Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, Health, Judaism, Memories, Politics, Third Phase, US History, World History

A Jew

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Spring and the Passover Full Moon (Corona Luna)

Friday gratefuls: For the lupron injection I’m about to receive today, I thank you. For an appointment with Dr. Eigner today, rather than April 17. For a memorable passover with Seoah, Kate, and 53 virtual guests. For Rabbi Jamie, whose soul shines. For the passover meal from Zaidy’s Deli in Denver. For that time, mythic and therefore real, when Hebrew slaves left bondage, crossed the Red Sea, and began 40 years of wandering in the desert.

If you find the passover the central story in your life, then you’re a Jew. Art Green. I’m a Jew. May as well claim it if this is the criteria.

Throughout my life liberation from oppression has been core to what I’ve done. Whether that oppression was modest as in the case of Juniors at Alexandria High School who couldn’t go to prom unless invited (we created a junior prom) or deep and pervasive in the case of women, the poor, sexual preference outliers, my instinct is to oppose it and if possible end it. Lots of Red Seas to cross.

Climate change is different, you say. Who’s oppressed by climate change? Living things, especially humans. And, as with the coronavirus, the catastrophe will fall often and heaviest on those too poor to adapt and with too little power to affect change.

This opposition of mine to oppression seems instinctual. Doesn’t seem to have an origin story in my psyche. I was neither abused nor oppressed as a child. I grew up with white privilege, white male privilege as my inheritance. The passover story, a universal one like Easter, puts liberation at the center of life. Until all are free, none are fully free.

Today I am a Jew, a pagan whose identity, whose soul, shares much with the tribes of Israel, their collective story and journey. Enough that I’ve become part of them, though not converted. I’m a close friend of the tribe, maybe, by Art Green’s definition, an actual member.

On a related but different topic, inspired again by Art Green, it occurred to me how Judaism and Christianity are complementary, very much so. Judaism differs, he says, from its close relatives Christianity and Islam in its communitarian essence. The message of god, of the one, listened to through Jewish tradition, is one which creates a people, a community. This is true at CBE and is a strength of Judaism invisible to me until I became part of this community.

Christianity and Islam, he says, deliver their message to the individual. God’s love heard through those traditions focuses on healing the soul.

Judaism puts the inflection on community, on liberation, while Christianity and Islam put the inflection mark on the soul; its need for wholeness, for realizing the one is that of which each of us is a part, while, paradoxically, being wholly within each one of us. These two inflections are not a reason for differentiation, but for mutuality. The world needs to know how to live in just communities; individuals need to find their way back to the one, to realize the oneness within them. These are not differences, they are parts of a whole.

I’m on a third path, but I’m coming slowly to recognize how it intersects with other paths.

Commentary on Religion, Commentary on the news, Coronavirus, Jefferson County, Judaism, Music, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Narrow, Pharaoh Mind

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Spring and the Corona Luna

Wednesday gratefuls: The garbage collectors. Zaidy’s Deli for Seder fixings. Jewcy for the Haggadah. Kate’s no leak bandage routine. Seoah’s potato and sausage soup. New kabbalah class starting today. Learning and the ability to learn. Books. Printing presses. Newspapers. The much maligned, but oh so important news media. Diane’s willingness to get up early to talk. Mark and Mary in month long lock downs (of varying strictures). Gov. Polis and Mayor Hancock (Denver) for stepping up. Jeffco, too.

What’s the idiot up to now? That’s how I think of my first look at the news when I get up. These days though I find the question moot. He already did it by screwing up the testing, playing keep away with the national stockpile of medical equipment, and blaming, blaming, blaming rather than acting.

John Prine died. One of my favorite musicians. Hello in There. Angel from Montgomery. Ballad of Sam Stone. An American original like Bob Dylan, who was a fan of John’s. Covid-19.

Passover starts tonight. Easter is on Sunday. Zaidy’s Deli in Denver, performing a mitzvah, offered takeaway Seder boxes with matzo, Manischewitz blackberry wine, brisket, haroset and other sides, items for the seder plate. Rigel and I drove over to CBE yesterday to pick up our order. Eve, the executive director at CBE, had put haggadahs in there.

