Tag: Inspiration

UNCOVERING THE PLACE OF STRUGGLE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In his Pendle Hill pamphlet last year, Marking the Quaker Path: Seven Key Words Plus One, Robert Griswold opens with the term “condition,” which initially seems familiar enough. Quakers often remark to a comment, “This speaks to my condition,” or even “the Friend speaks my mind,” conveying a sense of unity and affirmation.

Griswold, though, gives the concept a darker twist, noting that a meaningful spiritual journey requires seeing ourselves in our places of failure and weakness rather than a state of “being in charge,” as we so often do. Think of Anne Lamott’s “three essential prayers” — Help, Thanks, and Wow — and admit a long personal list invoking the first.

I would extend that awareness of condition not just to ourselves individually but to our families and circles of faith and then the wider society. I’d say there’s great need everywhere.

This, then, leads to the subsequent steps where we turn to the Holy One and our kindred spirits for direction and growth.

Curiously, condition is not a word I find used widely in either Scripture or early Quaker literature – not directly, that is – but it does fit the situation of many people as they set out in faith as recorded in both.

Could it be that in many of our religious circles, we’ve been running away from this very difficult but essential challenge? We go to worship looking for rest and renewal, not more turmoil and suffering.

O, Lord, give us strength!

~*~

More of my own reflections on alternative Christianity are found at Religion Turned Upside Down.

IS THIS SUPPOSED TO BE FUN?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Being mindful of what’s right in front of us can always be a challenge. Here are 10 new items from my end.

~*~

  1. Hard to think Christmas is so near. It’s just not in the air, at least for me, despite the bell ringers and carols around the stores. But then I’m often off on another planet.
  2. I always intend to put up our outdoor Christmas lights while it’s still warm. Rather than freezing my fingers.
  3. I’ve long said if she would only dance, she’d be perfect. OK, there are few other details I’d add, all these years later. Learning to read music, for one.
  4. Another old fear? If you get to know me, you won’t like me. Or maybe: You won’t like what you find. (That muscular reaction when someone gets too physically close in a conversation.
  5. I seldom I feel myself fitting in – in a crowd, an audience, a group, a family.
  6. NOT THE USUAL … one of my strictures in my desire not to repeat myself in blogging. Or anywhere else, for that matter. Not that I usually remember.
  7. I miss being able to get the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts on local radio. These days I have to listen on my laptop or cell phone. Just ain’t the same.
  8. In a depression.: Do I really LIKE anyone? Being with them? Am I having ANY fun?
  9. Well, I am drinking Virgin Marys during Advent. (Cheers in the morning!)
  10. You were supposed to save me.

~*~

Yes, light snow counts.
Yes, light snow counts. We know what just might be really ahead.

HOW THE STREAMS CAME TO THE SEA

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I come to the sea a stranger
a person of a different religion
learning to eat at one table

these days, one who dwells inland
as far as the tide retreats

the passion of the moon
with its heartbeat and home and
those who have been torn and uprooted
will sense this

no image holds the tide
the moon, then, must do

somehow resembling the moon I knew first in Ohio
and later, in sagebrush desert

all things who move furtively in the night

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

WAITING BEYOND PASSIVITY

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Another aspect of myself that’s just coming to light is a kind of passiveness that the Asian practice has encouraged – indeed, Yoga and Zen direct the practitioner to become invisible or transparent, egoless, etc. Put that together with my experience in employment, relationships, and so on, and it can become – as it has in my life – a reactive, rather than active, series of events: me as a passive victim rather than standing up on my own. Or when I’d stand up for something, it was to get cut down – again, becoming the victim. At least, that’s a quick overview of the openings at the moment. It’s not quite that severe: I’ve been a lot of places, done a lot of things. But there has been a kind of short-circuit that’s depleted too much energy and maybe even been self-destructive. A passive outlook leading to a victim mentality. Fun stuff. At least – and at last – I’m coming face to face with it. In seeing this, though, some interesting things are beginning to happen.

~*~

For more Seasons of the Spirit, click here.

