Category Archives: Fourth Phase

Acting, Art and Culture, Beyond the Boundaries, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Reimaging revelation, Science, Wild Neighbors, Writing

Joy

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Summer and the Herme Moon

Monday gratefuls: Herme. The Seeker. Gaius Ovidius. Han Shan. Writing a very short play. Acting. Distractions. Procrastination. Writing again. Working on revelation. Sacred. Divine. Holy. Spiritual. Religious. Worship. Inspiration. What do these words mean? Are they still important? Judaism. Sarah. BJ. Family. Ruth and Gabe. Marina Harris. My son and Seoah. Murdoch. Korea. Adapters. Travel. Love. Burning it all away but love. Life’s purpose.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: the religious life

One brief shining: Here it is the Lodgepole out my window I look at it and see all its Branches arranged towards the East where Great Sol becomes seen each morning no need for western facing Branches due to the shade of others those Branches toward Great Sol right now hold Needles and Cone, survival and reproduction of the species, unseen but known to me is that most magical and necessary of all transformations/transubstantiations photosynthesis gathering in the nuclear fusion power of Great Sol, combining it with carbon dioxide and water, then stepping it down into sugars and oxygen and fixed carbon. A miracle of the ordinary. The ordinary as miracle.

 

Oh. Speeding into my mind since last Tuesday night Herme and the nature of revelation. Prompting a creative torrent can’t keep up with it. Have to slow down. Stop. Read. Watch television. Burning through my photosynthetically captured energy reserves. Glad my thyroid stimulating hormone has given me the ability to use the energy as long as I can. More than glad. Joyful.

 

This is so much fun. Considering how to lace lines from Han Shan into my own written dialogue, stage directions, settings. Imagining how to advance the plot, how to have a smash bang ending. Yippee! Having to figure out how to represent each character distinctively. When I have trouble having to do that for one character. Gotta thank Alan for suggesting acting classes. I’ve learned so much about myself. About talents and skills long buried. Not gone. Which makes me happy.

Acting combines the intellect and the emotions, the lev heart/mind, into a sharpened tool with the whole body. The voice. Movement. Posture. Cadence. Emphasis. Volume. All important. Plus memory. Putting it all into the mind and retrieving it as necessary, remembering per Meisner how to live truthfully in an imaginary situation.

 

Also going to sleep thinking about revelation. What does it reveal? How? When? How do we know it when it’s happening? Waking up with revelation still on my mind. Seeing revelation through my window.

The book of Nature, of super nature, always open to one page or another. Great Sol in the Sky. The Lodgepole out my window. The first six inches of Top Soil. Feeling the Oxygen breathed out by the Lodgepoles going into my lungs. Another miracle. The transfer of Oxygen into my blood stream so the energy gained from Plants and Animals can transubstantiate into my organs, flesh, bones, lev. How marvelous! How wonderful.

These are the ordinary encounters, yes, but still inspirational. Perhaps they don’t rise to the level of revelation. The line between revelation and an ordinary miracle is still not clear to me. Perhaps an ordinary miracle involves the intellect more. I can look up photosynthesis, read about it, yet its role in our life of very life is so intimate, so critical, and so ignored that seeing where it is happening, right now, opens my heart in wonder.

Yet it does not have the jolt, the jitterbugging of the Rainy Night Watcher. That was a hairs on the skin rising up goosebumps moment. I take from those indicators that my body/lev responded holistically. No mental processing. No slotting of the experience or wondering about Elks. Rather an oh this is happening to me right now! Wow. What? Gosh. A frisson of fear. I can still see him dimly lit at the side of the road, watching, his Antlers spread wider than the space of the two Lodgepoles just behind them.

Loving this, too. Reimagining revelation. Yes. That’s the key.

