Category: Uncategorized

A new adventure is taking shape.

It’s going to take more emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual strength than we’ve ever needed.

Mary and I started a journey of parenthood that we thought would last for much longer than it did. Through faith, open communication, jiu-jitsu, and a commitment to the learning lifestyle, we focused on raising good and strong men.

I’m proud to continue that journey and witness their strength grow everyday to a place where I believe we can tackle the biggest challenges.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

A lover pulled the Hermit for me during a tarot reading this winter. It seemed impossible. With two sons and a co-parent with her own children, I was rarely alone and quite content surrounded by the energy of others.

Summer storms have washed away much of that energy.

There is no more romance and friends and family continue to disappear. My sons spend much of the day with neighborhood friends and I’m alone in my house more than ever.

I’m giving in to the quiet. I’m finding myself there. I’m remembering the young man who would spend hours reading and writing in search of truth and beauty.

As I compose this post, an unusual Hermit’s adventure is presenting itself. I’m surrendering to the call to get away from people and closer to nature than I have ever been. I don’t know where it might take me, but I am ready.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

I was fortunate to have a father who taught me that school wasn’t about learning and that it wouldn’t take much to turn a sold out concert venue into a death trap.

Malevolence isn’t necessary for very bad things to happen.

Again, I was lucky to have wise guidance. Better than biography is historical perspective.

I would encourage you to check out humanprogress.org and this interview with Steven Pinker: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-jordan-b-peterson-podcast/id1184022695?i=1000446083470

Almost everything is objectively better and safer than ever. This is bad news for the innumerable powers trying to scare us into surrendering our freedom to them.

The kidnapping scares of the 80s and 90s were fabricated as those numbers fell. Thirty years later kids aren’t allowed outside (e.g. local PA town passing a daytime curfew). Shark Attack Summer was a narrative contrary to the facts. The fear narrative always trumps facts in the media. The content providers do not want an activated people in their communities solving the very real problems that could be solved. They would rather present perpetual problems that have us voting for force of law against one another and doing nothing for each other.

Consider who most benefits from “terrorism.”

I had to go to the hospital where Mary died this week. A quick and mundane errand that I felt prepared for. It was satisfying to see the lot where I first parked to get Mary into the Emergency Department torn up and covered in rumble.

But as I approached the information desk in the main lobby, ghosts floated in around me. Family and friends who I had run into during my infrequent times away from Mary’s side were sitting or pacing the wide space.

My chest tightened as the quick and mundane errand stretched into, “Have a seat and I’ll take a look as soon as I can.”

My sons smiled and shared a story about playing Battleship at one of the couches. I looked at the ghosts and understood that so many of them weren’t with me any longer. I realized that I would walk out of there and they could not. I felt the pain that was there and knew it would not follow me.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

I haven’t had guests to my house in months. That’s probably what this post should be about, but it’s not. When my late wife’s parents wanted to stop by for an evening, I was grateful, but also concerned about the disorderliness and the heat. This is the first time I have lived with central air and I’m not very comfortable with it. I feel isolated in the house with all the windows closed, the outdoor sounds replaced by a droning from the basement. I run the heat in the winter (still missing the warmth of radiators), but I’m not missing out on too much birdsong in January.

So I fired up the ancient air conditioning unit and it didn’t work. No surprise really, I knew there was a leak in the system and it had been at least a year since I had tried it.

No bother, the evening cooled off and we were all comfortable. But it did get me thinking about why I don’t use our A/C.

• The jarring transition between air conditioning and fresh, if hot, air

• Grew up largely without A/C

• The birds: that first closed window made the house sadder

• My sons screaming in joy (or is that pain? might need to check on them) three blocks away

• Hearing what’s happening at night for security and awareness (a heightened concern of the single parent)

• The sound of a condenser running shuts down a small part of my brain
• My body performs better at room temp or above

• Concerts, soccer, yoga, burritos, sex: all the best things are done with extra heat

• I’m kinda cheap.

There’s something to be said for the little adversities. If you take on the little pains, you find out they were smaller than you thought. It’s watching your son getting choked on the mat and then smiling and fist bumping his partner. Then he’s in a competition against a much larger opponent getting smashed into the ground. Then he’s facing tragedy that many adults can’t manage. You watched and sat back and let him deal with the little adversities, now he’s stronger than you could imagine a ten-year-old could be.

Turn off the A/C and find out how strong you could be, because you ARE stronger.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

Each grief calls out to echo off other griefs.

They know one another by their partial professions of love.

Increasingly unintelligible as memories of our lost loves rely heavier on photos and aging dreams.

An intimate moment remembered as an epoch.

A catalog of wrongs righted off the ledger.

A cruel word as easily tattooed as forgotten.

A needle’s eye of lacking tenderness become a chasm.

Everything distorted for what purpose? To proceed? Proceed where? Through the “process”? To what end?

I know no person who wants to be rid of grief, but only to lighten it and find freedom out from under it.

To this end, perhaps, we are carried along by malleable memories and faulty minds.

-Jason Zerbey

I’ve been practicing yoga for a few weeks and my focus has remained on mechanics. Well, to be more accurate: I’m just trying to keep up with the class and not injure myself.

