Monthly Archives: December 2023

Great Wheel, Holidays

Note from the Long Night

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Winter and the Waxing Gibbous Winter Solstice Moon with Jupiter

Solstice gratefuls: The Fire. The dark. The Night Sky. Elohim.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Jupiter dancing with the Winter Solstice Moon

 

The Pine in my fireplace burns up so fast throwing heat, casting light, consuming wood. Such a passionate element. While the three quarter Winter Solstice Moon lights up my Lodgepoles and my Aspen, my driveway with a quiet secretive light. Makes her partner in the Solstice gavotte look small, mighty Jupiter giant of planets moves with the slow grace of one so, so distant.

A Shadow Mountain night in late December throws off little sound. Except a star scraping by another galaxy that wants it to play. Or, a slight Mountain Wind moving the soft Needles of the Lodgepoles. A faint shushing sound. I stood in it, a temporary visitor. Glad to return to the heat of my living room. So soft at 76.

 

 

God Speaks To Each Of Us

Rainer Maria Rilke

God speaks to each of us before we are,
Before he’s formed us — then, in cloudy speech,
But only then, he speaks these words to each
And silently walks with us from the dark:

Driven by your senses, dare
To the edge of longing. Grow
Like a fire’s shadowcasting glare
Behind assembled things, so you can spread
Their shapes on me as clothes.
Don’t leave me bare.

Let it all happen to you: beauty and dread.
Simply go — no feeling is too much —
And only this way can we stay in touch.

Near here is the land
That they call Life.
You’ll know when you arrive
By how real it is.

Give me your hand.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Holidays, Shadow Mountain

The Winter Solstice

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Winter and the Winter Solstice Moon

Thursday gratefuls: The Solstice. My favorite holiday. Bastien’s Steak House. Alan. 50 in Denver 32 on Shadow Mountain last night. I-25 clogged with cars. The city lights. Glad to be home where it’s dark. Lights on the City Center, the Capitol Mall. Colfax Avenue. Families. My family. Friends. My friends. Shadow Mountain Home. Herme. Ruby. That puppy in my dream. Snow for Christmas. Life. Surrender.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The longest night of the year

One brief shining: A new quiet has settled over me this Holimonth as Hanukah ended and the lights of Christmas, Christmas music, the whole runup to the gift extravaganza leave me with no nostalgia or wistfulness, rather a sense that Hanukah itself was enough for that sort of celebration though the Winter Solstice, tonight, remains my favorite Holimonth holiday.

 

Long ago before the age of reason and Francis Bacon, before the Greek astronomers and the Hindu astrologists, the Chinese sages we humans understood little about the world beyond our planet. Few were probably aware of living on a planet at all. As the longest day of the hot season faded into the past, our distant ancestors noticed that the nights grew longer and the days shorter. Was the sun going into a waning mode? Would it return for the longer days necessary for warmth and growth? On this night, this Winter Solstice night, that question would have loomed over those huddled together before a fire in a smoky dwelling. So it’s understandable that the big news for most on the Winter Solstice is the beginning of the sun’s reemergence, Great Sol slowly but surely reclaiming dominance over the forces of darkness and cold.

I have a different perspective. I celebrate at the Summer Solstice as the night begins to grow, as darkness expands its hold. It’s not that I’m a light Grinch, not at all. I love the growing season, air warm enough for short sleeves and picnics. Sure. I need to eat and my body loves a temperature suited to its native state. And yet.

Darkness. Where the roots and rhizomes and microbes live. Where the imagination comes alive, filling the night with faeries and ghosts and goblins. Where rest happens. Where preparation for the growing season goes on under the surface of the soil. Where preparation for personal growth goes on in the recesses of our psyches. Where the heat of the day calms, allowing a cool time for sleep. Where all is calm and nothing is bright. Fecund. Quiet.

Darkness does have its, well, dark side. Of course. The Forest gives itself over to the nocturnal Predators. The city, too. Criminal time.  Deaths occur at the Hour of the Wolf, around 4 am. Sleep might be fitful or hard to find. Wrecking the day. Fears can come out to play havoc with our inner peace.

