Yearly Archives: 2024

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism

Do you feel different?

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Beltane and the Bar Mitzvah Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Shabbat. Paul. Tom. Veronica. Jamie. Luke. Leo. Irene. Ginny. Janice. Air travel. Travel. Pride. Pride Shabbat. Soul. Lev. Humility. Kavod. Colorado Blue Sky. Old Friends. Friends who are old. Friends who are young. Ruth. Gabe. Kate, always Kate. Money. Having enough. Orgovyx. Cancer. Spinal stenosis. The body as it declines. Sarah and her recovery.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Leo

One brief shining: Coffee black, chai latte, black tea the cups set down with a light click and thud vapor steaming, do you need a few more minutes, eyes back on the menus, the silence of choice making, the clinking of silverware, plates lifted and carried away, the way old friends ended another time together before disbursing back to Shadow Mountain, the Twin Cities, Robbinston, Maine.

 

The week of the Bar Mitzvah has been full. A full lev. A full home. A fullness of presence and transformation and initiation. Now it’s fading into memory with only Shabbat left. Paul and Tom came as witnesses, as bearers of memory, as Woolly Mammoths. Veronica came as my partner in conversion and bonei mitzvah. Jamie as my rabbi. All of these relationships deepened. Made more by the ancient ritual of becoming part of a tribe, a tradition, a local community.

Realized last night at the Pride Shabbat service, that a key facet was oh so simple, perhaps not seen for what it is. The brief conversations after. The turning and moving and encountering one you know only slightly. Saying each others names. Then a longer time, plate of strawberries and humus and pretzels and cookies in hand, talking with those known better. The casualness of it all. Yet really. Seeing and being seen. Knowing and being known. Each time we gather. Layering on the glue of community. Being bound a bit more to each other, casual acquaintance and dear friend.

Do you feel different? A fair question. Hard to answer. Yes! Not really, no. Oh, wait. Maybe. Rites of passage like conversion and the bonei mitzvah have a critical function for the individual and the community. They test willingness to embrace the other as a full and complete member of the same organism.

Yes, I do feel different. I passed through the semi-permeable membrane of Jewish identity when I first submerged in the mikveh. When I talked with the beit din about my Judaism. When I studied with Tara for my Torah portion. When I got my new name, Israel. When I read stanzas of Marge Piercy’s poem. And my Torah portion. When I gave my d’var torah. When I listened to Rabbi Jamie talk about me. When we finished the service. When people heard about all this, or witnessed it for themselves.

Really, the magic of the mikveh. After, I had been Jewish my whole life. And that feels true. I stood at the foot of Mt. Sinai on that original Shavuot, watched Moses come down, received the torah.

Commentary on Religion, Commentary on the news, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Judaism

Rites of Passage

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Beltane and the Bar Mitzvah Moon

Friday gratefuls: Retrieving my phone. Smiling Pig Saloon and Barbecue. Irv. Paul and Tom. Mussar. The Perkei Avot. Letting us heal ourselves. Kristie. Prostate cancer. Mets. Radiation and Orgovyx. Gabe and baseball. Ruth’s dinner.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: P.E.T. scans

One brief shining: Bathing in the presence of friends and family, no not that kind, the kind where folks see you, come to your Bar Mitzvah, give you presents, and say nice things about you, how significant, how important, so appreciated.

 

Two rites of passage this week. The Bar Mitzvah. Which continues to reverberate in my soul. Wild thought about that. Veronica and I did our conversions at the same time. Now we’ve done our bonei mitzvahs together. She’s 28, beautiful, talented, smart. I’m 77. Together, it occurred to me we represent youth, promise, the feminine, and the elder, maturity, the masculine. A whole person.

 

Second rite of passage. The drug holiday P.E.T. scan results. Not what I wanted. Three or four new metastases. Spinal column, pelvic lymph node. Which means. Meds. Orgovyx starting early next week. Then, radiation at some point this summer. Yet again. I will glow.

