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  • In the stranger we discover humanity

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane and the Living in the Mountains Moon

    art@willworthington

    Friday gratefuls: Yesterday’s zero on posting. Hike on the Denver Mountain Parks Trail. Mussar and sadness around gun violence. Gabe here. Jon calmer. Ruth in the hospital again. Snow all gone. 7.5 inches. Wow. Bewilderment, Richard Power’s latest. Hawai’i. Money. Travel. Cumulus Clouds white over Black Mountain. Sol. Life-Bringer.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Gabe

    Tarot: Page of Vessels, Otter

    “As a person, Page of Vessels represents someone with an open and youthful approach to life. They are imaginative and playful characters. Otters may be mischievous, but their hearts are not malicious. Expect a surprise when Otter shows up to say hello!”

     

    The page of Vessels, the otter, reminds me to play, use my imagination for fun, enjoyment. Get some more mischief in my life. More surprise. More oneg, pleasure. More simcha, joy. Let my hair, what there is of it, down. Shake it all about.

    June 1

    Like most late season Snows, this one on June 1!, mostly gone yesterday. The rest will disappear today. Already 55 at 9am. All Moisture is good Moisture. Up here. Though. The Boundary Waters and Rainy Lake? Not so much. Water is not always where its needed. Watch for the Water wars to ratchet up here in the West.

     

    We had a powerful conversation at mussar yesterday about Uvalde and gun violence. Even our most conservative member, a Trump gal, was agin’ it. When will we ever learn?

    “When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the stranger. 34 The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native-born among you; you shall love the stranger as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” Leviticus 19:33-34

    The mussar text from yesterday quoted this verse and a comment on it by a German-Jewish philosopher, Herman Cohen. Loving God. Got it. Love your neighbor. Got it. A member of the tribe. Someone like you. Not stranger. Love a stranger? In this verse Cohen says we discover humanity and God’s disposition toward our species. Love is not merely tribal, but universal.

    A strong rebuke to the gun worshipers who say, “Hate the stranger in your midst. And, if possible, shoot them.”

     

    Gabe is up here for a couple of days. I’m recruiting him to help learn lines. Also, to find that annoying beep. He tried to find it but like me, could not. Jon? Nope. Gabe loves Kep and wants to see him, work on jigsaw puzzles, watch TV, hunt for deer antlers.

    We’re going to a presentation on Israel at the synagogue this evening. I like getting the kids over to the synagogue as often as possible. Being Jewish is important to them, but that part of them is not getting fed right now.

    Ruth comes home tomorrow. Jon and she will come up here for a family meal after she gets released.

     

    There’s a Denver Mountain Parks Trail on the way home from Evergreen, maybe 3/4’s of a mile from 73. I talked about it last week. I’ve taken to hiking it after mussar. One of my two trail hikes during the week. After our conversation about loving neighbors and strangers we talked about saying hello to strangers and acquaintances alike when we’re out and about. Having just finished Overstory I suggested we include Trees and Flowers, Rocks and Streams.

    Along I went. Hello. To the thick Ponderosa. Hello to the Bluebells peeking from the Grass. Hello to the great slab of Granite covered with Moss and Lodgepole Roots. Hello to the Stream running happily. Singing to me as I hiked. Hello to the Wild Strawberry. To the thorny wild Berry Canes. Hello to the tall Pine climbing up straight as a mast. Hello to the Rocky Stream Bed that gives the Water a crashing, foaming moment at the end of the trail. Hello to the small Pond and the Waterstrider on the Pond.

    This was more than a casual exercise. It made me feel I was among friends, no longer strangers these Plants. These Rocks. This Water. It might feel silly at first. That’s ok. Silly is good. Otter already told us so. You could give it a try.

     


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  • No Title

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane and the Living in the Mountains Moon

    Wednesday gratefuls: Life review. Sumi-e. Ruth. Snow. Yes. I mean it. June 1st, big Snow. Limbs down. Good sleeping. Astrology. Sun sign, Moon, and Ascending. Kep in the bed for the second night in a row. Hawai’i. I was there last year this time. Richard Powers. Reading. Trail hiking. TV back in its usual spot. Alan. Tom.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Snow!

