Category Archives: Fourth Phase

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase

I sense you’re slipping

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Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Candles. Snow. Torah study. CBE Men’s group. Feeling low. Workouts going well. 2025. Brother Mark. Mary. Seoah. My son. Murdoch. How do I feel? Acting. Erleada. Orgovyx. Medicare drug policy. Orcas. Sadness. Mountain dark Morning. Black Mountain.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: AI

Kavannah for 2025: Creativity

Kavannah for the January 4th life: Yirah. Awe, amazement, wonder.

One brief shining: Had a strange moment at breakfast with Alan, my tone and demeanor was soft, repressed, as if I were muted emotionally; nothing to do with Alan, whom I delighted to see after he had been gone a month, the strangeness coming in my lack of awareness that I felt this way, as if I had to have an old friend as a mirror to see myself.

 

Here is the image you requested, capturing a melancholic atmosphere inspired by Breughel’s style, blending positive and negative emotions with a surreal touch

Depressive genes run in our family. And, for Mary, Mark, and me the epigenetics after mom’s early death  pushed us each in different directions, yet pushed we were in unwelcome and unexpected ways. The Myth of Normal, an interesting if difficult read, says we all grow into adulthood with trauma overlaying our development, no matter our family of origin. There is, in its conceit anyway, no normal developmental path, only paths damaged in ways unique to each human.

Kate had a task set her by John Desteian, my former Jungian analyst. When she felt it, she was to tell me, “I sense you’re slipping into melancholy.” That she needed to do that helps explain the strangeness I felt at breakfast with Alan. That was me channeling Kate back to my self.

This might explain, too, my veering toward the past of late, and veering not toward its joyous times, rather those instances of loss, of failing to achieve the goal. Why this happens, much like my brother Mark’s much more intense struggles, is not clear. I can  find no particular precipitating event in my recent past.

Challenges, I just realized, my practice for this month in which I say to events I first valence as negative or bad: This too is for the good. This mussar practice forces me to pull the lens back, see an event in a broader or deeper context. How does melancholy fit into my life as a whole? Into what I need, really need, right now? Can it serve a purpose not evident in the way it makes me feel? What might that purpose be?

I’m not sure. The start of a New Year, even if you eschew resolutions as I have, can bring introspection if only by looking back on the year just past. Or, maybe I have it backwards and the fact that the past has come to visit me is the cause rather than the effect.

Perhaps I need, for some deeper psychic reason, to explore this ancientrail I have walked since February 14th, 1947 when I first saw the light of day. Melancholy pauses life, slows it down, turns it inward. Is it something I need to find a way to change or is it something I need to listen to, understand its role in my life right now? I don’t know.

These turns of heart can run toward danger if they get too far into the realm of regret or shame, but that’s not what I feel. I feel as if my heart has had a dark molasses poured over it, obscuring the present, making the now less immediate. Privileging then the look inward.

 

Asia, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Holidays, Kabbalah, Paganism, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation

Merrily we roll along, roll along, roll along

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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.

 

 

 

 

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Literature, Memories, Minnesota

The Skein of our Lives

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Yule and the 2% crescent of the Yule Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Honesty. To others and self. Yule darkness. The days between the Winter Solstice and the New Year. 5th day of Hanukkah. The Maccabees. The oil in the Temple Menorah. Good workout yesterday. Chatbotgpt. Ruth and Gabe. Mark and Mary. My son and Seoah. Murdoch. Rich. Ron. Alan. Diane back home. That long dive into the deep end of my mind.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Lev

Kavannah: Love (ahavah) and Persistence

One brief shining: Reading Michael Moorcock’s The War Hound and the World’s Pain I followed von Bek through Hell, through Mittlemarch, or Middle Earth, out to the world as we know it always hunting for the cure for the world’s pain until finally at the edge of the forest near heaven he receives a clay cup that signals his oh, so ordinary enlightenment while representing the culmination of human striving.

