Category Archives: Reimaging revelation

Judaism, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation, Torah

Fire

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Imbolc and the Cold Moon

Friday gratefuls: Alan. Snow incoming. Joanne. Marilyn and Irv. Rabbi Jamie. Leo and Luke. Mindy. Ginny. Janet. Ellen. Carol. Thursday mussar. A steel gray Sky. The yellowback running for President. Old Joe Biden. Democrats. Those who used to be Republicans. The Electoral College. To its demise. Mountain roads. Wild Neighbors. My Indiana home. The Sycamores.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: New Harmony, Indiana

One brief shining: Luke asked me if I had gotten my extra ear back off the table from Thursday mussar, the Roger he meant, the small flying saucer like device that glows green when it’s on, taking in speech from my left or across a table in a noisy restaurant, cleaning it up and delivering it via Bluetooth to my fancy schmancy hearing aid; Amy my audiologist says it reduces fatigue from straining to hear and understand. Believe she’s right.

 

I’ve written before about collecting my medical guardian, my hearing aid, my phone, my fitbit before I head out. Old age and technology add accessories to wallet and keys. Now I have to remember my Roger, too. The watch pocket on my jeans. Perfect fit. I also have to remember to pick it up, too, since I lost my first one at Gaetano’s with Alan. Getting more used to using it when I’m out. Especially since my ability to filter ambient noise has deteriorated.

 

The metaphor we’re discussing in Thursday mussar is fire. We began with a general conversation about fire itself, how humans have, uniquely among all living creatures, learned to use it. How it requires destruction. How it takes three things: fuel, spark, oxygen.

The most interesting aspect of Thursday’s session focused on the burning bush. This episode in Exodus occurs fifty years after Moses left Egypt, having killed an Egyptian overseer. Moses has become a shepherd and has herded his flock into the desert around Midian. He notices a fire burning off to the side of his path. Curious about it he turns from the path he was on to take a look. At some point he realizes the bush is on fire but not being consumed. God notices that he has turned aside to look and calls to him from the bush: Moses, Moses. Moses replies, “Here I am.”

If you recall, I wrote earlier about the difference between the higher criticism I learned in seminary and the Jewish approach to the Torah. The conversation yesterday at Beth Evergreen highlighted that difference. The question was not where was Mount Horeb, near which the bush burned. Or what was the history of Midian, beyond what the Torah offers as the place where Moses met his wife Zipporah while in exile from his homeland, Egypt. We didn’t examine the form of the text or its history at the hands of redactors or in the various historic texts of the Book of Exodus.

No. We discussed what was going on first. Moses turned and looked. He noticed the bush was not consumed. A messenger of God appeared to him, then God himself. In this episode Moses receives his call to return to Egypt and confront Pharaoh. To initiate the liberation of the Hebrew slaves.

Here’s what fascinated me about our conversation. We went from Moses observing a burning bush to the burning bush as metaphor for Moses’ own enlightenment. Moses had been on fire since leaving Egypt with a passion for his enslaved people. But he didn’t know what to do, if anything. Suddenly, while in the desert alone, in a place of solitude, it comes to him that he has to return to Egypt and do what he can to liberate them. Even though he feels inadequate to the task.

We then discussed the nature of revelation and how metaphor gives us a language to speak of our own experiences of revelation and the capacity to more deeply and personally understand the Torah as revelation. This is it. Emerson’s a religion of revelation to us in our time.

With this twist and one with which I agree. That the Torah and the Upanishads and the Tao de Ching and the New Testament and the Quran are not the dry bones Emerson found them to be, but a history of others who have walked the path of openness to the vast and sacred reality in which we live. They are our spiritual ancestors who have much to teach us about how to recognize and integrate those mystical moments when our own Reed Sea parts, when we stop from herding the sheep of our life to look at our bush that burns but is not consumed.

 

 

 

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Mussar, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation, Science

Expectations

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Winter and the Cold Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Alan and Cheri. Joanne. Denver. Downtown living. Down the hill living. Shadow Mountain home. Domo. Buckhorn. Sushi Den. Jerusalem. Ali Baba. The Bistro. The Fort. Bread Lounge. Angry Chicken. Katsu Ramen. Fountain Barbecue. Restaurants. Meals out with family and friends. Chamber music. Charlie Parker. Thelonius Monk. Herbie Mann. Dave Clark Five. Dazzle.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Shabbat

One brief shining: Bought a weighted blanket last summer and in these now cold winter nights it’s part of the layered system that keeps me warm; some mornings of late I’ve taken to enjoying not sleeping in but lying in, wrapped in those layers and happy with my head in the cold, just right, wondering why it all felt so good and I realized the other day it was the embrace of that weighted blanket.

