Monthly Archives: June 2025

Fourth Phase, Health

Not the Monk’s Simplicity? Or, is it?

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Beltane and the Greenhouse Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Jamie. Radical roots of religion. Shadow. Rain. Chilly night again. Wind. Natalie. MVP. Hip and back pain. Shirley Waste. Buddy Ode on Youtube. Halle, the traveling physical therapist. A sweet gal. Tara. Ruth in Alaska. The Commander. Seoah. Murdoch. Mary and Mark. Diane.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: PET Scan

Week Kavannah: Wholeness and Peacefulness. Shleimut. Integrating pain into my daily life. Accepting it all and being grateful for it.

One brief shining: Once more into the metal and plastic breach, my son, to see what can’t be seen with the eyes of nature, this time positronic emission tomography enhanced with a radio isotope that binds to prostate cancer cells flowing through my circulatory system as I lay on the moving bed, pushed slowly through the donut, too warm, yet handling it.

 

Cancer and back pain: I know. A steady drumbeat. This pain. That scan. This doc. That one. This last two weeks has been…oh, how do you say it? A bit much.

I’m not alone. Friends seeing docs a lot, too. Cardiologists. Nephrologists. Oncologists. Pain docs. Life in the retired lane replaces work with hospitals, medical clinics. Imaging with and without contrast. Expensive drugs.

Friday morning should reveal the latest. Do I have more metastases? If so where are they? In my hip? Am I qualified now for the SPRINT device? Telehealth.

Current observation. Chronic pain, which most of us will never know, clouds each day, marks a path filled with things, formerly done with ease, rendered literally out of reach.

It reaches into even the quiet places, tires us out, makes us want to live very simply. No unnecessary, triggering movements. No unnecessary upsets. Things like water in a dog’s bowl. Taking the trash out to the street. Standing and cooking. Each one a calculation of desire versus pain. This is not the monk’s simplicity. Or, is it? Maybe the lesson here is paring down life to its necessities. Doing less, with less. Maybe pain has a spiritual lesson about shleimut, wholeness and peacefulness. Or, maybe it’s just pain.

Wore my Los Alamos t-shirt purchased for my 35 sessions of radiation. Danger Radioactive Material with the familiar three yellow hash marks and the circle in the middle. Waited for 50 minutes with the lights turned down low as the 68Ga-PSMA-11 tracer wound its way through my blood system hunting for the PSMA protein.

Laid down. Covered up. Over the next twenty minutes moved slowly through the machine. Palm trees in the ceiling tiles at both openings. Sending me to Hawai’i and my days with my son and Seoah there.

The hour long drive to the PET Scan clinic another exercise in pain management. Singing out loud helps. I don’t look forward to drives of almost any length. Sciatica makes each time in the car a bit of the inquisition with not even its twisted purpose as a rationale.

This has been a difficult couple of weeks. Too much pain. Too much medical scrutiny. Too many unresolved questions.

There have been highlights. Shadow and our hugs, her happiness. Tara driving me to the open-sided MRI. Natalie’s careful, expert work. Nathan’s getting things ready. Rereading the Dresden Files novels. Morning prayers. Rain to dampen the Forests and swell the Creeks.

 

Dogs, Health, Politics, US History

The Shepherd’s Lantern

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Beltane and the Greenhouse Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Morning service. Morning darkness. The bird of dawn. Setting people free. Making firm our steps. Shadow at 4:30 am. Happy. A chilly night. JD, man of ambition. Shepherd’s lantern. Ukraine’s drones. The lives of simple people. Of angry people. Of cautious people. Of wise people.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: White tip of the herding dog’s tail.

Week Kavannah: Wholeness and Peacefulness. Shleimut. Integrating pain into my daily life. Accepting it all and being grateful for it.

One brief shining: Drove down the hill through the Front Range Foothills, geology and orogeny on display, small cliffs of Granite, pink and black Gneiss, made more beautiful by the Rain, Lodgepoles, White Pines, Ponderosas, and Aspens on Mountain sides, Grass greened by the Rains, Hwy 285 cutting its steep decline toward the High Plains which appear beyond the Hogbacks, evidence of an orogeny older than the one that pushed the Rockies up above, both demonstrating the power of continental drift, great sheets of Rock moving; slow, but unrelenting force, enough to remake our world.

 

Back pain and cancer: Last week and this there has been a flurry of activity around these two. P.T. MRIs. Oncology appointment. PET scan today. Another oncology telehealth on Friday am. Pain doc appointment on Friday, too.