 

I have these threads weaving through my life and my heart as we head toward the quarter century mark of the first century of the third millennium. In no particular order: kabbalah, mussar, friendships, family, writing, the nature rights legal movement, Mountains and Shadow Mountain, Wild Neighbors, reading for Herme’s Journey, exercise, cancer, back pain, books of all sorts, travel, Seed-Keepers, telling my story, Ancientrails. AI. Judaism. Paganism.

And, of course, there is the wider context for all these: Kate, politics, organizing, Christianity, paganism, alcoholism, Jungian therapy, the Wooly Mammoths, Minnesota, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Raeone and Judy, Tina, seminary, Alexandria, the Andover years, the Peaceable Kingdom, all those dogs.

There is the third place of the lev, as well. Or, perhaps better, the lev as a third place in which all these coexist, influence each other, reaching over and shaking hands, embracing. Pushing away. Denying. Erasing. Recreating. Nothing is static. All effects All. Moving not necessarily forward or backward, up or down, but in and out, releasing new energy with each penetration, impregnating the moment so something novel can grow, reach out for something else and keep the whole underway.

 

Yes. We loved each other.

Let me give you a modest example. Last night I decided to have an English muffin with peanut butter plus the last bit of the unfrozen Senate navy bean soup. As the English muffin toasted and the soup warmed in the microwave, I got out the peanut butter and thought. Hmm. Honey.

Reached into the cabinet, moved a box of sugar, and there sat a small canning jar with a handwritten label: Artemis Honey. In Kate’s beautiful cursive. She came. Standing there with the uncapping knife, honey super in hand, looking beautiful and engaged. The Andover years where we worked as one. Dogs. Vegetables. Flowers. Bees. And the chamber quartet we commissioned for our wedding. The honeymoon. Living in the move as we prepared to come to Colorado.

For a long moment I stood there. Before I reached in. Should I eat this? As if it were the last piece of her, of our life together. The honey harvest. Of course I can eat this now, a holy communion, a eucharist. Her body and mine together again if only for a moment.

I spread a bit of the wonderful thick amber colored honey over my peanut butter. And ate it.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health

There, there Charlie. You’re ok.

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Yule and the Yule Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Shabbat candles burned clean. Joseph and the famine in Egypt. Self-delusion. Seeing the World as it is, neither through dogma nor ideology. Allowing the news to penetrate but not instigate. Living this day, this December 28th, 2024 life, to the fullest. Without worry for tomorrow or regret about yesterday. Patience with my self; perseverance held lightly.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Honest introspection

Kavannah: Patience (savlanut) and perseverance

One brief shining: Going from this formerly small household task to the next, let’s say emptying the dish washer or cleaning off the cutting board, making an easy breakfast, filling the coffee maker with water, and often having to stop between them, out of breath, tired, needing to sit down, not dispirited, but pushing myself into an old realm of self-knowledge, a lesson learned again and again, exercise: cardio and resistance. Exercise.

 

Here’s an oddity. When I went to bed on Thursday night, my head was stuffy. I’d had bouts of feverishness and felt achy. Oh, I said. A cold. So I sent a note to my Friday night Hanukkah visitors saying I might have a cold, might need to cancel. When I got up yesterday morning, I still ached and my nose was stuffy. Wanting to give Ruth, Gabe, Veronica, and Luke plenty of time to make other plans, I sent out a note saying yes I had a cold. That I did not want to share. So Friday night was off.

Finished up Ancientrails and went downstairs for breakfast. Hmm. My nose was clear. I was not achy. I did not have a cold. Okay. Weird. But, good, right? Well, no. I’d ruined the evening already. So I felt a brief pulse of regret, maybe even a slight wash of shame. False pretenses, eh?

Result: I spent Friday trying to convince myself I did in fact have a cold. I rested and drank plenty of fluids. Yes, in order to slough off the regret and the shame, I lied to myself for awhile. Finally, I thought, this is stupid. You’re not sick.

So now I had doubled the problem by misidentifying a cold and then trying to convince myself I hadn’t been wrong. I know. I know. Convoluted, eh? The lengths…

Sat myself down. You did think you had a cold. You did what you thought was responsible. The only problem here is the regret and the shame. Oh, well, when you put it that way. I took myself off the hook. Said there, there. You’re still a good person.

