Tag: Inspiration

SLEEPING LATE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Back in my college years, I was definitely a night owl. Did much of my best work after midnight, in fact.

But my first job after graduation required me to be at the office no later than 6:30 in the morning most days – sometimes at 5 or 5:15. It was never easy, although I did find that a nap when I got home allowed me to socialize in the evenings.

Moving to the ashram, with its daily predawn meditation sessions, was no less grueling.

In the years after, though, there were many days when I could “sleep late” or “sleep in,” often till noon or so on a day off or when I didn’t have to be in the office till much later. Those were glorious.

When I remarried, however, a new tension arose: my wife is an early riser. No matter how late she turns in, she’s usually awake by 4. On top of it, I wound up going back to the second shift, which meant I’d make a serious effort to be in bed and asleep by 2 a.m. We could have been playing team-tag.

Now that I’m in what’s considered retirement, I’m pretty free to let my natural rhythm settle where it may, apart from mornings or nights when something’s scheduled. What’s surprising is how much I’m turning into an early bird rather than a night owl. I find the early hours conducive to clear thinking and writing – maybe I’ll even get back to meditating and exercising first thing in the morning.

It’s staying up late – even on choir rehearsal nights, with the long commute home afterward – that’s become the challenge.

Never would have expected this, believe me.

Now, if I can only get the power nap going in the early afternoon.

 

 

 

ALONG THE ISINGLASS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

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As I said at the time …

After dropping the kid off at school for a rare Saturday session (costume design class), noon, I stop off at Mount Isinglass for a short hike, in part to eat up a bit of time before our customary Saturday afternoon wine tasting and opera broadcast.

While most of our snow has melted, the woods are still covered, even in Gonic. The trail’s quite icy, with a few bare spots for relief.

Amazing how many people rely on their dogs as an excuse to take a walk – as the droppings in the snow attest.

Still, a good exercise, this trek before the snowpack is completely gone, at least if I don’t slip, fall, and injure myself.

Coming down near the river and former bridge, I view a black pool of stilled water brimming slightly over the usual banks, a complete contrast to the two snowy forest hillsides it cleaves. The utter beauty is timeless, and yet totally of the moment. While the water is quiescent, the air resounds with the ferocious chords of the cataract just out of sight.

I approach the top of the falls, the water gaining inevitable velocity and muscle, some of it careening into rockface and then pushing across the current. The narrow, sloping trail down to the base of the cascade, however, remains ice covered, and the places I would normally cross to the river are now mid-stream anyway. I back off, and head back, rather than attempting to scale the cliff to a possible overlook from above.

The temptation becomes too much, and I venture off the return trail, my feet crashing through snowpack that still comes to my knees, until I come to a place where the falls are in view off to the side below me. Rather than the miniature Niagara I’d expected, however, the water’s not rounding off to drop vertically, as I’d seen it in high water here the previous autumn. Rather, it shoots straight out – sometimes into a sheer wall of rock.

All of this wild power – untamed, exuberant, destructive or even cleansing, hissing like strong wind with drumming somewhere deep within. Anyone pulled into the current would be broken by the weight, crushed on the rock, torn by the crossfire. The mill that once channeled this energy has long been swept away by such outbursts, with only a few foundation stones remaining. Downstream, this water will be used at least twice to generate electrical power, but here it explodes for its own glory.

What is it that attracts us to cataracts? The description that comes to mind is “awe,” an acknowledgment of natural, inexplicable power far greater than our own mortal existence. Or maybe the seemingly inexhaustible stream of profusion that outlasts our own span of concentration and observation.

Even so, as the Psalmist noted, “He leads me beside the still waters,” not down to the base of the torrent. I think of two Plain meetinghouses in Ohio, both named Stillwater – one Quaker, the other Old Order German Baptist Brethren. The still water as a place of clarification, the sediment dropping away, a clear drink or safe place to water livestock and wildlife. Waterfowl, too, take refuge. Here the energy is latent and gathering, ready for release. In the meetinghouses, the worshipers gather, still themselves, become clear, preparing for the channel of the week ahead.

The contrast within one stream couldn’t be sharper, one as the other face of its complement.

On the walk back to the car, an icy beech leaf turns translucent on the snowy trail.

a beech leaf
translucent with ice

floating on snow

January 094

GLIMPSED FROM THE FREEWAY

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

When I grew up in the heavily farmed Midwest, a beaver dam or lodge was a rarity, an awe-inspiring emblem of wilderness.

