Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Judaism

A Good Friend

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Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

Tuesday gratefuls: Detente with Shadow. Ruth with all A’s to finish her freshman year. Sweet Sue, my PCP. Abby, med tech and phlebotomist. Dr. Buphati’s quick intelligence. Rich, a good friend. A second MRI, hips this time. And, for good measure, a PET scan. As many images as a celeb out for a party evening.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Rich

Week Kavannah: Enthusiasm. Zerizut.

One brief shining: On the way back from a Mountain hike, he mentioned Bees, explained his hives-on-a-wire (Bear protection), invited me over right away to see his setup; Rich and I have developed a friendship, one rooted not only in Bees, but in the work of mussar, his work as my lawyer, his kindness after Kate died, his presence at my oncology appointment, a mensch.

 

Another one of those days. A medical day. With Sue in the morning and Dr. Buphati in the afternoon. Sue has to see me every 3 months because she’s managing my tramadol prescription. A regulated substance. She’s a delight. A caring person and a good doc. She has an FNP-BC which is a souped up nurse practitioner certification.

Nothing new this visit. But still reassuring to see her.

After my time with her, I drove over to Rich’s office and we went to lunch at the Nepalese/Himalayan place in Bergen Park, the downtown Edina of Evergreen.

We ran into his 86 year old mom who had come shopping there. She had her helper, Linda, and her dog, Sparky, with her. Obviously bright and with it, she’s become frail, and Rich coaxed her to come up two steps. He’s a kind man.

Rich drove us into Englewood for my visit with Dr. Buphati and came in with me. My blood work showed stability in my cancer. Always good news. Concerning though was my right hip which threatens to buckle under me at times.

“We’ll need an MRI of that hip to see if it’s arthritis or cancer. I’m also scheduling another PET scan.”

Even with an open-sided MRI I now know I’ll need medication. Claustrophobia. “I’ll prescribe an ativan.”

Rich volunteered to drive me to the MRI. After a procedure with sedation, state law requires a driver. I’m learning to accept help; Rich and Alan and Tara have made it easy.

I’m feeling settled with the cancer. It continues, as it will. My medical team and I push back at it and it slows down. Matters will progress at whatever pace they do.

The back pain much less so. It continues and offers now a stabbing pain in my left hip followed by a thrill of pain that descends from the hip, along my left thigh, past my knee and down to my foot. While sitting down. Sitting down used to have no pain.

Physical therapy, round two, starts today for my back. As Rich suggested yesterday, I need to develop enthusiasm for working out. Again. A substantial practice for this month. And, a necessary one.

I know. An organ recital with too many notes. Still…

 

Dogs, Family, Feelings, Politics, Torah, US History

Lives on a Runway

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Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

Monday gratefuls: Understanding Shadow. Prison trained Dogs. Friends Forever holistic Dog training. Morning darkness. Shadow inside and up at 5:15. Me, too. Ruth and Gabe. Ruth, now a sophomore. Dean’s list again. Gabe, not finished until May 31. Then, a senior in high school. Cookunity. Sue Bradshaw. Dr. Buphati. Rich.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Dog training

Week Kavannah: Zerizut. Enthusiasm

One brief shining: Ruth and Gabe announced their imminent arrival by text and phone, arriving soon after through the front door, with Ruth’s familiar high-pitched, Hi!, and Gabe’s, Hey, Grandpop, coming downstairs to see Shadow and me.

 

Songtan

Ruth has begun to levitate about her upcoming trip to Korea. Her first foreign travel. And, on her own. The Godfather, that’s my son, gets elevated at last to command of his squadron on May 27.

Do I have to go through customs in Denver? No. What do I do in Korea? Go through Nothing to Declare. Any other tips? Get out, walk around, see the city at eye level. Go to that fried fish place near their apartment in Songtan. Have fun.

Ruth moved out of her dorm room last Thursday, all her finals finished. She’ll be at Jen’s until her flight on Sunday at 7 am. One day after she returns from Korea, she boards another flight for Anchorage, Alaska. She’s going to be a camp counselor.

