Monthly Archives: January 2026

Dogs, Minnesota, Politics, Seed Keepers, Tarot, US History

We Are the North Star

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Yule and the Moon of Deep Friendship

Shabbat gratefuls: A day of peace. Shadow and her cone, her brightly taped leg. Roxann. Tom. Jessie. Minneapolis. Resistance. In song and action. Red tie guy who could end this. The Federal Reserve. Washington Post reporters. Don Lemon. Cell phone videos. ICE. Border Patrol. Our poor benighted Republic.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Dr. Josy, caring vet

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Year Kavannah: Creativity.   Yetziratiut.   “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” ― Pablo Picasso

Week Kavannah: Tikkun  Olam. Repairing the world.

  • Lurianic Kabbalah: A 16th-century mystical belief that the world was created by divine vessels that shattered, scattering “sparks” of divine light. Humans perform tikkun by gathering these sparks through prayer and mitzvot.
  • Modern Social Justice: Since the 1950s, the term has become a shorthand for social action and progressive activism, such as environmentalism and human rights. 

Tarot: Nine of Vessels, Generosity

Generosity of Spirit: This card represents a deep, selfless love (agape) and a willingness to share one’s inner resources, compassion, and joy with the world.

Connection: This card emphasizes that sharing your emotional abundance fosters deeper connections with companions and the surrounding environment.

One brief shining: Non-violent resistance flows from nine of vessel’s energy, linking this peace seeker with that peace seeker in a chain powerful enough to hold back cruelty and hate, yet soft enough to ensure the well-being of neighbors in distress, and loving enough to re-place power where it belongs, in the hands of just folks.

Dog journal: Beginning the fourth day A.C. After the cone went on. Neither one of us like it much, only its proven medical purpose makes it and Shadow’s bandage bearable.

Going outside has become a chore. The bandage can’t get wet. That means I had to place the makeshift IV bag solution on Shadow’s injured leg. Difficult. I bought and received booties which are somewhat easier, but both require a lot of bending over and my right lower back does not like that. At all.

Only eleven days to go.

 

Just a moment: I can’t improve on this excerpt from a Krista Tippet Substack post forwarded by friend Paul Strickland. Her credo nourishes and promotes a way to heal our sore hearts:

…this is one of those moments when the strange and beautiful reality of the human condition rises in the face of what would deny it. In Minnesota, where I raised my children and grew this On Being Project, a world of care and dignity one human being towards another has flourished within and around all the images coming to us of violence and protest and despair. There are churches converted to food banks. There are families accompanying other families and neighbors delivering meals and other essentials to individuals who feel vulnerable for multitudes of reasons. There are strangers bearing witness, non-violently, as homes are approached and doors beaten down. There are teachers and librarians and healers stepping up to care for children and teenagers who are traumatized by all of this. I am hearing a thousand stories that are not making the “news” as I’m trying to follow it, but they too are the story of our time, and they are stories of what makes us human and humane.

I repeat: I cannot believe that this beautiful strangeness and complexity reside on one side of our political lines and not the other. A few years ago, I penned a few lines in this newsletter that have become my credo:

Enough of us see that we have a world to remake.

We want to meet what is hard and hurting.

We want to rise to what is beautiful and life-giving.

We want to do that where we live, and we want to do it walking alongside others.

We’re asking, where to begin?

We have a long way to go to find our way back to feeling our belonging to each other that has never stopped being true. But it is what we are called to. I cleave to my faith that there are “enough of us” longing to meet this calling.

The common ground of our sore hearts may be the place to begin, and return, and ever begin again.
Anoka County, Minnesota, Plants, Seed Keepers

Winter’s Mysteries

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Yule and the Moon of Deep Friendship

Friday gratefuls: Rabbi Jamie. Rabbi Rami Shapiro. Kabbalah Experience. Mah Tovu. Rollover IRA. Kate, always Kate. Shadow healing. Diane. Dr. Josy. “I was born to heal and be of service.” Melting ICE in a Minnesota January. Minnesota Anthem. Streets of Minneapolis. Resistance. Showing the way.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Tom, Roxann, Jessie

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Year Kavannah: Creativity.   Yetziratiut.   “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” ― Pablo Picasso

Week Kavannah: Rachamim. Compassion.