 

One of the reasons I’ve taken to these occasional surrender moments, to being awake but staying in bed, is the time it gives me to think. To ponder without distraction. I can follow a thought down an ancientrail and back again. This morning the notion of expectations had me going.

Over the last couple of weeks in mussar we’ve been discussing an example given by Rabbi Toba Spitzer in her book, God is Here. Which I highly recommend, btw. Her example comes from a silent retreat, an annual event for her. She sits down to lunch, imagining the taste of the food, enjoying the view, settling in for a pleasant lunch. A man sits down near her and begins to eat an Apple. Each bite explodes in her ear. She’s completely thrown off the wonderful lunch she’d imagined. She ends up with a ruined lunch. The obvious culprit here is her expectation of how her lunch would go. As long as she held onto the quiet, contemplative meal, she experienced torment from the Apple eater.

Taking the learning here. Expectations can sabotage our experience. Bad expectations. Bad. Down expectations.

Then I began to wonder. What are expectations? The shorthand we use so we can navigate our day. Cars will stop at stop signs. Eating two eggs, bacon, and home fries will not only taste good, but satisfy my hunger. Leo will make me happy when he comes to stay. The stove will turn on. Expectations help us by routinizing parts of our lives. So we’re not always thinking through what’s going to happen next.

Then it hit me. Expectations are the mental habit behind curiosity. Not obvious, right? Why? Because when something happens that defies or upsets our expectations, we have two choices. Choice one. Do our best to return our experience to its anticipated path. Which makes sense if the stove won’t turn on or we decide to wait out the guy who just ran the stop sign.

But even in those mundane instances we have to stop and consider the second choice. Why? Why won’t the stove turn on? Why did that guy run the stop sign? In these cases the answers will probably not rock our world.

However. Imagine that you assumed the earth was the center of the universe and you expected the data from your telescope would confirm that. Or on a less exalted plain. Traffic had caused me to stop beside three large Willow Trees. I looked at them, all gnarly and twisted, thick, old. Then I thought. Wait a minute. These are Willows. There’s no creek here. What’s going on? I’ve never seen Willows up here except by a stream. I don’t know the answer. But I’d like to.

Here’s the aha. Curiosity arises when something breaches our expectations. Why did she say that? What’s going on with my dog? Why is she limping? Why has the climate begun to change? What would happen if I put this and this together rather than that and that? Does the Apple eater have to ruin my lunch?

What this suggests to me. Greet breaches of your expectations with wonder. With awe. Because the world and your experience has given you a chance to learn something new.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation

The Most Precious Treasure

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Winter and the Cold Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: How do I feel? A mood changer. Thanks, Tal. Joan, such a bright lady. Alan in his tie dyed t-shirt for the Beatles shabbat. Luke’s dvar torah. His playing and singing in the service. A testament to his courage and growth. Breakfast at Dandelions, reopened under new ownership. Ackerman’s pick up of the couch. Reupholstering. Fixing Rigel’s deep hole. My son and Seoah.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Breakfast with friends

One brief shining: Got the new menu for Dandelions, three of them, one for Alan and Joan and me, went back to the table and took my time with it since I was still alone, noticed corned beef hash as an entree, two eggs, found a side of berries, and I had made my decision so I slid my menu away from me, picked up the cream and added it to the coffee, waiting.

 

A quote from the Zen calendar gifted me by Tom. From the Upanishads:

“God made the senses turn outwards, man (sic) therefore looks outward, not into himself. But occasionally a daring soul, desiring immortality, has looked back and found himself.”

Don’t know the context of this quote but by itself it tells a truth and a half-truth. The truth is this. Our physicality forces our attention out and away from ourselves. Oh, look! See that! Wow. Did you hear what she said? Hey, can you smell that? OMG. This is the best avocado toast ever. Yes, again. Right there.