But if you pay attention while driving the freeways around here – including those near Boston – you’ll catch a glimpse of a beaver lodge and then recognize the surrounding pond, frequently soon followed by another.

The sight reminds me of a wonderful documentary I once watched on public television. The program followed the life of a beaver colony through an entire year, and then, at the very end of the hour, the camera pulled back from the dam and lodge to reveal a busy limited access highway at the edge of the pond.

It’s enough to make me appreciate both kinds of engineering.

This beaver lodge appears to sit securely in remote wilderness ...
This beaver lodge appears to sit securely in remote wilderness …
... until you turn around to see it's built right at the side of a busy freeway.
… until you turn around to see it’s built right at the side of a busy freeway.
Further back in the pond is the large lodge that first invited me to pull over to the side of the road.
Further back in the pond is the large lodge that first invited me to pull over to the side of the road.

 

IN THE PERSPECTIVE OF TIME

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 9 Comments

As a writer, I love taking a phrase and rolling it around, substituting one word or thought and seeing what happens.

With the Grimms’ fairy tale opening, “A long time ago, when wishes came true,” I began substituting “prayers” for “wishes” and realized many people seem to assume that prayers really did have more effect a long time ago – say back in the time of Moses or King David – than these days.

But that also has me wondering about the depth of our wishes today. Are we too directed by advertising and material possessions to seek what’s truly desirable? The fairy tales and Holy Scripture, as I recall, have a lot to say on that account.

OF MINISTERS, ELDERS, AND OVERSEERS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

Traditionally, Quaker meetings recognized and nurtured individuals who had spiritual gifts as ministers, elders, or overseers. These roles could be filled by men or women, and their service extended over the entire congregation.

A person who offered vocal ministry during worship might be designated as a minister, if the messages were considered theologically sound. Because a minute would be drafted and approved in the meeting’s records, the individual would be known as a recorded minister.

Elders were those who held the ministers and ministry in prayer through the service. In other traditions, they might be called bishops, except that in Friends meetings, they function within the congregation, rather than over it. In the novel, Miz Lil and the Chronicles of Grace, Miz Lillian Leander upholds this role, even though her Lutheran denomination might not recognize its importance.

Overseers were individuals who were skilled in sensing the needs of others and in knowing how to respond. They were the ones who could transform the meeting for worship into a community of faith or a people of God.

After the painful divisions within the Society of Friends in the 1800s, these distinctions typically fell by the wayside. For quietist Meetings, there was an increasing aversion to hierarchy, especially one where ministers or elders might be appointed for life; other Friends, especially those west of the Appalachian Mountains, moved progressively toward services led by a pastor – someone who was often expected to embody all three gifts.

Still, the work’s there to be done, by somebody. Some forms, I’ll argue, work better than others.

NAMING THE GIFTS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 9 Comments

The Nominating Committee is as close as my Quaker meeting generally comes to recognizing and perhaps nurturing the varied spiritual gifts present in our community. In New Testament terms, these are the charismata – abilities in emotional and physical healing, prophecy, discernment, teaching, and the like, but the list could be expanded if we closely examine our community. My name, Jnana, arises from a similar application along a Hindu path. In Quaker tradition, these inclinations were acknowledged indirectly in selecting our overseers, ministers, and elders, back when these positions were acknowledged.

A vibrant Friends Meeting has all three roles present, even if we no longer see them that way. There’s also evidence that some of the historic problems resulted when one was lacking and another tried to compensate for that deficiency. I’m not sure when committees supplanted the old structure, but it often seems that Friends have wound up with a system based more on the work to be done than on the talent and energy to be released. In quietist meetings like mine, the clerk, incidentally, now typically becomes the de facto pastor – including the role of Public Friend, permitted to speak on behalf of the Meeting – while one of the difficulties for pastors in “programmed” meetings is the expectation they can perform in all three roles, overseeing, vocal ministering, and eldering, in addition to being the congregation’s chief executive officer.

Maybe it was a matter of viewing the story through my Quaker perspective, but this dynamic runs through Walter Wangerin Jr.’s Miz Lil and the Chronicles of Grace, a novel about a young Lutheran minister assigned to his first parish: black, inner city, Midwestern. That congregation survived largely because of the dedication of one elderly couple, Miz Lil and her husband, Douglas – one, the wise elder; the other, the mostly silent overseer. Together, they gently guide their young pastor in spiritual and personal growth, and in doing so, bring about a rebirth of the parish that survives them.

