• Category Archives Reimaging revelation

  • The Pearl

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    The Off to College Moon

    Monday gratefuls: Kate, always Kate. Sarah, BJ, Pamela. The Ancient Brothers. The Bistro. Oysters. Filet mignon. A Pearl. The Otherworld. Another dimension. Rain, Rain, please stay and come again another day. Shadow Mountain Drive, Shadow and Conifer Mountains, the Evergreen Meadow in the Rain. Mist and shades of green. My Otherworld.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Pearl

    Kavanah: Serenity   Menucha

    One brief shining: Drove over to Marshdale, a burb of Evergreen, as Rain pelted the Lodgepoles and the Aspens, rendering Shadow Mountain and Conifer Mountain green misty hulks of risen Rocks, to the Bistro, a small fine dining restaurant that Kate I and went to for special occasions, her 80th counted, walked in with my hood up as the Rain came down, got my usual table against the wall; Stacy came around and I ordered a 6 Oyster appetizer, both Kate and I loved fresh Oysters, proceeding from left to right I used the little fork to pry loose the meat, tipped the shell, and slurped them down, except at the sixth and last one, I bit down, what?, and pulled out of my mouth a tiny pearl.

     

     

    I looked at it with my unaided eyes, having left readers behind as I often do, and held it up to Stacy. Is this what I think it is? I’ll take it to the chefs. Yes, the chefs considered opinion, a pearl. She returned it in a small clear plastic cup that might contain sauce in another situation.

    Texted Ruth with a picture. What’s that? A tiny pearl I found during my birthday celebration for your grandma. Oh, she joined you. Dad does that sometimes with me.

    A sense of the uncanny settled over the meal. Thunder roared outside, Rain hit the windows of this charming restaurant with its low wooden beamed ceiling. Did Kate reach across the table and take my hand? Did I tell her happy 80th and see her smile? I had intended to order the house salad but instead ordered a caprese salad by mistake. A salad Kate and I first had in a small cafeteria in the Vatican on our honeymoon. We loved it and made it often with our own heirloom tomatoes. We called it Popeteria salad.

    At the table with me I had my Kindle on which I’m reading Lev Grossman’s latest, The Bright Sword, his retelling of the Arthurian legend, and in it a main character had just stumbled into the Otherworld. So had I.

    The Pearl from Kate, what else could it be, I’ll have set in a ring to wear on my ring finger or as a pendant for a necklace.

    On her 80th birthday. Kate. Reached out and gave me a gift. A Pearl of great price.*

    Raffles Town House. 2016.

    *Luke 13: 45“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, 46 who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it.

     


    Family Feelings Fourth Phase Mountains Reimaging revelation Weather +Climate

  • Earth Waves

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    The Off to College Moon

    Wednesday: Tom. Zoom. Ruth. Money for college. Inspire concerts. 110 minute workout yesterday. Work out days. 2. Focus on Herme’s journey. 5 days. Mayfly life. Earth Waves. Mountains. Mountain Day in Japan coming August 11. Shadow Mountain. Black Mountain. Conifer Mountain. Berrian and Legault Mountains. Evergreen Mountain. Berrigan Mountain. Mt. Blue Sky. My local cluster of Mountains. 82% containment of the Quarry Fire. Evacuations over.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Shadow Mountain

    One brief shining: Rabbi Rami Shapiro’s metaphor of our lives as Ocean Waves, above the surface of the Ocean yet still the Ocean, then returning to the Ocean from which we came made me consider Mountains, Earth Waves, lasting much longer than the Ocean Wave, yet also destined to return to the Earth from which they rose. both metaphors for human life and I choose the Mountain, the Earth Wave, to emulate.

     

    Continuing on the theme from the last few days. My cobbled together worldview. This is the life of August 7, 2024, risen through the orogeny of waking, strong and tall, durable. From its peak you can see Denver and Minnesota and Thailand and the Outback and Orion and Draco and the Milky Way. Yet also only a day, one of the infinite Mayfly lives, none longer than a day. We surf the Earth Wave of our day, our life, embracing its heights and its valleys.