Today was different. Not in the struggle to keep up with new poses, but in my intention. I noticed that the attendance card box was labelled “M-Z”. The instructors have been very kind to me and up to this point had been pulling my card for me, I hadn’t paid attention to the box.

My late wife’s name was Mary Zerbey. There’s more in those initials than the reminder of our life together or her yoga mat under my arm.

She was Mary Fisher for almost 37 years, Mary Zerbey for less than 11. I have learned that the Mary I know is unique. She only exists in my mind and the people who knew her for all of her 47 years don’t have the same person in their minds. It’s a peculiar revelation of grief, of how we exist differently in individual minds. My love for her is mine alone, as is my love for anyone.

I got to my mat with an odd intention, to release the love I had attached to people in my life and to bring it back into myself. A totally new idea for me. Up to now I’ve been sharing as much love as I can stand while simultaneously seeking it internally. Specifically, I focused on a recent love that was no longer serving my independent, forward movement.

Class was thoroughly challenging and I had no space to consciously reflect on my intention.

We stretched out for shavasana, or corpse pose, to close our practice and images from my dreams appeared. I watched an ancient planet, the source of powerful dream stories since childhood, fall towards a new landscape I had been wandering for weeks, searching for meaning. The collision destroyed both worlds, killing millions on the old planet and shattering the barren wilderness under my feet.

I went to tears under the cool towel over my eyes.

The old quest to find love in the world is over. I’m ready to find it in myself.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

“You’re a beast back there.”

It’s the most frequent compliment I get from teammates and opponents. Soccer is where I’ve consistently acted out the integration of my shadow into my persona. It’s come from an overdeveloped sense of work ethic. When every striker seemed bigger, stronger, faster, more skilled, or better equipped, I figured that I could out work any one of them. Pushing myself to never give up on any play introduced me to the beast. Through the work I’ve gotten stronger, faster, and a bit more skillful. Game after game I found unlikely successes and built neural shortcuts to the beast.

It’s there at every kickoff now. It’s part of my game, part of me that is entirely under control in a seemingly wild way.

I have a lot more beasts to contend with, trickier and nastier monsters, but I know how to work and how to use them for my betterment.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

The following is my response to an NPR podcast episode that was recommended to me recently.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hidden-brain/id1028908750?i=1000415979970

There’s a lot covered in this episode (after a diet of audiobooks, 2-hour Jordan Peterson lectures, and 3-hour Joe Rogan podcasts, I’m impatient with the old constraints), but the final points struck me pretty hard.

One of the conclusions that is reached is that religion was created for social purposes and that modern institutions are capable of creating models of stability and trust that can now supplant the function of religion. I’m a totally biased libertarian, but find that concept a little bit laughable considering history since Nietzsche declared God to be dead. He was right in a societal manner, but also put forth that Man had blood on his hands and needed to find a way to wash himself clean, to create a structure of meaning without an extra-human source.

Man tried that in the 20th century and it was a bloody mess. We’ve worshiped communism, socialism, capitalism, democracy, and nationalism, none of which is held to a standard that is higher than the humans who administer them. Yes, organized religion suffers the same problem, but there is no church that has killed the tiniest fraction of people as Soviet Russia, Mao’s China, the Khmer Rouge, the United States of America, and the largest governments since Nietzsche’s cautionary declaration.

The same governments imprison more people than any religion is currently capable of too.

I did enjoy the podcast and don’t have nearly the expertise to refute the basic premise, but it doesn’t ring true to me. If I’m correct in restating, the claim is that religion was created to provide social needs. (Strangely, this is refuted during the episode as the claim is that non-physical beliefs exist in earlier cultures without the same problems to solve, and that they were merely changed, not created. Maybe I missed a connection there.)

From Joesph Campbell, Carl Jung, and my personal experience with the creative process, I’ve gleaned that there is knowledge to be received, that it exists a priori conscious thought. It seems to me that religion comes after the spiritual realm, not before.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

I love myself.

I approve of myself.

All is right in my world.

I am change.

I am safe.

I am happy.

I am healthy.

I live with ease.

I am filled with lovingkindness.

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I start most of my days with thoughts of gratitude. I think of people first, often the ones I find most challenging to find peace with, then I turn to the things and circumstances in my life that make it amazing. I thank God for the obstacles and the tools He has given me to overcome them.

Then I spend time stretching and saying the above affirmations out loud. I concentrate on breath and the feelings in my body as I hold each stretch through the affirmations. I listen to myself, both my mind and my voice, as I speak each sentence. I let them guide my intentions for the day, show me what I need.

Meditation can be difficult for me. When I began regular practice months ago, I used music and a 13-minute timer to help clear my mind of the usual morning clutter. I let go of the music in the spring to let birdsong in the windows and eventually dropped the timer as my affirmations developed and I added stretches and muscle work.

I don’t get to it everyday and have yet to find a routine for our road trips, but I practice more than 20 minutes most days. I’ve also added occasional yoga classes as I’ve observed improvement in my physical state and desire to dedicate more time towards caring for and improving my body.

I want to thank Hunter Clarke-Fields for starting me on my affirmations. I found her at the beginning of my positive parenting quest and she got me speaking out loud about what I wanted for myself and my children. After reading Louise Hay, I modified the affirmations to fit my personal journey. I also want to thank the folks at Yoga U, the intensity of the classes has been invigorating and refreshes my mind, body, and spirit each time.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason