Tag: Life

IN THE MIX

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 7 Comments

I’ve heard it said at both ends of the Society of Friends that it takes three committed families to plant a new Meeting. So even with a pastor, a healthy mix of talents is required. This is probably true of other congregations as well, but I’ll continue to use “meeting” here because I think much more is involved than just seeing each other on Sunday morning.

In envisioning an ideal Meeting, let me ask if having six committed families or if having sixty not-so-committed members would be preferable. That is, a smaller group that is highly responsive to each other in their daily activities, or a larger, more loosely knit group that is more widespread through the surrounding community. I’d say there are pros and cons both ways.

The question becomes less abstract when we consider our own expectations of our local family of faith. First, what do you require from a faith community, and then how willing you are to work toward achieving that? Second, how do your personal expectations and participation differ from others in that faith circle? And third, considering the future of the Meeting, what would you hope for? (These, by the way, might be good queries for the annual State of Society Report answers.)

Planting a new Meeting is, of course, only a start. Nurturing it is another matter. My guess is that three families form the minimum requirement because of the range of vision they engender and can pursue together – a microcosm of what we already have here where I worship.

STRIKE THREE AND YOU’RE OUT

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

According to folklore, when intruders disturb a rattlesnake, the first passerby merely irritates the viper. The second passerby becomes truly annoying. The third in rapid succession, though, becomes just too much. And that’s the one the snake strikes.

I think many of us humans have days like that. When we erupt – or someone blows up at us – it’s often far out of proportion to the provocation. What you see merely reflects the third offense or offender – the one that triggers defensive action.

Either way, don’t take it too personally.

SAGEBRUSH AS A STATEMENT

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The diamond hitch is a top-of-the-line knot, especially useful in cowboy, mining, or logging country – or, as I apply it, the desert foothills of Washington state found east of the Cascade mountains. Forefront in my related set of poems is the unspoken recognition of diamond hitch as marriage, with its implied images of diamond ring and getting hitched. In the background, also unvoiced, is the diamond symbol of the clear and enduring heart – further extended to intense spiritual quest, as The Diamond Sutra (Vajrachchedika in Sanskrit) demonstrates, found also in the Buddhist linkage of diamond to Dharma. In addition to serving as an emblem for the open range of the American Far West, sagebrush, moreover, suggests wisdom, spice, even the Burning Bush of Moses – the profound influence desert has upheld for prophets and mystics over the millennia.

SUCH DIFFERENCES

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

As I said at the time …

Finally, observing the banner in the background of the thirty-fifth reunion pictures, my wife finally connected a date she’d long known with her own experience: “When you were all graduating, I was being potty trained.”

I wonder what I would tell them, given the chance. I’m not judging them, as much as judging myself and all of the intervening years. The long journey to here. I’m not gloating that I have a younger wife, one who’s only a few years older than some of their own children; besides, that wouldn’t have been the case, had my first marriage not failed. I’m finally experiencing the challenges and joys of parenting, while they already have grandchildren – on that front, maybe they really are much older. See, I am envious of those still married to their spouse right out of high school. They took the straight path and got down to business. In contrast, many lonely nights and a sequence of transitory relationships have been my alternative. I think how innocent I was (ignorant is the more accurate term, actually), especially on matters of sex. In the intervening years, even after I realized that certain girls had gone away because they were pregnant or certain guys were homosexual, I simply couldn’t admit that any of us were actually having, gulp, intercourse. Although, years later, looking at the homecoming court photos in the yearbook, the realization flashed upon me, from one’s smile, that she must have recently become sexually active.

Which leads me to the goddesses. The beauties I both idealized and gazed at with masked lust, wondering how the soft touch would feel, how the naked body would look, how two people actually connect. The ones who left me speechless. The ones who were, in many ways, in a league other than the one I inhabited. To my eyes, they were miraculous and mysterious, invested with secret knowledge and magical powers, with taste, social graces, and high style – no matter how middle-class we were or the fact that our conversations rarely went any deeper than howdy. The reunion photos, then, confirm my fears – that goddesses may become hags – yes, mortal, even grotesque. And yet, to my surprise, some have become more beautiful than ever. How can this be? If we could only return, however briefly, for candid discourse, to uncover what thoughts, feelings, and actions lurked behind those Mona Lisa facades, both then and in the subsequent years. Not superficial conversation, but blunt disclosures. Now, however, sifting through the reunion photos, I soon calculate how few of these goddesses attended – which leads to further speculation. To my eye, they were the essence of what Hollywood starlets aspire to represent. Unlike any mythology, however, few remain in any Olympus. Instead, I must confront a youth culture that offered little wisdom.

I must leave it to the girls-turned-to-women to speak of the Adonis club and its deterioration. Besides, I was never a member. On the other hand, I’ve sometimes quipped that if I could do it all over again, I would have hung out with the greasers – that they had what I was lacking. As if they would have had me! Or am I only imagining they had fun in their tweaking of authority?

To reenter those years also means admitting shame, embarrassment, and guilt. I’m not the golden boy my mother expected, or the great talent my youth pastor counseled. For that matter, it’s been many years since I could tie my hair back in a ponytail or part it down the middle. Since I had a beer bottle tossed at me at a party. As I’ve said, it’s been a long road from there to here.

One soon approaching what will be a fiftieth anniversary reunion, if it happens.

