Tag: Life

NAGGING QUESTION

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 16 Comments

I’ve been trying to avoid one nagging question: How does your faith make you a different person? How has it changed your life? Followed by: How do others perceive this?

The old Quaker testimonies presented faith as a matter of the way we live. Our “sufferings” for our beliefs. (It matters THAT much!) The days when Friends lived “under discipline” – language and clothing as outward expressions – remaining inescapable.

So what about today? How does being Quaker (or whatever your faith) make you not just different, but a better person than you would have otherwise been?

~*~

Seasons 1

For more of my reflections, click here.

 

THIS MATTER OF HOME

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Our Advent readings last year have had me reflecting on the concept of home and how deeply we, as humans, yearn for such a place. Or should I say state of comfort.

It also has me admitting how elusive it’s been for me. Our childhood home was never truly comfortable, physically or emotionally. And in the moves afterward, I often felt more that I’d established a suitable base camp while anticipating the next leap forward. Home, in other words, was always over the horizon.

The closest I’d felt was the craftsman-style house we bought in the Rust Belt, but I knew I wouldn’t be living there forever. I was still building my resume, as the phrase goes, working my way up the management ladder.

More than three decades later, I’ve settled into a community that feels right, though I’m very much an outsider. At least, as far as a career goes, I’ve survived into retirement. As for the house? It’s been my address longer than any other, but somehow it still feels not quite solid. No amount of renovation will ever make it quite right, not with its leaky cellar and foundation. But it’s what I have and where I work at what I love to do. The garden’s in place, and then there’s the loft in my barn.

And then there’s family, with the kids now grown and housed elsewhere. Could it be home, then, is wherever my wife’s cooking? At least that points in a state of awareness direction.

As well as an underlying unsettled element in my own psyche.

~*~

My poems on the challenges of renovations, repairs, and relating as a husband are collected as Home Maintenance, a free ebook at Thistle/Flinch editions.

OCCUPATIONAL MATTERS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Even our name, Society of Friends, emphasizes that we’re an assembly of PEOPLE. While we come together “to know that which is eternal,” each of us brings something different to the table (shall I say “our invisible communion table?), whether it’s in worship or our committee service.

As people, our individual training and daily work shapes our personal experience of the divine, and probably each other. I long to hear more from the varied insights within that kaleidoscope. Someone drilled in mathematics, for instance, may see a particular elegance and absolute beauty emerging within a complex calculation; a physicist, awe in the immensity and energy of the universe; a teacher, in the opening of young minds and the challenges that go with it; a carpenter, in the very character of wood or an emerging space; an artist, in the physical variations of revealed light; a gardener or farmer, in the rhythms of the seasons or the tenacity of weeds; I recall one salesman who treasured finding ways to help people solve unique problems in their businesses, even if he didn’t sell his product that time around.

I like the fact that in Bible stories we see occupations as well: shepherds, mothers, fishers, carpenters, weavers, purple-dye makers, tentmakers, rulers, even soldiers, slaves, and priests, their paths crossing and sometimes being transformed.

The other part of the story, of course, is what we take from our faith and practice into the nitty-gritty of our workplace and homes. How are we changed, to work change? In all the directions we go?

~*~

Seasons 1

For more of my reflections, click here.

 

MIND THE RIGHT LIGHTING

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

He says it’s one of his least favorite jobs as an electrician, this hanging new lighting fixtures. In an old house, there’s not much wire left in the ceiling to work with. Forget moving around on the ladder. And you’d rather not rip away any plaster if you can help it.

But the results can be so dramatic. Or should we say, illuminating?

~*~

My poems on the challenges of renovations, repairs, and relating as a husband are collected as Home Maintenance, a free ebook at Thistle/Flinch editions.

WHAT’S GOING ON THESE DAYS IN PREPARING FOR WAR?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Reflecting on the set of queries read to our Quaker Meeting during worship one Sunday morning, I was struck by a fresh interpretation. That set opens

“Do you ‘live in the virtue of that life and power that takes away the occasion for all wars’? Do you faithfully maintain Friends’ testimony against military preparations and all participation in war, as inconsistent with the teaching and spirit of Christ?”

