Judaism, Kabbalah

Zohar

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Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Ruth. New Snow. Cold. Full night’s sleep. Dreams. Alan. Acting. Directing. Singing. Dandelion. Evergreen. Ruby. Gas. Alan’s BMW. Electrons. Joanne. Taxes. Death and taxes. Diane, healing. Social media. Staying off social media. Gabe. Interviewing Rabbi Jamie. Breakfast. Peskyfowlatarian. Shrimp last night. Smoothie for lunch with protein powder.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Learning

Kavannah 2025: Creativity

Kavannah this new week: Chesed (this week, especially toward myself)

Practice for rachamim (compassion): Listening for the melody of the other (& self)

One brief shining: Opened the “very good” copy of Art Green’s Guide to the Zohar and fell further into a world of monsters, demons, divinity, and hints for seeing the sacred, following an ancientrail with trailheads in ancient Greece, in the Tanakh, merging Athens and Jerusalem, painting a picture that only the lev can see, eyes blinded by scientism and crude materialism, a cracking whacking inner smacking of old ways of thought confronting my deep desire to see what I’m looking at.

 

I now have all 12 volumes of the Pritzker Zohar, translation from an original Aramaic text compiled by Stanford professor Daniel Matt. He and other scholars translate the text and provide detailed commentary. This is as close to the original as I’ll ever get since I have scant Aramaic and only a bit more Hebrew.

It’s an odd experience, studying Kabbalah. At least for me. Its way of thinking and expanding and heading down unexpected paths often obscures more than it enlightens. At first. Though as I’ve gone on from the classes I’ve taken with Rabbi Jamie and David Sanders, especially with the Zohar, I find resonance with the wild speculation, leaps of thought, fantastic imagery.

Accused, I discovered in recent reading, of pantheism, the writers of the Zohar have felt and pressed their way toward insights consonant with my own. I’m discovering in this study why a systematic ge-ology, which I tried to write some years ago, couldn’t come from my lev. I experience the world as a mystic, a world ready to offer revelation at every turn, from a study of the Joseph story in Genesis to a Bull Elk watching me from the Forest’s edge as rain pelted down. Or the knowledge that in Emet, truth in Hebrew, are the three mother letters, aleph-the beginning, mem-the middle, and tav-the end, so that truth has to have a holistic context, is never a single statement or claim. Or the death of my beloved. Or the appreciation of sound as a creative force. In other words revelation of the One, the oneness, the unity and yet the creatively ever advancing all never stops coming to us, is available in every instance of every day.

I keep coming back to Rami Shapiro’s wonderful metaphor of each of us as waves created by the ocean, pushed up and moving for a time, then collapsing back into the ocean. Always part of the One, yet also distinct and remarkable, unique. Our distinctiveness never lost, yet also absorbed into the whole.

Art and Culture, Asia, General, Politics, US History, World History

The Demon of Ignorance. In the long view

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Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Friday gratefuls: Alan. Jamie. Frederick Posner. Mindy. Ellen. Janet. Ginny. Janice. Luke. Findlay. Leo. Gracie. Murdoch. Warmer night. Still cool. My son. Rich. Seoah. Living will. Estate plan. Affairs. Light. Dark. Tao. Light in the dark. Dark in the light. Wu wei. Chi. Ohr. Shiva. Creation and destruction. In the long arcing spiral of existence.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Shiva

Kavannah 2025:  Creativity

Kavannah week:   Appreciation of Opposition

One brief shining: Two brown paper bags at a time, crunching the snow on my driveway, I moved my Safeway pickup order from the back of Ruby, into the kitchen, yes you need to do these things, keep the muscles working, placing the bags on the  counter; after, I drove Ruby into her stall, gave her fresh oats and a quick rubdown, and returned to the house to put away my groceries.

 

Here is the Shiva Nataraja depicted in the style of the intricate bas reliefs at Angkor Wat

Hinduism helps me at a time like this. Tom reminded me of Shiva the other morning and I’ve stayed with that thought. Vishnu stabilizes the world; Shiva engages in constant acts of creation and destruction. Both acting over unimaginably long periods of time*, heading toward destruction, then renewal.

Seen in the context of a kalpa, what is the four year presence of an avatar of the id, guided by fear and lust and greed, not unusual attributes found in humanity. Especially in the Kali Yuga, a portion of the kalpa under the destructive, yet cleansing influence of Kali.

I suppose you could see this as the opposite of living in the moment. This way of understanding the cosmic cycle insists on embedding ourselves not in the here and now only, but also in the extended experience of kalpas and yugas. From this lofty perspective cousin Donald and his Clown Posse present as bit players, foils in a cyclic dance between chaos and order, a just world and an unjust world. Just as you and I do.

