Imbolc and the 78th Birthday Moon

Friday gratefuls: Ruth. Alan. My son and Seoah, headed to Minnesota. Shadow. The beginning of our life together. Ginny. The Granby Shelter. Puppies. Learning to navigate life. Old men. Learning to navigate life. Rascal. Tom. Ruby, her inner beauty. The Night Sky. Space Station. Visible satellites. Mussar online.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Night Sky

Week Kavannah: Curiosity.  Sakranut

One brief shining: Shadow, Moon Shadow, Shadow Mountain, my Shadow sits beside my chair here, her black and tan nose thrust over the arm, brown eyes looking to me for affection, a hand on her small soft head.

 

Realized yesterday as I moved around the house with purpose, doing things relevant to Shadow like water for her water bowl, checking her food, trying to find her, oh there she is, between the coffee table with the cd player on it and the outside wall, that my inner world has changed, grown less self-centered and more outward focused. Not a distinction between selfish and other oriented. Rather a distinction between self-focused and other focused.

I love being alone with my books, writing, television, thoughts, Shadow Mountain, I do. Not lonely. Yet. That is a world with me and my inner life at its center. And one I could have happily continued.

Introducing Shadow, whose head I just petted, however returns me to a state of living I’ve experienced for most of the last 35 years. A life with Dogs. With the relationship that only a Dog can bring into your life. Like a marriage it is a relationship of love and caring. Caring for the other and wanting what’s best for them. A two way relationship, too.

Now there will be a rhythm on Shadow Mountain that includes her needs, her desires, her life as well as the single human life I live.

This shift is welcome.

 

I continue to read the news. I know many have given it up, too depressing or upsetting. I get it, too. With the mélange of old man Trump signing, as one pundit put it, bigger and bigger pieces of paper, while brah Elon engages in a search and destroy mission aimed at dismantling the small l liberal consensus in place since FDR, and investigations of investigators become front page news, the US seems to be, maybe is, losing its center.

For those of us post WWII kids, now staring down the barrel of death’s cold never misses armory, all this disorients us. Who are we in this strange new place? What is ours to do? Do we consider the old ways, the ones of our youth, as permanent and try to wrest political reality back in that direction?

The FDR consensus that included government as a backstop for its citizens-think Social Security, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act, welfare, regulatory apparatuses to contain and restrain the excesses of our capitalist religion-came out of a time when the Great Depression had scarred all but the most wealthy. Something needed to change and FDR’s vision for an expanded Federal Government, boosted of course by the concomitant challenge of WWII, fit the desires and needs of many of us, our parents and theirs.

Those challenges have long ago receded into movies and books and history. What should the Federal Government look like today? What is its role? These are legitimate and timely questions. Necessary. Perhaps even urgent.

We are not, however, having a debate. We have become witnesses to a planned execution with no vision for the future, no rationale other than burn baby burn.

We must engage the debate. See what new vision fits this new world with a weakened US. What challenges face us now, and what must the Federal Government look like in response to them.