Like many synagogues, most, I imagine, CBE will hold a virtual Passover meal on Thursday night. We’ll use the Jewcy Haggadah, the ritual for the service. It has the famous four questions including how is this night different from all other nights?

The primary purpose of Passover is to recount to children the foundational story of the Hebrew slaves and their liberation from Egypt. Kids hunt for the hidden afikoman, a piece of matzah, and get a reward if they find it. They also hear about all the plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, sing songs, and generally have a good time.

Passover brings many friends and family, including a Gentile or two or more, into a bubbe’s home. Not this year. The story with the plagues has been changed by a plague. The irony has not been missed. Many of our friends are sad because this is a joyous occasion, a time to celebrate, and not having folks in the house will seem very strange.

At passover we move from a narrow place, a narrow pharoah mind, to an expansive place, the Promised Land. Rabbi Jamie in last week’s morning prayers, Maladies and Melodies.

Commentary on the news, Coronavirus, Family, Jefferson County, Mountains, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, US History

We Are At Home

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Spring and the full Corona Luna

Tuesday gratefuls: A good workout. All the delivery people: USPS, UPS, Fedex. Again, and still, all the service workers, warehouse workers, truck drivers, doctors, nurses, governors and mayors who’ve chosen to confront life under the pandemic. And, again, the coronavirus for unveiling the lies we tell ourselves to preserve our status, our pollution, our failed economic systems. Seoah, who cleans and cooks and smiles and laughs and orders from Lululemon.

The snow is melting. We’ve had bright sun shiny days. Jeffco put the entire county on stage 1 fire restrictions indefinitely. It’s unusual for that restriction to come this early, with much snow still to come. Not good news.

What would happen right now if we had a major disaster, like a wildfire? It would up end our life here and create a turmoil wherever we had to go. Or, an earthquake in California. A hurricane hitting Florida or New Orleans. Tornadoes in the south. Disasters during an ongoing disaster. Are we ready for these? They will happen.

We’ve flagged off our housecleaner for the second time. We’ve continued to pay her though, as we will pay our hair stylist. These are one woman businesses. They are our contract employees so we’re supporting them. How long? Don’t know.

Seoah cleans so we’re ok. And the hair? Somebody said a couple of weeks ago that we were only three weeks from knowing everybody’s true hair color. Shaggy’s been my look most of my life. Another couple of months is NBD.

Another zoom time this morning with Clan Keaton. Linking the far flung Ellises and our first cousin, Diane. Mark sent me a clip from the Arab News announcing a 24 hour curfew in Riyadh. Residents can only go out between 6am and 3pm for food and medicine. Today begins a month long lockdown in Singapore with somewhat looser restrictions. San Francisco’s been shelter in place for longer than most.

All this physical distancing and social distancing has begun to work. How much it will flatten the curve and what happens when it ends are still uncertain. Like our lives.

Commentary on Religion, Commentary on the news, Coronavirus, Judaism, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Weather +Climate, World History

We’ll See

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Spring and the Corona Luna

Monday gratefuls: Ruby, the red Rav4. Filled up. Wearing a masque in public. This time an obvious one. The clerk at the liquor store. The clerk at the Safeway. The guy from the Pho place, bringing our order outside. I gave you some extra! A trip to Evergreen with Seoah and Kate. Sunday zoom. Woolly friends, old friends. Deep story.

If god lived on earth, all his windows would be broken. Yiddish saying.

You can see why. Pogroms in Russia. The holocaust. Virulent anti-semitism throughout European history. But not just Jews. The plague. Earthquakes. Wild fire. Volcanoes erupting. Hurricanes and tornadoes. Pedophiles even among God’s supposed ambassadors. Wealth and status inequalities all over the globe. Racism and sexism.

This is the old, old problem of theodicy. If god is omnipotent, omniscient, how can he (yes, this is the he-god.) let bad things happen? Good question, as it turns out. Some of the most convoluted theological thinking of many bright theologians have never found a satisfactory answer. IMO that’s because there is no satisfactory answer.