Here is the depiction of Shiva Nataraja dancing atop the demon of ignorance, styled in the intricate and symbolic manner of Hindu temple art.

In the Shiva Nataraja I have here at home Shiva dances on the demon of ignorance. We can imagine cousin Donald beneath Shiva’s feet. I’m even willing to imagine this demon of all thing’s petty as a cautionary tale in the oh so finite history of our United States. From the next century: Never again.

When we focus on the moment, we lose the breadth and depth of history, of time in the sense of kalpas and yugas. This can be a serious problem in that we may universalize what’s happening in the moment and fail to understand the much, much larger context in which all events occur. A French historian looks at the longue durée. The long duration of history. I prefer the Hindu version because of its cyclical nature, but my primary point this morning?  As bad as he has been and will be cousin Donald does not write the long arc of history. None of us do.

 

*The Cyclical Nature of Time (Yugas and Kalpas)

  • Hinduism views time as cyclical rather than linear. It is divided into vast cosmic cycles called Kalpas, each lasting over 4.32 billion years.
  • Within each Kalpa are Maha Yugas (Great Ages), consisting of four Yugas (epochs):
    1. Satya Yuga (Age of Truth) – the golden age of righteousness.
    2. Treta Yuga – a slightly diminished moral and spiritual state.
    3. Dvapara Yuga – further decline in virtue and wisdom.
    4. Kali Yuga – the age of darkness and chaos, characterized by moral decay and ignorance.

The current era is believed to be Kali Yuga, considered the final and darkest age before renewal.

End of the Kali Yuga

  • At the end of Kali Yuga, it is believed that the world will undergo a period of destruction and renewal.
  • Kalki, the tenth and final avatar of Vishnu, will appear. Kalki is described as a warrior on a white horse, wielding a sword of divine justice. He will restore righteousness (Dharma) and end the cycle of Kali Yuga.

3. Pralaya (Dissolution)

  • After the end of a Kalpa, the universe undergoes Pralaya, or dissolution.
  • Pralaya can occur on different scales:
    • Naimittika Pralaya: The end of a day of Brahma (the creator deity), where the physical world is dissolved but the subtle world persists.
    • Prakritika Pralaya: The dissolution of the entire cosmos into its primordial state.
  • After Pralaya, Brahma begins the process of creation anew.

4. Shiva’s Role: Tandava Dance

  • Shiva, as the cosmic destroyer, plays a crucial role in the end-of-the-world concept. His Tandava dance symbolizes the cosmic cycles of creation, preservation, and destruction.
  • This dance is both destructive and regenerative, reflecting the cyclical nature of existence.

5. Philosophical Perspective

  • The “end of the world” is not feared but is seen as a necessary phase in the eternal cycle of creation and renewal.
  • From an Advaita (non-dualist) perspective, the physical universe is ultimately illusory (Maya), and the dissolution is a return to the unmanifest reality (Brahman).

Hindu eschatology emphasizes the impermanence of material existence and the eternal nature of the soul, offering a profound perspective on time, change, and cosmic renew

Commentary on the news, GeekWorld, Politics, US History

Bearing Witness

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Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Rabbi Jamie’s translation of chapter 2, Humility. Orchot Tzaddikim. Mussar. All my Jewish friends. One last night of very cold therefore very great sleeping. Winter in all her cold, frosty, white, Snow-packed glory. My Lodgepole Companion. The psyche, a delicate and fungible place. Breakfast with Ruth on Saturday. Boulder.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Memories of Gertie

Kavannah 2025: creativity

Kavannah this week: Appreciation of opposition

One brief shining: The spirit of Winter barren Meadows filled with Snow while Lodgepoles gather it on their Branches until it weighs too much, then bending the Branch sloughs it off, I see the curved, cloven hoof marks of Mule Deer hunting for Grass, imagine the Black Bears snug in their beds dreaming not of sugar plums but that Hive filled with sweet Honey and the cold Water of Maxwell Creek, tasty Larvae dug out of a rotten Log.

N.B: I asked chatbot to illustrate this in the style of the Pre-Raphaelites. These two images are what I got. Not even close. Notice, too, how similar they are in design. I’m having fun with this, not always liking what I get, but fascinated by it anyhow.

I could, I suppose, ride out the pardons and the gender bashing and the crashing noises from DEI initiatives by watching Shadow Mountain even more closely. As in John Muir Law’s nature journaling for example. Or, I could lose myself in the study of Torah and the Zohar, kabbalah’s central text. There are, too, so many books to read. So many good TV programs to watch. Movies. Zoom calls to attend. Friends to dine with. Family to visit or who come visit me. Sure. Those kind of blinders appeal to me because I want to do them all.

