Micro-Poetry, Black Swans and Steve Jobs: The Art of Imagining and Assembling New Worlds

There is only the dance 

until the swan dies.

                       ~  Bauke Kamstra

.

This blog began with this poem and this exchange – http://bit.ly/10BlxQv – between Bauke – @Wyrde – and me.  Then my new Twitter friend from Australia, @TP_Hogan, chimed in - http://bit.ly/10BEW3P - and triggered  thoughts on Black Swans leading me to dust off and burnish some musings from my archives. 

.

§                     §                     §

THE BLACK SWAN

The human opportunity is to turn flashes of insight into abiding light.

                                   ~  Huston Smith

Every now and then an unexpected and inexplicable event or product comes along that changes life as we have known it.  Labeled by some as a “Black Swan” such a random incident, occurring in history, science, finance, technology and the arts, transforms society.  

Totally surprised by the arrival of a Black Swan, society is substantially altered.  Afterward, when it cannot remember or conceive itself without the experience of that event or product, society finds a way of explaining and re-inventing itself around this necessary and inevitable arrival of a new defining pinion point.

The personal computer, the internet and the iPhone are Black Swan examples in technology.  It is interesting that Steve Jobs, known for his seeming ability to come up at will with repeated Black Swan creations such as the Macintosh computer, the iPod, iPad and iPhone, was not an inventor.  He was simply an assembler and integrator of existing technology and talent to produce society altering products.  Steve simply had a different and  Black Swan design for the standard issue of “Lego” pieces we all had on arrival.

Beyond his personal situation and challenges Steve Jobs was somehow able first to engage, then maintain, an inspired vision of the finished product as the active template which attracted, ordered and assembled diverse bits of talent and technology into the structure and profound impact of yet another Black Swan creation.

ARRIVAL OF THE BLACK SWAN

The oldest known reference to the term Black Swan comes from Juvenal, a Latin poet, writing 1900 years ago alluding to something that did not exist.  Juvenal’s expression became a common pejorative in 16th century London where all known swans were white.

In 1697 Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh discovered black swans in Western Australia, upending a social “certainty” and a tidy expression of that “truth”.  A little over a century later the clear thinking John Stuart Mill re-defined the Black Swan expression as an example of logical fallacy.  What once was an equation of certainty has become a maxim for the folly and unreliability of prematurely declaring the absolute certainty of a matter that is still in play in an expanding universe not unlike a sportscaster who would presume to announce the winning team after only the first inning of a baseball game.

In much the same way we find it easier to deify Christ than to enjoin his invitation to share with him a life of the miraculous, society  today prefers to endow Steve Jobs  with a status beyond the average person and still remains largely unaware that the Black Swan potential is about essence and opportunity, not individual talent.  It exists within any and every one of us who hears in a moment the angels sing then sets about unwaveringly to reorder their life and belief around that distant sound.   Such a resonant knowing if held and joined by like minds is inevitably manifested into a blessing for all, even if common understanding dismisses such a vision to be  as remote as the possibility of a black swan was in 16th century London.

Of course, upon fulfillment of this vision such a false perspective will simply be dismissed and forgotten and society will reorganize itself around the gift of this new way of life.

That is my inner knowing and expectation;  that’s why I am so optimistic.

In blackness where white swans last sing 

ever a new dance spreads its darkened wing   

                                                                               ~ Börje Melin

.

What Black Swans do you already “know” about?

How to See All of Life as Miraculous and Friendly in a “Tragic” and “Unsafe” World

This is my response to Mylène, my Twitter friend - @CopperBronzed -   regarding her request  http://bit.ly/13ZXPhl to comment on a tragedy in Ancaster, Ontario.

The Old Mill Restaurant Ancaster Ontario 
Mylène, this strikes close to home as I have lived on a greenbelt joined to Ancaster and loved to celebrate special days at the Old Mill there five minutes from my home.  Just minutes ago I was talking about the magic forest cover there.

I don’t as a rule follow personal tragedy stories. It can easily fill my life, already challenged in my desire to live beyond the distorted and impoverished template offered by my past world and prevailing culture.  I need my waking & sleeping hours to be primarily focused on calling myself and my current world to be better and more aware selves rather than pursuing the challenge of making sense of the steady feed of more tragic stories.  (For me, personally, this is requiring a deep mind retraining and complete thought reversal as I seem to have had just about everything upside down.) 

