Category Archives: Ancient Brothers

Ancient Brothers, Far Right, Men, Politics, US History

The Lost Boys

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Lughnasa and the Cheshbon Nefesh Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Jamie. Ty. Irv. Jim. Seth. Bruce. Joe. Matt. Lawyer guy. Will. Bill. Irv’s first time leading group. Evergreen High School. Its students. Seth’s daughters. Rain. 40 degree morning. A Mountain Fall begins. The Aspen’s, like Smaug, guarding still their gold. My son. His journey. A life led by principle. The Ancient Brothers on mystery.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Men, together

Year Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah: Derech Eretz.  literally, the way of the land.

  • Natural law. In some interpretations, it represents a natural, moral order that exists independent of formal Torah law. This is reflected in the saying, “Derech Eretz preceded the Torah,” and speaks to the innate decency that human beings should possess

Tarot:  #2 The High Priestess Druid Craft

  • Patience and waiting: The High Priestess advises against taking immediate action. She represents a time of quiet gestation and reflection, encouraging you to wait for more clarity to emerge.
  • Spirituality and the subconscious: The card points toward a deeper connection with your spiritual side, meditation, and exploring the mysteries of your psyche. 
One brief shining: We sat in the sanctuary shofars evidence signaling the coming of Rosh Hashanah while we conversed quietly, a minyan; one of us, visibly shaken, spoke of picking up his daughter from Evergreen High School that day before the shooting started, she was not feeling well, and I recalled Gabe’s succinct thought: Today is a strange day.

 

Aftermath: We men discussed how to be seen, how to know one another, how to be known. Wondered if the world hungered for human connection and dared take the risk, what it would be like.

We didn’t discuss it yesterday, but we could have. Think school shooter. What comes to mind? Yes, a boy, a sad angry dismissed unhappy no right place in his high school world boy. Boiler Medic Ken and I discussed this. Ken said yeah when he was in high school you took it out back and settled things. Except. These boys would not have been the ones, Ken.
 
What responsibility do we adult men have to the shattered psyche’s of boys who would be, not men, but seen, heard, appreciated, and failing that go the way of the too, too easy to obtain gun? Surely something. But how to engage, how to be there?
 
I raised a boy. Just one. I know he needed love, boundaries, respect. My guess, but not much of a guess, is that these boys need those things, too. From someone who matters.
 
Two of our number yesterday, one long retired, one just beginning work(ed) with young boys, ones whose lives experienced the disruption of mental illness. There are those among us who walk that road. Perhaps they could guide us.
 

Just a moment: Meanwhile, one who should guide us, call us together, calls instead for revenge. Vengeance is mine saith the Donald. In poor imitation. I believe Donald is one of those boys. Still. An insecure, frightened, internally beleaguered man-child, still up against the school yard fence promising reprisals.

Ancient Brothers, Family, Fourth Phase, Friends, Humanities, Poetry, Politics, Seed Keepers, US History, World History

Ways Forward

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Lughnasa and the Korea Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Waning gibbous Moon. Morning Darkness. Shadow. Father of Shadows. Great Sol. Artemis and her children. Heirloom Vegetables. Raised beds. Co-creation. Gardening. Kate, always Kate. Bee keeping. The Atmosphere. The Troposphere. Space. The International Space Station. The Hubble. The Web. Exoplanets. Distant Suns. Galaxies. Black Holes.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Shadows

Year Kavannah: Wu wei

Week Kavannah:  Hakarat Hatov. Recognizing the Good

Tarot: The Seer, #2

One brief shining: The boiler turns itself on, feeding hot Water into the hot Water tank while open windows let cool Air flow in and over my chair, my feet the chair chosen by Kate supporting me while I write.

 

Hakarat Hatov: Recognizing the good. Luke’s joy at getting an associate Professorship in Chemistry. His care for Leo. Rabbi Jamie’s creative teaching. Tom’s quiet confidence. Ode’s sketchbooks. Bill’s everyday kindnesses. Paul’s serious joy.

As Paul said on Sunday, if we seek Hakarat Hatov, goodness abounds in everyday life, no matter the bitter and ugly transformation of our government. Too easy to focus on the doom, let ourselves fall into despair. Don’t ignore it, no, but also recognize the ordinary good all around.

 

Just a moment: A way forward. Storm Before the Calm by George Friedman. Amy, my audiologist, echoing a similar idea. She knows folks she said, progressives, who want to return to the Obama era. No, she says, MAGA has revealed too many cracks (her word. I might go with chasms, abysses.) in the U.S. There’s no going back Amy went on. What we have to do is survive these years, then build something new, something that takes into account the MAGA reveals.

I agree with her and with Friedman. The excesses of the Gilded Age, which Trump apparently has in mind, led to the progressive era of Teddy Roosevelt, the trust buster.

Or, we could also call this late stage capitalism wherein the oligarchs gather so much money unto themselves that the rest of us have too little to power the consumer economy.

