Tag: Life

A STUDY IN SPIRITUAL CONTRASTS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Could it be like travel, where being free of your usual surroundings and routines engenders a rush of fresh sensations and perspectives yet, at the end, leaves you appreciating home all the more? For some, this is a matter of going abroad, revisiting favorite destinations or exploring somewhere altogether unfamiliar, although a backpacking trek or canoeing through wilderness will also deliver. Think of something as simple as a hot shower or bath, if you must, after days or weeks of deprivation.

I’m finding a parallel in my encounters with Greek Orthodox culture and faith in my town – consider it, in part, research for my newest novel-in-progress – and my extensive Quaker practice.

Both streams face the struggle of maintaining a distinct culture and identity in contrast to the generic Christianity – mainstream Protestant or Roman Catholic – that prevails in American awareness. Both, in fact, are generally invisible to the rest of the populace. (It does give us sensitivity, then, to others like Jews and Muslims who are not of that general fabric.) Both also run into the tensions of marriage where one spouse continues in the faith while the other is not a participant – how is the tradition passed on to a next generation? Or does it become extinct or ambiguously reconfigured? (Growing up, I had no clue of my family’s long Quaker ancestry.)

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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.

MORE THAN A QUESTION OF IDENTITY

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

What would you be if you weren’t Quaker?

I usually pose it in terms of religious affiliation, skirting the bigger issue of what we’d be without that particular spiritual discipline and nurture.

The question often illuminates an individual’s leanings within the Society of Friends, and it’s one that can be telling in many other denominations as well.

Many of us come to where we are from other religious traditions, and even among Christians the variations can be vast. And then there are yogis of all stripes, Buddhists, Native practices, arcane and pagan seekers, non-theists, agnostics, and much more. Neo-Muggletonians, anyone?

Some Quakers are very drawn to the social activist side of our community; others, the meditative worship. Some are quite Biblical; others, anything but. (Shall we mention the Gospel of NPR?) And that’s before we get to the full spectrum of today’s Friends, from ultra-univeralist to evangelical to alternative Christian to, well, we’re all over the map. And yes, many of us do miss music in our worship.

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DEAR CROSSINGS … WHERE THEY WILL

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 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. So strange to awaken with no agenda for the day, no pressing project at hand. To return abed, with coffee. Not that this is normal, by any stretch of the imagination.
  2. My big dream for financial liberation: HAWAIIAN SWEATERS. In northern climates like ours, the popular Hawaiian shirts have about a six-week span of usefulness. But with long sleeves and sufficient heft, their colorful designs just might be welcome for leisure wear the rest of the year. Think of skiing or ice skating or sitting beside the fire. Let me know if you’re interested in investing.
  3. On my way home the other day, had to brake for deer on each side of the road. And then? Such large ears!
  4. Am seeing so many of my literary work turning into history – despite their contemporary focus.
  5. “You write where your soul is” (says Ernest J. Gaines). Not necessarily where your body is.
  6. A long procession – parade – of panel trucks, tractor rigs, pickups – was headed by a hearse. I still don’t know the story.
  7. The Provost’s Wife is quite a character, famous for her parties.
  8. When I’m involved in a project, just plain STOPPING is difficult.
  9. The ocean’s turned wild, restless, throwing big sprays. I’d never be viewing this had that lover returned. Nor would I have written anything of what I have since she left. Seems altogether fitting.
  10. As another said, “Things are slow when it rains.”

~*~

The Ogunquit Art Museum hosts some impressive shows but is open only part of each year.
The Ogunquit Art Museum hosts some impressive shows but is open only part of each year.

 

The central gallery looks out over Perkins Cove, where major artists painted some iconic coastal Maine images in the years before the museum was built.
The central gallery looks out over Perkins Cove, where major artists painted some iconic coastal Maine images in the years before the museum was built.

 

Care to step outdoors?
Care to step outdoors?