Cooking, Dogs, Fourth Phase, Health, Politics, Seed Keepers, Shadow Mountain, US History

Help Me?

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Imbolc and the Snow Moon

Monday gratefuls: Shadow and me. Cool nights. Good sleeping. Figuring out Shadow. Amy. Annie. Luna. Leo. Gracie. St. Patrick’s Day. Taxes. 529. Cousin Donald. Democrats, wherever they (we) are. A world changing. My son and his theologizing. Seoah.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Granite Mountain Hotshots

Week Kavannah: Social Responsibility. Achrayut.

One brief shining: We were all together, Maine to Shadow Mountain, spots around the Twin Cities, as we have been for several years on Sunday morning, talking about sleep, yes, but really seeing each other, nodding to the gods the neshama the imago dei in each of us linking arms again as we walk each other home.

 

Dog journal: My instincts about dogs came alive in the struggle over Shadow and coming inside. I realized what needed to happen.

When she came to the door, I opened it. When she then ran away, I closed it. We did this many, many times on Saturday. Many times. Now when she scratches on the glass, I open the door, sit down, and she comes in! Hallelujah. A chorus from Leonard Cohen in his raspy voice as background music.

Shadow and I crossed a bridge on Saturday, from puppy enigma to young dog companion. My confidence level in our relationship solidified. And hers with me. I can see it. We see each other now.

What a journey. 100% worth it. We needed each other and, thanks to Ginny and Janice and Heather and the Granby Shelter folks, we found each other. A journey only just begun. More doggy tails to come.

 

Have found a meal service I like. Cookunity. Not cheap, but not expensive when balanced against eating out. Lots of meal selections, easy to heat up, and all the ones I’ve eaten, six as of last night’s Chicken Schnitzel with Mustard mashed Potatoes, tasty.

I find the four meal plan works well for me. The meals arrive fresh and their use by dates make ordering a week’s worth problematic.

Breakfast I manage well. Lunch, too. The evening meal though I’ll often skip because I’m tired or at least too tired to go through the whole rigamarole of cooking and cleaning up. Still, I need the proteins and veggies. Four nights covered. All right.

Also measure the cost against having a light housekeeper come in twice a week to cook a couple of meals, tidy up, do laundry, unload the dishwasher. Probably a hundred to hundred and fifty bucks a week. This notion driven for the most part by the cooked meals.

Taking care of myself while living alone is not always easy. Maintaining chez Shadow Mountain, seeing I eat well, workout. I can do it, have been doing it, but things that ease the way are always welcome.

Fortunate to have enough money. Kate, always Kate. Still caring for me four years after dying. What a woman.

 

Just a moment: I liked the image that came to me of my age peers as the faded flowers of the Baby Bloom, seedheads ready, needing to disperse our seeds so that a new generation of just and compassionate Americans rise up when Spring finally comes for our benighted nation. Help me make this happen?

Aging, Dogs, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Seed Keepers, US History

Still Learning

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Imbolc and the Snow Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Shadow. Cookunity. Cold night. Drinking the Golden Calf. Midrash. Torah. Religion and its ignorers. Ginny and Janice. Tethering. Salmon and white Bean salad. Battle Mountain, Joe Pickett. The many sided crystal of perspective. Lenovo laptop.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Midrash

Week Kavannah: Social Responsibility. Achrayut.

Practice: Working on Seed Keepers, Seed Savers

One brief shining: Working with AI, an odd by which I mean new and novel experience, to give form to a Seed Keeper’s Almanac, a self-help manual to recreate an America always longed-for, yet never lived in, a hybrid format in paper and on the web, replenished and renewed by its users, focused on dreaming America as neither an utopia, nor as a replica of a faux golden age, rather as a stewpot where different ingredients in different amounts blend together into a powerful, compassionate whole.

 

An issue for me. How to reconcile my lower energy, dog-distracted, hermit favoring life with a steady felt need to stand upright in this most ridiculous and chaotic of times. Not be absent.