    Tarot: Queen of Arrows

    “In Shamanic terms, Swans are about developing a sense of self, awakening your intuition, and a graceful disposition to others…Within the card lies the promise of rebirth and creativity – the tiny primrose peeping through the long grass. Willow is also more than a symbol of sorrow, it also promotes great healing and relief of pain…Queen of Arrows is completely independent, but she loves groups that bring like-minded people together.” tarotx.net

     

    These heavy, wet Snows put a lot of pressure on powerlines. My lights flickery. Power on and off. Not sure if the generator is on or not since I’m up in the loft. The maintenance kit for it has not come in yet. Ordered a month ago. Still working after that brief hiccup when Diane was here. Grateful to have it.

    Also grateful to have the Snow. Fire repressing Snow. And the liquid flowing into my tiny Aquifer here atop Shadow Mountain.

    Snow has started up again. How bout that?

     

    Astrology class yesterday. A question for the day: What gives you purpose? I said as I get older each new day gives me a sense of purpose. Yes. We live in the moment only. But that those moments, together, constitute our days, months, years. And each day with sunseen and sungone is a whole life. A rising up, a developing morning, a quiet midday, a winding down, and then, darkness, a night of sleep.

    Resurrection. Death. Resurrection. A new chance. A moment in which life can begin again. Old angers put aside. New loves recognized, acted on. Beauty admired, inhaled. Actions taken for justice. Following the Tao. Letting the day flow as it will. “Within the card lies the promise of rebirth and creativity – the tiny primrose peeping through the long grass.” Queen for a day.

    Simpler. Write. Workout. Lunch. Rest. Read. Go out or watch TV. Enough life for me. No pressure, no angst. Just the day. Some words. Some movement. Food. Learning. Other people some days. Some days not. Rest. My purpose; my day.

     

    Guns + white supremacy + Trump/GOP validation + inflation + job slippage among working class whites + fear of other others (liberals, gays) = chaos and violence. Topping this all off with a stacked supreme court? Priceless.

    My hope lies in two places: Gen Z, Ruth and Gabe, and dissolution. The acids of populist insurgency dissolving the current order, bringing chaos, forcing a new alignment of forces and beliefs. Probably not in my lifetime, but if so, yeah. I want to be there, put my foot on the accelerator.

    Not much, I know. But there nonetheless.

     

     


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  • Beltane: You are alive!

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane and the Beltane Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: Beltane. The growing season. Fire festival. Life renewed. Again. Still. My voice. Jon. Better. More insight, moving forward. Three dead mice. 2nd night, none in the kitchen. Edward Abbey. Mario. Taos. Road trip. Iran. Possible tour in the fall. Taipei, winter. Energy back. Got a lot done yesterday. Closing in on a finished downstairs. Feels so good. Jon’s idea about centering the chandelier. Smart guy.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Jon, taking hold

     

    October, 2014 Andover

     

    Beltane. Yes. The season I need. A Fire festival. Those crazy Scots and Swedes. All naked today, bonfires. Probably a lot of making love in the tall grass. Sympathetic magic. Maybe a few year and a day handfast marriages. The maiden goddess lying with the Greenman, with Cernunnos. Persephone with Pan. Ceres waving her hand, seeds unfurling, heading toward the sun.

    A celebration of the Garden, the Prairie, the Pasture, the Woodland. Life giving. Soaking in the Sun. The Rain and the Snow melt. Mountain Streams full. Trout loving the cold Water. It’s Beltane. Ring out the fallow season for real. Ring in the season of plenty.

    In the old days, the farthest away of the Celtic times, only Beltane and Samain. The growing season and Summer’s End. One or the other. Fertility or waiting, decomposition, getting ready. Resting. For this. The time of green. Of yellow and brown.

    Oh, I’m so ready. I’ve had a long, long fallow time. Maybe since 2018 or so. Life with Kate had hit its late fall, early winter. The Covid. Her decline and death. Grief. Kate, always Kate. Now less Kate and more me. Alive still.

    Beltaned. My Seed beginning to unfurl, blast its way through the Soil. Drinking in the Rain. Basking in the Sun, gaining power. My own Photosynthesis. Hands out, palms up, neck back, face lifted to the warmth of a new life season. Probably my last one. The fourth phase. Joyful. Rich. Headed toward joy.

    Leave no bit of juice in the tank. Spill it all on the road, running the engine as long and as far as possible. Like Ode on his long road trip. Like Neal Cassidy and Ken Kesey. Like Walt Whitman and his powerful Yap.