    My Lodgepole Companion greets this August 7th life with their usual stoicism yet expresses joy as its Needles, oriented by Great Sol toward the southeast, soak up life giving Light. The life of August 6th saw Rain for their Roots, may it be so in this life, too.

    My day, my only day in which to live, this day, August 7th, 2024, includes greeting Great Sol. Saying the shema. Groaning a bit as my back exacts its price for movement. Excited for Ruth’s visit to work on Kate’s Minnesota Saves account. Free the money. Free the money. Free the money! A nap in this life, I imagine. Near the end of this life, as Great Sol disappears thanks to Mother Earth’s stately spin, I’ll buy some cutup fruit at at the Evergreen Safeway and go to the Mussar Vad Practice group at CBE.

    After the day’s light disappears and night falls, I’ll drive home away from Berrigan Mountain and Evergreen Mountain, up the Valley drained by Cub Creek, Blue Creek, Maxwell Creek. Swimming through the Earth Waves in which I live, climbing from Evergreen to the peak of Shadow Mountain where I will rest at the crest of its wave.

    One day.

     

    Just a moment: The Midwest. My home for over 65 years. 40 of those in Minnesota. Not Coastal. Not a center of power in the political sense. Its politics far more opaque than those who live outside it know. Especially the Upper Midwest states of Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. More communal with the German and Scandinavian roots. More rooted in Land and Lakes. Distant from the rest of the U.S. Less concerned with the opinions of others, more determined to make its own way. Sometimes populist. Sometimes progressive. Sometimes conservative in the old fashioned sense. Sometimes crazy right. McCarthy is buried outside Appleton, Wisconsin. Not sure what it will look like to the nation as Walz’s turn on the hamster wheel of fame drives close inspection.


    Politics Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Reimaging revelation Shadow Mountain US History

  • My ancientrail

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    The Off to College Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: Ruth. Willville. August 20th. On her own. With a net. Returning to the Solar System. Gaia. Great Sol. Space. Vastness. Galaxies. Huge. Galaxy Clusters. Huger. The Universe its ownself. Our home. Our tiny, tiny presence in our galaxy, our local cluster, the whole of everything. And thanks for all the fish.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Shabbat

    One brief shining: Reading the parsha, the end of Numbers, then the book on Reconstructionism for class and for the CBE bookclub, lighting the candles, and saying the berakhot, the blessing over them, settling in to my Shabbat, sleeping, then rising, resurrected, granted another life, the life of August 3rd, 2024, lived with friends Marilyn and Irv, with more books and some TV until the day fled, the life was over, and I went down into the 1/60th of death again.

    Kavanah: PERSEVERANCE  Netzach (NETS-ach)  נֵצַ

     

    I cobble things together. Not exactly syncretism. I have no larger design in mind. Discovering useful ways of understanding, framing, defining. I’m finding the life of August 4th, 2024 a contemplative one. Coming as it does after Shabbat and graced by the presence of my Ancient Brothers. Better for me than living in the moment. Living a full life, one day at a time. AA resonance. Jewish inflection. Expansion of the be here now idea to a waking day. Carpe diem fits. Though it might be a bit aggressive. How about cradle the day, or enjoy the day, or embrace the day?

    This all fits well with the lesson of Yamantaka. Meditating on my corpse. Seeing death for what it will be. For me. Not a time to fear but to include in the ongoingness of life. Whether darkness or reincarnation or sudden awakening in a different form. As significant as birth. As love. As justice. As compassion.

    Eudamonia comes from the Greeks. Aristotle. A cleaner, more as I experience the flow life way of approaching life’s purpose. Especially considering the longue dureé, how very important and mostly insignificant I am and will be. How I was before I was. If I was. The Mexica idea. Life is a dream between a sleep and a sleep.