Initially, my mind considered ongoing conflicts around the world and the underlying conditions that fuel them. But to my surprise, as my thoughts turned to home, it was not the Pentagon that held my attention but the rising sales of guns sold for no other purpose but to maim or kill people – something quite different than hunting wildlife. Is this not “military preparations” of a more stealthy sort than we’d observe in the political arena? And what are the underlying conditions here? Hatred and racism, for sure, along with greed, lust, untruth, injustice, ignorance, fear, and much more, for certain. Turning these requires repentance, compassion, forgiveness, mutual respect, equality. Guns have no place in this equation.

New England Yearly Meeting’s queries on peace and reconciliation continue by urging an alternative action:

“Do you strive to increase understanding and use of nonviolent methods of resolving conflicts? Do you take your part in the ministry of reconciliation between individuals, groups, and nations? When discouraged, do you remember what Jesus said, ‘Peace is my parting gift to you, my own peace, such as the world cannot give. Set your troubled hearts at rest, and banish your fears.’ John 14:27 NEB”

NOW WE CAN HIDE THE VACUUM CLEANER WITHIN REACH

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Closets seem to be a recent addition to New England housing, and ours is no exception. We long desired to have one on the first floor, someplace to store the vacuum cleaner and brooms, for starters. Yes, the winter coats can hang in the mudroom (that was something this Midwestern native had to learn about, back when).

Mudroom? Definitely no space for a vacuum cleaner there.

And so we slid one in our pantry, when we got to that part of the bathroom project.

~*~

My poems on the challenges of renovations, repairs, and relating as a husband are collected as Home Maintenance, a free ebook at Thistle/Flinch editions.

FROM IN THE FLESH

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Thinking about weather means thinking about air and about what’s invisible. Air, of course, being our most pressing physical need. We inspire – breathe in – as well as expire, or at least exhale, for now. It’s a rhythm, as are the seasons. While we don’t see it, we feel its presence as wind and view its action on leaves and open water.

Of the ancient elements, air was invisible and heavenly, countered by visible earth, fire, and water. The weather, of course, invokes all three. Fire, not just as sun but as lightning as well. Water, coming down as rain, snow, sleet, hail, fog; mounting across the sky as clouds, swirling, dissolving. Earth, absorbing them all. Everything, full of mystery.

Our hearts instill not just rhythm but constant drumming, working to bring these elements together – air in the lungs, with the liquid stream of life drawing food from the stomach and intestines, in turn to create body heat and the electrical impulses of thought and muscular action.

In one of my seasons of soul-searching, I finally came to address the “earthy” dimensions of spirituality head on. While the Quaker queries and advices touch on some of these as matters, they do so as points of conduct, without necessarily delving into the lingering and underlying dynamics. There’s a longstanding tension in religious teachings between the goodness of the Creation and the evils of “the world” or our “natural inclinations.” As I would find, the biggest conflict occurs deep within our individual psyches, as we attempt to resolve the fact that we are essentially animals, and thus doomed to die, while also being spiritually aware, with a knowledge of good and evil. The is, of course, the curse of the Garden of Eden, that the price of knowledge also imposes a continuing pain. Otto Rank, one of Sigmund Freud’s two principal disciples, delves profoundly into this dichotomy and argues that the fear of death, and not sex, is the central issue in the human condition. He also contends that religion provides the only sane response to this condition.

At the interface of the animal and the spiritual we can expect the most profound perceptions to emerge, and the further the perception reaches into both the animal and spiritual experience of a person, the stronger its impact. In this sense, mysticism does not withdraw from life, but offers opportunities to more fully encounter it. Once again, we find ways the Spirit becomes embodied in our lives and our world. How it takes flesh. How the abstract reveals itself in concrete decisions and actions, as well as thoughts and emotions.

One of the central themes running through the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and early Quaker teaching is that God has an alternative way of living – one that is at odds with general society or many human impulses. Conflicts arise immediately, of course, because we are essentially social animals who require other people for our own survival. How much are we willing to suffer to preserve this alternative stream, and how much are we willing to bend? Part of the answer depends on our place within a People of God, as Jews, early Christians, and early Quakers have all seen themselves through periods of intense persecution. (In fairness, let me acknowledge that the vision of drawing away from the surrounding society is also found in a number of other religious traditions, although not necessarily with the ideal of becoming a People of God or of embracing the “earthy” aspects of the human condition.)

