Author: Jnana Hodson

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

UNMASKING THE IDOLS?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

I suppose most Americans think they have an understanding of what “religion” is. Their definition likely starts with a statement about believing in God, perhaps qualifying that in some context with Jesus or some other touchstone.

The matter of belief and practice, though, can be quite distinct – one doesn’t necessarily entail the other. Many claim to believe yet do nothing meaningful in response. Where’s the faith that redirects and transforms lives? Where’s the love and hope and joy?

Douglas Gwyn titled a 1989 volume Unmasking the Idols, and while the work was addressed to Quakers, I love his awareness of the importance of “unmasking the deep-seated problem of idolatry in our lives [as] necessarily our first task” in our spiritual lives.

Quite simply, it starts with us individually. But I also sense we as a nation need to identify all of the false religion that shapes our public policies and priorities. We could start with celebrities, professional athletics, consumerism, the workplace, corporate enterprise, military expenditures, personal success … well, you get the idea. We worship a lot of things – a lot of things we shouldn’t for our own long-range health.

For one thing, I want us to have other measures of worth than a dollar sign. (Or, in terms of organized religion, an IRS tax deduction.)

We can even look at stripping away the superstitions and customs that accompany our traditions.

The idols even appear when we’re objecting to what is perceived as religion in the public schools. I could, for example, point to the objections to anything mentioning Jesus in relation to Christmas, while substituting carols to witches for Halloween. (I’m with the fundamentalists on that one.) Or the ways we’ll bend in our claims of tolerance, but only in one direction.

Jesus was oh-so-right about that plank in our own eye!

Still, the question of exactly what defines religion is elusive. “Preparation for death” comes as close as anything I’ve heard, once I realized it’s really talking about preparation for life – whatever that mysterious state is – and then life more abundantly, as Jesus promises.

I would take it a step further. Not belief in a Holy One, but a daily, personal relationship. But how do you define that? And how do you keep it pure? Maybe we’re back to the exercises, one way or another.

JUST WHERE IS RELIGION IN AMERICAN LIFE?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Discussion over whether yoga is or isn’t a religion – and whether the physical exercises have any place in a public school curriculum – triggers another of my emotional hot buttons. This one has to do with the marginalization of religion – authentic religion, at least – from public consciousness.

I think we’re poorer as a consequence. If we can’t talk openly about our deepest experiences of life – birth, love, family, failures and successes, and especially death – and the ecstasy and despair that can accompany them, how are we to comprehend and direct our place in the wider world? In America, sex is no longer a taboo subject – just listen to the celebrity gossip, for starters – but don’t you dare talk about spiritual faith or ask someone their income and spending. (Never mind that I do address those matters in the Talking Money category at my blog Chicken Farmer I Still Love You.)

Let me point out that the kind of discussion I’m encouraging precludes dogmatic or doctrinaire pat answers. It’s based in direct experience, rather than speculation. It’s not a matter of arguing one’s correctness or trying to convert another, but rather to relate the personal struggle with the greatest questions and challenges of life.

What does it mean to do good? To love? To seek peace? To pursue justice? And how does your faith make you a better person or create a more just and humane society?

Bill Moyers’ Genesis: A Living Conversation series on PBS in the 1990s demonstrated how this could work, and led to some of the most profound discussions I’ve ever heard in the public arena.

Too often what I see in terms of religion in America is a kind of generic homogeneity. I much prefer those who see importance in what the Amish call the distinctives – the practices that set us apart and strengthen our particular awareness. We can’t all live like the Amish, but we can learn from them. We can learn from those who make room to pray seven times a day or who feed the homeless or observe a strict Sabbath.

Settling for the lowest common denominator in this case means settling on nothing at all. I much prefer celebrating the alternative.

I also prefer listening to those who are finding joy and lightness in their spiritual encounters rather than those who are laboring under guilt or gloom. I’ll let you go ahead and quote chapter and verse on that.

What I do know is that when there have been coworkers and others along the way who can tell me about their daily faith, and welcome my replies, we’ve both been encouraged and strengthened. It’s been a special bond unlike any other.

So, is yoga a religion? Well, first we need to be more specific! Just what do we mean by religion?

AFTER THE FROST

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

As everyone’s been saying, New England had a strange summer. It felt shorter than normal, and despite some uncommonly hot spikes, was overall on the cool side. June was drier than usual, while July was wetter. And we swimmers were finding the ocean already growing uncomfortable toward the end of August, rather than leading into the glorious days of September we often anticipate. (The Gulf of Maine takes time to warm, after all.) I barely got my value’s worth out of my season pass to Fort Foster beach, unlike last year, even though I’m officially fully retired now.