    That’s the message of the Great Wheel. Until you fall into the soil, become one with the next generation of life, you are alive. An agent. A whole universe swirling with galaxies of love, nebula of knowledge, Big Bangs of creativity.

    Contra Dylan Thomas I do want to go gently into that good night. Not as one passive and resigned, but as one filled with experience. One who took the moments and lived in them, loved in them. Shouted. Danced. Acted. One who knows the night is nothing to rage against, rather something to embrace. These element’s fallow time after their long journey as me.

    So. Take off those clothes. Throw away the inhibitions and the ambitions. Open. Spread out. Jump and twirl. It’s the Beltane festival. For you and for me.

     


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  • Erev Beltane

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and the Beltane Moon

    Saturday gratefuls: Kate, always Kate. Pete and the chandelier. Better than I thought. More exercise. Call from Ode. Breakfast with Alan on Monday. No Mouse in the kitchen Rat zapper! Cool night. Wild dream. New Acorns. Still reading Amanda Palmer. Qin Empire: Alliance. TV. Outer Range. TV. High Country News. P-22, the Mountain Lion of Griffith Park in LA.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The predator eating the Mice

     

    I throw the dead Mice over the fence. In a very short time they’re gone. Gonna watch this AM. See who this critter is. Glad to feed somebody. Makes this less onerous. A circle of life thing.

     

    Presentation tomorrow for Groveland. Zoom. Quite the thing. Something I couldn’t have done otherwise. Devolution. Trying to follow David Sanders advice. Write as I talk. Still working on reimagining faith after all these years. Getting very close to what I saw originally. The key move may be asking why privilege faith in the unseen when the seen has as much power in our daily lives? Our whole lives. I will post Devolution after I’ve presented it. Happy for critiques, thoughts.

     

    Ode called from the road yesterday. On his way to Taos. Blown away by the West. His sketchbooks, my blog. A daily discipline. Influenced by life in the moment. A confidant. To whom we tell our story. While other people listen in. Or see. Native to each of us. Over many years. A friend. He saw this similarity.

    A legacy of a sort. Maybe a legacy in reality. I’ve ensured Ancientrails’ longevity past my death in my trust. Not really a bid for immortality or legacy, but a way for grandkids and kids to remember Dad or grandpop. What was he like? Oh, yeah. Kate’s quilts, mug rugs, shirts, dresses, wall hangings. A bit of us hanging over in the visible world: stitches, color and ink, words.

     

    Healthspan. Asked Kristie about it. She said I could live 10 plus years with the treatments available for prostate cancer. Kristen, my PCP, said 90 was reachable with my current health conditions. Both positive and sobering. I mean, geez, even fifteen years. That would get me back to only 60. Not that long ago.

    Still. Able to live, love, write, travel. Tomorrow is not promised. Only this moment is sure. Gonna keep at it until I can’t. Unafraid. Except about getting Covid. Damn that disease got under my skin. Stephanie, the PA I see at Conifer Medical said, “Covid’s weird.” She had a tone of respect in her voice. Wu wei.

     

    The world. Odd things. Why my gratefuls include items like prostate cancer, death, grieving, illness, war, climate change. We see only dimly, though that darkly glass. Putin invades Ukraine. Awful. Ukraine stands up to Putin. Amazing. The fractured EU and Nato begins to heal, the West remembers itself. Wonderful. Ukraine pushes Russia out of Kyiv and begins to carry the fight to them. Wow. Biden’s handling of our response elevates him in world leadership.

    As does his handling of Covid. Which we may now find ourselves sort of out of. As a pandemic anyhow. Not gone. Probably never gone. Like the flu. Will we need Covid shots, boosters now? Like flu shots. Annually? Maybe. Fine.

    Covid has changed the nature of work. Created an economic recovery which has raised wages for the working class. Has cost us so many lives. So much time together. Made us realize how precious community is, even for solitaries like me.

    We often see well only in what Kate used to call the retrospectoscope. Why we need history. So much. I love history. And art. And religion. And writing. And people. And Shadow Mountain. And Arapaho National Forest. And Maxwell Creek. And whatever eats my dead Mice. Even the Mice. And life itself. Death, too.

