Monthly Archives: December 2022

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Judaism, Mussar

Courage of the Heart

Leave a comment

Samain and the Holimonth Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Alan. Has an offer on his house. Lunch today. MVP tonight. No Judy. May her memory be for a blessing. Kate, always Kate. Jon, a memory. Ruth in Colorado Springs. Gabe coming up for the weekend and the new Avatar movie. Fitbit 5. Kep waking me up at 5:20. Back to sleep after. Winter sleeping, window open. The last moonwalk, 50 years ago. Artemis I. James Webb. Hubble. Spacetime. Quantum mechanics.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Galaxies

 

Strong workout yesterday. 74 minutes. Cardio and resistance. Getting the results. Feel better. Lowered resting heart rate. Good cardiovascular conditioning. Could do more with the resistance work, but I’m satisfied with my current routine. Might change it at some point. Not right now.

 

MVP tonight. Judy has died so our little group has become one person smaller. Marilyn will lead us on the middah Ometz Lev, or courage of the heart. Here are a few items from her handout.*

This group is one of the night time drives I count as necessary. Marilyn and I carpool. At 6 pm I drive down to the parking lot for Flying J Ranch (a Denver City Park) and one of us drives to Evergreen. It’s a nice habit because we get to talk once a month there and back. Keep up.

Judy always brought interesting food. One of the things she did before she took her own life on November 8th (death with dignity, not suicide) was make a cookbook so we could continue her cooking if we wanted. I haven’t gotten mine yet. Making deviled eggs.

The closest analogy in my life for this group is the Woolly Mammoths. We all care about each other in and out of the group. Our sessions go deep into our lives, vulnerability seen as an asset. Rich Levine, my lawyer. Jamie, the rabbi. Marilyn, a retired reporter and public relations person for the Jeffco school system, Susan Marcus, another lawyer ( retired), Ron Solomon, actor/singer/writer/entrepreneur, Tara Saltzman, educator, and me. At least 5 years together now.

Each month we create a practice that gives us a chance to practice the middah we’ve discussed that night. We skipped last month because our meeting came at the time of three significant deaths in the congregation, one of them Judy. The last time together was my session on anavah, or humility. I took as my practice the mantra, down to earth. That meant that each time I felt I was about to take up too much space I’d recall my mantra. Or, when I experienced a moment  when I chose to hide myself. Down to earth. Be all of who you can be. But not more.

We discuss the result of these practices at the beginning of each session. We also hold vaad. Which is a time for any of us to speak what’s on our hearts and the others listen. Unless we ask for feedback that’s all the others do, listen. The concept is that we each know best how to solve or resolve our own issues, but speaking them aloud helps us in that process.

 

*                                       Cultivating Ometz Lev

“The Hebrew term for courage, ometz or ometz lev, literally means “strength” or “heart-strength.” Ometz is a core Jewish middah, a spiritual and ethical trait with which each of us is innately endowed as human beings formed in the divine image. Even those who consider themselves fearful or anxious can access the quality of ometz lev in any given moment.

“Jewish tradition teaches us to connect ometz lev with the quality of  chesed  or lovingkindness, concern for others. According to a Midrash, there is no real courage in using one’s strength to push someone into a pit or off a roof. True courage consists of seizing the hand of one about to fall or lifting someone who has already fallen.

“Cultivating ometz lev means applying our energy to protect and stand up for those who are at risk, including ourselves. We practice ometz lev whenever we leave our comfort zone, take an unpopular stand, expose our vulnerabilities, speak the truth, confront others, risk embarrassment or personal loss, or intervene on behalf of those unable to do so for themselves.”

Excerpted from: https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/cultivating-jewish-courage-ometz-
lev/ by Rabbi Marc Margolius senior program director of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality.

What is courage?
What does it mean to be strong?
What does it mean to be brave?

It is not the same as being fearless. There are plenty of things in life of which to be afraid. Plenty of things in our world that are scary. Someone fearless may be someone foolish.

The ancient rabbis ask the question: Who is mighty? And they answer: One who can conquer his or her own impulses.

In other words, a person who is able to do what they ought to do. To do what she decides is most right.

To do what he determines to be best course of action. Not obeying the fearful voice, but rather the voice of love, the voice of care, the voice of duty.