Even so. I’ll take some time, perhaps a lot of time, to go inward. To acknowledge the fecundity in darkness. Not to ignore the difficulties of the night, but to reclaim it from those who see it only as something to avoid with light or sleep or intoxicants.

The longest night. I’ll light a candle or two. Probably have a fire. Read poetry. Contemplate life and its complexities, its simplicities. Remember Winter Solstices past. What will you do?

Colorado, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Fungi, Health, Hermitage, Holidays, Myth and Story, Park County, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation, Shadow Mountain, The West, Travel, US History

Surrender Charlie

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Samain and the Winter Solstice Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Heidi. The Dragonfly Sign. Colorado Supreme Court. Psilocybin. Nahuatl Gods and Mayan hieroglyphics. Surrender. Irv. Rider. Mt. Logan. Crooked Top Mountain. The Grandfather Tree. Park County 43. Buggy Whip Road. Hangman’s Road. Washington County Maine. Climate change. Shadow Mountain. The Rockies. The Front Range. Alan. Bastien’s Steak House. The Winter Solstice. Holimonth.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Colorado Supreme Court

One brief shining: A cloth with Native American colors marking the four directions, circular, laid on it cut white Roses, small Pine Tree Branches, red Roses, Cinnamon, Coffee beans, Star Anise, Aspen Leaves arranged for a Peruvian gratitude ceremony in which I picked up a small Branch of Pine Needles, inhaled its essence three times and exhaled my love and gratitude before placing the needles gently in the center.

 

OK, nation! See Colorado go. I loved living in Minnesota and in the Twin Cities for forty years. The North Woods. Wolves. Lake Superior. So many Lakes. Liberal to radical politics. Not perfect, no. Witness George Floyd. But no place is. And Minnesota seemed as close as they come while I lived there. Then Kate and I moved to Shadow Mountain.

As the Dead said: What a long, strange trip it’s been. Many of you know my story over the now 9 years exactly since my buddy Tom and I drove straight through from the Twin Cities with Kepler, Vega, and Rigel in the back. And, yes, that story has its definite peaks and valleys. But that’s not my reference here.

No where else in the country, this divided and often pitiful land of ours, could I have had a legal psychedelic journey on Crooked Top Mountain then come home to Shadow Mountain and read the wonderful news that the Colorado Supreme Court had called a crook a crook, an insurrectionist an insurrectionist and kicked Trump off our ballot. I mean, whoa! What a day.

I shifted my inner identification a few years back from Minnesotan to Coloradan, my Mountain home become just that. Home. Yes, we elected a gay Governor. How bout that. And of course the wild Neighbors and the Mountain Streams and the Black Bears. The Snow and the spectacular Autumns with gold and green. Over the time I’ve lived here Colorado has shifted from red to blue. Not without some Western weirdness along the way, but that makes it interesting. All that’s true.

But in one day to take a psilocybin journey with a good friend on property so evocative of a sixties commune and then learn we Coloradans had taken a firm stand, saying what all clear eyed non Trump bedazzled folks already know but somehow cannot communicate, that insurrectionists should not, in fact,cannot hold office. Well, I’m busting with state pride right now. Colorado is the California of the new Millennia. OK. Enough local chauvinism. Still, pretty damned cool. Gives this aging radical a boost.

 

Short note on the psilocybin journey about which more later. Ate the mushroom after the gratitude ceremony. Mixed with a little lemon juice supposed to make it come on quicker and go sooner. Sat outside in the glass enclosed shelter where we held the gratitude ceremony, the others going inside. Watched the curved Snowy Bowl of Mt. Logan as my inner weather shifted under the power of the mushroom.

Went inside and lay down on a heated pad. Soon Nahuatl Gods and Mayan hieroglyphics began to move across the ceiling. Sometimes two dimensional sometimes three almost down to my face. I love hallucinations. So fun. I told my guide I might be under utilizing the experience; it was so entertaining.

Turned out no. I hadn’t. I had two intentions going in, the one I wrote about yesterday, how to live fully, and the second to continue my exploration of the sacred.

During some brief conversation after being asked if we had any insights I said, yes, I had one. In living more fully I’ve pushed, thought about things to do, about acting in my life to live more fully. Answering Shakespeare, I have always chosen to take up arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them. Now I need to learn surrender.