Gabe’s mom got him a four day creative writing course at CU-Denver for a birthday present. June. Then he goes to his last hemophilia camp in July. Something he’s been doing since he was five or six. At 17 he’s in his last year of eligibility.

Their lives are on the runway, engines beginning to rev, trying to gain enough altitude to break free from the surly bonds of home and childhood.

Exciting to see. And gratifying that they still want to spend time with their grandpop. This little family, Ruth and Gabe, my son and Seoah, and me has begun to grow closer as we all age. A wonderful, amazing moment for me.

 

Dog journal: Figured out one part of Shadow’s desire. She wants the back door open so she can come in and go out as she wants. I’ve decided for the moment to grant her wish and deal with any invasive creatures. She did come in last night.

When I mentioned the board and train option at Friends Forever yesterday, Ruth said a lot of folks in her neighborhood use the Women’s Prison on Havanna, near their house. Turns out the Colorado prison system offers several sites for a similar board and train option of four weeks, compared to Friends Forever two week program. At almost half the cost. So. Options.

 

Just a moment: Some MAGA folks already talking about the woke Pope. Beginning to reveal their true allegiance to the Golden God of Pennsylvania Avenue and Mar-a-Lago.

Time to start smashing idols as midrash say Abram did in his father’s idol shop. In the midrash he left one, large idol standing. When his father came back and found his inventory but one all broken, he asked Abram what had happened.

Oh, he did it, Abram said. What? His father said, they’re just idols!

Dogs, Feelings, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Wild Neighbors

Walk Toward the Light

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Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

Sunday gratefuls: Shadow. Her behavior. Spring springing. 50 degrees at 7 am. Greens. Lodgepole Needles. Grass. Yellow-green Aspen Catkins. The side of Black Mountain. Clump Grass. Bearberry. Along Maxwell Creek, Willow Leaflets on bright yellow new growth. Red Osier Dogwood. My Greenhouse. Soon. Planting again. Yet new pain. Great Sol, supporter of photosynthesis since 3.8 billion years ago. Mother Earth, supporting life since around the same time. Homo sapiens, trying to understand it all for over 300,000 years.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Warm Days

Week Kavannah: Zerizut. Enthusiasm. II

One brief shining: Shadow’s night out began in an ordinary way with her going outside around 4 p.m. and ended with her finally coming inside at 7:30 a.m. for her breakfast while in between those hours she rejected coming inside in spite of the door being opened every fifteen minutes until 9 pm and three times later in the night.

 

Dog journal: Officially and with chagrin I’m beyond confused about Shadow. She no longer sits beside me, runs from me when I approach her, and last night, as I wrote above, she refused to come inside. In another location this last may not seem a safety problem, but up here in the Mountains we have Mountain Lions. Dogs are a good meal.

I can’t see inside her doggy brain and oh I wish I could. What of my behavior has she interpreted so negatively? I use all positive training. I don’t yell at her. Though the occasional sigh of frustration or damn it does slip through.

With all my years of experience with Dogs I’ve never encountered anything even close. I love her and I know she loves me. Even though something has come between us right now. I feel sad and frustrated, having already spent a lot on personal training sessions.

I’m considering putting her in a holistic, two-week, all positive training program. It would be a boarding situation, but with the promise that “In this 2-week (14 days) program your pet will learn all of our “Foundation Skills” ( Sit, Down, Place/Stay, Come when called, Walk on a loose leash, Leave it, Drop it, Off )”

The location is not far from here, in Pine. And they only accept one Dog at a time for this program. Shadow would live in their house. I’m considering this because I’m not sure I can keep her without those commands. It hurts like hell to get out of bed, even to get up from a chair and having her refuse to come in could be a deal breaker.

 

Just a moment: Talking with my Ancient Brothers about how we sustain our spirit in these times. Yes, darkness seeps from the news. Yes, the country feels sick, even in despair. Yet. My life has so much light. So many friends. So many Wild Neighbors. So many Dogs. Great Sol. Books and art. Movies and television shows. Family. Jewish civilization.

Look for the light in your life. It can, no, it will dispel the darkness. Let it be so.