     

     

     

     

     

     


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  • A Simpler Heart

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and Kate’s Yahrzeit Moon

    2019

    Sunday gratefuls: Pesach. Chag Sameach. Easter. Ramadan. All together now. A time of high Winds. High Fire danger. Liberation. Resurrection. Revelation. Spring. Nowruz. Ostara. Beltane. The birth of Lambs. The Greening of Grasses and Trees. Blooming of Flowers. Bees hard at work. Snow and Cold in the Rockies. The fallow season becoming a distant memory. Fresh Milk. Seeds in the Ground. (not in Minnesota or up here.) Life triumphs. For now.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Family

     

    The second day of Passover yesterday. Tell me that old, old story of Pharaoh and his slaves. Saw it on Zoom. Broadcast live from Congregation Beth Evergreen. Was gonna go. Got Covid feet at the last minute. Fear makes prisoners of us all. Also. Didn’t know what to wear. I don’t have fancy clothes. Well, I do. I don’t like to wear them. Jeans and plaid shirts. An LL Bean vest. That’s the outer decor. With a pair of Keens.

    When I watched Rabbi Jamie go through the haggadah with the gathered (smallish) crowd in the sanctuary at Beth Evergreen, I both wished I was there and was glad I wasn’t. This is a long service. A couple hours until the meal.

    I stayed with it both out of a sense of obligation these are my people after all and out of a desire to re-member an ancient tale of liberation. An ancientale of authoritarian rule and those who broke away from it. The ancient and lonely trail of trying to lose the slave mind, to take life in your own hands and live it responsively and responsibly.

    It’s not easy being free. It takes work. Every day. Get food. Maintain health. Love family. And the Pharaoh’s of our day want their slaves to have just enough money to buy the things Pharaoh wants them to. Just enough to have some food, be healthiesh, maybe maintain a family. Buy gas, processed foods, over the counter remedies, pay rent.

    Then there’s the lower caste. The people of the street. Who are either can’t or won’t play the Pharaoh’s game. Who suffer from mental illness, addiction, loneliness.

    Those with privilege can navigate past the Scylla of money and the Charybdis of social expectations. Yet even most of the privileged founder anyhow. Crushed between the jaws of earning and wanting to fit in.

    Judaism knows this in its traditions and works to keep the freedom. It’s hard though even for ones who know the true difficulty of the journey from Egypt through the Reed Sea and those days years in the desert and hardest of all-gaining the Promised Land.

     

    Christianity went off on a tangent about mortality and its pain. Solved through a resurrected God who would take us all with him someday. Beautiful metaphor, resurrection. Death is not the end. Ain’t no grave can hold my body down. A little creepy in its bodies zipping up from cemeteries, or taken whole out of life in the rapture.

    There’s a liberation message there, too. But you have to work to find it, embrace it, follow it. Would have been better without the sin. Making it seem that resurrection needed earning. By not doing this or that. Rather than by following a path. A via negativa toward heaven. Born good? Nope. Born bad. Work to put away the stain of the Eden rebellion. Wash, wash, wash the stain away. Shout it out!

     

    We can take this wonderful wakin’ up morning and realize that death does not define us. We can take this pesach and gain our freedom. The resources of these two great faiths are available to us, but they come with so much damned baggage. So much institutional hoohah.

    Even so. I’ll stand with those who find death only a part of the journey. I’ll stand with those who know Pharaoh lives in our own heart and the journey lies in turning him from dictator to collaborator.

    Sure. I believe those things. They’re important.

     

    I have a simpler heart I’ve learned. One not so enmeshed. I recognize the wonder, the miracle of elemental creation. I see the Sun and its life-giving power. I feel Mother Earth under my feet, responsive to my hands, bearing all I need for this life, the one right here, right now. Ichi-go, Ichi-e. I see the moon in the darkness. I feel its gentle lunar power ripping whole oceans from here to there.

    I do not need to go further than these. I do. But I do not need to. I could live happily with giving only them reverence. With realizing awe only in their presence. With letting them think about my afterlife. About Kate’s.

    Death and life. Oppression and liberation. Yes. Important, big questions. Journeys of a lifetime. But, too. Following the water course way. Living life as it comes, letting it flow beneath and around and with our feet, our body, our heart, our mind. I’ll flow with the Taoist while I stand with those others and their ways. Seems strange I know, but that’s the spot I’ve come to for right now.

