A woodpile needs time to season if it’s going to do any good in heating the house. It’s a relief knowing this is ready. This is how it looks in a typical year, unlike this uncommonly warm December. Last time we looked at the forecast, though, snow was finally around the corner. We’re hoping. This is, after all, New England.
Tag: Life
RIDING THROUGH REVERE AND SAUGUS
Taking the bus to and from Boston for my choir’s caroling performances was far more civilized than trying to fight traffic and find parking. I should add that this is a commuter bus that makes only two stops before hitting Logan airport and then South Station. It’s clean, quiet, and comfortable, with free coffee and newspapers at the terminal. By the time you factor in tolls, gasoline, parking fees, and subway fares, it’s probably cheaper, too, at least for just one person.
Freed from driving and then sitting high above the auto traffic, I found myself observing much that’s normally out of sight, and for parts of the route, I’m afraid to report the cluttered landscape was rather dismal. For one thing, I was surprised by how much of the development in the suburbs we traversed was cleaved from rock. Nothing natural, much less harmonious – brute force, mostly. And then there was the jumble of retail boxes along busy highways, leading to the question of just who really patronizes the enterprises, much less whether there’s enough revenue to meet the bills. How many discount mattresses do Americans buy, anyway, or how many palm readings? A winter coat outlet I can understand, but, well, memory fails.
Perhaps if these were along pedestrian byways I’d be more sympathetic. Having to drive from one to another to browse or buy just eludes my understanding. For once, I’d even give Internet shopping the edge.
I also felt a pang in recalling a reply I made to a comment that remarked on the beauty of the town where I live. As I recall, I said that beauty can be cultivated anywhere, but that’s not what I was seeing along this route with its oil-tank farms, treeless suburban housing tracts, and construction machinery garages.
And then, to my amazement, as I looked down to the level below the overpass we were ascending, I saw a green park set gently on the earth. Here was a pocket of relief in spite of the noisy traffic overhead. Children from nearby houses could play, adults could stroll or sit. I’m still in awe of the designers who advanced this – and those who brought it to fruition.
Just thinking along the way. If you’re traveling over the holidays, here’s wishing you safe and comforting journeys. And keep an eye open for those unexpected beauties, too, wherever you land.
LEARNING FROM THE MONGOLIAN REINDEER HERDERS
With my plunge into yoga discipline early in my adult years, I came to an appreciation of non-Western ways of perceiving the world around us. For someone rooted in scientific, empirical , Aristotelian logical thought, this came as a jolt. Or, as Gary Snyder has argued, every poet must have an appreciation of some archaic system of awareness, be it astrology, I Ching, tarot, palmistry, well, you get the picture. Just listen and look.
What I’ve come to appreciate is the alternative wisdom carried by Native American elders, gurus of all sorts, and the range of those labeled shamans, East and West.
And so, at last summer’s sessions of New England Yearly Meeting of Friends, I was intrigued by an opportunity to view a movie on Mongolian shamans. It’s a remarkable work, by a registered nurse who has worked for two decades with nomadic reindeer herders in Mongolia. Having earned their trust and respect, and realizing their own vulnerability in the face of global changes, the shamans allowed her to film their healing ceremonies.
As I viewed the documentary, I was struck by how much of what she observed leads into Tibetan Buddhism, too.
This is remarkable work. What is healing, anyway? From a Christian point of view, I can say healing can differ from a cure. So just what happens in a shaman ceremony? And where can Eastern and Western health care interact? How much of our physical state is a reflection of our emotional and spiritual conditions.
We might wonder, too, how the Nativity stories would appear from the world view of the herders, how much their insights would inform us about shepherds and angels. Would a stable be that much different from the homes where the shamans enact their rites? As for the Magi? Or the heavenly wonder? Or even an oppressive political and economic presence? As the Gospel message insists, the world needs healing, no doubt about it.
To learn more of the reindeer herder perspective, go to Nomadicare.
ORIGAMI TREE DETAIL
Look at all that folded paper!
PLACING THE TRUTH IN ANOTHER LIGHT
As one traditional Quaker query was read aloud during a meeting for worship, one of its phrases began echoing within me: “Truth in the heart.”
How remarkable! Not in the head but rather the heart! Truth, which we see so often as ground in facts and logical consistency, is now assayed not in the brain but rather in the core of our affections.
As early Friends used the word, Truth is much more of a verb than an immutable object. Think of the progression from true to truer to truest. Maybe you can sense that motion in the slightly fuller expression of that day’s query, asking if we, individually and as a group, heed “Love and Truth in the heart” …
As I said, a remarkable phrase.
ROLLING PIN SANTA
This may be a plastic ornament for the tree, but it hits home as we know it this time of the year. Especially with the gingerbread house in hand.
MAINTAINING A GROUP IDENTITY IN A WIDER COMMUNITY
Seeing radical religion continued through an elder-and-student succession over the generations also sets it apart from the wider society. In practice, it also invokes a circle of learning, all working together.
Sometimes, as in monasteries, the circle receives support from the wider society. At other times, it is based in circles of families whose identity somehow stands apart from the wider society. Upholding those values requires passing the teachings and practices down through the families.