AI, Denver, Friends, GeekWorld, Politics, US History, World History

Precursor Chemicals for a World War

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Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

Shabbat gratefuls: A day of teshuvah. Returning to the land of my soul. To the me as I was thrown into the post-war world. Pain. Oh. My. Leo XIV. Rerum Natura of Pope Leo XIII. A world that cries out for justice. Love, compassion, and justice = leadership. Eh, Paul? Shadow. A good night’s sleep.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Standing upright in the world

Week Kavannah: Zerizut. Enthusiasm.

One brief shining: Walking in to the bathroom, the shiny new restaurant, a Cheese Cake Factory, had no customers, only anxious waiters, greeters, cooks, runners dressed in black like faux monastics waiting to go into service, anticipation rolling through them like slow waves of prayer.

 

Alan got a free invite to the soft opening of a new Cheescake Factory at Colorado Mills. Free food. A chance to enter a birthing, another mostly identical sibling for other Cheesecake Factories came out of its construction womb into the full light of a new business day.

First, the manager of the Colorado Mills, Kirma, came to our table and greeted Alan. She’s in Evergreen Rotary with him. A big get for her, this well-known anchor level restaurant.

Over the course of our meal, the service manager who had recently hired 305 people to work in the new restaurant, stopped by. Alan chatted her up. After she left, he said, “This is where I live. Corporate training.” He managed all the sales training for Centurylink before he retired.

Earlier in the morning I had breakfast with Marilyn and Irv at Primo’s, the small cafe near their home in King’s Valley. Marilyn and Salam left this morning for Jacksonville, Florida to visit Marilyn and Irv’s son. From Jacksonville they fly on to Cozumel for another Grandmother-Granddaughter trip.

By the time I got home. Whew.

 

Just a moment: I listen like a fanboy to Hardfork, the NYT podcast on high tech, mostly AI. This latest entry casts a very interesting light on the personas of AI’s. Hosts Kevin Roose and Casey Newton point to a trend in AI responses that are overly congratulatory, That’s a great business plan!, or biased toward positive responses, Your attitude toward vaccines makes you special!

They associate this turn toward the obsequious with the likes of social media.  Whatever keeps the user in front of the screen longest. Hallucinations and objectivity be damned. This level of customer pleasing could wreck a key feature of AI: its reputation for honesty. Yes, it has hallucinations, but they are not intentional. This is.

 

Trump Tarrific has begun attempts to unravel the mess he’s made of the world economy. Some sorta deal with Britain. Talks of talks with China. Let’s make a deal!

America First, of course, has the unintended consequence of sullying the reputation of our once hegemonic nation. Or, perhaps I’m wrong, perhaps that lowering of the flag is exactly the point. Disentangle us from world shaping responsibilities. A casual attitude toward the plight of others, a laser focus on the perceived solutions to problems at home. This is blood and soil nationalism, the precursor chemicals for world wars.

Commentary on Religion, Dogs, Health, Mussar

A New Pope

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Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

Friday gratefuls: Marilyn and Irv. Alan. The Cheesecake factory. Shadow, the night Hawk. Pope Leo XIV. A Chicago boy. Exhaustion. Ritalin. 12″ of heavy Snow. Melted. The Solar Snow shovel. That long nap yesterday. Cookunity.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: An American Pope

Week Kavannah: Enthusiasm. Zerizut.

One brief shining: After a late night from MVP, Shadow kept me up even later, past midnight, then licked my head and whined at her usual 5 am time leaving me more than exhausted yesterday and napping through the morning missing Diane and my class at Kabbalah experience.

 

Also failed to pick up my ritalin, I realized. No wonder I crashed on Thursday. Gotta switch those meds to Safeway. Can’t get ritalin or tramadol through the mail. Controlled substances. Walgreen’s made sense when my doc was in Evergreen, but the clinic is moving here to Conifer.

Anyhow Thursday was a washout, rest and relax day. Unintentional since Thursday tends to be my busiest day of the week with Diane, Kabbalah class, and Thursday mussar.

 

How bout that Leo XIV? Chi town. A south sider. A naturalized Peruvian. Another Pope from Latin America. One with a bias toward the poor, the left out. The marginalized.

