Fall New (Hunter) Moon also, a black moon
Not everyone will like this. But I know Bill and Tom will.
Monthly Archives: September 2016
An Ancientrail, A Walk Along It
Fall New (Hunter) Moon
My fellow traveler shoes are beginning to get a lot of mileage on them at Congregation Beth Evergreen. The Rabbi there, Jamie Arnold, is a very sweet guy, empathetic, bright, learned, good singing voice. At the Mussar midday session yesterday we looked again at the first chapter of Mesillat Yesharim. There are many important ideas in it, two stand out for me right now.
The first is that delight and pleasure are primary to our lives. Why? Because the contentment and serenity they provide give us a life in which we can focus on what matters. I love the notion of joy as a, or even the, core attribute of our day to day existence.
The second idea is that we can be tempted, pulled away from delight and joy, by both prosperity and adversity. Recalling this simple, but far from obvious truth about the human condition helps us see that our material advantages are not the core focus of our lives. Our material success is incidental to the spiritual journey-unless it distracts us from it.
When the hour long learning session is over, we go into vaad, which is personal sharing. Yesterday’s sharing was so profound. The level of trust and intimacy in this group, a testament to Jamie’s leadership, is deep. When a person finishes, we say shimat, “I have heard you.” (I think that’s right.)
Springtime of the Soul (& the Equinox)
Fall Harvest Moon
“Just as we can experience the Death and Resurrection of the God in the Easter season in spring, so can we experience in the autumn the death and resurrection of the human soul, i.e. we experience resurrection during our life on earth…” Festivals and Their Meaning, Rudolf Steiner
Francesco Botticini, 1470; Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.
Today is Michaelmas, the feastday of Michael the Archangel. British universities start their terms today, the Michaelmas term. Following Steiner, I have, for some years, seen Michaelmas as the beginning of a long period for soul cultivation. It is not, I think, an accident that the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, falls in the same period.
These are, too, harvest festivals, falling near the autumnal equinox. It makes sense to me to begin the New Year as the growing season ends. Samain, Summer’s End, in the Celtic calendar, marks the finish of the harvest festivals and the beginning of the fallow time. It is also the Celtic New Year.
Last night at Congregation Beth Evergreen I waited for Kate while she took Hebrew. Where I chose to sit filled up with religious school kids, bouncing with tweeny energy. Rabbi Jamie Arnold came down to talk to them about the shofar and the upcoming New Year. He talked about Rosh Hashanah and described it as a moment when the creation can begin anew. It is possible, he said, for each of us to start life anew on Rosh Hashanah. I like this idea and the question it poses: Who do you want to be in the New Year?
I’m going to consider this question over the next few days before Kate, Jon and I attend the Rosh Hashanah service on October 2nd at Beth Evergreen.
Another way to pose this question is, how do I want to nourish my soul in this, its springtime? What practices can I use? Kate and I have begun to seriously wrestle with the Jewish spiritual practice of Mussar, as I’ve mentioned here before. It will be one lens through which I approach the possibility of a new being, a new me.
Yet. That new me will have a strong relation to the man who harvested years of friendships over the last week in Minnesota. He will have a strong relation to the man who hears, Grandpop!, from Ruth and Gabe. He will have a strong relation to the man who loves Lynne Olson, and Kate, too. He will have a strong relation to the man who is several dogs’ companion. He will have a strong relationship to the man who writes novels. He may be a new man, yet still the old one, too.
Back in the humid east
Fall Harvest Moon
The autumnal equinox will occur while I’m on the way to Minneapolis. Right now I’m in Lincoln, NE. It was 56 when I checked Shadow Mountain yesterday afternoon, 90 here. And humid. I’m well past Cozad, which is on the 100th parallel, the start of the arid West.
The drive from Conifer to Lincoln was straightforward. Get on the highway, put a brick on the accelerator, kick back and let the car go. Almost like a Tesla. Speaking of which, I passed an autotransport loaded with Tesla Model S’s.
The harvest is underway here. Combines in the fields, tractors moving both huge round bales of hay and large square ones. Feedlots are also frequent. Charolais, Angus, even a feed lot full of Holsteins, which I didn’t understand.
Once out of the mountains and onto the Great Plains, agriculture becomes the dominant feature of the landscape. In Colorado it was mostly ranches with herds roaming large, barren looking land, the cattle often clumped up around large sheet metal watering tanks or huge piles of hay. Here in Nebraska wheat fields, other grains, hay and feed lots predominate.
Minneapolis is about six and a half hours away, so I’ve got to get on the old hoss and ride on outta here. Left my Stetson and my cowboy boots at home, can’t wear’em east of Cozad.
Love to you, Kate, Jon and all the dogs.
On the road in Lincoln, NE.
Road Trip!
Lugnasa Harvest Moon
Shower pan installed yesterday, additional support for grab bars (aging in place accoutrement), final decisions on niches and some extra work on the pebbles that will cover the floor. Jesus manages the later stages of the process, but it was Maestro (no kidding) who put in the no-leak rubber seal and poured the last of the concrete for the tile. By the time I get back the new shower should have tile.
