Samain and the Radiation Moon (3 sessions)

Thanksgiving gratefuls: Jackie. Ruth. Shadow. Todd and Alise. Rocky Mountain Cancer Care. My son. Seoah. Murdoch. Mary. Mark. Diane. Gabe. The Ancient Brothers. Alan. Joanne. Marilyn and Irv. Tara. Luke. Ginny and Janice. Leo. Eleanor. Annie and Luna. Derek. My Wild Neighbors. The Night Sky. Orion. Polaris.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ruth

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:  Gevurah      “While Chesed is associated with flow, Gevurah provides the structure that allows this flow, acting like river banks to channel energy. It is seen as essential for establishing healthy boundaries, creating space for important work, and preserving what is most valuable.”

Tarot: Being a metaPhysician

One brief shining: Ruth, my beloved granddaughter, who drove up here from Longmont and in turn drove me to my radiation session in Littleton, came back and put together the new kitchen stool for cooking, finished her chemistry homework with Luke’s assistance, and, for a final flourish made a sugar cream pie.

 

This morning she leaves for A-Basin to ski. Where she and her Dad skied every winter from when she was three or four. Fewer skiers on Thanksgiving day.

Ruth works two jobs. As a Starbucks’ barista and a cleaner in the CU library. She also has a full class load in the pre-med curriculum that includes biology, chemistry, statistics, and sociology. I’m so proud of her.

Gabe won a writing prize in a story contest that included 13,000 entries. 700 winners. Go, Gabe. He also got accepted into the University of Montana’s writing program with a $5,000 scholarship. Both of them had incredibly difficult childhoods, then their Dad died.

I admire their resilience.

 

Just a moment:  Here’s an important article in this month’s Atlantic:  The Conservative Movements Intellectual Collapse. Here are two sentences that give you the flavor.

“Trump’s most outrageous innovation was dispensing with the pretense that he needed to provide reasons for his positions…His greatest apostasy was not his rejection of any particular set of ideas, but his categorical rejection of the whole notion of ideas.”   And there you have it. Rule by whim and fancy. Our very own Mad King Donald.

The author, Jonathan Chait, one of my favorite Atlantic writers, shows how first gradually, then in toto, even previously independent think tanks like the Heritage Foundation fell under the Trumpist spell, explaining, for example, the strategic importance of Greenland and the Panama Canal, then, when nothing happened regarding them, stayed silent.

In the vacuum of ideas that is the Trumpian black hole it is not surprising that such entities as the New Apostolic Reformation, Christian Nationalism, and White Supremacists now led by Nick Fuentes who blithely owns his anti-Semitism with no cover at all, have taken the place of thought.

This may, as his term moves closer to its event horizon, leave a real opening for those of us with, well, ideas. There are now, for example, three mayors of major U.S. cities: Seattle, Boston, and New York City who are democratic socialists. Even the faded remnant of the Democratic Party may come up with an idea or two. (he said hopefully.)  May it be so.