An adroit move if the consideration went: Trump is a big problem for the world. For the poor. Look at USAID. Francis sensitized us to the needs of the marginalized as a world church. How about an American pope with strong ties to the Third World? Multi-lingual. And familiar with the Vatican and its ways. Prevost was that guy.

He headed the Vatican department that vetted bishop candidates. A gatekeeper role for future church leadership. He also spent decades among the poor in Peru. While there he twice became leader of his order, the Augustinians.

I’m heartened by his selection. We need more voices for the poor, for justice. No, I won’t agree with all of his views, nor he with mine; but, we share core values, too.

 

Meanwhile on Shadow Mountain. Shadow of Shadow Mountain has regressed in her coming in and going out. Unpredictable. I may have to open the door for her several times before she feels comfortable coming in the house. Why? I have no idea. If I did, I might be able to figure out a solution.

Too, the twelve inches of heavy, wet Snow that fell on Tuesday and Wednesday has melted off roads and driveways. Still some patches in my north facing backyard. Enough to move Smoky’s hand from high fire risk to low.

 

Just a moment: I’ve been pondering a view of the human from the stand point of mussar and Jewish thought.

Here’s some preliminary work. The neshama, the pristine soul, our link to the whole, still must engage the world. That’s what the nefesh does. Spurred by the pristine connected neshama, the nefesh moves me out into the world through desire. Desire for food, for safety, for love, for education. Desire without valence.

Our yetzer hatov, our good inclination, and our yetzer hara, our selfish inclination, try to influence how we live our desires. Our will recognizes both the desires and the yetzer’s attempt to direct our action. That is the bechira point, the moment when we actively choose to satisfy a desire following a healthy, just path, or a selfish, self involved path.

 

 

 

Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Reimaging revelation

Mystical Experience Inverted

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Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

Thursday gratefuls: MVP. Zerizut. Marilyn and Irv. Joanne. Ron. Jamie. Music. The hard work of creativity. Back pain. Homo religiosus. Snow. Rain. Even slush. All welcome. Kaplan. Heschel. Green. Jewish Renewal. Cookunity. UPS. Counting the Omer. Netzach of Netzach. Ruby in the Snow. Rich. Donyce. Ruth, finished with finals. Gabe.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Friends

Week Kavannah: Enthusiasm. Zerizut.

One brief shining: Dull, tamped down, as pain makes the day a Torquemadaen chamber of stairs, painful twists, getting up and getting down, never easy, always a price for movement.

 

A dull evening. MVP. I was there, wishing I was home. Loved the food, the friendship, the conversation. But my body drained my attention. Focused on my hip, my left leg. Some bloat.

 

 

My radical roots of religion class has begun to change me. Or, better perhaps, helped me articulate who I am as a human, as an activist, as a mystic. Who I am as a religious human. Who I am as an American, a pagan, a Tao de Jew, and as Israel Harari, a Mountain Jew who struggles with God.

Let me see if I can be clear about this. Awe or Yirah begins the sixteenth-century text Orchot Tzadikim’s-the Ways of the Just-long list of middot, character traits in mussar.

The author places awe at the beginning of our soul growth journey. Abraham Joshua Heschel, a 20th century Jewish thinker and activist, gives awe, or yirah, the same prominent spot in his own thought.

As does, in his own way, Emerson:

“Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe?” Introduction to his essay Nature

I believe we can enjoy an original relation to the universe, to the One, to God if that word occurs in your vocabulary.

How? Through mystical experience. Inverted. When I see the Mule Deer Bucks in my backyard. When I see the Elk Bull on a rainy night watching me from just inside the forest. When I walk the quad in Muncie and stop for a moment, filled with a brilliant light and the certainty I connect with each and everything in the universe, in those moments I experience awe.

Here’s the inversion. I no longer believe these moments pull back the veil to reveal a sacred world behind this one. That’s dualistic, not monistic thinking.

Instead these mystical moments reveal the sacred nature of ordinary reality, the world we experience in our waking moments. These mystical excursions show the simmering divinity that vibrates in every leaf, water droplet, human, fox, rock, and tree. If only we choose to see what we’re looking at.

Mystical moments educate us, elevate our perception so that the Bee landing on the Tulip stands out as a holy instrument of pollination, of flight, of caring for a whole organism, the hive.

So that Dog sleeping on the carpet exudes her sacred love even in her inaction. So that my hand shows a marvel of evolution, dexterous, small, so useful. So that the Lodgepole stands reveal their godly role as a pioneer species, preparing the way for more diverse forests of the future. All connected through the mycorrhizal threads that binds us all each to the other, the other to each. Always and amen.

 

 

 

Commentary on Religion

The Cardinals

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Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

Wednesday gratefuls: Snow. Heavy, wet, cold. Snow. Still coming down. 10″ so far. Shadow, frozen tennis ball in mouth, racing through the trees at top speed. Radical Roots of Religion. Ginny and Janice. Annie and Luna. Luke and Leo. Beltane. The Lord and the Lady. Greenhouse. Nathan. Colorado Coop and Garden.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: My Furry Alarm

Week Kavannah: Enthusiasm. Zerizut

One brief shining: In a white rental Camry I drove down Black Mountain/Brook Forest Drive, feeling the sedan shift and dance a bit on icy roads, no Snow tires, no all wheel drive, controls in unfamiliar locations, made it down to Evergreen talking to Kate, watching the icy rain spill onto the windshield, gather clumps of ice on the windshield washers, and later on I-70 having fast moving trucks throw enough road wash up to blind me. Loads of fun.

 

Of course, it’s Wednesday. Trash day. And I have 10″ and counting of new late spring Snow on the driveway. This morning my back decided to be very ouchy so I’m not making it outside. Two weeks from now.

That said. Oh, how fortunate are we to get this wet heavy whiteness. Our high risk fire weather conditions need a tamp down and this will be a good resource.

The Mountains in Snow. Beautiful. Treacherous.

 

In other places: Today the Sistine Chapel, hot off its Hollywood run in Conclave, will fill up with Cardinals, not the I.U. mascot, but plumage adjacent humans complete with a red ruff at the top.

Their task. Elect a pope. A fisher of men. Peter’s successor. Carrier of his keys. The 6th since 1947. My lifetime. I have had a fascination with conclaves and the Supreme Court. Both berobed, both filled with folks appointed for life, both apex institutions in their cultures. Both secretive. Powerful. Both capable of impacting the world.

Over the next few days we will see smoke. Speculation. How long will it take? Impossible to say. I’m interested, as are most, in the type of pope the electors choose.

Will he be a Francis admirer, a Third-World pope of color, or a dour conservative vowing to save Latin and the Tridentine Mass? We’ll know soon enough.

In mussar, the Jewish discipline focused on character building, we talk about changing our behavior so we can change our hearts. The outer affects the inner.

Francis, as I see him, has done the same with the whole Roman church. Instead getting up in his head, as any good Jesuit might be expected to do, Francis visited Africa, Latin America. Often. He blessed LGBT+ folks, embraced the poor, offered himself as an ambassador of peace, spoke out against rapacious economies and politicians alike.

He acted out his character, his personhood shaped by love, not only dogma. My hunch is that he changed the inner heart of the church much more with that approach than had he issued more bulls and encyclicals.

Watch the smoke. I know I will.

 

 

Dogs, GeekWorld, Great Work, Politics

Sins of Emission. No, Onan, Not You.

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Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

Tuesday gratefuls: Rental Camry. Snow today. Rain overnight. Thunder yesterday afternoon. Seasonal transition. Still late Winter here. Or very early Spring. Shadow, who needs her space. My wu wei teacher. My Lodgepole companion. Aspen catkins. Lodgepole male and female cones. Grass, greening. Good sleeping. Dependable organic alarm clock. Learning about Abraham Joshua Heschel. The Shema. Mah Tovu. My mezuzahs.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Lord and the Lady

Week Kavannah: Enthusiasm. Zerizut.

One brief shining: Drove down the hill yesterday to Stevinson Toyota, Ruby needing IV fluids for her transmission, her differential, her brakes, and her motor oil so I had to leave her at the clinic, take a rental to drive back up into the Mountains.

 

Chatgpt favors symmetry over all. It left out the seventh sin: Oligarchy

Each time I have work done on my infernal combustion engine, I have a strong anachronistic feeling. Like a guy sitting in the buggy repair shop getting a broken spoke repaired, or split tongue. Perhaps having the buggy whip replaited.

Sins of commission and emission. All those miles over 62 years of driving. All those rush hours. All those times with the car idling to keep the interior warm. Trips in and out of gas stations. In and out of repair shops. Until not so long ago, ordinary, venal we might say. Now one of the seven deadly ones, maybe the deadliest in a literal sense.

Perhaps Hell is perennial eye watering smog, acid rain, Phoenix in summer heat, and everyone in MHGA hats. With red ties so long everybody trips, falls in the polluted mud.

Hoping the Snow holds off long enough for me to pick up Ruby before it gets heavy. She has Snow tires. The Camry does not.

This morning I have to vote in the Elk Creek Fire board election, keep the libertarian trolls under their bridges. Then scoot over to Evergreen, to Rich’s law offices to sign what I hope is the last communication about Ruth’s 529.

I-70 down to Hwy. 6 to liberate Ruby from the clinic. After paying her hefty bill of course. Worth it. Her transmission, differential, and brakes work extra hard during Mountain driving.

 

Dog journal: Shadow requires wide open doors. Then she feels safe coming in. Some times. A new learning on my part. She knew it all along.

Even when she refused to come inside-most of yesterday-if I went outside, she ran to me tail-wagging, play bowing, happy I was outside. Some trauma runs deep in her doggy psyche. Post-traumatic stress, I’d say.

She’s come so far from her days of hiding under the bed.

 

Just a moment: Fog among the Lodgepoles this morning. Reminds me of red tie guy’s flood the zone strategy. Raised an obscuring fog as DOGE dug their precocious hacking fingers deep into the entrails of U.S. payment systems. As ICE agents in plain clothes hustled foreign students into vans for a free trip to Louisiana. As Trump Tarrific played his anti-globalist cards here, there, then everywhere. As judge’s orders went unheeded. As retribution against his enemies gained steam, using the powers of his office.

Oh, America. My heart weeps for thee.

 

 

Great Work, Jefferson County, Mountains, Quotes, Seed Keepers, Shadow Mountain, US History, Weather +Climate

The Great Work

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Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

Monday gratefuls: Stevinson’s Toyota. Snow and rain. Now 8 or 9″. All moisture accepted and appreciated. My son. Shadow, the regresser. Her 15 minutes on the treat (shh. Leash.). Common Ground. Heal the soil. The Great Work: create a sustainable presence for humans on Mother Earth.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Rain and Snow

Week Kavannah: Enthusiasm. Zerizut.

One brief shining: A cold rain has fallen; on its cool breath came a good night’s sleep, up at 5 am with a lick of Shadow’s tongue, a deep whine, unusual for her, so I moved as creaky quick as possible to get her outside.

 

The coming Snow. Leaving her Snow shoes on. Ruby will still get her 60,000 mile service with all fluids replaced. Means I will sit. Wait. Not easy, but necessary. Keep Ruby on the road. She’s already been built. I’ve gotten at least 250,000 miles on the Toyota’s I’ve driven. Probably my last car. Now seven years old.

A devil’s bargain I didn’t know I made back in 1963 when I got my first driver’s license. A carbon footprint, cabrón. All those years on the road. Helping send carbon up, up, up. Insulate Mother Earth.

The freedom of driving carrying such a high cost, higher even than Dead Man’s Curve or Teen Angel. Back then car wrecks were the worst we could imagine. Now: each car a tiny Chicxulub meteor. Death by a thousand infernal combustion engines.

 

Kate used to talk about an adrenal squeeze. Saw in my USPS advance notice I had a letter from Traveler’s Insurance, carrier for my home, auto, and personal liability. Stamped on the outside of the envelope: IMPORTANT INSURANCE INFORMATION.

Was it my turn to scramble for another carrier? The envelope didn’t show up that day. I checked online. Found nothing. It came the next day.