Does this mean that god is an intentional doofus when it comes to ruling the universe? No, it simply means that those of us who invented him and his ways, all of the hims and hers of the religious over history, have projected ourselves or our monarchs onto the sky. Turns out we’d be no good if we were omniscient or omnipotent. That’s a relief, at least to me.

There is a more radical approach to the conundrum, one that at first makes no sense. Monism. The universe is one. You can call the one god, if you want. Or, you can call it the one. The implication of monism for the question of theodicy is, well, hard to grasp.

Let’s say you choose to call the one, god. That is, the unique entity that is all stuff together is god. Some do this. Spinoza, for example. Art Green for another. There are flavors to this monism idea, but right now we’ll let those be. If the one is god, then all things, bad and good, are of the one. Volcanoes. Plagues. Hurricanes. Tsunamis. Murders. Rapists. The coronavirus. as well as, of course, love, justice, compassion, warriors, mothers, fathers, nurses and doctors.

I know. It seems like a violation of common sense. How do we get away with attributing the worst and the best to this god, this one? Short answer: we have no choice. This is the god who’s windows would all be broken, isn’t it? I mean, what sorta god…?

We start by recognizing that all of our judgments are just that, our judgments. It’s the human mind that separates events and people and their actions into good and bad. I’m not suggesting that there is no difference between good and bad. I’m just identifying them as artifacts of our minds trying to assess our world in terms of helpful and unhelpful.

Monism requires us to pause a moment and see that goods can become bad and bad things can have good results. Monism forces us to look beyond our blinkered vision, to turn around as we see, to take in the full 360 degree view.

Here’s an ancient parable, told in many cultures, that illustrates this point:

“Once upon a time, there was a farmer in the central region of China. He didn’t have a lot of money and, instead of a tractor, he used an old horse to plow his field.

One afternoon, while working in the field, the horse dropped dead. Everyone in the village said, “Oh, what a horrible thing to happen.” The farmer said simply, “We’ll see.” He was so at peace and so calm, that everyone in the village got together and, admiring his attitude, gave him a new horse as a gift.

Everyone’s reaction now was, “What a lucky man.” And the farmer said, “We’ll see.”

A couple days later, the new horse jumped a fence and ran away. Everyone in the village shook their heads and said, “What a poor fellow!”

The farmer smiled and said, “We’ll see.”

Eventually, the horse found his way home, and everyone again said, “What a fortunate man.”

The farmer said, “We’ll see.”

Later in the year, the farmer’s young boy went out riding on the horse and fell and broke his leg. Everyone in the village said, “What a shame for the poor boy.”

The farmer said, “We’ll see.”

Two days later, the army came into the village to draft new recruits. When they saw that the farmer’s son had a broken leg, they decided not to recruit him.

Everyone said, “What a fortunate young man.”

The farmer smiled again – and said “We’ll see.”

Moral of the story: There’s no use in overreacting to the events and circumstances of our everyday lives. Many times what looks like a setback, may actually be a gift in disguise. And when our hearts are in the right place, all events and circumstances are gifts that we can learn valuable lessons from.

As Fra Giovanni once said:

“Everything we call a trial, a sorrow, or a duty, believe me… the gift is there and the wonder of an overshadowing presence.””

This is a monistic perspective. And, in its vein, I’d ask you to take the rock out of your hand for a moment, quite breaking god’s windows over the coronavirus, and say to yourself, “We’ll see.”

General

An Experiment

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Spring and the Corona Luna

An unfolding, yet so far under reported story, A Perfect Storm is Gathering in the South. The author, Margaret Renkl, has become one of my favorite NYT op ed people. She’s had interesting columns on animals and plants in Tennessee and her coverage of the tornadoes that struck Tennessee last month were tender, evoking the good news of community at its best.

When I read this article, it confirmed a conclusion I’d come to while looking at a map of travel reductions over the last month. The map showed blues, greens, tans over most of the U.S., representing significant reductions in miles traveled since the shut down orders began to take effect. There was however a large swath of red, indicating no decrease in travel and in some instances, actual increases. The red outlined the deep South, went over to Texas and up a ways into the Midwest.

