ORIGAMI PEACE TREE
Tag: Inspiration
COLD COAST
The New England coastline can be impressive anytime of the year. While most visitors see it only from midsummer into early autumn, it is unmasked much the rest of the year.
GINGERBREAD LIGHTHOUSE
While I’ve never gotten wrapped up in my wife’s fascination with gingerbread houses, my contrarian nature has embraced the idea of making an annual gingerbread LIGHT house, and here’s one result .
For the recipe and the templates, especially if you want to go for fancier results, check out this story, recipe, and assembly directions. (It’s not the only gingerbread lighthouse at Coastal Living, by the way, in case you’re really adventurous.)
The model was based on the Whaleback Light just downriver from us, so I feel it’s an extra special touch. And the gummy lobsters and gummy sharks, along with the candy rocks for the lighthouse wall, were purchased from Yummies just beyond the Kittery Outlet stores. That can be a destination for Maine visitors all in its own.
JUST PAGES APART
As I said at the time …
For me, writing means watching my own shifting mind while opening myself up to all the living energies around me. It means simplifying, following unexpected leadings and openings, sometimes to dead ends, other times to unanticipated ranges. Some time ago I discovered that to write poetry I had to be sitting in meditation every day. And later, I found once a week would suffice.
If ego is an ever present trap, the practice can introduce repeated humbling. As do the rejection slips.
Detachment: who wrote that! And when? (The surprise of rediscovering your own work five or ten years later. Who wrote that, it is so incredibly fine! Or: Who wrote that piece of tripe? I’m glad it never saw publication. Sometimes only pages apart.)
And then the piece goes its own way: a living organism: readers, editors see it differently from you. What you would cut they love. What you love they see as sore thumb.
What we’re most fond of is likely to be what bothers others the most; what we’re about to toss out in the next revision may be what is most effective with our readers. (Point raised, I believe, by Joyce Carol Oates; true to my experience.)
As critics of others’ work: harshest, at times, on those whose work is most like our own! Too much mirror? Push ourselves as far as we can, coming to a point where we no longer know if a piece is any good or not only that we’ve done everything in its pursuit that we possibly can at this period in our life.
Prophetic practice: light in the wilderness.
The dilemma of arts/responsibility/spirituality brought into focus by looking at something like the Florentine court of the Medici: High Art interwound with brutal political/economic force. (Throw the man out the fourth floor window; nowadays, we have helicopters. How exquisite.)
The dilemma of the news photographer: Should I save the victim and lose the opportunity of taking a great photograph? Or should I be “professional” and observe the world as an outsider? This holds for all artists: at one point are we being selfish in our pursuits? At what point is our solitude essential for the well being of all?
Into solitude / the Silence / the Holy Now, as Thomas Kelley phrased it.
At its core, I write to discover / remember / connect / distill.
In my writing I collect – that is, bring myself back together. More and more, I think on paper. I write to find what is under the words and phrases before me. Go deeper, and then wider. I write to listen. Eventually, I write to sing.
REGARDING THE THREE-FINGERED MOUSE
I’m inclined to agree with Bukowski in blaming Disney (with all that “happy, happy, happy”) for America’s problems. Or even the world’s. Not that I’d agree with his solution for escaping them, meaning cigarettes and the bottle or a barroom brawl and violent sex.
You see, I’m uneasy when it comes to “happiness” as a goal or a life’s purpose. There’s too much suffering and oppression around us, after all, and no spiritual unity with the universe can exist by denying that. Still, that’s not to argue we need to be pulled under with its negative impact.
As for “fun”? I see that as a self-defeating destination. Its flipside, we should note, is boredom.
Joy, however, is another matter. It’s central to the message of Jesus, as the 16th chapter of John makes clear.
To that we could add bliss or contentment, not in the sense of denying the upheavals and evil of the world but rather in the dimension of accepting a personal inner peace that allows one to labor in furthering the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.