Ancientrails goes on the road around 8:30 am. A little hesitation concerning my bum left knee, but I’m going to wear a brace and I have my ice and compression brace along, too. The knee doesn’t like being in one position though an angle is best. That I can achieve in the car. Road trips. I love’em. Very American, very Midwestern. Conifer to Fridley is almost exactly the same distance as Paris to Rome, it’s neither a long nor a short trip.
We’re well into the meteorological spirit of fall here on Shadow Mountain, so I’ll be driving into warmer weather for the most part, I imagine. Minneapolis has torrential rains predicted for today through tomorrow morning. Hope I miss them.
I’m excited to see the fall colors in Minnesota.
It’s different here.
Books and a Pawprint
Lugnasa Harvest Moon
Gonzalez and Eduardo came again yesterday. They poured concrete, doing the initial work for creating a shower pan. And guess what? It has a small, Gertie sized dog print in it. She can’t keep her paws off of anything. Bear Creek Design is a pleasure to work with. They communicate often, keep their word. More expensive, but worth it in reduced hassle.
Went to my first meeting with the Evergreen Writer’s Group last night. Formed in August of this year this group meets in a used book store, Where The Books Go, in Evergreen. There were four of us last night. I sat and listened since I had not understood the mss submission process. Just mechanics.
Writing is a source of pleasure for me, genuine joy. At the same time I have a fear of exposure, of people looking at my work and going, meh. These two sentences explain the paradox of over 50 short stories written, 6 novels and two more underway with no sales.
This is a new group of people and the chemistry among them seemed good. At least two are retired like me. We’ll be meeting every other week, another reason to get into Evergreen.
Because I went to the Evergreen Library to pick up some audio books for my drive to Minnesota, I ate at a small Vienna Hot Dog spot. First time outside of Chicago that I’ve had an Italian beef that tasted like being on State Street. The Midwestern equivalent of Proust’s madeleine.
Grandkid Weekend
Lugnasa Harvest Moon
Jon and the grandkids went camping at Upper Maxwell Falls, less than 2 miles from here in the Arapaho National Forest. They watched a fawn come up underneath a doe and whack her underside a couple of times, then drink. Having this kind of opportunity so close to our home makes grandkid life richer. Ours, too. Ruth got cold; Gabe got hot. They ate clam chowder with sourdough bread and drank hot chocolate. Breakfast was back here.
The trip to the Argo Gold Mine was a promise to Ruth, made after I took Gabe there last year. It was much better this time since new owners had a guide that went with us on the whole tour, including the Double Eagle Mine. The Double Eagle was dug by hand, went back maybe two hundred feet, following a vein of quartz (gold shows up near the quartz). It was called the Double Eagle because the entire mine netted its two miners only $20, a double eagle coin. A helluva lot of work for 20 bucks, even in the late 19th century.
The tour is really of the Argo mill, the processing plant that received, through the Argo Tunnel, ore from 800 mines. The tunnel, 4.2 miles long, ran from upslope Central City to a spot just above the processing plant.
An assayer’s office determined the percentage of the big five metals in each ore cart: gold, silver, copper, lead, zinc. The mill purchased the ore cart based on the value of the metals. Then the ore cart moved over to the receiving pits. The cart tipped over on its side, spilling the ore into these deep bins.
From there the ore went to stamping mills for crushing of larger chunks of ore, through chemical slurries and ball mills and finally onto sorting tables. The process used vaporized mercury at one point and a cyanide leaching tank for the gold. Added to the physical dangers in the wooden mill, criss-crossed by belts to drive various machines and filled with the noise of the stamping mills that could be hear fourteen miles away, the poisons used made the mill a dangerous place to work.
This all came to an end when 5 miners, trying to retrieve gold from a vein when the mines were shut down, set off an explosion that drained older mines of water built up in their drifts. This sent a pulse of water jetting through the 12 foot wide Argo Tunnel, killing four of the miners, shooting a one ton ore cart a mile in the air and making the tunnel unfit for use.
The Argo mill shut down the next day. No way to get ore out of the mines and to the mill.
One Damned Thing After Another
Lugnasa Harvest Moon
Because, hey, she took the time to build it.
Argo Gold Mine Tour
Lugnasa Harvest Moon
A trip to the Argo Gold Mine in Idaho Springs.
Lectio Divina
Lugnasa Harvest Moon
Interesting intersection of past and present yesterday. In my Christian days, I explored many different forms of spiritual practice, including a Benedictine form called lectio divina. Turns out a Rabbi is teaching a version of lectio to other rabbis for use, in particular, with Torah study. Bonnie, a rabbi in training who attends Beth Evergreen, modified it to use in our Mussar study.
She read short passages three times, emphasizing different words each time and we all listened silently. She then gave us a brief time and introduced two questions about the passage. The idea was to react to the feelings generated, not the intellectual content. This is congruent with what I know of lectio in which language, often as little as one word, functions as a mantra rather than a message.
I found myself slipping into a comfortable place, going inside, considering my inner journey. It felt good. I hope we use the process more.
Kate has had her second Hebrew lesson. We plan to attend at least some of the high holy day services, beginning with Erev Rosh Hashanah, the first service of the Jewish new year.