Blog o’ Gnosis

This is a very old quote, maybe it was Plato, maybe Aquinas, maybe, more recently, Heschel. But I just found out today it was also a favorite quote of Rabbi Michael Robinson, who passed away early Thursday morning and whose funeral I attended today.

This is the worst week of the year: the week when every radio announcer and third-rate journalist announces the arrival next week of “the first day of summer.” June 21 is the Summer Solstice, also known as Midsummer. As in mid-summer, or the mid-point of summer. In other words, the middle of summer. Not the first day, the middle day. How difficult is this?

Okay, so I’m out in the yard on Saturday getting it ready for May Day. The biggest task remaining is preparing the tree that will be the maypole. It is already cut down, which is good, and the branches are all cut off, very good. But it’s got this thick bark on it, and lots of short little nubby former-branch parts, that have to be somehow smoothed down in a week’s time. Distressingly, no one has shown up to offer to do this work for me. No strapping fisherman from down the street, no neighborly construction guy who just happens to have a draw knife in his back pocket. Not even any nearby lesbian phone company repair-type who’s not afraid to use a chainsaw.

What a weird year this is. First our New Year’s flooding and drenching gives way to a balmy, gorgeous January, and everyone is worried that winter is over and the rain has gone. Then Wednesday we finally got a single sunny day in the midst of over a month of straight rain, with more rain on the way through April. There is just no making sense of the weather anymore.

I was just writing a note to a few friends and needed to lookup someone’s email address in my email program address book. Scrolling down the list, I was brought up short by noticing one I needed to delete. It belongs, or belonged, to my friend Luis Kemnitzer who died two weeks ago.

Today was a grueling day at work, one of those days when there’s nonstop fires to put out and complex problems to solve, and you end up eating lunch at your desk with little hope of a break. By 5:00 I was ready to stop looking at a computer screen but it wasn’t ready to [...]

I participated in a wonderful initiation ceremony this past weekend. The initiate was pretty much an ideal candidate: grounded, intuitive, smart, grounded, talented, serious, expressive, funny, and grounded.

I am now not only by choice but by necessity nested in my lovely house by the bay. October has passed by in a blur of strong emotions punctuated by late-night drives, my car full of belongings, on the winding road to the coast.

I mentioned Donald Engstrom here earlier this week. Today I happened on a lovely article by Donald that really summarizes his approach to not only life but teaching, and also illustrates a point I’ve been meaning to make. This train of thought was brought on by my witchcamp teaching experience last month where, as I [...]

For the first time this summer, Ross and I actually managed to get out of town together for an entire weekend, solely to have fun. This entails making sure the noisy, diabetic, incontinent (did I mention blind and unpleasant?) miniature toy poodle that belonged to Rosses late mother has someone to give her insulin shots 2x a day (did I mention she bites nearly everyone who tries?).