To live fully I need to open up, accept what’s coming. Greet the new year with arms spread wide for what it brings rather than what I can make happen. Well, not rather than. I mean, I’ll still take up arms, of course I will, but I learned yesterday that I have another option. To embrace, to wait, to listen, to let the world and its wonders come to me. As the Wicked Witch of the West might say, “Surrender, Charlie!”

 

 

Dogs, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Hermitage, Judaism, Shadow Mountain, Travel

Traveling

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Samain and the Winter Solstice Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Shrooms. Heidi. Irv. Psychedelics. Colorado. The West. Wolves and ranchers. Mountain Lions and Bears, oh my. The Rockies. Shadow Mountain. The Atlantic. Washington County Maine. Lake Superior. The North Woods. Wolves and Moose there always. The Wolf exhibit by Ode in Ely. Ely. The Boundary Waters. Voyageurs. Mt. Blue Sky. Grass along the shoulder of the road. The road itself. Cars. Bikes. Feet. Buses. Subways. Light rail. Heavy rail. You who read this.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Psilocybin

One brief shining: A certain coolness headed toward warmth, humidity rising and the dawn approaching, another new life redolent of travel those early mornings getting out the door to the yellow taxi cab, the ride to the airport, that buzz of anticipation making all my senses quiver with quiet joy.

 

 

Going on a trip today. Traveling to the inner reaches of my mind. And heart. The whole lev. Psilocybin. With a friend and his daughter. In Bailey, the Platte River Valley. Turn right at the Dragonfly sign she says. Bring a pillow, a blanket, a water bottle, snacks, and a journal. I’m ready. And, it does have the same feeling, oddly, of going on a trip.

A little bit anticipatory last night. Not anxious. Not calm either. First time with a guide. She’s a Ph.D. psychologist and a remarkable woman. Went skydiving to celebrate her 50th. Her parents are both good friends so I feel very comfortable with her.

Judaism emphasizes kavanah, intention, when engaged in prayer or action. I’ve been considering why I am doing this. The reason is simple. I’ve done mushrooms several times, as recently as this summer, but I’ve never done any psychedelic with a guide. After reading Michael Pollan’s book How to Change Your Mind, I decided I wanted to try that, too. That’s why.

But. What do I want to focus on, consider? Right now I’m at living life fully. However. I feel I’m doing that. Maybe not, though? Or, maybe I could go in a different direction or emphasize something more? What could I be leaving out of my life? A relationship? More travel? What else could I choose?

The more I mull this on the page, right here in real time the more I like this question. I have no need for career motivation or advice, nothing to prove. I love my life as it is yet I’m willing to enhance it. Excited to do it.

Unless I change my mind on the drive to Bailey. That’s it. Living life fully.

 

Yesterday Luke came to take Leo home. Luke comes in without knocking now and I like that. Makes him and me feel more like family. We love each other, all three of us. Nice to have that relationship with a guy Luke’s age. Could be my son from another mother.

Great Sol has stayed in place while Shadow Mountain whirled around to our location in the Solar System where he can see us. Light breaks on Lodgepole Branches, on Black Mountain, on the milky blue Sky.

 

 

Garden, Memories, Minnesota, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation

The Holy Land

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Samain and the Winter Solstice Moon

Monday gratefuls: Heidi. Irv. Luke. Money. Rich. Leo, the sweet boy. Cooper. Who may join me here. Sleep. Restoration. Resurrection. A new life, this day. Paul’s photo of the sardines. But, Paul, I’m stuck on lobster pots. Tom’s found sign. (right) Bill working with the paper marblers. Ode and the Stars. Diane getting ready for Taiwan. All the wound up little kids out there. Santa Claus. Norad. Christmas Trees. Eggnog. Lights. Yule Logs. All those pagan rooted parts of the celebration we call Christmas. Incarnation

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The ohr in everything

One brief shining: Wanted a piece of jewelry a necklace as a constant reminder of my conversion but no to a mogen David, the six pointed star, no to a chaim searched could not find anything until an Etsy artist from Israel with handmade metal Alephs showed up, loved it the beginning of the Hebrew alphabet, makes no sound, a symbol for ayin nothingness, the ein sof from which Lurainic kabbalah says all creation has its origin, now around my neck, making no sound, under my shirt, talking in quiet whispers to me of origins and nothingness.