    Being a Jew. Bathing in the waters of the mikveh. And in the community I find at CBE. And in the long, rich tradition of Jewish thought and ritual. Saying the shema in the morning and in the evening. Studying mussar. Friends.

    Hanging with the Ancient Brothers. With Diane. Friends and family over the years. Mary and Mark. My son and Seoah. Dogs.

    The Great Wheel and the pagan eye that finds the sacred, the divine right here on the surface of things where Tomatoes grow and Iris bloom and Rain falls and Wildfire burns.

    Following the Jewish liturgical year and the Great Wheel. Cyclical time. Not linear. More important to me. Though aging matters, too. I’m fond of the years I’ve lived. And the many, many lives known one day by one day.

    Of course, Taoism. Another way of understanding the unitary, yet always evolving one in which we move and live and have our becoming.

    With these ideas, these notions, this framing I find each day, each new life, a miracle. A time to savor. To not waste. To know as ichi-e ichi-go, once in a lifetime. And all beautiful. Wabi-sabi.

    My tao. My ancientrail. Herme’s journey.


    Art and Culture Asia Family Feelings Fourth Phase Friends Hermitage Holidays Judaism Mountains Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Reimaging revelation Shadow Mountain

  • Lugnasa

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    The Mountain Summer Moon (its 1% crescent)

    Shabbat gratefuls: Special Shabbat candles. A day of rest, friends, reading. The Quarry Fire. Life in the W.U.I, the wildlands urban interface. Its anxieties and its joys. Poetry. Literature. Torah. Talmud. Mussar. Midrash. Music. Ives. Copeland. Cage. Mozart. Coltrane. Parker. Monk. Bach. Telemann. Gregorian chant. Kate, always Kate. Her violinist sisters: B.J. and Sarah.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Shabbat

    One brief shining: This August 3rd life in the year 2024, a hot dry life with Wildfire not far away, with the contentment of Shabbat on offer, with those fancy Shabbat candles burned down, later Irv and Marilyn on their way to Aspen Perks for a breakfast with me, while I use ever changing neuronic activity to control my fingers, spit out black words while waiting to see what I’m saying. Oh.

    Kavanah: Presence   Metinut (mitt-ee-NOOT)   מְתִינוּת

    Mindfulness, presence, intentionality (literally to “move slowly”)   [חִפָּזוֹן Chipazon, chee-pah-ZONE: Hurry, rush, haste]

     

    Lughnasa*. A first fruits holiday. A cross-quarter day on the Great Wheel lying between the Summer Solstice and the Autumnal Equinox. August 1st. Catholicism celebrates the day as Lammas or Loaf Mass when parishioners in Great Britain and Ireland would bring freshly baked bread from the season’s first Corn (Wheat in the U.S.) harvest. As their campaign of suppression and repression of native religions gathered force, Roman Catholics swept up many Jewish and pagan holidays. Lughnasa among them.

     

     

    While the Roman Catholic church built churches and cathedrals over Celtic holy wells, hoovered up holidays, declared Celtic gods and goddesses heretical or chose to adopt them, St Bridgit being a notable example, Brigid being the powerful triple goddess of hearth, smithy, and healing, the Celtic Faery Faith never fully died out as W. Evans-Wentz proved by visiting late 19th century Celtic lands for his doctorate from Oxford. His dissertation, the Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, shows that it survived then in the pagan (rural) areas of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, Cornwall, and the Isle of Man.

    The week long market fair still held in rural Celtic lands had a religious as well as an agricultural purpose. Dancing and bonfires, sneaking off into the fields to spread fertility with the sympathetic magic of love-making, honoring the sun-god of many talents, Lugh.**

    Lughnasa, remembered by Celtic immigrants to the U.S. like the Scots-Irish, spawned county and state fairs here. The Great Minnesota Get Together is a for instance. If you go, look in the bushes. There might be a few stray pagans celebrating in the old way.

