Monthly Archives: April 2024

Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Travel

This test. Going ok.

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Spring and the Moon of Liberation

Tuesday gratefuls: Muir Woods. Redwoods. Asian Art Museum. Bonobos. Walking. Back pain. Ellis Avenue. The Tenderloin. The Chancellor. Boutique hotels. Amtrak. Travel. The Cable Cars. Powell. Sears Fine Foods. Hokusai. Ukiyo-e prints.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Challenging myself

One brief shining: About eight blocks from Bonobos, around Mason and Geary, my back complained, why it asked are you doing this to me, and I replied we are together finding out just how much trouble you are, both so I can take care of you and so I can not limit us unnecessarily, oh it said, that makes sense and I don’t want to be more of a problem than I need to be.

 

There are two facets to the back pain that are problematic. In the moment the pain can make me stop, sit down, wait for the nerves to calm. That’s the acute issue. The second facet is the price in fatigue. That is, after a bout of walking or standing which has any length at all, dealing with the back takes a toll, whether pain becomes acute or not, just from my bodies positioning and repositioning of itself .

Finding that I only have a morning and afternoons worth of energy. Or, I imagine, one of those and an evenings worth. Like yesterday.

Walking down Powell and across a Union Square bedecked in flowers-it’s Union Square in Bloom!- I wandered according to Google, found Grant Street while being assaulted with the noise of urban life, including a loud exhaust fan aiding a worker below street level, located the building, went up in the elevator to the second floor, found Bonobos and met Ish, short for Ishmael. He walked me through a fitting. Helping me find pants and shirts that actually fit.

The pants we got in one go. Shirt size took four different versions. But now we know. Ordered some chinos and three shirts, all but one shirt being mailed back to Colorado. The last shirt comes to the Chancellor tomorrow for Comedy Night.

Back down at street level I decided to walk to the Museum. I need the exercise and I love walking. In cities. In the Mountains. Slow, flaneur style walking. Noticing the hat store now closed directing customers to a new location. The woman wrasslin her thick male pit bull, muzzle on. A man sitting in a wheelchair along Ellis Street as if he were on the beach at an all inclusive resort. That guy with the pressure washer cleaning the sidewalk. The Tenderloin Police precinct.

By the time I found the Asian Museum I needed to sit. So I went to the Asian Box cafe and had lunch while waiting on Diane.

When we finished another few hours seeing the collection of Avery Brundage, proud racist and anti-semite, yet collector of Buddhist and Hindu artifacts, Diane left for her music with kiddos and yoga. I didn’t stay long. The day was done. I went back to the Chancellor a bit after 4 pm and rested until bedtime. Tired out and happy.

Art and Culture, Asia, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Travel

ah. Art

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Spring and the Moon of Liberation

Monday gratefuls: Asian Art Museum. Diane. Uber. Street cars clanging on Powell. Good night’s sleep. Sears Fine Foods. Chancellor Hotel. Its lobby with popcorn, coffee, water, apples, cookies. Learning my limits. Travel. Union Square. Fitting at Bonobo’s.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Song dynasty ceramics

One brief shining: Lunch at the Asian Box in the Asian Art Museum, the old main library transformed into a temple of the arts of Asia, riding its elevator to the second floor, finding the gallery with Chinese ceramics, locating the Song dynasty pieces, falling in love again with the skill and simplicity of that era’s potters, the delicate beauty of their work.

 

My first destination after the hotel. The Asian Art Museum. Why? I’ve missed wandering from vitrine to case to special exhibits, seeing the mark and choices of ancient hands. Especially the work of the Song Dynasty potters whose work is not only beautiful in its own right but had a lasting influence on Japan, teaware in particular. Temmoku especially.

Korean Moon Jar

These Korean Moon Jars represent the same aesthetic, simple, not perfect and in their case not even necessarily utilitarian. Just objects of clay, built on a wheel in two halves then joined. Coated with a white glaze, fired and finished.

The Song dynasty ceramicist’s influenced artists in Japan and Korea and now influence a new generation looking back at the choices made by these skilled potters. In my own preferences for ceramics the careful glazing, uncluttered designs, and muted colors say well made, well made.

 

I’m in the fourth day of my trip already. Second full day in San Francisco. The back limited me yesterday. After my morning session with the Ancient Brothers on what does your soul hunger for, I felt sleepy. Emailed Diane that I was going to take a nap. Thought it would be an hour. Nope. Two and a half.