 

 

Commentary on Religion, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Judaism, Politics

Religious Life

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Summer and the Herme Moon

Saturday gratefuls: Erica, Yolanda, Nancy, Sophia. Helen. Stacy. Jamie. Alan. Ann. Gracie. The Bread Lounge. Evergreen Market. Sugar Jones. CBE. Evergreen. The Muller Retaining Wall company. Gettin’ the job done at Evergreen Lake. The detour. All detours. Hunting for the sacred. Finding the holy. Walking with the divine. Racial justice. Economic justice. The Ancient Brothers. My convergence. That Bull Elk. Still imprinted and present. Korea. Israel, a land of revelation.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Revelation

One brief shining: CBE filled up with members of For His Glory church last night a project of Rabbi Jamie’s to advance racial justice by partnering with a black church, sharing services, gospel music, and friendship first through that most religious of human activities, a potluck, then a kabbalah shabbat service with traditional music.

 

I went for the potluck. Met Erica, Yolanda, Nancy, and Sophia. We had a long conversation. In a difficult setting for me. The Sun shone in my face and the babble of others filled my one hearing aid. Talked with them about my conversion. About their lives. Erica manages corporate relocations internationally. About Kate. They wanted to know if I could remarry. Yes, I said, but it would have to be a very special woman and I haven’t met her. At least not yet. Tithing and the synagogue’s dues structure. Tzedakah. Yolanda wanted to know what questions the rabbinic court (beit din) might ask. Hmm. I said. That’s a good question. I’ll have to ask Rabbi Jamie.

My sense of politics wants to move faster, engage quicker. Do something. Always. But this approach may work over a longer time. Building friendships. Shared experiences. Then let the political grow organically. Grow out of a common life nurtured over potlucks and joint services.

 

News of my conversion has begun to leak out. Not that it was in hiding. More and more people know. And the warmth I’m experiencing makes me feel good. Mindy came up last night and said I hear you’re going to have a very special moment in Israel. Yes, I am. She offered to help me with my Hebrew or anything else. Her husband David said later as I was leaving, one thing I love about Judaism. We’re not evangelical, but if you decide you want to join we’ll find a way to include you. Over lunch on Thursday Rebecca, on hearing my news, said, Welcome. Alan wanted to know about my bar mitzvah.

 

Revelation has begun to loom much larger in my thinking since the Bull Elk and the conversations stimulated by God is Here. Here’s a wiki definition: “In religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing of some form of truth or knowledge through communication with a deity or other supernatural entity or entities.” As I’ve begun to think about it more, I realized that revelation is at the base of most if not all religious truth claims. In other words revelation can be seen as the core religious experience, the one from which all others grow. Think of Joseph Smith and his golden tablets. Moses on Mt. Sinai. Mohammed and his angel. Jesus in the desert.

The problem comes when we ossify and/or reify the revelations of others. When we stop hunting for or opening ourselves to revelation. More to come on this. Much more.

 

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase

This Old Man’s Life

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Summer and the Summer Moon Above

Monday gratefuls: Leo. Still here. Luke. Tal. Sagittarius Ponderosa. Herme. Ann. Parchment paper. Gracie. Korea. Becoming a Jew. A pilgrim life. Seeking truth in the moment. Life. Great Sol. Herme. Cold Mountain. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Herman Melville. Hawthorne. William Cullen Bryant. Emerson. Whitman. Dickinson. Frost. Stevens. Oliver. Rumpelstiltskin. Knickerbockers. Rip Van Winkle. Ravens. Corvids. Crows. Magpies. Poe. The American Renaissance. Thoreau. Unitarians and Universalists. Christians.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: American literature

One brief shining: I have three cast iron pans big skillet, little skillet, and a griddle on which I love to cook breakfast with a pat of butter sizzling, throw on sliced potatoes, a couple of eggs, maybe some olives stuffed with garlic if I’m feeling fancy a six on the induction cooktop until the potatoes brown nicely and the eggs firm up, slide them off onto my plate for a preworkout meal.

 

Not sure how I’ve done it but my days have begun to feel full, no holes like those afternoon doldrums of the last few months. As I prefer it. Part of it? Writing Herme. Reading Korean history. But I suspect also the gradual increase of my thyroid meds bringing me closer to where I need to be. I pay attention to how I live my life, both conscious and unconscious actions during the day, over time. Try to understand what drives me. Especially when a disturbance in the force knocks me off course.

