Month: December 2015

PLACING THE TRUTH IN ANOTHER LIGHT

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

As one traditional Quaker query was read aloud during a meeting for worship, one of its phrases began echoing within me: “Truth in the heart.”

How remarkable! Not in the head but rather the heart! Truth, which we see so often as ground in facts and logical consistency, is now assayed not in the brain but rather in the core of our affections.

As early Friends used the word, Truth is much more of a verb than an immutable object. Think of the progression from true to truer to truest. Maybe you can sense that motion in the slightly fuller expression of that day’s query, asking if we, individually and as a group, heed “Love and Truth in the heart” …

As I said, a remarkable phrase.

REVISITING THE EARLY CHURCH, IN PART

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

While walking to Quaker Meeting one Sunday morning, I heard a familiar hymn from my childhood wafting from the open doors at St. Mary’s. About a block later, still humming along, I realized it was the Protestant hymn, “Faith of Our Fathers.”

Well, I thought it was a Protestant hymn, especially now that this music is as likely to be heard in American Catholic services as in the mainstream Protestant ones, which have been drifting toward the newer pop-influenced praise songs. (A musically literate friend, by the way, dubs the rocking chants the Rupture songs.)

Imagine my surprise in learning the hymn in question was written to commemorate the English Catholics martyred in the schism that created the Church of England!

Either way, the questions remain, Whose father? And which faith?

And, as a digression seen in genealogy, we can add that it’s often the mother’s faith that’s followed.

Still, any way you want to look at this, I think it reflects a widespread sense of an earlier “golden age” of faith. Early Quakers, for instance, insisted that they weren’t intent on reforming Christianity, but rather restoring it to a richness from “before the great darkness of apostasy that set upon the church,” something I’d deduced meant from before the first Nicene Council.

And, for balance, many later Quakers looked and still look to the upheavals of that first generation or two of the Society of Friends as a golden era of faithful devotion, something a closer reading of history will challenge.

Now that image of the early church has in turn been challenged in my reading of Richard E. Rubenstein’s When Jesus Became God, which focuses on the tribulations leading up to the Nicene Council and then flowing out of it.

The fact that both major sides in this confrontation were so violent, often as roving mobs, continues to rattle me, along with their allegiance to priests and bishops and the secular power those clergy already carried, even when Christianity itself was at odds with the Roman empire.

More subtle is the emerging schism between the Greek-speaking Christians of the eastern Mediterranean, with their complexity of thought and love of philosophical speculation, in contrast to the more action-oriented Latin-speaking Christians to the west, who lost much of the subtlety of the debate. Already, the tensions between the metropolitan bishops, or theoretically equal “popes,” of the eastern Mediterranean sea and Rome were mounting. If Rubenstein is right, the schism between the Eastern Orthodox churches and the Roman Catholics was taking shape even before the Nicene Council, no matter how later history records the tragic events.

All of this leaves me asking just when the church moved from synagogues and home-based circles into a priestly class abetted by passionate mobs in the streets.

As Rubenstein repeats, there came a point when Jews were no longer part of the discussion but were rather persecuted.

Now, let us consider. Could that be when “the dark night of apostasy” arose?

NOT EXACTLY BIGALOW?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

 

The more I listen, the more I perceive the Tea Party agenda is ultimately an attack on democracy in America. Unlike the Founding Fathers, they have no respect for the necessity of government.

And a position of no compromise is the essence of tyrannical dictatorship.

What’s left would be brutal and cruel. Especially, for many of them, without their Social Security, in the aftermath.

And they’re afraid of socialism as an attack on the nation and its values? Think again.

MAINTAINING A GROUP IDENTITY IN A WIDER COMMUNITY

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Seeing radical religion continued through an elder-and-student succession over the generations also sets it apart from the wider society. In practice, it also invokes a circle of learning, all working together.

Sometimes, as in monasteries, the circle receives support from the wider society. At other times, it is based in circles of families whose identity somehow stands apart from the wider society. Upholding those values requires passing the teachings and practices down through the families.