Kristie, who takes good care of me, said this is still manageable. And that she would tell me if it was not. That’s reassuring. Sort of. Still manageable made me go, huh.

Each iteration of treatment and recurrence adds up, carries its own weight. Yet I remain positive about the management and care I receive. My cancer seems hardy, able to withstand the best we can throw at it while each time there’s been something to do, something to put it back in quiescence.

That still manageable though. There may come a time. But it has not come yet.

So I will not dwell on it. As the rabbi’s say, each sleep is 1/60th of death and each morning a resurrection into a new life. Today is a new life, a chance to begin again. And that will be always true. Until death does me part from this world.

 

Just a moment: To all those embryo’s resting in cryogenic slumber. The Southern Baptists care about you. Like Alabama’s Supreme Court. Well, that’s what they’d like you to think. Actually ‘Bama and the Southern Baptists want to reach into the culture and impose on it their particular understandings of what it means to be human.

The Jewish position on this issue is clear and has been for centuries. Life begins with the first breath. Like Adam and Eve. Further. Because of this, if a problem occurs during pregnancy, the mother’s life is always given priority.

 

Another instance of religious certainty damaging human beings. Noticed Catholic Bishops have apologized for the treatment of Indians in boarding schools. That happened because Catholics of the time believed with certainty in the truth of Catholicism, the necessary dominance of Christianity over native beliefs, and the manifest destiny of American civilization. Very, very toxic confluence.

The message? Think about those things about which you are certain. Do any of them lead to harm for other people or for the world which sustains us all? Discard them now and learn humility.

Aging, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism

Now I am a man

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Beltane and the Bar Mitzvah Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Bar Mitzvah done. Tom and Paul here. CBE. My sacred community. Sarah and the Moose. Maine. Minnesota. California. Tree sex. Rabbi Jamie. Veronica. Rebecca. Joanne. Tara. Mindy. Presents. Finishing. All the Trees in the Arapaho National Forest.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Veronica

One brief shining: Veronica and I pulled open the doors of the ark, Rabbi Jamie lifted each Torah scroll and handed one  to each of us and we took the Torah scrolls throughout the congregation, prayer shawls in hand or with prayer books, folks touched the dressed scroll.

 

As you may have noticed, I missed yesterday. A busy day. Up and out of the house at 7:30 am. Over to Evergreen with Paul to meet Tom at the Bread Lounge. Breakfast. Corned beef eggs Benedict. A Cuban coffee. Conversation with two old friends.

Realized that their presence here added the experience into the long memory of our friendship. How long term relationships remain strong and fresh. It also reveals the limits of Zoom. 3-D, high touch has room for casual interaction, for direct care, for hugs. For meals eaten together. Having said that I’m still a fan of Zoom. It maintains connection in a much more direct way for me than the telephone.

After breakfast we drove over to the synagogue. It was only 9:30 so we had a half an hour to wait. I introduced Tom and Paul to various folks, we chatted.

At tennish we began. Rabbi Jamie gave Veronica and me a pep talk. Clumsiness makes it more human. This is a celebration of something that has already happened. Enjoy yourself.

Because Veronica sings and chants like the music major she is, she and Rabbi Jamie ended up doing most of the service. As agreed, I only came in on the parts I’d practiced.

Reading my Torah portion had its hiccups, not the best rendering of what I had learned. Not a big deal however.

I did feel clumsy about when to bow, when to rise up on my toes. And, boy was that Torah scroll heavy. By the time I’d made my circuit my left shoulder let me know it was ready to be done. Rabbi Jamie took it from me when I got back to the bimah.

We read a Marge Piercy poem at two stanzas each. I introduced the Mah Tovu and the Shema. Veronica chanted her Torah portion which was much longer than mine.

Our d’var torahs came next. Mine was predictably intellectual, hers much longer and heartfelt. Why the parish was never a good fit for me.

Veronica might make a good rabbi if she decided to go that direction. Right now she’s a mechanical engineer working for Lockheed Martin on spacecraft.