Working out plays a significant role in my sense of well-being. As a mood lifter, which it always is, but also as a sign of self care. That I’m doing what I can for my health. It becomes a floor to everything else for that week. Oh, yeah. I worked out. Feels good on a physical and psychic level.

Reading, too. Serious reading. Doesn’t have to be for an enthusiasm, but it helps if it is. A workout for the mind. Right now serious reading includes research for Herme, Korean history, reading for conversion, reading for my Israel trip, going for a deep understanding of the American far right and our current political situation, mussar. When I’m keeping my intellect sharp, I feel good.

Taking classes. Right now acting class. Mussar. MVP. Various CBE opportunities. But the Korean, too. And I want to get back to calculus at some point. Challenging my overall skill sets makes me feel good. I still have traction, not just following familiar ruts. I’ve also got sumi-e and painting. Not trying to master any of these, going for the best I can do. Enough. Maybe they’re hobbies?

Cooking. Maybe breakfast 3 to 5 times a week. A full evening meal 2 to 3 times. Healthy snacks. Trying to stay close to the Mediterranean lane. Sometimes right by it, sometimes straying into the past. But taking care of myself. Laundry and picking up around the house. Book piles don’t count. Having the house cleaned. Having Vince come over and mow, do other outside chores. Paying bills. Keeping up with my docs and meds.

Planning travel. Offers some interesting changes to look forward to. Leaving home. Coming back.

Meals out with friends and family. Zoom connections on a regular basis with those faraway. Showing up.

Good sleep hygiene. Maintaining 7 to 9 hours of sleep a night.

There’s also a category of activity I’ll call inner work. Not prayer nor meditation. Though it can be either or both at times. Mostly it’s about being kind to myself, treating myself with compassion. Even my inner critic. There, there. I know how you can be, but look how far we’ve come anyhow. Accepting my own death. My own limits. Shrugging off moods if they get too grippy. Or leaning into them, unmasking the boogiemans my psyche insists on creating on occasion.

Perhaps I’ll find a way to encourage the burning away of all of these that aren’t love. As I still believe I did accidentally discover the purpose of life. Somebody had to. Why not me?

 

 

 

 

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Judaism, Mountains, Our Land and Home

Bonus Post on Paganism and Judaism

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Summer and the sliver Summer Moon Above

 

From the beginning of my turn toward paganism I identified it as an ur-religion. That is, one all of us could embrace even if we layered on top of it another tradition like Buddhism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Judaism.

I’m still there. Why? My paganism locates the sacred, the holy, the divine in the stuff within me and around me. That is. The Lodgepole. Leo sleeping beside me on the rug. My lev. The Soil beneath me and the Rock beneath it and the core of the Earth beneath that. The Robin and the Magpie. The Fly and the Katydid. The Morel and the Candensis. The Worm and the Snake. The Stream flowing and the Pond resting. Beavers and Marmots. Mountain Lions and Bears. The Microbiome in my gut. The Mitochrondia in our Cells. Our Galaxy. Those Galaxies. Dark Matter. Multi-verse Worlds.

I believe this non-dogmatic, non-sectarian sort of paganism crucial to caring for our Planet as we go through the fiery apocalypse of Climate change. And, it is not in conflict in any way with my Judaism which insists on a unitary view of all things. All things contain a shard of ohr, or holy light, holy energy. All things.

I choose Judaism for my human and humane interactions. I choose paganism to undergird and focus attention on the World which holds us like a Bird’s nest holds fragile Eggs.

 

Asia, Dogs, Fourth Phase, Judaism, Korea, Literature, Politics, US History, World History

Korea and Reading

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Summer and the Summer Moon Above

Sunday gratefuls: Leo. Lying here beside me. Luke out having fun. Books. Oh, did I mention books? Korean history. Seoah. Murdoch. My son. Working hard. Korean schools. American schools. Having a dog in the house. Korea. The Korean civil war. The armistice. Kim Il Sung. Kim Jong Il. Kim Jong Un. Presidents in South Korea. Chaebol. Zaibatsu. Samsung. LCD. Hyundai. Different ways of organizing economies. And nations. Trump’s legal trouble. The House G.O.P. The Extremes. Showing us a path to nowhere.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Knowledge

One brief shining: Leo lies here on the green rug with Cypress Trees, I write this blog letting my fingertips move over my split keyboard, all while a bright blue Colorado Sky backdrops Black Mountain its Lodgepoles and Aspens, there is no sound except the slight click of the keys.

