Author: Jnana Hodson

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

MUTED WITNESS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

best known for our anti-war witness
we could do much more
individually and together
to summon others
to transcendental worship

*   *   *

if we hesitate to strip naked or don sackcloth
to march brazenly into parking lots
and through malls
or the courthouse
or legislature
to proclaim Truth

to those who reach for a Budweiser
the first thing
1st-Day morning
or so passionately decry anything
smacking of religion or church

how else do we extend the welcome?
maybe we’re just getting old
or sedate
or muffling passion

this is more important
than placing a notice
in the paper or a line in the phone book
if anyone remembers

*   *   *

there’s no invitation
without an address
or sign
or billowing aromatic
celebration
made visible

Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
To see the full set, click here.

UNCOVERING THE PLACE OF STRUGGLE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In his Pendle Hill pamphlet last year, Marking the Quaker Path: Seven Key Words Plus One, Robert Griswold opens with the term “condition,” which initially seems familiar enough. Quakers often remark to a comment, “This speaks to my condition,” or even “the Friend speaks my mind,” conveying a sense of unity and affirmation.

Griswold, though, gives the concept a darker twist, noting that a meaningful spiritual journey requires seeing ourselves in our places of failure and weakness rather than a state of “being in charge,” as we so often do. Think of Anne Lamott’s “three essential prayers” — Help, Thanks, and Wow — and admit a long personal list invoking the first.

I would extend that awareness of condition not just to ourselves individually but to our families and circles of faith and then the wider society. I’d say there’s great need everywhere.

This, then, leads to the subsequent steps where we turn to the Holy One and our kindred spirits for direction and growth.

Curiously, condition is not a word I find used widely in either Scripture or early Quaker literature – not directly, that is – but it does fit the situation of many people as they set out in faith as recorded in both.

Could it be that in many of our religious circles, we’ve been running away from this very difficult but essential challenge? We go to worship looking for rest and renewal, not more turmoil and suffering.

O, Lord, give us strength!

~*~

More of my own reflections on alternative Christianity are found at Religion Turned Upside Down.

IS THIS SUPPOSED TO BE FUN?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Being mindful of what’s right in front of us can always be a challenge. Here are 10 new items from my end.

~*~

  1. Hard to think Christmas is so near. It’s just not in the air, at least for me, despite the bell ringers and carols around the stores. But then I’m often off on another planet.
  2. I always intend to put up our outdoor Christmas lights while it’s still warm. Rather than freezing my fingers.
  3. I’ve long said if she would only dance, she’d be perfect. OK, there are few other details I’d add, all these years later. Learning to read music, for one.
  4. Another old fear? If you get to know me, you won’t like me. Or maybe: You won’t like what you find. (That muscular reaction when someone gets too physically close in a conversation.
  5. I seldom I feel myself fitting in – in a crowd, an audience, a group, a family.
  6. NOT THE USUAL … one of my strictures in my desire not to repeat myself in blogging. Or anywhere else, for that matter. Not that I usually remember.
  7. I miss being able to get the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts on local radio. These days I have to listen on my laptop or cell phone. Just ain’t the same.
  8. In a depression.: Do I really LIKE anyone? Being with them? Am I having ANY fun?
  9. Well, I am drinking Virgin Marys during Advent. (Cheers in the morning!)
  10. You were supposed to save me.

~*~

Yes, light snow counts.
Yes, light snow counts. We know what just might be really ahead.

AS SHE REMINDS HIM

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

he’s not a bird
eating fish
or worms

see how frantically he spades
without weeding

how voraciously he climbs out
on the seeded maple twigs

*   *   *

incisor
domestica

rodentia
in residence

*   *   *

a squirrel with a martini
too much     too often
fog in treetops     before the wind blows

how     do sparrows remember
once nested in this eave     before rats or squirrels
found them out?

if it were only hickory nuts for high-fat content     he’d
look shiny      with such thought     snickering abounds     how is it
they acquire a taste for the Big Bad Wolf     who bought the house?

*   *   *

nobody charged extra
for the vermin

*   *   *

in the walls                                        they’re all wild creatures
of course, considering the jerry-rigged affairs
the preceding landholders had undertaken within this plot

(oh, the stories the neighbors were relating, all hinting
at more scandalous expansions now lost to posterity,
nobody could remember much in the way of detail,
except for the wild noises and all the coming and going)

the remaining evidence held no apologies

so what if we live
in cages of our own making?     we still escape
into further flames or muck or fencing, all depending
on the company we keep
everyone’s a social creature,
the chattering
he’d considered birds was more or less
incensed squirrels, tearing about his estate

with that obscene flick of the tail

Poem copyright 2015 by Jnana Hodson
To read the full set of squirrelly poems, click here.

PRELUDE & FUGUE 48/

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

with fiddles and crows
tracing a map of yellow leaves

*   *   *

on a map of frosted snow
three crows with their fiddles
in the crown of their living

of a rock face map, frosted snow
three crows with their fiddles
in the crown of their living rock face

on a map, frosted snow, three crows
with their fiddles in the crown
out of their rock face, tracing some life

 atop scree, another one at the bottom, wintergreen

~*~

Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
To see all 50 Preludes & Fugues, click here.

HOW THE STREAMS CAME TO THE SEA

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I come to the sea a stranger
a person of a different religion
learning to eat at one table

these days, one who dwells inland
as far as the tide retreats

the passion of the moon
with its heartbeat and home and
those who have been torn and uprooted
will sense this

no image holds the tide
the moon, then, must do

somehow resembling the moon I knew first in Ohio
and later, in sagebrush desert

all things who move furtively in the night

Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
To see the full set of seacoast poems, click here.

WAITING BEYOND PASSIVITY

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Another aspect of myself that’s just coming to light is a kind of passiveness that the Asian practice has encouraged – indeed, Yoga and Zen direct the practitioner to become invisible or transparent, egoless, etc. Put that together with my experience in employment, relationships, and so on, and it can become – as it has in my life – a reactive, rather than active, series of events: me as a passive victim rather than standing up on my own. Or when I’d stand up for something, it was to get cut down – again, becoming the victim. At least, that’s a quick overview of the openings at the moment. It’s not quite that severe: I’ve been a lot of places, done a lot of things. But there has been a kind of short-circuit that’s depleted too much energy and maybe even been self-destructive. A passive outlook leading to a victim mentality. Fun stuff. At least – and at last – I’m coming face to face with it. In seeing this, though, some interesting things are beginning to happen.

~*~

For more Seasons of the Spirit, click here.