As the buzz went, the fall foliage was better than we’d had in years, although it seemed to run about a week ahead of schedule and then essentially drifted off. And, after a few near misses in September, we were finally hit with killing frosts before the last week of October.

Not that many years ago, I would have said that was the end of the garden season, but that’s no longer the case. The cold gives the Brussels sprouts and kale a sweet edge, the parsley hangs in well for a few more weeks, and root crops like carrots, parsnips, turnips, and leeks can stay in the ground until it’s too frozen to spade.

Maybe part of my sense of a shortened summer can be laid to my revived activity as a novelist, thanks to the Smashwords publishing. With Hippie Drum released at the end of May, I found myself busy getting the word out through June and then spent much of August and September revising and formatting more works. Unexpectedly, but with a renewed sense of direction, I even drafted large sections of new material. What all this meant, of course, was time at the keyboard instead of outdoors.

Now that Ashram is in circulation again, I’m once more reflecting on attempting to establish a right balance in my life – time for exercise and home projects, for instance, renewed cooking and expanded social activity. Who knows, maybe I’ll finally reach that sweet spot.

For now, that includes cleaning up the garden, removing the dead zinnia stalks, eggplants, peppers, tomatoes. Pruning the raspberries. Turning compost. And then there’s moving the fig tree to the cellar, putting the hoses and Smoking Garden lights away, dismantling the hammock, stacking the tomato cages.

Already I’m looking at the dandelion leaves and calculating how soon they’ll be emerging from winter and heading to our plates.

Just don’t tell me it’s going to be a hard winter or there will be tons of snow to shovel.

Balance means savoring just one day at a time, right? Or can it mean all of them?

NOW FOR SOME HEAT?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Each fall, we play a little game in our household. The goal is to see how long we can hold off before we begin using the furnace to heat the house. Yes, October and even September can be pretty chilly where we live, but since we have steam radiators, getting a right equilibrium for the furnace in the basement can be difficult – the boiler’s just getting going when it has to back off. Seems to waste a lot of fuel, from what we see, and that, in turn, wastes money.

So what we do is use the wood-fired stove in the kitchen to take the chill out of the house. The kitchen gets toasty warm, but enough heat percolates through the rest of the house to be tolerable. Someone, usually me, needs to get up in the middle of the night to reload the Jotul, but similar stories have been told throughout history. (When I worked the second shift, I could refill the stove when I got home from work and then sleep peacefully, knowing it would still be burning when my wife rose for the day.) We do use a couple of electric radiators, as needed, in rooms where we’re seated and working, but other than that, the goal is to get us to at least the first of November.

We’ve made it! But what’s this unseasonable heat wave? Highs near 70? In November?

Now, to see how much longer we can extend this. December? January? We’ve done it, at times. Did I mention it helps to dress warm?

ALL THE NEIGHBORS’ CATS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Our yard is claimed by the neighborhood cats. We have no idea where most of them live. The gray one prowls everything. “You’d think after five years here, they’d finally come up to me,” Rachel once said, and nothing’s changed.

The white-bibbed black cat often snoozes in our berm (the bank of shrubs and ivy between the sidewalk and Swamp), while the solid black one beside the catnip watches the bird feeder, and then there are Heifer Cat, Smoky, and Nimrod, who once caught a squirrel in our viewing. Who knows what their owners call them.

My favorite incident was watching a peregrine falcon raid the thistle feeder as I was showering. All the other birds fled in the commotion, but the fearless cat I named Spooky came marching forward, as a hawk. Everything happened so fast, what are you, kitty, really nuts? But the scene cleared without further incident. Hip-hip, for Spooky.

PRESIDENTIAL COLORS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Without any sense of being one of them, I’ve known people who claim to see auras around individuals. They have their own vocabulary regarding what each color means. And I’ve listened without agreeing or dissenting. It’s their experience, after all.

Still, I remember in the midst of one of New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation presidential primaries when one of the hopefuls was moving through the office, along with his entourage. I couldn’t quite identify the face, but it was familiar. What struck me, intensely, though, the way he was surrounded by a black vapor.

And a black aura, as they said, was satanic.

Afterward, I realized it was Pat Robertson – the Reverend Pat Robertson.

I still feel a chill, recalling the incident, with no way of confirming how much is true or fallacious. But others have told me the same.

CHOOSING, IN THE END

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As I said at the time, considering …

The matter of burn-outs, too. I have a long list, from those who’d been close. The ones who self-destructed at the brink of fame, largely through misplaced sexuality. One who achieved fame while still in high school, but then pursued a tangled life more than the fact. A common story, really. Perhaps the sex, like liquor, is the cover for much deeper wounds that need to be confronted and healed – but are instead allowed to fester.