 

More reading in Cuming’s history of Korea. Two chapters on the Korean civil war. He believes we should have let them fight it out, burned out the divisions and reordered their culture. As we had to. As Vietnam had to. Instead we put in amber the tensions and conflicts present after the Japanese Occupation ended. If I read Cuming’s account correctly, the North would have won the civil war, probably easily without us. Even with our involvement they came close. Then Koreans themselves would have had to sort out a new political order. Instead we have my son and his colleagues still in country, maintaining a very fragile and often fraught peace.

It was a time of big power conflicts, especially the USSR and the US. The architects of the idea of containment Dean Rusk, George Kennan, and Paul Nitze influenced the U.S. role in the war. Containing the Soviets, not China.

Korea is more than you know. Much more than I knew.

 

Realizing I privilege reading over most other activities. If I’m on a topic, an enthusiasm, I’ll sometimes read for hours at a whack. For days on end. Cup of coffee at hand. Now with my reading glasses perched on my nose. When I get tired, as I did yesterday, I watched a TV program, a K-drama just to stay in the the mind-world and went back to Cuming’s afterward. I’m neither a fast nor slow reader, I adjust my pace to the material. If it’s difficult, I’m slower. In the middle, as history usually is, I go a bit faster. With fiction I gallop.

Right now, as you can tell, I’m on Korea. When I finish Cumings, I’ll start another, the Two Koreas. Though. I might go back and reread the earlier chapters in Cumings. His long synopsis of Korean history before the late 19th century fascinated me since it contained so much that was new. For me.

Also, I’m building a conversion library. I already have a lot of books on Judaism, but I’m going to organize the ones I need for my study and put them up here in the home office. Had to order others. Looking forward to that reading, too.

 

Asia, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism

The Hermit Kingdom

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Summer and the Summer Moon Above

Saturday gratefuls: Leo coming up for the night. Fruit salad. Sleep. Good sleep. Korean history. Changing my view of northern east Asia. First full draft of Herme complete. For the acting class. Going to work with it today. Finding my sweet spot with exercise, reading, eating out with friends. A full life. Brother Mark and his rental car. The trap of desiderata. Opening myself further. Living on Shadow Mountain. In my mostly finished home. All the Creeks, Streams, Rivulets, Ponds, Marshes of the Mountains

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Change

One brief shining: A therapist lives in my finger tips ready to take on any inner problem dice it up, spread it out on the page for consideration and evaluation then continue on through a resolution that often ripples through my lev in a way I can feel in my chest, the issue put in a new context, revealed as an old pattern, or tucked away behind my ear as a learning to keep close.

 

Went part way down the hill to Morrison. The Cow. Alan and I met there for breakfast. It was a Friday, but the damned place was so busy. We had to wait twenty minutes. The closest sort of Mountain town to Denver Morrison sits right next to the famous Red Rocks Amphitheater. Downtown has plenty of places to hoover up tourist cash. The Cow among them. Apparently the only breakfast place though. Which makes sense since Red Rocks Concerts are evening affairs.

Alan’s first question when I told him about my planned conversion? When’s your bar mitzvah? Hadn’t thought about that. Maybe around my birthday next year?

 

Spent most of yesterday reading in a one volume history of Korea, Korea’s Place in the Sun by Bruce Cumings. I’m about halfway through and finding it fascinating. He focuses on contemporary Korea, but had to give an overview of earlier Korean history to put this time period in context. I’ve learned so many new things. How little I know about Asian history for one. I mean I knew I didn’t know much but the vast field of my ignorance has never been more obvious. It matters, too. Not my ignorance specifically but the general ignorance of Americans about Asia and its long, long history.

