I absolutely love the Winter holidays. I’ll take all of ‘em, I’m not picky. The tree, the lights, the darkness, the candles, the food, the staying up late and drinking too much, the days in between one bash and another where I get to just sit around and reflect. My dreams at the end of [...]
I was just in Chicago for the weekend, and had the chance to catch up with some Reclaiming friends while I was there. Getting out of town is I think critical for most bouts of soul-searching, including organizational soul-searching. It gives you a whole new perspective on what really is out of whack. Is it [...]
I continue to mull over my long involvement with Reclaiming, listening to what other people consider the babies in the bathwater, sitting with reactions and reflections in order to think of something useful to say about it all. One image that pops to mind is an incredible moment that occurred less than a year ago, and maybe that’s as good a place as any to begin.
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.
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