In a larger sense and in a balanced universe, including all involved in this unnecessary and sad tragedy, nothing happens to anyone for which they are not already a vibrational match.  What we fear or what we dwell on – good or bad –  will sooner or later manifest in our life whether as perperator, ‘victim’ or beneficiary. Grace offers a significant delay for us to bail harmless from our negative engagements. Nothing happened in this matter that can’t be forgiven and understood for a higher purpose although we can never demand those answers.  Often our ‘knowing’ is at best shrouded in bewilderment and needs to be so.

Each person will respond to this event from an already determined understanding that they live in an always loving, supportive and miraculous world or its opposite.  This viewpoint is arrived at not by logic, but by will and enlightenment.  A little of both, life as miracle, blended with life as a disaster, is becoming an increasingly difficult and painful gap to try to span. The unsettled lives of those who choose to always walk the ‘dangerous’ and ‘sad’ shadow side of the street while feeding on the human pain within and without will eventually merge with the fulfilled, happy lives of those who walk on the sunny and safe side.  This unhappy choice of life experience is unnecessarily tragic in time but ultimately eternally insignificant.

These matters are so.  They can be denied, but not diminished. We don’t get to vote on reality which is already so glorious for all we could only depreciate it with our attempted version of what life is all about and who we are.

My final comment on this for all of us is that we cannot maintain a vacuum in our life.  Absent a mindful choice of humble gratitude for every event, relationship and aspect of our life and a further watchfulness to maintain a positive inner dialogue, we create a vacuum that will draw in a vortex of darkness to upend our life.

And if this happens, no matter.  Our next step out of this ditch, as either observers or participants, is forgiveness which fully processed and understood becomes a realization there was never anything to forgive.  This final understanding takes great wisdom but comes naturally to those who have a desire to walk in an always safe and whole world of invincible love and miracles.

My heart goes out to the dozens and hundreds directly impacted by this sad event and to the tens of thousands more who follow the events in pain, sympathy, anger, fear or judgement.  My comfort is knowing all’s well that ends well and indeed it will end well and it already has because we are not creatures limited to bodies, time and space.  May many have the grace to see it this way.

Hope this helps.

What Tolstoy, Ghandi and Einstein Knew

 

I will publish this blog soon.  The research and processing is taking a little longer than expected.

 

Escape from Fables Labels and Confusing the Hell into People

Birth of a guest blog published first at Guest Blog

Earlier this week one of my Twitter Friends, Ron Tenin, @rpt62960,  posted a blog, on his website with this intriguing title:  Atheists Take Note – You Might Be Wrong. My twitter response led to an invitation from Ron to write this guest blog.

EPISCOPAL BISHOP WRIGHT was not the first one to get  

things totally wrong.  We should cut him some slack though.  We should also overlook his paternalistic bent to organize the minds of the faithful on that 1896 Sunday morning in Dayton Ohio, as he delivered truth from on high.  After all, is that not what we need society’s leaders, like bishops, to do?  Should we not leave it to the few who know what’s up to direct and control the lives of the many who don’t, and for their own best interest at that!

“If man was meant to fly,” Bishop Milton Wright announced, “God would have given him wings!”

Like the rest of us who at times claim divine or perhaps self-appointed infallible endorsement for that which we know little or nothing about and, even more, to influence change in that which seriously frightens us, Bishop Wright too had his haunting fears.  It wasn’t really his 26 year old son, Orville, that troubled him so much as it was Orville’s three years older genius brother, Wilbur, who had a mind to catapult himself through the air on little more than a motorized kite with good prospects of killing himself and maybe his too easily led and spell-bound brother as well in the process, thus bereaving the Bishop of his progeny.

The appeal to infallibility on matters betraying our profound ignorance, disguised personal agenda and fears has become a hallmark signature of modern discourse.  I do not intend to rail against this, however, but suggest -and sincerely so – that we should kindly and gently overlook it.  I assure you, this strange mood is a social deficiency in transition out the door, its demise hastened as we continue to require more and more transparency, authenticity and accountability in our dealings with each other.

In addition to declaring divine endorsement of our opinions we further resort to the curious practice of confirming ‘certainty’ and authority by labeling our enemies and all non – or wrong – believers.  Label it and it is so.  The truth is defended and the enemy –  always those labeled ones with the black cowboy hats – is vanquished.