The half-truth is only occasionally is there a daring soul who turns to the inner cathedral, that alembic of memory and thought powered by the fiery heat of the emotions. And that when they do they seek immortality. Some may, of course, search for the secret to life beyond life. But most of us stumble through the doors of our inner cathedral when a shock like grief, major illness, addiction, rejection, or several days in a row of gloomy inner weather force us down the steps into our vast private universe. We all go there from time to time over the course of a life. And look back, in rather than out. Unknown how many find themselves.

How can we learn from the experience? Socrates. The unexamined life is not worth living. I believed that the first time I encountered it and believe it now. That examen as the Jesuits call it is not for the timid; as any cartographer can tell you, here there be monsters. Yet it is those shadowy winged creatures of our soul who guard the real treasure.

Which suggests to me that Gandalf might well be our guide. I think of him in his encounter with the Balrog in the mines of Moira. Gandalf could have turned and run or at least not advanced toward the menacing creature. Instead he walks onto the narrow bridge that will carry him straight into the Balrog’s path.

Gandalf walked toward the bomb, toward the fight, toward the pillar of smoke and in so doing earned the opportunity to face a great obstacle rather than force it back down and away from consciousness. In the ensuing battle Gandalf the Grey dies but only after killing the Balrog. Later, he reemerges as Gandalf the White.

Whether Gandalf or Virgil or Moses or Tiresias or even Ignatius of Loyola, we need a guide, a companion as we wander the labyrinths of our heart/mind. I found John Desteian who walked with me through the tunnels and traps of my 28 years. I’ve found Ira Progroff and his journal workshops. Now Moses and the Torah. I’ve found Gandalf and Virgil, too. But the key companion all along has been the then existing version of myself.

I invite you to find the entrance to your mines of Moira. I invite you to take a deep breath and set your foot on the steps that lead down and in to your inner cathedral. Yes, there be monsters there, but they’re your monsters and they guard the most precious treasure of all: self-knowledge.

 

 

 

Judaism, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation, Torah

In Shabbat

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Winter and the Winter Solstice Moon

Saturday gratefuls: 6-8 inches of new Snow coming tonight and tomorrow. White Christmas. And, yes, it still matters to me. The dark. The long Nights. Christmas Eve. Christmas Day. Chinese restaurants. Home movie. Quiet days. Shabbat. Today. Till 5:52. Leonard Bernstein. Maestro. Love stories. Action films. Art house cinema. Vayigash. This week’s parsha. Zornberg. Green. Ellis. New blinds. John Ellis. Evergreen Shutter and Shade.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Christmas

One brief shining: Down the hill to Evergreen at night and after Thanksgiving some Lodgepoles and Ponderosas become pillars of light with bright multi-colored bulbs running from crown to base, how they do it I don’t know, I drive past following the curves and watching the lights, trying to remain on the road, sometimes it’s hard to do both.

 

I’m in my version of Shabbat until 5:52. Still working on what it means for me. Probably going to breakfast at Aspen Perks, see the wait staff there before Christmas. Seeing and being with friends is part of mine. I also read the parsha, Vayigash this week. Each parsha gets its name from the first word of the passage. This week Joseph reveals himself to his brothers and Jacob/Israel makes the journey to Goshen. I’m reading some commentaries, too.

Hang on here. I’m gonna get a bit into the weeds.

Avivah Zornberg writes commentaries that are rich in psychoanalytic and midrashic thought. Midrash are commentaries written by rabbis, mostly from a long time ago though they’re still being written today, too. Jewish encounter with the biblical text differs a great deal from the hermeneutical method I was taught in seminary. Higher criticism.

Exegesis came first. That meant using various critical methodologies like redaction criticism, seeing how various texts were edited, form criticism, sussing out whether the text conformed to, say, a prayer or a covenant or a song form, historical criticism, what was going on in the time period in which the text was written, textual criticism, how had this text fared in different editions of the bible over time. As well as others. The exegetical task was to find what the text meant in its day, sort of an originalist approach to the text.

Then came the hermeneutical task. How did this passage and its message, as determined by exegesis, relate to our time. After that the homiletical work, writing the sermon, could begin.

The Jewish approach can include the exegetical approach. Rabbis learn what critical methods have discovered about biblical texts. And, there is a lot of material to access. However, the Jewish approach that I have come to appreciate relies very little on higher criticism. Higher criticism seeks the best information about what the text meant in its day. Jews play with the text. Search in it for hidden meanings, word play, the human story. Or, the way the sacred reveals itself.

