a comment

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!