Tag: Inspiration

TO AND FROM CUBA, DEARLY

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

How many years ago did I write this? What’s come along since could fill a book!

One of the most exciting developments in New England Yearly Meeting is the Puente de Amigos – the Bridge of Love with Cuba Friends. Agamenticus Quarterly Meeting finally accepted the invitation to affiliate with Holguin Monthly Meeting, a pastoral congregation in the easternmost part of Cuba, a relationship that will force us to reexamine many of our own diversity of notions. The visiting Cubans have been gently reevangelizing New England, and when Wellesley’s teens were asked by their Cuban counterparts to “tell us about your conversion experiences,” a dialogue ensued that would have been difficult if not impossible to instigate otherwise: “our what?” Let us tell you!

~*~

For more Seasons of the Spirit, click here.

SIMPLY LISTEN WITH HANDS 

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

People typically listen with their heads, attentive to logic and thought, or with their hearts, to feeling and insinuation. But there is also a frequently untapped ability to listen with one’s hands, as I recognized at a Susan Stark concert in Brunswick, Maine. There, two Quaker pastors from Kenya (themselves excellent, forceful singers) sat with arms flexed out before them, as if each held an invisible beach ball squeezed slowly. They were appraising the vibration of the room, the presence of Holy Spirit moving. This time, the current was plentiful and active. Try it, in public – at a governmental hearing, a poetry reading, a concert or play, a sporting event – and you, too, may observe how the sense of each occasion may differ. Watch a master carpenter or a first-rate baker, as well, to see how hands ponder a task, running ahead of mental comprehension. A musician often seems to hear music through the fingers, as if playing, even when no instrument is present. Perhaps a surgeon does the same with medicine.

These poems celebrate the movement of Spirit perceived through a Third Ear, between the hands. The tactile response. Here’s one:

 

~*~

TO USE TOOLS

Connect
four fingers and thumb
sometimes, double

into the fire, and out
a pot, a pan, or a skillet

with or without a lid
and its handle

extending to a blade
or straw, depending:

All the wonder of the work at hand
cooking, keeping house,
gardening, splitting wood –

to say nothing of the factory,
farm, boat, or mine –

hunting or warring –

Even basic parts we touch
with each other

Poem copyright 2017 by Jnana Hodson
For more, click here.

Poetry
Poetry

THOU SHALT NOT?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

At least they’re not commandments. Holy Moses! Ten more from my end of the universe.

~*~

  1. Sometimes I enjoy being in the front passenger seat the entire trip. Get to see more, for one thing. It’s an opportunity not to be in charge, not to be fully responsible – just let go and observe. What a relief!
  2. All the waterfowl, the tip of the wing nearly touching the surface they fly over: how do they do it?
  3. As Richard Brown Lethem says of his work, “For my entire life I’ve been trying to mine the subconscious.” No wonder I’m drawn to his paintings, inexplicable as so much remains to me.
  4. I feel myself to be from another planet, looking at a world I once wanted to inhabit.
  5. The grief men carry. Could it simply be the passage of time? Or something more fundamental to Eden?
  6. As the news story reported, a neck-slasher to his stepdad: “I’m going to kill you and your life is going to end.” (The redundancy is emphatic.)
  7. The Isabella Stewart Gardner museum in Boston’s Bay Back really is a magpie’s nest, an egocentric collection of bright and shiny objects. I do wish the curators were at liberty to give its masterpieces better display, contrary to Isabella’s directives. My, there’s so much clutter in the way!
  8. Rather than heading back to Maine, she’s spending the night here. Thus, it’s NO YORK.
  9. Pockets in a room that aren’t doing anything: that hold, in effect, dead energy. What’s the better usage?
  10. Who am I, at the core? What do I really want? (That, for someone she accuses of being self-centered.)

~*~

Right downtown, a great blue heron watching the tide.
Right downtown, a great blue heron watching the tide.