Compressed our day which had originally included breakfast at Wise and Son’s deli, a visit to Diane’s home and her jogging hill. Instead she came here and I called an Uber.

After a tasty lunch at the Asian Box cafe at the museum, Diane had glazed salmon and I had pork with noodles, cabbage, bean sprouts, and tiny shrimp, we wandered the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean collections for three hours or so.

So happy to be there. My soul also hungers for art, needs it. My joy at being in a museum proved that.

The other hungers I identified were, like the one for art, mostly met on this trip. The others were travel, being in that place I do not know, seeing and experiencing things different from home, and seeing family. Aside from my brother and sister, Diane is my longest continuous relationship. She’s a first cousin on my mother’s side.

My family is far flung. Diane here in S.F. Mary in Malaysia. Mark now once again headed for Southeast Asia. My son, Seoah, and Murdoch in Korea. Interesting, to be sure, but the logistics of love and caring… Made difficult.

Health, Travel

April 26 and April 27 posts

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Spring and the Moon of Liberation

Friday gratefuls: Lidocaine patch. Amtrak. Honeybee rides. Waking up at 5. Shower. Finishing last of the packing. Some coffee. Then in the car. A true start to the trip. That first transport. Breakfast at Union Station at Snooze. Boarded train on time. Overcoming inertia.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Train in the Rockies

One brief shining: The fork at Snooze had curved tines, used them to pick up delicious chunks of corn beef, hash browns, washed down with a Blackberry Limeade, just right; after I sat on the traditional railroad benches, sooo uncomfortable.

Boarded on time, but left about 20 minutes late. I’m in my roomette,#21 on car 540. On this part of the trip I face south. Well, my window faces south. I actually face in the direction of travel. Right now, west.
We’ve been rolling now for an hour and a half. A long stretch out of Denver went north, then a wide sweeping turn found us inching up a grade, slow into the Front Range. We’ve been in the Mountains for a long while now. Passing through, on my side, walls of Rock, 17 tunnels, and lots of Evergreen. Some Snow remains, patches on the northern slopes which are out my south facing window.
Wherever we are now Winter remains. Deep Snow. Probably near a ski town. As we rode through the Denver metro, the dogwoods were in bloom. The yards were green. Spring had taken over. Not up here. However high we are.
Though the Creek running along side the tracks is full, not frozen. Something’s melting somewhere.
Snow topped Mountain Peaks, a fast running Mountain Stream, a herd of Elk, still in Colorado for sure. Guess we’re near Steamboat.
9,200 feet they just said. Only 400 higher than me. We’re in a really long tunnel right now.

My apprehension has now turned to observation. Using the p.t. exercises, the lidocaine patch, sitting down. So far not impossible. Struggled with my suitcase up the stairs to the level of the rooms. Expected that.
A really, really long tunnel.
The journey. The ancientrail of travel, of the Fool’s path. Something I need every once in a while. This may be a good alternative. Lower to the ground, no long airport walks. Slower. Which I like.

I’m using my laptop keyboard. Didn’t want to pack my ergonomic keyboard because I’m carrying rather than checking my bag. It’s heavy. Right now I’m finding this keyboard mostly ok. To my surprise. A pleasant surprise.
Writing on the tray table.
This is a very long tunnel. Did I mention that? I think I heard 9 miles long. We’ve been dark for a while.
Lunch is at noon. First come, first served. May skip. Probably got my day’s calories at breakfast.
Out of the tunnel at Winter Park near Granby where Rabbi Jamie sometimes lives. Got a quick photograph of a lift.
So far, so far. Still many miles to go. And I’m glad.

 

Spring and the Moon of Liberation

Sabbath gratefuls: Sleep. Ibuprofen. Lidocaine. Dennis. Roomette #21. Northern Nevada. Salt Lake City at midnight. Thin milk Sky with Great Sol riding the Southern passage. Snowy Mountain Peaks just beyond I-80. Greening landscape. Mesquite and Scrub grass. Breakfast between Battle Mountain and Winnemucca.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Vacating ahead of another 16 inches or so of Snow

One brief shining: Roomettes are small, but private, two seats, two nighttime beds, an outlet on the wall, only one, designed before personal electronics became more and more of our lives, most important a large window, a porthole as this long metal passenger ship presses its bulk forward, in this case to the Ocean, the wide Pacific and its bays in California.

