Fourth Phase, Memories, Travel, Writing

Ancientrails. Almost twenty years old.

Leave a comment

Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Sunday gratefuls: -8 degrees. Yet more Snow. Winter. Introspection. Diane, healing. Mark, all dressed up and ready to teach. Mary in the Florida of Oz. My son and Seoah, coming for my birthday. Talmud Torah. Exodus’ strong women. Moses. Yod Hey Vav Hey. Hashem. Adonai. I am. I will be who I will be. The burning bush.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Writing Ancientrails

Kavannah 2025: Creativity

Kavannah for the week: Appreciation of Opposition   Haarecha shel machloket

One brief shining: All through the nation MAGA folks will go to sleep tonight ready for their big day on Monday, Martin Luther King’s day of service, and cousin Donald’s hand on the bible, John Roberts presiding; I’ll give them their moment, but not my country.

 

Here is the image inspired by Caspar David Friedrich, capturing the nighttime scene in Bangkok’s Chinatown as described.

Want to lift a glass to Ancientrails. Early in February it will end its 20th year of daily existence. Started, oddly, in Bangkok. On a nighttime visit to a 7/11 I rushed across a side street and in the dark missed a gutter in the street. My right leg stayed still while my body kept moving. Thought I sprained my ankle. Hobbled on to the ATM, took out $100 in bahts, and limped across Yaowarat, Chinatown’s main drag, to my modest hotel. 2004.

Had about a week left before my flight home. Not wanting to miss the city, I drug my leg around, not worried because, hey, it was just a sprain. The nice lady at the physical therapist felt my leg and said, “Oh, that’s not a sprain. You’ve ruptured your Achilles tendon.” Well. Shoot.

Surgery. January 2005. Two months no weight on the right leg. What the hell am I gonna do? Cybermage William Schmidt set me up with Frontpage, a Microsoft app, and I began to write. I shifted, again with Bill’s help, to WordPress in 2007. Somehow the first three years got lost in the old bits and bytes shuffle.

I write every morning, no matter where I am, with few exceptions. Kate had her crossword puzzles and I have Ancientrails. Over 2 million words a few years ago. Probably closer to three now.

What I had decided to do was to take my journaling online. A blog. An anachronism now. Who writes blogs? Who reads them? Always had a thin hope that Ancientrails might take off, but frankly it never has. Oh, yes. There’s you, faithful reader, and I appreciate you more than you know. But a mass audience? Nope.

I get it, too. There’s no through line here except my life and opinions. Occasional theologizing, political opining, even art criticism though that’s fallen away for the most part. No telling what I’m going to be up to because I rarely know until I start typing.

Once in a while something fills my attention, like Ancientrails’ approaching double decade anniversary, and I remember to write about it. Most often, it’s a riff.

While I know it’s no masterpiece, I have added a codicil in my will to continue paying my cloud based service, Ionos, and its predecessors to keep Ancientrails on line after my death.

It is, at least, a piece of Americana. My peculiar America.

 

 

Commentary on Religion, Commentary on the news, Judaism, Politics, US History, World History

New Apostolic Reformation. Oh my.

Leave a comment

Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: 1 degree. 3 inches of new Snow. Talmud Torah on Zoom. Tech meets that baby in the reed boat. Joseph and Moses. Compare and contrast. That hygge feeling as Snow falls and the temperature sinks. Love it. NFL playoff games. Another Gray Man novel. Zohar volumes. The sacred world as we see it. Everyday.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: My son and Seoah, visiting next month

Kavannah 2025: Creativity

Kavannah this week: Appreciation of Opposition   Haarecha shel machloket

One brief shining: As the calendar rolls on toward the inauguration of cousin Donald, the movement of his big day inside the Rotunda shows who rules this country and the world, Mother Earth.

 

Expect a long Ancientrails sometime in the near future about the New Apostolic Reformation. After reading the Atlantic article about it, which came just after the Anti-Social Century article I talked about on the 16th, I found what might be a purpose for me over the next four years. Being in opposition to it. Partly why I chose appreciation of opposition as my kavannah for this week. The other one being so, so obvious.

Here is the illustration in the style of a National Parks poster, reflecting the contemplative and thematic connections of your paragraph.

