Author: Jnana Hodson

In downsizing to a remote fishing village in Downeast Maine, this eclectic writer feels everything's coming together.

Speaking Truth to power

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

We’ve heard the phrase a lot lately, but few know that it originated as a Quaker expression.

Most of us Quakers, or members of the Society of Friends, assumed it was one of those many great expressions from the beginning of the movement, back in the upheavals of the mid-1600s.

Not so, it turns out. Nor even the 1700s or 1800s. It’s much more recent than that.

The expression originated with a 1955 pamphlet published by the American Friends Service Committee titled “Speak Truth to Power: a Quaker Search for an Alternative to Violence,” which promoted pacifism.

Still, it rings true to the early Quakers, who spoke boldly with an alternative Christianity that  brought many changes to British and American society. The faith and its practice went far beyond mere religion. It extended through one’s relationships, including labor, possessions, business, politics, education, leisure, and nearly everything else.

For them, Truth was Christ, so speaking Truth to those in authority was to challenge the rulers and oppressors, countering them with the greater life and dominion of Jesus.

This goes way, way beyond being factually correct.

It’s more like invoking what others might do when they form a sign of the Cross when facing a demon.

Let’s not forget that authority.

We make our own

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments
Christmas cards seem to be a fading tradition. When I was growing up, my parents received several hundred and likely sent out a similar number. We do about two dozen, and that number’s shrinking. Here’s the design we mailed off last year, with a gold dust adhering to a rubber-stamped base. (Photo by Rachel Williams)

 

Sometimes, you need a bigger map

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

I’ve loved maps since childhood, so our new interest in Downeast Maine has whetted an appetite to investigate more of the region’s geography, which includes a lot of water. Not just the ragged coastline and bays, but also large lakes and many bogs, marshes, and swamps plus rivers and waterfalls.

One thing that’s rather boggled my mind is discovering of what’s cut off from U.S. maps on that edge of the continent.

For instance, I had no clue of Grand Manan Island, which is 21 miles long with bluffs rising 200 to 400 feet above the Atlantic just nine miles east of Maine. It even has three lighthouses. Getting there’s a whole other matter.

Still, I doubt that many Americans think of anything lying in the ocean east of the United States until you get to the British Isles or European mainland. So is there anything else we’re missing?

Well, there’s tiny Machias Seal Island further south, claimed by both the U.S. and Canada, which has a long lighthouse presence there.

What’s really surprised me is how far the province of Nova Scotia extends south.

From the easternmost point in the U.S., Nova Scotia is more than 82 miles to the southeast.

From Bar Harbor, Maine, it’s 113 miles to the east.

And further south, it runs down past Portland, Maine, where sits more than 200 miles to the east.

Put another way, nearly anyone sailing from Maine has to navigate around this extension of Canada.

If you follow the news, it also puts some of our fishing controversies in perspective.

From Provincetown, at the tip of Cape Cod, for instance, the distance to the tip of Nova Scotia is roughly 230 miles, versus 111 to Portland, Maine, meaning that the southernmost point of Canada juts that much further into what I had considered U.S. fishing grounds.

With the bigger map, one including both the New England, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia shorelines, you can see how a funnel is formed, one where ocean currents push into Fundy Bay to create the world’s highest tides.

For me, this is a reminder of how often our comprehension of a problem is limited by conventional thinking when we look at the situation.

Just how else do you get outside the box, anyway?

Could it be a mutually transitional relationship?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In the final revision of my novel What’s Left, the voice and direction of the story changed greatly. For one thing, it became much more Cassia’s own.

To my surprise, some of the material about her father lost its urgency or importance. Here was one passage that would be refocused and condensed:

The crucial turning point comes, she says, just before Baba arrives here. Tara’s always defended her own space — what she perceives as her essential freedom — and as long as he could accept that, they could spend time together. At heart, though, he’d require more commitment than she would offer, but this once, knowing he’d be headed to the monastery, the situation forced him to take that out of the equation. He had to admit he had no idea what would follow his cloistered withdrawal from the world, and demanding a commitment he couldn’t return at this time would be unrealistic and unfair. That insight, in turn, gave both of them a rare freedom space to concentrate on the present rather than planning an ironclad future together. We can enjoy the next few months together, at best, and they could take everything at that. It was the healthiest — and most rewarding — relationship he’d had. Neither was clinging to the other.

~*~

When it comes to relationships, individuals can vary greatly in their needs and expectations and what they can provide for their partner.

Would you feel comfortable in a relationship like this? For how long?

~*~

In the family, Cassia may have had food like this. Halvah and nut-cake at Mario restaurant, Monolithos, Santorini. (Photo by Klearchos Kapoutsis via Wikimedia Commons.)

~*~

 

I’m feeling suspended in time, as in limbo

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

A curious set of emotions has set in for me. As much as I love living in Dover, I feel myself separating from it. There’s a sadness, as well as the excitement of new adventure ahead, though we have no idea exactly how soon.

Next week? Next month? Next spring or summer? We don’t know yet.

We had enough surprises in trying to buy this place, in what seems a life ago to me.

So I anticipate a crush of time-consuming work ahead in packing and then unpacking our goods, as well as the rounds of changing address and establishing new connections, and that in turn has me hesitating to step up to volunteer for tasks in the groups where I’m a member. Yes, I’m distancing.

It’s happening at home, too.

Moving around the garden, for instance, when we realized we wouldn’t replant garlic bulbs this fall, not here. Or looking at my fern beds and asparagus patch, knowing I’ll definitely miss them.

Or facing household breakdowns, which seem to be multiplying. You know, let repairing them become someone else’s problem. They probably wouldn’t like the color of paint we use, anyway.

Things we’ve never really liked about the house itself but somehow accepted now are acknowledged as irritants. That sort of thing.

I keep thinking we could easily pour another hundred grand into this domicile, if we had that much, but it would never be want we really want or, at this point in our lives, fit what we need.

This all feels so strange, given that I’d settled into a kind of familiar lazy comfort with things.

All of them about to be uprooted.