Woke up around 5 am after off and on sleep until I took an ibuprofen, previously forbidden to me. Kidney disease. Since my labs have indicated no kidney disease for the last three years-it’s a mystery, Sue decided I could chance the occasional dose when things were, well, not good.
Trying to sleep last night as my hip said, hey, I’m here! I’m here, I reached a point where things were not good. Pain made it hard to sleep longer than an hour. So I reached for my first nsaid in many years.
Hammered that pain back into the hole it crawled out of. I didn’t feel bad. I’ve done p.t., which helps. Used the lidocaine patch, but 12 hours on, twelve hours off. Tried acupuncture, no relief. Seen a physiastrist. Increased my resistance work to strengthen my legs and core.
Two nsaid’s? NBD. Now that I know how much more effective they are than acetamenophin for back pain, I’m going to press for greater clarity about kidney disease.
All in all though, painful moments have not prevented me from boarding the train, walking around, going on vacation. Mixed conclusion, but right now travel trumps pain.
Part of the trick is to avoid over stressing my back. I did that yesterday walking around Union Station and to the train itself. Had I been a bit more circumspect I may not have had the pain I did. Learning curve

Yesterday the route of the California Zephyr followed the Colorado River for a long way. As I watched its muddy, ordinary flow, I wondered how something so mundane could be so important to millions of people. It is. The Water that flowed toward the Baja collects and channels Snow melt from Mountain Tops and Valley Floors, rushing it on south toward Las Vegas, Phoenix, even Los Angeles. Agriculture is the largest user though, not metro areas. Setting up a current struggle between population focal points and fields.

Just a moment: Student protests. Then and now. This 77 year old veteran of the war against the war knows the power and the fury of going over against the war machine. Against death from the Sky, death decreed by old white men, usually, too often, the death of those seen as other, be they North Vietnamese or Palestinians.
Yet this time. Anti-semitism is in the mix. Hard.

Memories, Minnesota, Politics, Travel

Arriving

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Spring and the Moon of Liberation

Sunday gratefuls: Steve, the Uber driver. The Chancellor. Powell Street. Cable cars. The Moon of Liberation standing over the Hyatt Regency. Amtrak. My back and its pains. A good night’s sleep. Diane. Her town. Mission and Fremont. Traveling. Vacating. Seeing the U.S. West, then the Pacific.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Uber

One brief shining: Left Roomette #21 behind pushing my bag, down the stairs, off the train, pushing bag again, show ticket to shuttle bus driver, board the bus, cross the bridge from Oakland to San Francisco with the Bay rippling underneath us, Alcatraz brooding off to my right, get out at Mission and Fremont, call an Uber, get in and ride to the Chancellor on Union Square.

 

No Wifi on train so my first trip posts will be above this one. Wrote them on Scribener and will import them when its update gets finished. Write now I’m in room 1304 of the Chancellor, a boutique hotel on Union Square. Writing now, too.

The back is an issue, but not a deal breaker for travel. Slower and with more management of pain. Sorta like home.

Steve, my Uber driver, was from Phoenix, now married to a S.F. gal. He drove a white Tesla and showed up within a minute of my booking. A critical move for my back. In times past I would have preferred to walk the 19 minutes to the hotel; now I know that level of effort would stress my hip and set me back.

My original flaneur idea, when the back flared for the first time in Korea, is the right one. Go slow and easy. Keep up the exercise. Do pain management.

That’s ok. The buzz of the new and the different still feeds my soul.

 

Yesterday as the train made its slow, delayed approach through poor suburbs, boulevards and underpasses filled with the makeshift homes of the unhomed, I got that sense of unease that always accompanies evidence of our failed political economics.

Then we came to Grizzly Island Wildlife Area. Egrets and Blue Heron. The Marsh. A Fox loping along for an evening meal. Wild Neighbors for San Francisco and its burbs. Calm returned to my soul. Not because there were no trailer parks, burned out cars, Target shopping carts, but because this felt like my place, a home away from home. Here I knew what to notice, how to exist.

In the so sad introduction to a major world metropolis my heart clogged up, the scenes of poverty’s devastation boiling my blood. Agitating me. Wanting to make me scream. So much so that I looked up M.I.C.A.H., the Metropolitan Interfaith Coalition for Affordable House. Yes, still there, almost 40 years now. And the Minnesota Council of Non-Profits. Fancy website. Couldn’t find Jobs Now though it may have morphed into something else. It was there the last time I wondered if what I’d done really mattered.