WHAT’S IN THE WIND

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

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

~*~

  1. My wife can’t resist an opportunity to make a holiday feast, and that means planning ahead. (Somehow the menu keeps growing, enough to feed twice as many guests as we have.) I’m impressed by the checklists she makes, too, to keep herself on track. Three days ahead – or more – the work actually begins. And then there’s the last-minute shopping for anything she wants to be fresh.
  2. Juncos and jays. Rituals and routines. Manners and mores.
  3. No matter my affinity, I never would have been comfortable in the Society of Friends in any of the earlier eras. I always would have chafed at the limitations and discipline. Nor, for that matter, do I see anywhere I would have fit in neatly. (We could start with my interior “fort” surrounding my emotions, despite my public interactions. Or my Aquarian/contrarian nature.) Well, the Mavericks have roots in Boston Harbor. Look ’em up. Doubt I’d fit in there, either.
  4. Opening my car door at the Nubble Lighthouse, I’m nearly knocked over by cold wind. Sustained, more than gusting. Barely a mile inland, only a mild breeze. This strange sensation of having my nostrils blown shut (or at least constrained): to breathe, I have to turn my back to the wind, a first in my experience. Make you wonder about sailors at sea?
  5. In Eastern Orthodox tradition, Mary is a temple of God that surpasses the one in Jerusalem. Within her, the Light or Logos becomes incarnate. The nuances are quite different from what I’ve heard in Western Christian teaching. How much else have I missed? I’m certainly invigorated by the sharp contrast to our austere Quaker aesthetic. I love the extremes.
  6. Launching this blog, as the horoscope said, came in my year to come out of hiding.
  7. In contrast to any sense of guilt or some shame or impoverishment: LOOK AT ALL THESE RICHES! Even the matters of what’s unfinished or undone, now turned to opportunity.
  8. A sense of progress, too.
  9. What do I really want? To be accepted and loved, without feeling pain? Certainly there’s more.
  10. What holds your life together?

~*~

I really should bring our bay trees and pots of rosemary indoors any day now. Yes, they can stand light snow or frost, but deep cold's another matter altogether. And we do like having fresh herbs at hand all winter.
I really should bring our bay trees and pots of rosemary indoors any day now. Yes, they can stand light snow or frost, but deep cold’s another matter altogether. And we do like having fresh herbs at hand all winter.

REEL, IF YOU WILL

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

What opens with a dance tune perchance deflects into the reaction to a blow or injury, to a fly fisherman’s reel, the canisters of a movie, or even a soaring eagle. These poems span experiences of touch and coupling, however chaste at times, and of flight and emerging lightness. To be light on one’s feet, then, and light-hearted in the end, if not a little dizzy.

~*~

EXTENDED FLOURISH

First, the snow a sheet of ice
shiny as cake frosting.

Then the Asian dental hygienist greets me:
“Sorry to make you waiting.”

Maybe it’s all in the skin.
A flourish we extend. A touch or care.

Excellence in a small thing, somewhere,
a note of gratitude or worship

placing everything in the larger context
of conception, especially through its monotonous stretches.

A few hours later, lavender mountains at sunset:
the Monadnocks, viewed from my studio window,

incredibly purple, even more than blue.
That night:

Sing. Dance. Fiddle. Doodle.
And away I go.

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

Poetry
Poetry

IN THE FINE PRINT

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

oh, stranger
you seem to expect a believer will forgive anybody

you seem to think a devotee must forgive everybody

you seem to presume a saint can forgive all

but it’s nothing you attempt in return

*   *   *

oh, stranger, there are conditions
according to Jesus

if you ask
we can begin

and if you express regret
and if you turn course
and do good actions
we can truly begin

if you want any forgiveness between us
we can begin gently working
according to Jesus

*   *   *

but if you think forgiveness is a license
to come back
the way you were, to continue harming
and hurting others
you’re mistaken
oh, sinner

forgiveness begins by admitting the mirror

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

WHY HAVE THE YOUTH GONE?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Quakers are not alone in this regard, but what we’ve been enduring is that no matter how much effort we put into raising our children within the faith community, they disappear somewhere in their junior high years. For decades, we’ve been hoping they’d reappear as they started raising their own families, but we’re seeing little of that, and again, we’re not alone.

It’s all too easy to blame competition with Sunday morning soccer leagues and the like, although we might also argue that the values the kids learn in their athletic competition more closely fit those of the larger, secular society than those they are taught in religious settings. Rabbi Michael Lerner makes an extended argument in his 2006 The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right, as he contends that too often our children see all too clearly the dichotomy between what we say we believe in faith and what we actually do in a dog-eat-dog marketplace. It’s a harsh criticism. No wonder religion is losing.

As I gaze around our mostly graying worshiping circle, I wonder just where the young adults are today – not just within religious communities, but just about everywhere I venture. Maybe they’re all hidden away working multiple 24/7 jobs trying to make ends meet. I don’t envy them the economic scene they’re contending with.

But I also wonder about the message they carry about faith itself. If the teaching among youths growing up “under the care” of Quaker Meeting has been to build a hopeful, optimistic foundation of values, how do we help them survive the brutal struggles they’ll encounter in the wider world? How do we instill an awareness of the importance of religious community and shared discipline in maintaining a drive toward a more loving and just society?

Perhaps we’ve been too comfortable in our safe, middle-class, largely professional upbringings and neighborhoods and expectation of college and career.