     

     


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  • Certainty

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and Kate’s Yahrzeit Moon

    after the election, 2016

    Saturday gratefuls: Hoo, boy. Workout on Friday. Good, but hard. Two sets. Wondering whether I need to go to 3. Got my cardio up. Well up. 300 minutes in the last week. 5 hours. Love the energy boost a working or partly working thyroid gives. Jackie. Haircut. She’s a sweetheart. She said of Kate, “I miss her flipping you off.” Me, too.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: April

     

     

    Decided two things. 1. Write Ancientrails and workout. See where the day goes after. 2. Make one new recipe and one new salad each week. On 2. Still trying to navigate cooking for one, yet liking to cook. Difficult. Finishing the first phase of kitchen reassemble today and tomorrow. Gonna. Get. It. Done.

    Even though my energy level has improved a lot, my stamina is still not great. Plus I find myself easily overwhelmed with trying to imagine a good way of replacing items in the cabinets. Plan to push past that and finish. Things can always get moved later if I don’t like their location.

    I would also like to get the remaining common room papers at least moved out of the room, set up the Roomba. Let the common room enter its useful period. May hang some art if I have energy left. Still have to call Dave for the couch reupholstery. And Peter needs to come and hang two lamps. Chandelier coming later.

    Plan to get some firewood today, too. Not a lot, enough for two or three fires. See how my lungs handle it. Should be ok, but…

     

    To Speak for the Trees is a feminist work of top order. Also a work about claiming and owning your own gifts. And, not coincidentally, a powerful expression of the Celtic cultural deposit. Very similar to the First Nations in kind and quality. In fact, the Celtic experience in the British Isles has many similarities to the Native experience in the U.S.

    Although their near genocide happened much further back in time. The Romans drove them into Wales and up into Scotland, down into Cornwall. The Vikings attacked what is now Ireland. Where the red hair comes from. Then the Roman Catholic Church, allied with the Anglo-Saxons, drove the ancient Celtic faith often literally underground, building their churches over holy wells and other sacred spots. The bastards.

    The old Celtic culture lasted longest in Wales, parts of Scotland, and in the Gaeltalk part of Ireland. Brittany and Galicia, in France and Spain respectively, as well.

    Beresford-Kroger writes of her education in the old ways in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s as the final waning of Druidic lore and the old Celtic culture. She is in my pantheon of heroines. Be like Diana.

     

    Setting out on another semester of classes at the Kabbalah Experience: Sefer Yetzirah III and Diving Deep into the Stars or Astrology and Kabbalah III. Having fun with these. Guess you could call it a quasi-hobby. Quasi because it’s too serious for fun and too much fun to be serious. I really like these classes, the strange world they open up. And, as David says, even if you’re agnostic about astrology you’re still learning something about yourself, aren’t you? I am.

    Because I’ve dipped a foot (way more than a toe by this point) into Kabbalah, astrology, and tarot, when I saw the sign for new moon intuitive readings, I thought, what the hell? $20 for 15 minutes. Just down from Jackie’s hair salon.

    Put my money down. Get quiet, then when you’re ready, say your name three times. Charles Buckman-Ellis. Charles Buckman-Ellis. Charles Buckman-Ellis. You’re at a big turning point. Well, yes. You’re a strong psychic, you could do this work. Oh? I need to lean into certainty. That’s probably true. Ha ha.

    After I told her Kate died a year ago, she said Kate reassures me, wants me to know that’s she fine, better than fine. Dancing. She taps me on the left shoulder sometimes. She wants me to live my own life. I have a strong core and that new life has begun to blossom. Mary, the psychic, mentioned a rose, but I saw a lotus opening.

    Not sure what to make of it. Some of what she said made me think she had read something of me. The part about certainty in particular. And, the time of a big turning point. Though I suppose we’re all always at some turning point or another. Still. I liked hearing  Kate reassured me even if I doubted it. Because I’d like it to be true. An odd time, definitely worth $20.