Greed cometh before a fall. As Gordon Gecko showed us.

 

Learning: Higher education and in particular the Humanities have suffered hit after hit as the conservative mortar crews have begun to walk in their ordnance, finding the bunkers and trenches of Renaissance and Enlightenment thought with their “anti-semitic” coded explosives.

I no longer fear the elimination of Humanities courses. Why? Because Thucydides and Beowulf and O’Neil and Whitehead and Mozart and Caravaggio do not live in the academy. They live in those who seek to understand their own humanity, the ways forward when faced with a culture shattered by avarice and base fears.

We and mine will still read the Iliad to understand how one man’s rage can cost the lives of thousands, even millions with today’s WMDs. We will also return to multiple perspectives as modeled by Impressionist, Expressionist, Abstract, and Realist painters and sculptors. We will embrace a world characterized by the metaphysics of becoming, of a One always in process, over the split apart world of Cartesian metaphysics.

The Humanities will not, cannot disappear because they are us at our best, self critical. learning from the vast deposit of human lives already lived.

 

Ancient Brothers, Asia, Commentary on the news, Dogs, Friends, Health, Politics, US History, World History

How Will It End?

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Summer and the Greenhouse Moon

Monday gratefuls: Ginny and Janice. Annie and Luna. Spice Fusion Ranch. Swerve toward cooler after Saturday heat. Red Tie Guy and the MOP. One hour movement breaks. Back and leg pain. Ortho consult. Harvard Medical on back pain. The Bird of dawn. Make firm a person’s steps. Shadow and Annie playtime. Our rocky Soil. Wildflowers. The Greenhouse. Finished on Tuesday? Planting on Wednesday! Horticulture. Wild Neighbors.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Close friends

Week Kavannah:  Roeh et hanalod. Foresight. Knowing what will be needed in the future.

One brief shining: Annie and Luna came out of the car with Ginny on leashes, Janice carrying the food from Spice Fusion Ranch in a brown paper sack, Shadow waited in the backyard since visitors put her in OMG, I’m so glad to see you, jumpy mode while I opened the door glad to greet Mountain friends who’d come to play.

 

Dog journal: Annie, sleek and brown and all puppy, came from the same Granby shelter as Shadow. Ginny and Janice adopted her a month or so before I adopted Shadow. She’s taller and a bit longer than Shadow, but roughly the same age.

It took a while for them to establish their power dynamics, then they played and ran, ran and played while Ginny, Janice, and I ate food from the new Indian place, Spice Fusion Ranch.

Ginny and Janice had stories from Champagne-Urbana where they formerly lived and where they still own an Air B’n’B. Janice created the first Costume degree program in the U.S. there while Ginny directed a social issues theater company.

Luna, their second Dog, is tiny. I’d be surprised if she weighed 5 pounds. Sweet and in the past a bit jumpy, she seemed much calmer, more herself yesterday.

Mountain friends. Ginny and Janice live in Kittredge, a very small town east of Evergreen about five miles.

 

Ancient Brothers: Just to say. We went around telling each other, one at a time, positive characteristics we saw in each other. A little love never hurts, eh?

 

Back and leg pain: With the movement breaks and physical therapy I’ve achieved a significant lessening of my pain. Also, with the evidence of the labrum tear in my right hip I no longer conflate its pain with the rest. Different etiologies.

I’m working back to regular exercise with my physical therapy exercises as a starting place. Feels good. P.T. plus tramadol finds my daily pain load enough lightened to help with my mood. A very good thing.

Cousin Diane found a Harvard Medical e-book on back pain and its treatment. I’m reading it now since I have decisions to make about what happens next.

 

Just a moment: Now, as the saying goes, we wait. What will a weakened Iran do in response to the MOP drop? Close the Straits of Hormuz? Attack U.S. military bases in the region? Send out assassins? Perhaps all three.

We’ve staggered from conflict in Ukraine to conflict in Gaza to conflict on the West Bank to conflict in Lebanon all the while bombing the Houthis and now to outright war against Iran. Where, when, how can it all end?

 

Ancient Brothers, Dogs, Family, Fourth Phase, Greenhouse, Memories, Men, Minnesota

Living, not dying

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Beltane and the Greenhouse Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Israel. Iran. The Middle East. War and peace. My son. Father’s Day. Korea. Commander. Seoah. Murdoch. The Jangs. Shadow. Our relationship. Dogs. Kate, always Kate. Evergreen Rodeo. Tourists. Maxwell Creek.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: CBE Men’s Group

Week Kavannah: Week Kavannah: Bitachon. Confidence.  “A feeling of self-assurance arising from one’s appreciation of one’s abilities or qualities.”

One brief shining: Touched the framing of the greenhouse, sturdy, and began to imagine the Garden beds filled with Lettuce, Radishes, Beets, Peppers, Tomatoes, Marigolds, a favorite salad ingredient, Nasturtiums, and standing inside a heated greenhouse in the Winter, Snow piled up outside and tending to the raised bed with Lettuce, Peppers, Radishes, Beets, Flowers growing in pots.

