Tag: Inspiration

LOOKING AFRESH AT PRAYER

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

She was right, of course, about prayer. What happened, though, was that when the others heard “the only way,” they were unaware of how many varieties of prayer there are – and since they rarely if ever get down on their knees or lift their voices to the Divine One, they likely thought you were saying they were damned, closed out, lost! The challenge, then, is in encouraging them to experiment with prayer! Once they begin to hear of the old Friend in Connecticut whose practice was to pray daily for individuals in the Yearly Meeting (“I want you to know that at 7.15 every night, I will be praying for your daughter’s recovery”) or of longstanding prayer partnerships between individuals, such as the one former Yearly Meeting clerk Jan Hoffman has shared for two decades or so, then the invitation is more readily heard.

~*~

For more Seasons of the Spirit, click here.

LIBERALLY LIBRA

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a 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. How quickly the sun goes down these days. How quickly, darkness descends.
  2. Even if I could read a new novel a day, in a year I could not catch up with a single week of publication. So many good writers! How on earth could I possible keep abreast of them? Recognize names, even? It’s hopeless!
  3. Every autumn I have to be on guard. Take my meds. Something in the air often takes me out, sometimes for a week or two, with something resembling “flu like symptoms” that remains a mystery to my doctors.
  4. Moonlight at the lighthouse: silvery on shimmering surface surrounded by smoky blue.
  5. Sometimes I look at the barn and think of Joseph Albers. All the paintings he made with only three colors, each one a square band within another.
  6. What a wonderful fall tradition, these potted mums! Especially since we have so few flowers left that can be cut and brought indoors. Even the green leaves must feel they’ve overstayed. There’s something tired, browning, even before any blight.
  7. Take care driving the back roads at night. Much wildlife’s out and about roving.
  8. End of the season at York Animal Kingdom comes sharply. The pygmy goats in the pen by the highway are gone, as are the Ferris wheel cars by the beach.
  9. The goldfinches have lost their yellow. How sudden and uniform their molting! Back to winter’s gray duster c0at.
  10. In our autumn foliage, one day can turn everything. Or even overnight.

~*~

It's all angles. I love strolling around town.
It’s all angles. I love strolling around town.

 

JUST WHAT, THEN?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In town, the side of one building has a ghostly paint on black brick. With difficulty I decipher

COMMERCIAL SALOON
T. MALLET PROP.
CIGARS NOW 5 c

across from the train depot and next to the OPERA HOUSE. Railroads, cigars, saloon, and opera all fit together in a remarkable calculation. Just where were women, besides up on stage?

What, precisely, mad the Far West so different? No family roots? It was all male: cowboys, loggers, miners, fishermen, soldiers, trappers. Even an orchard’s considered a ranch. You need only a few acres, Buckaroo. Where is my wife at this moment? Like Maya of Sanskrit lore, she’s a weaver. Like Maya, she had spun a web of entrapment. Maybe these open spaces aren’t really so open.

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

SEPTEMBER, THE CAPE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Wellfleet, at their grandfather’s

two perfect horseshoe crabs
adorn the table
of the uninhabited house
while he’s in Florida

in the fridge, Heineken dark
“your surprise” – available across the highway

Wellfleet and just think
oysters or the saltmarsh

sunlight breaks through
my desire to travel lighter than this
unlike the children

an array of silver cups, a blinding turn
the chameleon hiding nowhere
but itself or the air, last week:
“You don’t look happy these days”
also: “What do you want from me?”
how I wish I could answer the latter

pine / oak / locust scrub
“tick country”                        even the lawn

tiny green acorns
dry cranberry bushes, as part of the groundcover

in his yard                              }           in the house
sand everywhere                               the arranged ginger jars
the grass brown                                his collection
with pine needles                             Rookwood Pottery, at least
the book

patch of mussels, each one the size of a pea

round brick
worn by the ocean

of course if we lean back, even nearly at shoreline
the water’s over our heads

water taller than I am
is the problem

or water that sweeps you
off your feet in this ocean so clear
we see fish swimming past us – one
a striper two feet long, the other a cod,
halibut, mackerel – I don’t know fish, really
bigger than my daughter beside me
just days past twelve