I write, yes. I talk with friends and family, reinforcing their desires to get out there and do something. I’m part of a religious community dedicated to a just and compassionate world. Yet. What is mine to do?

The more I futz with chatbotgpt, the more I find possibility in the idea, the bringing into reality of a self-help manual for that world I’ve worked for my whole life. A connected hermit. A dog-distracted but still alert old guy. Using my energy as I can.

 

Thinking about those isolated from this dystopian new world disorder. Trappist Monks in the Gethsemane Abbey. Amish families around Lancaster, Pennsylvania and Fort Wayne, Indiana. Subsistence farmers. Those of us old folks with adequate financial resources. (mostly. Though Social Security and Medicare…) Expatriates like Mary and Mark. Wilderness dwellers in the North Woods, in the Mountain Ranges of this great land. Oddly perhaps some Native American nations. Probably some recluses and communal living folks far off the grid.

And, of course, the oligarchs.

The rest, even cousin Donald’s base. Nope. Vulnerable. Without cover. That includes my son and Seoah. Ruth and Gabe. Luke. Ginny and Janice. Anyone unfortunate enough to be poor. Or different in a way that the oligarchs and their tattered army dislike.

This struggle will continue for the rest of my life. That alone means something to me. A need to not kneel. Not acquiesce. A need to do what only I can do. Now.

 

Just a moment: I had a no good week in part. Feeling down, dog defeated. Weak in body and mind. Took wrassling and seeing others to bring myself back to level.

That’s ok, though. Learning how to live through the troughs as well as the highs is a key lesson. OK. Learning to live through the occasional abyss as well as the getting along just fine days. Glad I’ve advanced enough for that.

Back to working out. For example…

 

Health, Myth and Story, Politics, Seed Keepers, US History

The Daily Miraculous

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Imbolc and the Snow Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Talmud Torah. Shadow, her jaws, her claws, her intensity. A cold night. Good sleeping. Studying Zornberg. The Golden Calf. Cookunity. Shrimp and cheesy grits. American Idols. MAGA. Cousin Donald. $$$$. Matt Desmond. Jon Stewart. Working out. Finishing taxes and 529.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: AGI

Week Kavannah: Social Responsibility. Achrayut.

“Being human means being conscious and being responsible. By becoming responsible agents for social change we actualize not only our humanity but also our mission as Jews.” Viktor Frankl

One brief shining: When I turn my coffee grinder on and it begins its whirring chomping way through the dark roast espresso Beans, my ear knows, just knows when enough has been ground to fill the coffee maker. How?

 

The human body. Talk about awe. It knows so much more than we realize in consciousness. Like the length of time it takes to grind enough coffee beans. Or, where we are in a room and what’s behind us. Or, how fast we have to go to avoid a car merging into our lane. How to move and twist for a layup. When we’re in love.

How to get enough oxygen to your brain. Blood to your organs and extremities. How to make hormones that regulate blood sugar. How to clean toxins from your blood.

Or your brain. Which makes a navigable world each time you open your eyes. Taking in the right amount of data. Not too much, not too little.

The new field of sociogenomics recapitulates Heidegger and his dasein. We affect the world and the world affects us. Through genomics. How the body’s genetic material adapts and gets adapted to by its social environment.

The wonder, the awe of it all. Kate and I often observed that the wonder is not that the body fails sometimes, but that it works so well almost all of the time.

Breathing. Moving us through space. Reminding us to rest. To sleep. Perchance to dream. To wake. To eat. Making use of the fuel we provide it through metabolism. Parceling out nutrients to each and every cell. Speaking of miracles. Of magic. Of life.

 

Just a moment: I’m imagining a new Whole Earth catalogue. Or, better, a Seed Saver’s Catalogue. With colorful pictures, descriptions of Seeds like organizing, working the political process, current facts about poverty and its many solutions, success stories from around the country and the world, resources.

What Seeds might you include? I would want information on the American Renaissance. Poetry. Slavery. Stonewall. How to grow a garden. Raise Chickens. Wild Neighbors. Climate Change. How to repair a leaky faucet. How government works. The constitution.

