Circumcise the flesh of your foreskin, and that shall be the mark of the covenant between you and me.

June 6, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

68 bar falls 29.22 2mph SSW dew-point 62 Beltane, cloudy and rainy

Waxing Crescent of the Flower Moon (English)

Coming back from a journey throws the traveler back into daily life, matters that have been suspended on the road. This trip is no exception. Stefan’s wife, Lonnie, has surgery today for her adenocarcinoma. Kate’s got some problems at work. The tomato plant has not fruited. E-mail to catch up on. That pesky novel still calling to me. That sort of thing.

Let’s go back to the bris for a minute.

Here is the passage from the Torah that provides the theological rationale. It comes from Genesis 17:

1 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to him and said: “I am God the Almighty. Walk in my presence and be blameless. 2 Between you and me I will establish my covenant, and I will multiply you exceedingly.” 3 When Abram prostrated himself, God continued to speak to him: 4 “My covenant with you is this: you are to become the father of a host of nations. 5 2 No longer shall you be called Abram; your name shall be Abraham, for I am making you the father of a host of nations. 6 I will render you exceedingly fertile; I will make nations of you; kings shall stem from you. 7 I will maintain my covenant with you and your descendants after you throughout the ages as an everlasting pact, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. 8 I will give to you and to your descendants after you the land in which you are now staying, the whole land of Canaan, as a permanent possession; and I will be their God.” 9 God also said to Abraham: “On your part, you and your descendants after you must keep my covenant throughout the ages. 10 This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you that you must keep: every male among you shall be circumcised. 11 Circumcise the flesh of your foreskin, and that shall be the mark of the covenant between you and me. 12 Throughout the ages, every male among you, when he is eight days old, shall be circumcised, including houseborn slaves and those acquired with money from any foreigner who is not of your blood. 13 Yes, both the houseborn slaves and those acquired with money must be circumcised. Thus my covenant shall be in your flesh as an everlasting pact. 14 If a male is uncircumcised, that is, if the flesh of his foreskin has not been cut away, such a one shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.”

Verse 10 and 14 have the operative language. (no pun intended) First, circumcision is a sign of the covenant between Yahweh and the descendants of Abraham and Sara. Second, Gabe, in order to not be cut off from his people had to have his foreskin circumcised.

In the living room of Jon and Jen’s home the mohel, Jay Feder, set his instruments on a wooden table top. I asked him questions and in the process he and I bonded over our shared knowledge. Educated in several yeshiva and, for the purpose of the bris, in Jerusalem, Jay, a full time jeweler, is a bright and learned man. He’s also very funny.

His shtick included these off hand remarks, “Oh, I see Adrian (a six month old boy) is here. I hope he doesn’t remember me!” When Jon laid Gabe on the pillow (where Jay performs the circumcision), he laid him with his head toward Jay, who said, “So. Do you like his nose? You’re ok with it shorter?” Jon turned Gabe around on the pillow. He then turned to Jon and said, “All right. The father performs the bris. Are you ready?” And so on.

The chair in front of the table with the cloth on it is the Elijah chair. I asked Jay the significance of the Elijah chair. He told me the story of Elijah. You may remember Elijah. He challenged Ahab and his priest, Obadiah, to a contest of efficacy, their gods, Baal and Ahserah, against his, Yahweh. Long story short. Yahweh sends down fire and burns a sacrifical bull, and not only the bull, but the altar as well. Baal and Asherah did not. Later on, however, Elijah complains to Yahweh that the people of Israel have not been keeping the covenant. After this comment, Elijah suffers a demotion and has to anoint his student, Elisha, as his successor.

Later, Elijah leaves earth for heaven in a whirlwind, on a chariot of fire. He is the only character in the Tanakh who does not die. Rabbinic scholars have made much of the study of Elijah and they conclude that Elijah became a perpetual witness to those events in Jewish ritual life that affirm the covenant. “The rabbis say this may be a reward or it may be a punishment.” Elijah’s chair, then, gives concrete expression to Elijah’s presence at this most basic of all affirmations of the Abrahamic covenant.

This is Jon (my stepson) and Gabe with his knitted yarmulke. I wore one, too, but I don’t have a picture. Asked about the significance of the yarmulke, Jay said, “There are many answers, but one I like is that it shows where we stop and God takes over.”

After the bris itself, Gabe received his Hebrew name, Gavriel. This is Jon and Jen, Ruth and Gabe with Jay giving Gabe several sips of sweet wine.

Why wine? Glad you asked, Jay said. “The body starts deteriorating from the moment of birth until it finally gives up and dies. It is the reverse in the spiritual life. As life goes on our spiritual life becomes richer and richer until we make the transition after death. Wine is one of the things we know that follows the same path. As it gets older and older, it gets better and better.”

One of the things I admire and respect about Judaism is its emphasis on home-based worship and ritual. This event sacralized Jon and Jen’s living room. While Jay sang some of the blessings, I saw many of Jon and Jen’s neighbors pass by on the street. It was an interesting blend of cultures.