 

 

Sorry for wearing my sacred heart on my sleeve these last few posts. No, I’m not. Well, I don’t want to weary you with it. May not be your thing. Or, you may wonder about my mental stability. Which of course you might anyway. But to me I feel sane, just fine. As they all say, right?

Have been re-reading Radical Judaism by Jamie’s mentor, Arthur Greenberg. The Radical piece comes from the Radical Theology movement that sprang up from the death of God conversation. Radical theologians wrote in honest recognition of the wreck on modernist shores that the God of old had become. He expired there, perhaps holding his long white beard in wrinkled old man hands.

In Greenberg I find a soul companion, one who’s journey and mine took the road less traveled to much the same destination. A reimagining of sacredness utilizing the tools of other ancient seekers, especially focusing on the Western religious traditions. I took the Christian turnoff, then the liberal religion loop, stayed a long while in earth centered paganism, but, like Greenberg ended up on the path to the Holy Land.

That may be the best short hand for this work, come to think of it. The Holy Land. Not just for the Middle East anymore. My Holy Land. The drive between Shadow Mountain and Evergreen through the Arapaho National Forest. Your Holy Land, maybe the Waters of Lake Minnetonka, or a Regional Park, or a pond near your townhome, or the cold Atlantic and the Waters and Lands of Down East Maine. Lucky Street and its domestic neighbors.

Bloom where you are planted. Yes, a cliche for sure. And yet profound. Who knows when this phrase entered my archives, too common to pin down. But as an ethic, a call to action, a daily motivator it has stuck with me. Sort of like the shema: Listen up, Israel. The One is our God. Our god is the one. Brought to mind often, shaping a world in its simple resonant logic.

When Kate had to move to the exurbs to be within 15 minutes of the hospital, I resisted. I had lived in the Twin Cities for 30 years. My working life had focused on urban issues, urban politics. What was I gonna do in conservative Anoka County? But there was no choice. She needed the new job. We needed the new job. So. We bought a model home on 2.5 acres of land. About 40% wooded, some scrub Oak and Black Ash with long grass, the rest stripped bare by bulldozers in the process of construction.

Those of you visited our Andover home know what we did. We quite literally bloomed, over and over again, where we were planted.

I’m going to continue this idea later.

 

 

 

Cinema and Television, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation

A Use for God?

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Samain and the Winter Solstice Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Images. The eye and its mysteries. Our stories, the Ancient Brothers. Evoked by photographs: Orion, a candle, the symbol of the Tao, a leafless tree in winter with a sun on the horizon. Christmas Cactus. A light, fun drama. Alan as an assistant director. Cheri the salsa dancer. Leo, a true garbage hound. Luke in Granby with Tal and friends. Rabbi Jamie and Laura yesterday. Going on a mushroom journey on Tuesday. A celebratory steak dinner at Bastiens. Wednesday. Thanks, Alan. Reading now about covenant. All day today.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Alan

One brief shining: Found the strip mall, found suite J, the Wheatridge Theater Company, delivered my phone as ticket, found a seat next to Alan and Cheri, a three sided stage with three sided seating, a woman next to Alan working the lights in a black curtained space, and settled in for the entertaining story of Christmas Cactus, the detective.

 

On my heart this morning. A new vision, new eyes. Opened to a different wavelength, the band of sacredness. Since the drive the other day when the sacred pulse along the road began to insist, I have had my sensibility shifted. Not all the time, but much of the time. That tree, the Aspen there with its gray bark, its leafless Branches, its sturdy Trunk, and the roots below say to me: yes, I grow here, am here, one piece of this Forest whole. But not in words. The Lodgepole just out my window. Its curved Branches salute Great Sol as they soak up fusion energy, life giving energy. Their humility, their prayerfulness. I feel glad.

Where these new eyes to see what I’m looking at have come from I don’t know. I can only report that I have them. Sleeping Leo gives me a swelling heart as he is the Dog, Leo, but also all Dogs, all animals.