For me, this means learning to be more loving, and that’s a never ending challenge. It’s quite different from being giddy or depressed or self-centered or even blaming, gee, I was at the beginning of this post.
Oops! Back to Square One, once again.
PREPARING FOR THE TREE
Although we don’t bring the Yule tree indoors until Christmas Eve, baking and decorating the gingerbread cookies that will adorn its branches can be done days ahead.
TEACHING OR PREACHING
One of the criticisms that Evangelical Friends level at quietist Meetings like ours is that we are short on teaching. “Silent worship, for those who are well-instructed in divine truth, has real benefits,” they write, before cautioning: “upon those who have neither read the Bible nor hear it expounded the effect may be very different.” The passage I quote continues: “As a result, the Friends Church became victim to a group of erroneous teachers, among whom Elias Hicks was most prominent.” The section also points to some very deep misunderstandings among Friends, including Job Scott’s decision to remain silent in sessions called on his behalf during his traveling ministry; he sensed too many people had come with “itchy ears” primed for novelty rather than an open heart.
Ideally, vocal ministry arises as a prophetic voice, as William Taber describes in his Pendle Hill pamphlet, The Prophetic Stream. From this perspective, pastoral sermons can be criticized as arising too much as a matter of teaching and too little as an outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
Walter Wangerin Jr.’s novel, Miz Lil and the Chronicles of Grace, also addresses this, though from a different perspective. There, the young Lutheran pastor realizes that in greeting parishioners after the service, he cannot tell whether one woman is telling him he offered good teaching or good preaching on any given morning. One Sunday, however, it becomes quite clear she has been making a distinction: “’Pastor?’ All at once, Miz Lillian Leander. She took my hand and we exchanged a handshake, and I let go, but she did not. … Her voice was both soft and civil. It was the sweetness that pierced me. I think its tones reached me alone, so that it produced a casement of silence around us … there was Miz Lil, gazing up at me. There was her shrewd eye, soft and sorry.
“’You preached today,’ she said, and I thought of our past conversation. ‘God was in this place,’ she said, keeping my hand in hers. I almost smiled for pride at the compliment. But Miz Lil said, ‘He was not smiling.’ Neither was she. Nor would she let me go. … The old woman spoke in velvet and severity, and I began to be afraid.” Then she gently rebukes her pastor for unintentional consequences, after he has prided himself for being frugal by cutting off the water to an outdoor faucet.
“’God was in your preaching,’ she whispered. “Did you hear him, Pastor? It was powerful. Powerful. You preach a mightier stroke than you know. Oh, God was bending his black brow down on our little church today, and yesterday, and many a day before. Watching. ‘Cause brother Jesus – he was in that child Marie, begging a drink of water from my pastor.”
I love the way that passage illustrates how the prophetic voice flowing through an individual can be larger than its vessel. “Did you hear him, Pastor?” I love, too, the way it illustrates an elder laboring with a minister: “Miz Lillian Leander fell silent then. But she did not smile. And she would not let me go. For a lifetime, for a Sunday and a season the woman remained immovable. She held my hand in a steadfast grip, and she did not let it go.”
WHAT A SHOW!
As much as I keep the outdoors Christmas lighting around our place to a minimum — usually strands around the bay window and entryway — we also keep ours going through most of January, as does a much more elaborate neighbor two doors down the street.
But that doesn’t keep us from appreciating those who go all out on this front, especially folks with an artistic flair.
This year, though, we’ve learned of a teenager who’s been doing something remarkable at his home for the past five years — something so remarkable he’s also done City Hall this year, which we’re anticipating viewing this week as soon as the glitches are ironed out and it’s back running. The bit I saw Thursday night was jaw-dropping.
But we did drive on to see what he’s up to. Trust me, there’s no way to describe what this kid does with a computer and 8,000 LED lights. He’s set it all to music and a seemingly infinite number of variations on motion, coloring, and timing. It’s quite mesmerizing, although I think I’m getting a headache from the afterglow in my head. Still, to get a faint idea of what he’s up to, you’ll just have to click here.
You just might find it worth a trip to Dover.
ENGAGING THE POWERS AND PRINCIPALITIES
Like it or not, practicing an art means wrestling with power, including, in St. Paul’s phrase, the “powers and principalities.” Powers of destruction, on one hand, and sustenance, on the other. Destruction that can, as we’ve seen too many times, include the artist. Hence, the fascination with Faust. With madness. Alcoholism. And on. Self-absorption and inflated self-importance rather than humble service.
We hazard much, often without the slightest awareness of the risks afoot. For the Christian, these involve Satan’s dominion over “the world,” which includes the realm of the arts; in Asian teachings, we can turn to the traps of Maya, that spider web of worldly attraction and deadly illusion. Either way, cause to be wary. Need for disciplined faith. Yes, let’s introduce something we’ll call Satan, just to thicken the drama.
Which raises an ancient point of conflict for a Christian artist: I’m not at all sure art is a proper activity for a Quaker. Through much of Friends’ history, most of the arts were considered superfluous and dishonest engagements taking our attention away from true worship. “We Quakers only read true things” is the way one expressed it while returning an unread novel to a neighbor.
Yes, “we Quakers read only true things,” or used to. The exclusion of not just fiction but theater and paintings and sports as distractions from worship. Traps of the flesh?
And yet: discipline is essential in spiritual growth. Self-discipline, route to true freedom. And where is the mind without imagination? I continue to read and write fiction and poetry. I love symphonies, string quartets, and opera. I’m a baritone or occasional tenor in four-part a cappella singing. When I practice my art, I am fed by this love/compulsion/infusion.
So we’re back to the ways and spirit in which we engage the powers and principalities, and the ways we order our lives.
CHURCH WINDOWS
I’ve long joked that our Quaker meetinghouse has the prettiest stained-glass windows in town. That’s because they’re clear, looking out to the hardwood trees surrounding the grounds and all of the seasonal changes. The colors are those of snow and ice, spring greening, fog, mist, rainfall, autumn foliage. Admittedly, the new synagogue, with its view over a hillside to forest beyond, and the Methodists, at the edge of a millpond, can make rival cases. I’ll plead to being partial.
Crucially, though, transparent windows remind us of the world beyond the house where we sit in worship, a reflection of our awareness that our faith is a constant part of our various daily life activities. They remind us as well of the powerful rhythms of nature and God’s creation.
On the other hand, most congregations – including the Evangelical United Brethren of my childhood – gather within rooms of filtered light cast by stained-glass designs. I was puzzled by it then, and remain so today. Yes, I know the colored windows of the great medieval cathedrals were illustrated storybooks for the illiterate populace, but what I encountered always felt second-rate and often mildewed. Few individuals, I suspect, could say much of anything about the event being depicted or express any understanding of the decorative filling. Pointedly, the translucent windows cut off any view beyond the room. Perhaps the intention is to create a holy space – one set apart from normal life; perhaps, too, this hints at eternity as a departure from the landscape we know. But a shady or even creepy quality always seemed to lurk in the shadows. This is, I will note, quite different from the icon-based frescoes of Eastern Orthodox custom.
Apart from a few December afternoons at the National Cathedral in Washington, when I finally experienced the dazzling sunlight through the windows and recognized how Rose windows earned their esteem, my encounters with stained glass were few and fleeting. That is, until late one afternoon last year when I arrived early for our weekly chorus session and stepped from the room where we rehearse, crossing into the sanctuary on the other side of the sliding shutters. The square vaulted room is dominated by two imposing displays in traditional style – painting, essentially on pieces of colored glass that are then leaded together. Something about these, though, suggests quality sustained by wealthy donors. The impressive room has demanded closer investigation.
If the late 19th century brought about a flowering of stained glass in America, it was also a time before the spread of public art museums. Windows like these, then, would have been art made available to all for their wonderment.
Jnana's Red Barn 