PENOBSCOT BAY PARTICULARS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

1

what if the tide never turns
but waits to be submerged
in the next high tide
one after another until
the whole city is inundated?

sailboats would go under
on their moorings, perhaps still
rocking mostly one side
from perpendicular

the wharf and its autos
would mean nothing
while the moon ignores her orbit

2

masts sway
like speedometers

or gauges
missing their dials

3

a whirlpool, however large or compact
swirls within myriad currents
that knit the harbor

some talk of changing public opinion
or the incumbent party
but don’t reckon the vortex
swimmers approach
laughing to each other

any remorse
over their drowning
will ring hollow

3

while ducktrap is a fish
a store touts its Ducktrap Decoy

whether for some waterfowl or the fish
lingers in question

awaiting a retort
from Daffy, Donald, or Daisy

as for the fish? only silent
disdain

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

RAISING THE STAKES

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The kids raise a valid point when they notice how much we teach them about Quakers back then – but what about now?

Yes, what about NOW!

We need to get our act more together and acknowledge many of the remarkable ways we continue to witness today, usually in individual callings that deserve more support from the rest of us. So maybe the kids’ question can help us better focus on our greater purpose.

I’d like us to proclaim more of the courageous work of Friends internationally, too – I can think of examples in Cuba and Kenya in our own time.

Not all of the action involves peace and forgiveness issues, either.

Consider, too, two points from a visit to an Evangelical Friends Church on the other end of the Quaker spectrum from my own Meeting:

“Is Jesus Christ going to be exalted and praised?”

Her shocked look haunts me, considering the big Quaker gathering where I’m headed. I think, Yes, but in ways you wouldn’t recognize.

Also, humbly, as another realizes from one difficult exchange with a customer at her business previously that week: “I may be the only Jesus they’ll see.”

Now we’re talking business.

~*~

For similar thoughts, check out Religion Turned Upside Down.

FLY, FLY, FLY

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Just a taste of what’s popping up. In case you were looking for a prompt.

~*~

  1. Anyone else hate raking leaves? Find bagging them’s even worse? A reminder, too, of the tons of snow to be shoveled, all too soon around the corner. Will this be the year we cave in and buy a snow blower, rather than continue by hand?
  2. Commuting to choir each week requires driving through Belmont. That is, the one in Massachusetts. When folks mention the name, it could as easily refer to the one here in New Hampshire, up in the Lakes Region. Or, in my past, the neighborhood where I grew up in Ohio, going all the way through Belmont Elementary and High.
  3. Sometimes on that commute, the GPS sends us through some exclusive neighborhoods. We note the tonier neighborhoods are dominated by slate roofs.
  4. As a midday meal, it’s hard to beat fresh mussels and a baguette.
  5. So many things have to be taken at a leisurely pace, doled out over time.
  6. Would love to hit weekend morning dim sum in Boston’s Chinatown again. The restaurant basement function rooms fill with 250 or more diners as a dozen carts of delicacies pass your table. Pick something, if you wish, or wait for the next. Nothing in English, and no prices in sight. Just what’s in that steamed bamboo dish? The total for this “Chinese fast-food tapas” turns out to be about what we’d pay for breakfast at McDonald’s.
  7. Another unanticipated side of my Motets: the close connection between religion and politics, or at least social responsibility.
  8. Did Quaker culture essentially fail to address the earthy side of life? Could we have become all too refined?
  9. Guiding and teaching a new generation – a swami at last. Or whatever you want to call the guru or elder or abbot.
  10. What are we really afraid of? Really afraid of?

~*~

An expression of timeless grieving. Gone was that Puritan constraint.
An expression of timeless grieving. Gone was that Puritan constraint.

 

 

SAGE COUNSEL

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Master intricate knots. Trout flies, for example. Especially in your dreams.

Be astounded by what any feather can do.

~*~

Mice, even snakes, leave their tracks in the dust.

Follow them, to their hideaway.

Knock at the entrance and enter.

Come home, explaining, “Last night my mind blossomed.”