This too is for the good. My practice this month. For perceived negative, “bad” things that happen. In the healing rush of honest introspection I also looked at my shortness of breath. Yes, I’ve let things slide, tried to do exercise my way and it’s not working.

What’s the solution? Back to cardio and resistance. 30 minutes, five days a week. Might move my treadmill downstairs. Gonna measure spaces and the treadmill today.

This is why my kavannah for the day are patience and perseverance. I need to be patient with myself while persevering in my exercise.

Family, Fourth Phase, Friends, Writing

With Love to Each of You

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Yule and the Yule Moon

Monday gratefuls: Altitude Electric. Ana. Furball Cleaners. Mark, my postman. Mark, my friend. Mark, my brother. Christmas, fading in my attention. Hanukkah. Yule celebrations. Evergreen Trees. Holly and Ivy. Mistletoe. Yule Log. Wassailing. Apple Trees. And the Apple Lord. The Maccabees. Hanukkah candles. Menorah.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Herme and his journey

Kavannah:  JOY  Simcha שִׂמְחָה  Joy, happiness, celebration (עֲלִיזָה Aliza: Lightheartedness, playfulness, fun)

One brief shining: Imagining the millions of children in Christian homes and in the homes where only secular capitalism drives the holiday, all one in their fervent faith that Santa Claus somehow will find their home, bring them a wrapped box of dreams and a stocking filled with hope.

 

Ruth did so well. 3.94. Dean’s List. A victory for her, one she earned the hard way. Having your first semester go well paves the way, makes college important and joyful, not something faced with dread. Makes me smile, feel happy.

She and Gabe will be up here Friday night for a sabbath meal, Hanukkah, and a fire in the fireplace. I hope Veronica and Luke will join us. I’m planning to serve salmon, boiled potatoes, and a vegetable side dish from the deli. All from Tony’s.

 

I often tell people that I’m alone but not lonely. Why is that? Because of friends and family. And zoom. Three times during the week I spend an hour with Paul in Maine, Tom in Shorewood, Minnesota, and Diane in San Francisco. Once a month Tom, Paul, and I zoom with Irv for an hour. On Sunday morning the Ancient Brothers Tom, Paul, Mark, Bill and I meet for an hour and a half on zoom.

Here in the Mountains of Colorado I attend a weekly hour and a half of mussar taught by Rabbi Jamie at the synagogue. Once a month I attend a second mussar group in the evening. On most Fridays I have breakfast with Alan Rubin, often with Joanne Greenberg. Every two weeks I have breakfast or lunch with Irv and Marilyn, Ginny and Janice. Tara and I get together irregularly, but often. On occasion Rich Levine and I have breakfast. Luke and I share a meal now and then. Veronica and I do, too. I even saw Scott Simpson, a Woolly brother, in Evergreen this summer. Tom and Paul came for my bar mitzvah. Tom comes out when the mood strikes him.

Gabe comes up and spends a weekend every six weeks or so. This last semester I drove over to Boulder to see Ruth almost every other Sunday. I talk to my son and Seoah every other week. Of late I’ve spoken with my brother Mark and Mary on zoom. These last three are literally thousands of miles away. On an irregular basis I zoom with Sarah and BJ Johnson, Kate’s sisters, too.

Why I’m alone but not lonely.

Friendships are precious, fragile. They require nurture and regular time. Quantitative time. Not the mythical parenting quality time. Same with family. Sitting with each other. Going to a movie. A planetarium show. Hiking. Doing psychoactive substances together. Eating a meal.

I count myself blessed that I have both friends and family. And ones who want to share my life. It could be otherwise.

With love, to each of you. I write this.

