Dear Friends-

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/ns7ajbx8m3rl8tpfmf589/h?rlkey=rkflioctynpdhjv3a838191xv&e=1&dl=0

 Dearest friends-

I've not been here for a while. I've finished my thesis and it's been approved. Now no more whining about the damn paper any more. All my papers are written. All that left to submit is a small video my friend is making of trees and old women and their wise words. I'll post it here when it's done. I'm officially retired for 23 days...went to the office today and hung out with my pals. Was good to see them and get caught up.

I have been lying in bed til 11 or 12, then get up, go swimming, walk the dog and call it a day. Really. I think I'm terminally tired. Tonight is my dance night. Yesterday I finally went back to my beloved garden to volunteer and Monday I attended a tai chi class for the first time in forever.

A big party in February to celebrate chaplaincy, retirement and my birthday. My family will be here. The only problem is I don't want to plan it but I guess it was my idea so I better get on it. I've got about a month. 

The boys have gotten quite big and momma, are they destructive.  They wake me up at 6 Am, like toddlers. They're terrible but just look at them. I bought them a bed but they prefer the box it came in. The dog lies on the bed which is too small for him. I am so glad I got them. They make me laugh, they snuggle me when they're not pouncing on my face and fighting with each other and they're beautiful with golden eyes. 

Playing the piano more now. My studio needs some restoration. I've been writing a trashy novel. It's so much fun. How do you write about sex in a fresh and interesting way? There are LOTS of terrible descriptions, I can tell you. 

Anyway, about to go dance. And I have a silent retreat in June. For two weeks, in blessed silence. 

Intricate

the way the rain follows itself

magnolia buds about to exhale

spinach sprouts

reach for the boundless sky

Much love. 

 

 Sitting at my desk listening to the Messiah. I love the music so much, used to sing it every year but the pandemic has put a halt to my favorite venue. Ah well. I can pretend I have a stellar alto voice. 

Plunged into the lake this morning. When water is 45 degrees, the body feels like it is on fire. Really. I went with a new friend, a guy named Tareq who I met tree planting. I invited him and he came (!) with his g'friend who decided to watch because she's not crazy. Btw, Tareq is gorgeous and I made the mistake of thinking he (they) were queer. Oops. They set me straight (ha). Good reminder to never assume, ever. They have a meditation practice and they're doing ecological work so it was natural that we talk and all. they're down for another dunk in the brrrrrrr lake. Ok, Very grateful for my wee hot tub. 

The kitties have their periods of calm before they are racing around getting into everything. I swear, it's like having two toddlers at opposite ends of the house, running full tilt towards each other. 

May we all have a love-filled holiday, however we celebrate it. Let our love shine over all, everywhere. 

Dears-

I just sent a revised and edited thesis to my advisor. Let's hope it will pass muster this time. I still have to write up a list of all the times I met with/talked with my mentor through the last two years and line up those talks with the Five Buddha Families. Whatever the heck that is. 

We were gonna plunge into the lake (45 degrees) today but it's pouring rain, so tomorrow it is! Gawd, I'll be screaming for sure. Today is my last day of call forever. By the end of the month I'll be done, really done. I have a case to review for a law firm. So distressing to read about the details of a birth that went awry through no fault of anyone involved. We can always do better but we're not perfect. The last two births I attended were hairy, both involving 911 and all but the outcomes were ok.  

I'm thinking a lot about my next life. Where do I put my energy as a retired person? What calls to me? I'm asking my friends but I have to figure it out myself. Unhoused folk? Healthcare for underserved people? Feeding the hungry? I'll still volunteer in my beloved parks, maybe become a forest steward. 

My baby boys. They have broken a lamp, the glass in two pictures, countless plants have had the Edvin and Omar treatment, they run around like dervishes at unacceptable hours of the night. I would walk into a burning building for them. 

Solstice this year. great grief descends on the land. I read the news lightly. A friend was obsessively live streaming Gaza horror and I insisted that he stop. As if exposure to the death and trauma would make it stop. We are a broken species. 

I love my children and my grandson and so many other people. In my tiny corner of the world, I can plant trees in the greenbelt and feed homeless kids. What else is there? I'll be looking around. I'm sure I won't have to look very far. Suffering surrounds us. Be alert for the beauty, it's there too. 

 Dears-waiting on a baby at the birth center. My dear Diane is in town and she is home with the dog and the cats. We're going to the coast tomorrow for a few days and I suspect with the way things are going right now, I will be stumbling home in the daylight. Only a few more weeks of this on-call business. 