Travel

Tales to Tell, But Not Before I Sleep

June 5, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

65 bar falls 29.40 1mph NNE dewpoint 63 Beltane, cool and rainy

New Moon

A quick note to say I’m home. I have more to say about the bris and tales to tell about the rest of journey, too. But not now. It’s too late.

Family

Jay, the Mohel

June 3, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

Quite an afternoon and early evening.

At 3:30 Gabe had his first post hospital infusion of factor 8, the clotting factor largely absent from his blood. We drove a circuitous route through the new homes built on the site of the old Stapleton Airport.

We crossed out of that development into a poorer neighborhood, the one in which Jon and Jen both teach. It is also the location of a former Army base now occupied by the university of Colorado. It is also the site of the old Army hospital plus several new buildings that now constitute the University hospital.

In an old Army hospital building, with a wonderful Art Deco lobby, and old, undecorated halls and rooms is the hemophilia and thrombosis center. In there the women who staff it made kind noises and praised Gabe’s beauty.

We went back into a procedure room and there the nurse practitioner found a vein near Gabe’s left ear and slid in a needle attached to a line. She first drew blood to retest his factor level (occasional misdiagnosis), then inserted the hypodermic containing the factor into the line and pushed it into his bloodstream.

It works immediately and in fact aids in clotting the puncture created by the needle.

Gabe whimpered, then went quiet. In a minute Amy had a gauze patch over the puncture site and held it for about five minutes, just to be sure.

2 hours later, at Jon and Jen’s home, Rabbi and Jeweler, Jay performed a wonderful ritual. Jay and I hit it off. I held Gabe’s legs while Jay, the mohel, cut the foreskin in two practiced movements. There’s more to this, but I’m in a hotel lobby and I feel the need to move on. Later.

Family, GeekWorld, Politics

Liberalism on the Rise

June 3, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

Double tree has computers, but they come out in this really big font and I can’t figure out how to decrease the size. So, I’ll. just. shout. it. out. o. k. ?

When I left Jon and Jen’s last night, Barb was still at the ER at University Hospital. I’m headed over there now to help with housecleaning, so I’ll find out what happened.

There’s a line now at the computers. That’s what comes with socialism, when everything’s free. Or, at least when the cost is hidden. Gal just stood, drinking coffee, looking at me. Passive aggressive.

Read the newspaper this morning about the economy. Bad news. Which is good news for Democrats. Also, an interesting article by somebody named Jonathan Goldberg. He’s an editor of the National Review and author of a book, Liberal Fascism.

His perspective is that conservativism will rise again. He said over and over that Republican does not equal conservatism. The current administration spent like “a pimp with a week to live.” A colorful metaphor. I suspect the gut of his argument is correct, however, and that is that conservatism is a part of the American ethos and will only be challenged by a liberal ascendancy, not obliterated.

We can only hope that first, the ascendancy will happen, and that it will produce affects that have a long shelf life, like Social Security and Medicare. Which do need to get fixed. Amen.

OK. Out for now. See you on the flipside of the bris.

Family

In Crip’s Territory

June 2, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

At Jon and Jen’s. Held Gabe for an hour. We had guy to guy chats, his little blue eyes looking up and his mouth forming that curve babies use to indicate they know where communication comes from. He’s swaddled now and in his downstairs bed.

A crack of thunder, a lightning flash and rain. Nice cool down. A fan is on so the room has a nice cross breeze. Denver is high and the altitude thinner so sunburn and heat pound on bare human flesh. Likewise, though, in the evening, once the sun goes down, a pleasant coolness settles over the city. With few bugs summer evenings have a high human pleasure index.

Jen’s mom, Barb cut her foot on a hotel door. She went to Urgent Care where they couldn’t stop the bleeding. Ironic, eh, with little hemophiliac Gabe about to have his bris tomorrow? So, Jen has left to take Barb to the University ER.

We had plans to go to a Brazilian steak house, but we’ve decided on take-out sushi instead. Jon’s taken off to get the sushi. He’ll take Jen’s order over to the ER. So, I’m here with Gabe and Ruth, both asleep. I’ve got a bit of hummus and some goat cheese as an appetizer.

The redevelopment of Stapleton Airport, just blocks from Jon and Jen’s house, is a major urban infill project. Lots of new housing and lots of new upscale shops. This, too, is ironic since Jon’s neighborhood has the reputation in Denver as the ghetto. It is a mixed income area with the poor and the middle class sharing property lines. On the whole it seems a pretty calm place, though Jon says it is Crips territory. He also says the occasional crackhead will break into houses looking for loot.

Barb’s injury on the eve of Gabe’s bris is family. The connected web makes her injury now a part of family lore. Had an odd thought while holding Gabe yesterday. I am now in the generation that will be remembered, no longer am I part of the generation that remembers. This underlines the long and ancient trail of generational succession, reaching back to those brave folks who walked out of Africa and stretching forward to where we do not know.

Family, GeekWorld

No Computer? Bad.

June 2, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

In Denver: temp. Hot sky blue no clouds

Traveling without a computer is harder than I thought. My fingers now write with the keyboard, without it I have a different stream of thought. Not worse, just different.

