Daily Archives: July 16, 2023

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Judaism, Mountains, Our Land and Home

Bonus Post on Paganism and Judaism

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Summer and the sliver Summer Moon Above

 

From the beginning of my turn toward paganism I identified it as an ur-religion. That is, one all of us could embrace even if we layered on top of it another tradition like Buddhism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Judaism.

I’m still there. Why? My paganism locates the sacred, the holy, the divine in the stuff within me and around me. That is. The Lodgepole. Leo sleeping beside me on the rug. My lev. The Soil beneath me and the Rock beneath it and the core of the Earth beneath that. The Robin and the Magpie. The Fly and the Katydid. The Morel and the Candensis. The Worm and the Snake. The Stream flowing and the Pond resting. Beavers and Marmots. Mountain Lions and Bears. The Microbiome in my gut. The Mitochrondia in our Cells. Our Galaxy. Those Galaxies. Dark Matter. Multi-verse Worlds.

I believe this non-dogmatic, non-sectarian sort of paganism crucial to caring for our Planet as we go through the fiery apocalypse of Climate change. And, it is not in conflict in any way with my Judaism which insists on a unitary view of all things. All things contain a shard of ohr, or holy light, holy energy. All things.

I choose Judaism for my human and humane interactions. I choose paganism to undergird and focus attention on the World which holds us like a Bird’s nest holds fragile Eggs.

 

Asia, Dogs, Fourth Phase, Judaism, Korea, Literature, Politics, US History, World History

Korea and Reading

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Summer and the Summer Moon Above

Sunday gratefuls: Leo. Lying here beside me. Luke out having fun. Books. Oh, did I mention books? Korean history. Seoah. Murdoch. My son. Working hard. Korean schools. American schools. Having a dog in the house. Korea. The Korean civil war. The armistice. Kim Il Sung. Kim Jong Il. Kim Jong Un. Presidents in South Korea. Chaebol. Zaibatsu. Samsung. LCD. Hyundai. Different ways of organizing economies. And nations. Trump’s legal trouble. The House G.O.P. The Extremes. Showing us a path to nowhere.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Knowledge

One brief shining: Leo lies here on the green rug with Cypress Trees, I write this blog letting my fingertips move over my split keyboard, all while a bright blue Colorado Sky backdrops Black Mountain its Lodgepoles and Aspens, there is no sound except the slight click of the keys.

 

More reading in Cuming’s history of Korea. Two chapters on the Korean civil war. He believes we should have let them fight it out, burned out the divisions and reordered their culture. As we had to. As Vietnam had to. Instead we put in amber the tensions and conflicts present after the Japanese Occupation ended. If I read Cuming’s account correctly, the North would have won the civil war, probably easily without us. Even with our involvement they came close. Then Koreans themselves would have had to sort out a new political order. Instead we have my son and his colleagues still in country, maintaining a very fragile and often fraught peace.

It was a time of big power conflicts, especially the USSR and the US. The architects of the idea of containment Dean Rusk, George Kennan, and Paul Nitze influenced the U.S. role in the war. Containing the Soviets, not China.

Korea is more than you know. Much more than I knew.

 

Realizing I privilege reading over most other activities. If I’m on a topic, an enthusiasm, I’ll sometimes read for hours at a whack. For days on end. Cup of coffee at hand. Now with my reading glasses perched on my nose. When I get tired, as I did yesterday, I watched a TV program, a K-drama just to stay in the the mind-world and went back to Cuming’s afterward. I’m neither a fast nor slow reader, I adjust my pace to the material. If it’s difficult, I’m slower. In the middle, as history usually is, I go a bit faster. With fiction I gallop.

Right now, as you can tell, I’m on Korea. When I finish Cumings, I’ll start another, the Two Koreas. Though. I might go back and reread the earlier chapters in Cumings. His long synopsis of Korean history before the late 19th century fascinated me since it contained so much that was new. For me.

Also, I’m building a conversion library. I already have a lot of books on Judaism, but I’m going to organize the ones I need for my study and put them up here in the home office. Had to order others. Looking forward to that reading, too.