Perhaps some sort of AI way of generating new and more information, connections. A link, maybe, to the Wikipedia project.

Liberty and freedom. Communal responsibility.

How to train a dog, raise cattle. Do wildfire mitigation. What are the responsibilities of a citizen?

Engaging, short articles. Lots of images. Lots of resources. If possible, free to all. A labor of love of country and Mother Earth.

Aging, Dogs, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work, Politics, Wild Neighbors

They Call it Puppy Love

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Imbolc and the full Snow Moon

Friday gratefuls: Mini-splits. Shadow. Ginny and Janice. Luna and Annie. Leo. Gracie. My Lodgepole companion. The crooked Aspen outside my bedroom. The Mountain Lion family near Morrison. Black Bears. Soon. Mule Deer and Elk. Fox. Abert’s Squirrels. Red Squirrels. Rabbits. Voles. Mice. Marmots.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Wild Neighbors

Week Kavannah:  Yirah. Awe.

One brief shining: Tis an odd season this with taxes due next month, the wearing of the green celebrating St. Patrick who took Irish Wolfhounds to the Pope, big Snows covering basketball tourney roads, and hints of Spring with resurrection and liberation waiting to manifest.

 

Always of two desires in these months. Crack wind, Winter blow, Snow. Stay longer. Fire in the fireplace. A good book. Cold nights for sleeping. Yes.

Open vistas. Clear Skies. Mountain Wildflowers. Aspen Catkins. Lodgepole Anthers. Rabbit families. Chipmunks. Greening Willows and Dogwood. Mountain Streams in full voice, tumbling and turning. A sense of possibility strong in the Air. Yes.

Dog journal: If you’ve never had a skittish puppy lay at your feet, head rested on your slipper. If you’ve never had a puppy wriggle up the side of your leg and look you in the eye with, yes, puppy love. If you’ve never had a puppy. I wish you had.

Shadow incarnates love. Adoration. Companionship. Even the struggles and the outright exhaustion. All part of the joy.

Puppies, like Wildflowers and Spring, remind us of the Great Wheel, Maiden-Mother-Crone, life begetting life. Old age and youth running next to each other in partnership. With love.

Shadow. A small streak of black fur bounding through Snow drifts, racing around the perimeter, the fence line, all young muscle and limber movement, all newness. A potion to ease the aching joints and rigidity of 78 year old bones.

 

Just a moment: I keep finding Seeds. Books about Seeds. Seed-Keepers. Seed Savers Exchange Catalogue. Seeds. The Seed Vault in Svalbard. Chapters in the Light-Eaters. Lectures in online botany classes.

Recalling the spiny nubbin of a Beet Seed. The delicate Carrot Seed. The thick Pea. The Soil in an Andover raised bed leavened with compost and top soil, organic chemicals. Pressing the Seeds into the Soil. Feeling a frisson of future salads, side dishes.

In remembering these things a sort of strange hope rises. That we, the faded flowers, now the Seed heads of yesterday’s generational garden will leave our Seeds of love, justice, and compassion to grow in the rich Earth of this once and future nation.

Maybe we could create a Seed Catalogue for our nieces and nephews, our grandchildren. Even a Seed Savers Exchange for the ideas and actions that still hold the promise of a victory garden for diversity, for equality, for shared wealth and opportunity.

Or a nation in exile limned in a new Whole Earth catalogue for those of us who hold fast to the notion that rapaciousness, cruelty, mockery, and misogyny have no place in America’s fields and beds. Plant these instead, these seeds of liberty and freedom with their attendant responsibilities.

Plant this seed of love and that one of compassion. Fertilize with chi, illuminate with ohr, moisten with joy.

Dogs, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health

A Shadow in the Night

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Imbolc and the Snow Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Shadow. Ginny and Janice. Friendships. Adoption. My son. Training outside. Shadow’s a night owl. The Celts. Holy Wells. St. Winnifred’s. Hawarden. Lugh. Brigid. Arawn. The triple death. Scotland. Wales. Ireland. Brittany. The Gaeltacht. Cornwall. Richard Ellis.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Shadow and her personality

Week Kavannah: Yirah. Awe.