So, I found this computer and decided to log in. Outside at Jon and Jen’s scratching the soil to plant grass seed.

Ruth and Gabe are, as are all grandchildren, wonderful. Ruth has complete sentences, if you can follow her language. I drank it all. Where my pink sunglasses? Where my grandma? She’s also two. Everything, even the moose, Merton, that I brought for Gabe was immediately hers.

Gabe’s a delight. I held him right after I got here. gotta go. back to the grass

GeekWorld

Ancientrails Goes Dark

May 30, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

57 bar falls 29.59 0mpn N dew-point 56 Beltane, cloudy and misty

Waning Crescent of the Hare Moon

Just a quick reminder note that Ancientrails will go dark for almost a week during my Colorado trip. I head out in just a few minutes, once more down 35, then to 80 and finally to 70.

Look forward to connecting with you all when I get back. (BTW Almost 350 people a day check in on Ancientrails according to the last count.)

News of the Strange

Their Lawlessness Got out of Hand

May 29, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

57 bar steep fall 29.94 7mph ENE dew-point 52 Beltane, cloudy and cool

Last Quarter of the Hare Moon

Can this possibly mean what it says? “While cities are hot spots for global warming, study finds people in them emit fewer gases.” Washington Post, 5/29/2008 In this same vein I watched part of a National Geographic Program on an outlaw biker gang, the Mongols. The narrator made this surprising statement, “Their lawlessness got out of hand.” Hmmm.

When I travel by car, I spend more time picking reading material, movies and audiobooks than I do clothing. This will not surprise some of you who know my fashion sense, late sixties college student unregenerate, yet it always surprises me.

Each trip has a theme. Don’t know when that started, but it helps me make decisions on the road and to deepen the experience. This trip to Denver, in addition to the obvious theme of tribal initiation (the bris), nature writing and trees will occupy my time. Not hard to figure out where this came from.

My first nights stay is at the Arbor Day Foundation in Nebraska City, Nebraska. I’m taking along a book I bought awhile back called Arboretum America. It tells the story of trees in the history of the US. Also a book of nature writing.

Family

Years of Change

May 29, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

58 bar falls 30.01 0mph SW dew-point 52 Beltane, cloudy and cool

Last Quarter of the Hare Moon

RJ Devick has his offices at 169 and 394, a tall building, 20 stories, for the burbs. It has a glass curtain wall and looks like the generic office building. We go out to see RJ once a year. At those meetings we examine our portfolio and its performance–fine–any changes in our financial situation, all positive. More money in savings. Kate’s income stayed up rather than decline as we had imagined when she made the shift to managed care. Kate is within 2 years of retirement. 2 years.

These are years of change, not so much in the purpose of our lives, as in the external actions related to it. Kate will stop working at Allina, but will keep her license up and volunteer more. Her change is my change, of course, as the stay at home spouse. She will enter the homeworld full time and we will have to adjust to that. I don’t anticipate any major issues.

I leave tomorrow morning for Denver and since Kate uses the laptop for her work, I will not be posting for the next week. Look for a trip summary next Thursday or Friday.

Friends, Garden, Weather +Climate, Woolly Mammoths

The Most Ancient Trail of All

May 29, 2008 Charles Leave a comment

54 bar falls 30.06 1mph NE dew-point 51 Beltane, cloudy and drizzly

Last Quarter of the Hare Moon

A change has begun to creep over the Woolly Mammoths. It is at least late fall for us. One of us had an episode of Bell’s Palsy over the weekend. He first thought, as I would have, stroke. The effects lingered into this week.

Late last night came news of a Woolly spouse. Cancer of the utereus. Adenocarcinoma. A hopeful prognosis if tests next week find it in an early stage. Even so.

Frank’s heart attack before he came to the Woolly’s and his bypass surgery after have kept medical issues in front of us, yes, but these are new. Fresh. Signals that we have begun to age. The fact is that such matters are no longer unusual in our period of life. While still not common, they will begin to pop with increasing incidence until, one by one, this herd of Woolly Mammoths and their spouses follow those of the Ice Age on that most ancient trail of all.

On a cloudy, cool day with a light rain falling this news could be depressing, but I find it just so. These matters are as key to our developmental age as were graduations in our 20’s and weddings in our late 20’s and early 30’s. Like those earlier rites of passage, the action is not in the event itself, but in our reaction to it over time. (to paraphrase Saul Alinsky)

I spent an hour and half outside today, planting and transplanting. Cloudy, cool, drizzly. Perfect for that work. Blue fescue, Maiden Grass, cucumbers, watermelon, squash and morning glories will each enjoy the rain on their first day in their new locations. The daylily transplant project was part of this and continues, in dribs and drabs, as it will until we finish it, probably some time in July.

We go out to see RJ Devick, our financial planner/money manager, today. These situations become more and more pertinent as Kate nears retirment age and I enter that time when eligibility for both pension and social security are upon me. Considering these matters thoughtfully are also part of our development period. We are at the cusp of a major change in our lives.