I still hear a recorded minister in Ohio with his counsel, “When something becomes everybody’s responsibility, it becomes no one’s,” and wonder how we ensure that our responsibilities and individual talents are aligned effectively. When this happens, we are blessed – in large part, because our nominating committee has been doing much more than routinely filling in blanks on an organizational chart. From there, the matter of developing gifts also means we need the worshiping community more than ever. Mentors, helpers, friends – however you want to name them – all growing together.

COCHECO MILLS CLASSICS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments
A typical water-powered textiles mill would have thousands of these foot-long bobbins feeding its looms.
A typical water-powered textiles mill would have had thousands of these foot-long bobbins feeding its looms.
A sampling of the designs that made the Cocheco Mills world-famous.
A sampling of the designs that made the Cocheco Mills world-famous.

The short distance between New England’s mountains and its Atlantic coast means its rivers and streams drop in elevation rather quickly, and that has provided both powerful currents and many opportunities for power-generating dams. As a consequence, the region is peppered with old mills – usually brick but sometimes stone or even framed wood – that were once the industrial backbone of America.

Downtown Dover, for instance, is built around the Cocheco Falls, where the river plunges into the tidewater. The falls are topped with a dam, and the diverted water once powered a complex of textile mills that produced world-famous calico, among other woven products. The Amoskeag Mills in Manchester, meanwhile, were noted for their denim, which supplied Levi Strauss in his legendary San Francisco production. Nor was fabric the only product coming from the mills. Everything from precision tools to locomotives to shoes and socks and cigars was being shipped from the cities and towns along the waterways.

Over the years, many of these mills have fallen into disuse through a combination of newer technologies, cheaper competition from steam-powered Southern mills, and overseas production. But the legacy remains.

As I learn from my elder daughter while examining a glorious sampling of cloth she’s intending to turn into quilts or comforters, the designer Judie Rothermel has recreated some of the classic patterns found at the American Textile History Museum in Lowell, Massachusetts, and reproduced them in partnership with Marcus Fabrics.

The Cocheco Mills Collection, issued serially over several years, is one of the impressive results.

Let me say, some of the technical results are mesmerizing while the colors are deep and delicious.

How did we ever stop making this?

REGARDING A GRANDFATHER CLOCK

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

When I was growing up, “going to the farm” meant a trip to my grandmother’s sister and brother-in-law in the other corner of our county. One of my memories was of the grandfather clock that stood at the top of the stairs and Aunt Edna’s mentioning that it had been carried over the mountains in a Conestoga wagon “from the place where Conestoga wagons were made.”

As a history buff, I eventually realized that was Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, now famed for its Amish population. The plot thickens, as I explain at my genealogy blog, The Orphan George Chronicles.

Decades after the farm had been sold and I began working on the genealogy puzzle, I received a few photographs of the clock, and a few days ago I scanned them into my computer. You can’t see many of the details, but I remember the small moon and sun that would rotate in the clock face. A few years ago, back in Ohio, I was surprised by how short the clock itself is. We think of grandfather clocks as large, but this one is probably shoulder-high to me.

Most amazing, though, is the sweet ringing it issues in singing its quarterly rounds. Not a gonging sound at all, but more like the clinking of crystal stemware.

And to think, the clock itself had been rediscovered, hidden away on its side in a loft of one of the barns. Just goes to show, you never know quite what to expect when you go rooting around in an old barn now, do you?

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DEAREST MADAMOISELLE, LOVELY AND EVER CHARMING

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As I said at the time: Hey! Somewhere along the line, the Postal Service lost a letter, it seems. At any rate, I’ve been wondering about you, how you’re doing, whether you decided to run off to New Mexico or Arizona and start having babies one-two-three or whatever. Even whether I’d said something that offended terribly. (So much for self-esteem, right?)

At least, thanks to the wonders of Computer Era (or, too often, Computer Error) I be able (that, I’m told, reflects Chicago schooling regarding the conjugation of the verb to be) to resurrect my last letter to you. Is this the one you responded to, meaning I never got your last letter? Or did you not get this one? And the poems in the new Indigo, um,  are they the two you didn’t know you had or, surprise, are they the ones I sent in July? Mysteries, mysteries!

At any rate, I’m anxiously awaiting the new issue – and all the news – and maybe even the missing letter!