what kind of life has this been?
with flashes of brilliance, just enough
remaining for harvest

her knife, sharp and long

sailing into the wind
repeatedly, returning and now
through the years

windowpanes
two over two
traditionally
live our lives

one, in a denim jacket
while the other, in a blue swimsuit
nap in clear breeze

I wonder how people fall asleep in the sun
in chairs, at that

Rachel, my wife, informs me of changes
how so much has overgrown now
she no longer sees the saltmarsh or cove
from the dining room, even traces
of Reenie’s garden have vanished

ever dutiful, busily Rachel thins hostas and day lilies
where Grandpa has taken an ax to their roots
“and I came to the Cape for this?” but the motion
grounds her in a way the surf grounds me

blue sky, blue ocean
warm water compared to Maine
choppy surf “knocks a child over”
happened once and now Rachel won’t
bring them back here but prefers
bayside, where the water’s warmer

I believe her, yet

when we walk the road to the Atlantic full on
she observes
overgrowth around cottages and houses
is often quite pronounced
to go with the windswept, cracked gray of dunes cabins
and the ever present shake siding

all night, all day
the highway mocks
the surf’s rhythm

in the swells with Megan, she snarls
“I thought you said it was warm”
“warmer than Maine!”
and laments the waves aren’t bigger
though they knock us off our feet and
fill our suits with small gravel
(viz Grandpa’s bathroom floor after her shower)

turning overcast, trying to spit rain
cool, too
no swimmers but three dozen surfers in one stretch
kids sledding on the dune cliffs
30 feet, maybe, the low spots
100 in others

a seal, faroff, away from the surfboarders
feel the sun now, too much on my face

wind and wind gong
fiddler crab and mussels
the saltmarsh tide turning
chalk and slate outside the general store

oak, pine, and locust trees
a mole scurrying along the foundation

all these beachcombers
tomorrow expect no one
after the weekend

“we’ll take you back”
the waves cackle and rage

will the kid ever learn, packing a whole suitcase for herself
(too much and still no swimsuit)
for a short trip?

 

morning water cold but great breakers,
a great workout, knocked over, body slams –
lose my trunks once, saved at the ankles
fortunately, out of season

surf calms but still choppy, very windy
a seal head appears, just briefly

Sunday morning, clearly the last swim of the season
a record amount of rain for the month
Hurricane Wilma decaying offshore
kicked up quite a show here

twenty-foot swells crashing on the rocks

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

ARISING OUT OF SILENCE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Another form of study we have found helpful is Worship Sharing, in which a topic is announced, a facilitator shares a brief (up to twenty minute) introduction, and then each person can respond out of the silence, speaking only once until all have shared and observing the other “rules” of vocal ministry: no direct rebuttals, space between messages, and so on. Thus, your original proposal could be turned into a series, “How To Meet God,” beginning with a session on experiences each person has had in encountering the Divine. A second session could examine varieties of prayer, in which individuals might begin to see the silence and social service as prayer, in addition to supplication, thanksgiving, praise, confession, and so on. Yet another session might examine ways of centering down for a better “sit” in Meeting (prayer returns here!). Each of the queries makes a good Worship Sharing focus, as does a carefully selected piece of scripture. Larry and Joanna Sparks, by the way, have prepared an excellent approach for group study of scripture, that requires the readers to sweep away their baggage and then to examine the text closely to see what it actually does say; a circle at Agamenticus spent six weeks on Jonah and felt they needed more time! Oh, yes, confession of our individual spiritual baggage and our initial religious training can also be useful Worship Sharing. Testimony about one’s spiritual journey to date has formed the basis for some Agamenticus Friends for monthly breakfasts at one family’s farm.

~*~

For more Seasons of the Spirit, click here.

