Tag: History

STREAMS OF SEEKING IN FAITH

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 10 Comments

In the historical overview that forms the core of Seekers Found: Atonement in Early Quaker Experience, Douglas Gwyn casts his net wider than the circles in northern England of the mid-1600s who formed what we’ve come to know as the Seekers. What he traces is a broad undercurrent of radical faith from the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation, an alternative Christianity in which an Indwelling Christ or Inward Light is to some degree acknowledged and which, in turn, leads to rejection of many or all outward sacraments or ritual in worship. It turns out to be far more widespread before the Quaker movement emerged and gave it distinctive voice than I’d previously seen.

Frankly, as he focuses on seminal figures who advanced this thinking, I’m amazed that his brain didn’t simply explode. Remember, he’s following not just one person but many, all with flashes of nuance and insight that begin to overlap and also to diverge. Nothing is static.

Of course, we face similar problems looking at the counterculture movements of our own time. Just who, for starters, would we look to as voices of hippie thought and lifestyle?

When Gwyn remarks that “many of the Seekers-turning-Quakers … started out as hyper-Puritans whose idealistic moral absolutism made them unbearable to themselves and to those around them,” I feel an echo in my own hippie passage. Many of us seemed to be doing something similar. My, could we be intense! (That, along with the emphasis on “mellow.” Go figure.)

It also has me wondering about the spiritual starting point for many of the teens and young adults in our wider society today. Just where would deep conversation and inner growth begin? What are the driving forces in their lives?

Historically, the focus on events in England also leaves me sensing a gap in awareness of the radical advances in New England from the 1630s, exemplified in Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, and Samuel Gorton, as they prefigured those in England in the 1640s. I’m not faulting Gwyn here, since his thesis is on the forerunners and emergence of the Quaker movement, but it is a topic ripe for exploration. Let me suggest John M. Barry’s Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty (Penguin, 2012) as a starting point. The New Englanders, quite simply, seem to be ahead of their Old World compatriots. Maybe the British court records present a fuller picture, but until the end of censorship in 1642, we seem to have little else to go on.

It’s all a potent mix. When the first Quakers came to New England, they found fertile ground.

What Quakers added, according to Gwyn, was a means of putting that seeking into action within daily lives. It was a matter he views as apocalypse. Somehow, our hippie adventures never got that far, which leads to a whole new set of considerations.

~*~

More of my own reflections on alternative Christianity are found at Religion Turned Upside Down. You’re welcome to take a look.

IN A WHIMSICAL VEIN

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment
Atop Fanueil Hall.
Atop Fanueil Hall.

The cricket design of the weather vane atop Faneuil Hall always delights me. Or, as I long wondered from the ground, could it be a grasshopper?

Whichever, the craftsman and the client both demonstrate a lasting sense of delight in the realms of nature. Turns out to be a cricket after all, crafted in 1742 by Deacon Shem Drowne, perhaps inspired by similar weather vanes on London’s Royal Exchange building. The cricket, by the way, is the only part of the historic building to remain unchanged from the 1742 original. A 1761 fire gutted merchant Peter Faneuil’s original structure, and in 1805 architect Charles Bulfinch designed additions that doubled the width and length of the building while keeping the basic style to produce what we see today.

Boston is a rich and varied destination – the Hub of New England, or the Universe, as they used to say. Living a little more than an hour to the north, we’re well within its orb.

ANOTHER OF THOSE OLD WATERTOWN FAMILIES

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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?

REAL DEVELOPMENTS IN THE YEARS SINCE I DRAFTED THAT NOVEL

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The years since I drafted Big Inca versus a New Pony Express Rider have brought significant, often dramatic, restoration and redevelopment to long neglected historic mills like the ones at the heart of my novel.

One impetus for the renewal appeared in a handful of towns in Maine, where credit-card giant MBNA transformed old mills into attractive call centers that in turn revitalized local economies. Even after being shut down in a later buyout, the benefits linger, and other developers had concrete models to follow.

Visionary entrepreneurs like the late Joseph Sawtelle here in New Hampshire as well as nonprofit agencies or local government-backed councils entered the picture, making mills in other towns emerge as small-business incubators or readily adaptable buildings for new arrivals, especially enterprises growing rapidly.

And, if the location’s right, they can attract artists of all stripes – painters, sculptors, printers, dancers, musicians, craftsmen, bakers and caterers – as an affordable alternative with natural light and high ceilings. (We love the annual studio tours and open houses in the mills in one nearby town.)

Sometimes the downtown locations lend themselves to conversion into residential condos as well. And then there are universities, health-care organizations, and museums that move in for convenience. (Well, one mill in downtown Manchester, New Hampshire, does have a helicopter pad on the roof.)

In other words, there are some fascinating case studies just about everywhere I turn.  But I still haven’t found any where the top of the tower is turned into a tiny penthouse, not the way Bill did at one point in the novel. I’m still quite fond of that touch.

RIDGES AND RIVERS

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Someday I’ll learn the identities of clouds. Buy the chart, memorize their qualities and forms, and then watch the flowing sky afresh. This is, after all, yet another strand of mapping.