We could also look at charisma in public figures, and how so often it comes by consuming in flames those who surround you. Witness Clinton and Lewinsky. (Which also raises questions about the kind of marriage the Clintons have agreed upon – obviously, not the usual white-picket fence variety but something far more Continental. Marriage blanc?)

Yes, there are reasons for fears. Actually, before I shift gears in a moment, I should recommend Camille Paglia’s controversial but seminal Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence From Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, a great overview of art and literature and human sexuality in the course of Western Civilization. As she convincingly titles her chapter about Dickinson: “Amherst’s Madame de Sade.”

Then there’s the whole realm of intrigue about fetishes themselves – and even whether they remain more powerful left in the imagination than in reality. Columnist Bob Greene toured the Playboy Mansion before it was torn down and was disheartened to discover how small and dingy the indoor swimming pool was compared to all the photo layouts he had worshipped in his adolescence. Maybe the potential of doing X, Y, or Z has more hold than no longer being able to do the tattoo differently now that it’s there. Ditto so much else!

The paradox, actually, that choice doesn’t exist until you choose one – and rule out the others. Guess that comes into place here. You can believe in marriage in general, but in the end it’s going to be with a blonde, a brunette, or a redhead – or for her, possibly with a baldy. Go for them all, and you avoid going as deep into the experience, or so they say. From my experience, it gets tiring investing all the effort and time in what is essentially the early stages of a life journey – I’d much rather be much further along with a reliable companion. Hope this doesn’t sound moralizing, but I’ve been making the decision to move forward on some other fronts of my life the past few years rather than jumping into another relationship that pulls me away from my life’s direction. And, yes, there are many moments of weakness in that, when the loneliness can become paralyzing.

BEAT IT

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Reflecting on the hippie movement and even trying to define just who was and wasn’t included has also had me thinking of the earlier bohemian movement known as the beats.

While I’m not about to get into a detailed description of beatnik identity, I will admit to being a big fan of many of the writers who fall under its label as well as a lot of the jazz and folk musicians and, especially, painters. Where I grew up, the word beatnik also conjured up the village of Yellow Springs and its Antioch College.

A few years ago – OK, a little longer than that – I sat down with great anticipation to delve into Ed Sanders’ fat volume titled Beatnik Glory. To my surprise, it was a depressing experience. I was left with the impression of one self-centered male artist after another expecting his girlfriend/mistress/wife to take care of him, earn an income, and raise their kids in her spare time so he could tend to his higher muse, which somehow often seemed to include drugs of one sort or another, at least until some of the women wised up to the reality they were being used or could do better. Then, of course, we were left with the males’ lament of being abandoned. That was hardly my idea of glory.

I suppose that also fits much of the stereotype of “hippie,” even though I saw some much different action. Many could be considered enterprising and/or hardworking, for one thing. Nor was it all a white-male thing, not by a long shot. For starters, the Pill and Feminism changed that equation, and there’s no turning back.

WASHINGTON, THE CITY

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

As I said at the time …

In the Northwest quadrant of the nation, they refer to it as “Dee Cee” just to keep from confusing it with its larger namesake. Not that that really helps, mind you. It’s more an expression of derision. After all, not even the wire services or television networks make that distinction. No, everywhere else it’s simply “Washington,” and let the Evergreen State go to hell.

But is that really fair? Of course not. The name of the place is District of Columbia, which is rather cumbersome. Georgetown has a nice ring to it, but unfortunately, it’s an old neighborhood that really should be its own city, for that matter; but the District tries to be a city-state in all the negative connotations of the concept.

Why, now, they’re even trying to become an independent state! The audacity!

Listen, now, if the residents of the nation’s capital want to be represented by congressmen, they can petition to do what’s fair. And that is to return to the State of Maryland what its people had so nobly ceded to the federal government way back when the Founding Fathers, in their great wisdom, decided to seat the nation’s capitol in a teeming swamp. Just look at a map and it’s obvious the portion in Maryland is neatly squared. Part of a diamond, actually. You can see how it would have squared on the Virginia side, if the bureaucrats hadn’t decided they didn’t need that land and gave it back, instead.

So the feds have already returned to Virginia what that commonwealth had thrown into the kitty. And look what they got as booty the Pentagon, Arlington National Cemetery, Dulles airport, and Wolf Trap.

Not only that, but let’s remember where loyalties have been placed. Remember how Virginia turned upon Washington, sent troops to destroy it so that was back in the Civil War.