In our own time, we sometimes speak of “parallel universes” that resemble our own. At a stoplight I glance over at the car next to mine and see the woman driver is scratching spots on a large lottery ticket. I have no idea what makes this so important to her at this given moment, why she didn’t take a few minutes when she first bought it, or whether she’s running late for her next appointment. For that matter, the attraction of lotteries largely eludes me, while Quaker discipline and frugality give me reason to avoid them. It’s one of those flashes where I begin to wonder if I’m living in a parallel universe within the United States of America, if not this planet Earth. I view military events, crowds in shopping malls, celebrity news, NASCAR racing, stadium concerts, new automobile showrooms, funeral home calling hours, McMansions, strip mining, and a host of other activities with the same bewilderment. On the other hand, I’ve begun to appreciate baseball and football, at least as they apply to New England, and once owned a used BMW that initiated me into car culture, of sorts.

That’s not meant to cast myself as “holier than thou,” but simply different – somewhere between American consumer society, on one side, and the Amish and old-order Brethren, on the other. If I begin sounding too cocky on the “holier than thou” front, my wife and children are all too willing to point out my failings. Humility is part of the earthy half of this spiritual equation. We are, after all, only human. In our own ways, at that.

~*~

For more of my Seasons of the Spirit reflections, click here.

A RATHER CHECKERED CAREER

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

For someone who has engaged in a writing life his whole adulthood, I’ve had a rather checkered career as a reader. After a precocious outburst in the classics – Robinson Crusoe, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn in second- or third- or fourth-grade (not as class assignments, of course – who knows what we were reading there), I found myself largely oblivious to fiction. My attention turned to history and biography (the Landmark series, especially) and then science and politics. Non-fiction, with a sense of content. Fiction came later, in high school, curiously through political fiction – Brave New World, Lord of the Flies, 1984, rather than any of the traditional British canon. Throw a little Shakespeare in, and I was off – into journalism. (Let me mention that Huck Finn was much harder reading in my junior year of high school than it had been when I was younger; as a novice reader, I wasn’t tripped up by the strange spellings of dialect.)

In college, for whatever reason, I developed a passion for Samuel Johnson. Not for his moralizing as much as the sarcasm, I’d say, as well as a fascination with the baroque richness of his style. Maybe it was just the force of personality projecting from the writing. And then came Virginia Woolf, Kurt Vonnegut, Richard Brautigan, Jack Kerouac … the widening stream.

Surprisingly, a major turning point occurred in the span when I had the fewest opportunities to read – my years living in the ashram, a monastic community in the Pocono mountains of Pennsylvania. Out of the practice of meditation and reflection, however, I began to approach literature in a new way. The quietude opened poetry to me, both as a reader and a writer. The experience also introduced me to mythology, with the Hindu stories being more fantastic and meaningful than anything I had encountered in the Greek and Roman stream. Later, I was able to leap from this into the stories of the Bible as well, returning me to my previously unknown roots.

Others have written of being a promiscuous reader. I wouldn’t say I’m addicted to reading that way – at least, not any more. One of the ashram exercises, in fact, was a “reading fast,” meaning written words, rather than food. It’s all a matter of focus. That is, when I’m eating, I want to choose to concentrate on my food rather than a text. When I’m traveling, I want to see where I’m going. (Airport terminals, on the other hand, or stretches before takeoff, are another matter — they are among those place of limbo.) Later, when the newspaper first comes off the press, I found I could no longer focus on the stories – not after a shift of heavy editing. If anything, my head was so full of disjointed stimulation I needed to slow down to savor what I’d already encountered. For that matter, I prefer walking to jogging, with its restoration of a natural pace. I rush too many places and deliver on too many deadlines as it is. When I enter someone’s home for the first time, I must take care to pay attention to them more than the spines on their bookshelves. Now what were you saying?

I read, then, with greater focus these days. More selectively. I can no longer have classical music playing in the background. (It used to provide a barrier for noise from my family or neighbors.) Now, I immerse myself in what is before me. The text, then, as in scripture.