One brief shining: Shadow has taken a liking to the night, last night for example she went out at 6:30 PM, running and zooming, playing, and did not return inside until after midnight. Sleepy me.

 

Dog journal: Shadow has come out of her shell, no longer in hiding under the bed or behind the coffee table. She loves to train, for a short while; then, on to her toys the strong Kong and the soft animal which she throws in the air. Her appetite remains strong and dependable.

She greets me in the morning with such joy. All exuberance, zerizut wrapped in a small canine form that hops, reaches out, touching my arm, my shoulders, my face. She’s mostly house trained now with fewer and fewer gifts left on her rug.

One area that requires work. Coming back inside at night. Well, ok. An area that requires a lot of work. She will not come in when I call her and will not come in if I’m near the door.

I can’t press her or spook her because that will just make the problem worse. Amy thinks it’s some difference between the inside and the outside after darkness falls. Like seeing herself in the glass doors. Or, something.

Last night I waited until 10:15. A long, long wait for me since I go to bed at 8:30. Put on a full court press with treats, high-pitched voice for my sweetie pie to please, please, please come in. Failed.

Feeling very guilty, but also needing sleep, I closed the door and went to bed. When I got up at 12:20, Shadow agreed to come back inside. I slept well the rest of the night.

Running ideas through my head. Dog door. Long wire lead. All her feedings before 1 pm. Eventually teaching her the come command, but that’s a weeks long strategy. And I need sleep each night.

Today I plan give her last feeding around 1pm and let her outside. She’ll most likely come back without too much trouble. Around 6 pm or so, in spite of the fact that she is not leash trained, I plan to take her out on a leash. After we come back in, that’s it until the next morning. See if that works. If it does, it should be good until she’s learned to come to me on command.

 

Just a moment: A good friend has struggles with a possible new diagnosis. I feel for her and the journey of learning often difficult information. She has a strong partner which makes the situation less fraught.

As we age, for most of us, the day comes when see you next year is not the good-bye we get from the doctor’s office. See you in three months. See you after the labs get run. See you after the MRI. See you soon.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Garden, Memories, Minnesota, Shadow Mountain

My Sweet Kate

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Imbolc and the Snow Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Luke. Leo. Shadow. The flying hearing aid. Cool nights. Great Sol. The hard time in the Mountains. Little food, hidden under Snow. Predators hungry. Hibernators beginning to move around in their slumber. Temperatures careening between Winter and Spring. Snow sliding off the solar panels. Sit. Down.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Finding my hearing aid

Week Kavannah:  Yirah. Awe.

One brief shining: Puppy paws and puppy claws plus puppy bouncy energy hooked my hearing aid, sent it in off on a long flight, hunting for it, needing it even more than my phone, where could it be oh god what if it’s gone what if she smelled the ear wax and ate it, lost things get found by a search pattern, ok here, there, wait, underneath the dumbbell? That’s it! Whew.

Kate. Yes. Always Kate. My ninja weeder. Quilter. Clothes maker. Physician. Traveler. Keen intellect. But most of all, my sweet Kate. The woman of possibility and promise. Music lover. Grandmother. Stepmother, but really second mother to my son. One who would not quit. Dead next month for four years.

Yet also here. In her quilts. In the Turtles and the small troll with the Norwegian flag. In the bronze Horse statue from Camp Holloway. In the art from our time in Mexico City, Paris, Hawai’i. In her Judaica which I use. Most of all in my memory, nestled in with all I most cherish, never to leave.

Thirty-five years from our marriage in St. Paul’s Landmark Center. Thirty-five years from our wonderful honeymoon following Spring from Rome to Venice, Paris to London, London to Edinburgh, Edinburgh to Inverness. The first of many journeys we made together.

