• Tag Archives Valentine’s Day
  • Turning 63

    Imbolc                            New Moon (Wild)

    “Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”- Franz Kafka

    It’s not an especially significant birthday in the way of things.  63 is a lull between OMG I’m in my 60’s and 65, the all purpose retirement age in former times.  The lack of symbolic significance and its very ordinariness makes me happy to turn 63.  I have no expectations about life at 63.  So far, the 60’s have been kind to me.  I’ve lost no friends, no family.  With the exception of Kate’s back trouble, no one I know has a serious ongoing health problem.  Frank Broderick who at 77 is now in his 15th year after his first heart attack manages his cardio problems, proving that even yesterday’s fatal condition can now fit into a long life.

    (Rembrandt self-portrait at 63)

    Turning the prism one more  time 63 astonishes me.  Why?  Because of its very ordinariness and because of its lack of symbolic significance.  Not so long ago, say when I was in my teens, folks my age had begun to teeter toward a time of serious old age and disability.  That point in life is still not on the observable horizon for me.  In fact, it’s possible some number of us reaching this age will be relatively healthy and able until our final days.  Quite a change.

    On a personal note I have made my peace with the world in terms of success.  What I’ve had, little but some, will do.  I enjoy the love of a good woman and five dogs here at home and the circle  expands to nuclear family and extended family and friends like the Woollies, the docents and the Sierra Club folks.  My days have meaningful labor that changes with the seasons.  I live in a country I love, a state, and a home.

    Intellectually and creatively, it seems, I’ve just begun to come into my own, which means there are satisfying frontiers still ahead.

    Then there is Kafka.  Kafka.  What an odd and yet appropriate quote from  him.  He knew with fine detail the absurdity of modern life, yet he  found aesthetics central to a life of real engagement.  Me, too.


  • Not Wild. Not Yet.

    Imbolc                                    New Moon (Wild)

    With the weather calm, blue skies and no wind, welcoming the Wild Moon seems a bit off point.  As February ends, though, and we head into March the character of the Wild Moon will show up.  Soon, the push and pull between winter’s resistance and spring’s temperate insistence will create storms as we oscillate back and forth until the sun’s rising angle makes spring inevitable.  The next  six weeks are a real meteorological festival when our latitudes entertain a host of weather’s finest celebrities:  sudden snow fall, driving rain, howling winds, sleet, ice and bursts of warmth.  Get ready to be entertained.  It will be, well, wild.

    This morning the grocery store was full of shoppers with some aspect of Valentine’s day on their mind.  They bought candy, two for one ribeyes and items for their honey’s favorite meal.  As I checked out the clerk, a young woman with orange/red hair asked me if I had special plans for Valentines.  Yes, I told her, it’s my birthday and my wife and I will go out to eat.  What about you? I asked.  Oh, she said, I work until 2:00, then hanging out with friends I guess.  It’s a day for people that love each other to show that.  She  sounded a bit sad.

    When I got back there were boxes inside from the mail, one from Singapore and two from Bonaire, Georgia.  One came yesterday from Denver.  Fun.

    I’m dickering with Groveland UU to become a field instructor for an intern they want to hire.  It’s an old problem for me.  They don’t have much money, but the time commitment involves travel as well as an hour plus with the intern, once a week for nine months.  A lot of time for me.  Yet, mentoring is, I believe, an important part of our role as we get older, so I want to do it.


  • Ordinary Time

    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.