While chesed (lovingkindness) often refers to a choice of action, rachamim is deeply tied to visceral emotion and empathy—feeling the pain of another. 

Tarot: Page of Arrows, the Wren

The colors of the Goldcrest – red, white, green, and black – were once held to be sacred and the common Wren was considered a guardian of the winter mysteries.  Parting the Mists

One brief shining: Nazis drove toward Moscow in the winter while ICE and the Border Patrol came to the streets of Minnesota in January, both tactical and strategic errors born from the arrogance of ignorance and a lust for power unbridled that blinded leaders and empowered those they aimed to oppress. Winter mysteries.

For Roxann: Boot Lake Scientific and Natural Area, not far from Kate and mine’s Andover home, held a mother White Pine with two trunks splitting off from the main trunk about ten feet up. No straight timber there, no whaling ship’s mast. It got left behind when the lumberjacks came.

A century or so later this unwanted Tree had birthed a ring of younger Pines grown up almost in her shadow. I found this Tree, which I thought of as my Tree, not in the sense of ownership, but as a friend and spirit guide, while hiking in the SNA as I often did, especially in the Spring when the Bloodroot blooms.

In summer I would bring a snack from home, hike through the used to be home plot, now a field of grass, then through an outer ring of Birches that opened onto a Meadow enclosed by Birch and Oak and White Pine. Across the Meadow, inside the Woods there, I would find my tree, sit beneath her, my back against her rough bark. Sometimes I would meditate, imagining her roots sunk deep beneath me, feeding and being fed by mycelial networks invisible to man. Seeing her lower branches reaching out toward her children, acknowledging them as her family. Feeling her crowns still pushing toward the Sky, toward the warmth and energy of Great Sol. Sometimes.

Sometimes I would eat my heirloom Tomato with White Onion slices and feel the companionship of my Tree and her children.

In Winter I would strap on my Snowshoes and hike through deep Snow, through the Birches, and across the white blanket covering the Meadow and find her again. I often made this hike on the day of the Winter Solstice. She would speak to me then of winter’s mysteries. Of vast silence. Of cold so sharp it made her Needles twitch. Of the Deer that might bed down near her.

I love that all I have to do is reach out in memory and I am with her again, as I could be today if I strapped on my snowshoes and climbed over the fence.

Dogs, Minnesota, Music, Politics, US History

Action

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Yule and the Moon of Deep Friendship

Thursday gratefuls: Dr. Josy. Petscans. Glaucoma. Shadow enconed and bandaged. Tom. Roxann. Jessie. Bruce Springsteen, The Streets of Minneapolis. Resistance. ICE. Border Patrol. Alinsky, the action is in the reaction. Prostate cancer. Winter, winter where art thou? Amazon. Safeway. New Korean restaurant in Evergreen. Rebecca and Joanne. Tara.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: the action is in the reaction

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Year Kavannah: Creativity.   Yetziratiut.   “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” ― Pablo Picasso

Week Kavannah: Rachamim. Compassion.

While chesed (lovingkindness) often refers to a choice of action, rachamim is deeply tied to visceral emotion and empathy—feeling the pain of another. 

Tarot: #1, The Shaman

“The shamans unique quality is the ability to enter and commune with all levels of sentient life on the earth. It is he who shudders with the wisdom and joy contained in the haunting music of the whale song or whose skin prickles with arousal at the howling of the timberwolves. His soul reverberates with the unheard sonorous call of the mountains and smiles with pure joy at laughter of the waterfall.” Parting the Mist

One brief shining: Under the bed eyes glowing cone attached lay Shadow in her most secure most safe spot wondering wondering about the silly thing around her head about the bandage on her right front leg about her Dad looking at her and speaking softly.