I did not realize how much standing would be involved. By the time the service ended, at about 2 hours, I was exhausted. More limitations of the body.

At this point I’m glad to have this done. Finished. It puts a cap on the whole year. I’m finished with preparation, ready to live as a Jew.

It was so good to have Ruth and Gabe there. In a way this was a pivotal moment for the three of us. Grandpop now firmly in their tribe. Ruth cried a bit, remembering Jon. And that too was good.

I did leave my phone at the synagogue. Got some gifts which I’ve not yet opened. Had some deep conversations. A special, sacred day.

 

 

 

 

 

Plants

The Leaning Lodgepole, Tree #4

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Beltane and the Bar Mitzvah Moon

 

Leaning

The leaning Lodgepole is in my back. It’s not in any danger of falling, but it definitely has an angle other than 90 degrees with the soil. Makes it distinctive within its small cluster. All these Trees benefited from the thinning I did in 2015 for fire mitigation. They’ve grown bigger and stronger. I’m tempted to say leaner, too. But that would be a groaner, right?

Unlike my Lodgepole Companion and the Tall Tree in Elk Meadow Park, today’s Tree has branches all around its trunk, taking advantage of a 360 degree opportunity for solar capture. It’s also thicker at the base than those two, an altogether bigger tree in terms of volume. Not sure about height. Tough to compare yesterday’s Tree since it’s not nearby.

Bearberry growing on the north side of Leaner

Unlike Companion it has plants around its base, in this shot Bearberry. A hardy Evergreen ground cover that produces red berries in the fall. Leaner has other plants, too. One proving a bit of woodlore.

North side of Leaner. In the moss itself are varieties of lichen

This Tree joins its many similar neighbors to create a Lodgepole Grove around my drainage field.

Part of the Grove

Great Wheel, Great Work, Jefferson County, Judaism, Mountains, Shadow Mountain

Penultimate

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Beltane and the Bar Mitzvah Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Friends. All of them. Near and far. Family. Ruth and Gabe. My son and Seoah and Murdoch. Mark. Mary. Diane. Tara’s help with some additional Hebrew I got for tomorrow. Tara. Irv. Tom. Paul. Marilyn. Heidi. Alan. Jamie. Veronica. Mindy. Kat. Lauren. Elizabeth. Kate and Mike. Kate’s Creek. Kate, always Kate. Great Sol. Exuberant this morning.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Completing a long journey

One brief shining: The Shema in the morning, I cover my eyes: Listen, God-Wrestler. YHWH is our God. YHWH is one, touch the mezuzah, still sleepy I pick up my phone, take my morning pills, put in my hearing aid, check for dishes and empty cans of mineral Water, try to remember when I took my synthroid, then upstairs to see Herme still lit from the night and turn him off. A new life has begun.

 

Bar Mitzvah day tomorrow. Today is penultimate, one of Kate’s favorite words. I’ve practiced. A lot. I’m as ready as I can be. Within one year I have converted, completed the studies necessary for conversion, learned my torah portion in Hebrew so I can read it with no vowels and no punctuation from the torah scroll, practiced leading portions of the morning service, gotten my tallit from Joanne and learned how to use it. Tomorrow the Hebrew meets the scroll as we say. Ha.

It’s not been easy. At times I felt I might founder under the expectations, the constant study. Like learning a new language. The religious language of an ancient people. Yet each step has deepened my conviction about becoming a Jew. Even with the whole Israel/Gaza mess and the aborted trip to Israel.

Each time I go in the synagogue, if I remember, I wear my kippah. I say we when discussing matters Jewish. My lev, my heart-mind, has shifted allegiances to this oddly rigorous, yet undogmatic spiritual path. My inner pagan remains intact, nurtured now by Rosh Chodesh, the Jewish lunar calendar, Sukkot, Passover, Shavuot, Tu Bishevat as well as the Great Wheel and the unitary metaphysic I claim every morning and evening when I say the Shema. Reconstructionist Rabbi’s like Jamie, Art Green, Toba Spitzer, Rami Shapiro, and Michael Strassfield continue the radical project of Mordecai Kaplan. In doing so they have, for me anyhow, opened my lev to the intimacy of teshuvah and the world-embracing power of tikkun.