We are living in unspeakable times. I sit down to write more of my thesis and just stare at the computer screen. The Sunday NYT last week was covered with a weird Calvin Kline ad and when I folded the page down, the front page of the paper had a young boy touching the face of his dead sister while she was wrapped in her shroud. 

I needed Diane to hold me while I cried for a long time. Unbearable, it is all unbearable. 

Dinner with friends yesterday. We went around the table and said three things we were grateful for. Friends, family, food and shelter, safety. 

I can feel the top of this baby's head with my fingers. Her little round head. I'm not sure this momma can complete her labor without pain relief. We will wait for her to ask to be transferred. She may tough it out. We never know when we sit with a mother in labor what she will do, what lengths she will go to, what pain she can tolerate. I'm surprised all the time. When I think a mother can't go on, she surprises me  and muscles that baby out. 

I did. A long time ago. I was 22 and stubborn. Tough. On a mission. But labor is a proving ground. A crucible if you will. We bring all our fears and doubts and questions to birth. And we birth the way we have to. There is no right way. We are bent to the will of the force moving through us. 

"My legs were towers between which

a new world was passing..."

----Audre Lorde

 Dear ones,

Yesterday we had a birth that went swimmingly, until it didn't. An aid car was called, the paramedics were lovely (not always the case), the receiving hospital was gracious, the nurses were (always) stellar and the family is all well and back home today.

You know me, not a believer in a supreme being, or a 'father' or some shadowy figure that looks human, all powerful, moving us around on the chess board of life. 

But.

The closer I am to my own death, the more dispassion I experience with whatever happens. That isn't to say I am unmoved by the tragedy of Gaza or wars anywhere, or planetary shifts that signal the end of an era on Earth which we are all subject to, we are living right now, witnessing the end of days for life as we know it on our beloved terra firma. Od course I will act to bring in a baby who is hesitating or control bleeding for the mother, as best as I can. I will rebury worms I have inadvertently dug up while gardening. I will care for the small lives I share my home with.  

But.

The joy I feel when I am with my beloved Clark or Milo or my dear wife is a kind of universal non-discriminating joy, a joy that is freely offered, freely given, like the rain that falls on everything and everyone. At times it pours out of this small body in a kind of warm and endless river. 

So today I welcome baby Leda to her life with her brother and her parents. In the great stream of love. 

Dear friends-

Well, the concert was as splendid as I had hoped, an intimate gathering in a 900 year old church. The incomparable Jamie Irrepressible, in all his glory. Milo recorded a bit of one of his songs but it won't down load. I think that's perfect because it hardly captures the beauty of that night. He sang my faves and a few songs from his new album. He was funny, tender, vulnerable. He told us he was nervous. 

Worth every penny to come here with my darling boy. Who is still sleeping. 

The hotel I chose way back when was, um, no. Way out in the country, no food nearby, public transportation was going to be a hassle. So we bailed for a Marriot in the center of Bristol with all the bells and whistles and so glad we did. Milo and I walked all over the place yesterday. Sat in St. Mary's church to meditate. Bristol cathedral is right next door to the hotel and I attended evensong yesterday. All the priests were women! Every one. The choir was heavenly. All the prayers were the old chestnuts I remember from my childhood, church of England, y'know. The church acknowledges Bristol's past as a slave port, and that over 500,000 Black humans were essential to the wealth of the city. At the end of the service, prayers were offered to the Israeli and Palestinian people, the war in Ukraine, refugees and immigrants everywhere, to the climate disaster. I found tears in my eyes. Sitting here now writing this,  A kind of healing has settled over me and my fierce anger at the church of my childhood. Participants yesterday were praying on their knees for peace in the world. I don't hold with monotheism (duh) or the virgin birth etc etc but what moved me was the ask, that love prevails over all. 

So I watch my beloved grandson sleeping, the window of our room overlooks the church garden and i am drinking good English tea. 

And I am among my people, my ancestors. How lucky am I.

Much love always. 

In This Shirt

Darlings,

I sent my thesis to the thesis advisor today. He immediately sent back an email thanking me. Ha! I thought. Wait til he bites down on my thesis, on the interviews quaking with humor and love, on the trees, all old and wise in their rugged bark and deep rootedness, more rooted than any of us. Trees know why they are here. They don't go around asking questions all the time. They don't make themselves suffer with unexpressed longing. They hardly even judge. Nah, they don't judge. Like the rain, they fall on the just and the unjust equally. Of course the rich have reinforced roofs and they don't live in flood plains and they burrow into the desert in their bunkers, ready to wait it out.

BTW, gold bars? People are hoarding GOLD BARS. Why on Earth? 

I'm going to sit on the couch and eat cookies and watch the last season of Sex Education. And if you have an opinion about my choices, please keep them to yourself. K? 