Fourth Phase, Holidays, Literature, Politics, Shadow Mountain

Sleeping with the Enemy

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Samain and the Yule Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Elements. Au. O. He. H. C. N. Li. Nk. Atoms. Molecules. Protons. Neutrons. Quarks. Leptons. The quantum World. The Universe. Galaxies. Local clusters. The Cosmic Void. Great Sol. Nuclear fusion. Solar flares. The magnetosphere. Earth. Venus. Mars. Our planetary neighbors. The Oort Cloud. Voyageur. Space flight.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Gravity

Kavannah: GOODWILL  Ratzon  רָצוֹן  Goodwill, friendliness, agreeableness  (קַבָּלָה Kabala: Acceptance, welcome)

One brief shining: In time for the holidays my Murphy chair recliner arrived in a yellow Penske rental truck unloaded onto a rolling platform, its brown leather cushions in a large cardboard box, two young men one carrying the chair downstairs and the other the box, setup the chair with its three slots for dowels, enabling three different angles of recline, placed the cushions, maneuvered the chair underneath the violet themed Tiffany lamp and my arts and crafts lower level came one step closer to being finished.

 

On my third Gray Man book. Allowing myself a long reading vacation, not ignoring serious reads, but letting my oh what the hell preferences dominate for a bit. The Gray Man books are the most realistic I’ve read about assassins. How would I know? Well… No. I read about the author and his meticulous research and I see it reflected in his work. Court Gentry, the Gray Man, slips in and out of various countries, scenarios, always on the run, also always finding a mission of moral worth in an immoral/amoral world. If you like such writing, the Gray Man books are top of the heap. IMO.

 

We may be seeing the future this week. Too many cooks in the kitchen. Mike Johnson creates a deal to keep the government at work. First Musk, then Trump step in and say no. Result? Chaos. Or the kerfuffle between Musk and Kennedy over how to deal with weight control: drugs or lifestyle change. This is all, mind you, a full month before Cousin Donald takes the reins of what already appears to be a runaway carriage.

 

Yes. Next week’s Christmas day. The holiday has gradually receded from my notice, at least here at home. In its place Hanukkah gifts have begun to pile up on the bench around my breakfast table. This for Gabe. That for Ruth. We will celebrate with a meal and candle lighting on December 27th, the third day of Hanukkah, which starts on the date of its more consumptive cousin this year. The latest it can ever start. Lunar v linear calendars.

 

Just a moment: That trial. 51 guilty verdicts. Gisèle Pelicot’s strength and presence. She impresses the hell out of me. Collected and authentic, leaning into her power. Each image I see of her shows a person at peace with themselves. A towering accomplishment considering the patriarchal abuse she took time after time from so many.

If the patriarchy is not on your hit list, who are you, anyhow? Oh. Wait. You might have a red hat on your coat rack. A really long red tie in the closet. Be aware women of the right. You are literally sleeping with the enemy.

Commentary on the news, Family, Fourth Phase, Kabbalah, Writing

Guard your own soul

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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.

 

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.

 

Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism, Paganism

Israel ben Avraham v’Sarah

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Samhain and the Yule Moon

Monday gratefuls: Veronica. Our first conversion anniversary/birthday. The mikveh. Evoke 1923. Bonding. Her birthday on Feb. 13, mine on the 14th. Kismet. The magic of the mikveh. A world filled with friends and family, Dogs and art, peace, silence, stillness, an openness to learn and to perform good and worthy deeds. In a word: Love.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Veronica

Kavannah:  WISDOM   Chochma חָכְמָה Wisdom, learning, scholarship.  Second Sefirah = intuitive/revelatory ideas; creative flow state; right brain (opposite Understanding/Binah)

One brief shining: At the table of Kate’s pearl, Tom and mine’s hearing challenged delicious meal, of other solo meals, I sat with Veronica discussing life and sex and Judaism until after the fish and we had both ordered dessert, Rebecca, our waitress brought my creme brulee with the small candle in the shape of a number 1. Our birthday as Israel and… I forgot to ask for her Hebrew name.

 

prompt: A mikveh as a Celtic holy well using Celtic design

I was ready for the mikveh though I didn’t know it. My time researching holy wells in Wales. Visiting St. Winnifred’s. Learning about the holy well as a portal, a liminal space between the worlds. This one and the Other World.

