The Off to College Moon

Friday gratefuls: Dreams. Irene. Mnsaves. 529’s. Cash. Sue Bradshaw. Great Sol. My Lodgepole Companion. The sweetness of life. Alan and Joanne. Tom. Joy. Diane. Indiana. Morristown. Alexandria. Muncie. Ball State. Wabash. The liberal arts. Ruth and the UC-Boulder library. Coach Prime. Finding a jeweler for my Pearl. Whippets. Irish Wolfhounds. Sight hounds. Wolf-dogs.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The lessons of pain

Kavanah: HOLINESS קְדֻשָּׁה Kedusha   Holiness, dedication, specialness   (רוּחָנִי Ruchani: spiritual, cognitive function = intuitive/abstract)  On this one I part company with tradition. I do not consider these antonyms poles of this midot. [גוּפָנִי Gufani: physical, earthly; literally “bodily/fleshly”; cognitive function = sensory/concrete] [חִלוֹנִי Chiloni, Common, worldly, secular] I specifically seek-and find-the holy, the sacred in the physical, the earthly, the body. In the ordinary and the common.

One brief shining: Long ago my journey veered away from any notion of transcendence, of anything spiritual that took me away from my body, from my deep interconnection, even interpenetration with the world as I experience it daily; the Celts taught me that yes there is an Otherworld, but that it does not distract from, rather it enhances the holiness of Animals, Plants, Water, Fire, Air, Mother Earth so that this world and that world meet, in my case often through the wonder of my own body or the gentle swaying of the branches of my Lodgepole Companion or the fawn, already losing her spots who dines in my backyard.

 

 

Since Tim Walz’s nomination for Vice President on Kamala Harris’s ticket, the Midwest is having a moment. Having lived in the Midwest from the age of one and a half through sixty-eight, I’d say I qualify as a Midwesterner. I now have both the experience of those sixty plus years and the kind of clarity that ten years and nine hundred miles distance provide, having lived in the Rocky Mountain West since late 2014.

Here are the states I consider Midwestern: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan-the Upper Midwest and Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Ohio-the lower Midwest. The U.S. government includes Missouri, North and South Dakota, and Kansas, but they fall, in my thinking, in another category. Perhaps the Plains States. My criteria is neither demographic nor geographic, rather it is what I felt was the Midwest all the time I lived there.

Though raised and schooled through undergraduate work in Indiana, the Lower Midwest, I spent my adult life after college in the Upper Midwest, first Wisconsin, then Minnesota. The distinctions between Lower and Upper are real, yet so are the shared realities.

I find these stereotypical “finds” by those writing about the Midwest at least mildly insulting. Hotdish. So, casseroles. So what. Found in church basements and kitchen tables all across the U.S. Friendliness. Maybe more a surface congeniality rather than the surface grumpiness of New England? Both conceal a wariness about strangers I find usual rather than unusual. There’s a wholesomeness in the Midwest. Check out any Midwestern high school, bar scene, the back pages of a big city’s free newspaper. Look at this silly article and see other stereotypes like Midwesterner’s say jeet (?), have never worn a proper Halloween costume, and wedding photos are taken in fields. Come on, guys.

My Midwest has a distinct and often apposite combination of heavy industry and agriculture. Beans and corns vie with Detroit, Akron, Gary. Both have taken heavy hits over the last part of the last century and into this one. The Rust Belt. Corporate farming. My Midwest has Chicago as its big city though Cincinnati and Cleveland, Detroit, and the Twin Cities are also major urban areas. My Midwest does have an emphasis on county fairs and state fairs that does mark it out, primarily due to the strong agricultural sector in all these states. My Midwest may have been more religious once, but that has changed rapidly in past decades.

My Midwest shares with other regions systemic ills like racism, sexism, classism. Witness George Floyd, for example.

Not sure how much further I want to go with this today. Thought it would be more fun to write, but it kind of brought me down. Why? Don’t know.