 

Dog journal: Shadow came home, happy to see me, snuggled up in my legs, licked licked licked my face. If she wasn’t so furry, I might have done the same to her.

Dr. Josy said Shadow followed her around in the house. Wondered if she did the same to me. Was she anxious? No, I don’t read her that way. She wants to be in my vicinity, and when I sit down, she wanders off to do her own thing. Natalie, the trainer, calls Blue Heelers velcro dogs. Once they bond to you, you’re the center of their life.

This is gonna be hard. She needs to go out, yet have the bandage protected. Dr. Josy made a plastic leg cover out of an IV bag and tubing. Works, but I have to get it on her, my back not always a cooperator. Just two weeks. We’ll get by. Ordered some outdoor socks that will be easier to get on and off.

 

Just a moment: Saul Alinsky said the action is in the reaction. This basic principle of non-violent protest has played out once again on the Streets of Minneapolis. The violent, cruel, inhumane reaction of ICE and Border Patrol agents to the action of Minneapolis citizens has produced political pressure and a lot of it. Will it be enough to change the course of this thugee approach to immigration enforcement? I’m not sure.

My guess? Yes, for a bit anyhow. Yet. The entrenched callousness and ruthlessness of MAGA and their sorta leader, red tie guy, suggest they ain’t gonna wanna change for very long and no more than they have to.

Unless. More cities, more US citizens take to the streets. And if Democrats grow a spine. Push back. Possible. Just possible.

I’m attaching Springsteen’s song again just because.

Dogs, Far Right, Minnesota, Politics, Seed Keepers, US History

Always Looking for Minnesota

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Yule and the Moon of Deep Friendship

Wednesday gratefuls: Thomas Friedman. Paul Wellstone. Al Franken. Ilhan Omar. Hubert Humphrey. Walter Mondale. Rene Good. Alex Pretti. All the Minnesota resisters. ICE. Border Patrol. Minneapolis. St. Paul. Lake Superior. Up north. The Boundary Waters. Ely. Duluth. Grand Marais. The Gunflint Trail. Andover.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Resistance

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Year Kavannah: Creativity.   Yetziratiut.   “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” ― Pablo Picasso

Week Kavannah: Rachamim. Compassion.

While chesed (lovingkindness) often refers to a choice of action, rachamim is deeply tied to visceral emotion and empathy—feeling the pain of another. 

Tarot: Two of Stones, Challenge

Many challenges… are born of insecurity and subconscious issues…In the modern material world, where so much emphasis is placed on a show of power or wealth, it is often a perceived position or status that enflames… rather than the reality of a situation. Holding your own ground and defending your position at such times can be achieved by keeping in touch with pure and positive motivations and holding on to personal integrity and sincerity…Remain clear and focused on your objectives and stay firm in your ethical efforts to proceed… Parting the Mist

One brief shining: Dr. Josy led Shadow out on her yellow leash, the cut on her right front leg below the carpal pad too deep to repair at home; Shadow didn’t want to go, she snuggled up between my legs, looking up at me with those pleading eyes, Dad can’t you fix this?

 

Dog journal: Shadow cut her leg, not sure how. Going to check the Dog run today. A deep cut. Dr. Josy had to take Shadow home with her, to her office. She sedated Shadow and stitched up her leg. Shadow will be home this morning wearing the cone.

The last time a Dog looked up at me with those fix me Dad eyes Vega had just come home from the Bergen Bark Inn after Kate and I returned from Joe and Seoah’s wedding. Vega died that night from bloat.

Shadow’s leaving last night brought that right back to the surface. Many weeks after Vega’s death her plea for help would come in my mind’s eye. I’d push it away because the pain, the pain of not being able to help…

I learned a great life lesson with that memory. One day I decided not to push it away but to bring it back, to relive the anguish in her eyes, to relive the moment when Kate and I went to Sano Clinic and knelt together over her body, both crying, saying goodbye to a Dog with an outsized personality, a companion we loved. After recalling it, reliving the pain, I no longer needed to push away the memory.