Up until the end of the nineteenth century Korea was the little brother to China. Korea’s king went to the Emperor of China for investiture and the two nations had cordial relationships, including significant trade. But. China took no role in Korea’s internal affairs nor its external affairs except to serve as a deterrent to outside invaders. Korea kept itself to itself, repelling foreigners with force. That’s how it came to have the title the Hermit Kingdom.

Did you know we had a military government in Korea from 1945 to 1948, immediately following the collapse of its Japanese occupation? Or, that the communists who were influential in the North were Russians, not Chinese? I didn’t. Only a hint of the insights and new facts I’ve gained.

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health

Look Round

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Summer and the Summer Moon Above

Thursday gratefuls: Rabbi Jamie. Judaism. Rebecca. Alan. Leo coming up on Saturday. Luke. The balance of my inner life. The things that throw it off. Weather. Lab results. Anxiety. Self-doubt. The soul. And its compass. No, better. Its gyroscope. Still strong. Moderate fire risk. My home. A sanctuary. As are the Mountains, CBE, the Ancient Brothers. Books. The U.S.A. Korea’s Place in the Sun by Bruce Cumings. Reading. Thinking. Loving. Health. Sleep.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The soul’s gyroscope

One brief shining: The question is not will you get pushed around and down by the winds of change that blow through your inner life, of course you will, rather the question is have you created a strong gyroscope that knows how to keep you steady even when your inner balance shifts off course.

 

Gyroscope. “A gyroscope is a device used for measuring or maintaining orientation and angular velocity.” [ Ancient Greek γῦρος gŷros, “round” and σκοπέω skopéō, “to look”] wiki

My inner gyroscope became a strong stabilizer thanks to my now long ago meditation on my own corpse, occasioned by work with the Tibetan Buddhist mandala of Yamantaka that hangs in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts Tibetan gallery. Not the only aspect to my inner stability, no, but what I consider the most important.

Often characterized as the Tibetan Buddhist God of Death, Yamantaka really wants to aid you in coming to terms with your own death. This is very important in Tibetan Buddhism since the ability to be tranquil at the time of your death affects your possibilities for reincarnation. That is, what your next reincarnation will be.

I’m no Tibetan Buddhist but I recognized a good practice when I saw one and began a long period of meditating (visualizing and staying with the visualization) of my own corpse. It took a long while but I became comfortable with the image of my dead body. I’m sure the actual Tibetan practice is more involved and more subtle than what I did, but the effect for me was to gradually relieve me of any fear of death. It did not relieve me of wanting to live. To the contrary. Life became more vibrant, more precious.

I’ve now encountered three what I would count as good deaths: Kate’s, Judy’s, and Leslie’s. That is, they all accepted the truth of their final illness, saw it for what it was, and lived at peace in the final days before their deaths. That does not mean they did not want to live. Of course, they did. Leslie said when told of her liver cancer, “Well, that sucks.” And, it did. Judy Sherman said often, “This beast will kill me. But not today!” Kate was so calm (when she was not experiencing air hunger) that she could reach out to the respiratory therapist who had just stuck a long needle in her wrist and drawn blood from an artery there and say, “Kenton, good job with the ABD.” (arterial blood gas draw). She saw the outcome of this phase of her long illness and chose to die. As did both Leslie and Judy.

In the Greek sense of gyroscope they took a look round and saw things as they were, did not let denial cloud their judgments, knew this was not abnormal, rather so so normal. Their inner gyroscopes were strong, keeping them steady even at the end.

How is your inner gyroscope?

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health

The Magic of the Ordinary

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Summer and the Summer Moon Above

Wednesday gratefuls: Rebecca and her 45th high school reunion. Joan and her son who has started to receive social security. Alan and his tenderness. Abby and her passion. Deborah and poetry. Tal and his sweet empathy. Deborah as Wonder Woman. Acting class last night. Working on Herme. Growing, changing. Taking shape. The purpose of life. Figuring it out. Letting the anxiety through. Letting light in. Anxiety opened a Leonard Cohen crack.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The purpose of life is to burn away everything but love.