Circumnavigating Latin America. Korea and Singapore. Greece. The Greek Islands. Kusadasi and Ephesus. Istanbul. Maui many times. The Big Island and Kauai. NYC. New Orleans. Mexico City. Oaxaca. Merida.

The journey we made from St. Paul to Andover. The Gardens. The Dogs. The Bees. The Orchard. Then on to Shadow Mountain. The Mule Deer. Black Mountain. Congregation Beth Evergreen. Ruth and Gabe. Sadly, Jon.

Her own last journey. In and out of emergency rooms, hospital beds, surgery suites. A gradual, but inexorable decline. Yet always working the NYT crossword each morning. Always engaged with the politics of the day. Always engaged with me. Precious time together.

Now in the four years since she crossed the vale between life and death still vital and present in my heart.

Feelings, Fourth Phase

Living with Death

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Imbolc and the Snow Moon

Monday gratefuls: Miralax. Rocky Mountain GI. Shabbos meal. Luke and Leo. Tarot. The Hermit. The Wanderer. The Fool’s Journey. Shadow and the outside. Shadow the intransigent. New computer. Getting help. Working out. Ruth. Korea. My son. Seoah. Murdoch. 35th anniversary.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Kate, always Kate

Week Kavannah: Yirah. Awe.

One brief shining: The shifted clock synchronizes us with the rest of the world, changes our time of reporting to work, of having lunch with friends, alters our bed times and our rising; it does not however change an animal’s feeding time because they do not know our clocks and rely instead on inner chronos, following their remembered patterns. So do we, if we listen.

 

Each time I read that Standard Time matches our circadian rhythms I want to shout out. No. Our circadian rhythms match the world. We think light bulbs and grocery stores change this. That we, masters of time, can choose whenness. But we cannot. Spring will follow winter. Day night. Our measuring instruments only conceal the limits of our true understanding. An understanding which our bodies do not forget no more than Shadow forgets when her feeding time is.

This is the deeper reason, the why of my dis-ease with this human all too human hubris. Enough. Live as your body needs. As your pet’s body needs. Just say no to  Saving Daylight.

Whether it’s a real Indian saying or not: Only the white man (rational man) would think that he can cut six inches off a blanket, sew it back on the other end and imagine he has a longer blanket.

 

The American Immortal* feeds off the same blinkered view of reality. This food. Eaten in this quantity. On this schedule. That workout. This choice of vitamins and probiotics. And, voila! No more death.

Or, as in the wonderful Netflix anime series, Pantheon, we can become an uploaded version of ourselves. Able to live forever in a cyber paradise. Will the last person to upload please pull the plug?

As one in the fourth phase of life, beyond 70 with a terminal illness, I can say that either alternative sounds miserable. Can there be disembodied life? Would a world in which no one dies be a world at all? Certainly it would be crowded, resource poor, mean.

Death adds life to life. An end to the ancientrail. Yours and mine. Which lets us know where we are on our inner journey, the far more important one. Shucking off this flesh. A necessary moment for any potential rebirth. Or, simply an end. I’m ok with either.

 

*”Why I hope to die at 75.”

 

Aging, Ancient Brothers, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Judaism, Shadow Mountain

Awe as life slowly draws to a close

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Imbolc and the Snow Moon

Sunday gratefuls: DST. Ha. Shadow and her toys. Stubbornness. Seoah and her study of English. Joanne. Cool nights. Talmud Torah. Sefaria. Jamie. Luke and Leo. Computer help. Cookunity, Blackened Shrimp and Creamy Grits. Ways of eating. Regret. Remorse. Poets. Wendell Berry. Regenerative agriculture. The Andover years. Kate, always Kate.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Sunseen

Week Kavannah: Yirah. Awe.

One brief shining: Shadow moves her neck in the familiar prey killing way, holding tight and shaking hard, again, again, as she burrows her way into her brand new bed, filling the area around her with soft fluffs of white filler and small bits of cutup rubber foam. Another foe vanquished.

