Category: American Affairs

HOT TUB ORACLE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I never intended to live there as long as I did, in the rented townhouse in what I sometimes called Yuppieville on the Mountain. But it must have suited me during that decade of waiting and searching, my anticipating true love and a long-desired relocation into permanence. Besides, it was convenient to the office. Admittedly, I enjoyed using the whirlpool in the clubhouse, soaking in the hot water while watching snowflakes drift down on the other side of the display windows; besides, at that time, the complex was still surrounded by woodlands. Lest it sound too idyllic, let me also acknowledge the dumpster parked beside my unit was frequently overflowing.

The poems in the resulting collection arise in that experience of transient proximity, which has become so much a part of the American landscape. The poems themselves are a kind of side street from other works I was drafting and revising during this time. Still, they make me examine what was right in front of me, all the same.

The series closes my collection, Rust and the Wound. To read the free ebook, click here.

LOST YEARS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

these damned mill towns exhaust
another mystery in the night
of Indian and Barbados descent
as much a sphinx as medical

for a change, salmon, at the hydroelectric dam

(along with the fish ladders they’re installing
two blocks from my home) the only evidence of life
is where beaver has gnashed a foot up the trees

~*~

the decade and a half
between the collapse of first
marriage and origins

that second                spiritual redirection
and career retrenchment
not harried                but

resignation
collisions
oh, all these devils

~*~

like the other stuff I was going to do tonight
my intellectual existence, it seemed
if she knows any alternatives

To continue, click here.
Copyright 2015

NOW, TO LOOK MORE CLOSELY AT A TWO-EDGED SWORD

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

If you want to see out-and-out prejudice by people who think themselves to be open-minded, here’s a good litmus test. Raise a matter of Christianity. Or, as a woman, wear a cross necklace. Then ask if it’s the same response you’d get had you presented something from another religion.

Put another way, I’d long ago been appalled by an assumption many of us liberals took in regard to Christians – and to be candid, I was once one who was self-righteously disparaging. Quite frankly, it’s out-and-out judgmentalism that hurts our progressive causes. It’s ignorant of the important support radical faith gave to many movements through the centuries and can still give to the future. It’s a point for dialogue with our opponents, if we’re willing to engage it.

Two common assumptions spring to mind here.

The first involves intelligence. There’s more to life, let me point out, than materiality. Think of love, music, morality, for starters – people with knowledge of ways of empathy, too. Extend that, then, to a recognition that to be a person of faith does not automatically mean stupidity, even if we do see way too many examples in the public arena – not just those of the Christian label, either. Nor do Christian do not come in a one-size-defines-all homogeneity – some denominations, for instance, refuse to bear arms or participate in war as a consequence of Jesus’ command to love our neighbor, while other churches rally around the troops. The ways of thinking and the emphases vary widely, from Fundamentalists to Evangelicals (yes, there are differences there) to Pentecostals to various strands of Calvinists or Lutherans (yes, again some key differences) to various Wesleyan (Methodist) and Baptist and Anabaptist (Amish, Mennonite, Brethren, Quaker) and on to the Unitarians. And that’s just among the Protestants. Add to that the Anglicans (Episcopalians), Roman Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox and you have a very rich mix, indeed.

Within those are some very intelligent and sensitive people, along with circles of personal growth and ethical accountability.

The reality is that religion is capable of engaging our innermost motions – our hopes and fears, especially. It’s a power that can run many ways, challenging the status quo as well as establishing community. The state and the establishment have many reasons to desire to curb it, as history attests. Even at a personal level, it can be scary stuff.

Pointedly, progressive movements have sprung from this source. For centuries, up through America’s civil rights revolution, social change has grown from radical Christianity. A central thread of the Bible has been the evolution of justice and then radical peace and equality. Read it closely, and what emerges remains a challenge to the status quo. Let’s not lose it now!

As the prayer goes, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth …”

Many of us see that as a more loving, just, and peaceful society. Mock it if you wish, but think of the alternatives. Are they really progress?

All of that, of course, leads to my second point: the so-called Christian right, of the political sort, hardly owns the mantel of Jesus. And since any religion has the potential of engaging those most soulful endeavors of human existence, we see across the spectrum instances of appealing to fear and oppression, on one side, as well as forgiveness and oneness, on the other. Religion in this dimension presents an opportunity for conversation and growth, if we allow it.

~*~

For more on radical faith, see my book, Religion Turned Upside Down.