Pain doc prepping me for the SPRINT device. Oncologist letting me know the MRI and the PET scan results.

These two are unrelated pathologically; however, they entwine thanks to lower back and leg pain occurring where prostate cancer tends to spread. They also entwine when the back/leg pain chips away at my resilience. Takes work to stay level.

Ready in both instances for whatever comes next.

 

Dog journal: I walked Shadow on a leash yesterday. All was well until the leash snagged a downed Lodgepole branch. Shadow thought the branch had begun to chase her. Natalie had me drop the leash.

Shadow ran inside the house, next to my chair. When pushed, next to my chair is her safe spot. Good to know.

I got Shadow on February 4th, four months ago tomorrow. She’s been a challenge. At times I’ve wondered if I could follow through. Today though I have no doubt. As I wrote earlier, her story and mine will be told together.

The Shepherd’s Lantern. I couldn’t find Shadow in the yard when Natalie came. Then, I spotted Shadow’s tail, held erect, obvious by its white tip. “That’s the Shepherd’s Lantern,” Natalie said, “I only learned this a couple of weeks ago.” Check herding breeds. White tipped tails are common.

 

Just a moment: My friends talk of news diets. Of putting down the podcast. Turning off the TV. Not even reading headlines, much less stories. I sense this is more intention than action.

Why? We’re taught, aren’t we, that staying up with the news is critical for a citizen of a democracy. Civics 101. Yet what to do when the news singes your eyeballs. Boils the blood. Clenches the fist. Engenders feelings of helplessness.

My hunch is that only action can really work. What kind of action? Depends on you. What you’re willing/able to do. However. We cannot abdicate our role, however small it might be. Our history has more years, more elections to play out and we must prepare the way.

 

 

 

Boulder, Colorado, Family, Judaism, Politics, US History, World History

It’s Personal

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Beltane and the Greenhouse Moon

Monday gratefuls: Buphati. MRI results. The Ancient Brothers. Shadow. Water. Food. Natalie. Tom. The Happy Camper. Driving, painful. Ruth in Alaska. Mary in Seoul. Guru in K.L. Me on Shadow Mountain. Great Sol. The bird of morning. BJ. Pammy. Gabe. Family, flung far.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Books

Week Kavannah: Wholeness and Peacefulness. Shleimut. Integrating pain into my daily life.

One brief shining: The greenhouse has more than plants and memories; it will be therapy and prayer, too, an everyday exercise in tactile spirituality, joining with the evolved life of plants in an act of co-creating abundance: Lettuce in a bowl with dark red Brandywine heirloom Tomatoes, rings of Red Onion, a diced orange Nantes Carrot, not yet, no, but soon.

 

Judaism in trouble:

Front page news from Boulder. A fiery assault on demonstrators bringing attention to hostages still held by Hamas. This apparently not Nazi nostalgia, but Palestinian weariness with the long, long war and its murderous execution.

Not only Boulder, but the home of UC-Boulder, Ruth’s university.

You may recall that my conversion was to have taken place in Jerusalem, October 31st if I recall correctly. That pleased me because it married my pagan observance of Samain with my immersion in an ancient mikveh in the holy city.

You do recall, I’m sure, why it didn’t happen. On October 7th, Hamas attacked kibbutzim near the border with Gaza, killing and raping as they went. A horrific act of terror. Really, a brazen pull on the nose-ring of militant Israelis.

For many dark reasons, Israel stepped into the trap Hamas had made. Netanyahu needed to avoid corruption charges. A never-to-be-realized war aim of eliminating Hamas. Frustration with continued anti-semitic activity by Iranian supported actors like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. The out of proportion political influence of the Jewish ultra-right in Israel that wants genocide. The perilous location of Israel.

The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) continues to pound Gaza, killing civilians, civilians, because Hamas hides among them. Many (most?) of us who love Israel as a needed safe place for Jews long ago stepped away from support of this “war.”

The immorality of bombing starving women and children. Using up whatever goodwill Israel had accumulated. Being tone deaf to the world’s critique. Bad, sad days for all.

No wonder the anger and frustration has spilled over into the U.S. No wonder, too, that this same anger and frustration has served as fuel for the alt-right with its white supremacist views, its Hitlerian hagiographies, and not only them, but American Muslims, college students who see an asymmetrical war, politicians who want any lever they can find to bring the East Coast elites to heel.

In the same ugly way that testosterone feeds prostate cancer, the war over Gaza feeds hatred and bigotry all over the world. We will all be poorer when it ends.