As a seminary student, a lifetime ago, I was urged to establish (read label) and defend a personal theology to stream me and carry me through life.  This, I was told, should provide a decent living and afterward take me hopefully to heaven if I got it right – albeit, possibly a different heaven to those with different theologies.  Labeling offered the religious community a welcome hammer-lock on the “truth” and a comfortable alternative to the struggle of faith and the soul-wringing quest to embrace the miraculous in daily living.

It was apparently important for me to determine whether God was supra or infra-lapsarian, whether I decided that “baptized” babies who were sprinkled with water had the same chance of making heaven as adults who were solidly drenched in a water tank, river or lake. I needed to declare whether eternity was to descend on human history in a pre, post or a-millennial time frame and whether that should indeed come with a side label of mid, pre or post-tribulation.  Finally, I needed to avoid the ‘moral failure’ label, a designation that came with an automatic life suspension from church leadership and likely loss of a passport for heaven.

Later in life I have settled for being a pan-millennial (it will all pan out in the end) and Little Bo Peep theology (leave all of God’s people alone and they will come home wagging their tails behind them.)  In fact I have come to understand that we are all already home.  Not aware of this beautiful truth just yet we still desperately dream and scheme of how to create hell on earth to ensure that our version of a sad, lonely and dangerous reality is widely adopted.  It is clear that this is the strategy.  What is not as clear is any possible gains that may be realized from this design for self defeat and misery.

As an unenthusiastic champion of religious labels and absent a passionate interest in theology there turned out to be minimal prospect for me to experience and understand life primarily within the benefits and embrace of an ecclesiastical context.

Now, I sincerely said we should cut people some slack who are casting about trying to be “right” when clearly in over their heads.  You would not be angry at someone, who asleep, dreams that they are a pink elephant, would you?

Understand, people are asleep. They are dreaming of being trapped in sin, shortages of every kind and separation from each other and from the All-That-Is. They dream that they are defined and limited by time and space. In this dream they are a body that finds itself possibly among some good but certainly mostly among other bad and dangerous bodies.  Their body can hurt, or be hurt by, other bodies. The ‘gladiator’ rules are that the last body standing wins.  In case of a tie, the more beautiful and thinner body gets the trophy although it has not exactly been determined what the trophy is about.  It can’t be about fame because that needs admirers and in this aspired scenario everyone else’s body is dead.  It can’t be heaven because that’s about community and sharing… joy, gratitude, kindness and that stuff.

Add labeling to this context of our self as marginalized, challenged, isolated and it spawns social behaviour and rationale as bizarre as this invented and impoverished version of life. For example, if you follow and trust U.S. politics you could be forgiven for believing global warming is a derivative of the political will of the people and that it has no reality outside of this scope. If Americans vote into power the Democrat label, global warming is acknowledged and remedial legislation and political initiative is activated to ‘save the world’.  If a majority of people vote the Republican label the problem is solved because there is no global warming.

In the case of a divided vote, tune in your favourite, self-echoing entertainment on Fox News or ESPN and join the label war. The enemy is always the one you paste with negative labels.  Pro Choice/Pro-Life for example are home team shirts while Pro-Abortion/Anti-Abortion are labels pasted by the enemy side for away games.  God or self-as-God is always on your side as you fight against “treachery” or for a cause célèbre, be it abortion, homosexuals, atheism, God-fearing Christians,  immigrants, terrorists, anarchists, criminals, social equity, diversity, military supported economics, new agers, libertarians, neo-cons, science, scientism, secularism, humanism, humanitarianism, fundamentalists, the 1%, the unwashed masses, carnivores, vegetarians, more guns or less guns and a host of other issues that divide.

If you are a government, strategic labels like “foreign fighters” are handy to introduce and ingrain for it will allow you to invent whole new illogical and separate systems of legislation and incarceration once those unable and unqualified to lead themselves have bought into the “truth” and impact of these new labels.  If you are a government official it is imperative that you look straight into the camera when you use these newly minted labels.  You must look deadly serious without a hint of a smirk or smile.  Using phrases like “read my lips” and “make no mistake” should seal the matter. Studies show wearing a tie of the appropriate subtle colour and fashion will help maximize the authenticity of this construct.