Yours as ever, no closer to a state of permanent bliss than I ever was.

Prince, Tom Petty, Steve Winwood, Jeff Lynne and others -- "While My Gui...

Dear sweet jeezus

 Dear ones-

So grateful it 's raining. We'e actually in a drought. 

Life is, in a word, insane. Two midwives for the whole clinic is not ideal, to say the least. I did say no to my partner yesterday so I could write. I think I might be at the point where I can call my thesis 'good' because we have a form to fill out that states we are 80%, 40% etc done... I think I'm at 85% done. I have no idea if my APA formatting is ok (don't ask). I still have a few appendices to complete. I sent what I have to two friends to read. One of them is way smarter than me and way more eloquent about Buddhist principles as they inform her life. I just write about how it feels to swim in very cold water and gratitude for my little life. And the love I give and receive. If I would say anything about my 27 year practice of meditation, it's that. 

Then there are the baby boys. Omar and Edvin. 

Well, there's another momma in labor today. We'll see about that and when she needs attention. 

ALT ER LOVE

XX Luminous Cloud

Felix is very confused.

 Omar and Edvin (Eddie for short). Obviously for our boys in Young Royals. And before you get all attitude cuz they're brothers and I'm referencing a gay story, these children do not know their gender identity or orientation yet. They're just babies, after all. And those names are perfectly respectable and they are hilarious. 

 Dear ones-Just done hosting a morning meditation for my dear teacher who is traveling. It' s so lovely to sit first thing in the morning. It's a bright sunny day and for the last few days a neighbor and I have been getting in the lake at 6 AM with the other lunatics. The water is 65 degrees at the moment. Not as cold as it will get. Not wetsuit weather yet. We're gonna go later in the day today. 

Tuesday I caught a baby and called 911. It was, how to say, a true emergency. Everyone is fine, I visited the family on Thursday, as they got home from the hospital. I'm very curious now about the intersection between faith and science because this situation had both. The family, devout Christians, prayed. I used medications and techniques I know how to use. And in my way, I wasn't praying exactly but I do believe in cause and effect (called co-dependent arising) and I have my own dialogs with the BVM and Kuan Yin. So who's right? Neither? Both? The family firmly believes in the power of prayer and that the situation arose as it should. In other words, it was preordained. From my perspective, yes, they're right. What I never know is how it will go, what will happen. Will this mother bleed? Will the baby struggle to breathe? I'm alert for all the irregularities but resting on normalcy. I don't believe there is some higher power directing the activities of humans. Or do I? If we're mere specs, I would think a divine being would not bother with us individually. 

I also think we live on an intelligent biosphere. As an aspiring green chaplain, it seems evident to me. As we inter-are, as Thich Nhat Hanh worded it, there is this vast web that in indivisible. We form and unform and reform into and out of the elements. We never die, if you will. We just become something else. As Ram Das' teacher Neem Karoli Baba said about his own death, "Where would I go? I'm not going anywhere. I'm just leaving my body." As long as we believe that we are these skin suits, we get stuck. So we've got our ancestral DNA. Calling on the ancestors seems right. And this family was doing that too. So are we that different?   

Well, I wasn't planning to go HERE this morning. 

I'm watching a junco eating the shriveled grapes outside my window. She pecks at the bunch, knocks one to the ground, hops down and eats it, then goes back for more. I missed the grape window this year. I was away getting married.  

Ah well.

Enjoy your day.

Love,

Shoun (Luminous Cloud)

Dear friends-

Welp, what is there to say? I'm still in bed,  avoiding my writing desk. I just talked with a video-savvy friend who is eager to make a short video to accompany my thesis presentation, should I get that far. (I will, I must).

The birth world is chaos but that's nothing new. We're short a midwife so I'm taking more call :-( and feeling the pressure to be in twelve places at once. I talked to the boss AKA my friend who I sold the practice to back in 2017 yesterday and with the addition of another midwife at the end of this month, I may be off the hook for real. Like, not working anymore. Which would be just fine with me. I would still offer to  birth assist but randomly. I was thinking I could hold out til the end of the year but sooner would be just fine. I talked to my financial guy yesterday and he assures me that he can get me to 2045. But holy moly, I don't want to live that long, nah. Besides, the planet and all. 

How are you faring with everything? My children and grandchild are ok. My circle of friends and wider communities are also ok. But the planet is not. Well, she'll be fine, she'll right herself. We've just made a hash of it. 