Boulder is an hour from Shadow Mountain. I’ve been there many times over the last year plus for breakfast or lunch with Ruth. She’s a Jewish student in a time when Jews, again, are persona non grata.

This attack was not something I read about. It’s personal.

 

Commentary on Religion, Dogs, Health, Humanities, Judaism, Kabbalah, Literature, Myth and Story, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Science, Torah

This Is Not the Way

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Beltane and the Greenhouse Moon

Sunday gratefuls: A day of no-things. Shadow and I outside, drop, walk, stop, drop, turn, walk, drop. Her eagerness. Her five o’clock licking. Sciatica. Morning darkness. The morning service. The Shema. Tara. Ruth, home two days ago, leaving for Alaska today. Gabe, now a senior. Whoa. Mary in Seoul. Seoah, Murdoch. My son. Mark walks to downtown Al Kharj. Shadow Mountain.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: MRI

Week Kavannah: Wholeness and Peacefulness. Shleimut. Integrating pain into my daily life.

One brief shining: Sorry, Marines, pain is not weakness leaving the body, no; but, it is a constant reminder of being alive, of still having a body that can identify itself through the jolt that starts in the hip, gathers intensity around the knee, and on occasion flashes to the foot.

 

Back and cancer: Get MRI results tomorrow. Buphati at 3 pm. On Friday I see Kylie my Army officer retired P.A. for preparation. I have a SPRINT device in my future. The bogo MRI. Checking for cancer and readying me for a pain reduction, elimination procedure. Rare confluence of medical care.

Ouch, ouch, ouch. ouch. Sciatica is a son of a bitch. Above 10. A crescendo, then a falling away. I. Do. Not. Like. It.

If the SPRINT device works, I will send up hallelujahs in the name of its inventor, Kylie, and the doctor who installs it. If it doesn’t? I’m no worse off than before. Probably nerve ablation.

If there’s cancer in my hip? Don’t know. But Buphati will have things to recommend, I know.

 

Reading: I’m on a run of science fiction and magic. John Scalzi’s Starter Villain and Kaiju Preservation Society. Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files. The Gray Man and Daniel Silva set aside for the moment.

My serious reading of late has been for my two Kabbalah Experience classes. A New Story for Human Consciousness and the Radical Roots of Religion. The first, learning to retell, reimagine the story of Adam and Eve. And, in so doing, realizing we can reframe, reconstruct any story, including the one we tell ourselves about who we are in this world.

The second investigating moments when Judaism received a radical refit. Focused on Mordecai Kaplan, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Reb Zalman, and Art Green, but looking backward to Maimonides, the Bal Shem Tov, the destruction of the second Temple and the rise of Rabbinic Judaism.

I’m excited about these classes. I want to retell the story of Adam and Eve. Maybe my own story, too. Most of all I’m excited about considering what the next revolution might be in Judaism, imagining it, perhaps helping to build it.

 

Just a moment: Whoo, boy. We’ve crossed over and I didn’t really get it until I read this paragraph in an article titled: “Why Trump’s push for ‘gold-standard science’ has researchers alarmed.”*

Crossed over to what? An age of ideology, a time when political thought, doled out by political commissars, trumps (see what I did there?) decision making for any other reason.

This is a direct route to a Stalinesque, Mao Tse Tungesque form of governance. It is, as George Will observed in his strange opinion piece about Trump as a progressive, a form of Statism.

I admit I’m an Enlightenment, scientific method guy. But. I know that science does not occur in a political vacuum. Its funding, its direction, even its focus often has political influence. Look, for example, to the Agricultural and Mechanical universities dotted around the U.S. and delivering junk methods to farmers that kill the soil and enrich Big Ag.

Even so. I support science and the scientific endeavor to understand, to grasp the world around us as it is, not as we either imagine or wish it to be. No political commissar will know scientific facts better than scientists themselves.

I do agree with one facet of this critique of science, however. Many Americans have lost faith in science and we need, as a country, to help restore it. This is not the way.

 

 

 

” “And in a “Gold Standard Science” executive order last week, President Donald Trump outlined a new level of oversight over what counts as quality evidence and what does not, (emphasis mine) putting “a senior appointee designated by the agency head” in charge of overseeing “alleged violations.” Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said in a briefing that the goal of the executive order is to “rebuild the American people’s confidence in the national science enterprise … the status quo of our research enterprise has brought diminishing returns, wasted resources and public distrust.”” Washington Post, June 1, 2025.