In the story of Joseph, for example, Joseph’s brothers throw him in a pit, then take his coat, dripping with blood from a lamb, and give that to Jacob, his father, saying they don’t know what happened to him. Jacob says it looks like a wild beast has torn him apart.

Instead of spending time on exegesis Zornberg dives right in. The pit can represent nothingness, ayin, the same nothingness from which God created the world. Joseph’s brothers consign him to ayin both by throwing him in the pit and by taking his blood soaked coat to Jacob. Jacob though is not completely taken in. He says it looks like a wild beast has torn him apart. He leaves open whether Joseph is dead or alive.

But. Joseph is now absent from him and will be until the revelation comes to them about Joseph in Egypt. So, Jacob experiences Joseph as being in nothingness. Because of the blood. Zornberg then riffs on blood and what it can mean like bloodline, life, sacrifice. There are also the themes of sibling rivalry, deception, a father’s deep love for his son, as well as the parallel story of Joseph’s journey into Egypt and his rise to power there.

I like the focus on longer passages, on whole narratives within the text. I also like an approach that seeks multiple meanings in the same text, acknowledging that we all approach not only Torah but everything in our life from distinctive places. That we see differently and conclude differently. It’s the frisson among the differing ideas raised in the Jewish encounter with the text that is the point. Not finding the meaning or message of the text, no, finding the messages and meanings of the text. A prismatic truth rather than a single truth.

 

 

Colorado, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Fungi, Health, Hermitage, Holidays, Myth and Story, Park County, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation, Shadow Mountain, The West, Travel, US History

Surrender Charlie

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Samain and the Winter Solstice Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Heidi. The Dragonfly Sign. Colorado Supreme Court. Psilocybin. Nahuatl Gods and Mayan hieroglyphics. Surrender. Irv. Rider. Mt. Logan. Crooked Top Mountain. The Grandfather Tree. Park County 43. Buggy Whip Road. Hangman’s Road. Washington County Maine. Climate change. Shadow Mountain. The Rockies. The Front Range. Alan. Bastien’s Steak House. The Winter Solstice. Holimonth.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Colorado Supreme Court

One brief shining: A cloth with Native American colors marking the four directions, circular, laid on it cut white Roses, small Pine Tree Branches, red Roses, Cinnamon, Coffee beans, Star Anise, Aspen Leaves arranged for a Peruvian gratitude ceremony in which I picked up a small Branch of Pine Needles, inhaled its essence three times and exhaled my love and gratitude before placing the needles gently in the center.

 

OK, nation! See Colorado go. I loved living in Minnesota and in the Twin Cities for forty years. The North Woods. Wolves. Lake Superior. So many Lakes. Liberal to radical politics. Not perfect, no. Witness George Floyd. But no place is. And Minnesota seemed as close as they come while I lived there. Then Kate and I moved to Shadow Mountain.

As the Dead said: What a long, strange trip it’s been. Many of you know my story over the now 9 years exactly since my buddy Tom and I drove straight through from the Twin Cities with Kepler, Vega, and Rigel in the back. And, yes, that story has its definite peaks and valleys. But that’s not my reference here.

No where else in the country, this divided and often pitiful land of ours, could I have had a legal psychedelic journey on Crooked Top Mountain then come home to Shadow Mountain and read the wonderful news that the Colorado Supreme Court had called a crook a crook, an insurrectionist an insurrectionist and kicked Trump off our ballot. I mean, whoa! What a day.

I shifted my inner identification a few years back from Minnesotan to Coloradan, my Mountain home become just that. Home. Yes, we elected a gay Governor. How bout that. And of course the wild Neighbors and the Mountain Streams and the Black Bears. The Snow and the spectacular Autumns with gold and green. Over the time I’ve lived here Colorado has shifted from red to blue. Not without some Western weirdness along the way, but that makes it interesting. All that’s true.

But in one day to take a psilocybin journey with a good friend on property so evocative of a sixties commune and then learn we Coloradans had taken a firm stand, saying what all clear eyed non Trump bedazzled folks already know but somehow cannot communicate, that insurrectionists should not, in fact,cannot hold office. Well, I’m busting with state pride right now. Colorado is the California of the new Millennia. OK. Enough local chauvinism. Still, pretty damned cool. Gives this aging radical a boost.