    *

    *“To this day, there is a town in Kerry that holds a fertility festival each August, where a magnificent he-goat precides like Cernunnos for three days and nights, and bacchanalian drinking, wild dancing, and varieties of sexual indescretion are the principal entertainments. It is this characteristically Irish mélange of pagan and Christian that forms the theme of Brian Friel’s magnificent play Dancing at Lughnasa—Lughnasa being the harvest feast of the god Lug, still celebrated on August 1 in parts of Ulster.”  source: How the Irish Saved Civilization (1995)

    **“Lugh was able to do all things well. He could forge at a smithy and ride a great horse, hold his breath under water for hours, fight without ever becoming exhausted, and throw his spear with perfect precision. He was also a harper, poet, wheelwright, headler, and genealogist, and that’s not all! Lugh managed to defeat the giant Balor of the One Eye, who could kill everyone in his range of vision simply by opening his eyelid and looking at them. Lugh whirled his sling over his head and put out Balor’s eye.”source: The Story We Carry in our Bones (2015)      Irish Myths


    Great Wheel Myth and Story Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Reimaging revelation

  • Election 2024: the Novel. Another Twist.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    The Mountain Summer Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: The novelist has thrown yet another Big Twist into this election year. Trump’s ear. Oh, my. Red Flag warning today. Red Flag in the day, attention must pay. Numbers. Zornberg’s Bewilderment. Reading. Mitch Rapp. Another week of 150 plus minutes exercise. Radiation consult this Thursday. My son. Seoah. Murdoch. Hawai’i.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: My son

    One brief shining: Handed in my Powerball ticket, a big winner, over a quarter of a billion dollars, Tom’s challenge, what are those first moments like, how do I feel, what do I do, the Ancient Brothers topic for this morning, an American, so American, fantasy, yet one with a Rorschach template for our real values.

     

    Gotta admit. I didn’t see a registered Republican recent high school student using his no doubt legally obtained AR-15 assault rifle to fire eight shots at 45. That one photograph with blood around his mouth. I thought to myself, no way this can get any weirder. Wrong, so wrong. Gobsmacked. Forehead slapped. Mind scrambled.

    No thriller writer would have this much chutzpah. The irony way too obvious. The twist, after the debate and the Supreme Court ruling on immunity, and the felony convictions, and the money damages in the cover up trial and the E. Jean Carroll verdict. Too much. I mean, come on. Is that believable?

    It is a page turner though. What will happen next? Russian interference? Chinese interference? Maybe a black hole selectively absorbing only those citizens with way more red than necessary in their fashion statements? Each day a different aspect of the democratic process comes under attack from those seemingly interested in a quasi-king instead of a head of the third equal branch of our Federal Government.

    At 77 this is almost more excitement than I can handle. Normally a bit breathless here at 8,800 feet, now I’m attached to an oxygen concentrator.

    There are as well all those polls showing the orange one ahead in the swing states, the battleground states, while kind Old Joe dithers. And Kamala Harris runs without running. Democrats dither along with Joe. Somebody has to show decisiveness. Let’s turn this damned election upside down and inside out. Elect a Democrat.

     

    Just a moment: Here’s the thing. Revelation. A musty old idea. Communication from the other side, eh? Or, maybe from this or that multiverse? Could be God? Always, and I want to lean on this hard, Always, human mediated. Even miracles only become miraculous when reported and confirmed by some human who experienced them. The implication? All of our religious reveries, our sacred writings, our tales of Jesus and Moses and Zoroaster and Shiva and Lao Tze, all within the human experience. What is resurrection but a tale told by a human?

    No, this is not a definitive argument against revelation per se. All I can confidently say is that we don’t know it unless someone told us or we experienced it and are the ones doing the telling. Same thing could be said, I suppose, for science. Only the results of experiments by humans, evaluated and reported by humans.