I suggest we set aside all this uproar and dramatic finger pointing. Being asleep to reality and believing we are the arbiter of how things really are, we routinely deny the wonder of life and the glory of every single person we have met or will ever meet.

I offer a more enlightened approach that can enliven society and help us escape this madness.  It will also considerably lighten our journey as we can dispose of all labels and their debilitating emotional baggage.

An introduction to this wholeness is found in two defining questions that Albert Einstein posed. First, do you believe you are in an always friendly or an always hostile universe and, secondly, do you believe all of life or none of life is miraculous.  These are bifurcated issues that cannot be straddled with any more ease than a tall picket fence nor blended together with any conceivable survival of credibility, coherence or logic.  A little of both alternatives, though too often opted for, is a recipe for impotence, disaster and confusion.

-  It should be observed that not everyone seeks to eliminate confusion. Confusion is sought by some as a valued strategy to achieve their ends. Having lost their moral compass and their way the goal becomes simply to stay ascendant in the game by deliberately introducing the mayhem of non-logic and grabbing control in the confusion. -

The real insight into the accelerating change toward social enlightenment and progress that is upon us lies in these  two poignant questions of this sage who left us almost six decades ago; it also lies in a new understanding of the real quarterback of our bodies and society, the human heart.  That is for another blog and until then I leave you to contemplate the wisdom of Albert’s two questions and look forward to hearing from you.

An Easter Story and An Easter Heritage: Part Two of Three

 

Re-posted from March 30, 2013

The word Pesach in Hebrew means to pass over or to spare with compassion.   Erev Pesach or Passover Eve on Nissan 14 was a day of preparation for the Hebrew slaves in Egypt. They were told to kill a lamb at sunset – the start of Nissan 15 and beginning of Pesach day one of seven –  and put its blood on the sides and top of the doorposts of each home.  Seeing the blood the angel of death that was to pass through the land to kill every firstborn of the people and domestic animals would pass over that household and spare them this tenth plague which would break Pharaoh’s final resistance to letting the Hebrews leave Egypt. The meal was to be eaten in haste – shoes on, robe tucked into the belt and staff in hand.

At midnight, around 1300 BC or about year 2400 on the Jewish Calendar, an anguished cry went up across the land and a distraught Pharaoh summonsed Moses demanding he take his people out of Egypt immediately.  They left in the middle of the night by the light of the full moon, a band of slaves about to become a nation on their way to a promised land of their own, never to return to Egypt.

Some 1300 years later, around the year 3795 on the Jewish calendar a young Rabbi sat down with a dozen shaken and confused followers to commemorate the Passover feast. He declared that he was God’s Paschal lamb, that he would die in place of these men and all humanity but then step out of the grave overcoming death forever.  This resurrection life was available to all, accessible through each individual’s heart of faith, to join him as equals.

I do not know if there was a full, partial or no moon later that night when he prayed alone and then was arrested. It may not have been that important because his was not an external engagement of Pharaoh’s chariots or his pending Roman captors but rather an internal struggle and agony of soul seeking to embrace for himself the reality of Light over belief in darkness and the truth of Life and Love over the perception of death and fear.

By the full moon’s light on the dark and bitterly cold February night of 1184 sombre bands streamed into Old Uppsala from all over Sweden, caravans traveling with horses, cows, oxen, rams, pigs, dogs and cats arriving for the Great Mid-Winter (human and animal) Sacrifice held every eight years in the sacred grove surrounding the Viking Temple in Old Uppsala. This temple was dedicated to Frey, the god of fertility and weather. Three huge mounds dating back some six hundred years or more dominated the sacred groves and were positioned much like Stonehenge or Mayan Yucatan Pyramids, huge edifice calendars to exactly capture seasonal light pinpointing the arrival of the “lamplighting” January/February full moon.  This was the full moon that was required to enable travel across the nation during the short winter days to attend and supply the sacrifice.

It was believed Frey, whose statue reigned over the sacred grove and temple grounds, was entombed in one of these mounds. Frey’s day – Friday – had remained unchallenged over the centuries until this new Good/Long Friday, granted by the tradition of a Semitic people and an obscure rogue Rabbi of a millenium ago, now threatened to unseat him.