~*~

Out of all of this, my own work emerges. As a writer, I strive to create a linear progression. That is, the parts must advance is some sort of logic. Curiously, in my own work, I am often inspired by a Hegelian model – thesis, antithesis, synthesis – as drawn from cinema theory. On a wider scale, my earlier interests surface in new ways, resulting in something more akin to a matrix or spiral or collage than a straight line. I have been called a Mixmaster, with good reason. On top of it all, in my many moves about the continent, I’ve found myself exploring the soul of each place – something wine aficionados consider, in a smaller range, when they discuss terroir.

A CASE FOR NURTURING SERIOUS READERS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

One of the challenges facing contemporary society is the shrinking percentage of active readers. (I say percentage, but fear what we face is more a shrinkage of actual numbers.) It’s not simply the decline in readers of fiction or the number of people who recite poetry from heart, but the lack of literary engagement of any kind. So I rat on myself early here, with my belief that the act of reading carries social value – especially when serious literature is the subject.

It is no mere coincidence that Americans’ widespread ignorance of history and our political system has accompanied the growing addiction to a sensual media orgy – large-screen television, movies, rock music – while habitual reading, including newspapers, has been declining. That is, what is superficial and easy – and ephemeral — has the upper hand. Little is demanded of the receptor, and loud excitement, rather than a deepened awareness, is the expectation; escapism, rather than engagement with life itself. Several European writers have suggested something more troubling is at work – the loss of reflective people, contemplative individuals – a theme I see developed, obliquely, in Stephen L. Carter’s Integrity and the labor of moral discernment. In other words, is the mind being enlarged or merely numbed? The fact that so many people cannot name their own senators or governors or are largely ignorant of geography, yet recognize countless actors and rockers points toward a disintegration of community and social service.

Paradoxically, the act of reading is largely a private enterprise. It’s a dialogue between a reader and a writer, sometimes separated by continents or centuries. It requires more activity from the receptor than a movie, short song, or television sit-com does – in fact, one of the concerns these days is the atrophied state of the imagination among those who have been raised on “electronic media” rather than the printed word or, for that matter, stories read aloud or in radio broadcasts. (There are, after all, degrees of imaginative challenge.) In the act of reading, there are no visible intermediaries – no actors, soundtrack, directors, sets, or costumes. The editor or printer or bookseller is of an entire order altogether. Here, the reader and the writer engage in a dance of the soul or a passionate argument. (Serious readers can be as demanding as lovers when it comes to this relationship.)

But the act of reading can also take us into the existence of another person, viewing the world from within that context. A movie, in contrast, leaves us looking at that person, hoping for a hint of emotion or profundity. The author can reflect on the situation, suggest ranges of experience, voice moral struggles in ways a movie might only touch in passing.

Here I think, too, of large-scale musical compositions – symphonies or string quartets, for instance – that demand intense listening, inducing reflection and emotional awareness. Like reading, the audience for serious music is in decline – and with it, a link to the riches of the past and its aspirations and wisdom.

FRIENDLY GREETINGS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As I said at the time …

I’ve heard there was a time when elders would hand tracts to Friends entering Meeting for Worship. I suppose it was like the ushers in many congregations who distribute bulletins listing the order of hymns and sermon title, as well as announcements. Let me confess I’ve been tempted to randomly distribute some of our weekly mail that way, just to see what pops up.

Tracts and pamphlets do seem quaint in an Internet era, but a lot of Quaker teaching has been passed down in those small pages. Are there new ways of doing this without “spamming” the message? Maybe relying solely on the written word is too limited. Perhaps the actors and visual artists in Friendly circles will step up to the challenge. Audiotape? DVD? Web streaming? Well, the newsletter as a PDF download is one step in that direction.

All the same, in this frenzied season, there’s something comforting in opening next year’s Plain-style calendar – the one from the Tract Association of Friends. And who would have guessed how helpful it is, thanks to the numbered rather than named months, in dealing with the computer protocol at the office? Maybe some things are simply timeless, even when looking toward a Happy New Year at the end of frenzied holiday celebrations. So here we are, turning the page, and in some ways, just starting all over again.