Yes. But that’s not where it started for me. First with Kate. The convert. A slumbering Judaism that got reignited when we moved to Shadow Mountain and found Congregation Beth Evergreen. Rabbi Jamie made it easy for us to be there, even pagan me. Friends that we made made it home.

It was those friends who engendered the aha that decided me. Those who enter the sanctuary, the mah tovu implies, make the sanctuary sacred. Our friends. Now, after Kate’s death, my friends. My sacred community. Here in the Rocky Mountains. Among the Mountain Jews. Which now include me.

 

Great Wheel, Great Work, Jefferson County, Judaism, Mountains, Mussar, Plants, Shadow Mountain

Taller than its neighbors at Elk Meadow Park, Tree #3

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Beltane and the Bar Mitzvah Moon

Occurred to me today that I can honor any tree I want. Doesn’t have to be in my yard though I imagine the bulk of them will be.

Today I had a blood draw in Evergreen so I drove up Stagecoach Road to one of the many trailheads for Elk Meadows Park. Got out of the car and walked over to the main path. On the left side of the main path was a stand of Lodgepole Pines. Though the elevation was only 7,700 feet they seemed to be doing fine.

Probably influenced by reading Wild Trees I chose the tallest of those in the grove for my honoring.

A sense of the Park
The tallest in this shot

This Tree grows in a small Grove on a slightly sloped area. A Colorado Forestry website says Lodgepoles prefer a slight slope and this Tree has found one. Like my Lodgepole Companion most of their Branches push out from the Trunk toward the Southeast. Also like my Companion this tall Lodgepole has almost no branches toward the Northwest.

Its lower Branches contained fewer male sex organs than my Companion, but shared this characteristic with its neighbors. Further up they began to proliferate. About two thirds of the way up a row of Branches had female Strobilus that were taller and fuzzier than the others. Don’t know what that means, but some of Tree #3’s neighbors had the same pattern.

The softer, yellowish pine cones are the male organs. The more erect one in the middle is female which will transform over time into serotinous cones. Serotinous cones have heavy pitch sealing the precious seeds inside. Only the heat of a Forest Fire will cause the pitch to melt and allow the seeds to disperse onto the scorched earth.

When you live in the Mountains, it is so easy to drive past the Trees, seeing them only as a barrier to accessing the slope of the Mountainside. Or, to see them and think they’re all alike. If you’ve seen one Lodgepole, you’ve seen them all. They do share many characteristics. Altitude and soil preferences. Monoecious reproduction. A thin bark. A susceptibility to Fire, especially Fires that advance from Crown to Crown. The hardest for smoke jumpers and hotshots to control.

Yet they are all different. All unique individuals expressing their full potential in that one spot where they grow, adapting their Branching strategies to the microclimate of other Trees, position on a Mountain, shelter or not from Storms, the nutrient value of the Soil.

The bark of Tree #3

 

Judaism, Torah

What was/what is/what will be

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Beltane and the Bar Mitzvah Moon

Monday gratefuls: Bar Mitzvah in two days. Paul and Tom coming. Ruth and Gabe. The gold Mogen David, shield of David, from BJ. Writing my D’var Torah. Interpretation of my Torah portion. See below. My Lodgepole Companion eating from Great Sol’s buffet of light. Rain yesterday. A cool night. The Rockies. The Appalachians. The Sierra Nevada. The Sawtooths. Kilauea. Mt. Etna. Yellowstone. Krakatoa. Mauna Loa. Mauna Kea. Haleakala. Magma. Lava. The living Earth.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Altitude and depth

One brief shining: Rough bark on the Lodgepoles, no running your hand over it appreciating the surface as on the Aspen, the Lodgepole grips your skin, makes it sticky with resin; no smooth bark at the top either, it’s rough all the way up to the Lead, so I placed my palm on it feeling its ridges and wide spots, its less welcoming configuration, wondering why Trees make the Barks that they do.

