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.

REAMS OF CORRESPONDENCE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

She wanted to review our email exchanges from our days of courtship but couldn’t find copies of what she’d sent me. Hoped I had printouts.

I’ve been downsizing, so some things weren’t where I expected to find them. Knew I had a loose-leaf binder somewhere.

Nowhere in my studio, though, the one in the attic. No, not the bookshelves or even the remaining filing cabinets or the knee-high closet under the roof. Nor in the first sweep of the loft of the barn. Not in the drawer of surviving correspondence there, either.

Naturally, I was perplexed.

One more round, though, and I came across a crate of binders. Aha! First one had Quaker letters, back before Internet. Second one, other letters. And then, a three-inch thick binder, our nine months of emails. My first emails, actually. How embarrassing … and fascinating! So long ago, it now seems.

Has me reflecting on how much times have changed, too – amazed, on one hand, how much I actually sent out in the postal system and received in reply. Where did the time come from? And reflecting, on another side, at how much today would be a click and later delete … and thus lost. (Printouts? Too tedious, most of the time.)

Another question even has me pondering how much of my poetry and fiction would have simply been shot off as blog posts rather than tediously typed and retyped, revised and condensed into literature, had another option existed?

If my small-press acceptances letters fill three filing drawers, as they do, the rejections would take up 20 times the space. Where would I put them? Or why?

Now, back to the juicy stuff …

WHAT MAKES A POEM, ANYWAY?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Even poets will often have difficulty defining exactly what a poem is. As if there’s a single measure for poetry to begin with.

To call it “slow prose” seems to me to slight both poetry and prose. Robert Bly once faulted traditional English-language poetry for the way it’s commonly functioned in the role of sermons, with any inherent wildness diluted or tamed. How much politeness can a poem contain, anyway?

One distinction might arise in parallels to music. There are good reasons composers set poetry and not prose to a score – and not all of them have to do with metrics or form. A good poem has much of the indefinable emotional sensation of listening or performing music, apart from any linear explanation. Both somehow take us into the darkened recesses of our soul.

Maybe I’ve come too much under the spell of what Bly instead calls “leaping poetry,” which can be found throughout the oral traditions of so-called primitive peoples or in many pages of Scripture, including the Bible, or in the visions of Asian, Latin American, or French poetic seers.

Not that it’s easy to veer far from our roots in linear composition, or at least speech. Many contemporary poems obviously arise as a strand of journaling or even confession – and I’ll plead guilty there, too, though hopefully I’ve compressed, distilled, and transformed my material into something, well, full of imagery and free flight that makes a particular become universal as well.

There’s also the continuing struggle of just how far a poem can run from the very basis of language itself and still communicate some underlying sensation or experience. Choosing pieces to read before an audience, as I’ve found, can lead to a much different selection than I’d have for on-page presentation, where more linguistically fragmented work might be more engaging.

Could it be, then, that the question then isn’t so much what a poem is but rather what it are? And then, how many of those elements exist in this work or that?

PRACTICING ADVENT

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

As I’ve previously mentioned, Quakers historically were among those Christians who did not observe Christmas, much less celebrate it as a holiday. Of course, I’ve also noted that it’s hard to live as a “peculiar people” within a wider society and not run up against the festivities, especially if you have children. (It’s far easier to be a minority if you’re not the only one or even the only family. Preserving your distinct identity really does require a community.)

Add to that the fact that Quakers do not follow a set liturgy through the year, although I might argue we’ve had a very subtle one based on the seasons and our quarterly and yearly meeting gatherings or even our monthly sets of queries.

One of the queries, though, reminds us of the importance of preparing ourselves during the week for our Meetings for Worship – taking daily time for prayer, reflection, Scripture, and spiritual readings. In that vein, joining with my wife in a book of readings for Advent seems to fit right in.

Finding the right book, though, has been another matter. Some years, we’ve found that the commentary and accompanying discussion questions don’t really fit with the Scriptural text or the excerpts from significant authors that open the daily reading. Other times, the focus veers into speculation, away from personal experience and encounter, and has felt less than edifying.

This year’s another matter, I’m happy to report. The book we’re following – Keeping House: The Litany of Everyday Life by Margaret Kim Peterson – isn’t even set up as daily readings, much less of an Advent sort, but the pages are working … well, let me use an old English word I’ve come to treasure, goodly. Not perfectly, then, but goodly.

The narrative opens with a defense of keeping house – something that has, as Peterson notes, become tainted in modern American society, even as it’s taken on a Martha Stewart mythology. Put another way, what we’re looking at is theology from a woman’s reality. As she argues, feeding and clothing the poor doesn’t have to mean people we don’t know. In modern society, impoverishment comes in many forms, even for people who seem to have more than enough material goods. People like us.

You can see where this is going – right to the heart of our daily survival.

Of course, I can also ask: What recommendations do you have for next year’s readings? Anything that’s especially moved you? Are there particular practices you find helpful? Any noteworthy memories? What are you doing this Advent, if anything? If you’re not in a Christian tradition, are there other winter solstice practices you find satisfying and would like to present?

Advent, we should remember, is quite different from a holiday shopping season.