 

Joanne called last night, after Havdalah, to thank me for her Shabbos meal, bean and vegetable and chicken soup. Kind of her. We talked about compost Worms, ninja weeders, and the joys of Mountain living.

 

I’m up early, earlier than I want due to the imperial clock and its demands on my time. The air-fryer clock and the turtle clock have now returned to the correct time. You might have one or two such clocks. Most make the transition thanks to computer based chronoworkings. Some don’t. A couple I never change so they return to instant utility on these great wakin’ up mornings once a year.

Most of you know my feelings on this matter so I won’t bore you.

How can I keep from yawning?

 

My practice for regret and remorse goes like this. Watch through the day for actions I regret, omissions of action, too. Name them and acknowledge the regret. Example: yesterday I didn’t work out. I regret that choice. What comes next? Remorse. OK. If I don’t want to repeat that regret, what could I do? I chose lean into netzach, perseverance and grit. When I consider working out today, I will raise netzach up, too. A reminder.

My practice for yirah. Sit quietly. Close my eyes. Breathe slowly. Pay attention to the sounds. Shadow chewing on her toy. The mini-split fan. A car passing on Black Mountain Drive. Open my eyes. See Shadow move toward her food. Begin to eat. Lodgepoles in the back with Snow piled up around their Trunks. The Oriental carpets. My hands curved over the keyboard.

Acknowledge the wonder, the intricate dance that is my immediate world.

 

Just a moment: Ancient Brothers today on end of life planning. Not a fun topic, but an important one. Why? Because good end of life planning frees up life right now. No worries about who’s responsible for what. What will happen as health deteriorates.

Surprised me by being both a pragmatic prod to each of us and a way of joining hands as we walk this final ancientrail together. We are not alone.

How many of us have a context where we can discuss a topic like this in a sober, respectful fashion? Not many, I image. Gratitude to Bill, Tom, and Paul for sharing their work to date.

 

Commentary on the news, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Judaism, Korea, Mussar

Awe

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Imbolc and the Snow Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Shadow. Night. Day. Leaves of Green. Lodgepoles. Regret. Remorse. Teshuvah. Parasha Tetzaveh. Jon. Kate, always Kate. Willows along Maxwell Creek. Osier Dog Woods, too. Rascal. Vince and his two girls. The heart. The liver. The pancreas. The bladder. The kidneys. The brain. And all the others that keep us alive, rebuilding us as necessary.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Vince as a friend

Week Kavannah: Yirah. Awe.

“Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. ….get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.”

― Abraham Joshua Heschel

One brief shining: To live in this world my eyes must see the Tree and the Rock and the Stream; my ears must hear the Magpie, the burble of Water, a friend’s voice; my hands must feel the soft fur on Shadow’s neck, the keys on my laptop, the roughness of my skin; my nose must take in petrichor, the smell of coffee brewing, the fresh, cold Air after a Snow, and my taste must blossom at the lox and cream cheese, the bagel around it, the capers.

 

One thing no politician, no system of government can take from us: our awe. Even if Trump were to run for a third term, I can still wonder at the Mule Deer, the Moose, the Fox. Photosynthesis. Orion rising in the night Sky. Hugs.

If we can stand amazed while a gentle Snow covers the land, we can imagine and create. Subversive acts. Imagination and creation. The soul overflows with desire for the beautiful, the just, the kind. That cannot be taken from us either.

My predominant response right now to the Dance of the MAGAworld Faeries is sadness. A sadness arising from what could be and what is. He/They/It cannot have my memory of a world where fairness and kindness guided daily life. And he/they/it cannot make me live in a world where I don’t appreciate difference. I won’t let it happen.

 

Thinking about my MVP night where I present on ratzon, will or desire or pleasure. When my son and Seoah got married, they rented a hall in a ceremonial space called Bliss. Bliss had five rectangular halls, one right next to the other, that could be reserved. The hall next to my son and Seoah’s had a first birthday celebration. Very festive, but also with an air of mystery. A Doljanchi.