This has been the history of the Jewish people, for starters, the preservation of a unique vision of justice and philanthropy, a critical stance from the mainstream, the independent role of prophecy in which political and social rulers are placed under a more absolute authority, monotheism rather than polytheism.
We see it, too, to some extent in minority and ethnic communities as they attempt to maintain their unique identities and cultures.
The Amish, of course, stand out in America as they pursue this.
One of the complications is that it can lead to a relatively small gene pool when it comes to finding a spouse.
In the Church of the Brethren, the annual sessions, which alternated between the East Coast and the Midwest, were often followed by marriage announcements. In other words, it was the place to go if you were looking. The shared values heightened the chances for a successful union, we can suppose.
For Quakers, the boarding schools allowed for some wider mixing than one would find in the home village. Still, the lines could tangle in time, even with a strict ban on first-cousin marriages. I remember a conversation with one young couple who told me they were also third cousins or some such. Don’t think it was aunt and uncle, but it seemed that complicated at the time.
Maybe that’s why I wasn’t shocked by the complex, tangled family lines presented in Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex or even the incest. (As others have noted, the reason the incest taboo is so universal is simply that the practice has likewise been so universal.)
In the novel, persecution leads to brutal oppression and massacre. The generations are torn apart. And then, somehow, they continue. What shocks most is the violence and hatred and related moral failures of the more “civilized” ships that fail to come to the rescue of innocent victims. But that returns us to thoughts of the wider society, doesn’t it.
PUNCHBOWL AND ORANGES
Who says it has to be Wassail?
LIMITATIONS AS A FOCUSING LENS
The old strictures sought to keep Quakers focused on their religious calling. As Damon D. Hickey explains (The Southern Friend, Volume XXVII, Number 2, 2005) them, “This cross, this obedience that was called for, was in the broadest sense the death of self-will and obedience to the inward Christ. … Thus, worldly amusements, especially dancing, were a waste of precious time and unfit the mind for devotional exercises. Music was the devil’s instrument. The Lord called his people to leave the world’s friendships, vain fashions, … sinful amusements, which would include the movies, the theatre and the dance. Perhaps this part would not much apply to our readers, but … in nearly all the so-called Quaker Colleges and Preparatory Schools dancing is practiced.”
He continues to quote 1943-44 writings by North Carolina Wilburite Anderson M. Barker, who argued that by yielding to Christ the Ruler
He will rule out all hurtful reading, and preserve all from putting too much time upon the news, and other such readings, to the neglect of the Bible and other good books, which have to do with our eternal interests.
Then there’s the quotation, “We Quakers only read true things,” told by a boy returning three novels he’d borrowed from a neighbor. Or what is erroneously sometimes called a Quaker hymn from North Carolina, which is usually heard these days in folk music circles, “How Can I Keep From Singing?” Or the recorded ministers who dragged me to an apple barn in Ohio for my first contradance, only to hear the next morning an elderly friend wearing a bonnet rise and wag a finger into the air, warning us of “that evil amongst us known as folk dancing” – while others looked down, sheepishly, trying to suppress a grin.
From the beginning of the movement, we have Margaret Fell’s objection to the strictures of a “silly gospel” that took hold, all the same.
Or later Quakers who accepted things that bind and pinch, as long as they’re chosen.
Or the struggle to keep a vibrant faith and intellect, rather than a barren one.
Always, the tension, in Scripture, between one world, “And God saw that it was good,” and another, sometimes called the ways of the world or even the wayward world.
So the challenge is in keeping a focused life that avoids becoming simply barren.
Let me point to the proportions of the classic meetinghouses – elegance as simplicity – plus the emphasis on philanthropy. Poetry as prayer.
So here we are, with our love of movies, music, theater, visual arts – and a tad of guilt?
I hear an echo of my father, with his passion for big-band music and some of the old hymns, “It would be a lesser world without music.”
I think, too, of a couple who lived without electricity as part of a strict economy that allowed them to focus full-time on calling and playing for country dances.
So here we are, with a visitor asking after the rise of worship – “Are you the pastor?” Before I could say anything, a voice behind me: “He is, he just doesn’t know it.”
Look, I want everyone to sit on the facing bench (elders gallery) at least once a year. “Her turn – next, a child.” Facing each other across history.
~*~
For more on my poetry collection and other reflections, click here.
THEY’RE THERE, ALL THE SAME
How difficult it is to see fish in the water, especially when looking in from above. They’re so perfectly camouflaged.
It’s another of the things I’ve observed living along a river and near the ocean. Or even looking into the large tank at the New England Aquarium for the divers doing maintenance below, where only their bubbles give them away.
We look and still miss so many things right in front of us. As for me, I like to think I behold everything. Now what were the color of the bank teller’s eyes just a minute ago? I’m clueless. What what make and model was the car that ran the stop sign and nearing collided with us just moments before that? I was caught breathless. And you want to talk about God?
Of course, it helps to know where to start looking. If you can.
Jnana's Red Barn 