Maryland, meanwhile, dutifully stood by the Union. Oh, I know, there were a few upstarts who sent their sons off to fight for the Confederacy, and, sure, the feds had to keep cannons trained on Baltimore City just in case. But by and large, Maryland stayed put. Isn’t it time for that debt to be paid?

So the nation gives the District of Columbia back to Maryland, which then picks up a larger congressional delegation. Maryland has been a much smaller state in numbers than it ought to be, considering its influence and geographical placement.

Oh, I know there are those who retort that we don’t want Washington, not with all of its poverty and related urban problems. Just think about what it will do to our welfare costs, for starters.

Well, wait a minute. What’s to keep us from taking the existing welfare kitty and just dividing it among more people? That seems generous enough to me, and besides, it won’t cost you and my a nickel more.

And as for the urban problems, why, people said the same thing about Baltimore before William Donald Schaefer and the Citizens (Sic) got their act together. No, this seems to be an ideal opportunity for the new governor to demonstrate what he really can do while nurturing even more political talent. Make him the Dean of American Urban Renaissance. And a hot governor, toj _  boot.

There are those who say the feds should keep an essential portion as the District of Columbia. Hey, I’m not against that. I mean, the folks in the White House ought to be able to figure out how to keep all those lawns mowed and the monuments polished  although after trying to locate books in the Library of Congress, which, as you all know, is hardly open these days, I begin to wonder.

My own preference would be to place all the greenery and white marble buildings in a National Park. You know, Foggy Bottom National Park. Or Capitol Hill National Park. Or the Federal Mall National Park. We all like National Parks a lot more than we do a District of Columbia, no?

But quibbling aside, the place needs a new name, if for no other reason than basic courtesy to the Evergreen State.

Now I’ve always been told that if you’re going to criticize, you ought to at least have a positive proposal up your sleeve. So here goes.

Columbia or even District of Columbia would be nice, except for that planned community of ponds and condos between Baltimore and the Potomac. So that possibility’s kaput.

William Donald Schaefer is a nice name. He was an exemplary mayor, before he went flaky as governor. What? You say it’s even longer than Washington, D.C.? Well, listen, not if you use the whole name for Washington, District of Columbia, it’s not. Besides, Americans have a penchant for shortening names, so next thing you know, it would be William, D.S., and that’s definitely shorter. And then William and finally Billy, and we all remember fondly what a relief he was to the White House.

But would a Republican administration allow that? Probably not.

So here it is: we rename the federal area national park or district George. That’s it. George. That Yuppie cluster of Georgetown can become Junior if it wants. We have more important matters at stake. George speaks with authority. It’s regal, too.

As for the Maryland part the real city we offer a complementary name. Something to honor the founding mothers, as well: Martha.

Now doesn’t Martha, Maryland, sound like a lovely place? I can’t think of anyplace that sounds more truly Americana.

I know it will create a few difficulties at the Washington Post, for starters. Which may be exactly why a Republican White House might buy into this proposal. Nobody’s going to be quoting the George and Martha, Washington, Maryland and Virginia Post any more. They might as the Federal Post, but we’ll see.

We’ll see.

SOJOURNING

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

One question facing many Quaker meetings is what to do about members who have moved away but want to retain membership. Their reasons may be sentimental or a family connection, the reality that they reside at a distance from the nearest Friends circle, or some discomfort they have regarding the meeting where they are. The fact remains that being Quaker requires face-to-face encounters with Friends.

Related to this is the concept of sojourning, with its sense in the Hebrew Bible of passing through a land on the way to another. Some of the references mention sojourning in Egypt; others speak of welcoming strangers who sojourn among you. Readers of Sojourners magazine see its application in our own time. In contemporary American society, sojourning is a widespread fact of life.

Quakers offer a form of affiliation known as a Sojourning Member, extended temporarily from the meeting where one is a member to a meeting where one is residing. I found myself using it formally in one of my relocations, where I didn’t sense full unity with (or from) the closest meetings and I held a job that was likely transitory in my career path. Informally, however, I found myself sojourning among Mennonites and, to a lesser degree, Brethren, who were theologically closer to my meeting of membership and my practice. Crucially, in a sojourning situation, one remains in communication with one’s “home” meeting. During this period, this meant attending its yearly meeting sessions and providing written responses to the sets of monthly queries.

Only after moving to New Hampshire and visiting among the nearest meetings did I feel clear to join with Dover, and even then there was a period before I felt free to transfer my certificate of membership. As it’s turned out, this is the land where I’ve settled – and my own turn to welcome sojourners amongst us.