CLEARING THE DECK … OR IS IT SIMPLY HOUSECLEANING?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Ideally, I’d allow a lot more time between the release of my latest book and the next. Give readers an opening to catch on to what I’m doing and then to catch up – or even a breather.

But I’m not, for several reasons.

  • The first, quite simply, is that the backlog weighs on me and inhibits the next stage of writing. For me, it’s been like looking at a very long to-do list or piles stacked around a room, all mumbling for attention someday. I prefer to work with a clear desk and plenty of room to assemble to new endeavor. (I’ve never known how Chinese cooks can prepare a multicourse dinner using a single-burner hotplate and barely more space – I’m not the kind of worker, even in the kitchen.)
  • On top of it, the practice of submitting pieces to small-press journals is time-consuming, tedious, and piecemeal at best. In many cases, the audience is smaller than what shows up at the Barn, so the desired recognition is unlikely to result. And there are all the files to maintain and update. I’m sensing there are better ways for me to build and maintain those connections at this point in my literary career. So, after more than a thousand appearances in those periodicals, I’ve taken a hiatus.
  • So much of my writing – especially the fiction – has been drafted on the fly before being uprooted to a new location and fresh set of challenges and experiences before I could fully digest those already in process. At last, being settled in one place for the past decade and a half has allowed me the stability to revisit and revise those works and bring them to some sense of closure. (Something regular readers here at the Barn are no doubt perceiving in my zigzag postings.)
  • And then, at my age, I have no way of knowing whether I’ll be around 20 years from now to dole out the backlog – or even whether the book publishing world will still be available. The ebook option is a big opening that could close up at any time, the way hitchhiking flourished and suddenly ceased. Think of Amazon and its recent actions, for starters.
  • Besides, to be candid, each of my works is different – I don’t expect anyone to read everything I create. Rather, I hope a given reader will find something among them that will appeal, even while skipping over others.

As I watch my filing cabinets empty and the piles shrink, please understand the joy I’m feeling. Understand, too, how liberating I’m finding the opportunity to publish at Smashwords and Thistle/Flinch. And please delve into those offerings.

ARE YOU SAFER?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

That’s what the big red headline said on the large card we got in the mail. The headline was underscored by the line, “Are you safer now than you were just one year ago?”

Before answering, note that the lines were accompanied by a large photo of masked men waving Arabic flags from a parade of pickup trucks. No way to tell where the photo was taken, by the way – it could have been from the movement that toppled dictators across northern Africa for all we know.

The mailing, from the self-proclaimed Conservative Solutions Project, is attempting to restore excessive national security measures many conservatives successfully clamored to remove. And now? They want it back. Or some of them do. Or maybe a group of retired intelligence officers, now living in Florida, are trying to stir something up.

The text on the back includes the misleading statement, “Conservatives know that we can never preserve the American Dream if we can not first preserve our National Security.” No, that’s a pathway to dictatorship and its police-state terror. Wasn’t that what both Iraq wars were supposed to obliterate?

The American Dream rests on civil liberties and economic opportunity. That’s what needs to be protected, first and foremost.

What truly annoys me about this bombastic mailing is its blatant fear-mongering. I can answer that I don’t feel safer than I did a year ago, but it’s not because of the 2015 USA Freedom Act. It’s because too many nutty Americans are carrying guns they can obtain all too easily, and attempts to limit that keep getting rolled back. I’m concerned that some kid stealing quarters out of unlocked cars in our generally quiet neighborhood is going to get blasted away by a self-appointed vigilante walking his dog in the night. Or that the bullet will fly off to unintended mischief.

Look, I’m not against gun ownership – I’ve lived in rural areas where hunting puts food on the table. But let’s get real. How many of the 12,413 firearm deaths so far this year involve national security issues, anyway? How many of the 312 mass shooting incidents? How many of the 650 children and 2,452 teens killed? (These statistics do not include suicides — 21,175 in 2013). Talk all you want about radicalized Muslims, they’re not the big problem.

So, to the political groups, let’s just say this. Don’t play the “safer than a year ago” card unless you have some concrete proposals for dealing with rampant gun violence in this country. Something that makes sense without undermining our trust.

WHAT ARE THE QUALITIES FOR GOOD LEADERSHIP?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 5 Comments

Comments on earlier posts regarding the emerging U.S. presidential race have touched on a topic that ought to be more sharply examined: just what qualities are needed in a good leader?

I’ve seen charts executive head-hunting firms use for corporate hires, which see different quality requirements to match a company’s situation. A small, fast-growing firm, for example, needs a much different kind of person than does a behemoth in a shrinking market. The compensation packages can vary widely, too, especially when considering the likely tenure of the hire. Somebody hired to shake things up might be expected to have a short and stormy span at the helm, unlike a more comforting presence for a smoothly functioning organization.

That said, back to political leadership. What qualities would you list as essential?

The ability to recognize talent and draw out others into a common cause has been suggested. Vision, compassion, intelligence, integrity, willingness to listen to critical perspectives and weight alternative actions are others. And then?

Maybe we’ve been overlooking the most obvious all along. What would you name?