Spring and the Moon of Liberation

Shabbat gratefuls: Christina. Sam. Jamie. Luke. Two Wendys. Gary. Ayelet. Ode. Tom. Paul. Bill. Neck brace. Writing. Parsha.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Chesed

 

Kavannah: Areyvut. Mutual responsibility.  All humans are accountable to each other.

Tarot: Five of Bows, empowerment.  Returning to the homeland of your soul. I write.

 

One brief shining:  I have a coffee mug. A male moose stands in shallow water, looking away, toward the boreal forest. Below him is an inscription: The Gunflint Trail. I bought this mug over forty years ago. It has survived moves, constant handling. A Velveteen Rabbit.

 

Legacy cannot be purchased; but it is inescapable.

Not because legacy is not real. Ruth and Gabe will remember me.  Ancientrails, words and ideas over time.

Legacy arises from life. It cannot be created by a name on a building or a ghost-written biography.

My social worker, Rachel, believes in the ripple effect. She sees  our interactions with others expanding, rippling out. Rachel is a kind and sensitive woman. She treats me with kindness. Her soul expands further into the world when I unconsciously treat another with kindness.

That coffee mug. Has had a ripple effect. On me. Holding it I remember Raeone and a night on the Gunflint Trail when we heard a banging, clanging sound. Opened the door to a black bear, head in our garbage bin.

I remember M.J. We were close, then not.

Holding it I remember the boreal forest which fills the Arrowhead region of Minnesota. Wolves, bears, moose. Glacial lakes. A border with Canada. A long coastline on the Great Lake, Superior.

The ripple effect. Ceramics capture ripples. Over the years since that banging, clanging night I’ve often picked up this mug, filled it with cold coffee, and signed on zoom with my Ancient Brothers, three of whom still live in Minnesota.

The moose has a few spots where its glaze has worn off to reveal the white glaze of the mug’s first firing. Constant use has changed it from a souvenir to a vessel of memory, more filled with Grand Marais and the North Shore than the gallons of coffee I’ve drunk from it.

The mug’s legacy. An emptiness bounded by glazed clay. It’s that emptiness, the cylinder-shaped nothing. That makes it useful.

That’s legacy. Unintended. Yet inevitable. Our lives create an empty space which others can pour themselves into.  At my age much of my glazing has worn off from  constant handling. The self–my neshama–once glazed over by convention and routine, now casts a gentle glow through my long frayed exterior.

Pick up the mug.
Fill it.
Remember.