Just a moment: Thomas Friedman* and Al Franken are good Jewish boys from St. Louis, Park. Both, like Paul Wellstone, another good Jewish boy, roughly my age.

Wellstone’s 1990 campaign, conducted from the back platform of his famous green school bus surprised Rudy Boschwitz, the two term incumbent senator. Wellstone won.

He drew on the same reservoir of left populist political attitudes that today fuel the non-violent protests against ICE, the Border Patrol, and red tie guy’s cruel policies. A sense of decency, of justice, of belief in the American dream, of belief in equality before the law runs deep among Minnesotans.

Why I wrote on the 16th, after the murder of Rene Good: If any state in the country can stand against this abuse of Federal power, it’s Minnesota.

 

*”Friedman: I will just say one thing about my fellow Minnesotans, who I’m really proud of for the way they’ve risen up against what is basically a deliberate provocation. Minnesota is a unique place.

I always tell people this story. When I was about 5 years old there was actually a Jewish Mafia in Minneapolis, and my dad grew up with a lot of these guys. They were mostly bootleggers. One day, when I was young, my dad came home and said one of his friends had been sent to jail. When you’re 5 years old and your dad says he knows someone who went to jail, it just blows you away. I said, “Dad, what did he do?”

My dad thought for a second. I was just 5. He said, “Son, he was shopping in a store before it was open.” That’s Minnesota for breaking and entering. It’s that kind of place.
Whenever people ask me where I’m from, I say, “Well, I live in Beirut or Jerusalem or Washington, but I’m from Minnesota.” And you will never understand my column if you don’t understand that. My column is called Foreign Affairs. It used to be, anyway. But it really should be called Always Looking for Minnesota.”  Interview in the NYT, 1/27/2025
Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Plants, Reimaging revelation, Travel

The Wild Life

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Yule and the Moon of Deep Friendship

Tuesday gratefuls: Sue Bradshaw.  Shadow, bone crusher. Warming. A bit of Snow. Marilyn and Irv. Roxann and Tom. Jessie. Minnesota, leading the way. Non-violent resistance. Just folks saying no. Australia Day yesterday. On this side of the dateline. The Emirates. Saudi Arabia. Desert monarchies. Iran. Israel. Palestinians. Egypt. Jordan. Syria. Lebanon. Iraq. Kuwait.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Circle Route around Lake Superior

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Year Kavannah: Creativity.   Yetziratiut.   “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” ― Pablo Picasso

Week Kavannah: Rachamim. Compassion.

While chesed (lovingkindness) often refers to a choice of action, rachamim is deeply tied to visceral emotion and empathy—feeling the pain of another. 

Tarot: Page of Bows, the Stoat

  • Connection to Nature: The Stoat serves as a guide to help you reconnect with the sacredness of the ground beneath your feet

One brief shining: The wild streets where violence and dominance meet love and resistance, a reminder that our animal natures lie not far beneath the veneer of civilization, only waiting the right insult to emerge, leap the whole construct of ego and superego, let that id out to play.

https://www.duluthharborcam.com/p/canal-park-cams.html

Minnesota on my mind: There is a spot on I-35 heading north where your vehicle crests a rise and suddenly, in the interior of the North American continent, lies a huge body of water and two port cities, Duluth in Minnesota and Superior in Wisconsin. From that crest you can see the shipping canal visible if you click on the link above. A shipping canal! On a Lake.

If it’s summer, Lake Superior straddles the horizon, a blue reflection of a northern Sky. In winter the Great Lake might be frozen or might be, as it had been on this cam for several days, a scrim of slate gray with Water Vapor boiling off it.

I never tired of seeing Lake Superior just as I never tire of living in the Rocky Mountains. Different geographical features, yes, but equal in majesty and wonder. Twice I drove all the way around Lake Superior, 1,300 miles. The shoreline itself is 2,726 miles. A big Lake.

We live our Mayfly lives in the presence of miracles. Black Mountain. The Front Range. Lake Superior. You. Your friends. The Atlantic and the Pacific. The Mississippi and the Nile. Africa and Asia. Wild Neighbors like the Mountain Lion of Pacific Heights in San Francisco. Kangaroos and swooping Magpies.