ROLLING WITH WHALES

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

on the way out, a fifty-year-old shrimper from Louisiana –
originally from Gloucester, where he’s visiting his sister –
tells of the Gulf’s particular brutality

how crews typically go out twelve days
till the hull is full . his boat with three Rolls-Royce
engines so loud harborside residents complained
he hesitated to open full throttle
unless the water’s churning was especially rough

rocking at the jetty-mouth sandbar
like Canobie Lake’s pirate ship ride
three delighted school groups shriek

when we top twenty-one knots – his boat, twenty-three
yet his went down / couldn’t salvage any gear
lost two crewmen with him five years
he himself now limps
wounded in the knee by a barracuda,
and it’s not healing right . he hobbles along
with a cane, wondering if it’s time to quit
the shrimping in his blood
run an excursion boat instead

“and you, sir?”

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

LOOKING IN THE MIRROR OF BIAS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Those of us on the liberal side of the social and political spectrum like to think of ourselves as open-minded, which means the times we exhibit flashes of bigotry can be especially painful.

First off, we’re blind to it. Not us, right? But we do.

And sometimes we do it to each other.

An example comes in the gold cross a young woman decided to wear. She’s nothing along the lines of a Fundamentalist or even a committed believer, but she liked her grandmother’s jewelry and this particular piece. Difficult, though, was her experience of the reactions from her fellow college students and faculty, starting with their physical motion a step backward. Literally.

There were words that would not dare be said to Jews or Muslims or ethnic groups of any stripe – and assumptions that simply did not fit. In fact, there’s a presumption of right-wing positions accompanying an ignorance of the social-justice dimensions of other Christian communities and their actions. And there’s nothing of the nuanced theology that moves beyond the cartoonish criticisms we often hear.

For the record, Quaker tradition long frowned on any jewelry whatsoever as superfluous and vain. But I’m not wearing the distinctive Plain clothing of Quaker history, either. Now how would they react to that?

ANOTHER OF THOSE OLD WATERTOWN FAMILIES

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Lately, I’ve been running into references to Saltonstalls. It’s an old prominent New England family, admittedly, but I had never really connected the dots.

One is an imposing Colonial saltbox house in Haverhill, Massachusetts, with 1712 emblazed on the central chimney. It sits at One Saltonstall Square.

Another dot to the family came in a reference to two (Robert and Sir Richard) as purchasers in the charter for provincial New Hampshire, perhaps buying out the first settlers of Dover. “Probably in 1633,” as the account goes.

Then there’s the principled judge (Nathaniel) who resigned in 1692 in disgust from the direction the Salem witch trials were taking.

That stirred memories of hearing of a U.S. senator from Massachusetts (Leverett II) or a family that owned a small daily newspaper north of Boston.

Now I see I’d taken photos of the statue of Sir Richard Saltonstall, a founder of Watertown in 1630. (Since Watertown is where my choir rehearses weekly, it’s on my radar.)

While Sir Richard returned to London two years later, two of his sons remained and established what became a Boston Brahmin family, one that produced at least one graduate of Harvard in every generation, plus governors of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Before leaving the New World, Sir Richard was among those granted a patent of Connecticut – and back in Europe he had his portrait painted by Rembrandt.

I suppose that’s enough for now. The full story could run on for volumes.

But it’s not the kind of world I grew up in, not out in the Midwest.

I’m left wondering if old establishment families like this functioned as close-knit networks or even as tribes and how much individual deviation was permitted. Who were the chiefs and elders, especially? What was the role of religion or political affiliation?

Maybe that would be an entirely different kind of history than we’re accustomed to seeing. What are your thoughts?

A CHIP OFF THE OLD PLYMOUTH ROCK

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

If you delve into genealogy or even read obituaries, you may run across references to someone as a “Mayflower descendant.” The assumption is that at least one of their ancestors arrived (and survived) the 1620 voyage to Plymouth Bay. Their lines have been carefully detailed.

More broadly, though, you’ll come across those who consider all Plymouth arrivals of the first decade as Mayflower ancestors, not that I’m finding that online at the moment. So I’ll leave it as a hearsay argument. Still, after all, the Mayflower itself made a second crossing in 1629 – one of 10 vessels to arrive there in that period – and this is where things can get confusing.

Add to that many others landing to the north in this period – at Salem, especially, and then Boston, plus a scattering at other New England ports. The region was quickly filled with settlers, including the Hiltons at Dover, where I live in New Hampshire.

These can all be long lines, some much better recorded than others.