     


    Politics Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Reimaging revelation Science US History

  • Transitioned

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer and the Mountain Summer Moon

    Shabbat gratefuls: Lengthening nights. Warm days. Spanish food for the Fourth. Judy Sherman. Kate. All those who suffer, yet are strong. Resilience. Workout yesterday. Joanne. Responsibility. Seeing, being responsive. Kavod. Honor. Teshuvah. Botany. Cambium. Phloem and xylem. Heartwood. Photosynthesis. Carbon Dioxide in. Oxygen out. Creating food for us all.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Energy into matter

    One brief shining: Got a thick cardboard box, heavy, filled first with crenelated paper, opened the larger box inside and removed the slices of acorn fed Iberian Jamon ham, of chorizo, of other ham slices, churros and xocalate, then the smaller box which contained Olives, grilled Peppers, nuts greeting my Fourth of July feast.

     

    Every once in a bit. I’ll see some food offering. In a grocery store, especially one like Tony’s. Or, online, maybe Wild Alaska or at the Spanish food site, La Tienda. The Store. My imagination gets caught by the marketer’s guile and visions of a scrumptious meal dance before my inner eye. Not real often. But on occasion.

    Less often, my eye’s dance, my inner tongue tastes the delicacies on offer and I reach for my money. The anticipation never matches the reality. Oh, if it only could. Sure the Jamon ham is tasty, but not in a lift off, send me to the moon way. The Olives are good as are the Peppers. Good, not amazing. I know. You’d think at 77 I would have learned. And mostly I have. But on occasion…

     

    Still no word from Rocky Mountain Cancer Care. Not sure why getting in to see these radiation oncologists is taking so long. Kristie put me on the Orgovyx to tamp down the cancer while I wait to get in, but it’s been almost three weeks and I don’t even have an appointment. I’ve jiggled Kristie and Rocky Mountain. Nada. I’m a bit frustrated. Ready to have these metastases radiated.

    I’m assertive about my care. In general and especially so with cancer, yet moving medical bureaucracies is no easier than moving corporate or governmental bureaucracies. Sometimes you have to wait.

     

    Back to the tarot deck. Pulling cards each day. Tarot tickles my inner compass, puts a probe down below my consciousness. Yesterday from the Wildwood Deck I turned over a five of vessels for the second time in three days. Ecstasy. Happiness. Realization of a dream. And from the Woodland Guardian deck, the Bee and the Pomegranate. Productivity. Hard work.

    Herme’s Pilgrimage has legs. Learning botany basics in a Coursera class from Tel Aviv University. Finished the Tree communication class from the New York Botanical Garden. Am reading my way through a book on Tree myths and one on old growth forests. Did a Google arts and culture search on Trees and got thousands of hits. This pilgrimage has a wandering path with Trees as a lodestar. For now. Plants, too.

    I have transitioned from the days of learning for my conversion and bar mitzvah to a new field of knowledge.

     

     

     

     


    Cooking Health Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Reimaging revelation Tarot Writing

  • I’m Into Something Good. Oh, yeah…

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: Cool night. Elk. Mule Deer. Fox. Great Sol. The Great Wheel. The Great Work. The Jewish Year. Wild Trees. Ancient Forests. Sequoias. Coastal Redwoods. Bristlecone Pines. Kabbalah. Shekinah. The Sabbath Bride. Emergence. Lodgepoles. Aspens. Jewitches. Love. Justice. Compassion. A direction, a purpose. A way to live.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Emergence

    One brief shining: Before the closing of the door and before I even open it, I stand hand over my eyes repeating the shema, declaring that I, god-wrestler, find the one to be all and the all to be one, which we might call god or not, but we can call it for sure the interdependent web of all things, all becoming things, everywhere there is a where, stretching from me in front of my bedroom door to the other reaches of this universe, passing by the Crab Nebula and the Horse Head Nebula on its way to a boundary where there can be no boundary.

     

    I’m into something good.* Said this this morning during the Ancient Brothers. An exciting burst of serendipity, synchronicity, plain old enthusiasm. Heading toward eudaimonia. Wow. Sounds manic as I write it. Has some of that flavor. The shovel that uncovered this new path? A dream. And the Dreamers’ response to it.