On this end, to update from what’s there: Am still waiting for the chapbook … the usual unexpected delays and complications; in this case, a near-fatal blood clot suffered by the editor’s wife.

As you can see, I’m in the midst of a major computer conversion – from a fourteen-year-old XPC II system and nearly 300 five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy disks (Word Perfect 4.1) to a 6.4-gigabyte Pentium II Windows 98 Word 97 unit with both HP scanner and inkjet printer. It’s taking much longer than I anticipated; am still not on-line (one step at a time!) It’s like household he-man repairs and remodeling: everything takes three times longer than you believe it will, should, or can. Just ask your Italian father: if he’s anything like my ex-father-in-law, the one I miss greatly, these jobs are just that. (One of Sam’s great lessons to me, by the way: be sure to leave something undone for tomorrow!)

So I built, from kits, a new credenza and hutch, plus a “utilities cart,” projects that proved the timing theory: the credenza that took the salesman two hours to assemble took me six or eight, in part because the instructions are written in three languages but proficient, from what I could determine, in none. Ditto for the printed illustrations. Then, when the electronic goodies came, there were all the boxes to unpack and the new wiring to figure out (and whatever you need for the big rebates seems to get lost with the trash). Guess I’ll never purchase again where there’s a rebate involved! Just give me the discount, now! To say nothing of the software to install, nearly wrecking my Windows 98 in the process. (A Sunday morning phone call to Hewlett Packard nearly averted that!) At least much of the software installation is so much easier than it was a decade ago! My computer guru, the one I’ve “hired” for a bottle of Jim Beam or Jack Daniels, has been a big help, dropping on me a stack of magazines that could be used instead as the coffee table; his real challenge is in rigging the system that will allow me to convert and transfer a dozen or so novels and tons of other writings from the old system to the new. All this must seem foreign to you, who appear so much at ease with stylish desktop publishing! (So when did you first delve into cyberland – and desktop and all of the great touches you display?)

Hmm, that’s interesting, the date on the page break and all. One more thing to figure out, eventually – modifying these damn templates to my own style! (Spent a couple of hours a few weeks ago trying to do that, only to finally learn I couldn’t do it – see now there are other ways to go about it, thanks to a $40 book that tells me what Microsoft’s can’t.)

Did get away for a week in a small cabin in the Maine woods – no heat and no glass in the windows, but there was a fireplace as well as sliding shutters across the screened windows: good thing, too, with the nights getting down to freezing! Snuggled in with a stack of novels to read, learned to canoe solo on the five-mile-long lake and winding river, and even drafted some decent poetry.

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How long ago all that seems! Well, it does come from a few years before I acquired the barn and everything that’s gone with it … including a great wife and family. Which makes it ancient history, indeed, even without the computer updates.

ANOTHER PROMISCUOUS READER

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 6 Comments

I had thought the phrase “promiscuous reader” originated with Virginia Woolf to describe someone who reads widely and passionately – even the sides of breakfast cereal boxes – but now fail to find it. (So much for relying on memory.) Instead, she left us The Common Reader, itself drawing on Dr. Samuel Johnson’s phrase in his “Life of Gray,” where he bellows, “I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense of readers, uncorrupted by literary prejudices, after all the refinements of subtlety and the dogmatism of learning, must be finally decided all claim to poetical honors.” Woolf, of course, takes Johnson to task as she peruses her own wide range of literature, while Johnson, in that cruel twist of fate, exists almost exclusively in the realm of university English literature departments.

I think, too, of a girlfriend’s reaction the first time she entered my apartment and saw the rows of peach lugs displaying my collected books along one wall: “Wow, you’ve read all these?” Well, mostly, I probably replied, silently realizing there would be some serious differences here. Looking back, I see how many more volumes had slipped away – in the divorce, to other lovers – or simply been borrowed and never returned. (The lugs, by the way, were inspired by a description in Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums – the orchard no longer used apple crates, but the wooden peach lugs were still available.)

On the other hand, you may be one of those who enters a home and immediately heads for the shelves to see what the host reads – or even plays on the CD or phonograph. As my ledger of readings demonstrates, the spines of the volumes can say a lot about a person. Besides, the paradox of books and magazines is that they dwell in our private experiences, yet also engage in a dialogue, often across decades or even centuries. Sometimes we even find others whose readings overlap and can speak together of our travels. At the moment, I’m beginning to feel like an open book.

All the same, here’s hoping you enjoy my shelves, such as they are. And thanks to those of you who have already weighed in.

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