There is, too, the writing of another novel. Haven’t gotten traction with that work for a while, but it could happen. I would delight in sliding off into a different universe, a world of my creation. Where I have real influence. Not saying it won’t happen.

Maybe I cancel my subscription to the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post. Listen only to tech and philosophy podcasts. AI is a rabbit hole I can happily run down for hours at a time.

I could switch my sleep schedule, stay up only at night. Become, once again, an astronomy nerd. Invest in a fancy Celestron. Send my mind and heart out to distant galaxies.

And yet. I won’t. Perhaps I should. For the peace of my soul. But. I can’t. I will not look away. Will not say I did not know. Did nothing when they let insurrectionists, convicted seditionists go free. Did nothing when they came for programming aiming for a Federal Government whose employees come from all sectors of our population. Did nothing when they came for work to realize the Great Work: creating a sustainable human presence on Mother Earth. Did nothing when they came for the poor, the wretched yearning to be free. Those who believe so much more in the dream that is America than we can fathom. Did nothing when they came for the citizens made so by birth. As was I.

You might ask. What then will you do? I will bear witness. Though I can appreciate the opposing forces in our own body politic, I do not have to let sympathy, which is the best I can manage, cloud my judgment. And, I won’t.

 

 

Mussar, Politics

Incremental Change

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Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Tom. Paul. Cold again. Working on my week kavannah. Not going well. Borzoi. Irish Wolfhounds. Whippets. Akitas. German Wirehairs. Coyote Hound/IW mix. Dogs of all sorts and sizes. Dogs I’ve known and loved. Dogs I haven’t known but would love if given the chance. High Mountain Winds. Shirley Waste. School Bus Drivers. Snow Plow Drivers. Rural Mail carriers. Doing jobs that make our lives easier.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: History

Kavannah 2025: Creativity

Kavannah this week: Appreciation of Differences   Haarecha shel machloket

One brief shining: How to see the humanity in the inhumane, how to see kindness in the cruel, how to see truth in the liar, how to know the faith in the hypocrite, how to find justice in the unjust, how to do all these things without losing a sense of outrage and personal conviction about inhumanity, cruelty, lies, hypocrisy, injustice will be the challenge not only of this week’s kavannah, but a work of the next four long years. At least for me.

 

I freely and without reservation admit that yesterday’s post did not advance my appreciation of the differences I find between my own values and cousin Donald and his crew. Satire is not kind. Can be cruel. At best, even if it is these two, it neither lies nor is unjust.

When drill, baby, drill becomes a battle cry, I can acknowledge my own complicity in our fossil fuel supported economy. When a flat, uninformed dictat like: From this day forward there are only two genders, male and female, in America comes out of the mouth of a President on inauguration day, I can hear the pleading for a simpler, easier to understand relational world. When racial justice will occur in a color-blind, meritocratic society, I can feel the fear of the other advancing, gaining traction. When the leader of the law and order party pardons those who assaulted officers of the law, well, you got me here. How do we square that circle?

What I’m trying to say is this. Even in the darkest of his and his minions purposes, there lies a sentiment or conviction I can find within myself. In this way I can stay in touch with the humanity of Stephen Miller. Bannon. The Q-Anon shaman. Does this change my direct opposition to their actions, their intended actions? Not at all.

We serve different gods. My god lives and acts only through human and natural life, through the processes and systems of the natural word. My god opposes inhumanity, cruelty, injustice, lies, and hypocrisy. But not the humanity of those caught up in these acts.

Not knowing this is the abyss of which Nietzsche spoke, the one that stares back. And the monster that when fighting you do not want to become.

Mussar suggests small, incremental changes get us where we need to go. This is my small change today. Acknowledging the need for this sort of reflection about our public life. Amen.

 

Politics, US History

Oh, dear

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Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Oligarchs at play. That hat. Barron. He who would be king. -10 last night, 18 this morning. Ruth back in Boulder. Gentleman Mark teaching future engineers. Mary in Melbourne. Diane, healing. Me, on Shadow Mountain. Great Sol. Sunlight. Snow. Grass under the Snow. Voles. Rabbits. Chipmunks. Salamanders.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Melania’s Hat

Kavannah 2025: Creativity

Kavannah this week: Appreciation of Opposition   Haarecha shel machloket

One brief shining: Barron with his oiled and brushed back hair, much taller now, stood next to his mother and her visible disguise, she Rosemary to his Damien, behind them those powerful men come to lick the boots of the orange haired, fake tanned one: Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk.

Here’s the Vaudeville-style illustration based on your description. the first iteration.

The trillion dollar trio. Like Tinkers to Evers to Chance. Bezos to Musk to Zuckerberg.  They shuffled around nodding to those who have sworn fealty to them, dukes in a contemporary medieval amorality play. The royal family included Jared and Ivanka who were not named on their way in. Also, the two sons who kill large animals with big guns. None though, not even cousin Donald, who could match Melania’s hat. A model who understands the power moves which fashion can reveal and conceal. All hail the queen of mean.