If you look at the Wikipedia article about it, you’ll find that it references C. Peter Wagoner as its founder and chief influence. Hard for me to believe but I studied with this guy back in the 1980’s. In Pasadena at Fuller Theological Seminary. At the time he was a guru in the church growth movement and one of my tasks as an Associative Executive for the Twin Cities Presbytery involved consulting with churches on just that topic.

I discovered in the Atlantic article that part of their work began as a counter to the Liberation Theology movement then ascendant in many Latin and Central American Catholic churches. In 1974 I attended a weeklong conference focused on bringing Liberation Theology to North America. Cornel West was part of the conference. My sentiments were then and are now with the spirit of the Liberation Theologians, not the New Apostolic Reformation, yet I seem to have connected with key figures in both movements. Odd. To say the least.

Just a moment: A hostage deal. Back home in the Hoosier State we’d say, day late and a dollar short. October 7th 2023 is a long way back. 94 hostages remain alive and in the hands of Hamas. The cease fire? Bout time. I hope this leads to a full stop to this horrendous chapter in Israeli and Palestinian history.

At some point the pieces have to get picked up, if they can be found, and a new era in the Middle East will slowly emerge. What will it look like? No one really knows. A weakened Iran. Syria without Bashar and with a new government of Islamic jihadists. Houthis still firing missiles toward the Persian Gulf. Lebanon with a weakened Hezbollah. Israel with Gaza and the West Bank still Gaza and the West Bank. Hamas weakened.

I’d like to see a Saudi Arabia/Israel brokered diplomatic initiative, though I don’t expect one. And of course, cousin Donald now enters. What could possibly go wrong?

Fourth Phase, Friends, Politics, Weather +Climate

Ways of Healing

Leave a comment

Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Friday gratefuls: Alan. Charlie’s dying, too. This disease will run its course. Phrases offered as billboards in my mind. Ruby on Mountain curves. Polar vortex slumping. Arriving soon. Snow first. Cancellations. Gunflint Trail coffee mug, over 35 years old. Ancientrails approaching its twentieth anniversary. The value of conversation. My interlocutors, all of you. Including readers of this blog.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Being heard and seen

Kavannah 2025: Creativity

Kavannah this week: Wholeness and peacefulness

Here is the image inspired by your paragraph, created in the style of Minoan art. It reflects the vibrant colors, flowing lines, and intricate details characteristic of this ancient artistic tradition, capturing the warmth and connection of the moment. 2nd try, still not quite what I wanted. Anyhow.

One brief shining: Ears offered in gentle wholeness, eyes turned toward me, body relaxed, yet engaged, an occasional smile, grimace, nod across my coffee cup and his red plastic keep the coffee warm thermos, as I did what the mussar practice for this week (from the Thursday group), suggested and told my friend Alan, in response to his how you doing, how I was doing.

 

Normal, or rather, traditional Minnesota winter weather coming to the Mountains. Snow and below zero cold. Cancellations. I’m glad. My Coloradification has been complete for a while now. Cold starts in the mid-20’s. Below zero? Head for the thermostat. Snow and ice on Mountain roads, especially at night? Nope. Not anymore. Even with my Minnesota skills I know too big a risk when I see one. For me.

 

Breakfast with Alan this morning. The Parkside. Next to the Evergreen Arts Center where Alan’s Rotary meets early on Friday mornings. This week, I said, had challenges. Mostly in the ever changing world of cancer. As I wrote a few posts back in Overburden, I have strategies for these moments. And they work. To varying degrees. This week I’d say they worked reasonably well since the challenge level was high.

Kristie said, as I wrote, this disease will run its course. Recognition, yet again, that my cancer is incurable. And, if something else doesn’t take me out, it will be happy to step up. When? No one knows. I’m in as good a place as a stage 4 cancer guy can be according to Kristie. That’s welcome news. Yet it has a grim underlayment.

So I told Alan the whole current context for my feelings this week. He listened. I listened, too, to myself. As I spoke, I grew lighter. Brighter. Remember that bit about the healing power of conversation? No, it cannot cure my cancer. But. It can cure my soul.

 

Just a moment: Wanted to issue a sort of correction. I wrote cousin Donald did not have his hand over his heart at Jimmy Carter’s funeral. And he didn’t. But. I did notice later where his hand was. It was over his stomach.

3 days and counting. Still no glimmer about whether I’ll engage, ignore, or run wildly about my house, hands in the air, screaming for no apparent reason.