GREAT TASTES FROM NEARBY SOURCES

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

There are some things we’ve decided not to grow. Sweet corn, for example, requires more space than we’re willing to allocate.

Part of our decision reflects the reality that we have some fine farm markets nearby, and we welcome the exchange of a local economy. The same-day butter-and-sugar or all white ears are unbeatable, especially when accompanied by our own tomatoes. Who says a feast has to be expensive?

A pick-your-own orchard presents another example. We have fond memories of family journeys to Butternut Farm in Meaderboro for peaches and apples. For me, of course, the visit reminds me of living in the orchard in Washington state’s Yakima Valley, so many years ago, now, though I welcome its many varieties other than Delicious. A Gala, anyone?

The annual trek to a Christmas tree farm here in the city feels related – first, to pick out our choice, and then, a few days before Christmas Eve, to harvest it and somehow fit it into the car. We still treasure the bird nests we’ve found in ours some years.

PYRAMID OF VINING BEANS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Back on June 14, I posted a photo of our newly erected tepee for the pole beans. Now that they’ve sprouted and taken off, here’s how it looks.

The vines have climbed to nearly seven feet tall. I'll need a stepladder for picking.
The vines have climbed to nearly seven feet tall. I’ll need a stepladder for picking.

If the plants produce as well as our first round of sugar snap peas did, I’ll be feeling like a pharaoh of beans. (I hear the groans in our household already. So, she might ask, did that make me a sugar-snap daddy?)

TRULY CORRESPONDENCE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

A while back, while reading a selection of letters by the itinerant Quaker minister Elias Hicks (1748-1830), I was impressed by the length and quality of some of the individual correspondence. These were pieces that could have been published essays, yet were addressed to a specific individual – pieces, I should add, from a farmer by trade.

I’m left wondering about the amount of time some Friends (and others, of course) spent daily or weekly in reading and writing as well as reflecting on the issues at hand.

Don’t tell me it was a slower era or that they had more time to employ – labor was more demanding and often tedious, after all. I think something else is at play here.

As I said, I’m impressed.

MAKING TIME FOR THE WORK

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

As I said at the time …

There’s no denying the importance for a writer to have a physical space where the work-in-progress can be left out in the open, safely behind a closed door, between sessions. Where there’s no lost time putting everything away, only to have to bring it out again in order to resume where one left off. This doesn’t have to be a dream space, either.

But making time for writing is even more crucial. Being able to get a thought or line down on paper, while it’s fresh. Of finding large blocks of time to engage in the interior dialogue of characters as they emerge amid your daily errands and nocturnal dreams. (Like babies or demons, they possess you.)

I’m not alone in finding my practice of writing becomes part of a larger juggling act, especially when I’m already working fifty-hour weeks as a professional whatever somewhere else. Especially when those hours are outside the “literary” field altogether. Then there are the needs of a home life to contend with, and, in my experience, a faith community, too. For instance, I’ve found that as long as I’m employed as a full-time journalist, my off-duty hours leave me only enough hours to (a) write and revise or (b) focus on submissions and correspondence or (c) attend and give readings and other public events; but there is no way to do two of the three (much less all three) in the same period.

On top of it all, the work takes as long as it needs. Or, like the old-house syndrome, every repair or renovation project will require at least three times more time and money than you budgeted.

BACK TO THE SCENE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 9 Comments

The groundhog story continues. Not to be content with the early raids on our garden, the attacks on our beds resumed. Lush Brussels sprouts plants that had been three feet tall were now mere spikes, and in the latest round we lost some kale and squash plants. Neighbors are relating their own losses, including peppers.

I did notice a small entryway had been dug out under our firewood stacks and eventually saw a pointy nose and beady eyes regard me. Not once or even twice but enough to make me suspect the worst. So I moved the trap from the garden and placed it near the entrance.

To my relief, I did find that the trap my wife bought at a yard sale a few years ago does indeed work, and that cubes of cantaloupe prove irresistible to the critters, but even that is taking its own turns. The first time the device was triggered, a bit of Brussels sprouts stem included as bait kept the shutter from locking … allowing an escape. Would the villain learn to avoid my means of entrapment?

I reset the trap and by lunchtime returned to check it out. Although both shutters had been triggered, a ‘chuck was propped up OUTSIDE, one foot on the top as it peered in, likely wondering how to get back to the bait, as if adding insult to my intentions. It seemed I’d been conned again. But, just in case, I circled around and closer examination revealed another was couched inside. One down, at least one more to go.

The short version of what followed includes a trip to Maine, just over the river. Released from confinement, that one bolted through the forest … straight toward New Hampshire.

For my part, back home, hoping they’re slow learners driven more by their guts than their brains, I reset the trap in pursuit of the other. Two hours later, I was back in Maine and evicted that critter, which dashed straight into the river and started swimming toward New Hampshire before rounding back to shore. I was grateful it was still high tide but dismayed to see what confident swimmers they can be. So much for that barrier.

Back home again, seeing new diggings around the firewood, we face the reality of having at least one more living under that neatly stacked firewood. If this keeps up, I’ll have to buy another melon today. At least I’m grateful we didn’t try growing our own; they would have cleaned ’em out, meaning I’d still have to buy one to use as bait.

All that's left of the once thriving Brussels sprouts.
All that’s left of the once thriving Brussels sprouts.