My pagan and Jewish selves stand adjacent in my lev, or maybe more, interpenetrating each other. I love Sukkot, the sukkah, a harvest holiday. I love Simchat Torah when we dance with the Torah, all the while knowing that Torah is anything from which we can learn, i.e. all things, for me especially the world of Wild Neighbors and hidden Mountain Streams. I love Shavuot, when all Jews stood at the base of Mt. Sinai and received the Torah. It also celebrates the barley harvest. I love Passover, the spring planting holiday and the holiday of liberation. I also love Yule and the Winter Solstice, Mabon and Samain, Beltane. The phases of the Moon, especially new and full.

When I immersed in the warm waters of the Denver mikveh, I went into a holy well, submerging my old self; then a renaissance, a rebirth after I visited the Other World of the long Jewish tradition and the Other World of the Celts in the same moment.

Did I say I was naked? As was appropriate. A holy well. A womb. Sacred Water. As all Waters are. We enter the world brand new from the womb and the mikveh, the holy well.

Sputtering a little. Hitting the wall with my head as I floated up. Surrounded by warmth and an Ovidian moment of transformation, of metamorphosis, from pagan to pagan Israel son of Abraham and Sarah.

I’ve had life changing moments before. I mentioned arrival day yesterday. My ordination. The move to Colorado. Marrying Kate. I love the multi-layered self each of those moments has created. And I look forward to having my life changed again. By what, you might ask? I don’t know. Not yet.

 

Just a moment: Oh, gee. A possible constitutional convention? What could possibly go wrong?

 

                                       Israel ben Avraham v’Sarah

Family, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Health, Holidays, Memories, Politics, Writing

Stories Worth Telling

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Yule and the Samain Moon

Thursday gratefuls: A Mountain Morning in Winter. Rich and Doncye. Brother Mark. Mary. A new Kindle. Hanukah presents. Jacquie Lawson Edwardian Advent Calendar. December cold and Snow. Magpies. Canadian Jays. Abert’s Squirrels. Red Squirrels.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Snow Flakes falling on Shadow Mountain

Kavannah: Ahavah (love) and Bimah (understanding) Understanding, differentiation, deep insight; from בּוּן to split, pierce/penetrate; also בֵּין between

One brief shining: I roll out the mat, kneel down in a posture not unlike a Muslim at prayer and do the push-ups I can do, then skull crushers with weights brought down near my ears, those silly calf raises, 15 goblet squats, bicep curls, wall angels, incline pushups, my upper body/lower body day.

 

Fun with chatbotgpt. NB: I asked for skullcrushers which are done with dumbbells and got this guy. Part of the fun.

BTW: If you’re new to Ancientrails, I want to explain. When I capitalize a noun like Rock or Mountain or Lodgepole or Mule Deer, I’m following a commitment I made after reading Braiding Sweetgrass. In Potawatomi everything considered alive gets capitalized out of respect. I’m not totally consistent, but I try to be.

When I went into see Rabbi Jamie about feeling meh, he mentioned two things. One, getting back to making art. He means sumi-e which I did for a long ago Kabbalah class. I also paint. Both sort of. However I turned up the heat in the loft and intend to start again. It brings joy.

Second he mentioned a website Storyworth. For those of you age peers who read this, it’s worth a look if you have kids or grandkids. Storyworth sends out a weekly prompt, you write in their software in response to them. My first two prompts were: How did you get your first job? and What was your father like when you were a child?

At some point, I’m not sure when, you’ve written your story. It’s then printed and bound and shipped to you. Price determined by how many books you want. I’m getting four. Ruth, Gabe. Joe. Myself. A neat service. I’m having fun with it and it counts as getting back to writing.

I’ve also begun writing my project of essays, ideas on observing each of the 8 Celtic holidays. Pretty far along on Yule.

 

Just a moment: Still, like many of you, I imagine, marveling at the choices for cabinet leadership our new President, same as the old President has offered up so far. Sure, Gaetz got gone as fast as he deserved, but Hegseth remains in play. Kennedy, too. And Gabbard. Patel. Many of these vie to replace the old chestnut about the fox guarding the henhouse. Now: Patel guiding the FBI. That old drunk at DOD. Vax denier heads health and human services. Combine these choices with long red tie guy’s volatile, chaotic, grudge based style of, what? Can we call it governing? Sorta drains the meaning out of that word. The point is: matches. Gasoline. All over D.C. for four years. Four years.