     

     

     

     

     


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  • Wait

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and Kate’s Yahrzeit Moon

    Friday gratefuls: Luke. CBE. The Thursday mussar group. Gracie and Leo, two dogs also learning mussar. Kep, the sweet boy. David Sanders. Being where I need to be. Taking a breath. Or, two. To Speak for the Trees. Ancient Celtic wisdom. Relevant today. Thanks, Tom. The Lodgepoles and the Aspens on this property. The Willows along Maxwell Creek. The Bristlecone Pine on Mt. Evans.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Authenticity

     

     

    Not quite done with David Sanders. Close, though. The result may be, probably will be, I’m doing fine. Things will be good with my heart and my life. This meshes well with my levothyroxine boosted energy level, the coming of spring.

    Punta Arenas, Argentina 2011

    Even Kate’s yahrzeit though a sad memory does signal a year’s worth of time to integrate her loss. Time I’ve used as best I can. The grief has not passed, nor do I expect it to. Or, want it to. That sudden welling of tears has a direct heart link with her, with our marriage, with our love. I imagine the intensity of those moments will continue to diminish, but I don’t expect them to disappear.

    As I explained earlier, due to the Jewish leap year her Jewish yahrzeit will not happen until May 1st. This April 12th though I’m lighting two 24 hour yahrzeit candles, one for her and one for our marriage. There is that third aspect of our life together, our usness, our mutual decision making, the frisson of our days and nights, the interactivity and mutuality, that also perishes.

    No longer do we have a money meeting that parses our financial life. No longer do we consider how to celebrate our anniversary. Whether to go on another cruise. Hold hands in the car. Sleep together. Agonize over illness, celebrate joyfully for our grandchildren, children, dogs. Dead, too. And, grieved. I lost my partner. My best buddy.

    Ushuaia, Southern most town in the Americas. 2011

    My soulmate. Yes, corny as that phrase is. Yes. We helped each other grow. Consoled each other in tough times. Had the best interests of the other at heart. When I made a bad turn right in front of an oncoming car, I dithered about whether I should be driving. “Any one could have done that.” Oh.

    Death has such finality. No do overs. No matter how much desired. I thought I already knew that, but no. I had to learn it again.

     

    Sorta strayed from the main point there. Though not without good reason. Part of my question about what comes next lies entangled with the process of grieving. But not all. Not even most. It is my life, no matter the thread of sorrow now woven into it.

    Feeling more confident about emergence. That as I live into the redone house, a less restricted post-Covid life (will it ever be really over?), when I feel my way into new possibilities as they become apparent, that the new, an extension of the old, of course, how can it not be, will declare itself. Might be a quiet embrace. Could be a noisy clamoring. Look what I’m up to now! Don’t know. Will, as Seoah would say, wait and see. Wu wei.

     

    A word about To Speak for The Trees. This book, which I discovered after reading an article forwarded by Tom Crane, feels like a hook, a wu wei moment. Oh, yes. Celtic thought. I’d forgotten. Laid it aside. Yet here is this woman, about my age, Diana Beresford-Kroger, recounting her immersion in the Celtic life in Lisheen, Ireland. And how that immersion fed her life as a scientist, as a keeper of rare trees. How it might still feed us all.

    Stirrings. Threads. Links. Weaving themselves again, still, into my days. I await guidance. With no expectations. Giving it over to the days as they come and go. Waiting.


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  • No Wonder

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring and Seoah’s Citizenship Moon

    Saturday gratefuls: Alan. Boredom. Sadness. Missing Kate. Clean Kep, so playful in the morning. The up and the down of grief. Warm weather. More Snow coming. Ruby. Her need for the bad fuel. Habituation, the helpful and the unhelpful. Getting to the inflection point. The delicacy of an early Morning blue Sky over Black Mountain.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Boredom

     

    Feeling my way into boredom, sadness, and grief. Sounds like a devil’s potion moving toward despair, but I don’t think so. Instead it feels like my psyche trying to break free.

    Yes, I sat and cried yesterday afternoon. In that time after my nap and before evening when I feel. Pointless. Bored. Don’t want to read. Don’t want to watch TV. (a good feeling at that hour.) Don’t want to study. Don’t want to write.

    Pointless. I have no purpose, no way forward. Just traveling. Walking. Slow. Along the ancientrail of longing for. Something. I know not what.

    That delicate blue Sky has a few puffs of Cumulus now, lit up by a turning Earth revealing the Sun’s presence to start a new day. Whirling through the vacuum of space around and around and around. Following the Light Giver like a trapped Angel. As all the Angels and their Light Giver twirl outward from their home. A journey of ancient celestial mechanics. Glory. Glory. Glory. Hallelujah.