 

Life, tactile and warm, Shadow and the greenhouse, living, not dying. Nurturing life other than my own, right here at home. As I’ve been used to doing for the last 40 plus years.

This is walking upright in the world. For me.

Yesterday I attended the CBE men’s group. Rabbi Jamie said, “I’m seeing you in person.” I finished a ten session zoom class with him on Wednesday, and I haven’t been to the synagogue in several weeks though I’ve attended Thursday mussar on zoom many of them.

Driving has become such a literal pain that even a trip to Evergreen makes me uncomfortable. Working on it. SPRINT device in July sometime. A visit to an orthopedist on Wednesday for the tear in my right hip’s labrum.

Glad I have Halle and her spirited work, her sage advice. One hour then up. A walking meditation. Dog training. Making breakfast, lunch. Getting the trash ready. Yes. Agency.

 

Father’s Day: Talked to my son yesterday. His Sunday morning. Father’s Day. Being a father in my particular way began with my commitment to feminism. Doing my part for birth control. I had a vasectomy at age twenty-six. The Rice Street Clinic in St. Paul.

As a result, when the need, and that’s what it was, the need to become a father hit me, quite unexpectedly, at age thirty, I had to have a reversal. Which never woke my little guys back up. Low motility.

Which left adoption. Raeone and I worked with an adoption agency in Minnesota to find a baby who would die if they were not adopted. At the time, the late seventies, that meant India.

Women in rural Bengal would find themselves pregnant in their eighth month due to malnutrition. The would go into Kolkata to give birth, then the babies were discarded.

Unless. International Mission of Hope had arrangements with several of the “hospitals” that took in these women. In those instances the babies were taken to an IMH orphanage and made available for adoption.

Our first referral, a girl, died due to a salmonella infection that rampaged through the orphanage. It took another year for a new referral, little Jang Deep, four pounds and four ounces, delivered in a wicker basket by blue and white garbed nuns at the International Arrivals section of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

 

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

Awe as life slowly draws to a close

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Imbolc and the Snow Moon

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

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Sunseen

Week Kavannah: Yirah. Awe.

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

 

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

 

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

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

How can I keep from yawning?

 

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

Ancient Brothers, Dreams, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Great Work, Torah, Weather +Climate

A Day in the Life

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Imbolc and the Birthday Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Torah study. Luke and Leo. Joanne. Ron and the Purim spiel. Shadow. Her wiggly, happy self. My son and Seoah safely back in Korea. Barb’s service today. Family. Of choice. All ways, always. Big problems to solve. Ancient brothers. Raising a puppy. Sarcopenia. Workouts.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Shadow

Week kavannah: Persistence and grit. Netzach.

One brief shining: Grappel pelted down, small pellets of snow, fog shrouded the route between Evergreen and Conifer, driving on and out of it on my way to the Happy Camper, more joint relief edibles for night time.

 

After sleeping through the leaving of my son, Seoah, and Gabe, I got up to a happy Shadow. We played a bit. Wrote Ancientrails, fed her, then got ready for Torah study.

Eleven people. A minyan. A lively and learned discussion. The tests of the Israelites on their way in the wilderness. Our family history. Also a family of choice for me. Lots of new voices.

Afterward, I drove to Bailey and picked up edibles for sleeping. Stopped at Buster’s and got a 12 pound bag of Natural Balance puppy food. Found even that bag heavy. I mean. Geez. Gotta get that resistance work back. Gassed up Ruby in a windy storm of grappel, then back home.

More cold weather. 10 when I got up. Not Minnesota cold but still… After 10 years of Coloradification, cold to me.

My son and Seoah spent 2 years plus in Hawai’i and a year in Singapore. They prefer the moderate heat of Hawai’i. Korea has its share of cold, snowy weather in a maritime climate. Tougher.

 

This last week, with Shadow and visiting family and my birthday. Exhilarating. Filled with love. Also exhausting.

I have decided to skip my son’s promotion ceremony in May. I will focus my energy and resources on the Jang family visit in late June or early July.

Seoah’s mom and dad, her brother, and her sister, possibly her sister’s husband, and three kids coming to the Rockies, to Conifer.

A once in a lifetime trip for them. I’m excited for them to be here. Seoah’s dad, in particular, loves Mountains. 8-10 days

 

Just a moment: The Ancient brothers theme this morning-what big question would we like answered. I have two.

How do we restore the flawed, yet wonderful government and culture we had only a month ago? What are the things that I can do to make that happen? Who are my allies?

How do we continue the work necessary for a sustainable human presence on Mother Earth? With climate deniers in the ascendancy around the world, at this critical juncture for global warming.

A second part of the topic responds to this Mike Nichol’s quote: “The only safe thing to do is take a chance. Play safe and you’re dead.” When did we last take chance?

Adopting Shadow is this year’s main chance. Can I do it? Will I be good for her? Can we create a life together?