One brief shining: Drove down the hill to pick up my new hearing aid at Mile High Hearing, saw Amy and left for Dave’s Chuck Wagon Diner over on Colfax seven minutes away anxiety bubbling after having given myself two new cancers and one autoimmune disease then deciding that was ok I could handle it when all of sudden the purpose of life bubbled up and I knew what it was: to burn away everything but love.

 

Usually the first and loudest critic of my own work I believe I’ve found the purpose of life. Kinda hubristic, yeah? Still. The purpose of life is to burn away everything but love. Sounds right to me. Ha. How bout that? Nothing like having decided cancer(s) were on their way to claim my body but not my soul. That got the old philosophical engine cranking over then purring.

I even give myself a pass on the anxiety. I’ve been sick long enough and spent enough time placing it into perspective, one foot before the next, that sometimes a bit of new data can upset my inner balance. So. You’re ok, Charlie. Or as Dr. Gonzalez said when I sang the worried song in an e-mail to her: You’re fine. I see this all the time. Oh. All right. Zip up and trust your doctors. Kate’s right there with me.

 

Emotions have been close to the surface for the last couple of weeks anyhow. Not sure why. Kate coming into memory and tears almost there, too. Joy at seeing Luke and in the acting class last night. Deep curiosity reading a one volume history of contemporary Korea. Expansion of my heart at seeing blue Sky. Satisfaction with my home. Awe at the beauty and wonder of the Mountains and the Wild Neighbors.

 

Life has begun to take on a magical component. How to describe it? The ordinary shifts subtly toward the extraordinary. That Lodgepole. Is it waving at me? The mist rising from the road last night. Transported me to an Other World. Kate’s Creek now has a mystical presence in my life as place of healing. The Wild Neighbors who share their lives with me on occasion I see as spirit messengers. Even the anxiety I felt over the last few days. A crack that let the light shine in.  How can I keep from singing?

Perhaps the transition from this world to the next lies not as far away as we think.

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism, Woolly Mammoths

A bit more on conversion

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Summer and the Summer Moon Above

Monday gratefuls: Out of thin Air. The Ancient Brothers on the elemental. A good nap. Nights growing longer. Living in the temperate zone. Allergens. Itchy eyes, runny nose.  Peripheral vision. Vision. Taste. Hearing. Touch. Smell. Building our own personal reality. Rabbi Jamie. Dick. Tara and Arjan. The many folds and valleys, neurons and synapses of our brains. The wonder of the whole nervous system. Cancer. Prostate Cancer.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The mind-heart. The lev

One brief shining: This morning the Lodgepoles exude health needles green bearing new green cones alongside older light brown ones shooting into the blue Sky with puffy white Cumulus drifting through and Black Mountain’s gentle presence not far away my home world.

 

The Ancient Brothers talked through the four elements: air, earth, fire, and water. A week for each. Five different perspectives on each element. Paul, the careful researcher. Mark, the personal with a creative twist. Bill, often the religious or poetic. Tom, literary and scientific, poetic. Myself, the personal with a religious twist. Our differences are what make these Sunday mornings. Same topic through different lenses. All valid. All interesting. All enriching. A lesson here about the nature of the human community. We need you to show up as you. You’re the only one who can.

 

Also a clue here about my reason for converting. In the Word to Deed class Jamie gave this past Saturday we discussed the Ma Tovu, a prayer said upon entering a synagogue or other house of worship:

How lovely are your tents, O Jacob; your encampments, O Israel!
As for me, through Your abundant grace,
I enter your house to worship with awe in Your sacred place.
O Lord, I love the House where you dwell, and the place where your glory tabernacles.
I shall prostrate myself and bow; I shall kneel before the Lord my Maker.
To You, Eternal One, goes my prayer: may this be a time of your favor.
In Your abundant love, O God, answer me with the Truth of Your salvation.    Wikipedia

While discussing the first three verses, I offered a slightly different reading than the others. Jacob represents the individual, Israel the collective. Or, said another way, the personal and the communal. As for me I take as the individual who, through the abundant grace of a collective or community (Your in this case referring back to the first line) enters with awe into a place made sacred by the community itself. This made me think of why I love CBE, the sacred nature of the connections I’ve made there. I now had a horizontal rather than a vertical view of sacred community. Not infused with holiness from above or without, but created from within the magic and mystery of human connection, human relationship.