Commentary on the news, Fourth Phase, Friends, Hermitage, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., US History, World History

Solitude in the Public Square

Leave a comment

Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Great Sol. Finishing the Warhound and the Pain of the World. The Outpost. Weakness. Exercise. The Move. Good night’s sleep. Diane, healing. Mark, teaching. Mary, waiting. My son. Working. Conversation. Chatbotgpt. My Lodgepole Companion. Nature Journaling. John Muir Laws. The privatization of Space. Blue Origin. New Glenn. Falcon Heavy. Starship. NASA.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Letting matters become as they will

Kavannah 2025: Creativity

Kavannah this week: Wholeness and Peace

Here is the revised WWII patriotic poster-style illustration emphasizing regionalization and the rise of different global powers, with a diminished focus on the United States. This was a second try. Chatbot has trouble with words in illustrations. Maps, too, apparently

 

One brief shining: Our divided and war worn World, regional powers rising, taking advantage of the retreat of the American Titan back to its homeshores, invading Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, threatening to enclose and absorb Taiwan, claiming the South China Sea, while we, the once world hegemon want Greenland, the Panama Canal, and, for gods sakes, the Gulf of America.

 

No. Not starting a political rant. Just making an observation about the volatile and dangerous turn the World has taken. How in two generations, my parents and their children, us, the US has gone from savior to policeman to super hegemon to coming isolationism. With, of course, those weird exceptions. Maybe First Friend Elon will buy Greenland and the Panama Canal and gift them to us? Could happen, right?

Still pondering how or whether to engage with the new post-January 20th America. That Seed-Keepers idea. Retreating into the world of the American Renaissance. I am going to study the Zohar, get up close and intimate with Kabbalah again. That’s for sure. Put this odd inflection of humanity’s history in a wider and deeper context.

 

An interesting article in this month’s issue of the Atlantic. The Anti-Social Century by staff writer Derek Thompson. Here’s a link to the February issue. In some ways Thompson’s argument is an extension of Robert Putnam’s famous monograph: Bowling Alone. In that Putnam found increasing social isolation a definite problem Thompson’s essay seems to part ways in his acknowledgment that many people prefer solitude and now have a home environment that nurtures it. Challenges the notion of a lonlieness epidemic. Thompson though, like Putnam, finds this diminution of the public space a disturbing trend and pushes for changes that might result in a social century.

Here is the WPA poster-style illustration based on your paragraph. It emphasizes new social dynamics while nodding to traditional third places.

Without going study to study, graph to graph in the article I want to raise another possible perspective. Perhaps, like the recent acknowledgment of neuro-typicals and neuro-divergents, what Thompson has really done is limn the rise of a new way of being social, a different way that honors the individual over the community. Perhaps we can find a way to be responsible citizens without as many third places like churches, bowling alleys, cafes, sports fields.

I know this may sound like, may even be, an oxymoron, solitude in the public square, but I know my life is as rich now as it has ever been and I spend the bulk of my life alone. Many older people, especially women, find living alone freeing. A space in which they can grow and develop in their own peculiar ways.

The evolution of solitude could also be a revolt against the too many press of urbanization, perhaps even a desire to return to the more solitary ways of the early American rural life. Without having to leave the convenience economy behind.

It could be that the whole Trump/MAGA/ascendance of the id represents the last gasp of an older American culture that wanted to dominate and control the public square. Make it toxic enough that only they could stand to be in it. For now.

 

 

 

Family, Friends

A Way of Life

Leave a comment

Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Overburden. Cancer. Conversation. Its healing power. Diane, healing. Mark in Al Kharj. New computer. Being healthy while dying. Great Sol. Hidden by the spin of Mother Earth. Orion. Vega. Rigel. Antares. Betelgeuse. Polaris. Hokusai. Ukiyo-e. The Hudson School. The School of 7. Abstract Expressionists. Rothko. Whistler.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Art

Kavannah 2025: Creativity

Kavannah this week: Wholeness and Peacefulness

One brief shining: Conversation with Kristie, my urological oncologist, supportive and kind, always leaves me with one phrase kicking around in my skull, my psyche, my heart and the last one was: This disease will run its course. Oh. Yeah.

 

No. I’m off the cancer dance right now. Staying on the floor with that partner for too long? Like one of those 1920’s dance marathons where I end up with my arms slumped over him, my card with the number on it creased from hanging on too long. Better to sit down, drink some water. Come back in three months.