Yes, economic injustice and its tragedies are and will be with us. But so will those whose lives are spent trying to change them and if change can’t happen right now, ameliorate their effects.

Travel

The Travel Jones

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Spring and the Moon of Liberation

Thursday gratefuls: Travelin’. Truckin’. Grateful Dead, thanks Mark. Diane. Great Sol, out and proud. My Lodgepole Companion performing, as I write, the oh so necessary miracle of photosynthesis. The 60’s and San Francisco. Flowers in my beard, maybe? That day before leavin’ feelin’. Lots to do. Lidocaine patch on. Ready for the day. Living.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Amtrak

One brief shining: That Travelpro lies on its back right now thrown open, zippers dangling, ready to receive that which I decide I cannot buy in Union Square and that which I’ll need until my new clothes arrive from Bonobo’s, my meds all ready for their placing in those plastic containers so familiar to those geriatric others out there, electronics and their necessary cables, charging apparati are still in place doing their work and will be snatched up last.

 

Oh the things we’ll see and the places we’ll go. As this, the last day before vacation, has arrived my mood has that pre-trip lift. No fussing around. Stop the mail. Get a pedicure. Text Marina about the key for Ana. Gather Hebrew pages. Run the dishwasher. All that kind of thing.

I have some pro-travelers in my life. My brother Mark has lived most of his adult life on the road, out of the country. Hopping from Southeast Asia to Saudi Arabia depending on work and his whim. My sister Mary has lived most of her adult life in Southeast Asia. She’s made the most of it, not thinking twice about traveling around the world to visit friends and family, for work helping the educational systems of various countries, teaching in Japan. My son travels internationally many times a year, currently lives in Korea, before that Singapore and Hawai’i. My buddy Mark (aka Mario, Sam) Odegard has made of travel an art form, a venue for taking risks, for learning about new cultures, for adventures with Babbet. Friend Paul Strickland has visited many countries, gone round the world. Tom traveled for work, a lot. Me? I look at them and marvel. How they can decide just what to take. Make all the arrangements,handle the inevitable snafus. They are my role models.

Well, two more. Mom and Dad. Mom made the daring decision to join the WAC’s in WWII, getting sent to Europe and north Africa with the Signal corps. She saw Algiers, Capri, Rome, London. The first of our small family to leave the country for points beyond these shores. Dad though. He was the ur traveler even though he only got beyond North America once as far as I know. He just loved to go. We went to Oklahoma a lot. His birthplace and mine. We went to Canada, to Stratford, Ontario. We went to state parks in Indiana, to Air Force base museums. After his sort of retirement, he and his then wife, Rosemary, traveled Indiana going to places with curiosities that Dad wanted to see for himself like the really big ball of twine or the river that disappeared.

Though I’ve been more modest in my getaways, I’ve had my share. What I do have though is the travel jones. Every once in a while, I need to go somewhere. Of late, I’ve let inertia tamp that down, but like any jones it’s never really gone. It awaits only a pretty picture of somewhere far away, or a lecturer mentioning the churning of the sea of milk to get me on Kayak or the Amtrak website.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Judaism, Travel

My revels are not yet ended

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Spring and the Moon of Liberation

Wednesday gratefuls: Shirley Waste. Taking out the trash. Pine Martens. Otters. Sea Lions. Platypuses. Echidna. Cassowaries. Emus. Ostriches. Dinosaurs. Velociraptors. T-Rex. Brontosaurus. Mitochondria. Organelles. Life. Its emergence. Our participation in it. A true and undoubtable miracle. Consciousness. Life observes itself. The Universe observes itself. And celebrates itself.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Life

One brief shining: A morning thing gripping the plastic bar across the back of the trash bin, giving its plastic tire a kick so the bin shifts back onto the tires, then dragging it, making the sound of Thunder across the asphalt cracks headed toward not a curb, no not here, but the edge of Black Mountain Drive where it will wait for the truck to come, embrace it, lift it, shake it, and return it to the ground, goodbye trash, goodnight recycling.

 

In at least two different places at once. An improvement over times past when my self lay fragmented over my calendar and its scribbled appointments, its crossed out engagements and the repercussions of both filtering out like tiny fingers, tearing open the envelope of the next day and the day after, contaminating them with worry.

