Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Friends, Woolly Mammoths

Floating Away to Blue Cloud Abbey

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Imbolc                              Waning Cold Moon’

Last day at home until Sunday.  Headed out to Blue Cloud Abbey, where Kathleen Norris wrote at least two books.  The Abbey’s buildings are 1960’s modernist, most like public elementary schools, save for the Abbey church which has some panache.  The Abbey church, the guest house and the monastic facilities sit on the highest point for miles.  After sundown, the lights of small towns faraway twinkle.

I’m looking forward to an actual retreat with some quiet time spent on meditation and my own spiritual path.  I haven’t done one of those in a long time, too long.  Love is on my mind, right now, so I’ll plan to spend some contemplative time with how it is in my life and how I offer it to others.  This Valentine’s Day, my 63rd birthday, feels like a spur to thinking about love, a bit unusual for me since I’m normally focused on my birthday.  Anyhow, I have a new Parabola focused on love that I’m taking with me.

Woolly Brother Mark Odegard has taken his magic bus to the shores of the  Pacific Ocean outside Puerto Vallarta.  His journey, a pilgrim’s really, takes him where his vision beckons.  I admire his willingness to open himself to the world and to others, a life lived embracing life.  Very Zorba.  And Zorba is one of my heroes.

Aging, Humanities, Letters, Writing

Back To School

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Imbolc                                  Waning Cold Moon

The snow has stopped.  Our neighbors, the Perlich’s, had relatives visiting today with snowmobiles which they happily drove on the Perlich’s lot.  I hope it was to make Greg feel better.   By city ordinance snowmobiles cannot come below a street about a mile north of us, but in this situation I won’t complain.

Chapters 2 and 3 in Wheelock completed.  That means I’ve copied declensions for 1st and second declension nouns, taken a shot at learning them, but count on repetition over time to cement the case endings.  I’ve also read about grammar, syntax and word order.   Then Wheelock has sentences from Latin writers like Horace, Catullus, Phaedres.  My job is to translate them.  At the end of the Latin sentences are sentences in English to be translated into Latin.  After this, once for each chapter, there is a paragraph, again from a Latin man of letters.  Today it was Horace.  I don’t recall yesterday’s.

This work demands nose to the grind stone type studying.  Create flash cards.  Review flash cards.  Copy declensions.  Use declensions.  Learn grammar.  Use grammar.  Translate from and into.  It feels like real studying, which it is, I guess.

So far, I like it.  A lot, actually.  In fact I’m a little surprised at how much I like it.

The novel  keeps on spooling out, nearing mid-way or somewhere close.  I plan to write on it during the retreat using my handy net book and my take along keyboard.  I suppose I’ll study some Latin there, too.  Very appropriate at a Benedictine monastery where Latin is still a living language.  Sort of.

Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel

Imbolc 2010

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Imbolc                                            Waning Cold Moon

Though daytime begins to gradually increase right after the Winter Solstice, it is not until Imbolc that we begin to see actual signs of life’s return.  An early indication of life’s strong statement against the inertia of the cold comes as ewe’s become pregnant, have life within their bellies–imbolc.  Not many of us (Gentlemen Jim Johnson excepted, of course) have pregnant sheep in our lives, so this early pointer to the green means little to us.

The weather in Celtic lands had rain and chilly, but not cold, weather in these months, so the grass and plant life would begin to emerge.  Here in Minnesota this week often has some of the coldest temperatures of the year and snow is far from unusual.

The only U.S. ritual I know of directly related to Imbolc is Punxsutwaney Phil. Click this link for a direct immersion in this small Pennsylvania town which still celebrates an animal, the woodchuck, who comes up from a hole in the ground and checks the weather to give an indication of winter’s length.  His prediction stretches out six weeks which takes us close to the time of the spring equinox on or about March 20th.  In other words he predicts the weather during the season of Imbolc.

It’s been a while since I’ve written about my favorite Celtic goddess, Brigit.  This is her holiday and the candles in the picture here allude to the sacred fire, kept burning day and night, for at least 1,000 years and probably much longer, in her honor in the Irish county Kildare.  Brigit is a triple goddess, common in Celtic lore; she is the goddess of the smithy, the hearth and the poet.

The link between these aspects of her is fire and creativity.  The smith, in the time of the ancient Celts was a wonder worker, developing strong tools, weapons and jewelry for the people.  The hearth is the center of domestic life and the Irish put it out once a year and relit it from a large bonfire built on the sacred hill at Tara.  Finally, the poet, a crucial element in Celtic political and creative life, drew his or her inspiration from the holy fire of Brigit’s presence.