 

Yesterday. Breakfast with Marilyn and Irv. We always talk a long time. Like a dorm room discussion. Yet also heart felt. I don’t remember my college long conversations being very focused on feelings. Always in the head. Or, mostly. As an adult, I find mixing the two, the rational and the emotional, the most fruitful, the most healing.

A good time to talk about conversation. What Ancientrails is, in my mind. A long ongoing conversation with whomever happens upon it. I don’t get as much feedback as I expected when I started, but no worries. It’s also a conversation with myself. Often therapeutic. Putting my thoughts down on, well, a computer screen. As long I’m honest.

Chatbot offers this etymology for conversation: “The word conversation has its origins in the Latin word conversatio, which means “a turning about” or “a living with.” It comes from the verb conversari, which means “to live with” or “to associate with,”…” The online etymology dictionary has this: “mid-14c., “place where one lives or dwells,” also “general course of actions or habits, manner of conducting oneself in the world,” both senses now obsolete; from Old French conversacion “behavior, life, way of life, monastic life…”

I’m plucking out to live with, place where one lives or dwells, and way of life to emphasize. This more contemporary definition hangs around the word’s surface meaning in my opinion: “a talk, especially an informal one, between two or more people, in which news and ideas are exchanged.” Oxford languages.

Here is the illuminated breviary-style illustration inspired by your paragraph. The image features intricate medieval manuscript-style designs, a natural setting, and two figures engaged in heartfelt conversation.

To converse with someone, or with a group, happens not only in the moment of a conversation, but also through the impact that conversation has on your/my daily life. If I tentatively see myself as a writer and a friend says, you’re an author, I’m reinforced and heartened. If I see a friend experiencing depression, I’m not only there for them in the moment of discourse, but the in the relational tie built and strengthened by that conversation.

Done well conversation is a sacrament of human communion. I go to mass many times a week only for the eucharist of seeing and being seen. It sustains me as a person and heals stress and worry. You know who you are in my life. My world would shrink up if you were gone from it.

Health

Overburden

Leave a comment

Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Kristie. Prostate Cancer. Erleada. Orgovyx. Life with cancer. Marilyn and Irv. Cold. 6 last night. Polar Vortex. Samsara. Monkey mind. Inner peace and wholeness. Shleimut. Water. Heat pumps. Keyboards. Microphones. Life. Death. The most ancientrails. Great Sol.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Living

Kavannah 2025: Creativity

Kavannah this week: Wholeness and Peace

One bright shining: Wanting to reveal a part of my cancer journey, not that I’ve kept it secret, rather that I have let it travel along largely unremarked, yet the truth may be important for you or someone you love.

 

Diagnosed in May 2015. Prostatectomy that July. Radiation 2019. Gold standard treatments. For the cure. Didn’t happen for me. 99% of men diagnosed are alive 5 years later. As I was. In May I pass the ten year post diagnosis trail marker. In 2021 a p.e.t. scan showed metastases, cancer spread into my bones and lymph nodes. At that point I became stage 4. In many cancers stage 4 is an imminent death sentence. Not so in prostate cancer. 34% of men live 5 years past that change. One man lived 22 years with stage 4 prostate cancer.

This is not about prognosis, which I’ve decided is a red herring. At least for me. The variables are too complex and whenever I’ve had an answer it has pressed down on me. Most important? Gonna die from something anyhow. And nobody can prognose that.

Here is the illustration in the style of 19th-century photography of the U.S. West, reflecting the somber mood and enduring journey described

Rather this is about what I call the overburden of prostate cancer. Any cancer, really, that hasn’t killed you. The difference with prostate cancer lies in the capacity to live 10, 15, even 20 years after diagnosis.

That means waking up each day of those 10 years with the knowledge that I have cancer. No, I don’t turn to that each morning, not even every day, yet the reality of having a part of my body actively trying to kill me never leaves me. I might encounter the thought, as I did yesterday, on learning a friend who also has prostate cancer may be nearing death. Or, on those every three month visits to the phlebotomist, waiting for the results. Then, soon after, a visit to the oncologist. Maybe an article in the newspaper. Or, another friend, like one of the three members of my Thursday mussar group, who have different forms of cancer, speaks up.

To not let this send me down, down into the darkness of self-pity or melancholy or depression I have taught myself ways of addressing these moments:

Sometimes. I’m  living one life at a time. Today I’m living my January 14th, 2025 life. I only have today, this life, anyhow.

