Monthly Archives: September 2014

Colorado, Faith and Spirituality, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., The Move, Travel

Liminal consciousness

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Fall                                                                               Falling Leaves Moon

Carlsbad Entrance from the twilight zone. Beyond this point there is no natural light.
Carlsbad Entrance from the twilight zone. Beyond this point there is no natural light.

Stood tonight, arms on our mantel place, a fire crackling below me, wondering. What will I lean against this time next year? Will I hear wind coming down the mountain, the bugling of elks, the cough of a mountain lion? There might be frost on the plants outside and a chilly night ahead.

This is not I wish I would still be here kind of wondering, nor is it I wish I knew where we’ll be next year. It’s just curiosity, a sort of advance scouting. If all goes well, by this time next year-in the Great Wheel season of Mabon, a bit more than a week after the fall equinox-we should have been in our new place for over half a year. Strange to consider that.

Liminal consciousness. It arises when we know a transition is upon us, a time when we are no longer where we were, nor are we where we’re going. The weeks before a marriage. The summer after graduating from high school. Pregnancy. Interviewing for a new job. Getting ready to move to another place. In the broadest and most ultimate sense of course life is a liminal moment between birth and death. Liminal consciousness arises when we wake up to our condition.

Tonight, on our fire place mantel, I woke up again to the physical sense of moving and of

Angled window close up Chaco Canyon
Angled window close up
Chaco Canyon

having been moved. That awareness gripped me and I lived in it fully, not for long, not in a wistful way, but I was in it. Now that moment is in the past and I’m in Minnesota, with moving tasks and daily life here capturing and holding my attention. As is appropriate.

But stay aware for those moments of liminal consciousness. When they come, they have learnings for you.

 

Great Work, Latin, The Move, Translating De Bello Gallico

Slowed

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Fall                                                                            Falling Leaves Moon

Been moving at a reduced pace the last four days. Latin each day, getting further into Caesar’s Gallic Wars. Today he set out on a characteristic fast march from Rome to protect “our province”, a part of which is now Provence, from marauding Helvetians. Whom he’d set up with a betrayal by a wealthy leader of their people, Orgetorix. This is the war when Caesar, in the ever expanding effort of Rome to secure its borders, bleeds himself into world history. He speaks of himself in the third person.

Beyond the Latin, not so much else. Picked a few raspberries. Electrified the visible fence. (Kate says I should call it the invisible fence, except I didn’t bury it, I strung it on an existing fence line.)

Finished up the Southern Reach trilogy. Not sure how I felt about it. I wouldn’t recommend it, but it might have been good. In essence it presents an alien invasion that is so alien we can’t even be sure we’ve been invaded. Its central idea, that an alien might come to earth in a way so outside our experience that we would have difficulty recognizing it, seems valid to me. Anyhow. Check it out or not.

Watching the news, picking up positive threads about the environment. Bill McKibben’s 350 organization’s 400,000 person march in NYC was good news. Increasing public disapproval of the Polymet mine project is another. Coal seems to have been knocked back on its heels, at least here in Minnesota and by Obama’s actions, in the rest of the country. Little El Hierro has gone 100% renewable as did the Danish island of Samsø. Even the President’s decision to reach out to a smaller club of wealthy countries for action on carbon emissions is a positive sign, maybe the most positive of all these.

Still, as a Sierra Club staffer said when I gave her the same list, “Yeah, but doesn’t it make you nervous?” She’s right. Gaining ground would be so unfamiliar to us that we might make mistakes. But we have to take the risk that our message might finally be gaining in both public and political circles.

Feeling like I might get back to the packing side tomorrow. Clean up some clutter left behind after the SortTossPack push. Vet yet more files. Pack photographs, office supplies. There’s still more to go.

 

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Springtime of the Soul

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Fall                                                                               Falling Leaves Moon

A brief interlude of high 70’s and 80’s disappears starting today. It’s 50 and rainy. Better, in my opinion. And more fitting for Michaelmas anyhow. The springtime of the soul.

St. Michael, the Archangel, is God’s general, the militant leader of the warrior angels, chief strategist in the war against the rebel angels and instrumental in ejecting Lucifer, the Morning Star, from heaven. His mass day, today, September 29th, honors him and the other archangels, Gabriel and Raphael, and often, Uriel.

Michaelmas was one of the four English quarter days which celebrated equinox and solstices on set days rather than on their astronomical occurrence. Thus, Michaelmas celebrates the autumnal equinox, which one author called the day of the “darkening.” It is the start of the English university first term and a day when rents were paid for the year, contracts settled and festivals held.

Michaelmas is the springtime of the soul because it presages the coming fallow time. It emphasizes the darkening aspect of the fall equinox when the hours of nighttime begin to exceed those of daylight. When the plant world faces the long dark cold, it turns inward,

goes down into the ground either as seed or as root and gathers its energy, readying itself for emergence in the spring when lightening begins and temperatures warm.

Just so with us. As a cold rain falls here today on Michaelmas in Andover, the joy of sitting inside with a book, or meditating, writing, sewing, quilting comes. Our inner life can begin to blossom, the richness in the soils of our souls feeds projects and dreams and meditations.

This springtime of the soul has only begun today and it will follow, over its time, the fallow season. I welcome you to this nurturing, deep time. Blessed be.

 

Dogs, Garden

Containment

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Fall                                                                                 Fall Leaves Moon

The visible fence has switched on. This is our attempt to keep Gertie out of the orchard until we move. She has, of late, taken to digging out around the fruit trees. No, no, bad dog. The big girls, Vega and Rigel, dig happily everywhere, hunting for something or other underground and aided by our Greater Anoka Sand Plain soil. I’m thinking the Rockies might not prove so congenial. Actually, I’m hoping.

