Daily Archives: December 29, 2025

Ancient Brothers, Cooking, Memories, Men, Minnesota, Myth and Story

Santas

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Yule and the Moon of New Beginnings

Monday gratefuls: Cold Hafar. Mark invigilating. Cold night, good sleeping. Your favorite place. Mine is right here on Shadow Mountain. Ruth, skiing A-Basin. Gabe sorting through Jon’s art. Shadow’s last week in boarding school. Sue Bradshaw. Ana. Sheetpan meals. One of my own. Working out again. The Hummingbird.

Sparks of Joy and Awe:

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Week Kavannah:  Gevurah   strength, discipline

Creating Space: “Gevurah is the strength to create space and to hold space… it’s what helps us nurture our passions.” — Renee Fishman

Becoming a metaPhysician

One brief shining: Cutup the Spring Onions, added brightly colored strips of Bell Peppers, some Garlic, Olive Oil, Salt, Pepper, stirred them together to coat everything, all spaced evenly in one of my Nordicware quarter sheetpans, baked at 425 for ten minutes, then put Andouille and Italian sausages on top of them and baked 30 minutes more and soon I had at least five meals ready.

 

Cooking: Beginning to understand how to build my own sheetpan meals. Their virtue lies in their short prep, ability to accommodate diverse ingredients, ease of cooking, and limited cleanup. Just the sheetpan and whatever prep left over.

Once finished, I eat one meal right away, then portion out the rest in containers, pop them in the fridge, and I have my own meal service. Today I’m making Salmon fillets with baby potatoes and perhaps broccoli florets.

The nerve ablation has removed my back pain on my left side, so I can stand longer while prepping and cooking.

Still weak though, stamina sucks. I wanted to add sauerkraut to the sausage meal, but I’m too weak to open the f*!#&ing jar. Same with the Sour Cherry preserves I wanted to put on my toast. Geez. My modest goal is to get back enough grip strength to manage these simple tasks. I’m working on it.

Glad to be back in the kitchen, cooking for myself. I prefer my own food and the nerve ablation plus my new resistance work regimen enables me to get back at it.

 

Santa: Ancient Brother Mark told a great Santa story yesterday morning. Worth sharing.

When he lived in Marine on St Croix, Mark contacted a Santa to come for a pre-Christmas gathering at his house. Christopher was young, 3 or 4, and Mark invited a few other families with young kids. It was a Christmas party and the children had not been told Santa was coming.

After the party was underway, a pickup truck pulled up in the driveway and a man with a real great white beard got out, came around to the backdoor, and walked in, saying nothing. The kids stared.

Still saying nothing he went over to the fireplace and shined a flashlight up the fireplace chimney, checked the damper by opening and closing it.

“I’m one of the Santa’s.” he told the by now confused and wondering kids. “We have to go out and check chimneys to be sure Santa can get down them.” He went on to explain that there were many, many Santa’s. “Making Christmas happen is a big, big job.”

Mark and his friends tried to pay him, but he refused the money. “Don’t blow it for me, man. It’s for the kids.”

Commentary on Religion, Judaism

A Bonus Post from Rabbi Rami Shapiro

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I’m going to replace my New Year’s resolutions with the Five Remembrances from the Upajjhatthana Sutta (“Subjects for Contemplation”).

The Upajjhatthana Sutta is also known as the Abhiṇhapaccavekkhitabbaṭhānasutta. I mention this only in case you need to impress people at a New Year’s Eve party. Delivered orally some 2500 years ago and written down in Pali around 29 BCE, the Upajjhatthana Sutta is famous for its teaching of the Five Remembrances:

  1. It is my nature to grow old. There’s no escaping growing old.
  2. It is my nature to fall ill. There’s no escaping illness.
  3. It is my nature to die. There’s no escaping death.
  4. Everything and everyone I cherish shares this same impermanence. There’s no escaping my being separated from them.
  5. Thoughts and feelings are beyond my willful control. My actions alone belong to me. There’s no escaping the consequences of my actions.

These Five Remembrances aren’t resolutions; they are facts. You don’t have to accept them any more than you have to accept gravity. They are simply what is so.

Memorizing and reflecting on the Five Remembrances is said to deepen your appreciation of life and your compassion for the living. In my experience, it also eliminates the haunting question “Why Me?” When I remember that everyone suffers, there is no need to ask why I’m suffering. Not distracting myself with the story “Why Me?” allows me to address the problem at hand more creatively.

If the Buddha were a Jew, I imagine he would have ended each of the Five Remembrances with the Hebrew word titmoded: deal with it. There’s no escaping growing old—deal with it. There’s no avoiding illness—deal with it. There’s no escaping death—deal with it. There’s no escaping impermanence—deal with it. There’s no escaping the consequences of my actions—deal with it.