 

Wanted to share the first draft of my d’var Torah.

My bar mitzvah Torah portion:

Exodus 19:25-20:1-2

19:25 So Moses went down to the people and said [this] to them.

20:1 God spoke all these words, saying:

20: 2 I יהוה am your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage:

 

God self identifies here with the word, יהוה. Yud Heh Vav Heh. YHWH. Rabbi Lawrence Kushner writes: “…in truth these letters are unutterable. Not because of the holiness they evoke, but because they are all vowels and you cannot pronounce all the vowels at once without risking respiratory injury. The word is the sound of breathing. The holiest name in the world, the name of the creator, is the sound of your own breathing.”

Another turn on the sense of this God name that shows up thousands of times in the Torah is that it is a verb. That God is a verb, not a thing, not an entity. We might consider this as a translation: what was/what is/what will be. God evolves from the past into our present moment and on with us into the future.

We can turn back now to the Shema: Shema Yisrael.  יהוה eloheynu. יהוה echad.  A translation with this definition of יהוה : Listen, God-wrestler. What was/what is/what will be is our God. What was/what is/what will be is one. (Pause)

Martin Buber famously suggested that there are two kinds of relationship: I-It and I-Thou. “The I-It relationship is one based on detachment from others…in which one uses another as an object. In contrast, in an I-Thou relationship, each person fully and equally turns toward the other with openness and ethical engagement. This kind of relationship is characterized by dialogue and by “total presentness.”[i]

Returning to the Shema and we God-wrestlers. What was/what is/what will be is one. An I-It relationship imagines we can detach a person, a Tree, a Mountain, an ocean from the one that we know as what was/what is/what will be. Alfred North Whitehead called this a fallacy of misplaced concreteness. It is a violation of the interconnectedness we proclaim every time we say the Shema.

Rabbi Rami Shapiro calls the move from I-It to I-Thou a change from narrow mind to spacious mind.[ii] In narrow mind we foreclose on possibility, limit our understanding. Most dangerous of all, we deny the interconnected reality of the One.

Here’s an example of narrow mind. A commentary on the American Dream, especially in the West: “Propelled by our ambition to remake ourselves, we careen past one another, oblivious to the fact that we’re following a pattern as old as our country.”[iii] 

(Pause)

Mizrahim. Egypt. Or, the narrow place. Or, the place of bondage. It is godly to move from the narrow mind, the narrow place in our psyche, to the spacious reality of our true bond, our literal oneness with all that becomes and is becoming.

 

We can now understand, I believe, Rabbi Rami Shapiro’s reframing of this first commandment:

“I יהוה am your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage”

as a kavannah, an intention:

  1. “Spirituality is a source of liberation. Aware of the suffering caused by enslavement to things and ideas, I set my intention to free myself from all addictions and compulsive behaviors, both material and spiritual.”[iv]

This is teshuva as Shapiro defines it, returning to the whole you, the one  made in the image of what was/what is/what will be, and knowing all of you lives embedded in a glorious reality always evolving and becoming something new.

 

 

 

[i] Lucy Fishbein on Sefaria

[ii] p. 80, Judaism Without Tribalism, 2022, Monk Press

[iii] NYT article about Ted Kaczynski

[iv] p. 129, op cit

 

 

 
Jefferson County, Judaism, Mountains, Mussar, Plants, Shadow Mountain

My Lodgepole Companion, Tree #2

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Beltane and the Bar Mitzvah Moon

My Lodgepole Companion

This Tree, a Lodgepole, a Pinus contarta latifolia, stands first in the view out of my window where I write. I can see other Trees and Black Mountain, but over time I’ve developed a fellow feeling for this Tree. Watching Snow sag its Branches. Then how they slough off the Snow. How its Leaves (needles) change color with available moisture. Right now, at the end of a wet Spring, intense green. How it waves gently in a breeze, sways from its base in strong wind gusts. How it remains in its spot, committed and content. I feel it as a literal companion, there when I need it. Always steady and strong.

