Beltane Rushing Waters Moon
Still working on how I will lead our mussar class next week. It’s been hard for me, mildly anxiety producing. First, I don’t have the depth, any really, in Jewish thought. The Mesillat Yesharim, Path of the Upright, is a complex, subtle and often difficult to parse text. With a guide like Rabbi Jamie Arnold its complexity and subtlety becomes an advantage, encouraging a range of views, sparking discussion. But with me, lacking sufficient knowledge, it could become a bramble thicket instead.
Secondly, I do have some depth in other fields, especially those related to the environment, and I find myself drawn to them with the content of chapters 18 and 19 in this central mussar text. Those two chapters recount movement toward hasidut or piety and chesed or loving kindness. Since these are action outward categories-hasidut can also be translated as loving deeds-ecological thinking fits well with them. But. I realize if I go in this direction I risk making my own agenda the centerpiece rather than learning about these middah.
Thirdly, the whole Jewish immersion experience I’m having at Beth Evergreen is like learning a new language. I have some words and a very limited amount of grammar. I don’t want my naivete getting in the way of other’s learning.
Last. As is usual for me, I have way more information than can possibly fit. At this stage, roughly a week away, that’s not a problem. Except it is. I don’t know how to edit the material because I’m not really sure what my focus is. Is it hasidut, chesed, kedusha (holiness) or is it the manifestation of those ideas in the world? In this case it’s a question of am I moving too quickly beyond the new concepts to their application?
I’ve enlisted the help of a rabbi in training, Bonnie Houghton, to help me sort out what will be useful and what won’t. Mussar and Torah study both emphasize the value of a study partner. A sound idea.
Oh. And. I’m not a Jew.
Our next Sierra Club meeting will be on June 19th, one day before the summer solstice. Sierra Club work is paganism stripped bare of its mythic content. There is passion for sure, but not the poetry, no ritual, no inner work. It’s all outer work: hike, lobby, analyze, network, persuade. We may, for example, show the next Al Gore movie, Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power. See trailer below.*
Somehow I need to find a way for my inner work to imbue my outer work. Todd, a long-time member of the Mt. Evan’s local group to which I belong, talked about a hike he took yesterday in Reynold’s Park. He named a particular orchid that he found and his face lit up. “A bullsnake, too.” It may be that these folks, tied to the very local region encompassed by our borders, find their inner work in being on the trail, hiking Mt. Bierstadt, taking the Mt. Evan’s road, helping clear trail.
This morning I fed the dogs as I usually do, but I left them inside, no longer willing to risk a mountain lion attack. Mountain lions add frisson to life in the Front Range Rockies. It’s similar to driving in well below zero weather.
Mountain lions and bears, oh my, are not the only fauna here that can hurt you. At lower elevations there are timber rattlers. There are also black widow and brown recluse spiders, all venomous enough to cause great harm. In these hills we find not the sound of music, but the shake of a snake’s tail. Julie Andrews might not skip so blithely here.
An intriguing pagan element runs throughout the Judaism I’ve been exposed to at Beth Evergreen. The Jewish liturgical year is on a lunar calendar. Shabbat begins at sundown on Friday and Friday shabbat services are held at night. Sukkot is a harvest festival, held outdoors in a sukkot booth. Tu BiShvat is new year for the trees. Judaism is also very body positive, actively opposing ascetic practices that exist in some forms of Christian monasticism, and encouraging the enjoyment of sex.
Water – Bonnie offered a quote from the novelist Julian Barnes: “Mystification is easy; clarity is the hardest thing of all.”
Today I’m making chicken noodle soup and Kate’s making Vietnamese pho. We’ll serve this at a Beth Evergreen leadership dinner for 
So I renewed my effort to connect with the Mt. Evans’ local group of the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Sierra Club. Colorado seems to work more through these regional clusters than as a whole. There are nine of them, covering the entire state. The Mt. Evans’ group includes our part of Jefferson County, Clear Creek County and a northern portion of Park County. It’s titular feature, Mt. Evans, is a fourteener (over fourteen thousand feet high) which has the highest paved road in North America leading to its summit. According to locals here it’s also the weathermaker for our part of Conifer.
My ratzon for political work, which I critiqued in a past post, needs sharpening, focus. Part of my problem with Fighting Trump, my previous title for articles I saved in Evernote, was, I realized, that being against something is a weak ratzon for me. I need to be for something and the Trump resistance tends to focus on opposing him. He demands opposition and resistance, no question about that, but I need to be working toward a just society, an equitable society, a sustainable society, a compassionate society, not only, not even primarily, saying NO.
Modulating the call and response occasioned by Trump era politics in my own head has proved daunting. I’m not going on a “news cleanse” or planning to ostrich myself in the several inches of snow we just got. (though that last one sounds sort of good)