Mystical Murmurs: My Interfaith Life

Well, it’s been a year since I last posted here. Maybe my three constant readers thought I’d died. But no! Call it the Trump Effect. All I’ve done during the past year is watch the growing horror in the Oval Office clawing nearer to disaster with his tiny hands. I rode that wave of delight we all felt when the Democrats took the House. And I’m waiting desperately for Robert Mueller’s report (assuming we get to see it) and its nice, fat indictment for Trump.  But neither of those things may happen. Meanwhile, as I obsessed about the state of the union, the blog remained unblogged, the garden grew weedy, and I totally failed to do any work on myself (aside from tai chi, which I’ve done faithfully). No meditation, no hiking, no yoga, no Great Courses (I think I left off in the middle of a course on the Gnostics).  I’ve become a dry leaf, rattling in a gale.  So maybe it’s time to take myself in hand. Trump is not going away today, tomorrow, or the next day. Sprin...

One side of my family is from the south, from coastal North Carolina. Among other endeavors, they grew peanuts, and every autumn of my childhood we received a huge bag of raw peanuts, to be roasted and enjoyed. On visits to see these relatives, I also recall being driven at night through the Dismal Swamp, which impressed me as eminently worthy of its name. Like many of my other family members, those on the North Carolina side could be a bit eccentric. The one who sticks in my mind is Cousin Pearl, who at eighty had glasses like Coke bottles and rode a bike everywhere. In her house there was also a fascinating little room with walls lined from floor to ceiling by little apothecary drawers, in which she claimed to store “this and that. “ To this day, I have never learned their contents.  Cousin Pearl was a wonderful conversation partner for a young teenager. One topic, though, was off limits: the Civil War. Cousin Pearl mentioned this painful period only once, referring to it...

Yes, that's right. I am in search of my waist. It has gone missing! I lost quite a bit of weight in my fifties. 18 months of counting points. No ice cream. No peanut butter. So much rabbit food that I nearly grew a cottontail and began hopping around on the lawn at night. But when I hit my 60s, my body turned on me, like a villain in a cartoon. And now my waist has disappeared. It used to be in the normal spot, and I was able to encircle it with belts and skirts. Now the belts just laugh at me. A skirt recently suggested I was ready to try elastic. Now, I could lament this loss of my waist. I could go on and on about yesteryear, and how I was once a size eight. Or I could resign myself to the loss of my waist, and somehow ... somehow ... go on without it. I hope it has gone to a good home.

My next-door neighbor, Carolann, was found dead in her home on the 5th of August, when the police, having been requested to do a wellbeing check, broke down her door. They were in her home for quite a while, so we hoped she was simply going to be taken to the hospital again. But no. When the police finally emerged, they informed the small group that had gathered that Carolann had died. While there was no wailing or gnashing of teeth, we were all sorry to hear this news. We had all had dealings with Carolann's eccentricities over the years, and many of these occasions had me on my last nerve. Recently we let her know that we wanted to remove a dying tree on the edge of our property, to make installing a fence a bit easier. In the end we installed the fence around the tree, since Carolann would not permit our tree removal folks to set foot on her property, and declared that if any branches fell on her bushes, there would be trouble. In retrospect, these are small matters, and all...

Well, I did it! My last day at work was Friday, June 30th. For all my sentimental readers, I'd like to tell you that I woke up on July 1st and felt like I was dangling over the void. That the future stretches out before me like an undifferentiated, gray plain, wandered aimlessly by folk who have lost their reason for living. That I miss all the productive, life-saving work that I did in the law library. But I would never lie to you. I now feel like I can leap tall buildings, scale rocky heights (well, short rocky heights). And I can count with no hands the lives I saved over my career. Now I have time to read the morning office on my sunny front porch. Time to tackle little projects I have put off. Time to spend with my dogs and my husband (none of us is getting any younger). And I have volunteer work in a hospice facility that I find deeply satisfying. So don't hesitate. Jump! Why work one more second, unless you love your job? Take that leap! There's life on th...

I'll admit it: Despite having been born in 1953, I was one of those kids who knew nothing about the old, original Cold War. We had no family bomb shelter, and as far as I can recall, none of our neighbors had one, either. We had no food saved, except in the very small chest freezer. Water? If it didn't come from the tap, we wouldn't have had any. Moreover, the Bomb was never a topic of discussion at our house. At least, not in my presence. I did take part in Civil Defense drills in elementary school, of course. Depending on the location of the classroom, we either hid beneath our desks, doing the ole duck-and-cover, or we did the same thing out in the hall, with our heads up against the row of lockers. But I don't remember the Civil Defense drills being explicitly about the Bomb. I wonder if my classmates knew why we were doing this? I remember absolutely no discussion about it in the classroom, before the drill or afterward. I did realize the Soviet Union was full...

Spring begins tomorrow! A blessed Ostara to my friends who celebrate the 8 sabbats. Spring is something we can all celebrate. For more information about Ostara, click here .