Source: https://jewishhome.org/meaningful-life-messages/what-is-courage/

Questions for Reflection
1. What makes you afraid? How do you overcome that fear?
2. How does obeying the voice of love, care and duty impact your actions?

“Maggid” from The Art of Blessing the Day
by Marge Piercy

The courage to let go of the door, the handle.
The courage to leave the place whose language you learned as early as your own.
The courage to walk out of the pain that is known
into the pain that cannot be imagined, mapless, walking
into the wilderness, going barefoot with a canteen into the desert.

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” —E.E. Cummings

Aging, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Politics, Shadow Mountain, US History, Woolly Mammoths, World History

Aging and its good news

Leave a comment

Samain and the Holimonth Moon

Monday gratefuls: BJ and Sarah. Kep at 4:30 am. David Olson. Jon, a memory. Kate, always Kate. Gabe’s Hanukah wish list. Ruth in her dad’s sweater. The Ancient Brothers on the assets of aging. Morocco and Croatia. The World Cup. Ruby and her AWD failure notice. Clearing the way for some moving. Sleeping in. Hard reset on my hearing aid worked. Phonak. SpaceX to the Moon. Elon Musk. Sort of. The clear, clean days of Winter.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Moon as it changes

 

Yesterday after the Ancient Brothers identified the assets of aging I took a rest day. Saturday was too much driving. Although Kep seemed to like it. Read, watched TV.

In the early evening I talked with BJ and Sarah. What different lives we all have. Sarah and Jerry and their self-built gardens and buildings in rural North Carolina. BJ and Schecky who biked 5 miles to New York Cake and back from their home in the Hotel Beacon on Broadway. Me on Shadow Mountain with the Elk and the Mule Deer.

 

The assets of aging. Too often aging = kvetching. Aching bones. Tired from driving. (see above) This knee, that hip or shoulder. Maybe replaced. Friends and family members dying. The stock market. The bowels. Care taking. Cancer. Arthritis. And the list goes on, seeming to grow a bit with each added year. BTW: not diminishing the reality of any of these. Or the disruptions they create in daily life. But. It is easy to get lost in the obligations and ailments. Forget the wonderful gift still daily available. Life.

So Tom asked the question. What have we gained as older folks? What are our assets now? Knowledge accumulated through the days and months. Having seen things fail and things succeed. The ability from that to put life events, even dire ones, in perspective. Including death.

The bonds of friendship. As one of us pointed out, it does take forty years to have a forty year friendship. Or, with family it take decades to enjoy grown children and have them enjoy you.

We often have some money squirreled away and with it the ability to help in modest ways when necessary. A real joy.

Love. Its necessity and its travails. Its various focii. From partners to brothers and sisters to friends and pets to Mountains and Trees and moments in time, special places. That it can be lost and regained. Its mystery and its beauty. Long experience with how love can enter and transform lives can give us old folks a certain softness, a way of being with another more easily so love can seep into the cracks. This is a great and wonderful gift.

Loss. We’ve seen death up close. Know its horrors and its mystery. It is no longer far off. We also know the death of loved ones can be survived, even when everything within says they can’t. We also know the death of a pet is the loss of a companion, a friend of many years. Not to be diminished.

Though there are many other assets I’ll only mention one more. We have seen our culture change from the closed in, materialistic immediate post-war years to the thousand flowers blooming of a counter-culture and a reaction against it that has not yet run its course. Here Philip Slater’s little book, The Chrysalis Effect, suggests that the integrative, democratic culture of the anti-war, back to the land, civil rights era remains ascendant in the face of stubborn and even violent responses to it. Women have still gained power. African-Americans and Latinos have more power. First Nations people have begun to feel their influence grow. The LGBTI+ community has blossomed. Globalism has won the day as trade interleaves nations with other nations.

We remain to support the rise of integrative, democratic culture in whatever ways we can. Loving our GenZ grandchildren. Donating money. Acting politically. Giving our validation to these changes. Pressing back against what Slater calls the Controller Culture. Being imaginal cells for the changes birthing themselves as I write.

Assets indeed.