This has been the history of the Jewish people, for starters, the preservation of a unique vision of justice and philanthropy, a critical stance from the mainstream, the independent role of prophecy in which political and social rulers are placed under a more absolute authority, monotheism rather than polytheism.

We see it, too, to some extent in minority and ethnic communities as they attempt to maintain their unique identities and cultures.

The Amish, of course, stand out in America as they pursue this.

One of the complications is that it can lead to a relatively small gene pool when it comes to finding a spouse.

In the Church of the Brethren, the annual sessions, which alternated between the East Coast and the Midwest, were often followed by marriage announcements. In other words, it was the place to go if you were looking. The shared values heightened the chances for a successful union, we can suppose.

For Quakers, the boarding schools allowed for some wider mixing than one would find in the home village. Still, the lines could tangle in time, even with a strict ban on first-cousin marriages. I remember a conversation with one young couple who told me they were also third cousins or some such. Don’t think it was aunt and uncle, but it seemed that complicated at the time.

Maybe that’s why I wasn’t shocked by the complex, tangled family lines presented in Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex or even the incest. (As others have noted, the reason the incest taboo is so universal is simply that the practice has likewise been so universal.)

In the novel, persecution leads to brutal oppression and massacre. The generations are torn apart. And then, somehow, they continue. What shocks most is the violence and hatred and related moral failures of the more “civilized” ships that fail to come to the rescue of innocent victims. But that returns us to thoughts of the wider society, doesn’t it.

HOMAGE TO OTHERS IN THE ARTS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

The tradition of art inspiring art is a long one. Perhaps we might even see a redundancy there and shorten the sentence to “Tradition inspiring art is a long one.” Or more accurately, “Traditions inspiring art are long.”

At the moment I’m reflecting on my poetry collection, 50 Preludes & Fugues, which springs in part from Dmitri Shostakovich’s 20th century homage to Bach. There are, we should note, two sets each with 24 preludes with fugues. I became acquainted with some of these piano pieces in college, via a budget LP recording apparently with the composer at the keyboard. (Memory had a young American pianist, as it is, but now I think it was the composer himself at the keyboard.)

And then these engaging, sometimes haunting, works disappeared from general public awareness.

Decades later, a Naxos CD set of the complete cycles by Konstantin Schebakov allowed me to rediscover their range – the discs were often playing as I drafted and revised the new poems. Still later, through a Christmas gift from my younger stepdaughter, I gained the opportunity to closely examine Keith Jarrett’s exploration on the ECM label, after hearing selections of his performances on public radio broadcasts.

What continues to amaze me is how different the two interpretations are. The Russian Schebakov is crystalline, restrained, centered on each chord and its ringing. The American Jarrett, in contrast, develops the phrasing – these pieces sing. Which version do I prefer? Or which is, in some way, “better”?

I can’t say. Instead, I’d argue that each is a counterpoint for the other, both springing from the same root. And that as a consequence, we’re all richer for their advances.

In the arts and if faith, we all build on deep roots that have come before us.

WHAT A GANG

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Some of us of a certain age remember a weird black-and-white Saturday morning children’s show starring Andy Devine, a rotund, raspy-voiced former cowboy movie sidekick. I never knew quite what to make of the show back then, but each week essentially had three individual adventures bridged by the host and an audience of screaming kids. The same ones, in the close-ups, each week.

When the topic of Andy’s Gang comes up – along with a singing of its theme song, “I’ve got a gang, you’ve got a gang, everybody’s got a gang – ANDY’S GANG!” – what I’ve noticed is the utterly perplexed look on the faces of those who’ve never seen it. In short, nobody can describe it in a way that comes across. The cartoons came on afterward and ran till noon or so.

Thus, when a recent Google search turned up some Andy’s Gang videos from the ’50s, we started watching. Let’s just say the show hasn’t aged well. After a few shots of the host, the mother in the room said she’d never allow her kids around that character. Ahem. And that was before his classic “Pluck your magic twang-er, Froggie,” which she declared had obviously Freudian meaning. (She was, in fact, more graphic.) And then we got a mini-episode with two bare-chested boys in India, who were rescuing monkeys. Another friend points out the blatantly racist undertone of the stories in Africa. Do your own analysis there, if you want.