This map shows the problem. Travel declined by far the least in the South. A conservative columnist writes that this is demonizing the south. His argument seems to focus on rural areas that require longer trips for essentials like food and medical visits. Thus, the red. Of course, that could have some merit, but it doesn’t explain the other rural counties in states not in the south. Most of them have managed to slow travel.

He also doesn’t take into account the most salient reason for travel remaining high in those states. Their governors, again with some emerging exceptions, have not issued stay at home orders. All Republican. All saying something along the lines of individual liberties come first. My guess? They’re not really so concerned about individual liberties as they are about political backlash if they become “tyrannical” like those governors in other states.

Whether you agree with their logic or not does not matter. What they’ve done is set up an unintentional experiment. Were lock down orders necessary and did they flatten the curve? Or, were they a serious contravention of the right to assemble, the right to go anywhere you damned want? If, over the next few weeks, virus cases begin to abate in the north and west, but not in the south, we’ll have an answer.

If the southern governors were wrong, we’ll still have a huge problem, because the United States is a federation with no passport controls between individual states, much like Europe. The infected will stay be able to move freely and as the rest of the nation begins to open up a bit, the virus will have a chance to take hold again.

Sigh.

Aging, Coronavirus, Family, Friends, Health, Mountains, Myth and Story, News of the Strange, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Woolly Mammoths

Mystery

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Spring and the Corona Luna

Saturday gratefuls: Nurse Michele from Mt. Evan’s Hospice and Home Health Care. A night without leaking for Kate!!! A new protocol for her feeding tube. Masks. Personas. No, masks, soft cloth masks. No, it’s all masks. Even our body. Mystery. The peaks of the mountains. Cirrus clouds racing high above them. Lodgepoles with hoarfrost. Woolly’s on Zoom.

Zoom. Zoom. Zoom. Talk about mysteries. How does this really work? I mean, seeing old friends, family members who are far away. Maine, Saudi Arabia, Singapore. Shorewood. Anoka County. Downtown Minneapolis. While up here on Shadow Mountain. Talking to them. They hear me and respond. I see facial expressions, room settings. All on zoom settings. Wow.

The O.E.D. Mystery. Definition #1: hidden from human knowledge or understanding; impossible or difficult to explain, solve, discover; obscure origin, nature, or purpose.

A psychonaut. This friend. He’s done psychedelics. He’s done ayahuasca, the shaman’s drug from the rain forest. Living in mystery, living into mystery, life’s mystery. What’s behind door number 3? Is there a wizard in oz or just a traveling salesman pulling levers and pushing buttons? He’s stayed level, working, drawing, imagining. Pushing himself, his art, his words as he ages. A beautiful thing to see. Inspirational.

Speaking of beautiful things. Michele, the Mt. Evan’s home health care nurse came yesterday. She showed us how to clean Kate’s tube feeding site with warm, soapy water and sterile pads. How to apply a zinc oxide cream below the disc. How to cut a gauze bandage to fit under the disc and one to fit over it. Since that time, around 11 yesterday, Kate’s been leak free. Hallelujah. Really.

A guy I knew at CBE, Howard, had a brain hemorrhage this week. And, died. Echoes of mom, that week in October. I spoke with him at Purim, the last time I was at CBE. Nothing apparently wrong then. No TIA evidence. Just normal Howard, talking about his wife’s leukemia and their tennis doubles. They played competitively even though she was in treatment. The cancer took her a while ago. It’s not only Covid-19 out there. It’s cancer and brain bleeds and feeding tubes, too.

My point here is not a gloomy one. It’s just that life, and death, goes on unrelated to the viral victory march. And will continue.

Coronavirus, Health, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase
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Spring and the Corona Luna

Thursday gratefuls: Lab techs. Ultra-senstive PSA tests. All the folks at Anova Cancer Care. Shelley Denton, my Lupron nurse. Dr. Eigner, my urologist. Ruby, for the ride. Kate, for the life together. Seoah, for joy. Murdoch’s pictures from Brenton. The cool mountain air this morning.