Each day for 9 days one man and seven domestic animals chosen from every province in the land were hung from the “holy” trees until 72 bodies were swinging in the wintery wind and allowed to decay while birds and rats ate the corpses as this sacrificial life’s sustenance was intended to nurture the trees of the sacred grove. The satisfied gods would then cede national blessing for another period.

Led by the King of Sweden, who faithfully presided over the ceremonies, this event anchored success in national affairs, trade, commerce and warfare.  Known regionally for their prowess these Swedish Vikings for hundreds of years were sought for their laws, administrative acumen, business shrewdness and fierce battle skills throughout the great river lands of Russia, Ukraine and across  the Black Sea, embracing the Byzantine Empire where they served as the legendary personal Varangian “Swiss Guard” for  a series of  emperors in Constantinople.

They were known throughout the region as the “Ryss”, old Swedish for rowers. Some claim they were more predominantly known as the “Russ” Vikings from “Rusiori” which was ancient Greek for Blond.  The lands they rowed through and engaged became known as “Ryssland”, the Swedish name for Russia today.  At local request they built and stayed to rule mighty cities like Kiev and Novogorod.  Upon the Byzantine emperor’s death, in gratitude for their services, each member of this vaunted guard was honoured to  enter into the royal treasure room and take for himself gold, coins and gems, as much as they could bear at a single time.  Thus, from this repatriated treasure, Uppland today still uncovers more era Byzantine coins than anywhere else in the world.

The Uppsala Vikings had no inclination to raid Europe or ply the Atlantic waters to Vineland in the New world, that was the lot of their Norwegian and Danish cousins, also empowered by the pleasure of their gods appeased by the dark rituals of their regional sacred groves scattered throughout ancient Scandinavia. Theirs was the promise, mystery, business and treasure of the vast lands to the east and to the south, the gateway to a splendid national franchise for the Near Orient and beyond.

Trade Routes from Uppsala of the Swedish (Varangian) Vikings from the 9th Century

It was the king’s duty to maintain this national welfare and ascendency by ensuring the trails converging on Old Uppsala, lit by the February full moon, were filled with living votive gifts and sober witnesses to satisfy the gods and secure yet another eight years of their pleasure and support for national prosperity.

The light of Christianity had become increasingly disruptive by 1084 creating uncertainty and jeopardy for this cult fountainhead of national well-being.  Already it had been necessary for the local Uppland power elite, who funded and directed the king in national affairs, to dethrone the previous king. A convert himself to Christianity, he had refused to lead this exchange of human and animal life for national prosperity in the very preceding Mid-Winter Sacrifice of 1076. As Christianity was spreading, more and more leaders across the country obligated by law to attend the sacrifice were refusing to participate in this event despite the heavy fines imposed on them.

In fact, this 1084 occasion was to be the last national sacrifice in this holdout national cult center against the rising tide of Christianity in the country and by 1164 the eclipsed sacred grove and burial mounds were triumphantly transferred to the Swedish Archbishopric.

Nearby what had been perhaps Scandinavia’s most dominant cult center for human enslavement, the tallest church in Scandinavia was erected within two centuries. Shortly after, the first Scandinavian University and one of the earliest in Europe was founded in Uppsala to pioneer  many of the foundational pillars in academic progress. Today this institution and city is a Mecca for the former client lands and trading partners of the Uppland Vikings.  These former Soviet Union countries , bordering the Baltic Sea and beyond come to Uppsala to seek access to stable government models and innovative economic and industry systems.

13^th Century Uppsala Cathedral (Domkyrka) Built Under Roman Catholicism Taken Over by the Lutheran Church at the Reformation Served as Cornation and Burial Place for Swedish Kings for over 500 years.

So what have these annual Easter/Passover birthdays meant to me over the years?  I have spent nights on the farm as an adult and walked the streets of Uppsala and Old Uppsala enjoying for the most part penetrating, unusual beauty and peace.  I have lived briefly and intimately on three occasions in the land promised to the people of the Pesach exodus and naively been caught in the literal cross-fire of Abraham’s son’s ongoing grievance with each other, forced to maintain a cool head to extricate myself from bullets and stones of an ancient war…to be concluded.

An Easter Story and an Easter Heritage : Part One of Three

Re-posted from March 29, 2013

Today is my birthday… sort of.  You see I have three birthdays every year, a Viking, Christian and Jewish birthday.  In the year I was born all three came on the same day: April 4, Good Friday and the eve/first day of the Jewish Pesach (Passover) week.

