Imbolc and the Snow Moon
Sunday gratefuls: Shadow. Cookunity. Cold night. Drinking the Golden Calf. Midrash. Torah. Religion and its ignorers. Ginny and Janice. Tethering. Salmon and white Bean salad. Battle Mountain, Joe Pickett. The many sided crystal of perspective. Lenovo laptop.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Midrash
Week Kavannah: Social Responsibility. Achrayut.
Practice: Working on Seed Keepers, Seed Savers
One brief shining: Working with AI, an odd by which I mean new and novel experience, to give form to a Seed Keeper’s Almanac, a self-help manual to recreate an America always longed-for, yet never lived in, a hybrid format in paper and on the web, replenished and renewed by its users, focused on dreaming America as neither an utopia, nor as a replica of a faux golden age, rather as a stewpot where different ingredients in different amounts blend together into a powerful, compassionate whole.
An issue for me. How to reconcile my lower energy, dog-distracted, hermit favoring life with a steady felt need to stand upright in this most ridiculous and chaotic of times. Not be absent.
I write, yes. I talk with friends and family, reinforcing their desires to get out there and do something. I’m part of a religious community dedicated to a just and compassionate world. Yet. What is mine to do?
The more I futz with chatbotgpt, the more I find possibility in the idea, the bringing into reality of a self-help manual for that world I’ve worked for my whole life. A connected hermit. A dog-distracted but still alert old guy. Using my energy as I can.
Thinking about those isolated from this dystopian new world disorder. Trappist Monks in the Gethsemane Abbey. Amish families around Lancaster, Pennsylvania and Fort Wayne, Indiana. Subsistence farmers. Those of us old folks with adequate financial resources. (mostly. Though Social Security and Medicare…) Expatriates like Mary and Mark. Wilderness dwellers in the North Woods, in the Mountain Ranges of this great land. Oddly perhaps some Native American nations. Probably some recluses and communal living folks far off the grid.
And, of course, the oligarchs.
The rest, even cousin Donald’s base. Nope. Vulnerable. Without cover. That includes my son and Seoah. Ruth and Gabe. Luke. Ginny and Janice. Anyone unfortunate enough to be poor. Or different in a way that the oligarchs and their tattered army dislike.
This struggle will continue for the rest of my life. That alone means something to me. A need to not kneel. Not acquiesce. A need to do what only I can do. Now.
Just a moment: I had a no good week in part. Feeling down, dog defeated. Weak in body and mind. Took wrassling and seeing others to bring myself back to level.
That’s ok, though. Learning how to live through the troughs as well as the highs is a key lesson. OK. Learning to live through the occasional abyss as well as the getting along just fine days. Glad I’ve advanced enough for that.
Back to working out. For example…
