You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
A lifetime of Quaker practice and inquiry comes to play in the reflections of Stillwater. The essays are submitted in all due humility, even as reminders to myself. Still, they’re open to all as an invitation.
~*~
For these essays and more, visit Thistle/Flinch editions.
Being mindful of what’s right in front of us can always be a challenge. Here are 10 new items from my end.
~*~
~*~
near the waterline, someone’s hammering
throughout the day, someone’s always
hammering
a staccato telegraph
of winter’s approach or gratitude
so little demands repair
or just some old goat’s survived
though when the hammering ceases
he may be eating a sandwich
or sawing a board to be hammered
yes, two taps secure its position
in the quiet, he’s
gone off to the supply house
for a another box of nails, another size
a door slams from another direction
where new hammering erupts
before the man puts his hammer down
on a leather tool belt
and then orders a beer
you’ll find boxes of hammering
in the tool shed, brown paper bags
of hammering in the mud room
old jars of hammering
on his truck bed
open any one
and his arm and shoulder
begin moving
the whole world as his anvil
Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
To see the full set of seacoast poems, click here.
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.
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:
~*~
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.
At least they’re not commandments. Holy Moses! Ten more from my end of the universe.
~*~
~*~
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
masts sway
like speedometers
or gauges
missing their dials
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
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.
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.
Just a taste of what’s popping up. In case you were looking for a prompt.
~*~
~*~
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.