Imbolc, called Candlemas by Catholics, is a good time to examine the creative projects in your life:  at work, at home, in any location where you reach in to  your Self and offer something back to the world.  You may want Brigit to participate with you in that search, or you may want St. Brigit, the Catholic saint named after her.

Live into this holiday and this creative season as a person on fire.

Faith and Spirituality

A Convention of Former Therapists and Ex-Wives

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Winter                                            Waning Cold Moon

Strange event today at Groveland.  An old therapist of mine showed up to hear me preach.  An ex-Roman Catholic priest, he came into my life while I was still reeling from a barrage of self-inflicted wounds.  His therapeutic approach was problem-focused, that is, we always discussed what was the matter with me.  In therapy with him I learned that this approach didn’t function well overall for me.  He was a good listener and empathetic, too.  It was, though, over against that school of psychological thought that I sought out a Jungian and found John Desteian.

On thinking about it further I wondered what it would be like to have an event where all my old therapists showed up.  If I added in ex-wives, I could fill a small lecture hall.  What might we discuss? The points I refused to acknowledge.  The ground I could have covered more quickly if I’d only listened.  Or, might we discuss the essential fragility of the human condition, its inevitable pressures on our small selves.  We might have a laugh at the man I was and perhaps, I hope, drink a cup of tea to the man I have become.

Still doubting.  Still vulnerable.  Still fragile.  Yes, but still here, too.

Faith and Spirituality, Friends, Weather +Climate, Woolly Mammoths

The Archaeology of Snow

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Winter                                                   Waning Cold Moon

As the Cold Moon begins to wane, so will the bitterness of our winter,  sliding toward warmer averages, probably more snow, certainly no green for another month plus anyhow.  This winter, like winters of yore, we still have November snow Add Newlayered like archaeological remains below December and those below January.  Even with increased temps we will, most likely, bury these further under a February layer and March until we have five months here, mingled compressed, all vulnerable to the sun that rises higher concentrating its blessing until we discover once again that things still grow here.

Preached this morning at Groveland.  A repeat of Roots of Liberalism.  I wrote this piece originally for Groveland, but ended up presenting it in Wayzata last Labor Day Sunday.  My October date with Groveland, when I would have given it there, they asked me to do some consulting, help them get on top of their disintegrating community.  Too much work for too few volunteers, an old churchbane.  No easy answers, but they’re still at it.

When I presented Roots in Wayzata, it went over so well I felt brilliant for an entire afternoon.  Even then, though, I felt near the end I had reached beyond the patience level of the average listener and I felt the same way today.  The reaction today was less effusive and the discussion less rich, but I felt heard again.  Now I can move forward and get to work on Liberalism, part II:  the present.  Due near the end of March.

Buddy Mark Odegard writes about reading on the beaches of Puerto Vallerta.  He believes we should all emulate the small birds who have the good sense to emigrate during the bleak season to warmer climes.  When I grip the steering wheel with white knuckles while driving on ice, I agree with him.

Family, Writing

Kate

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Winter                                             Full Cold Moon

Kate goes back to work on Monday, February 1st.  Right now I believe she’ll do ok.  Her hip injections–cortisone–have helped.  Her neck has been fine during this period, but she will have to return to odd angles while looking into young eyes, ears and throats.  The computer ergonomics in the office are not ideal for her either.  She’s gotten more and more exercise in over the last few weeks and I hope that means that her stamina is sufficient.

We’ll take it, as they say, a day at a time.

I wish I didn’t have the Woolly Retreat coming up over the weekend, but she’s not working weekends, at least not right now, so there will only be Thursday and Friday nights when I’m not here.  Of course, if she experience difficulty, I’ll give it a miss.

The novel keeps on coming.  In retrospect I think it was the novel that kept me up the other night.  Since I write without much of a plan, it’s quite easy for me to write myself into a corner, or to realize that early ideas, some woven into much of what I’ve written, no longer work.  Both happened with this one.

Since I’m nearing what will be the middle of the book in number of words, the arc of the story has to reach a certain dramatic point here and I had to fiddle with a good bit of the already written material to make that possible.  Part of the change, inevitable really, involves pruning excess characters, locales and plot lines.  When I did this, I reduced the plot lines to three, much easier for a reader to follow.  I also created a key  plot point that will allow all these plot lines to converge further along, and I hope, diverge again as I set up the second book.