    This journey older by far than the Laramide Orogeny, one that places the whole of Earthly Creation in its proper perspective. Deer Creek Canyon and its consolation nods to its Progenitor.

    Purpose and purposelessness burn away. Sadness and grief burn away. Life itself burns away. We travel because we are in the journey and of its Way. The path is our meaning and our destruction. Like sadness and grief.

    See the Self here. On a high velocity spaceship created not by rocket science. No. But by the forces that made possible the rocket scientist herself. Made possible that Fish clambering across the liminal zone between Water and Land. Made possible that one-celled Creature. Swimming. And even then the journey had long been underway.

    Ah. No wonder the Taoist says follow the Water.

     


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  • the moment when change is possible

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc and the Moon of Seoah’s Citizenship

    Babar on Dick Cavett, Jon Olson, Spark Gallery

    Sunday gratefuls: Jon. Spark Gallery. Tom Liker. His paintings. Santa Fe Art District in Denver. Rocky Yama Sushi. Rabbi Jamie. Divorcing. Luke. The Mussar group. MVP. Snow. Cold. The Ancient Brothers. David Sanders. Kep. Ukraine. Zelensky. Kate, always Kate. Rigel. Kristine. Kristie. Erleada. Orgovyx. Prostate cancer. Deer Creek Canyon. Living with, living in spite of, living into. Living.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Rabbi Jamie

    Tarot: Two of Vessels, Attraction

     

    Accent acute. Accent grave. The cedilla. Diacritical markings. “The word diacritic is a derivative of Greek diakritikos, meaning “separative” or “able to distinguish,” which is based on the prefix dia-, meaning “through” or “across,” and the verb krinein, “to separate.”” Merriam-Webster

    Kairos. Another Greek word. This one often used in theology, there translated as crisis. This from wikipedia: ‘the right, critical, or opportune moment’. In modern Greek, kairos also means ‘weather’. It is one of two words that the ancient Greeks had for ‘time’; the other being chronos. Another translation: the moment when change is possible.

    We have lived for this whole millennium in interesting times. Since 9/11/2001. That was the first and so far most impactful inflection point. It is easy to separate, to distinguish between the pre-9/11 world and its aftermath in which we still live.

    It was a kairos moment, a moment when change was possible, and we chose, through the dark machinations of Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, and their likable stooge, George Bush, Osama Bin Laden’s exact goal: an asymmetrical war considered a holy war, or. better, an unholy war against Muslim’s who co-opted the idea of jihad.

    We were in the right; they were in the wrong. Let’s go get’em! Now 21 years later the wreckage of our intervention has left smoking ruins in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and to a lesser extent in Lebanon and Palestine. We’ve spent lives, a trillion dollars or two, but who’s counting, and our reputation as a beacon of liberty. Coming well after another stupid war, the Vietnamese War, these twenty one years have eroded the idea of democracy and helped fuel the rise of oligarchs and autocrats.

    Kairos II. A macro problem, let’s call it. Because the next big shock was microscopic, a virus. Can’t even see the damned thing. We’re still not done with it, may never be done with it, and millions have died world wide. We’ve holed up in our houses, become afraid of our neighbors and friends, let alone the maskless vigilantes who so badly misunderstand liberty that they’re dying by the thousands without needing to.

    Kairos III. Sorta in the middle of all this, what?, horror? George Floyd. In my former home town, Minneapolis. The San Francisco of the Wheat Belt, a progressive’s dream city if there ever was one. Black Lives Matter. Riots and protests. All over the world. Where did we put that beacon anyhow?

    Of course riding high above all this was Kairo Prime of our time, climate change. Super wildfires. Ocean rise. Tumbling condos. Jacked up hurricanes and tornadoes. Changing weather patterns. A lot of record warmth. Uneven rains, 800 year droughts. Geez.

    We got a lot going on here as I head into my 75th year. Three quarters of a century and I’ve never seen any time like these last twenty. Even the Vietnam War and the movement seem preparatory, not diacritical as I once thought.

    And I have grandchildren. Who have to live into this world we’ve birthed. Yes, none of this had to happen. But cooler heads did not prevail and we got global warming. Peaceniks failed and we got forever wars. The civil rights era came up short and we got George Floyd, Trayon Martin, Ahmaud Arberry. How do I sit down with Ruth and Gabe and say sorry?

