The Off to College Moon
Wednesday gratefuls: Ruth in her dorm room at Willville. With a passion for learning. Gabe home alone. Storm Clouds and high Winds. Breakfast with Tara. Cheryl, the phlebotomist, and my blood draw. The Pearl. Diane and Tom. Brother Mark and the Bangkok urban park. Mary in K.L. My son and Seoah. Songtan. My Lodgepole Companion waving to the keepers of moisture. Perhaps encouraging them. Rain on me.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Blood and its mysteries
Kavanah for the life of August 21, 2024: Knowledge, da’at
One brief shining: Da’at lies directly beneath the keter, or crown, of the tree of life, linked in the downward movement of chi, of life force, of the Tao to hokmah, wisdom, and binah, analysis and planning, feeding in turn hesed, loving-kindness and gevurah, boundaries and strength; knowledge taking shape through consciousness and unconsciousness giving birth to wisdom, to shaping and birthing by the binah.
The tree of life in Kabbalah maps a flow of sacred energy from keter to malkhut, the realm of the shekinah, the feminine sacred, and then, as through a divine pump moving back up through the ten sefirot to keter where the cycle of creation and transformation begins again. Yesterday my blood filled a vial, already containing facts that I need for accurate knowledge of my cancer. The spark of that knowledge exists ahead of its translation into a something that can be considered, only becoming knowable as it moves through the laboratory, carried in drops of my essence, and transformed there into knowledge that I can access, use.
I am especially glad that that using that knowledge, my current PSA and testosterone levels, passes first into hesed, or loving kindness, reminding me that all knowledge comes as kindness, and also, through gevurah with its own boundaries.
A heady way of saying that I’m waiting on my lab results to see if my PSA has returned to undetectable, which would be a big YES, or has continued to rise, sealing my diagnosis of castration-resistant cancer. What framing this waiting kabbalistically does for me is remind me that all of life, all of creation flows up and down the tree, always, including the divine spark, the neshamah or pure soul that is me. Life to death, death to life. Constant change and creation, constant novelty. No destruction without creation. A Shiva view of the nature of life.
Just a moment: If you want a recent and readable analysis of the probable effects of an orange win, read this Thomas Edsall article, Trump is not done with us. Here is its last paragraph:
“I am going to give the last word to Timothy Snyder*:
Trump is in the classic dictatorial position: He needs to die in bed holding all executive power to stay out of prison. This means that he will do whatever he can to gain power, and once in power will do all that he can to never let it go. This is a basic incentive structure which underlies everything else. It is entirely inconsistent with democracy.”
*”Timothy Snyder, a historian at Yale and an expert on the regimes of Stalin and Hitler…”