See what you’re looking at.

 

Soul work: Is easy. Let no one fool you. No clergy, no self-help guru, no psychologist. All you have to do? See what you’re looking at. Hear the world around and within you. Let your hand brush over the coarse bark of a tree. Smell that Wood-burning stove. Or a Stargazer Lily. Taste your morning coffee and, in your mind’s eye trace back to the hand that dug the clay and the one who shaped the mug, the Coffee Tree, the Bean picker, the who dried the beans, who packaged them.

Then. Notice who saw. Who heard. Who smelled. Who touched. Who tasted. Really notice. If it was the One within who saw the miracle revealed by each sense, that’s your soul. If it’s not, repeat until it is. Easy.

Minnesota, Politics, US History

Love is the Power.

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Yule and the Moon of Deep Friendship

Monday gratefuls: Good sleeping. Cold weather. A bit of Snow. Shadow, sleeping. Roxann, recovering. Tom, too. Jessie. Alex Pretti. Rene Good. Minnesota strong. January in Minnesota. Marilyn and Irv. Tara and Eleanor. Paul, shoveler of Snow. Braiding Sweet Grass. Furious Minds. Prostate Cancer. Western medicine.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Minnesota

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Year Kavannah: Creativity.   Yetziratiut.   “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” ― Pablo Picasso

Week Kavannah: Rachamim. Compassion.

While chesed (lovingkindness) often refers to a choice of action, rachamim is deeply tied to visceral emotion and empathy—feeling the pain of another. 

Tarot: #6, The Forest Lovers

The Forest Lovers represent a positive spiritual force of creative emotional energy and a universal desire for harmony. The inhabitants of the Greenwood revere and respect the rites of love as the force that ensures the unfolding cycle of creation and emotional stability. Always bring the light of love with you; allow it to illuminate the darkest corners of your world and support you through whatever you set out to do.

One brief shining: Yogurt, yes, cheese and Egg burrito, yes, protein bar, yes, a tin of Sardines, yes and I’ve hit sixty grams of protein, ah, still finessing my diet, the biggest challenge of my life after Kate’s death, neither great nor bad, if not quite good, nourishment, I know. I know.

 

Tarot: I’m so glad I drew the Forest Lovers this morning. The Birch Tree wound with green Vines reminds me of Minnesota, especially the Arrowhead where Paper Birch, Aspen, Balsam, Spruce, Jack Pine, and White Pine continue the southern reach of the Boreal Forest, enclosing the many Lakes there and providing habitat for Moose, Wolves, Canadian Lynx, Black Bears, canoers, and other Wilderness loving tourists.

The reminder of Wild Minnesota and the reminder of the power of love to illuminate even the darkest corners of our world encourages me to see our political dark corner from a different vantage.

Non-violence as a strategy assumes power comes from helping others see the oppression, the injustice that can only endure when people of conscience look away, pretend it isn’t there. Non-violence chooses love as a healing force, as a way to make change, to be the difference the protester wants to see in the world.

There is an argument that non-violence cannot work in an authoritarian polity, like say Hitler’s Germany. If the ruling authority does not care about public perception, about individual human lives, then protest can be silenced either though violence or stopping it before it happens.

While it’s true that the Miller/Trump/Noem worldview reads as authoritarian, and that the leadership of ICE and the Border Patrol are outright authoritarians, we’re not Germany in the 1930’s. Not yet.

Why? Because there are still millions who love freedom, liberty, and justice. Sure most would rather ignore the immigrant among us. Many never encounter an immigrant, documented or undocumented.

But the love of our friends and neighbors in Minnesota will not let us look away. They brave the cold and the danger to awaken that ember within, to ignite a Wildfire of love that can burn down the twisted, dark forest of hate. Open your heart and you will become a wildfire of your own.

I will never forget Rene Good and Alex Pretti who gave their last full measure of devotion. I hope you won’t either.