OH, FOR THE CURIOUS TURNS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

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

~*~

  1. So fine to curl up together in the hammock, even if we do require a blanket by this time of year. Good times, indeed, if we pause to catch them.
  2. Eighteen years later, I can still ask: Just who is she, really? Little is truly predictable. So much remains full of surprises.
  3. The joy of grilling continues. Pork chops and ribs, chicken, sausage. And anything beef goes so gloriously with our remaining stream of fresh tomatoes.
  4. The potted mums by the back door catch my breath each time I set forth. A few golden blossoms surrounded by a field about to burst out so starry!
  5. I thought the household chaos and clutter would greatly improve when the kid moved to college. I was wrong.
  6. Observing high school kids and realizing they’re so young! Compounded by recognition of how much unfolded when we weren’t much older! How did we ever survive?
  7. A parallel universe I could have inhabited. I’ve been grieving, so much lost, even while so much is gained.
  8. We’ve decided hard cider, rather than wine, can be a distinctive touch when we’re guests elsewhere or entertaining. New Hampshire has two producers we really like, and their work couldn’t be more different: North Country, in an old mill just a few miles away, and Farnum Hill on Poverty Lane on the other side of the state. As one friend described the latter, with great approval: “It’s apple champagne.”
  9. Barring a hurricane somewhere down the coast, the ocean around here can be warmer now than it was in July. Some of the best swimming happens now. Along with some of the best memories.
  10. Maybe there’s still time to harvest staghorn sumac cones and grind them into powder, like the popular Middle Eastern spice that goes so well on kabobs.

~*~

A widespread emblem of New England.
A widespread emblem of New England.

 

OF SOJOURNING AND EXILE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Kokopelli is not quite of this place, but he will stand in for the local hunchbacked flute players. As will Krishna, in tunes that begin slowly and build to ecstatic climax. Maybe they will be joined by a wandering sailor, looking for water. Maybe by fiddlers like me. Our melodies haunt and echo. This music demands dancing. The drummers appear.

You might ask what the Native American flute is made of. As well as Krishna’s pipe. What kind of bone or horn the sailor has carved. What opens as a simple, plaintive cry gains complexity and liveliness. Spider, in fact, weaves their intricate counterpoint.

The sailor knows sees their progression running from reel to jig to, ultimately, hornpipe. Who knows what the Hopi or Hindu call it — the effect is the same. Just look at a cow skulls and see where the horns were. Look at elk antlers. Look in his Bible, where horns are an image of power. Some who venture out into solitude return with their own power song. Begin wailing. Begin reeling.

I reflect. Suppose my children are born here? Is this really an arrival or a failed promise? What about the long exile ahead? The decades of trying to understand precisely what I’ve encountered in this desert and at its rim. Perhaps I will face a desert in my profession, as well. Perhaps I’ll find the sea is another kind of desert — one giving rise to the fishermen who were Christ’s first apostles. I already know of salmon returning to the desert.

I had believed this would be his Canaan — my place of milk and honey. I could spend the rest of this life pondering exactly what I experienced. Attempting, as well, to recover something of the encounter. The tune ends, but I remember its sound and its place on my maps. No matter that I might have even found this Canaan in a large city of orchestras and quartets, stages and screens, galleries and architecture, lectures and bookstores.

Maybe I’m merely sojourning here all along. In exile here as much as anywhere. And maybe it wasn’t the desert as much as the promise itself I explore.

At the end, a door closes. Maybe a gate. Like Eden, with its reality that I’ll never return. This desert is not a land that many visit. It reveals its true nature slowly, if you’re patient. If you’re reverent.

Actually, this might be just one more gate locked behind me. Even if I could return, I’d find everyone scattered. Or at least older. Here I haven’t even collected an antique basket or beaded moccasins or a piece of turquoise and silver jewelry to carry with me. Wherever I’m going.

Those were the days when I could read a totem pole and anticipate the stories. Maybe even name the children and their grandparents.

I should have known traveling with Kokopelli comes with risk. There’d be a price, eventually. Maybe it was while I was at the office or those other times when I turned, and he wasn’t there with me.

Now I come home and both Kokopelli and my wife are missing. I should have been suspicious all along.

It’s time for me to leave, then. I’m free.

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

RECONSIDERING THE NATURE OF TRUTH

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

Contrary to the opinion of many contemporary Quakers, theology among Friends did not cease developing after the death of George Fox. While I have argued that early Friends had their reasons for not fully articulating their radical vision publicly, they left us enough dots to connect to rediscover their revolutionary line of thinking. As I’ve written, this is built on three central metaphors: Light, the Seed, and the Truth.