I think the third regular adventure had a goat-cart in Ireland.

And then there’s an ad where Andy’s telling a friend he has a big date lined up. He gets all spiffed up for the event. Let’s just say, when she shows up (to eat cereal with him), she’s not age-appropriate.

It’s supposed to be cute, I know, but these days it’s just creepy. The word, in fact, just kept returning.

At least each week’s show ended with a reminder to be good boys and girls and go to Sunday school the next morning.

 

LIMITATIONS AS A FOCUSING LENS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The old strictures sought to keep Quakers focused on their religious calling. As Damon D. Hickey explains (The Southern Friend, Volume XXVII, Number 2, 2005) them, “This cross, this obedience that was called for, was in the broadest sense the death of self-will and obedience to the inward Christ. … Thus, worldly amusements, especially dancing, were a waste of precious time and unfit the mind for devotional exercises. Music was the devil’s instrument. The Lord called his people to leave the world’s friendships, vain fashions, … sinful amusements, which would include the movies, the theatre and the dance. Perhaps this part would not much apply to our readers, but … in nearly all the so-called Quaker Colleges and Preparatory Schools dancing is practiced.”

He continues to quote 1943-44 writings by North Carolina Wilburite Anderson M. Barker, who argued that by yielding to Christ the Ruler

He will rule out all hurtful reading, and preserve all from putting too much time upon the news, and other such readings, to the neglect of the Bible and other good books, which have to do with our eternal interests.

Then there’s the quotation, “We Quakers only read true things,” told by a boy returning three novels he’d borrowed from a neighbor. Or what is erroneously sometimes called a Quaker hymn from North Carolina, which is usually heard these days in folk music circles, “How Can I Keep From Singing?” Or the recorded ministers who dragged me to an apple barn in Ohio for my first contradance, only to hear the next morning an elderly friend wearing a bonnet rise and wag a finger into the air, warning us of “that evil amongst us known as folk dancing” – while others looked down, sheepishly, trying to suppress a grin.

From the beginning of the movement, we have Margaret Fell’s objection to the strictures of a “silly gospel” that took hold, all the same.

Or later Quakers who accepted things that bind and pinch, as long as they’re chosen.

Or the struggle to keep a vibrant faith and intellect, rather than a barren one.

Always, the tension, in Scripture, between one world, “And God saw that it was good,” and another, sometimes called the ways of the world or even the wayward world.

So the challenge is in keeping a focused life that avoids becoming simply barren.

Let me point to the proportions of the classic meetinghouses – elegance as simplicity – plus the emphasis on philanthropy. Poetry as prayer.

So here we are, with our love of movies, music, theater, visual arts – and a tad of guilt?

I hear an echo of my father, with his passion for big-band music and some of the old hymns, “It would be a lesser world without music.”

I think, too, of a couple who lived without electricity as part of a strict economy that allowed them to focus full-time on calling and playing for country dances.

So here we are, with a visitor asking after the rise of worship – “Are you the pastor?” Before I could say anything, a voice behind me: “He is, he just doesn’t know it.”

Look, I want everyone to sit on the facing bench (elders gallery) at least once a year. “Her turn – next, a child.” Facing each other across history.

~*~

Elders 1

For more on my poetry collection and other reflections, click here.

Light 1

THEY’RE THERE, ALL THE SAME

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

How difficult it is to see fish in the water, especially when looking in from above. They’re so perfectly camouflaged.

It’s another of the things I’ve observed living along a river and near the ocean. Or even looking into the large tank at the New England Aquarium for the divers doing maintenance below, where only their bubbles give them away.

We look and still miss so many things right in front of us. As for me, I like to think I behold everything. Now what were the color of the bank teller’s eyes just a minute ago? I’m clueless. What what make and model was the car that ran the stop sign and nearing collided with us just moments before that? I was caught breathless. And you want to talk about God?

Of course, it helps to know where to start looking. If you can.