It’s time. My third PSA blood draw since ending radiation. Sept., January, April. The next one, in the summer, will/should be the important one, the one that tells me whether I still have cancer. Of course, this one could, too, if it’s survived the Lupron and the radiation, but I don’t think it has. But I don’t know.

In an article on the ethics of corvid-19 triage I read a chilling sentence, “What if the patient has corvid-19 and serious cancer?” Serious? Seriously? Yes, I know what they mean. But. At 72, with a cancer recurrence, how would they answer this question for me? Do I get a ventilator? Others in my situation? Yikes.

I’m looking forward to the drive. Not getting out much these days, not even for medical stuff. This Quest lab is near Tony’s market. Gonna stop in for the senior shopping hours, 8-9. Not sure what I’m after, maybe some fish.

Life is quiet here, as I imagine it is where you are, too. My routine has these fixed points: MWF, resistance + cardio. TTh: High intensity intervals. Thursday at 1: Mussar on Zoom. Friday afternoon: woolly zoom. Sunday morning: Old Friends Zoom. Wed. a.m.: Kabbalah class on zoom. Each day a page of the Talmud. Evening: television and reading. Some wandering around, trying to find my ikigai. No luck yet.

Gotta get a little breakfast before the blood draw. Later.

Cinema and Television, Commentary on Religion, Coronavirus, Health, Myth and Story, News of the Strange, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase

Ättestupa

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Spring and the Corona Luna

Wednesday gratefuls: Garbage collectors, workers at power plants, cleaners in all places, showing us how important “menial” labor can be. Kate in her sewing room!! Yeah. Sewed on some buttons, made some mug rugs. Seoah doing grocery shopping for us. Brenton and his many pictures, videos, obvious joy being with Murdoch. Concerned friends. Upcoming PSA blood draw, Lupron, visit with Eigner.

Another, grimmer topic. Wanna sacrifice yourself for the economy, grandpa? Any of my readers of a certain age going with Dan Patrick? “‘As a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren?…If that is the exchange, I’m all in,” Patrick said.” Patrick is Lt. Gov. of Texas, Dan Patrick. The quote is from a Fox News interview with Tucker Carlson.

Patrick made his senicidic comment after Trump declared he wanted to get the economy going by Easter, “This country’s not made to be shut down.” Only after being told that if he did, deaths would be in the hundreds of thousands, and his lackey Lindsey Graham said, “You would own those deaths.” did he pull back. OK, we’ll open it up on April 30th, he decided. Why April 30? Who knows?

Last year when Kate had a period of feeling better we went to see, first, “The Kitchen”, a women take over the mob movie with Elizabeth Moss and Melissa McCarthy, in return Kate agreed to go see Midsommar. “It’s Scandinavian,” I said.

Hmm, yeah. Sorta. I’m a fan of horror movies (not slasher flicks. Ugh.). Hammer Films. The Thing. The Fly. Rosemary’s Baby. The Exorcist. The Shining. The Omen. Creature of the Black Lagoon. Not many get made that are thoughtful, even beautiful. The Horror of Dracula, a 1958 Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee movie in the Hammer Film series, was beautiful. So was Polanski’s 1967 The Fearless Vampire Killers.

There are now two that are both beautiful and thoughtful: The Wickerman (1973) and Midsommar (2019). The Wickerman has a Celtic folklore background while Midsommar uses Swedish themes. I’ve learned in doing some research that these are folk horror movies. A new genre to me by name, but not by preference.

Anyhow, in Midsomar, Ari Aster, director and writer, draws on Swedish folklore. Some of the ideas there are familiar to you like the Maypole, the colorful Swedish garments, white trimmed in flowers and runes, all that blond hair, and festive bonfires outdoors. And, yes, naked Swedes can be seen dancing around midsommar bonfires. Look it up on your interweb.

Aster also draws on one aspect of Swedish folklore embedded enough in the culture to give a name to certain high cliffs and promontories: Ättestupa. In prehistoric times, Swedes believe, elders threw themselves from the attestupa when they were no longer able to care for themselves or assist around the camp. Senicide. Though attestupa may have been challenged among folklorists, senicide is/was real. Elders wandering away from the village to starve, active euthanasia of the elderly, or, as Lt. Patrick suggests, economic senicide.

