Monthly Archives: June 2024

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:

Mussar, Plants, Shadow Mountain

Honoring the Aspen, Tree #1

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Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

This is the first entry in my honoring the Tree mussar practice. I will post these as I do them.

My kavanah, my intention, is to enhance my capacity for honoring all things, all Earthlings. Including humans. In this honoring means paying attention, close and uninterrupted attention. Seeing the other for what they exhibit, to imbibe their uniqueness and their interconnectedness. This uniqueness has many names: Buddah nature, soul, highest potential, essence, wholeness, image of God. In seeing the sacred reality of this Aspen I am in turn seeing my own sacredness in the process of seeing the Aspen.

 

When we first moved here on the Winter Solstice of 2014, this Aspen had no leaves. Tiny shoots of its clones were hidden beneath the Snow cover. But they were there.

Nine and a half years later I went out today, out front since this Tree is in the front. As I walked up to it, I noticed its Trunk’s variation between a smooth gray Bark and a wrinkled black Bark. As if the Tree could not make up its mind. I’m curious now as to the purpose of the two different types of Bark. A Spider and an Ant crawled over both smooth and rough, unconcerned.

My hand found the change in textures though they seemed more graduated with touch. The smooth Bark had some grippiness to it and also contained small raised bumps of the rougher black Bark. When I walked around the Tree, I noticed at its base a large scar, black Bark that looked like a Fire scar. Doesn’t make sense to me, but it’s a distinctive feature of this Tree and a reminder that its journey has not always been easy.

Looking straight up the Trunk toward the Leader reaching for the Sky the Bark got smoother and smoother as it went up and the Trunk got smaller. Could it be that a certain girt stretches the smooth Bark far enough that it separates and allows the rougher Bark to form? If so, why?

The most striking feature of this tree for me, on this sunny Colorado Mountain morning, danced on the ends of short stems, quaking this way and that. Throwing shadows on the Leaves behind them, then fluttering out of the way. Leaves in groups of five opened and closed each others access to Great Sol’s brilliance.

The interplay of light and shadow these Leaves put on would make a great Calder sculpture. The shifting moving Leaves were beautiful. As beautiful as any work of art in a museum.

While being beautiful, they also perform Mother Earth’s true miracle, light-eating. Turning photons into sugars. The sine qua non for all complex life on this planet.

Asia, Judaism, Politics, Sport

Rebels

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Beltane and the Bar Mitzvah Moon

Friday gratefuls: Shabbat. Bar mitzvah decisions. Regaining confidence. Purpose. Shekinah. Trees. Great Wheel. Great work. Rabbi Jamie. Zornberg. Mordecai Kaplan. Mah Tovu. Mussar. Luke and his passion. Leo. A long immersion in matters Jewish. Alan and First Watch. Diane and the Sea Lions of Fisherman’s Wharf. Mark and Bangkok. Familiar turf for him.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Mordecai Kaplan

One brief shining: We sat there around his circular table, his library wall filled with texts in Hebrew as well as English, Rabbi Jamie and me, he showed me the Haggadah by Mordecai Kaplan, this one got him excommunicated, oh, my attention piqued, I’ve got to have one I said because I love stories of rebellion and its consequences.

 

Finished reading all 2,000 plus pages of Romance of the Three Kingdoms. A significant classic of Chinese literature. And a good read. Took a while. One takeaway from it. Rebels are the bad guys. The guys who support the Emperor are the good guys. This was an important learning for me since we Americans valorize the rebel, the American revolutionary. Our country was born in rebellion whereas China’s civilization honors it long, continuous history.

The mandate of heaven takes the place of the rebel. So long as an Emperor could claim the mandate of heaven*, he could rule. But, if he lost the mandate of heaven**, it became the people’s responsibility to overthrow him and usher in a new dynasty. Even in this case though the rebel served the new dynasty to be born from the old one. No experimentation in political form.

I admire Mordecai Kaplan and his willingness to follow his own thinking, to de-supernaturalize Judaism and to demote tradition from decider of all questions to a factor with a vote but not a veto. I love the expectation of debate, of doubt, of honoring the other’s perspective. Kaplan and my kind would not fare well in Chinese culture. Either under the old dynastic pattern or under the very similar Chinese Communist Party. Rule from the top down is the Chinese way.

