![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/queen-of-stones-wildwood.jpg\")
<\/a>Kavannah: Areyvut. Mutual responsibility.\u00a0 All humans are accountable one to another.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Tarot: Queen of Stones, Bear. Strength rooted in Mother Earth. I know mortality in decay, in cancer, in Kate. I choose to live because of these, not in spite of them.<\/p>\n
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One brief shining: Artemis has been through her first winter–what passed for winter this year. Her Japanese lanterns glow at night. Ten bulbs of garlic have wintered in her west-facing raised bed. I will plant carrots and beets in that bed today, check the garlic. Prep the tomato bed, plant the seeds. Flowers of memory in the east-facing bed: gladiolus and stargazer lilies for Jon, purple iris for Kate.<\/p>\n
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Nowruz. The Persian New Year. Passover, the annual reliving of liberation from oppression. Easter, the annual celebration of life’s ongoingness. Spring.<\/p>\n
If our Shadow Mountain April has no snow, it will be our cruelest month. Letting us slide into summer with little moisture for lodgepoles and aspens, grasses, dogwood, willows.<\/p>\n
Spring holidays acknowledge our deepest fears. Easter. Is death the enemy? Passover. Are we enslaved in our narrow places, with no hope of liberation?<\/p>\n
Nowruz. Will the growing season begin well?<\/p>\n
Artemis. My nod to Nowruz. Planting in expectation of blood-red beet salads, carrots cooked in butter and brown sugar.<\/p>\n
Gardening. A ritual of confidence. A collaboration. Hands, seeds, soil, and sun. I love taking the prickly beet seeds in my palm, pinching one between thumb and finger. Planting it, pressing the soil down around it. Tucking it in. Spring.<\/p>\n
Fourth phase. In May of 2015 prostate cancer showed up, death knocking, no longer an abstraction but presence. A shock, yes. Yet not a shock either. Mortality begins at birth.<\/p>\n
Health? My body equilibrated, functioning well. What health isn’t: a permanent state. Even for those seeking life extension.<\/p>\n
I remember sunrise services, a melding of Christian yearning to defeat death and pagan confidence in the sun. Transform the fallow season into the growing season. Once again. Life after death.<\/p>\n
Tara invited me again to her Passover.<\/p>\n
A full Haggadah with afikomen hidden, questions about plagues, conversation about contemporary mitzrayim: in society, in ourselves. Mitzrayim. A narrow place of bondage. Egypt.<\/p>\n
Ancient myth as contemporary history. Our story of liberation from slavery. Of the heroes and heroines who led us out of Egypt, across the Reed Sea, and into freedom.<\/p>\n
What is the evanescence of health against these muscular affirmations: life lived through fallow seasons, life confronting and transforming death, oppression changed into freedom, into a tribe?<\/p>\n
Sun.
\nSoil.
\nSeeds.
\nSpring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Spring and the Moon of Liberation Sunday gratefuls: Exercise. Artemis. Planting today. Tomatoes. Carrots. Beets. Check garlic. Fantasy. Writing. AI. Medical Alert. Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names. Sparks of Joy and Awe: Parsha Kavannah: Areyvut. Mutual responsibility.\u00a0 All humans are accountable one to another. Tarot: Queen of Stones, Bear. Strength rooted in … Continue reading Muscular<\/span>