I hear the heat pump working, drawing what heat there is in the 35 degree weather into my house. Warming me. A marvel. Awesome. Sacred. Think of the water vapor also invisible, also in the air. When a cloud forms, the invisible water vapor becomes visible. Ah, we say. Water. But only a fraction of the story. Why? Because the water vapor is there right now, all around you, around that Aspen and that Lodgepole. The cloud functions as a reminder, a natural heuristic device.

“See” the water vapor. Know it’s there. This is the same experience I’m having with the sacred right now. I can see it where before it was invisible to me. Perhaps I’m meant to be a cloud, a natural heuristic device.

Different tact. Same vein. God. Does that word, that idea add anything to this experience. My inclination is no. In fact perhaps the word God with all its linguistic and historical baggage obscures rather than unveils. Yes. My immediate, knee jerk response after many years of abdicating myself from God language.

However. As a word that might denote the totality of this experience, of seeing, being enveloped by, the sacred? There might be some purpose there. Not finished with this. Not at all.

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Mountains, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation, Shadow Mountain, Wild Neighbors

I Could Have Said, Hallelujah

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Samain and the Winter Solstice Moon

Saturday gratefuls: Word to Deed. Rabbi Jamie. The dark of a Mountain Winter morning. Good sleeping. Darkness and Fog. Obscurants. Leo. Here again. Luke. Tal. Sofers. Scribes for Torah scrolls, ketubahs, and mezuzah scrolls. Evenings out. Alan. His BMW. Dispatched from the factory. Not yet at the port. Kabbalah. Talmud. Midrash. Faith and its cultured despisers. Including me? Learning. Bread Lounge. French Sourdough. A Cuban.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Christmas Cactus, Alan as assistant director

One brief shining: The Bread Lounge inhabits a second floor space over Nelly’s General Store in a small upscale shopping center in Evergreen and is at least for now the place to go filled all the time with young lovelies, retirees, the occasional tourist, and the friendly cash register lady who asked Alan and I yesterday morning, “What are you two fine gentlemen up to this morning?”

 

You know you’re a regular when the cashier not only greets you but on occasion gives you the military discount just because she wants to. Or a waitress leans out from the kitchen, “Hi, Charlie!” Or when the Sugar Jones folks put together a box of 8 creme brulee truffles just for you because they’re selling out their Christmas orders and want to be sure you have your weekly fix.

My address says Conifer but I spend much more time in Evergreen. CBE is in Evergreen and many of my friends. Though. My precinct is actually an Evergreen precinct. I live between Evergreen and Conifer, a bit closer to Conifer but not that far from Evergreen either.

As a small town boy, I find these sorts of interactions grounding. I’m known. Not well, but as a person who belongs here. That was the way of life in Alexandria, Indiana as I grew up. Many folks knew who you were, well enough to greet you on the street or in a restaurant or shop. Those greetings said, yes, I know you and I know you know me. The relational glue that made a small town function.

We also knew when Art got caught again playing poker in the backroom while on duty as an Alexandria policeman. When a local teacher got caught stealing a cup of quarters at a casino in southern Indiana. Who died. Who had a wreck. Who was sick. Who got pregnant with no husband. But we also knew who the father was. Small town life had its definite pluses and minuses, especially in the golddust covered years of the late 50’s and early 60’s.

Plus or minus my 76 year old person still responds with warmth to situations that remind me of days spent at Bailey’s Drug Store or the Bakery or at the County Fair. 12 years of education with the same kids. Paper routes on the same streets. All those stories involving the same people. A real place, a real there there.

I want to be clear. These are not conscious triggers. Rather, they are subtle, below awareness until they begin to mount up, hit a critical mass. And I realize, oh, I feel comfortable here. Part of not apart from.

Had a related feeling yesterday as I drove to Evergreen. Driving through the Arapaho National Forest, familiar with the curves, the houses, the terrain up and down. The sacred began to be visible. Those Lodgepoles growing in the rocky crevices, life powerful and insistent. The wavy brown stalks of Grass covering a Meadow like a beard on a face. The Red Osier Dogwood and the Willow Trees outlining the Mountain Stream from which they drink. Those two Mule Deer crossing the road in front of me. All sacred, all part of the one. Suppose I could have said, hallelujah.