In other news, it rained yesterday and last night, finally. I went outside and turned my face to the sky, just to feel the rain. Today the air smells so good and fresh. All the poor plants are in their shutting down cycle  but their roots are well watered. My pea patch buddy brought me a summer squash, tomatoes, green beans, a cuke and some sweet peas. I'm debating whether to go in the pool or the lake...When the weather gets colder, I do this bargaining with myself about where to go. Tomorrow and neighbor and I are getting in the lake at 6 AM for a swim. Then we go off to work. 

What will I do if I don't work in the clinic anymore? It will be so WEIRD. Putting down an identity. 

Love and kisses,

Luminous Cloud   

 

My girl married her John from South Africa. He now has a whole new family. And he asked me to be his mum. I said yes, of course. 

Waiting on a mom in early labor. I don't wanna go to a birth but I will get over my bad self. I have to. Friday another three days of training with chaplaincy. It rained a bit last night, lovely to hear the rain on the deck. 

I have a bunch of short papers to write about the last trainings and the one coming up. Remember, if I EVER suggest another training program I'm interested in, please disabuse me of that notion. Please. 

Although film theory would be fascinating. (Don't ask)

I must go for a walk or something. I'm tangled up in knots with stress.  A swim would be great but I can't take my phone in the water with me. 

I hope everyone is ok after the latest climate/political fuckery. We find our friends. We hang with those we love. Last weekend was nuts but I saw some of my favorite people in the world. My wife loves me and I love her.  Clark gave me a Bob Ross bobble head that talks. So life is good. 

 Tomorrow begins another chaplaincy training period with lectures on-line and a 5 day retreat thrown into the middle. My mentor cleverly suggested that on our 'rest' day that Rachel and I go to the lady spa. I immediately made an appointment for a scrub and a soak and a lie down. Yeah. 

The weather this summer in the PNW has been reminiscent of the past. Cool in the morning, burned off by 2 PM so a dip in the lake is called for and cool nights. While the rest of the planet burns up and people die of the heat, we are enjoying the lovely Northwest summers of yore. 

Can we talk. I don't know how we (I) live with this cognitive dissonance. I know the suffering is immense. When we were near Death Valley last month, the temperatures reached 120. Mapquest did not allow us  to cross the desert. A broken car would be death for us. Heat deserts are a thing, especially for poor and Black and Brown people in big cities. As usual. Who dies first, sooner, more often. 

How do we live with this? 

My thesis is now 24 pages and growing. I told my advisor it's probably all wrong. I'm keeping the magic out of it. The beauty of the women I have interviewed is hidden behind the words. Maybe those long gorgeous stories are just for me. Facts and surveys and data are not my experience. If I have a description for myself at this point in the chaplaincy process is that I'm a mystic. I endeavor to see with the eyes of my heart. As I said to someone I'm mentoring right now, it's all love. All the years of practice and meditation and study and retreats have brought me here. It's all love. From within and without. 

Continuing on with my teen boy series obsession, I have discovered a Substack person who is dissecting Young Royals with the eye of a film school instructor. Each week he/they/whoever takes one topic; metaphor of pizza, music, negative space, blocking scenes etc. and gives an in-depth analysis of said topic. I'm totally hooked. It's so interesting. My wife has joked that film school will be my next field of study. She might be right. And very possibly, I'm avoiding the pain and heartache of our beleaguered world by entertaining myself thusly. 

Well, dear friends, I have to get up at 5:30 for the morning meditation so I better get to bed where, perhaps I will fall asleep. 

I may dream of my dear dear lake which holds me and rocks me in her vastness. I am grateful for every day I get to swim there. 

Random thoughts. May we all be well. May we find freedom in this very life. 

 Dear friends-down deep in my writing I'm not sure there is a light at the end of this particular chaplaincy tunnel. I don't know if I'm getting closer or farther away, distracted by so many shiny things. What about the patriarchy? Don't forget indigenous peoples! Therefore mycelium! Grief informing every step. How many trees have burned, exactly how many? Not to mention all the other assorted life incinerated. 

How do we show, demonstrate, practice with an undefended heart when that heart is nothing but rubble? 

In Seattle there is a project called The Last 6000. Folks are cataloguing 'heritage trees', the old ones in parks, in back yards, in green belts. Of course I'm interested. I just learned from the city that trees destroyed in parking strips by the homeowner adjacent can be fined, depending on the size, kind and age of the tree, up to $100,000 per tree. As if money could replace the shade and shelter of that individual. 

Ok, this is an obtuse post, I know. 

Eden is marrying South African John on the 19th of August. I will leave my two week training and immediately go to the airport and fly to LA (Hi Elizabeth!), perform a quickie wedding for them on Saturday and then fly back on Sunday. Whew. 

Nick Cave is a genius composer. 

ANOHNI and the Johnsons - Sliver Of Ice (Official Video)

We married