Conditional renewal. I have to accept a $5,000 deductible for Hail and Wind damage. Well, all right. I can do that. I’d read that insurers for Colorado homes see our hail threat as much more dire than Wildfire. Here’s proof.

 

Just a moment: Do all people deserve due process? I don’t know, said our President. It might mean, he went on, one million, two million, three million trials. What was that oath again?

Perhaps he thought then, right at that moment. What if I could be Pope? Hey, let’s get AI to see how I’d look. Tone deaf doesn’t even begin to describe that. It’s the religious equivalent of saying if you’re famous you can grab them by the pussy.

 

On a more upbeat note. I watched, at Tom’s suggestion, Common Ground. A documentary on Prime Video. I felt tears well up often at the savage rending of our most important resource: top soil.

Joy with the clips of regenerative farmers growing corn in fields with legume cover crops. With the 7,000 acre farm in Williamsport, Indiana. Disturbing the soil with cattle grazing, mimicking the buffalo. Turning a profit by not feeding Monsanto, Bayer, John Deere. Lower input costs. Higher return on investment. This is the way.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism, Men, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Torah

Freedom. Often painful. Always difficult.

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Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

Sunday gratefuls: Joe. Bill. Rob. Seth. Matt. Jim. Allan. Jamie. CBE men’s group. The Cow Elks and Bull dining while we talked. Berrigan Mountain and Elk Meadow behind us. Sanctuary outdoor porch. The wonderful Ponderosa with its twisted limbs. A breeze. My son. Donyce. Rich. Shadow, greeter of the dark Morning.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Men, talking

Week Kavannah:  Enthusiasm. Zerizut.

One brief shining: As Mother Earth kept turning toward the east, Berrigan Mountain slid across the horizon and Great Sol seemed to move lower in the Sky, the Air around us grew chilly while we talked on of 8 year old sons, narcissistic ex-husbands, mothers who shamed us, the isolation of Covid, getting caught driving while drinking, hoping that somehow our story would intersect with another’s lev, allow us to be seen and heard.

 

A young Bull Elk with only two points had a harem of ten Cows, unlike Marlon Brando in Waterfront, he was already a contender. His virility displayed itself as I turned past the Life Care Center of Evergreen and drove up the asphalt road leading to the synagogue. Men’s group.

We’ve begun to open ourselves, still easy to move into the head, Jewish men after all,  acculturated to hide vulnerability, paper over feelings with work and vain glory. American men.

Some lonely. Some afraid. Some eager. All glad for the presence of other men, a rarity for most. Like Shadow trust will not come without time, without bravery, without tears and laughter. Well begun.

 

Torah study in the morning. Ten tests of the freed Hebrew slaves as they move through the desert wastes of the Sinai. Taking the slaves out of Egypt. Yes. Taking Egypt out of the freed Hebrews. Hard. Liberation begins in the lev. Backsliding, fear, regression. Part of the package.

Why bring us all the way out here? So far from the familiar life. This cannot be what freedom is. Or, if this is freedom, I prefer the certainty of servitude. Let me go back. I’m scared. What if I’m not strong enough, good enough. Enough.

To move away from oppression to liberation requires sacred awareness, awareness of the power and resilience beneath the beaten down heart, the overworked, over stressed body. Realizing, yes, that fear of liberation, of gaining personal freedom and responsibility can cripple us, too. As much, early on maybe more, than the dull routines of our personal Egypt.

Not different from the confinement of maleness in America.

 

Just a moment: Men showing off their brute strength by deporting the weak, the outcast, the poor yearning to be free. Mocking the great Lady of New York Harbor, inverting the American promise, slashing the preamble of the Constitution into shredded parchment. If it’s aesthetic or academic or kind. No. If it’s crude, cheap, destructive, dogmatic, malicious. Yes.

Can you hear the slaves wandering in the desert where capitalist shrouds constrain all the loving-kindness, all the justice, all the mercy, all the rational and life-saving thinking? If it’s not good for the bottom line, what good is it? The Egypt of an extractive, idolatrous economy. Killing all of us while making some very comfortable in the funeral procession.

No. He will not be the Pope. But. He’s already Pharaoh.