A person can be born on Christmas day and count on it always being December 25.   My life has usually been a little less predictable than that, not the least of which is the story of my birth ‘trifecta’ day.

For clarity, I will briefly separate the component parts dating my birthdays.  Rolled together they take on an air of complexity but in reality simply reflect a combination of many different ingredients, kind of like Indian cuisine, which becomes delightfully palatable when allowed to be what it is and trusted by all dinner guests to be divinely prepared.  Though always substantially more, it is, however, never less than all its ingredients.

So what does Good Friday/Pesach and the Jewish/Christian/Viking head of the calendar and spiritual year mean for me today. What clues to celebration of life and inner freedom does it hold for all of us.

My three birthdays all converge on the same day only once every several centuries.  Being unwilling to miss out on their separate flavours I am content to celebrate the  unique aspect of each of them every year in their own profound and beautiful aspects.  To my mind multiple birthdays rock, anyways.

My life began in tiny farm community just outside Uppsala Sweden that had been celebrating Påsk – Swedish for Easter (derived from Pesach) – by then for almost 900 years. The rest of Sweden had more readily adopted Christianity decades earlier.  The core heart of the Viking culture, centered in Old Uppsala, just 10 miles beyond our farm, and radiating into the surrounding Uppland region, however, was more resistant to ceding to the new ways accompanying this ‘intrusive’ faith that had filtered into their country in the decades surrounding the turn of the first millennium.  Some decades later, however, these local holdouts joined in with the rest of the country.

The Viking temple at the corner of our farm , where my paternal grandparents now rest, needed a new function and was conveniently re-designated and sanctioned as a church. Annual local Påsk celebrations subsequently commenced there, sometime during the  1100′s, marking the head of the Christian calendar.

Jumkil’s Kyrka, a Viking Temple Until the 1100’s,  From the Corner of Our Farm    (Photo http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jumkils_kyrka_-_kmb.16000200121636.jpg )

The first of my three birthdays, April 4, is shared with my Dad as we had the same earth arrival day.  I call this my Viking birthday. As an eldest son I often consider how my Dad, himself an eldest son, passed on a readiness and understanding of life received  from his Viking and devout Christian heritage to those in and beyond his family.  I am also aware that this, in some aspect and on some level, is now mine to carry on as my Dad passed forward the baton some years ago.

Påsk in Sweden had its narrow aspects over its initial years when life was more uncertain and difficult and its people more pessimistic and seriously minded.   Långfredagen –that is Long or Good Friday, also my Christian and second birthday- was an occasion, among other rites, for the devout householder to whip his spouse, children and servants for greater awareness and sobriety in preparation for the somber occasion and fellowship of Christ’s sufferings.  Aroused in the heightened spiritual ethers emanating from overlapping Easter and Spring Solstice ritual celebrations, local ‘believers’  became inflamed to purge “Satan” from the community. He was most often “discovered” in the form of clairvoyant and telepathic women, who became known as a påskkärringar (Easter-bitches), and deemed  to be witches in league with the very Deceiver himself, thus  ‘deserving’ of most horrific barbarian ‘remedies’.

These grim practices and quests tended over time to be challenged and softened by the sheer joy of welcoming Spring’s delights, reborn once again. The beatings evolved into neighbours playfully switching each other with new Spring birch branches and leaves wishing each other good health and good fortune. The witches’ legacy has become a Halloween type celebration with Swedish children dressed as witches knocking on neighbours doors ‘spooking’ them to offer up sweets.

The church from 325 AD had arranged that the newly adopted Gregorian calendar would ensure that Easter Week would always come in the Spring culminating on Easter Sunday. This would fall on the Sunday following the first full moon after Spring Equinox.  Some 800 years later and faithful to the tradition of their Jewish Lord and Saviour, the erstwhile Uppland Vikings and now newly minted Christians, embraced the themes and symbolism of a Middle Eastern people, and doubtlessly also former trading partners, the first of whom would not arrive in Sweden until some five hundred years after the conversion of the local Jumkil Viking temple to Christian purposes.