Today I’m pushing myself, challenging myself. Do the trip. Discover new limits. Or, discover that the worry, this not so tiny finger has no business in my heart. Yes. The trip.

Second place. The new Jew. Still learning Torah portion. Perhaps needing to learn some more for the service. Reading to finish the last session of Jamie’s ten lessons for conversion. Finding myself oversaturated, filled past the brim with so much new information, behavior, language, worldview that I feel weary. Not weary as in on my Eloheinu this was a mistake. Not at all. Weary as in enough for now. Like nearing the end of a period of study. Bachelors. Master of Divinity. Doctor of Ministry. Enough for now. Don’t tell me what to read. Don’t put me on display. There is though, as there were with each of these degrees, still a bit more to do. Have the bar mitzvah ceremony. Read my Torah portion. Have my last class with Jamie. Then. Ahhhh.

So travel as personal litmus test and pushing through the last days of my year of living Jewishly. Working to continue life with eagerness and depth. That’s what these represent for me. Both of them.

Reshaping my days and my commitments to a new, 77 year old form.

Want to be clear. It delights me to have these two places to become. A trip and a new identity. My life is not over and I’m living it full out or at least as full out as my 77 year old body and energy level will allow. I talk to Kate most days, know she walks this part of my ancientrail with me. A joy.

From the calendar, the Zen calender: Joy is being willing for things to be as they are. Charlotte Joko Beck.

And, just because Tom (who sends me the Zen calendar each year) put this out yesterday on Shakespeare’s 400th birthday:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

 

Art and Culture, Asia, Mountains, Music, Myth and Story, Poetry, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation, Shadow Mountain, Travel

Cabin Fever Trip

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Spring and the Moon of Liberation

Tuesday gratefuls: Great Sol. Brightening our day. Counting the Omer. Begins tonight. Traveling readiness day. Delayed, but happening today. Diane’s great work on setting up an itinerary. Museums, as Ode says, temples of creativity. The Artist’s Way. My Jewish immersion. The Three Body Problem trilogy. Fall Out on Prime Video. High quality television. Kindle.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Artists-painters, writers, playwrights, musicians, poets, actors, sculptors, architects, composers

One brief shining: With awakening I’m in a new life, a multiverse reality based on the day before yet new as the dew on a spring ephemeral, in that day my many breaths each constitute life breathed out and back in, new lives each breath, how can I keep from singing?

 

Feeling the welcoming breath of a travel day exhaling from the end of the week toward me. Inspiring my activities today. Finalize packing. Stop mail. Get a pedicure. Collect myself for a journey.

This is mostly a cabin fever trip. A way of escaping a place I love because the snow and the cold stayed a bit too long. And for most folks I’ve talked to. A way to refresh the joys of home by vacating its presence for a bit. Enjoy the graces and beauties of San Francisco, see Diane. Live in a hotel for 7 nights, 2 nights in a sleeping car there and back. Write. Read. See the Rockies, the intermountain West, the Sierra Nevadas, canyons and deserts.

I’ve missed seeing good art on a regular basis. I’ve not found the Denver art scene at all comparable to the Twin Cities and I’ve let that attitude, plus the drive, keep me from seeing much at all. That’s on me. This trip will allow me to visit at least three of the country’s great collections: The Legion of Honor, the De Young, and the Asian Art museum. I plan to see them slowly. Taking as much time as I need. Reenter the world of Zhou and Han, Song and Tang, Picasso and Hokusai, Rodin and Giacometti.

Yes. You could say of me. Religion, politics, and art. The subjective, the debatable, the aesthetic, the aspects of culture not manageable by STEM. Sure I like a good scientific discovery as much as the next nerd, but to examine an ancient text for the message it carries down the millennia to this day, to stand in the street and face down an oppressive economy, to join the conversation of those for whom shape, color, and language create whole worlds and dizzying perspectives, yes. That’s my journey.

That and one other thing. The wild spots outside my door, up the flank of Black Mountain. Here on Shadow Mountain I can integrate the seeker, the advocate, and the artist with the world around me. My Lodgepole Companion and I see each other each morning. I said hello yesterday to those Mule Deer Does munching grass along Black Mountain Drive. Within them lie the same message as the Torah portion I will read on June 12th, the same spirit of over against oppressive structures, and an equivalent beauty to the best of Monet.