 

Short note on the psilocybin journey about which more later. Ate the mushroom after the gratitude ceremony. Mixed with a little lemon juice supposed to make it come on quicker and go sooner. Sat outside in the glass enclosed shelter where we held the gratitude ceremony, the others going inside. Watched the curved Snowy Bowl of Mt. Logan as my inner weather shifted under the power of the mushroom.

Went inside and lay down on a heated pad. Soon Nahuatl Gods and Mayan hieroglyphics began to move across the ceiling. Sometimes two dimensional sometimes three almost down to my face. I love hallucinations. So fun. I told my guide I might be under utilizing the experience; it was so entertaining.

Turned out no. I hadn’t. I had two intentions going in, the one I wrote about yesterday, how to live fully, and the second to continue my exploration of the sacred.

During some brief conversation after being asked if we had any insights I said, yes, I had one. In living more fully I’ve pushed, thought about things to do, about acting in my life to live more fully. Answering Shakespeare, I have always chosen to take up arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them. Now I need to learn surrender.

To live fully I need to open up, accept what’s coming. Greet the new year with arms spread wide for what it brings rather than what I can make happen. Well, not rather than. I mean, I’ll still take up arms, of course I will, but I learned yesterday that I have another option. To embrace, to wait, to listen, to let the world and its wonders come to me. As the Wicked Witch of the West might say, “Surrender, Charlie!”

 

 

Garden, Memories, Minnesota, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation

The Holy Land

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Samain and the Winter Solstice Moon

Monday gratefuls: Heidi. Irv. Luke. Money. Rich. Leo, the sweet boy. Cooper. Who may join me here. Sleep. Restoration. Resurrection. A new life, this day. Paul’s photo of the sardines. But, Paul, I’m stuck on lobster pots. Tom’s found sign. (right) Bill working with the paper marblers. Ode and the Stars. Diane getting ready for Taiwan. All the wound up little kids out there. Santa Claus. Norad. Christmas Trees. Eggnog. Lights. Yule Logs. All those pagan rooted parts of the celebration we call Christmas. Incarnation

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The ohr in everything

One brief shining: Wanted a piece of jewelry a necklace as a constant reminder of my conversion but no to a mogen David, the six pointed star, no to a chaim searched could not find anything until an Etsy artist from Israel with handmade metal Alephs showed up, loved it the beginning of the Hebrew alphabet, makes no sound, a symbol for ayin nothingness, the ein sof from which Lurainic kabbalah says all creation has its origin, now around my neck, making no sound, under my shirt, talking in quiet whispers to me of origins and nothingness.

 

 

Sorry for wearing my sacred heart on my sleeve these last few posts. No, I’m not. Well, I don’t want to weary you with it. May not be your thing. Or, you may wonder about my mental stability. Which of course you might anyway. But to me I feel sane, just fine. As they all say, right?

Have been re-reading Radical Judaism by Jamie’s mentor, Arthur Greenberg. The Radical piece comes from the Radical Theology movement that sprang up from the death of God conversation. Radical theologians wrote in honest recognition of the wreck on modernist shores that the God of old had become. He expired there, perhaps holding his long white beard in wrinkled old man hands.

In Greenberg I find a soul companion, one who’s journey and mine took the road less traveled to much the same destination. A reimagining of sacredness utilizing the tools of other ancient seekers, especially focusing on the Western religious traditions. I took the Christian turnoff, then the liberal religion loop, stayed a long while in earth centered paganism, but, like Greenberg ended up on the path to the Holy Land.

That may be the best short hand for this work, come to think of it. The Holy Land. Not just for the Middle East anymore. My Holy Land. The drive between Shadow Mountain and Evergreen through the Arapaho National Forest. Your Holy Land, maybe the Waters of Lake Minnetonka, or a Regional Park, or a pond near your townhome, or the cold Atlantic and the Waters and Lands of Down East Maine. Lucky Street and its domestic neighbors.

Bloom where you are planted. Yes, a cliche for sure. And yet profound. Who knows when this phrase entered my archives, too common to pin down. But as an ethic, a call to action, a daily motivator it has stuck with me. Sort of like the shema: Listen up, Israel. The One is our God. Our god is the one. Brought to mind often, shaping a world in its simple resonant logic.