Other times the tried and often effective, well, you’re gonna die anyhow. Always true and usually reassuring in its own, odd way.

Another method relies on a mantra: live until I die. That reminds me to focus on living rather than dying.

Yet another approach. Lean into the thought of death. View my own corpse. Accept death’s reality as an ever abiding constant over the whole of my life. This can be surprisingly effective.

Here, though, is the point of all this. Every time I have to use one of these strategies takes mental and emotional energy. Depending on other circumstances in my life either more or less energy. And, there is a certain accumulative effect. Which means I have less resilience for other aspects of my life. Like doing my taxes. (ha)

This is the overburden. And it never disappears.

 

Fourth Phase, Judaism, Kabbalah, Tarot

Meh in the rearview. For now.

Leave a comment

Yule and the Full Quarter Century Moon

Monday gratefuls: Marilyn and Irv. Alan. The Full Moon. Cold night. 4 degrees. Good sleeping. Celebrex twice daily now. Chronic pain. Snow. Moving stuff around. Brings George Carlin to mind. Carlin and Monty Python. Douglas Adams. The trinity of comedy for me. Exodus parshas begin this week. Zohar, all 12 volumes. Clearing space for study. My son. Murdoch. Seoah. Korea. Mary in Brisbane. Mark in Al Kharj. Diane, healing.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Grocery pickup

Kavannah 2025: Creativity

Year Tarot: The Archer

Kavannah for this week: Wholeness and peacefulness  shleimut

One brief shining: A new Dell desktop sits nearby, still in its substantial box, waiting to get lifted out, placed next to my old Dell desktop so the transfer of files can begin, underwriting in its newness the sense within me, reinforced by my Tarot year card, the Archer, that this will be an important year for me: “This Wildwood Tarot card makes meaning: the dawn of new life is beginning and a bumper season is coming.”

 

Yes, the period of meh has receded. Encouraged by learning that my aorta won’t bother me. By writing stories in the Storyworth app. By leaning into my mobility limitations. By deciding to go for an ortho consult: right shoulder, left forearm and hand, lower back and hip, neck. By focusing on kabbalah and Torah study. By the new CBE men’s group. By my pescatarian (plus chicken, if nothing else is available) turn. No, not a hard decision, a decision to lower the number of choice points when it comes to food.

Also by recognizing, even more, the value of my mornings. And further, by the decision to move my home gym down to Kate’s old sewing room. Concentrating my workouts downstairs.

Glad for all this.

 

Only a week away from MLK holiday. And, on the very same oh so ironic day, the inauguration of our 47th felon, no. Wait. President. No. Felon President. That’s it. If the long arc of history bends toward justice, the sag created on the 20th will have to be repaired.

MLK. Malcolm X. I’m more a Malcolm X sorta guy. Sure, non-violence. Yes. As a way of bringing change. When it works. Where it can work. Not much good against despots, Proud Boys, 3 Percenters, Christian Nationalists. Violence. Often counter-productive. Yet look at the Day of Love, as felonious cousin Donald has renamed it. That was violent, not extreme, yet that was the overall look and feel. No Velveteen Rabbit stuff. More like where the wild things are.

Din, or justice in Hebrew, insists on right and wrong, demands restitution and retribution when a wrong is committed. (from Tara’s work sheet on rachamim).

This image puts the Wanderer’s Journey overlaid on the ten sefirot of Kabbalah’s Tree of Life. Though interesting for that reason I want to focus on the line between Chesed, #4, and Gevurah, #5. Chesed is loving kindness and Gevurah is strength, boundaries, the law. If rachamim, compassion, were placed on here it would be on the midline between Chesed and Gevurah, blending the attributes of strength and boundaries with loving kindness.