To go on. O Lord I read as a Self, a Soul. The rest is an inner prayer. I love this body and this community in which I dwell. The place where glory tabernacles. I am a humble member of this community which makes me who I am. To you, the Eternal soul/Self, I pray, hoping this is a time of your favor. In the abundant love I feel in this community I find the truth of your salvation. [salvation=healing, wholeness]

As Bill said yesterday morning when I recounted some of this, he said, that’s what makes the Woolly’s special. And, it is. We find the sacred, the mysterious, and the grace filled not in some dogmatic prison but in the everydayness of our lives. With the people we come to love, with the people we come to trust with our most intimate selves. And with the places that give us the same feelings.

So converting is not really about a religion per se, it’s making a claim about who my people are. I have at least three religions by this count: Judaism, The Woolly’s/Ancient Brothers, and my family.

 

 

 

Art and Culture, Asia, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Judaism, Kabbalah

Calligraphy and OMG channel

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Summer and the Summer Moon Above

Sunday gratefuls: The Ancient Brothers. Air. Thin air. Earth. Wind. And Fire. Elemental, my dear Watson. Sherlock Holmes. Perry Mason. Hercule Poirot. Daiglish. Mystery. Mysteries. Books. The written word. The spoken word. Acting. Herme. Han Shan. Whitman. Rilke. Rumi. Oliver. Harrison. Lee Child. CJ Box. Richard Powers. Idris Elba. Ethan Hawke. K-dramas. The lev, the mind-heart. The Moon. The  Sun. Our Home.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Writers

One brief shining: A Mountain morning blue Sky above Black Mountain curving behind the Lodgepoles in my Yard a cup of coffee and water on the desk my fingers dancing on the keyboard not only an extension of the curves and folds of my brain but of my lev saying things before I think them reading what I have written to know what I’m saying the joy of writing.

 

 

Calligraphy. An art almost unknown to Americans, even more so to millenials who have famously not been taught cursive writing. When Kate, my son, and I went to China, I remember we went to a national museum in Beijing. I was excited because I had always found Chinese art compelling. Disappointed. The exhibits were all calligraphy. Mostly long sheets of rice paper [made from mulberry leaves] with the squiggles and wiggles of Chinese cursive ideograms. Unintelligible. It took a while for me to realize the power of what I’d seen. How I wish now I could return to that exhibit.

Oddly, many at CBE remember me for a project during one Kabbalah class focused on the Hebrew alphabet. Using sumi-e brushes and black ink from Japan I drew many of the Hebrew characters in a flowing cursive, put a small verse beside them, then signed with my chop I purchased when in Beijing. The small red mark of my name contrasted with the black of the aleph and bet and vav and nuns. I set up tables and had everyone try the experience of using sumi-e brushes.

Mark Odegard sent me an image of a Han Shan, Cold Mountain, poem he had done by a Chinese calligrapher. What a beauty. Made me want to own a nice piece of calligraphy for my home. Searching for one.

 

Had a bad time Friday evening and Saturday morning. I let the worm of anemia enter my omg channel. Usually I get diagnostics back from my blood work the next day on Quest Diagnostics. The result of the latest round of blood draws, taken Thursday, has not been posted. I think some maintenance issue on the Quest website. However, it left me wondering about anemia with no helpful information to counteract speculation. Internal bleeding? Probably not, although not to be ruled out. Low iron or vitamin B? The blood tests will show. So I went to the logical place next: leukemia. I have cancer already, why not two kinds rather than one? With no data my mind went down that road pretty easily.

Here’s the thing. I’m not afraid to die, but I’d prefer later thank you very much. Still. Could be now? Right? I’m ok with that, yes, but again, not my preference. I went over the legacy such as it is. My writing. Friendships and family. This stand and that for justice. Perhaps a few original ideas not well developed. Got sadder as I thought. The evening was chilly, rainy. Gloomy. Outside mirroring inside.

Took me a bit of time to right the ship. Not long but not before I’d had a persistent gnawing angst for a few hours. Didn’t disturb my sleep however.