Classic doljabi set

At a Doljanchi the foods offered have symbolic meaning, for example, “…5-colored rice cakes called osaek songpyeon (오색송편) represent harmony with one’s surroundings and are a wish that the child will grow and get along with different kinds of people and places.”*

The part that captured my attention for thinking about ratzon, however, is the doljabi ceremony. “A variety of objects are put on a table or tray in front of the child and whatever the child chooses foretells his or her future.”* A table of traditional and contemporary items is below.**

Where our will leads us, our desire, there will be our lives. It occurred to me that the doljabi ceremony continues throughout our lives. Our desires leading us to choose now the pencil, now the money, now the microphone. That’s why the focus and the strength of our ratzon is a powerful character trait.

 

*The Soul of Seoul

** Items For A Traditional Doljabi Table

  • pencil/book (smarts)
  • food (won’t go hungry)
  • money (wealth)
  • thread (longevity)
  • needle (talent in the hands)
  • scissors (talent in the hands)
  • ruler (talent in the hands)
  • bow and arrow (military career)
  • Items For A Modern Doljabi Table
  • microphone (entertainer)
  • golf club/balls (athlete)
  • computer mouse (tech. adept)
  • gavel (judge)
  • stethoscope (doctor)
  • piggy bank/money (entrepreneur)
  • graduation cap/books (scholar)
  • science objects (scientist/inventor)
Commentary on Religion, Dogs, Politics, US History

Shadow. N.A.R. Storm.

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Imbolc and the Snow Moon

Friday gratefuls: Jorge Borge. Herman Hesse. Thomas Mann. Sinclair Lewis. Theodore Dreiser. Goethe. F. Scott Fitzgerald. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Thoreau. William Cullen Bryant. Dante. Homer. Euripides. Moses. Ovid. Mary Oliver. Coleridge. Wordsworth. Poe. Hawthorne. Cooper Powys. Joanne Greenberg. And so, so many others.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Creativity

Week Kavannah: Patience.  Savlanut. When I rush, slow down. When I want to speak, wait. When my inner agonizer arises, calm him, move on

One brief shining: Said the shema, said my I am comfortable with who I am and what I have, turned on the oxygen concentrator when I heard a crash and then another crash from the space where Shadow was; went back out of the bedroom to find my laptop, my Kindle, various papers, and a bag of treats splayed out on the floor, a shocked Shadow looking sheepish, a little scared. So I picked things up, comforted her, and returned to bed.

 

Dog Journal: As her comfort level increases, Shadow has become more and more a regular puppy. Chewing up her brand new bed. Trying to get into the treats I left on my computer table. Being bouncy and happy and wiggly. She has learned sit, down, and touch.

She still does things that confound me. When I want her to come in, she stands by the door, won’t come in until I sit down. Often, too, she will run back outside if I get up too fast. When it’s cold outside? Annoying. Like right now for instance.

Having her here when I wake up. When I come home. Glad to see me, tail wagging. Yes. Many times yes.

 

N.A.R. notes. Wagner did a phenomenological analysis of Christian church growth. He found the most growth in Pentecostal congregations in the third world and mega-churches in the U.S. His conclusion? The holy spirit was at work reshaping the church for a new era.

From within his worldview this was a logical conclusion. Where there are signs of vitality, there is the current activity of God in the world. He also noted that in these new congregations, these gatherings local leaders were the authority. The megachurches, too. Apostles and prophets were the missing elements from denominational governance. Instead of bureaucracy there were charismatic leaders who spoke directly with God and acted in (his) stead.

We will see later how this lead to the powerful, politically motivated Christian Nationalism that we wrestle with today. Wagner’s work I’m discussing now is from the late 1990’s.

 

Just a moment: I have George Friedman’s The Storm Before the Calm out again. Going to reread his last chapters. The Trump/Musk assault on American norms of the last 80 years may be the storm Friedman predicted. Sure feels like it anyhow. A tearing down of the old paradigm followed by a reshaping. The reshaping will not be the work of the MAGA folks but of a coalition, I would imagine, of the center-right and the center-left, perhaps forming a new political party.