Family, Far Right, Friends, Minnesota, Politics, White Supremacy

Sad. Yes. Despair. No.

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Yule and the Moon of Deep Friendship

Sunday gratefuls: Minnesota. Each whistle. Each winter garbed protester. Each person of brown skin living there. Each act of defiance. The wonderful spirit of all those out in sub-zero weather melting ICE. Shadow, who comes inside. Work outs. The haiku writing glass lady of Bernal Hill. Its owls, coyotes, dogs. Counterrevolutionaries. Against radical reactionaries.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: America

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Year Kavannah: Creativity.   Yetziratiut.   “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” ― Pablo Picasso

Week Kavannah: Rachamim. Compassion.

While chesed (lovingkindness) often refers to a choice of action, rachamim is deeply tied to visceral emotion and empathy—feeling the pain of another. 

Tarot: King of Vessels, Heron

The King of Vessels (Heron) encourages you to trust your intuition and move through life with the calm assurance of someone who understands their place in the natural world.

One brief shining: Shadow goes out and comes in, rolls her red Kong ball, eating treats as they fall out, picks up her Barkely bone with the marrow now licked out, grinds it in her strong jaw, grating her teeth, flops over on her back still holding the bone, another Mountain morning well underway while the America we once knew lies broken, a ravaged bone beneath the feet of oh, so sad delusionaries.

Here’s my letter to the editor on an NYT article: Watching America Unravel in Minnesota.

Yes, the American government has revealed its dark, dystopian nature and how this ugly chapter can only worsen. It is unraveling.

But not America. As a 40-year resident of the Twin Cities, I’ve never been more proud of my adopted home state. America has shown up on the streets of Minneapolis, in a thousand acts of protest, in a general strike!

Bend no knee. Blow a whistle. Organize your neighbors. Say no to tyranny. That’s my America. And, my Minnesota.

I wish I had a lighter side to offer this morning, something to whisk away the descending darkness, reveal the ohr that I know lies hidden under the masked, jackbooted thugs, yes, even them. All I’ve got is a faith in the millions and millions of Americans who know in their heart that shooting civilians, killing them has never been acceptable. Who know that the deaths create martyrs for the cause of liberty and justice for all.

I cannot tell you the depth of my sadness. My ongoing grief as this, this tawdry simulacrum of democracy, continues to lay waste to American cities, laws, norms of decent behavior. At how it feels to near my 79th birthday and find my home shaken to its core, divested of harmony, all in service of long discredited ideas: xenophobia, white supremacy, oligarchical greed, and a devastating lust for power.

Yes, sad. Despair, no. My Wild Neighbors continue to thrive. Shadow sleeps after her morning’s play. I have family I love. Friends I love. Artemis has Garlic Cloves ready to send up Scapes in the warmth of Spring. Tara and I will plan our gardens this Tuesday. My birthday present to her. Ruth has begun her training to become a phlebotomist. Gabe feels life beginning to change as he enters the last semester of his senior year. Roxann had a successful procedure. Tom and Jessie supported each other. Alan has a new left knee. Life continues.

 

Minnesota, Myth and Story, Reimaging revelation, Seed Keepers, Weather +Climate, World History

Is This a Friendly Place?

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Yule and the Moon of Deep Friendship

Shabbat gratefuls: Shadow, chewer of bones. Ruth and phlebotomy. Gabe beginning to grasp leaving home. Rabbi Jamie, grieving his dad. Tom and Jessie. Roxann. Star Trek: Discovery. Joe and Seoah. Afar Hafar. Down Under Melbourne. Up high Shadow Mountain. Minnesota. Its culture.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Science Fiction

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Year Kavannah: Creativity.   Yetziratiut.   “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” ― Pablo Picasso

Week Kavannah: Rachamim. Compassion.

While chesed (lovingkindness) often refers to a choice of action, rachamim is deeply tied to visceral emotion and empathy—feeling the pain of another. 