When Kate had to move to the exurbs to be within 15 minutes of the hospital, I resisted. I had lived in the Twin Cities for 30 years. My working life had focused on urban issues, urban politics. What was I gonna do in conservative Anoka County? But there was no choice. She needed the new job. We needed the new job. So. We bought a model home on 2.5 acres of land. About 40% wooded, some scrub Oak and Black Ash with long grass, the rest stripped bare by bulldozers in the process of construction.

Those of you visited our Andover home know what we did. We quite literally bloomed, over and over again, where we were planted.

I’m going to continue this idea later.

 

 

 

Cinema and Television, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation

A Use for God?

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Samain and the Winter Solstice Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Images. The eye and its mysteries. Our stories, the Ancient Brothers. Evoked by photographs: Orion, a candle, the symbol of the Tao, a leafless tree in winter with a sun on the horizon. Christmas Cactus. A light, fun drama. Alan as an assistant director. Cheri the salsa dancer. Leo, a true garbage hound. Luke in Granby with Tal and friends. Rabbi Jamie and Laura yesterday. Going on a mushroom journey on Tuesday. A celebratory steak dinner at Bastiens. Wednesday. Thanks, Alan. Reading now about covenant. All day today.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Alan

One brief shining: Found the strip mall, found suite J, the Wheatridge Theater Company, delivered my phone as ticket, found a seat next to Alan and Cheri, a three sided stage with three sided seating, a woman next to Alan working the lights in a black curtained space, and settled in for the entertaining story of Christmas Cactus, the detective.

 

On my heart this morning. A new vision, new eyes. Opened to a different wavelength, the band of sacredness. Since the drive the other day when the sacred pulse along the road began to insist, I have had my sensibility shifted. Not all the time, but much of the time. That tree, the Aspen there with its gray bark, its leafless Branches, its sturdy Trunk, and the roots below say to me: yes, I grow here, am here, one piece of this Forest whole. But not in words. The Lodgepole just out my window. Its curved Branches salute Great Sol as they soak up fusion energy, life giving energy. Their humility, their prayerfulness. I feel glad.

Where these new eyes to see what I’m looking at have come from I don’t know. I can only report that I have them. Sleeping Leo gives me a swelling heart as he is the Dog, Leo, but also all Dogs, all animals.

I hear the heat pump working, drawing what heat there is in the 35 degree weather into my house. Warming me. A marvel. Awesome. Sacred. Think of the water vapor also invisible, also in the air. When a cloud forms, the invisible water vapor becomes visible. Ah, we say. Water. But only a fraction of the story. Why? Because the water vapor is there right now, all around you, around that Aspen and that Lodgepole. The cloud functions as a reminder, a natural heuristic device.

“See” the water vapor. Know it’s there. This is the same experience I’m having with the sacred right now. I can see it where before it was invisible to me. Perhaps I’m meant to be a cloud, a natural heuristic device.

Different tact. Same vein. God. Does that word, that idea add anything to this experience. My inclination is no. In fact perhaps the word God with all its linguistic and historical baggage obscures rather than unveils. Yes. My immediate, knee jerk response after many years of abdicating myself from God language.

However. As a word that might denote the totality of this experience, of seeing, being enveloped by, the sacred? There might be some purpose there. Not finished with this. Not at all.

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Mountains, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation, Shadow Mountain, Wild Neighbors

I Could Have Said, Hallelujah

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Samain and the Winter Solstice Moon

Saturday gratefuls: Word to Deed. Rabbi Jamie. The dark of a Mountain Winter morning. Good sleeping. Darkness and Fog. Obscurants. Leo. Here again. Luke. Tal. Sofers. Scribes for Torah scrolls, ketubahs, and mezuzah scrolls. Evenings out. Alan. His BMW. Dispatched from the factory. Not yet at the port. Kabbalah. Talmud. Midrash. Faith and its cultured despisers. Including me? Learning. Bread Lounge. French Sourdough. A Cuban.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Christmas Cactus, Alan as assistant director

One brief shining: The Bread Lounge inhabits a second floor space over Nelly’s General Store in a small upscale shopping center in Evergreen and is at least for now the place to go filled all the time with young lovelies, retirees, the occasional tourist, and the friendly cash register lady who asked Alan and I yesterday morning, “What are you two fine gentlemen up to this morning?”