    And… Here we go. I’m going back to Wabash College. At least that place I was when I was there. Serendipity note: the Herman’s Hermits song below was released in 1964, the summer before my last year of high school, and before my mother’s death in October. Another serendipity note: Herman’s Hermits.

    When I went to Wabash, I had competing emotions, both so very strong. The first. Grief. Unresolved, not understood, in no way dealt with. Mom was dead. I left home to go to this school, at the time highly competitive, and bare my small town intellect to so many others so much smarter than me. Grief and uncertainty. Toxic at best.

    The second. Finally! A liberal arts education. A chance to get into the cultural deposit of the West. (It would be many, many years before Asia showed up in my life.) Philosophy. History. English Literature. Languages. A chance to grow beyond my autodidact years, guided by professors and stimulated by fellow students. Hard to convey the excitement, even relief, I felt at starting college.

    Then German happened. I wanted to read Hegel, Nietzsche, Kant in the original. So I signed up. And floundered. Bad. Got c’s and d’s on quizzes and tests. Where this headed was clear. Abject failure. I did not do the brave and movie worthy thing. Face up to it and overcome. No. I dropped German like a hot potato masher hand grenade.

    At the end of the year summer jobs were hard to find and Wabash was expensive. I decided to go further. Leave Wabash altogether. I’m not big on regret, but this is one of them for me.

    The dream. Said. Go back. Be who you intended to be. The one that got lost along the way. So who was I going to be, the 18 year old version of this 77 year old. I wasn’t sure of anything but my desire to dive headlong into the deep waters of the liberal arts. Where would I come out? No idea. Didn’t want to know. I only wanted the journey. No destination.

    I’ve made a journey, but got off the path of liberal arts, shunted aside by politics and religion. By alcohol and women. By travel and jobs. All ok, all good. Yet not where I wanted to be.

    Now. The tarot card, the Hermit, hangs rendered in neon over my breakfast table. Herman’s Hermits remind me of the year before college, feelings accelerating, ground speed increasing. I’m also reminded of my first response to Kate’s death. I’m going to be a hermit. Hence, the neon. Last year I wrote a one-act play introducing Herme, the Hermit, and Cold Mountain’s poetry. And the dream says, go. Teshuvah. Return to the highest and best you.

    A semi-hermit, a sometime recluse, a happy loner. But one with the permission to study, to write. To go back into the liberal arts and see if, as Israel: God-Wrestler, I can add to the world my own learnings.  About the Great Wheel, the Jewish liturgical year, trees and plants, about process metaphysics, about religion, about poetry and literature, about transformation and metamorphosis. These are the lenses through which I have learned to see the world.

    Next. Organizing my days, weeks, months, years around this Fool’s Journey. After that. On to the diving board, spring up and down. Out into thin air.

    *


    Feelings Fourth Phase Friends Great Wheel Great Work Holidays Humanities Judaism Letters Literature Myth and Story Plants Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Reimaging revelation Tarot

  • Cabin Fever Trip

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Moon of Liberation

    Tuesday gratefuls: Great Sol. Brightening our day. Counting the Omer. Begins tonight. Traveling readiness day. Delayed, but happening today. Diane’s great work on setting up an itinerary. Museums, as Ode says, temples of creativity. The Artist’s Way. My Jewish immersion. The Three Body Problem trilogy. Fall Out on Prime Video. High quality television. Kindle.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Artists-painters, writers, playwrights, musicians, poets, actors, sculptors, architects, composers

    One brief shining: With awakening I’m in a new life, a multiverse reality based on the day before yet new as the dew on a spring ephemeral, in that day my many breaths each constitute life breathed out and back in, new lives each breath, how can I keep from singing?

     

    Feeling the welcoming breath of a travel day exhaling from the end of the week toward me. Inspiring my activities today. Finalize packing. Stop mail. Get a pedicure. Collect myself for a journey.