~*~

Pulling into the barnyard, I find another paradox of spiritual discipline: the practitioner becomes simultaneously rooted in flight.

~*~

By now, I’ve been away so long I no longer feel the memory.

How large was that spider?

If we had looked at each other, I would have seen. I was free to go home, even if it took another forty years to get here. March straight into that horizon? And then?

~*~

In cloud wisps two soaring ravens turn about.

They wheel from great land in the sky.

The black rings under my eyes are gone.

~*~

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

IN THE FACE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

even when I preside
this matter of conducting business
troubles

words and more words
plus reflection
in place of action

called to be a community
exemplifying unity in love (Mark 9:50 and Ephesians 4:3-4)
yet how scattered we are
yet how often grieved

another report
to minute
for the archives

*   *   *

asked by a shining elder
“what are you willing to give up to follow a leading?”
I sputter

not my income
not my household
not my almanac

not again

yes, I’ve been trapped
waiting for the elusive breakthrough

*   *   *

waging peace calls for self-honesty
within
waging peace builds on moments
of rest and contentment
waging peace in the face of ambition

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

SERIOUSLY SCORPIO

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Why wait for the dust to settle? Here are 10 bullets from my end.

~*~

  1. Am imagining evenings for violin and piano. How long since I’ve even picked up rosin and bow!
  2. A drive through a stretch I call the Black Forest can be quite amazing now. So luminescent, a golden-yellow tunnel of light.
  3. Indian Summer officially comes after the first killing frost. It’s almost scary.
  4. How much I feel myself a dilettante. A little of this, a little of that.
  5. The Big Question? (Questions! Yes, it’s questions!)
  6. It’s important to have a place to wind down, to fester, to percolate. To look at the messy side of your existence. (Nothing of that in a Frank Lloyd Wright home.)
  7. Reza Baraheni is the Iranian poet I heard read after his release from prison and torture. He warned that the alternative to the Shah would be even worse.
  8. My Mediterraneo poetry project had me reconsidering Greek and Roman mythology and then seeing that in contrast to theology. What strikes me is how convoluted it is, more than even Hindu cosmologies, and how anthropromorphic, down to the birthing or immortals slaying other immortals while frozen in time. How intricately it’s bound to a specific locale and its people. In contrast to the One Truth implicit in monotheism, i.e., science, the mythologies give us a cosmos that’s chaotic, ruled by caprice, fear, vengeance, conflicting deities as the source of human suffering. How do you find direction in such confusion?
  9. A neighbor’s 2 1/2-foot iguana is on the loose, according to the poster on the telephone pole. There’s a $100 reward.
  10. You don’t shoot your own troops. Not if you want to win. Otherwise, there’s every reason to mutiny.

~*~

Along the Community Trail through Dover.
Along the Community Trail through Dover.

 

Just in case you were looking for red.
Just in case you were looking for red.

 

FIELD GUIDE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

When you walk into the expanse, keep going. Maybe you’ll meet a dwarf at creekside. Maybe a bear. If you do, you must speak respectfully and listen closely to the reply. Even if they call you a yokel, as Kokopelli did.

~*~

A dust storm — sandstorm — and they close the highway.

You must wait. Cover your mouth and eyes.

~*~

On high ridges, bachelor Basque shepherds follow their flocks all summer. Each one and his dogs rarely encounter anyone who speaks Human.

~*~

Wilderness is about clouds, too.

Now what were you dreaming?

~*~

Guides do appear. Sometimes among fellow practitioners. Maybe even your landlord. Or Kokopelli.

~*~

“Who’s standing on my head?” a totem pole figure wonders.

Just like a typical office.

~*~

Blinking in my field of karma, the reminder:

PENDULUM
swinging
back
winter
NIGHTFALL

It’s not the first time.

Be faithful and wait.

~*~

Sometimes a lover becomes a place you want to enter.

Sometimes one’s the space the other envelops.

~*~

Where would I have been without her in that desolate expanse?

~*~

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