    I really, really don’t know. Yes, of course love. Yes, of course compassion. Yes, of course justice. Knowing this from the jump doesn’t seem to have saved me from implication as a failure in every kairotic moment, every event diacritically identified here.

    And, I’m tired. Not sure I have the eagerness or the energy necessary for another fight. Without a fight how can I hope to live with myself in my last quarter century? Or so.

    Yet. Joy. Patience. Loving kindness. Honor. Holiness. Also necessary. Perhaps I can evoke, provoke those? Keep tossing virtues into the collective until something catches fire? I don’t know and I don’t pretend to know.

    I do know that I cannot be silent, nor complicit. The chief sins of our age.

     


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  • Soul

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc and the 3/4 Moon

    Thursday gratefuls: Forgot Wednesday. David Sanders. Jodi. The new kitchen. The furniture rearranging and moving. Herme going on the wall sometime in March. Along with that Arts and Crafts chandelier being hung. Kep. A very good boy. Rigel, returned to her constellation. Kate, always Kate. Snow and Cold. A Minnesota winter week for Shadow Mountain. Great sleeping.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The heart/mind

    Tarot: The Knight of Bows

     

    I’m a fence sitter when it comes to ideas. I can hold the polarities, as kabbalah teaches, but when it comes to saying yes to something like the soul, I shy away.

    Seems it went like this. Freshman philosophy at Wabash. All those proofs for the existence of God that Father Ed gave me my senior year of high school. That I loved. That seemed clear and irrefutable. Pretty refutable. After that, Camus.

    Reinforcing Camus was the flat earth metaphysics of the logic positivists and the linguistic analysts. Wittgenstein: That of which we cannot speak, we must be silent. I inhaled.

    No god. Or, if there was one they weren’t very good at their job. Anyhow, I became an enlightenment guy, empiricist full stop. Skeptical, sometimes veering into nihilism, sometimes cynicism. Actually, a sort of lonely place.

    Appleton, Wisconsin. Married, deeply unhappy. Working in a paper mill cutting rags to make paper for the U.S. Treasury. Drinking way too much. Trying to live with the open marriage I entered into willingly. In my head. But not in my heart. In a city I could not embrace.

    Judy and I decided to part ways, but not divorce. I’d find politics and the church. The politics led me to seminary. A Kierkegaardian moment gave me a window into the Christian faith without having to accept the metaphysics. I’d live as if I believed.

    Worked. I took a deep, deep dive into Christian theology, ethics, mystical thought. Practiced several forms of mediation like lectio divina, the Jesus Prayer, contemplating the ineffability of God.

    Worked until it didn’t. I began searching in my heritage, my Celtic heritage for writing ideas. Found the Great Wheel of the Seasons. This time I not only inhaled. I held it in. Got giddy. A new way of looking at the world, an animistic way, a pagan way. Not Christian. Oops.

    Not like Judaism. Where your belief in God is your business. Even for Rabbi’s. Had to bale. Lucky I met Kate. She gave me a parachute out of a difficult situation. Kate though.

    She was a flat earther, too. A scientist. A mathematician. A healer. And my love. She took to the animist idea, the live close to the earth, live with animals. Dogs in particular. Bees. We loved each other into the land of Andover. Growing vegetables. Planting an orchard. Making our own cutting gardens. Seeding much of our front yard with prairie flowers and grasses. Harvesting honey. Building a fire pit for those cool Minnesota evenings.

    Kate was also a Jew. A convert when she was thirty. A Jew of the heart. She went to a service at Temple Israel and began to cry. She felt at home. Kate was not a cryer. Probably a mystical experience in retrospect.

    During our Andover years we worshiped Mother Earth and Father Sun. In the old way. By working with them to grow food, to enhance the beauty of our home. Those years with hands in the soil, seeds and seedlings our tools, made me-and her-into confirmed animist/pagans.

    Until we moved to the Mountains. It was time to take on new masks and tasks. We stumbled upon Congregation Beth Evergreen late in our first year here. Kate found a home for her Jewish soul. And I found a home for my animist/pagan one.

    All this to get to one sentence: I’m going to live as if evolutionary panentheism and the notion of a soul are true. Said another way, I’m going to live into them.

     

     


    Fourth Phase Judaism Kabbalah Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Shadow Mountain