In my own thinking, I keep returning to the concept of the two seeds, one of Christ and the other, call it what you wish – the point is, we face not just “that of God within each person” and its potential, but also a counter element to challenge. It was a line of thinking at the time the Quaker movement erupted in Britain. Think of the parable of the wheat and the tares.

Contending with the two may be what’s been missing in our teaching and example.

~*~

More of my own reflections on alternative Christianity are found at Religion Turned Upside Down.

SAGELY, SAGGITARIUS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

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

~*~

  1. Crows – dozens upon dozens – all over town, roosting together somewhere. Rook, as they say.
  2. Late afternoon driving: so much glare, not just the low sun, either, but blazing up in reflections. Wet pavement or a waterway I’m crossing.
  3. Midnight here now really fits around 10:30, unlike 12 in the summer, calculating midway from sunset to sunrise.
  4. Cranberries, so quintessentially New England, remind me of driving to Cape Cod and passing all the bogs where they’re grown.
  5. When it comes to Friends, we need new blood.
  6. Eastern Orthodox Advent starts on the 28th and continues to the Feast of the Epiphany, Jan. 6 or 7, not our more widespread Christmas Day! Since we’re taking this up voluntarily, rather than under church discipline, we make some adaptations. Thanksgiving, for one, and ending Advent on Dec. 25, for another. Does it make us look like wimps?
  7. Poetry as a heroic journey. Holy, my voice. Or gritty.
  8. Where am I NOW? Where’s my HEART?
  9. Good to be reminded of ACTIVE WAITING, especially through periods when you feel suspended, on hold until others make a decision or act or all the pieces to fall into place. Drawing from James Nayler, Brian Drayton sees a sequence in spiritual response. The waiting prompts a response, which requires prompt obedience. Next is suffering, perhaps as embarrassment or upheaval. And then public witness – telling others, even if only in a small circle. Throughout, small steps count, however tentative.
  10. How much of being a public figure is a matter of being a performer, too – someone who needs a circle of fans?

~*~

It's always an honor for our choir to perform a set for the lighting of the huge Christmas tree at Faneuil Hall in Boston. The 80-foot tree is an annual gift from Halifax, Nova Scotia, expressing gratitude for relief given its citizens after the 1917 harabor explosion that killed an estimated 2,000 people. The tree is adorned with 30,000 lights.
It’s always an honor for our choir to perform a set for the lighting of the huge Christmas tree at Faneuil Hall in Boston. The 80-foot tree is an annual gift from Halifax, Nova Scotia, expressing gratitude for relief given its citizens after the 1917 harabor explosion that killed an estimated 2,000 people. The tree is adorned with 30,000 lights. Here’s the stage before we make our entrance.

A MISCELLANEOUS TENDRIL OF LITERARY ADVICE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

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

~*~

  1. De-racinated, “no root system,” a criticism Tony Hoagland makes regarding so much contemporary American poetry. Also, he notes our fiction is far less diversified than our poetry, in its many tribes.
  2. Don’t know who described Franz Wright as not a formal poet yet “the structure of his poems develop organically, driven by music, rhythm, and symmetry.” Not a bad model!
  3. For that matter, who wrote, “Their humor often depends on a single word: in fact the whole laugh can rest on a single word choice,” before quoting Mark Twain: “The difference between any word and the ‘right’ word is the difference between a lightning bug and the lightning.”
  4. TONE as the angle of sensibility toward the subject. Looking, too, for the fractional element – the bit that counters the previous.
  5. As far as the persona of the writer, think of that time before World War II and the larger-than-life characters who were largely self-created: the conductor Leopold Stokowski or movie star Cary Grant as examples who wound up as caricatures of themselves, or at least strangers. It was, after all, a Sol Hurok era. As for our own obsession with “celebrities” rather than “doers”?
  6. Czeslow Milosz: “The purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person.”
  7. Denise Levertov corresponding with William Carlos Williams: “I have been honest in what I’ve written – but with what hypocrisy I have selected what I wrote!”
  8. To which Williams replied: “You know yourself better than anyone else can ever know you. … Perhaps you will never be able to say what you want to say … deep feeling that would reveal you in what may not want to be revealed … In that case, the loss will be great.”
  9. John Berryman: “You should always be trying to write a poem you are unable to write, a poem you lack the technique, the language, the courage to achieve. Otherwise, you’re merely imitating yourself, going nowhere, because that’s always easiest.”
  10. “And these bottles of wine, which we filled, were new; and, behold, they be rent: and these our garments and our shoes are become old by reason of the very long journey” (Joshua 9:13, KJV).

~*~

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
The Boston Public Library, left, faces Copley Square in Boston’s Back Bay. How many other landmarks, by the way, can you name that give honor to an American painter? At the right is the 1873 Venetian Gothic Revival style Old South Church. They are seen here from the steps of famed Trinity Church, whose shadow reaches across the green.