Of the three, I’ve found Truth to be the most difficult to grasp. Metaphor typically builds around an image, but just what works for Truth, no matter how many layers of meaning and experience we compress into it? Moreover, metaphor rarely settles into something as comfortable as a noun. In other words, just how do we turn Truth into a verb?

I was delighted to see Douglas Gwyn pick up on in his book Seekers Found: Atonement in Early Quaker Experienence, with his own elegant turns. He begins with a concept of  spiritual formation: “The Quaker truth-stance was constituted by four distinct aspects, or ‘moments,’ … that can be related to four standard philosophical accounts of truth.” He addresses this from the psychology perspective of individual experience as a reality. Among them:

Powerful catharsis of being “convinced of the truth”

Gwyn begins with the sensation early Friends reported in their encounter with the Quaker apocalypse:

At that moment, the light of Christ gave them a searing, unmistakable knowledge of themselves. They were confronted as never before with their alienated conditions (including overt sins) and by the power of God to redeem them.

Yes, they were shaped by earlier teachings and beliefs:

The first moment of truth, therefore, was one of correspondence between propositional belief and lived experience. … The insistence on a lived experience of Christian beliefs … was an important breakthrough at the culminating – and self-defeating – moment of the English Reformation.

Coherence

Making sense of the experience presents its own challenges.

The truth of any proposition is established by its consistency or harmony with a larger body of previously established truths. Coherence, then, implies a framework within which one interprets either ideas or the data of experience (spiritual or empirical). But simultaneously, new experiences, while corresponding to elements within that existing framework, may also alter the framework (“shift the paradigm”), sometimes drastically.

Verification

Gwyn notes that Quakers could be more orthodox, especially in their insistence on moral accountability or the behavioral codes, which

not only expected outcomes of the convincement process but also the necessary means of conformity with Christ. This strong “process” aspect of Quaker truth has affinity with operationalist philosophical theories, which posit that a hypothesis must be verified by appropriate procedures of investigation. Here, the emphasis is upon the active means of testing the proposed idea or action, in contrast with the static framework of established truths suggested by coherence theory.

Pragmatism

But truth’s fourth moment is still rightly called pragmatic. … Like operationalism, pragmatism is concerned with action, but judges truth by end results, rather than means.

~*~

Gwyn delves deeply into the workings of these, and more, but as he observes,

these comprise the framework within which early Friends found, served, and remained faithful to the truth. The truth itself remains a divine reality, defined by God’s loving faithfulness to humanity and all creation.

Here, then, is Gwyn’s breakthrough key in approaching this Truth – it’s active, as love, allowing him to present us at last with a requisite image: Jesus himself!

While not all metaphors have to be visual – the ringing of a bell, for instance, might be a richer connection than the bell itself – I’d simply overlooked the idea of using a person itself. But why not? The English can speak of the Crown, after all, and in our times, a picture of the Queen comes to mind. Americans have long spoken of George Washington as the Father of Our Country and Gilbert Stuart’s portrait springs forth, along with statuary in parks and other public places across the land. We even have a major city and a vast state named in Washington’s honor, which simply magnify him as a metaphor.

To continue, Gwyn turns to the gospel and letters of John, who

portrays Jesus in conversation with a variety of individuals who take different positions in relation to him. A Christian dialectic emerges from these conversations. … John’s dialectical universalism contrasts with the syncretistic universalism of Hellenic culture, where various deities mixed and matched for the masses, while philosophy served the more refined pastime of the privileged. … The Gospel of John called various peoples into service to the one true God. … Again, this God who sent Jesus is less “true” in the sense of opposition to false gods, than in the Hebrew sense of faithfulness. … One did not choose Jesus from a long list of seeking options. Rather, “I choose you” (John 15:16). That call of truth was enormously energizing …

Gwyn’s insight certainly opens John 3:16 in a fresh light: “I am the way, the truth, and the light.” Look at the compression of metaphor!