That mulberry limb, a large one blown over in a storm a month or so ago, finally got taken down today. A few strokes of the large pruning saw and it was on its way to the brush pile. We have many brush piles around the property, handy as places to put, well, brush, but also and more importantly as homes for critters.

Finally, more raspberry picking. The raspberry harvest lasts into October, often accomplished when frost is still on the leaves early in the morning. Not so today, however, with the temperature at 77 already. (11:45 a.m.)

A few small chores done, now the Sunday relaxation begins.

Colorado, Politics, The Move, The West

Oh, Yeah, Can You See

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Fall                                                                                              Falling Leaves Moon

The temperature, the political temperature, of Colorado can be taken in the gubernatorial race between Democrat John Hickenlooper and conservative Republican Bob Beauprez, scrambling over who will control fracking in western Colorado counties, but my favorite is Jefferson County high school students protesting against a conservative school board.

Here’s a couple of paragraphs from the Denver Post that show what the students are mad about. Denver Post, 9/25/2014

“The curriculum proposal, crafted by board member Julie Williams, calls for a nine-member panel to “review curricular choices for conformity to JeffCo academic standards, accuracy and omissions,” and present information accurately and objectively.

Williams’ proposal calls for instructional material presenting “positive aspects” of U.S. heritage that “promote citizenship, patriotism, essentials and benefits of the free enterprise system, respect for authority and respect for individual rights.”

Materials should not, it says, “encourage or condone civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law.””

Interesting definition of accuracy and objectivity.

Jefferson County is a western suburban county that runs from near Boulder in the north through western, affluent suburbs of Denver to an area not far north of Colorado Springs.

“Jefferson County’s electorate is Colorado in miniature, with roughly equal parts registered Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliated voters.  The geography ranges from close-in suburbs with many students poor enough to qualify for discounted lunches to wealthier areas and mountain towns. Jefferson County is more than 90 percent white but has a growing Hispanic population.” Denver Post, 9/28/2014

I love it that these student have taken the essence of U.S. outsider politics like civil disorder and social strife, utilizing the mildest of these strategies, peaceful protest, and flung it back in the face of a school board attempting to rewrite history. My kinda people.

Jefferson County borders both Clear Creek County and Boulder County. We’ll almost surely land in one of those or even Jefferson County itself. I’ll unpack ready to help.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Science

The Original Pentecostal

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Fall                                                                                   Falling Leaves Moon

Listen to the languages calling out to you. From the lilac bushes, from the way vehicles move on the freeway, from the body movements of people in a crowd, of the clouds as they scud overhead or stop, gray and wet. Watch dogs as they wag their tales (tails, I meant, but I like this homophonic error) or smile or lean in or bark or whine. Watch their eyes move. Babies reaching, reaching. From the insects as they buzz the late season flowers, the wasps flying in and out of their nests, the birds high in the trees or walking across the road. The turtles when they walk miles to find a proper place to lay their eggs. So many tongues.

Mother earth is the original pentecostal, speaking in so many tongues. She also speaks in the movement of continental plates, the upwelling of magma, the process of evolution, the deep sea vents and their often alien seeming life forms. Or look up. Into the milky way and see the language of origins spread out before you on velvet, the most valuable jewels in all of creation. Each of these languages has a syntax, a grammar, meaning. The speakers of these languages want to reveal their purpose.

But we have to have ears to hear. Listen.

(Pentecost, El Greco, 1596)

 

Colorado

Got gas?

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Fall                                                                             Falling Leaves Moon

 

Propane, propane, gotta get me some a’ that good propane.  Propane, propane, winding through my heart and winding through my veins, gotta get me some a’ that good propane. I think those were the lyrics I heard, right?

In the mountains, in addition to water and septic, we’ll also likely have propane. I’m trying to learn about propane prices, purchasing and propane tanks. This is a different arena than the handy gas pipe-line with which I’m familiar.

The issue caught my attention due to propane shortages last winter and rapidly increasing per gallon prices. It’s something I know nothing about. When I lived on the Peaceable Kingdom outside Nevis, Minnesota in 1974, we had fuel oil. Which was cheap. Until the winter of 1974. Remember the Arab oil embargo? That produced my introduction to efficient wood-burning stoves, chain saws and splitting axes. In this case the price leaped from below a dollar to over two in a matter of weeks. Ah, the memories. And it hit 50 below wind chill several times that winter.

 

 

Colorado, The Move

Time to Exhale

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Fall                                                                                Falling Leaves Moon

Two campers here glad to see the last week in the rear view. Kate’s got a headache and I’ve got a large dose of avoidance to around the house work.

We went off for our family business meeting at Key’s Cafe. Coffee good. Food good. The bustle and energy of folks waking up, the wait staff fully engaged, dishes and silver ware clanking and clicking good.

Planning some museum immersion this next week, to fill in a spot left empty with all the hithering and thithering. Some time with old favorites like Blind Man’s Buff, the Chinese collection and the ukiyo-e prints. Then some time at the Walker, the art of the present and recent past.

Time to exhale for a bit.

Colorado, The Move

A Big Hand to Kate

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Fall                                                                         Falling Leaves Moon

Our second SortTossPack day is done. Our walls and shelves are bare of art, which now rests in plastic tublike containers or in narrow boxes designed for the safe transport of framed works. They work hard. Removed two chest of drawers, a desk, a file cabinet and two bookshelves, plus the second and last large pile of red-tape book boxes.

The steps we’re taking now seem to cover more ground, move us closer to the reality. We’re going to take a rest the next couple days, maybe more, then do another round of decluttering and packing on our own. Next week the landscape contractors.

On October 8 the realtors and the stager comes. After them the movers for bids. Still a lot of work to go, but we’ve done the bulk of the move readiness part.

A big hand today to Kate, who managed the process while I was away being a political animal.