Asia, Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Wheel, permaculture

Ordinary Time

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Winter                              Full Cold Moon

In just two days those of us who follow the Celtic calendar will celebrate the coming of Imbolc.  I’ll write more about it on Monday, but I wanted to note here the difference in timber and resonance between post-Epiphany January and the holiseason just ended.  We move now into the ordinary days, days when the sense of expectation and sacred presence relies more on our private rituals, our own holydays.

In my own case, for example, Valentine’s Day lends this time period a certain magic as its pre-birthday spirit invades the present.  Also, for me and my fellow Woolly Mammoths, this next week marks our annual retreat, so we get ready for it, this time again at Blue Cloud Monastery in South Dakota.  It is, too, for those with any presence in the Chinese world, just a couple of weeks before the beginning of the spring festival, or, as we know it here, Chinese New Years.  This year it begins on my birthday.

Imbolc, too, has sacred resonance and its six week period marks the beginning of the growing season here as seeds for certain long growing season vegetables like leeks must get started.

Family

A Guy Thing

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Winter                                        Full Cold Moon

Tires for our 4WD Tundra, knobby tough guys, weigh a lot.  Guiding them onto their small, threaded mounts required three tries and two different efforts with the jack.  Finally, they were on.   They have a nifty device to prevent rust, a washered nut with a stainless steel crown that projects out from the wheel.  Made me wonder why all vehicles don’t use the same system.

When I picked up the tire at Carlson Toyota, I thought about telling them that the accelerator pedals on both of our vehicles work fine.  They might need a little bucking up right now.  Forgot.

Composted the potatoes that froze and thawed, perhaps three dozen altogether.  Next year’s potatoes will stay inside.

When we had our garage door opener in the first bay replaced a week ago, the old one stayed behind and needed dismantling before it  could be taken by the trash man (solid waste professional).  I did that, too.  It was a guy morning which had me wondering once more about how genitals predispose us toward particular tasks.

The cookies Kate made have white chocolate and macadamia nuts.  So good she’d better not make them again.

Family

Awake

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Winter                            Full Cold Moon

Every once in a while, not often, say every two-three months I can’t get to sleep.  I’ve not discerned any pattern in this over the years.  I’m not ruminating.  I’m not anxious.  Sleep will not come.  Last night was one of those nights.

Around 2 am, I gave up, got up and read.  I like the quiet late in the night, the sense of isolation and a sort of sneaky pleasure in doing something  off normal.  At times I think I should turn my days around and sleep in the morning and stay up very late and write.  Perhaps I will someday to see how it works.  Could be hard on Kate though.

Kate’s upstairs using our new Kitchen-aid to make special cookies for me as a thank-you for help during her recovery from surgery.  Not needed, but welcome.  They have white chocolate in them.

My 63 birthday comes on Valentine’s Day.  We’ve made plans for a meal at Azia, an Asian fusion and sushi bar at 26th and Nicollet.

Now I’m off to mount the new tire and replace Kate’s license plates on the truck.

Aging, Politics, Weather +Climate

The lustre of mid-day

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Winter                                             Full Cold Moon

The full cold moon now has -5 temps under its light.  When there’s snow on the ground and a full moon in the sky, I always think of Twas’ The Night Before Christmas:  And the moon on the new fallen snow gave a lustre of midday to objects below.  Writing that reminded me of a performance I gave of that poem with our high school concert band in the background.  Scared me to death and I didn’t like it.  Acting I loved, but performing to music–not at all.

I surprised my 3 year old granddaughter last week with the news that Grandpa did modern dance in college, performing in front of an audience several times.  My mind says yes I did, my body insists it could never have done that.  It was fun.

Obama.  Our government.  I have known for decades now, as have many of my contemporaries that our system of government broke down long ago.  There are many reasons:  money, lobbyists, an archaic method of representing voters wishes, an apathetic citizenry, the practice of the big lie.  In the past I subscribed to the idea of radical change, a dramatic overhaul of our system, one that would replace it with, say, democratic socialism or a scheme in which the whole of Amerika broke down into smaller regional states.

With the passing years I have lost my faith in radical change in two ways.  One, I doubt the chance of creating it.  Two, and more fundamentally, I’m not convinced that my radical change would not morph into something terrible, perhaps in a different way, but still terrible.  I suppose this could lead to despair or reasoned apathy, but I’m not cut from that cloth.  In a bad situation you use the tools you have and  work for the best change you can expect.

It may be that within the remaining years of my lifetime that  the stars will align  and dramatic change will be possible.  I doubt it, but it could happen.  If it does, I’m there.  Even so, I’m not sanguine about a better world.

This world, this one world, the only world we have must always be enough and not even close to enough.  We must live in it as if it is enough; we must work for it as if it’s not even close.