General

Angel

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Samain and the Winter Solstice Moon

Friday gratefuls: Alan. Joan. InSpire concerts. Bread Lounge. Bastiens Steak House. DAM. Heidi Saltzman. Irv. Kippahs. Mussar. Great Sol. The sacred surrounding us, above us, below us, within us, around us. Like Water vapor in the Air. Supporting us like the Granite and Gneiss of Shadow Mountain. Energizing us like our morning coffee. Mezuzahs on my front door, my back door, my bedroom door. Moving between spaces, thresholds, liminal spaces. A sacred moment. My son arriving on a 747 from Calcutta 42 years ago today. His wonderful life.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: My son

One brief shining: Turned off the electric menorah with all eight lights plus the shamash going dark, watched the bright blue beeswax candles burn down on my crystal menorah after saying the Hanukah prayer for the eighth time, finished with my first Jewish holiday as a Jew, feeling my Jewish identity grow and strengthen, as it does when I touch the mezuzahs on my door frames, put on my kippah.

 

42 years ago tonight. At midnight. A 747 landed in Minneapolis. The night was bitter cold, well below zero and it had come from the warmer geography of the Indian subcontinent. Within were two nuns in blue and white habits each carrying a wicker basket with two tiny babies. When they deplaned and came to Raeone and me, we were suddenly, immediately, right then parents. Oh. My.

My son (whose name I don’t use for security purposes for him.) lay next to the boy who would later become Willie. By happenstance a work friend, Luann, had also adopted from India and her son was in the basket next to ours. Not sure how she did it but Raeone made off with the wicker basket. Which she still has. What happened to the other two I don’t recall, my gaze and attention fixated on the 4.4 pound body of OUR baby. Would we kill him? His body, wrinkled and brown, looked too small to survive. And we were responsible? Yikes!

The short answer. Almost. At the time I drove an orange Volkswagen, the original bug. Which, from time to time, including this time suffered from frozen gas line syndrome. We sputtered to a stop a mile or two from the airport on our way home. The bug immobile. Oh, oh. Fortunately for my son and Raeone, Luann and Willy came by, recognized my car, stopped and took them to our house in Minneapolis.

Me? Not so much. 15 degrees below zero and windy. This is, btw, before cell phones. A truck stopped. A Latino man got out. I explained. He offered to tow me to our house. Thank God. He had a tow rope in his truck, hooked it up and I rode with him.

He came inside with me to see my son and warm up a bit. His name? Angel. As I said above, the sacred surrounds us.

 

Art and Culture, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Hermitage, Judaism, Myth and Story, Shadow Mountain, Wild Neighbors

Neverending Story

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Samain and the Winter Solstice Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Marilyn and Irv. Good friends. Tom, always a good conversation. My son and compartment syndrome, the bloody treatment. Seoah shooting a 90 at screen golf. My son an 85. Two athletes. Plus Murdoch. Hamas. Israel. Palestine. The diaspora. The Joseph story. The Jacob/Israel story. The Abraham story. Bereshit, Genesis. Beginnings. Ganesha. Krishna. Vishnu. Shiva. Snow plows and their drivers. My mail carrier, Mark.

(N.B. I capitalize words associated with what I consider the living world, a practice of honor I picked up from the Potawatomi in Braiding Sweet Grass. [except for humans] Also, I include in my gratefuls the dark as well as the light since both make up our whole life and contain a seed of holiness. I learn this from the sacred nature of reality as One. It does not mean that I love, say, Hamas.)

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Breakfast with Marilyn and Irv

One brief shining: At Primo’s Cafe I scooched between a diner’s chair and a giant Santa, right hand raised in what I imagine is a greeting gesture though it looks more like he’s waving to other outsized folks like Johnny Inkslinger, Paul Bunyan, Babe the Blue Ox, or perhaps very large Reindeer, a Rudolf with a nose the size of a softball.

 

Conversations. Tom. Marilyn and Irv. Diane. Alan and Joan. Luke. My life requires time alone the most, yet it also requires conversation, connection, the intimacy of knowing and being known. Yours too I’ll bet. The second one, I mean. Most don’t need as much alone time as I do.