My Lodgepole Companion is the center Tree in front closest to the house

On close examination I noticed it has few Branches spread toward the northwest. Other Trees in its small Grove block the sun from that direction. Its Branches have multiplied on the southeast. Right now they seem to be agreeing with my writing, nodding vigorously as a breeze contacts them. This Tree also has Branches near the ground. Due to fire mitigation needs I trim those off unless, as here with my Companion, the surface is rocky, not flammable.

These Trees grow close together. Lodgepole Forests have evolved to burn in crown Fires, then reestablish themselves anew when the high heat melts the pitch holding their serotinous cones tight. This evolution might make you wonder, why live in a Lodgepole Forest? As I do. Well. Gee. Shuffles shoe in the dust. Don’t really have a good answer to that outside of beauty and the Mountains.

I’ve got get to down to the main Denver Public Library which has a special internal library holding of books on Colorado History. The Colorado History Museum, too. I want to chase down the logging history of the Front Range, especially along what is now the Front Range corridor. An arborist I know told me, and I’d already suspected, that the whole area on either side of what is now Hwy 285 was clear cut to build the city of Denver. 285, also according to him, follows the route of the logging railroad built out as far Kenosha Pass, almost to South Park.

Here’s a map of Lodgepole stands in Colorado. I’ll later post one for North America.

I want to put the Arapaho National Forest, Conifer, Evergreen, our chunk of Jefferson County in perspective. Who lived here first? The Utes, I imagine, but I don’t know that. Why did they leave? When did the first white folks settle here? When was the clear cutting? How long did it last? What did it ruin? Enhance? When was 285 built? Our small communities, when did they come to be? Why?

My Lodgepole Companion represents a contemporary Forest grown up, I think, to replace the one clear cut at the turn of the last century.

Their (I’m using binary pronouns for the Lodgepoles since they have both sex organs on the same tree. Monoecious.) growth has a reason here in the montane/sub alpine altitude range, 8,000-10,000 feet. Not sure what it is.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Judaism

Practice

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Beltane and the Bar Mitzvah Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Rock. Gneiss. Granite. Shale. Sandstone. Lava. Sedimentary. Soil. Humus. Loess. Chernozem. Thin. Rich. Regenerative agriculture. Corn. Wheat. Barley. Soy Beans. Millet. Quinoa. Taro. Tarot. The Hermit. The Fool. Herme. Shadow Mountain. Rock above ground. Maxwell Creek. Cub Creek. Upper Bear Creek. Bear Creek. Kate’s Creek.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Tom and Paul

One brief shining: I undressed the Torah scroll after Jamie removed it from the ark; holding it by the spindles of its rollers, he placed the scroll on the bimah, unrolled it to its current spot at the end of Leviticus and began going backwards to the nineteenth chapter of Exodus where the ten sayings, or the ten commandments are written, found my Torah portion at Exodus 19:25, handed me a yod, and Hello, this is Evergreen medical center chimed in my hearing aid, projected by blue tooth from my phone sitting at the back of the sanctuary.

 

Yeah. It was both funny and an odd juxtaposition of an ancient text, modern technology, and today’s health system’s love affair with text, e-mail, and phone as reminder mediums. Vayared is the first word of my Torah portion and I had my mouth ready when my hearing aid came alive with the sound of medicine.

This was yesterday morning during the final run through before Shavuot. Kat was at CBE, Veronica was on Zoom. Not sure where Lauren was. Jamie and I rounded out the bonei mitzvah* crew. I practiced reading my parts while Lauren and Kat sang and chanted theirs. There was some palpable tension as mistakes were made with the first and only performance only four days away. Rabbi Jamie was reassuring, quietly helpful.