I couldn’t look away. I didn’t want to watch the coronation. But I did. I even listened to the speech. America’s golden age starts right now. I. I. I. I. I. I. Bad people. Bad policies. I. I. I. I. Drill, baby, drill. Look at me. See me. Acclaim me. And, we won’t forget God. Yes, he actually said that.

After his speech. America’s tenor? Sang of America the Great. Following him. The most chilling part of the event for me. A military chorus moved down the aisle starting their musical offering with the first verse of the Battle Hymn of the Republic:

the second iteration. after I asked for a spell check

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword,
His truth is marching on.

CHORUS:
Glory, glory, hallelujah! Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah! His truth is marching on.

As I heard these words, I knew who cousin Donald believed this song referred to. And I feared for us. Even for myself.

Amy Klobuchar, the relentlessly vanilla senator from my former home state of Minnesota, though. She who spoke truth to power on that accursed day. Reference after reference to the peaceful transfer of power, the value of the Constitution, the norms of our democracy, the people’s will. I was proud to have lived in her state, to have voted for her.

I think of FDR. A paraphrase:

YESTERDAY, January 20th, 2025, a date which will live in infamy. The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by the crudest and vilest of our own citizens.

Make no mistake. This man means to bring retribution to his enemies, succor to insurrectionists, and more money to the oligarchs who sat near him.

Friends, Health, Politics, Sport

The Great Game

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Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

Monday gratefuls: MLK Day. Inauguration Day. Cold -9. Senate Navy Bean Soup. Another batch. Catfish fillets. Beets. Peskyfowlatarian. Fish and Seafood and Chicken for protein. Making life easier. The thousand mile journey to Trump’s last day in office starts today.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: This land, our land

Kavannah 2025: Creativity

Kavannah for the week: Appreciation of Opposition   Haarecha shel machloket

One brief shining: Oh, watching football with Lake effect Snow, Bills and Ravens pounding away at each other, two young boys at quarterback who came into the league together in 2018, cold hands and slick footballs, not to the death gladiators leaving it all on the floor of our modern day Coliseums, our American Plaza del Toros.

 

Here is the vintage movie poster illustration inspired by your description

We did not invent the spectacle of grown men hurting each other or themselves for our entertainment. Far, far from it. That ball game the Mayan’s played. Sometimes sacrificing the winners. Toreadors. Gladiators. Buzhaski, played with the headless, stuffed body of a goat. Or now. Motor sports. Rugby. Lacrosse. Hockey. Even Basketball. Called games.

Suppose if you wanted to stretch the definition we could include traders on stock exchanges, commodity exchanges. C-suites. Hedge funds. Anywhere men, almost always men, put themselves at risk for some reward. Always a reward. A super bowl ring. A bull’s ear or tail. Death in order to play with the gods. Living another day. Trophies.

I’d like to say I have no interest in such things. That men concussing each other didn’t captivate me. But it does. Athleticism, yes. Of course. But the brutality? That, too. A non-evolved part of my brain I suppose.

Feeling for Mark Andrews, a dependable tight end, who fumbled in the fourth quarter, and most miserably of all, dropped the game tying 2-point conversion with less than 2 minutes left. Glad he’s not a gladiator.

 

Just a moment: No, I’ve not forgotten. Today is the first day. Only four more years to go. I hope. A lot of excellent material being written about liberalism, Democrats, what’s needed to restart the engine of our democracy after all these would be fascists put sugar in the gas tank.

I recommend a book Tom Crane sent me: The Storm Before the Calm. George Friedman. Without going into his argument he predicted a transformational presidency after which a new American Way would arise. Along the lines of Teddy Roosevelt’s reaction to the first Gilded Age. May it be so.

 

When the polar vortex heads back north Vince and his helper will come. They will move the dining table and three of its chairs upstairs to my loft, shift some wire shelving to the weird niche between my window walls and the pony wall, then bring downstairs my treadmill (so, so heavy), three stall mats, weight bench, kettle bells, exercise balls. No more schlepping up the garage stairs to workout.

They will also move a TV into that room. And they’ll switch out my new Morris Chair, taking it upstairs, while moving my old favorite leather chair downstairs. Finally, they’ll lift my new desktop tower next to my old one so I can start the change over to a new Windows 11 unit. Not sure quite yet when I’ll get the new 32″ curved monitor up and in place.

In yesteryear these last few things I could have and would have done myself. Not today. Far too weak.

 

 

Fourth Phase, Memories, Travel, Writing

Ancientrails. Almost twenty years old.

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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.

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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

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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

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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.