I’m lucky enough to have regular folks to meet over eggs, potatoes, and bacon in the breakfast spots available here in the Mountains. And others I meet in the cloud, that mysterious realm just on the other side of my computer screen that contains people I know. Like Tom and my cousin Diane, my Ancient Brothers: Paul, Mark, Tom, Bill. The Thursday mussar group. A blend of the cloud and IRL.

Judaism contains its own cloud. What Christians often called that great cloud of witnesses, referring to the dead. In Judaism the Rabbis speak over the ages through the Talmud, the Midrash, and the stories of their lives.  The rituals and traditions of Jewish life, the Torah, the Kabbalah, even the blood of the ancestors carry their own message. As well as the history of the Jewish people. That great cloud of witnesses places my temporary life in a broader and longer context. Comforting and challenging.

Each book I pick up becomes a dialogue between the author and me, between the story and me. In this way my life might be said to be a constant conversation with interlocutors living and dead.

Then there is the world of my wild neighbors and the planets, Great Sol, and other galaxies. A conversation exists between that very young Mule Deer Doe that comes to eat grass in my yard and me. She looks at me through the window with gentle, puzzled eyes. Among those three Mule Deer Bucks who welcomed me here. That Elk Bull watching from the side of the road in the rainy night. Black Mountain and its changes. The running Streams and the Arapaho National Forest. Crows, Ravens, Magpies. The Snow as it marches across Mt. Blue Sky to Shadow Mountain.

A neverending story you might say.

 

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Great Work, Holidays, Judaism, Politics, Shadow Mountain

All the grandchildren will need them

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Samain and the Winter Solstice Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: The Geminids. The Sky. Outer Space. The James Webb. Orion. Aquarius. Polaris. The Crab Nebula. Fusion power, may its potential become reality. The Darkness before a Winter Dawn. Fog. Driving through a Cloud. Prostate cancer as a chronic disease. Phonak. Split keyboards. Wireless mice and keyboards. My desktop, old faithful. With me since 2016. Cernunnos.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: My sibs

One brief shining: On the seventh day of Hanukah I will take out eight beeswax candles, small tapers, and starting from the right place them one at a time until all but two candle holders have a candle, the eighth candle, the shamash, lies in front of the menorah ready for its servant role as bringer of fire and light to the other seven candles, when the others burn the shamash will go in its central holder, ready if needed.

 

Still learning. Supposed to light the candles from left to right, always start with the new light. This festival honors a small group of Maccabean soldiers who liberated the temple in the second century b.c.e. The Temple menorah had only six lights plus a shamash, the helper and, in addition, the Mesopotamian Sun God. An interesting conflation.

The Temple menorah burned oil and was to be kept lit always. The Seleucid’s occupying the Temple had let the Temple menorah go out. The only oil that could be used in the menorah was oil that had been blessed. There was only enough for one day. Yet it burned for eight days so the story goes. Enough time for the priests to return and bless more oil.

Jews celebrate this holiday to honor the Maccabees and their small force that returned the Temple to the Jewish community. Thus, it’s a holiday signifying the power of even a small group of dedicated people. Yes, the miracle of the oil. But for most, not the main point. A minor holiday in most ways except for its confluence with the Christmas season and its emphasis on lights.

 

Another interesting confluence. My beeswax candles for the menorah and the climate conference in Dubai. 200 nations agreed to transition away from fossil fuels. Cynical me: Finally. Probably not in time. Glad me: Finally. The right direction.

We must emphasize adaptation, too. Adaptation to the results of climate change will have to proceed apace with the efforts to rein in carbon emissions. My own energy and money will focus there. I used to have a front line seat and intention to stop coal, get legislation passed, keep the oil in the ground. No more. There are plenty of young activists doing that. May they succeed.

Me? I want the axolotl population to increase. Perennial food grains to go into the soil all over the world. Institutions like the Land Institute to get more and better attention, funding. I want those farmers willing to wrestle the land back to its non-fertilized, non-Roundupped state to start buying land back from corporate farms and feed lots. I want the DNA of all food crops to diversify again, away from the monocultures sold and owned by seed companies and pharmaceutical giants. I will support all of these efforts in my own way, both financially and politically.

Why? Because a world changed by a climate heated beyond our experience will need all of them. My grandchildren will need all of them. All the grandchildren will need them.