    This is mostly a cabin fever trip. A way of escaping a place I love because the snow and the cold stayed a bit too long. And for most folks I’ve talked to. A way to refresh the joys of home by vacating its presence for a bit. Enjoy the graces and beauties of San Francisco, see Diane. Live in a hotel for 7 nights, 2 nights in a sleeping car there and back. Write. Read. See the Rockies, the intermountain West, the Sierra Nevadas, canyons and deserts.

    I’ve missed seeing good art on a regular basis. I’ve not found the Denver art scene at all comparable to the Twin Cities and I’ve let that attitude, plus the drive, keep me from seeing much at all. That’s on me. This trip will allow me to visit at least three of the country’s great collections: The Legion of Honor, the De Young, and the Asian Art museum. I plan to see them slowly. Taking as much time as I need. Reenter the world of Zhou and Han, Song and Tang, Picasso and Hokusai, Rodin and Giacometti.

    Yes. You could say of me. Religion, politics, and art. The subjective, the debatable, the aesthetic, the aspects of culture not manageable by STEM. Sure I like a good scientific discovery as much as the next nerd, but to examine an ancient text for the message it carries down the millennia to this day, to stand in the street and face down an oppressive economy, to join the conversation of those for whom shape, color, and language create whole worlds and dizzying perspectives, yes. That’s my journey.

    That and one other thing. The wild spots outside my door, up the flank of Black Mountain. Here on Shadow Mountain I can integrate the seeker, the advocate, and the artist with the world around me. My Lodgepole Companion and I see each other each morning. I said hello yesterday to those Mule Deer Does munching grass along Black Mountain Drive. Within them lie the same message as the Torah portion I will read on June 12th, the same spirit of over against oppressive structures, and an equivalent beauty to the best of Monet.

     


    Art and Culture Asia Mountains Music Myth and Story Poetry Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Reimaging revelation Shadow Mountain Travel

  • A person of…

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Moon of Liberation

    Shabbat gratefuls: The Morning Service. Bar Mitzvah. Snow. Cold. Moisture. Water. Air. Fire. Earth. Old physics. Physics. String theory. Twine theory. Thread theory. Quilts and quilting. Sewing. Matilda, Kate’s dress dummy. Kate in my dreams. Ancientrails. Diane. Art. In person. Judaism. My year of living Jewishlly. Outside my comfort zone. A lot.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Trains

    One brief shining: I looked out my window today, oh my, and there on the ground lay Snow, on the Branches of the Lodgepoles Snow, on the driveway Snow, and my Snow and Cold loving self looked at it and sighed, the calendar showing in less than two weeks, the fire holiday of Beltane, start of the growing season.

     

    Looking at myself. Some people. A man of money. Of power. Of racing. A woman of medicine. Of writing. Of the 100 meter dash. Of acting. Of music. Of whatever occupies prime location in an individual’s life story. I have to look at my story and be honest. I am a man of religion. Both small r and Big R. Individual and institutional. Can’t say I would have predicted this for me. Nor much of the time been aware of it.

    Yet. The deep questions of our species. Our search for meaning. For how to position ourselves in this, this whatever all this is. The folks and traditions who have explored these questions. My turf. Where I’ve lived much of my life. Oh, yes, their have been other enthusiasms: politics, art, writing, gardening, But somehow I always bounce back to the prayers, the songs, the sacred books. Not as a supplicant but always as a lover, one who presses his hand to the heart of it. Leans his head in and enjoys a quiet afternoon learning of the Greek Orthodox theological framework of reception. The Taoist wu wei. The Jewish Morning Service. Why Jesus prayed at Gethsemane. The Potawatomi writing habit of capitalizing the names of living things.

    One who rides through the Mountains looking for signs. Who walks down Mountain Valleys hearing the voices of the Creek, the Magpies, the wild Strawberries. Seeing in the gentle run of a Mountain Stream swollen by Spring Snows the path of all living things carried by this mystery, vitality. A man who cannot absent himself from the quest for what and why and where.