I was not born on one Jewish calendar day because before April 4^th of that year was out it had actually become two Jewish calendar days straddling Nissan 14 and Nissan 15, 5708.  This is my third, and my Jewish birthday.  I said this would be a little complex –  like an Indian meal, remember? –  Actually it is no more complex than the fact that Western calendar days start at midnight and Jewish days at sundown.

Now, the 5708 part is easy;  it is the continuous years since the traditional Jewish date of the creation of the earth that this Jewish calendar sets at 3761 BC.

That is easy of course unless you were Bishop Ussher and it also tends to be easier if you are a conservative Jew than if you are a conservative Christian. Let me explain. The Irish Bishop Ussher in the 1600’s, using the King James Bible, pinpointed creation to have occurred just before nightfall preceding October 23, 4004 BC, a date which still resonates more or less with conservative Christian scholars and their extended community –  dinosaurs, geological fossil and carbon-14 dating notwithstanding.

Ussher’s rigid calculations of course assume 24 hour days, a point which even the most conservative Jewish scholar or believer would tend to concede as not being set in stone.  This difference is mainly so because Jews are much less left brain oriented than their occidental neighbours in both matters of faith and understanding how life in general works.  They also tend not to be troubled by the suggestion that the dates and space of history can logically be trumped by spirit.

This is not to say that the reliable seasonal point of the most important celebration of the year was any less important for the Jews than the Christians. Since these respective ‘top of the year’ holy days  were indexed to the very  same Spring moon, two of my birthdays happened to overlap.

For the Jews, Passover was the defining event of their history that transformed a million or two desperate, hardscrabbled offspring from a handful of quarrelsome sojourners in Egypt, into an epic nation en-route to their own Promised Land. The 29½ day lunar Jewish calendar month, unadjusted, would soon skew this glorious annual celebration time of new life and new beginnings to fall in the midst of the dark and cold of winter if not tweaked and indexed to both the moon and solar year of Spring Equinox.  Thus, with several adjustments, the Jewish calendar became a Solilunar Calendar ensuring that my Jewish birthday of Nissan 14, would always fall on the first full moon after Spring Equinox.

There is a very important reason why this day has to fall on a full moon that I will disclose in my next blog.  It has to do with the full moon, dangerous travel cross-country, at night, by foot without flashlights… for an emerging Jewish nation and, interestingly, coincident with full moon mandatory nighttime  cross- country travel two millennia later by the ascendant Swedish Vikings…. to be continued

A Resting Place

Along the road there have been places of great rest and beauty provided by kind friends, many of whom were just recently strangers…. red mountains, hummingbirds that land on my nose while I sleep in the sun and go out of their way to hover in my face to greet me, a vibrant year round mountain stream always singing by my doorstep, carrying a depth that readily swallows and renews my tired body, the restful bounty and seasonal extravagance of an orchard hosting a variety of prolific fruit trees, a vineyard bearing foreign and domestic grapes and two fat nonchalant greenskeepers daily trimming and feeding the grass – sheep – named Woolly and Bully.

“She passed away the year before last”, offered our landlord, and also now yet one more dear friend.  We were prodding the orchard with pruning shears and rakes to wake it for Spring. He was used to sharp instruments that re-order life’s forms, having spent nearly four decades behind a surgeon’s scalpel in this country and in many others abroad. He was speaking of his cousin’s wife. “My cousin and his children received a gift of money in memory, and bought a little apricot tree.  They wanted to plant it at the root of an old apple tree in our orchard and spent the day wrestling with the old stump, pulverizing it with a chain saw to prepare the planting place. It’s doing well and will double in height this year. It’s unusual for an apricot tree to bear fruit in it’s first year.”

I had earlier met his cousin briefly, a tall, gentle, warm and elegant man, maybe in his early seventies. He comes from time to time with his grandchildren to celebrate this canyon in which he played as a youth, then shared with his cherished life partner and his growing family.  Now he’s a grandfather like me.

I took my camera and wrote some words about a woman I never met but whose love and vitality reflects in people I have come to know – kind and thoughtful people who lived and laughed with her and still share her life … and so many dear memories.

A Little Apricot Tree

This little apricot tree seems almost insignificant and forlorn at a distant glance.

 

Up close it breathes with life and shimmers in vibrant beauty.

It lives in the parenthesis of  mighty Sycamores.

Leaving the limits of its imprisonment, it soars to the sky beyond the tallest trees,

Dances among all living things,

And shares the strength of Mountains.