 

You know you’re a regular when the cashier not only greets you but on occasion gives you the military discount just because she wants to. Or a waitress leans out from the kitchen, “Hi, Charlie!” Or when the Sugar Jones folks put together a box of 8 creme brulee truffles just for you because they’re selling out their Christmas orders and want to be sure you have your weekly fix.

My address says Conifer but I spend much more time in Evergreen. CBE is in Evergreen and many of my friends. Though. My precinct is actually an Evergreen precinct. I live between Evergreen and Conifer, a bit closer to Conifer but not that far from Evergreen either.

As a small town boy, I find these sorts of interactions grounding. I’m known. Not well, but as a person who belongs here. That was the way of life in Alexandria, Indiana as I grew up. Many folks knew who you were, well enough to greet you on the street or in a restaurant or shop. Those greetings said, yes, I know you and I know you know me. The relational glue that made a small town function.

We also knew when Art got caught again playing poker in the backroom while on duty as an Alexandria policeman. When a local teacher got caught stealing a cup of quarters at a casino in southern Indiana. Who died. Who had a wreck. Who was sick. Who got pregnant with no husband. But we also knew who the father was. Small town life had its definite pluses and minuses, especially in the golddust covered years of the late 50’s and early 60’s.

Plus or minus my 76 year old person still responds with warmth to situations that remind me of days spent at Bailey’s Drug Store or the Bakery or at the County Fair. 12 years of education with the same kids. Paper routes on the same streets. All those stories involving the same people. A real place, a real there there.

I want to be clear. These are not conscious triggers. Rather, they are subtle, below awareness until they begin to mount up, hit a critical mass. And I realize, oh, I feel comfortable here. Part of not apart from.

Had a related feeling yesterday as I drove to Evergreen. Driving through the Arapaho National Forest, familiar with the curves, the houses, the terrain up and down. The sacred began to be visible. Those Lodgepoles growing in the rocky crevices, life powerful and insistent. The wavy brown stalks of Grass covering a Meadow like a beard on a face. The Red Osier Dogwood and the Willow Trees outlining the Mountain Stream from which they drink. Those two Mule Deer crossing the road in front of me. All sacred, all part of the one. Suppose I could have said, hallelujah.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism, Mussar, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation

Call Me When You Get It

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Samain and the Choice Moon

Friday gratefuls: Good sleep. Laying around. Hanukah. Lighting my first candles as a Jew. Toba Spitzer. Mordecai Kaplan. Metaphor. God is Here. Mussar. Holimonth. Advent. Posada. The darkness. My inner Shadow Mountain. Tara’s cute new puppy. Kippur. Leo. Kepler of blessed memory. Rigel of blessed memory. Kate of blessed memory. A pinch of dysthymia. Oversleeping. Winds knocking over my trash can. Weather on the way. Cold and Snow. Rich. Diane. Tom. My son and Seoah and Murdoch.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Leo

One brief shining: The cloud as metaphor sitting in Evergreen, Colorado, talking to Rabbi Toba Spitzer in Newton, Massachusetts, while others dotted the screen from Lakewood, Georgetown, Conifer who was the live audience, us around the table in Beth Evergreen or the individuals in the cloud, or were we all simply in the Cloud alive to ourselves but bits and bytes elsewhere? The multiparity?

 

Not sure what’s going on with me right now, but I’ve slept in a lot this week. Over two hours this morning. Post-conversion dysthymia? That old melancholy coming up the chimney from its shack on my inner Shadow Mountain? Have felt slightly off for a few days. Negative thoughts showing up, not staying, not affecting my mood for long. Thanks to the how do I feel exercise Tal taught us. Yet they keep returning and oversleeping usually means a disturbance in the inner world.

 

When I drove back from p.t. yesterday though. Mary discharged me. Good work on the back and I now have the exercise tools to manage it, know when to ask for help if it flares again. Prior to seeing Mary we had the Zoom which included Rabbi Toba Spitzer answering questions about her book, God is Here. Loved her. A great mind working at the frontiers of religious thought.

Coming back up Brook Forest Drive I felt good. Reminded myself that people, people are good. I need people on line and in person regularly. Patted myself on the back for attending mussar, seeing Mary. Having meaningful connections in both places. Told Mary when she said something about her boyfriend that he was lucky, somebody out there needed her in their life, glad to know she’d found someone.