    Perhaps you, too? Do you read the sacred books and know their definite humanity, yet find within them the human desire to grasp the interconnectedness of things? Feel inspired to have your own moments of revelation? Perhaps, eh? That splash of color. That child’s laugh. The sudden sense that an injustice needs redress. The kisses of a small furry puppy or a three-year old child. A wondering about Buddha nature? About chi? About teshuvah? About Ramadan?

    You see my conviction is this. We are all people of religion. All born with wonder, imbued with awe, fascinated with the mysterious. Sure, some of us make a life of it, but all of us question. All of us see values and linkages. See them and need them. Yes, your path may be all of your own making, yet it can be informed by those who have chosen to retain the paths of their ancestors. As your path, your ancientrail, can inform theirs.


    Commentary on Religion Feelings Fourth Phase Great Wheel Judaism Mountains Myth and Story Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Reimaging revelation

  • In the Weeds. Skip if not interested

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Moon of Liberation

    Wednesday gratefuls: Marilyn and Irv. Spinal stenosis. Pain. Writing. Art date. Morning pages. Great Sol blasting us with fusion energy. Green Lodgepole Needles. Black Mountain. Blue Sky. Shadow Mountain strong. Our lives and the challenges we face, the moments that define us. Our favorite places. Earth. Our orbit around Great Sol.  Yod Heh Vav Heh. The ineffable. The unutterable. The necessary name. I was. I am. I will be. YHWH is one.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: the tetragrammaton

    One brief shining: There is a moment, an eternal moment, one still entrained in the vast sweep of eternity, when we find ourselves, know who we were, who we are, and who we will become, in that moment we instantiate the four letter name of God, we are godly, god corporeal, god within the world, god as hands and feet and heart for justice, mercy, and love, this moment is always and long, extending over your whole life.

     

    Feeling theological today. Here’s my torah portion in English:

    19:25 So Moses went down to the people and told them.

    20:1 Then God spoke all these words:
    2 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery

    I can now say this in Hebrew, pronouncing it from the Torah text which as I said a few days back has no vowels and no punctuation.

    Will also have to write a brief dvar Torah. An interpretation of these verses. Look forward to that. Going to concentrate on the word translated Lord here, the yod-heh-vav-heh name, YHWH, and which by long custom is usually pronounced in Jewish readings as either Adonai, Lord, or Hashem, the name.

    Plan to refer to Rabbi Arthur Green, Rabbi Jamie’s mentor and former President of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. He suggested a version of the Shema in which the word Adonai is said aloud while picturing YHWH in the mind. Jamie told me about this. This is now and has been my practice since I learned about it. Not sure what Green’s notion is, but here’s what I get from doing it over and over.

     Adonai and Hashem are sort like cover bands for the tetragrammaton. They show a certain level of respect for YHWH, but in fact obscure it and its power. The true name of God, in Jewish tradition, is unpronounceable and unwriteable. Therefore, as Ludwig Wittgenstein once said, or almost said, “Of it we cannot speak.” YHWH can be pronounced and written. Its meaning may be obscure. Rabbi Jamie teaches that it is a mashup of verbs, not a noun, and many agree with this reading. Including me.

    If we follow the verbal idea, the name means something like I was, I am, I will be. Sorta makes sense as a description of the one, the unity that is all things according to Jewish theology. How I view this “name” lies not in its identification purpose-this is God’s name-rather in its process and metaphysical claim. What was, what is, and what will be is in fact the source of Torah, the claim that an interconnected, interdependent whole best expresses the reality in which live, and move, and have our becoming.

    We are bound up in the pastness, the presentness, and the futureness of reality. Inextricable from it, contributing to it, having to interact with it. If we enter into a covenant with reality, saying that we will not separate ourselves from each other or from the world around us, then we act consciously and creatively to advance the whole, not pretending that certain people are different and therefore bad, not pretending that the world outside our homes and offices is not also our home, not pretending that we have a way to wall ourselves off from each other through towers of wealth or knowledge or power.

    Humility and awe. That’s the what all this suggests to me. Live with humility and awe.


    Judaism Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Reimaging revelation Torah