Tarot: Page of Bows, Stoat

  • Spirituality: It represents a free spirit, a prodigy, and the realm of dreams and visions.
  • Connection to Nature: The Stoat serves as a guide to help you reconnect with the sacredness of the ground beneath your feet

One brief shining: Waiting outside while a loved one is in a surgical suite, a shiva minyan, a young man looking into the future, a young woman educating herself with joy, people close to me at inflection points, moments when life can feel the wind shear of change, perhaps moments after which the journey alters in a significant way. Bless them all.

 

First. Minnesota. Land of 10,000 protesters. A general strike! From the yesteryear of the labor movement. Wonderful. Chesed, loving kindness in concrete action. Solidarity. Across racial, class, and sexual preference lines. Our America live now on the streets of my former, yet forever home.

100 clergy arrested at the airport. Those who know justice will roll down like a Spring Mountain Stream. Those who feel the oneness, who pray for peace and acts of compassion. Those who risk themselves to say NO to this Stephen Miller fever dream, this Trumped up version of law enforcement. My peeps.

I could not be more proud of this out of the way state, on nobody’s well traveled path, up north, bordering Canada. Yes. That Canada. Who also stood up to our naked would be autocrat.

Minnesota, the only state in the lower 48 which never lost its Wolves. Landed sister to the great Gitchee Gummi. Where the Boreal Forest sweeps around crystalline Lakes carved out by receding glaciers. Where the Anishinaabe and the Lakota  have lived for centuries. A beautiful, proud state with a long history of radical politics, of caring for the other, of owning the past and its failures. Of looking for solutions that include, not divide.

These cruel, cold weeks we are all Minnesotans. Melting ICE. Showing love for our neighbors. Standing tall against injustice.

 

Second, is the universe a friendly, unfriendly, or neutral place? A question Einstein saw as the most important of all as humanity advanced into an increasingly technological future.

Perhaps since late high school, certainly since my first philosophy class, I’ve been in the neutral camp. I never believed in a god that reached into human lives and changed them. Or, one that changed history. My gods were abstract expressions of human projection. Merciful, demanding, angry, loving, just. As we are.

Once I disabused myself of gods altogether, I saw the universe as awesome, wondrous, and indifferent. How could it be otherwise? An infinite game of pool with one atom striking another, repeat, form something new, repeat, until without a guiding hand, on this Rocky, Watery world evolution took hold. As wondrous and awesome as the creation of the universe, but still random. Mutations, extinctions. until, in a rare geological epoch, a goldilock moment favored a bipedal life form with a big brain. Could have been otherwise, eh?

Well, yes. It could have been. But it wasn’t. This last week I’ve considered all the same data and have come to a different answer to Einstein’s question.

Friendly, I now see. The universe is friendly. How could it be otherwise. Random its working may have been, yet can I deny that those random acts of Star creation, solar furnaces in which the elemental structures of the universe were brought into being, did not seed the Galaxies and Solar Systems with the needed material to create Water, Mountains, Land, life?

And, can I deny that over the 4 billion year history of this single Planet-one of trillions captive to those solar furnaces-the interactions of gravity, erosion, freezing and thawing, lightning strikes, volcanic explosions made it possible for the vagabond continent of Africa to become home to the hominid evolutionary path that led to Homo Sapiens.

Further, can I deny that that evolutionary path led some early humans out of Africa and into what is now Europe, India, China and that further travels of my/our ancestors eventually found what is now the Americas.

Lastly, can I deny that if the long, amazing chain of atoms striking atoms, the kindling of Stars, the subsequent creation of Planets and solar systems, the emergence of life on Earth, and the long, long, long path leading to Mom and Dad, which led to my birth proves the universe to be friendly? I cannot. Neither, however, do I believe that the universe qua universe works as a somehow god, finding our everyday actions a place to intervene.

Yet, we are all part of this marvel, this miracle and in that connectedness find our mutuality, not only with other humans but with the Bear, the Lion, and the Platypus, the Ocean and the Desert, the fertile Land and the frozen poles. And even the most distant Stars and Galaxies.