Realized in reading Tara’s notes that I’m a left side of the tree guy. More severe and punishing in my approach to injustices. Which I think is appropriate for public and systemic wrongs. Rabbi Jamie, I think, is more of a right side of the tree guy. Loving kindness and compassion as first approaches. Which I think are more appropriate for individual and small group situations.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Judaism, Mussar

Rachamim

Leave a comment

Yule and the almost full Quarter Century Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Vince and his friends. Their muscles. Moving day for my home gym. A couple of chairs. My new computer. The complete Pritzker Zohar. My classroom for the next few years. Year Tarot: The Archer, #7. Life Tarot: The Wheel, #10, and a shadow card, The Wanderer, #1. Wildwood Tarot. Going deeper, yet staying on the surface. Ruby and her Mountain ways. Talmud Torah

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Leaning in to mobility limitations

Kavannah for 2025: Creativity

Year card: The Archer, #7  “The Archer is located on the spring equinox, March 21. The time this card represents is sunrise. The Archer belongs to the Air element, bringing creative energy and inspiration. This Wildwood Tarot card makes meaning: the dawn of new life is beginning and a bumper season is coming.”  TarotX.net

Kavannah for this week: Wholeness and peacefulness  shleimut

One brief shining: Seeing my son over the thousands of miles, listening to him describe his life and work, hearing his melody loud and clear, a strong man, dedicated, caring, loving, thoughtful, a tune marked by doggedness and intelligence, commitment, warrior energy.

 

Here is the illustration in the style of an ukiyo-e print, visually interpreting the nurturing and generative qualities of compassion.

This new practice for the month, listening for the melody of the other, has proved challenging to recall. Its purpose is to train my rachamim muscle, my compassion, over against my din muscle, my justice muscle. Justice somehow got wired into my soul from a young age. Always ready to judge and enter the fight on behalf of others. Compassion came later, or at least in much smaller emergences than my desire to stop the war, further women’s rights, block capitalist greed, build affordable housing.

As I’ve aged, compassion (rachamim) has pushed its way forward. Perhaps because I have needed more compassion. Perhaps because aging can induce, and has for me, vulnerability. Life contains fewer and fewer chances, contains more and more tragedy and chaos. Reduced energy, at least for me, plays a role here, too. I don’t have the get up and struggle sort of vitality, physically, that I used to have. Also friendships and acquaintances have risen to top priority in my life. Following only family. To retain and sustain relationships compassion must show up first.

Did that shoulder slump? Is her head slightly tilted down? Is there a tightness in his voice? That foot tapping. Clock watching. Smiling without sarcasm. She leaned her head suddenly on to my shoulder. What do I know of the composer? What’s likely influencing this melody? Is it one I’ve heard before? Is it new? Is it shrill? Or is it like morning Bird song? My eye can be, must be my ear.

Both rachamim and the Hebrew word for womb share the same root. What can we imagine from this? Does compassion have a generative quality, creating a womb-like space for another’s soul to grow? Does compassion nurture over time, making it a necessary element of every interaction with another? Frequent exposure to your compassion may be the fertile Soil another’s soul needs to flourish.

Sometime I’ll write about din. Which sets aside compassion in the interests of equity, fairness, fighting oppression. Not today.

Health, Judaism, Mussar, Torah

Listen to the Melody of Others

Leave a comment

Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Talmud Torah. CBE. New Dell tower. Warmer. But not too warm. Salmon. Asparagus. Baked Potato. Better. Ann, palliative care nurse. Leaving. New nurse in February. Sore shoulder and left forearm. Arthritis in my right hip? Diane and her shoulder. Mark in Al Kharj. Lodgepoles and Aspens in Winter. Mule Deer and Elk. Fox and Mountain Lions. Bears hibernating. Humans with higher heating bills.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Personal Computers

Kavannah for 2025: Creativity

Kavannah for the 7 lifetimes in this January 11th life-January 18th week: Wholeness and Peacefulness – shleimut

One brief shining: A knock on the door, a young East Indian man in a Federal Express shirt holding up a small screen for my signature, where do you want it, and he carried my new computer upstairs to my home office, solving the first problem I would have had with it.

 

Here’s the updated illustration showing the stressed physicians in a medieval illuminated manuscript style, now highlighting their anxiety and overwhelming work conditions.

In the way of the medical world these days. Ann, my palliative care nurse whom I’ve seen four times, resigned her position. Moving on. As did Kristen, my former PCP. And Lisa and Susan, other former PCP’s, and Eigner, my urologist, and Bret, the young ophthalmologist who went back home to North Carolina during Covid. And Charlie Petersen before all of them, moving to Colorado, and Tom Davis after him.

I had one doctor my whole childhood. Dr. Gaunt. Whose son Mike was in my class. When I left Alexandria, he was still at work in his office, in a converted house; I remember it smelled of alcohol, he had a nurse in white with the little cap, glass jars of cotton bowls and syringes so big.

