As Doc would have said:
No sign of striving for excellence anywhere.
Even mediocrity seems above him.
Tag: Life
REGARDING ROOMMATES AND NEIGHBORS
a black kid
as I was carrying out stuff
“you moving?”
“yeah, to a farm.”
“oh . hey, is your sister moving too?”
yeah, to the city
To continue, click here.
Copyright 2015
TO AND FROM CUBA, DEARLY
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.
THOU SHALT NOT?
At least they’re not commandments. Holy Moses! Ten more from my end of the universe.
~*~
- Sometimes I enjoy being in the front passenger seat the entire trip. Get to see more, for one thing. It’s an opportunity not to be in charge, not to be fully responsible – just let go and observe. What a relief!
- All the waterfowl, the tip of the wing nearly touching the surface they fly over: how do they do it?
- As Richard Brown Lethem says of his work, “For my entire life I’ve been trying to mine the subconscious.” No wonder I’m drawn to his paintings, inexplicable as so much remains to me.
- I feel myself to be from another planet, looking at a world I once wanted to inhabit.
- The grief men carry. Could it simply be the passage of time? Or something more fundamental to Eden?
- As the news story reported, a neck-slasher to his stepdad: “I’m going to kill you and your life is going to end.” (The redundancy is emphatic.)
- The Isabella Stewart Gardner museum in Boston’s Bay Back really is a magpie’s nest, an egocentric collection of bright and shiny objects. I do wish the curators were at liberty to give its masterpieces better display, contrary to Isabella’s directives. My, there’s so much clutter in the way!
- Rather than heading back to Maine, she’s spending the night here. Thus, it’s NO YORK.
- Pockets in a room that aren’t doing anything: that hold, in effect, dead energy. What’s the better usage?
- Who am I, at the core? What do I really want? (That, for someone she accuses of being self-centered.)
~*~
AFTERNOON AT OUR THIRD-FLOOR APARTMENT WINDOW
white body
with black wingtips
on white sky
a gull flitted past
the third-floor apartment window
on an overcast day
the next afternoon
panes sliced sunlight
onto a bubbling aquarium
that opened as butterfly wings
on the opposite wall
still, she was a question mark
who made him a question mark
in return
my Indiana, so faraway then
To continue, click here.
Copyright 2015
A STUDY IN SPIRITUAL CONTRASTS
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.)
FLY, FLY, FLY
Just a taste of what’s popping up. In case you were looking for a prompt.
~*~
- 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?
- 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.
- Sometimes on that commute, the GPS sends us through some exclusive neighborhoods. We note the tonier neighborhoods are dominated by slate roofs.
- As a midday meal, it’s hard to beat fresh mussels and a baguette.
- So many things have to be taken at a leisurely pace, doled out over time.
- 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.
- Another unanticipated side of my Motets: the close connection between religion and politics, or at least social responsibility.
- Did Quaker culture essentially fail to address the earthy side of life? Could we have become all too refined?
- Guiding and teaching a new generation – a swami at last. Or whatever you want to call the guru or elder or abbot.
- What are we really afraid of? Really afraid of?
~*~
SAGE COUNSEL
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
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
Why wait for the dust to settle? Here are 10 bullets from my end.
~*~
- Am imagining evenings for violin and piano. How long since I’ve even picked up rosin and bow!
- A drive through a stretch I call the Black Forest can be quite amazing now. So luminescent, a golden-yellow tunnel of light.
- Indian Summer officially comes after the first killing frost. It’s almost scary.
- How much I feel myself a dilettante. A little of this, a little of that.
- The Big Question? (Questions! Yes, it’s questions!)
- 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.)
- 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.
- 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?
- 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.
- You don’t shoot your own troops. Not if you want to win. Otherwise, there’s every reason to mutiny.
~*~
Jnana's Red Barn 