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Holidays, Judaism, Politics

Dissonance and its troubles

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Spring and the Passover Moon

Monday gratefuls: Marilyn and Irv. Steve, Cyndi, Hoosier woman. Heidi. Salaam. Kathy. Patrick. Gil. Seder at  the Saltzman’s. My permanent seat at Tara’s seder. And, Marilyn said, hers as well. Belonging, not believing. Judaism. An Ancientrail of debate, song, justice. The Passover Moon last night. Mountains. Forests. Wild Neighbors. Good food.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Palestinians. Israelis.

One brief shining: When the chatter grows loud and the hearing aid fails, the world recedes and I sit there, an observer wishing I was elsewhere, sort of engaged, hearing the headline words, wanting to add something, get in there, talk, yet both functionally unable, too little signal, and emotionally unable, I need to get away from here, from these people.

 

Passover last night at Marilyn and Irv’s. Wonderful. Frustrating. My first passover as a Jew. Now my story in a different way than metaphor, though it is too metaphor. My ancestors who stood up to Pharaoh. My ancestors fled into the Sinai, wandered there for forty years eating manna, grumbling, receiving the torah, making a golden calf. That’s the difference. The lineage. Whether Hebrews were slaves in Egypt or not, this origin story conveys how and who we are even now, thousands of years later. The we there is the difference.

No longer do I sit at a seder table as an interested observer, rather now as one whose attention and person has direct links with the maror, the haroset, with the seder plate. Profound for me. And, oddly dissonant.

As I sat through my first seder as a Jew, I was with people who waved “organized” religion away with a Buddhist shrug or a spirituality makes more sense wave from the back of a parade convertible. I wanted to say, well, ok, but for me I find wonder in the torah. In the blessings. In the community of Beth Evergreen. But my hearing issues and my sense of the chasm between me and religion’s cultured despisers kept me quiet. And in that quietness I judged. Judged.

Shallow. Timid. Fearful. Seeking the pablum of the inner life. Baby food. The reason our politics are so screwed up. Bright but so caught up in their white privilege they can’t see the world as it is.

Oh, I was superior. Better than them. And in that very feeling of course reduced myself and my own observations to a sideshow. I felt defensive, but not willing to talk about it. To challenge, to step in the water. I stewed. Wondering how I could extricate myself. I couldn’t.

It was my first passover as a Jew. I wanted to be there. To hear the four questions, to sing Dayenu, to taste the bitter herb and the haroset. To listen to and participate in my story.

Later, this morning, I found myself. Collected the Charlie from the table last night. Sat him down and said, “Look. These are people trying their best. Wanting to live well. To be loving and kind. As are you.” They don’t share your radical politics, very few do. They don’t share your fascination with the ancient ways of a desert people. And why should they? You are the one being judged when you judge. Lighten up and enjoy these folks.

And here’s the thing. Outside celebration of a holiday focused on liberation I could have found each of these people to be interesting interlocutors. Good for a breakfast or lunch time heart to heart. Passover, and my first as a Jew, revved up my political and religious engines. I ran too hot for the evening.

That is the other thing. I’m a man of religion and of politics. What are the two things folks agree not to discuss at Thanksgiving? Yep.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Holidays, Judaism

Passed Over

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Spring and the Moon of Liberation

Sunday gratefuls: Passover. The Saltzmans. Tara. Arjean. My permanent seat at their seder. Their willingness to sign so I can have a dog. Yesterday’s Snow melting off my Lodgepole Companion. Dripping toward the Aquifer that fills my well. Great Sol brimming over, gently warming the Needles, the clumps of Snow, an eternal cycle of Sun and Water, Plant Life and Soil. Observing it.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Gravity and Water

One brief shining: Sat down this am to write three morning pages, picked up the yellow legal pad, the black pen, and feeling overwhelmed, too much to do, wrote myself into a calmer place, write now I wrote, hah, I liked that writing write now, then slowly penning my way toward blessings, the hundreds of blessings I’ve experienced just since getting up and the joy of them, oh, not so bad now, eh?

 

Snow melted off my Lodgepole Companion. A lot of it still there at 7:30 am. Now three hours later. Great Sol convincing a man to take off his coat. A blue Sky. Ancient Brothers on favorite places finished. Morning pages written. Breakfast made and eaten.

 

Ancientrails, then a shower and a nap. Passover seders take a while and it’s often quite a while until the food. So, a nap. And a snack before hand. This is the day before the actual day because Salaam may have a track meet tomorrow.

