Tag: Inspiration

One commute I can’t complain about

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Some Sunday mornings, my drive to and from the Quaker meetinghouse a half-hour from my home is a meditation in its own right.

Even in fog or snow, it can be refreshing.

Much of the road is through forest, plus stretches along Passamaquoddy and Cobscook bays and their tributaries. The route also passes through a tribal reservation and a national wildlife preserve, which does sound a bit exotic though I take it as routine.

Eagle sightings are common, and I have had to stop for deer or turkeys in the middle of U.S. 1. Once I even spotted a moose far ahead on the pavement.

A radio program of classical choral music on a CBC station that comes in quite clearly is often also an element, depending on my mood.

Do you remember the freedom you felt when you first learned to drive? Some mornings, especially when there’s no other traffic, that elation returns.

While I’m tempted to proclaim “What could be more glorious than this!” I will also note many of the scattered homes I pass resemble junkyards – poverty in Washington County is a constant – so there’s a reminder of that reality, too. I suspect there are more dead cars and trucks here than people.

As an added touch, there are no traffic lights, either.

I’ve been meditating for more than 50 years now

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Well, I haven’t been living as a monk in a Himalayan-mountain cave any of that time, but it does sound more impressive that being a “meditator” or someone who practices in a contemplative religious tradition that long even when it’s only once or twice a week.

The thought came to me in Quaker worship the other Sunday morning, the center of what has remained my spiritual discipline and community after the yoga-based version faded away over the years – even my rising before dawn to sit cross-legged in front of a small altar and its candle before I tackled poetry and then took off for the paying job for the rest of the day.

~*~

While I can no longer park myself on a cushion on the floor in the Asian style but rather settle in much more loosely on an old meetinghouse bench – do not call it a pew – the bigger change has been in the focus of my sitting.

The goal of the yoga exercise was to transcend, leaving behind mundane awareness altogether. Somewhere you might encounter your past lives, even. If not that, then a natural high, as an advanced version of a drug trip. At least an awareness of an altered state of consciousness that might even address authentic ethereal reality.

Instead, in the Quaker vein, what I’ve found is a time of being mentally and emotionally renewed and even gaining clarity into my daily engagements.

Or, as one quip goes, some of the best barns in New England were designed during Quaker Meeting. In this case, meaning the hour of shared and mostly silent worship.

~*~

The half-century mark also takes me back to my first Summer of Love, detailed my novel Pit-a-Pat High Jinks, a book that has scenes triggering the erotica filter, should you try to order a copy.

While I was preparing to live in the yoga ashram to our south back then, I experienced my first summer with a daily exposure to the outdoors, including swimming in mountain lakes, often naked, Upstate New York. It was a time of great struggle, discovery, growth, and redirection for me.

And at the end of all this, at the closure of our hour of silent worship here in Maine, one Friend (aka Quaker) voiced an insight from a Native perspective that when it comes to time, the focus is on the past – it’s the only one we can know. The future is the one behind us, rather than ahead. Not that there’s that much ahead for me in this lifetime.

~*~

Still, it’s was a kind of day that had me wondering, can life be any better than this? (Even with those aches et cetera of aging.)