Aging, Dogs, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Mountains, Shadow Mountain

Ruth and Gabe

Leave a comment

Samain and the Holimonth Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Ruth at Cedar Springs. Colorado Springs. Pikes Peak. Garden of the Gods. I-25. Gabe, on himself. A long drive. Getting lost. Kep, having a good time on the road. Sleeping in the bedroom last night. Ruby losing her AWD. Then getting it back? Family. People happy I’m staying here. Preparing for some more moving in the house. That mortgage at 3%. This house, this home, this Hermitage. Herme. Lit daily.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ruth, her journey to self knowledge

 

Struggled to get Kep in the car. Neither one of us are as strong as we used to be. Got it done though. He panted nervously. Eventually laid down, grew calm. Picked up Gabe at his mom’s, then headed down I-225 to I-25, all south toward Colorado Springs.

Colorado Springs. Where Ruth has spent the last three weeks at Cedar Springs Hospital. She says it’s a good place for her. We took Kep out of the car so she could see him. Couldn’t tell if he remembered her or not. His cues as to who’s who seem blunted.

This hospital has an iron gate around its whole campus. The gates open only one car at a time and there are at two gates. The main building is older brick in the style of institutional gothic. The newer buildings have mid-to-late twentieth century school architecture. Buff brick, single story. A slightly conical roof. Glass entrance doors.

Ruth told me there is an acute hospital in the building next to her for adults and young children. Her building, Juniper, is only teenagers. Next to it is a third building which houses the school and an adult residential unit. Therapy dogs come regularly as do therapy horses, sheep and goats.

It all seems grim to me, but Ruth likes her therapist and says she’s doing better. She’s learning guitar, reading a lot, making art with markers. They’re also trying to recalibrate her meds. Find a mix that works for her.

She will be there into January. I’m going to see her on December 24th which happens to be the last night of Hanukah as well as Christmas Eve. She’ll get a pass and we’ll go out into Colorado Springs, find some things to do, have a meal. Visitation is only on Saturdays and for one hour on Tuesday evening. Without a pass Saturday visits have a 2-4 pm limit. Ruth got tired, so Gabe and I left at 3:30. She lost sleep last night due to the readjustments of her meds.

It was good to have the ride down and back with Gabe. We had long conversations. School mostly. He has actual ringlets, his hair is long. With a touch up for side curls he could be a Hasidic Jew. He’s grown a good bit over the last six months, maybe over 5 feet at last.

He says he’s popular but doesn’t know why. He has good friends. Seems steady. Has no idea where he’s headed in terms of education. Sandoval High where he and Ruth go is a STEM school. He enjoys biology, putting things under a microscope. Photography. He’s also learning guitar. Dork. That’s his self-description. Yet. He also says others say he’s self-confident. He is. Probably why he’s popular.

He loves muscle cars. Would I please buy him a 1968 Mustang? Here’s one for only $25,000. Shows me his phone. No.

When Kep and I got back to the Mountain, Kep jumped out of the back, landed gracefully. I could tell he had a good time. He carried himself with more pizazz.

Two hours down. Two hours there. Two hours back in heavy traffic at night. I was pretty tired. Getting back to the much less hectic pace of Shadow Mountain was a distinct relief.

Dogs, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Hermitage, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Writing

Cancer Today

Leave a comment

Samain and the Holimonth Moon

Saturday gratefuls: Tom. Ruth. Diane. Mary. Mark. Alan. Jen. The Night Sky. Each Star. Each Galaxy. All the Dark Matter. The mysterious and ineffable Universe. Life. All my wild Neighbors. Kristie. My P.E.T. scan. The Ancient Brothers. Kep. Finding his way. By feel at times. The House on Shadow Mountain. Herme. Family. Friends. This Day, this amazing unique Day.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Blood

 

P.E.T. scan. Kristie and I talked late yesterday. It was a little confusing, but my big takeaway from it was that the news was good. Compared to the axumin scan I had last year almost all the sites that had uptake of the tracer showed what she referred to as healed cancer. There were no new areas of concern though one spot near my left hip and one spot of my T3 vertebrae did have uptake which means active cancer. This confused me a bit because I didn’t remember any spot on my spine being of concern after the axumin scan. Might have forgotten, or not been told.