 

Just a moment: A bit about the Caitlin Clark story. Yes, she’s a whitebread Midwesterner playing in a state, Indiana, that has not been celebrated for its moves towards racial justice. Yes, she’s touted as the next big thing that will push the WNBA higher up in the world of professional sports. And, most important, yes, the media has portrayed her first games as a pro with the breathless and hyperbolic ideas that often accompany writing about a new sports superstar.

She’s getting knocked around, shoved, posted hard. Many of those playing her like hockey enforcers are black. So villainous? Right? How dare they play hard against the white savior of their sport? Isn’t that self-defeating for women’s basketball as a whole?

No. The opposite is true. Were Caitlin given kid glove treatment she would never have the chance to mature into a true star. This hazing, some no doubt with malice, shows she’ll get no special favors on the court. That her game has to take over at a high level or she’ll remain a journeywoman player.

Should intentional fouls be called? Of course. There’s no excuse for casual violence in any sport. Well, ok, MMA. Otherwise, let everybody play their game.

 

 

*…the Mandate of Heaven was that although a ruler was given great power, he also had a moral obligation to use it for the good of his people. If a ruler did not do this, then his state would suffer terrible disasters and he would lose the right to govern.  World History Encyclopedia

**The sign that the mandate had been lost would be made evident by all kinds of calamities including natural ones: earthquakes, storms, solar eclipses, floods, drought, famine and plague. Other signs could be a more personal evidence from the emperor’s own behavior: cruelty, corruption, military defeat and incompetence. These were all interpreted as signs of the displeasure of heaven. To rise in rebellion when these signs occurred was justified. ChinaSage

Mountains, Mussar, Plants, Shadow Mountain

Kavod. Honor.

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Beltane and the Bar Mitzvah Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Eleanor, Tara’s new dog. What a cutie! Tara. The last practice with Tara. Using a Yod. MVP last night. Joanne’s new tooth. Rich’s weight loss. Honor. Seeing the Buddha nature in another. Seeing the sacred image in another. And in yourself. Honor the other and your self with complete attention. Early finish for my 150 minutes this week.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Going down the Forest path

One brief shining: Reach out a hand, feel the roughness, the curvature, perhaps put a finger into one of the fissures, sap or resin may stick to it, may have the scent of a Pine Tree, a Pinus contarta perhaps, or one of the Ponderosa Pines a bit lower down the Mountain, their Bark their persona their face to the world, a point of contact between the inner and the outer Tree.

 

My mussar practice for this month: honor as many of the trees growing around my house as I can. That is, see each of them as an individual, stand with them, look up, feel their trunks, note the marks of their individuality, their uniqueness. Honor the journey of that Tree from seed to maturity. Honor the work they do above and below ground. Remain in their presence. Listening. Smelling. Touching. Seeing. Hearing.

The Branches as they wave up and down in a morning breeze. Their rampant Strobilus ready to send pollen out to the female flowers. The green Leaves (I know, needles. But this is what botanists call them.) growing in brush like clusters up and down each Branch. Their stillness. Their occupation of one spot for the duration of their life. The Bark, protecting. How the Branches may stretch out only in one direction. The Trunk sways in the Wind. Their height. Even the Lodgepoles are taller than my house, my garage.

Working on my new purpose. Reading. Observing. Thinking. Not sure where it all will lead. The fun in it.

Noticed last night driving home late from my MVP group at the synagogue. Trees. The same Trees that were there on my drive down. The Arapaho National Forest. Mostly Lodgepoles. Realized how difficult the density of the Lodgepoles would make a night time hike. How instead of welcoming they became menacing. Barriers to easy travel. Trees change character for Forest dwellers depending on the time of day.

 

Just a moment: I’ve made a couple of decisions. First, I will sell this house when I’m 80 and move to an apartment somewhere close to Joe and Seoah. Why? They finish up in Korea the year I turn 79. I want to be close to them as I head further into the thicket of aging.

Second. No more doom and gloom about the orange one. Or MAGA. Or the convinced. No. I’m 77. Life’s gotten a lot shorter. I’m going to continue living my life no matter what happens politically. I may engage or I may not. What I will not do is succumb to despair, constant anger, bitterness.