The most disturbing scenes in Midsomar come during the attestupa. The Harga collective using seasonal language for life’s stages: Spring: 1-18, Summer: 19-36, Fall: 37-54, and Winter: 55-72. This last season, Winter, is the mentoring season. At 72 Winter ends, and so do you. That, for the Harga, was when you headed for the attestupa.

Midsomar is on Prime Video right now, free. If these kind of movies fit into your cinema way, I’d encourage you to watch it. It’s a very good example of the folk horror genre. If you watch it, let me know what you think of the last scene.

Friends, Health, Third Phase, Woolly Mammoths

Restitution

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Spring and the Corona Luna

Tuesday gratefuls: Midsommar, the movie. Korean pancakes. Working out. The endorphins. Nap. Kate’s string of better days, except for that damned leaking feeding tube. Reconstructionist webinar on zoom. Your strong coefficient of restitution. (see below) The Talmud. Beggars in Spain, a sci fi novel I’m reading which Kate also read .

A conversation among old Woollies, gray haired Mammoths, about resilience went from Paul’s etymological observation about resilio, leap or spring back in Latin, to Tom’s engineering vocabulary: the coefficient of restitution. After looking it up (Tom sent a definition, but I can’t copy it.), I found this, which explains Tom’s familiarity with it: “The coefficient of restitution is largely absent from undergraduate Physics textbooks but is HUGELY useful for problems involving collisions.”

Here’s a bit more: “The closer the coefficient is to one, the bouncier the object is. An object with a coefficient close to zero would have very little bounce.” What’s your restitution coefficient after colliding with the social distance pressure waves of Covid-19? Are you closer to one? Still bouncy and vibrant. Or, closer to zero? Laid out flat by the whole experience. Maybe you even have covid-19.

My coefficient varies during the day and day by day. Most of the time I’d say its .85 or so. Occasionally though. Thinking of Gertie. Realizing the hassle of getting groceries. Getting the call that the practice is closed: my ophthalmologist, for instance. Feeling the world’s sigh. Maybe down to .5. But not for long.

Coronavirus, Dogs, Family, Friends, Health, Jefferson County, Judaism, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, US History, Woolly Mammoths

Seeing

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Spring and the Corona Luna

Monday gratefuls: Corn dogs. State Fair corn dogs. The Minnesota State Fair. The Great Minnesota Get Together. The Great U.S. stay apart. The bailout. I think. Being alone with Kate and Seoah. Those pictures of Murdoch from Brenton. Life in a world historical event. Life. Death. The power of Monday.

Here’s what I’ve seen. A black SUV, a Lexus, next to me at a stoplight. Latex gloved hands on the steering wheel. On the road to Loveland Saturday all the LED road signs read: Avoid Non-Essential Travel. A cascade of it’s gonna be later messages from Instacart. So many maps and graphs and charts. Fewer cars on Black Mountain Drive, especially when I go out for the newspaper around 5:30 am. Empty parking lots. A closed outlet mall. So many e-mails starting with we care about you and that’s why our business is doing X. Friends and family on zoom. The rabbi on zoom, singing about breath. A sign at Bergen Bark Inn. We’re taking care of the dogs of essential workers like doctors, nurses, firefighters, police, grocery store workers. The worker at Starbucks extending a credit card reader so I could insert the card, then remove it on my own. My own gloved hand on the hose nozzle at the Phillips 66. That bottle of hand sanitizer in my cup holder. Seoah with her lysol spray hitting each package that gets delivered.

When will it ever end? When will it ever end?

And, yet. A moment in time like no other. Yes, the Spanish Flu. Yes. But, no. Not in this millennia. Not in my lifetime. Not in this century.

The first quarter of 2020 has not gone so well. What with all the dog bites, then Gertie’s death, then the plague. Yes, the Moronic plague. And, the virus. True.

However, I find it exciting, too. What will happen next? How bad can this get? Wow. Really? The ways people are coping. The empty streets of big cities around the world. The bravery. The stupidity and the cupidity.

Like one facebook meme said: This is the first time we could save the world by watching television.