I also say confusing because I don’t know what healed cancer means. Kristie said she thought of it as cancer cells that have been starved to the point of inaction. As long my testosterone is low they will not be able to reignite.

I don’t know what they’re going to want to do about the two sites of still active cancer. Might be radiation. I’ll have a call with Dr. Simpson again. He’s the radiation oncologist. The other option would be to continue letting the Erleada do its work. It has improved my situation a lot over the last year. See if it can knock out or down these remaining active sites. Maybe there’s an option I don’t know about.

Drug holiday. In 9 months or so I will be taken off both Erleada and Orgovyx. This is because being on them too long means my cancer might develop resistance to them. During the drug holiday my testosterone will return and the “healed” cancer cells will once again have a food source. Kristie said sometimes patients are off the drugs for years before the PSA rises. Sometimes months. Very individual. Not predictable.

Anyhow. That’s the cancer story as it stands today on the third day of Advent 2022.

 

Yesterday was a busy day. Talked to Tom in the AM. In the creativity class my How to Become a Pagan was a hit. As I said yesterday, you can read it on the Reimagining Faith page of this blog. Made me feel good. Pumped me up for my writing. A priority for me.

Lee from Morris Autobody brought the Jeep back. And I drove him back to his shop. You may remember Lee from my conversation with him about the problems in his business.

Ruth called but the connection was never made. I called her back. The same. Kristie’s nurse, Michelle, called and asked if I could reschedule till Monday. No. I want to know the result of that scan. Mark called me and Mary wanted to zoom. All of this communication happened over the space of an hour and a half.

Leave for breakfast with Alan at 8:30. The Parkside. A slow weekend. Looking forward to it. House chores to get started. Groceries. R&R.

 

 

Acting, Great Wheel, Hawai'i, Hermitage, Politics, Shadow Mountain, The Move, US History, Weather +Climate, World History, Writing

A fascinating time to be alive

Leave a comment

Samain and the Holimonth Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Dinner with Tom at the Willows last night. Long time friends. Diane. A Mountain Wind. Snow knocked off the Lodgepoles. Snow and Ice on Black Mountain Drive. Advent. Sussex. The Jacquie Lawson advent calendar. Going to bed. Waking up. The Chrysalis Effect by Phillip Slater. CJ Box. Kep, the old dog. US vs. Netherlands. How to become a pagan. Acting class. Nitya. Teaching the Ancient Brothers.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Holimonth

 

Acting class has been hit by illness. Tal, the teacher, has the flu or something like it. Nitya, a class member, spent several days in the ICU and is still recovering in the hospital. Not sure what will happen. Tal wants to hold a class on Friday, but I’m reluctant to go given the recency of his bout with the flu. A tough wind down for what has been an interesting and challenging experience.

I was ready. I’d gotten both monologues memorized and somewhat polished. I knew all the lines in my two scenes. Not wasted work. Good work. Helps the brain. Adds some literature to the bank.

Tomorrow morning I present in the Creativity class. Think I’m going to do my How to become a pagan piece. Wrote it yesterday. Gotta see how long it is when spoken. Going to lean into writing and art over the winter as I said yesterday. This was a start.

 

High Wind warning today. The Lodgepoles have begun to sway. Dancing with each other as Sunlight makes their tops glow. I haven’t written about it but the Mountains and their Trees and Wild Neighbors? I would have missed them. A lot. Couldn’t imagine being in a city environment where no Pine Trees framed the Nighttime Stars. Will not trade this beauty for a place with less. Hawai’i matches the Mountains with its Oceans and old Volcanic Mountains, its rich fauna. Someday. But right now. This wonderful place is home.

 

The world. Russia looking like a blind Bear in the Ukraine. Wrecking the place, striking out wildly. China finding that suppression and repression have their limits. Even with a newly anointed dear leader. The US struggling with divisions at home and new fractures among European allies. Not a great time to be a world power.

 

It is however a fascinating time to be alive. Talks of a moon base. Be still my John Carter, Flash Gordon little boy heart. The James Webb showing us more and more of the universe in which we live and move and have our becoming. A world shifting its long term basic rules. Climate change accelerating. Women growing in power. China and Russia and the upstart USA. All in flux.

Glad to have these years as my last ones.