The Moon of Liberation carries us into this ancient story of slavery, plagues, a recalcitrant Pharaoh, and a stuttering advocate. The journey which leads me to the Saltzman’s began on the day in the far past when Azrael, the angel of death, passed over the homes of Hebrew slaves if they had lamb’s blood smeared on their lintel.

The passover liberation of Hebrew slaves underlies de minimus this holiday, but also that Egyptian night of deliverance underlies all of Jewish history since then. The story told and retold among diaspora Jews in Babylon, in Russia, in Poland, in Hungary and Austria and yes Germany. Later in many places in U.S. cities. And in any other spot where enough Jews have immigrated.

When we dip the parsely in the salt water, and the haroset in the bitter herb, we show the paradoxical nature of this holy day. It is of spring and growth, yet also tainted by the waters of the Reed Sea. The mortar of the former slave’s work has transformed to haroset: apples, walnuts, cinnamon, honey, and sweet wine, yet we dip the matzah covered with haroset into the bitter herb, often horseradish, to remind us that wandering the Sinai was also a time of affliction, affliction in spite or or as a direct result of liberation.

We embrace our history, knowing we all have our own Egypt’s, our own shackles. Knowing, too, that the shackles of others, as long as racism and sexism and homophobia create contemporary ghettos, are our shackles as well. This is not just a holiday, it’s a promise to ourselves, to each other, and to the world that we will share the burden of the other.

Commentary on Religion, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Judaism, Mountains, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation

A person of…

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Spring and the Moon of Liberation

Shabbat gratefuls: The Morning Service. Bar Mitzvah. Snow. Cold. Moisture. Water. Air. Fire. Earth. Old physics. Physics. String theory. Twine theory. Thread theory. Quilts and quilting. Sewing. Matilda, Kate’s dress dummy. Kate in my dreams. Ancientrails. Diane. Art. In person. Judaism. My year of living Jewishlly. Outside my comfort zone. A lot.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Trains

One brief shining: I looked out my window today, oh my, and there on the ground lay Snow, on the Branches of the Lodgepoles Snow, on the driveway Snow, and my Snow and Cold loving self looked at it and sighed, the calendar showing in less than two weeks, the fire holiday of Beltane, start of the growing season.

 

Looking at myself. Some people. A man of money. Of power. Of racing. A woman of medicine. Of writing. Of the 100 meter dash. Of acting. Of music. Of whatever occupies prime location in an individual’s life story. I have to look at my story and be honest. I am a man of religion. Both small r and Big R. Individual and institutional. Can’t say I would have predicted this for me. Nor much of the time been aware of it.

Yet. The deep questions of our species. Our search for meaning. For how to position ourselves in this, this whatever all this is. The folks and traditions who have explored these questions. My turf. Where I’ve lived much of my life. Oh, yes, their have been other enthusiasms: politics, art, writing, gardening, But somehow I always bounce back to the prayers, the songs, the sacred books. Not as a supplicant but always as a lover, one who presses his hand to the heart of it. Leans his head in and enjoys a quiet afternoon learning of the Greek Orthodox theological framework of reception. The Taoist wu wei. The Jewish Morning Service. Why Jesus prayed at Gethsemane. The Potawatomi writing habit of capitalizing the names of living things.

One who rides through the Mountains looking for signs. Who walks down Mountain Valleys hearing the voices of the Creek, the Magpies, the wild Strawberries. Seeing in the gentle run of a Mountain Stream swollen by Spring Snows the path of all living things carried by this mystery, vitality. A man who cannot absent himself from the quest for what and why and where.

Perhaps you, too? Do you read the sacred books and know their definite humanity, yet find within them the human desire to grasp the interconnectedness of things? Feel inspired to have your own moments of revelation? Perhaps, eh? That splash of color. That child’s laugh. The sudden sense that an injustice needs redress. The kisses of a small furry puppy or a three-year old child. A wondering about Buddha nature? About chi? About teshuvah? About Ramadan?

You see my conviction is this. We are all people of religion. All born with wonder, imbued with awe, fascinated with the mysterious. Sure, some of us make a life of it, but all of us question. All of us see values and linkages. See them and need them. Yes, your path may be all of your own making, yet it can be informed by those who have chosen to retain the paths of their ancestors. As your path, your ancientrail, can inform theirs.