Not today’s medicine. Hospitals are understaffed. Physicians find working for corporate entities like Kaiser and Optum and Allina stressful. No longer able to practice medicine, rather having to practice assembly line healing, pushing patients through in shorter and shorter visits. Revenue capture now the main goal, not health.

I get the churn in this environment. Again, though I am anti-murder-as we all should be-I understand Luigi Mangione’s frustration. He is not alone.

 

Here is the image in the style of Albrecht Dürer, illustrating the concept of active, caring listening through harmonious interaction and natural surroundings.

Today we’ll study the last parsha in Genesis: Vayechi, He lived. The story of Jacob’s death and Joseph’s, too. A story full of pathos as Jacob blesses his sons, claims Joseph’s sons as his own, then, “…is gathered to his ancestors.” The last line of the book of Genesis: “Joseph died at the age of 110 years, and he was embalmed and placed in a coffin in Egypt.”

There is no mention in the Joseph story of slavery. This is odd since the next book in the Torah is Exodus. In other words the story goes from saving Jacob and his sons, patriarchs of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, by a big move to Egypt and then to the story of their enslavement and later liberation that defines the Jewish people down to this day.

You may recall my practice from the last month, to say, “This too is for the good.” especially in situations I might consider negative or even bad. One way to look at the book of Genesis, from the Garden of Eden and eating from the tree of good and evil, down to Joseph placed in a coffin is as a sequence of this too is for the good moments.

BTW: my practice for this month is to first listen to the melody of others.

General

Ripped from the Headlines

Leave a comment

Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Friday gratefuls: Rabbi Jamie. Loving rebuke. Unloving rebuke. Mark in Al Kharj. Hyperpanda. Saudi Arabia. Mary in Brisbane. Diane healing. My son. Seoah. Murdoch. Eleanor. Kingsley. Tara. Arjan. More Snow and Cold. Mini-splits keeping me warm. Go, heat pumps. Mussar. Listening for the melody of other persons. Salmon. Russet Potatoes. Asparagus. Baby Beets. Celery. Mandarin Oranges. Muesli. Milk. Protein powder.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Firefighters

Kavannah for 2025: Creativity

Kavannah for this January 10th life: Perseverance & Grit  Netzach

One brief shining: Rooting around for something to eat for dinner last night, peanut butter and English muffin, no, ramen, no, Chicken potpie, no, then, there in the back of the top freezer door, a rubbermaid container, what is it, Senate Navy Bean soup, the last bowlful, ah.

Here is the image styled as a dramatic movie poster titled “LA Burning.”

 

Let’s see. LA on fire. Trump gaining his long deserved status as a felon today. Our criminal President. The picture of the Presidents at Carter’s funeral. Every one with a hand over their heart. Except for cousin Donald. And how bout that threshold we just passed, eh? An average “2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, above those the planet experienced at the start of the industrial age.”*

Wonder if the wizard in his Mar-a-Lago Oz has a heart for him? Doubt it. Already taken by the cowardly lion. I can see Trump’s inner persona with a Bert Lahr face, without the humor.

That threshold? It was the goal of all the carbon dioxide emission heroics planned. If only we do these things now, we’ll stop the rise of the hockey stick at or below 2.7 degrees F. How we doing on containing emissions anyhow? We did reach a record last year there, too. The highest rate of carbon emissions ever. That’s right. All the angst generated in all the world and not only have we passed a critical threshold going up, a failure, we’ve ensured a yet hotter world by increasing rather than decreasing carbon emissions. All in the article linked to below.

Oh. And that felon about to run the most powerful nation in the world? He got this: (an) unconditional discharge, in which a defendant is not fined, locked up or given probation. You can read more details about this outstanding moment in Presidential history here: Trump Sentenced.

All this ripped from today’s headlines. Gosh, gee whiz. What an interesting country we have. What a hot country we have. What a felonious President we have.

LA burning? a tragedy for humans and infrastructure. One that will take decades I imagine for a full recovery. Here’s an irony. I don’t how much, don’t even know how to figure it out, but much of the water pouring down on those fires has to have come from Colorado Snow melt draining into the Colorado River.

 

Just a moment: Sometimes the world around me outstrips my ability to grasp, understand it. Even at a rudimentary level. I’m ready for four years of daily lessons in humility.

 

*2024’s record breaking heat.