 

Janet and I had an interesting post-mussar conversation. She said the only way to find God is through meditation. She’s a Jewbu. A Jewish Buddhist. And a very bright lady.

Well, god is a universal idea so how can you be sure if the one you find in meditation is the One? Don’t we need each other for that sort of connection? She agreed we need the sangha, the synagogue.

 

I don’t think the only way to connect with the sacred is to go in. As most of you know. Though it’s a sound way. I find the sacred right out there on the surface of things. The Lodgepole. Janet. Black Mountain. Mary. Leo. Electricity. Computers. Darkness. Daytime.

Rich and I had a disagreement about this on Wednesday night. He wanted to preserve the particularity of Judaism, that its holy places in Israel, for example, were special. I asked him what Judaism points to.

I agree with his appreciation and love for the particularities of Judaism, its holy places, rituals, people. Otherwise I would not have converted. Yet. I also want to preserve the idea that we do not need the rock on which Abraham would have sacrificed Isaac, or the Western Wall, or Mt. Sinai, or even the Torah to find our way to the sacred, to recognize our inescapable linkage to and with it.

Here’s a poem that Tom offered this morning that says what I’m saying. By David Budbill

 

The Three Goals
The first goal is to see the thing in itself
in and for itself, to see it simply and clearly
for what it is.
No symbolism, please.

The second goal is to see each individual thing
as unified, as one, with all the other
ten thousand things.
In this regard, a little wine helps a lot.

The third goal is to grasp the first and the second goals,
to see the universal in the particular,
simultaneously.
Regarding this one, call me when you get it.

 

 

Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation

Revelation Real Talk

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Samain and the Choice Moon

Friday gratefuls: Cardiology. 1818 Ogden Street. Enlarged Aorta. A trip down the hill. Potluck tonight. Participating in the service. The oneg. Mindy’s chocolate treat. Leo coming on Sunday. Luke to Florida. His mom. Veronica. Rabbi Steve. Rabbi Jamie. Joan. Cooking. Classes. Reading about Jewish Identity. Preparing a session on emunah, faith, with clouds as the metaphor. The kippah. Israel. Having a new name.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Lev, the heart-mind

One brief shining: Revelation, revealing, stripping, strip clubs are religions really strip clubs for the sacred and the holy I ask this only because I wonder what neon sign synagogues and mosques and churches might put out front to advertise themselves maybe a cloud fading away, returning, or maybe a rock solid boulder with a small halo, or perhaps a great waterfall, sure you could go with the usual the cross, the crescent, the star of David, but how yesterday let’s catch up with the times, eh?

 

Revelation. Simple, really. Reveals. Reveals what? Ah, there’s the rub. If it reveals, and here’s a very serious question, why were these matters covered up in the first place? Occulted. Hidden. Obscured. And, if they are so powerful, so important, so necessary why go to the trouble to make them difficult to locate or understand? I mean, come on.

Take Mohammed, his name be blessed, in the cave. God downloaded the Quran from the cloud through him. Holy Dropbox! Or, Moses authoring the Torah. Or, the moving finger guiding Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Not to mention all of us who subsequently made a living helping people understand all this revelation. All the ink spilled since on the meaning of jihad, salvation, Abraham. Not to mention too, all the blood spilled. Institutions, buildings, gathered wealth and power. Moving far away, as Emile Durkheim predicted, from the charisma, tending toward the bureaucratic.

Was this the point of all those who wrote and who later claimed or had claimed for them, divine inspiration? Doubt it. But we are human, all too human, bound to want to hoard wisdom, fence off knowledge, keep others a safe distance from our stash.

So revelation has this unintended consequence of creating religions, never the point. But if not what was the point and why did the revelations stop coming? Did the God referred to in these Abrahamic religions stop talking? Did the still small voice become so still and small as to be inaudible?

Real talk. We’ve blocked our ears. Shut our eyes. Swathed our hands. Stopped up our nose. Closed our mouth. Revelation never stopped. How could it? The sacred reality of our daily life screams to be heard. To be seen. To be felt. Smelled, tasted. Taken into our bodies, realized too, from our inner world, the still small voice of the sacred? No. It shouts to you from your inner cathedral (Ira Progoff). You are made in the image of Mother Earth! You are part of this vast throbbing, buzzing universe perhaps its consciousness, its opportunity to perceive itself and you spend your time worried? No. It has all been provided for you. Just look around. And you’ll know.