Tom asked me what the purpose of an adult bar mitzvah is if it’s a rite of passage into manhood and womanhood. Something I presumably (OK. OK.) accomplished a while ago. The first answer I gave him was that this bar mitzvah was a way to increase the depth of my Jewish learning. I began this process about a year ago and conversion was the aleph moment, the beginning. That was last November.

Getting ready for my own bar mitzvah has pushed me into a better familiarity with Hebrew, with the prayerbook, with the Torah scroll itself, with Rabbi Jamie, with Tara, my tutor, and with other Jews like Alan, Joanne, Irv, Marilyn, Dan, Rich, Ron, Susan. To them it signals my seriousness about conversion. As Alan said, it checks one of the boxes.

The second answer I would give him now. Wednesday will be a capstone moment for my year of living Jewishly. It will mark the point when my life as a Jew can pass over from preparatory to customary. I have noticed that I often use we when referring to matters Jewish already. A sign. Still have not gotten to services as much as I intended. That homestand inertia I’ve mentioned before, yet I feel bonded in a new and deeper way to Congregation Beth Evergreen.

 

 

*Bonei Mitzvah means, builders of chosen connection and communal service. The phrase is an adaption of the plural form of bar or bat mitzvah (or b’nei mitzvah / children of mitzvah) that is gender neutral, highlights the active nature of the process… HaMaKom

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Hebrew, Judaism, Memories, Science, Travel

Teshuva. Bar Mitzvah. Earth Rise.

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Beltane and the Bar Mitzvah Moon

Shabbat: Shavuot. Moses. Torah. Rain. My Lodgepole Companion. Great Sol. Photosynthesis. Chlorophyll. Trees. Ruth and Gabe. Tom and Paul. Joanne. Clouds. The West. Less than 20 inches of Rain a year. Climate change. The Great Work. The Great Wheel. Shekinah. The Sabbath Bride. Caitlin Clark. Angela Reese. Sports. Election 2024. Reading

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Narrow mind, spacious mind

One brief shining: Fear leaked out of some antediluvian part of my subconscious, reminding me with the certainty born of angst and nail-biting that no you can not sing, you can not chant, you will never learn the Hebrew, you are not able to, remember that time, what time, oh you know that time.

 

Still turning over the toxic combination of cabin fever, melancholy, and little boy acculturation. It had me. For maybe March and April. Did not lift until I rode the train to San Francisco and back. Finally, like a dog shaking off water after a swim, I woke up.

Teshuva accomplished. I had returned to the confident, can do it Self. The one I had moved away from in a subtle way, missing the mark of who I really am. This is a constant cycle for most of us. Forget, Turn away. Sink down. Somehow submerge the gift that you are to this world. Then, a moment of felt love, of self compassion, of changing perspectives and there. you. are. Welcome home prodigal Self. Here is a feast for you!

Perhaps today is a teshuvah day for you.

 

Practice for the Bar Mitzvah. This morning at ten. A run through for us all. The whole morning service. After meeting with Rabbi Jamie on Thursday, I now know what my parts are. And I’m able to handle them.

I have a couple of introductions to make. One to the Mah Tovu. A prayer said on entering the sanctuary. It was a lesson about the Mah Tovu that prompted my conversion. I’ll read it in the transliterated Hebrew. The second to the Shema. The daily prayer said on rising and on going to bed. Also the prayer said when you are dying. Each mezzuzah contains the text of the Shema. Here’s one way of saying it in English:

Hear, God-Wrestler. What was/what is/what will be is God. What was/what is/what will be is one.

The four of us: Veronica, Kat, Lauren, and I will read two stanzas each of a Marge Piercy poem. I will read Psalm 118 as translated by Rabbi Jamie and another poem of my choosing.

I’m glad for the practice. I need a rehearsal. Going to wear my new clothes from Bonobo’s. Why I bought them.

 

Just a moment: Bill Anders is dead. Who, you may ask, is Bill Anders? An astronaut who took a photograph during the Apollo 8 mission. This is the photograph: