Ever cut your own tree?
Tag: Life
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE QUOTATIONS BLUR?
When someone speaks of an event while quoting someone else, how accurate is that quotation? How much is a recasting by the teller, perhaps years after the event being related?
In drafting my newest novel, as I turned to a first-person narrative by someone who never even met many of the characters she’s telling about, I realized that her quoting them was actually a filtering through her own voice. In other words, the precision of their voice was in question. Would it be right to put their input in quotations marks? Or eliminate the quotation marks and let the telling float in and out of some recollection?
I’ve opted for the latter. Will it work for the reader, though? We’ll see.
THE PRIEST’S WIFE
The celibacy expectation for their priests and monastics leaves many Roman Catholics perplexed when they hear of the married ministers of their Protestant and Anglican/Episcopalian neighbors. Sometimes this is seen as a question of whether a pastor is able to focus all of his attention on the work of the church without the distractions of family life – or, on the other hand, the ways that family service enriches his ability to understand and counsel the members of his congregation.
(Yes, I’m aware of the male pronoun there – we haven’t touched on the matter of the ordination of women in many of those Protestant and Anglican/Episcopal churches, contrary to Roman Catholic strictures.)
While the focus is usually on the pastors, the condition of their spouses is typically overlooked. Are they fully members of the congregation or are they somehow set apart? They’re definitely in a spotlight and held to a higher standard than the rest of those in the pews. In addition, many congregations assume the spouse – usually the wife – will function as an enthusiastic unpaid full-time employee of the church, either as an unofficial co-pastor, minister of music, choir director, secretary, or some other visible role. Whatever the ultimate definition, it’s a high-stress situation to fill. Not all marriages survive. As one former pastor told me, “My wife said she married me, not the church.” For him, to take another pastorate would have led to divorce.
To add insult to injury, they’re rarely accorded any open recognition of the duties they fulfill, much less given a place of honor. Their husbands are typically addressed as “Reverend,” for starters. As for the wives, though? Only Mrs.
In contrast, the Eastern Orthodox introduce a fascinating alternative. While the priesthood is reserved for males only, they are allowed to marry – if they do it before ordination. The last year of seminary, according to the story, is a time of intense courtship. (Otherwise, it’s celibacy.)
As for the wife? In Greek circles, she’s accorded the title presbytera in English, drawn from priest or elder. Among other Orthodox, similar titles from their native tongues.
Of course, now I’m wondering how it plays out in practice.
YES AND YET
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?
~*~
- She’s big on Christmas traditions, including our observing Advent these days. I’m still surprised she inherited none of it in her family! Created it like a radical quilt. Makes this array all the more remarkable, from my perspective.
- Slush on the windshield. Ice underfoot.
- Winter’s setting in, though I’m already tired of it.
- The earliest sunsets of the year have plateau’d and are already inching back in my part of the world. The oppressive late-afternoon darkness will soon be obviously relenting. We don’t wait for the solstice.
- I like the Eastern Orthodox insight of Mary as the Mother of Light.
- In reality, I hate being the caretaker, responsible one, cleaner-upper, put-awayer. Contrary to my self-image.
- It’s been a long road to here. Sometimes it feels like a hangover.
- In working a seasonal job, she has a curious freedom in not having to worry about being fired, losing the mortgage, and so on. Just put the hours in and go home.
- Whatever happened to my collection of winter scarves? (As if I really need to ask.)
- Authenticity: something that speaks to the bones.
~*~
REVELATION, BEGINNING WITH GROUNDHOG’S DAY
BEING SINGLE AND without children for much of my adult life, I could get around Christmas without getting caught up in many of its trappings. One year, getting my holiday greetings out late, I launched my annual letter with “A happy Ground Hog’s Day to thee.”
That’s particular calendar date had seemed so weird, until I discovered there are “solar seasons” as well as the ones our calendars show. In solar winter, for instance, the solstice comes at the middle of the season, rather than the beginning; so Christmas would be right around the middle of solar winter, even though it’s at the beginning of the calendar winter. Why does my brain ever go into these bizarre leaps? Oh well, as long as we’re at it: If my calculations are right, Ground Hog’s day comes at the end of solar winter. Follow that? In other words, as far as the amount of sunlight falling on the Earth is concerned, winter is over, even if we wind up getting another six weeks or so of cold and snowy weather, right up to the vernal equinox. So what I really began asking was whether Punxsutawney Phil, the official ground hog those Pennsylvanians in tuxedos and stovepipe hats bring out every year, is stuffed or live. He sure looks stuffed in the official portrait the wire services move, but what do I know? One of my coworkers, who has witnessed the event, claims it’s a living critter.
Awareness of solar seasons puts other events into perspective. Halloween, for instance, acknowledges the beginning of solar winter. May Day brings solar summer. The Midsummer’s Day or Night, ostensibly announcing the beginning of calendar summer, really does come at solar midsummer. The beginning of August is the invisible event in our awareness.
(Neo-Pagans, incidentally, put their own significance into this alternative alignment of seasons.)
Dwelling in northern New England, as I do, presents another awareness of seasons. They are not evenly divided across the year, as a calendar would do, but are instead of unequal duration. Winter, for instance, begins around Halloween and lingers until the beginning of April – five months, rather than three. Summer, on the other hand, opens around the Fourth of July and ends by mid-August – all of a month and a half. That leaves three months for spring and two-and-a-half months for autumn. Within that there are other divisions. Winter, for example, ends with Mud Season, Black-Fly Season, and Mosquito Season. Or some Mainers see the year as Freezin’ Season, Black-Fly Season, and Road Construction Season.
It’s easy to make the leap to the emotional dimension of the seasons. Skiers and ice fishermen can view deep winter with their own appreciation. I revel in the glorious mutations of October foliage, while another friend dreads its appearance, knowing all too well the gloom that will follow.
Some creatures, of course, will hibernate.
~*~
For more Seasons of the Spirit, click here.
POSTAL PERSPECTIVE
A three-year-old girl
held a life-size Mr. ZIP’s
cardboard hand in her own
while waiting for Daddy
or an interior lobby
stoplight to change.
Can we go now?
These days, she
must be
my wife’s age.
To continue, click here.
Copyright 2015
NOT ALONE BY A LONG SHOT
When the name Jnana was bestowed on me back in 1972, it was soon expanded to Jnana-Devanandashram – or Jnana-Dev, in a diminutive.
Apart from recognizing my unique character and giving it focus, the name also linked me to a major saint and at least one mythical spirit in India’s past.
Prominent among them was Jnanadev, born in 1275 and described – I love this – as a mystic poet and slave of love. His Jnaneshwari is considered the second most-important commentary on the Bhagavad Gita. Alas, he died at age 21.
Now I see there’s another of our own time who’s a musician who performs with Tibetan monks.
That’s before we get to Facebook, with its host of entries, or the Jnana Yoga displays. As for Jnana alone in a Google search? There are millions, thanks to those software engineers from India.
Still, let me guess, I’m the only one you know. Am I wrong?
MUTED WITNESS
best known for our anti-war witness
we could do much more
individually and together
to summon others
to transcendental worship
* * *
if we hesitate to strip naked or don sackcloth
to march brazenly into parking lots
and through malls
or the courthouse
or legislature
to proclaim Truth
to those who reach for a Budweiser
the first thing
1st-Day morning
or so passionately decry anything
smacking of religion or church
how else do we extend the welcome?
maybe we’re just getting old
or sedate
or muffling passion
this is more important
than placing a notice
in the paper or a line in the phone book
if anyone remembers
* * *
there’s no invitation
without an address
or sign
or billowing aromatic
celebration
made visible
Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
To see the full set, click here.
IS THIS SUPPOSED TO BE FUN?
Being mindful of what’s right in front of us can always be a challenge. Here are 10 new items from my end.
~*~
- 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.
- I always intend to put up our outdoor Christmas lights while it’s still warm. Rather than freezing my fingers.
- 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.
- 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.
- I seldom I feel myself fitting in – in a crowd, an audience, a group, a family.
- 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.
- 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.
- In a depression.: Do I really LIKE anyone? Being with them? Am I having ANY fun?
- Well, I am drinking Virgin Marys during Advent. (Cheers in the morning!)
- You were supposed to save me.
~*~
AS SHE REMINDS HIM
he’s not a bird
eating fish
or worms
see how frantically he spades
without weeding
how voraciously he climbs out
on the seeded maple twigs
* * *
incisor
domestica
rodentia
in residence
* * *
a squirrel with a martini
too much too often
fog in treetops before the wind blows
how do sparrows remember
once nested in this eave before rats or squirrels
found them out?
if it were only hickory nuts for high-fat content he’d
look shiny with such thought snickering abounds how is it
they acquire a taste for the Big Bad Wolf who bought the house?
* * *
nobody charged extra
for the vermin
* * *
in the walls they’re all wild creatures
of course, considering the jerry-rigged affairs
the preceding landholders had undertaken within this plot
(oh, the stories the neighbors were relating, all hinting
at more scandalous expansions now lost to posterity,
nobody could remember much in the way of detail,
except for the wild noises and all the coming and going)
the remaining evidence held no apologies
so what if we live
in cages of our own making? we still escape
into further flames or muck or fencing, all depending
on the company we keep
everyone’s a social creature,
the chattering
he’d considered birds was more or less
incensed squirrels, tearing about his estate
with that obscene flick of the tail
Poem copyright 2015 by Jnana Hodson
To read the full set of squirrelly poems, click here.
Jnana's Red Barn 