From childhood, I’ve absorbed maps. Mind travel. Concepts augmented by photographs and writings, which have often furnished a sense a such familiarity that when I arrive in a new place, strangers stop me to ask directions, even on my inaugural visit. Foliage, waters, buildings, and people fill in the lines of his maps as they stretch toward some new border. But this move, with its desert, has been an exception. Nothing’s been predictable or particularly comforting. Besides, I experience a vague agitation when venturing to the edge of my known universe. If possible, when visiting new locale, I push out a few miles further, to determine what’s over the next ridge or river — or at least down the road — as if to anchor myself within some context, rather than remain at its periphery. Curiously, I feel more secure when placing that border at some shoreline or rise — countryside, at the least — rather than within seemingly endless tracts of housing, factories, stores, and pavement. Even a round earth has places where monsters may lurk. Gaps exist in any map. Consider the clouds. Everything is, after all, changing. Even that rock, where Kokopelli is sitting.

For more insights from the American Far West and Kokopelli, click here.

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.

IN THE DIMENSIONS OF DAILY EMPLOYMENT

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Any workplace holds confidences you can never reveal. Not that you don’t want to expose company secrets. Then, considering the office computers, fax machines, and photocopiers, you realize they’re incapable of guilt. They simply do their job — and you might find that unsettling.

Whenever I do manage to tap genuine emotions regarding this employment, no one’s more shocked than myself. Take something as simple as a pane of glass between my desk and the trees outdoors. Even on my job in Appalachian mountains, I wanted a window. One the size of a book would suffice, although a picture view would be preferred. I’ve always appreciated a panorama, a sense of precisely where I fit into the weather of a particular day. Instead, I feel trapped underground, half-buried in regulations and routine. Only a band of natural light at the far end of the fluorescent-and-steel expanse hints of sun, moon, sky, or clouds — and even that aperture is tinted. Why are my hours on the job so cut off from the rest of life? “We may as well be coal miners in carbonized veins or muscular razorbacks sweltering in midnight foundries. Is it only the sun we miss? Examine the calendar. Check on the moon’s phase.”

I could just plot my escape. I am surrounded by desert. Trek there alone. Right to the heart.

He recall the words of another friend who spoke of the paradox of Zen Buddhist freedom: the very limitations the practice imposes also lead to an extraordinary freedom. An individual who’s free in the Spirit can be placed in prison and yet not be captive — persecuted and yet unbowed — denounced and still spotless.

The Dedicated Laborious Quest, as my Teacher taught, is a truly free way.

Free, yes, with the labor.

I pick up the phone and hear Kokopelli’s whistle. He wants us to get going. Then tells me of the dance where we’ll be playing.

For more insights from the American Far West and Kokopelli, click here.

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.

REST IN THE AGES

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 7 Comments
Tucked away in a corner of the park, this gate.
Tucked away in a corner of the park, this gate.

The burial ground in Boston Common is the resting place of early patriots, among them the composer William Billings – the latter, by assumption rather than documentation. Historians will note that the headstones in the city’s oldest graveyards no longer stand over their intended bodies, but were moved around by convenience.

Boston is a rich and varied destination – the Hub of New England, or the Universe, as they used to say. Living a little more than an hour to the north, we’re well within its orb.

It's a classic New England scene, in cities, towns, and isolated countryside.
It’s a classic New England scene, in cities, towns, and isolated countryside.

 

BACK TO BACH

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

This time of year, the world makes a special nod to the genius of Johann Sebastian Bach, who was born on March 21, 1685, in Eisenach, Germany.

When I first explored classical music, in the late ’50s and early ’60s, Bach was a much more distant figure than we encounter today. Yes, he was considered one of the three greatest composers ever, but largely in a scholarly consideration. Rare performances of his music itself largely focused on the organ works – infrequent events outside of their application in religious services in churches having both outstanding instruments and musicians – or came about through a few soloists who championed his instrumental compositions. Think of E. Power Biggs, Pablo Casals, Wanda Landowski, Rosalyn Turek, or the Bach Aria Group.

Harpsichords, for that matter, were a novelty, and the Brandenburg Concertos were typically performed with a piano as a substitute in the ensemble. How strange that sounds today, when these once exotic pieces are among the most frequently played works on classical radio stations, and commonly in period-instrument bands at that.

For one thing, the repertoire is not as defined by symphony orchestras as it was then – a break for Bach, who wrote little that would fit into their programs, even in a scaled-down mode. Today, we have chamber orchestras, community choruses, and period-performers to champion other avenues of composition.

Seems strange to consider how much the classical music scene has changed during my lifetime. For perspective, Vivaldi and Mahler were even greater rarities. And for many of us, the jazz-influenced Swingle Singers gave us the first clue of just what Bach’s scores might unleash.

We’ve been liberated from the heavy-handed, smoky, Romantic-era, Victorian approach I first encountered. What’s happened parallels the breakthroughs in painting restoration, where old masterpieces were finally stripped of the layers of dark varnish that we’d assumed were part of their intended appearance. What a brilliant, startling, controversial revelation that was! How garish rather than reverential we found much that was finally released to the light. How playful, how scandalous! What joy!

Thus it’s been with Bach, too. In the right hands, the mathematical purity of Bach’s inventions is utterly heavenly, intimate, sensual. To sing the parts with others is a marvelous balancing act of hearts and minds dancing in spirit together. Gone is any sense of a sermon in sound – this comes closer to prayer.

Add to that the demands of daily craftsmanship imposed on Bach, meaning that he created work after work more or less on deadline, with little time for major revisions, and the results can be seen as all the more impressive. No wonder we’re left agog in the face of what we discover in what he timeless wonder he discovered and embraced.