~*~

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

THAT LAST WEEK OF SUMMER

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The mind dances here and there, rarely in a linear fashion. So what’s on my mind these days? How about counting on these fingers?

~*~

  1. As she says, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
  2. Still many sailboats out, their sails looking soft, dreamy. Other boats, on their moorings, rock endlessly. Listen to the incoming tide.
  3. With the sea haze is pronounced, we can barely see the Isles of Shoals from the mouth of the Piscataqua River. Other times they’re crisp, five miles away – the hotel and conference center/retreat, avian observatory, and White Isle lighthouse, among them. Soon, everything will be deserted for winter.
  4. Asked what makes me run, I could easily answer: COFFEE! Actually, it’s often a mystery to me, too.
  5. Without a big project going, I feel lost, adrift, directionless.
  6. Sometimes that sensation of feeling lost is a fog. When I’m not relating to music, what I hear is mostly noise.
  7. One help in revising a long work of fiction, especially, comes in finding its “emotional zipper” – and then everything falls into place as you move along it.
  8. Where’s the center of gravity? That is, the central identity or overall impression.
  9. Will she realize it’s our anniversary? (She almost always has the date wrong.)
  10. How I love the cool, clear days of late summer and early autumn!

~*~

Somersworth, New Hampshire.
Somersworth, New Hampshire.

It’s a common real estate question, I suppose: what do you do with an old church? In my newest novel, the family turns one into a rock concert venue, not that unlike the Stone Church in Newmarket, New Hampshire, not all that far from us. Others around here have been turned into homes or apartments. And still others are art galleries or retail spaces. Parking, of course, can be a problem.

MINDING THE DOOR

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I’m grateful for each person who is led to enter the meeting room and pray that more will follow. The paradox of inclusivity is in assuring that it encourages each of us to fulfill and express our potential, rather than settling safely at the lowest common denominator of experience. If we cannot meet that potential, then we guarantee that spiritual depth will be found only in exclusionary bodies, which is not the way I want to respond to the Great Commission!

Cross-fertilization can be helpful, especially when it involves profundity reaching across to profundity, or from depth to like depth. You know how my sojourn among Mennonites in Rehoboth sustained me when I was confronted by similar difficulties with Quakers in that city. Let me note here, too, that the pastor at Durham Friends is a Italian-American Mennonite whose degree is from Andover-Newton – a wonderful and tender hand among us. I see that in your own Quarterly Meeting there are pastors at China, North Fairfield, and Winthrop who would, no doubt, enjoy meeting you. Now what was your question about hymns? The importance, I believe, is in substance rather than form (and, yes, “Magic Penny” could do with more substance, musically and theologically).

You were rightly appointed to be clerk of Ministry and Counsel. It’s a valid endorsement of your gifted abilities, and an invitation to grow in them. The fact that you are aware of spiritual baggage as well as the snares of ego and personal agenda is healthy. Within your baggage, too, is much that will find rightful application, more of that cross-fertilization that can help. The rest can go on the compost heap, which has its own spiritual metaphors. Either way, never fear being a “fool for Christ,” as Paul so aptly put it.

Your challenge likely involves a roomful of religious refugees yearning for the warm fellowship of church while fearing – often because of their own negative experiences with Bible-thumpers, proselytizers, smarmy priests, pedophiles, or whatever – the very goods that are essential. (In psychological terms, this involves looking directly into the Jungian shadow, at the places we were wounded; in Bible structure, it’s the reason we see the Tree of Knowledge early on but don’t see the other tree growing next to it until late in Revelation: the Tree of Life, with healing in its leaves – or, closer to home, the cure for nettles growing next to the nettle plant.) To use an old Brethren expression, “Bible words for Bible things,” meaning that sooner or later you have to face up to sin, repentance, atonement, Father, LORD, Holy Spirit, grace, rest, faith, prayer, and all the rest, often learning to retranslate as you go.

One thing about this group is that no one in it has much tolerance for being preached at – they’re just too independently intellectual for that, even if some of them earn their livelihood by lecturing! Lay out information for examination, and it’s a different matter.

~*~

For more Seasons of the Spirit, click here.