MAYBE IT STILL COMES DOWN TO MEANS VERSUS ENDS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

In the aftermath of the recent national elections, trying to make sense of the American scene today is, well, downright scary. The fact we have one party so willing to risk constitutional crisis rather than work cooperatively on solutions to common problems strikes at the very heart of democracy. And that’s before we get to the divisions revealed geographically, demographically, and economically.

Several of the phrases floating around the campaigns continue to ring in my ears. Describing one party, we have an “echo chamber” of “misfits,” which begins to look far larger than would be healthy for any society. And for the other party, the race came down to a “technocrat” versus “activist,” in itself suggesting a division between an appeal to the brain versus the heart.

Much of this situation, I’ll contend, springs from a lingering state of denial involving the encounters of those of us who came of age during the 1960s and ’70s. Coming across a summary of William Clark Roof’s 1993 A Generation of Seekers: The Spiritual Journeys of the Baby Boom Generation, I had to sit up and take notice when he noted that a low level of community involvement accompanied our search for personal meaning. It’s something that’s certainly happened across American society over recent decades, although I’d say increasing demands on our careers and suburban family lifestyles have taken their toll, too.

As Douglas Gwyn comments in Seekers Found: Atonement in Early Quaker Experience:

Roof’s study confirms many impressions of baby boomers in the ’60s, but adds a new perspective. Many tried drugs, were sexually active, and went to rock concerts and political protests. But many did not. Half of those surveyed say they did not try drugs; a third never attended a rock concert; and 80% were not politically active in that period. On the whole, Roof finds boomers to be nearly evenly divided between traditionalist and countercultural affinities.

A conventional view might look at this split along the lines of the Vietnam war issue, with the traditionalists joining the military and the hippie side in full opposition. But Roof’s criteria turn the angle: more than a few servicemen experimented with pot and other drugs in ‘Nam, along with free love, and moved easily into hippie circles on their return. Meanwhile, I sense more than a few hippies never did drugs, out-of-wedlock sex, or political protests. For them, maybe it was all about the music?

As Gwyn continues his reflections on Roof’s study, he prophetically notes:

But in subsequent decades, with a tightening of the American economy, the assumption of abundance often turned from utopian to belligerent, as Americans vented their frustration over lowered or failed expectations. Given their expanded subjective and expressive registers, boomers are already more likely to consider themselves wounded by defects in their religious upbringing. When religious institutions or leaders fail their expectations today, boomers are all the more likely to feel cheated, wounded, or even victimized.

It’s not just religion, let’s be honest. This cuts across the entire society.

Gwyn makes one other argument that lingers, one that involves the kind of association each seeker is drawn to. One is process driven, and the ways we can become captive to the mechanics of a particular system. (He names capitalist democracy as an example.) Here, the procedures outweigh results. I love his observation, “If civility is too strongly identified with democratic processes, then true seeking and conversation to one’s neighbor will tend to be subverted. Caucus politics or the contest of interests may usurp the conversation.”

The alternative, goal driven identity, can override the process altogether, in which the ends justify any means of getting there.

The vital tension Gwyn encourages “requires a disciplined and sustained dialogue between seriously considered and passionately held positions,” a “drama of faith, which is played out upon a level civic stage of public concern.”

Quite simply, where is that dialogue today? And where is the open exchange in questioning and refining the factual essence of the positions? An “echo chamber,” on either side, simply cannot do the job.

~*~

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

SO MUCH FOR THAT PICTURESQUE IMPRESSION

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Looking at all of the old red-brick mills remaining along the waterways of New England, you’re likely to see them as strong, serious, silent enterprises in their day. Something like a library, perchance.

The reality is something quite different. They were beehives, for one thing, where workers were subject to wide fluctuations in hot and cold (no heat, which could spark fires, along with some brutal summers) – in addition to cotton lung, like the black lung suffered by miners.

As for the quiet? Forget it. These factories were powered by leather belts that ran in relays from the groaning, splashing waterwheel to squeaky overhead rollers on each floor which in turn led to all kinds of clacking machinery. The whole building shook.

Not all of them wove cotton, either, but the mechanics were the same.

The leather belts, by the way, would wear out and break. They alone led to a unique art of construction and maintenance. The city where I live had tanneries to supply the mills, unlike the next city downstream, which was involved largely in shipping.

As the ditty went:

“Portsmouth by the sea,
Dover by the smell.”

As I was saying about that initial impression? These were the nitty-gritty realities.