Tag: Musings

WATERTOWN AND THE BOSTON MARATHON BOMBING

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

When I awoke this morning, my wife greeted me with the words, “You missed it last night; all hell broke loose.” I thought she was talking about her board meeting or maybe a big fire, but instead she told me that all of Watertown, Massachusetts, and several surrounding towns were locked down. And then she related the news of the Boston Marathon suspects, the subsequent shootings in Cambridge, the carjacking, the mad police chase down Mount Auburn Street, and all of the activity taking place around the Arsenal Mall.

The developments are still unfolding – and likely will continue to do so for days – and I won’t attempt to relate what’s being reported. What is difficult is trying to imagine the challenges of coping with the shutdown of a very active community. One I’ve been coming to know with some affection.

This year, my Thursdays have wound up in Watertown, where the Revels Singers rehearse for two hours each week in St. John United Methodist Church on Mount Auburn Street. The choir, ranging up to 80 voices, many of them very fine, is led by George Emlen in works from the Renaissance to the present spanning many nationalities and languages. Last night, for instance, we tackled Welsh and French-Canadian as well as English, and the musical experience was exhilarating. No, I’d never even dreamed of being part of such an ensemble.

Rather than getting stuck in rush-hour traffic, I try to arrive early enough to have dinner at one of the inexpensive but excellent restaurants a block or two down the street. (Don’t let looks deceive you: follow your nose instead.) Watertown is an older suburb of Boston, one with substantial houses typically on small lots, and has become a haven of many ethnic cultures. The church where we practice, for instance, also houses a Korean Methodist congregation. Buses pass by frequently, and pedestrians fill the sidewalks. In one block I pass the Greek kabob and gyro emporium I’ve come to habituate, an acclaimed Chinese storefront with tables and takeout (yes, some of it goes back with me to New Hampshire), a Japanese fusion eatery, an Iranian bakery, an Hispanic-focused grocery, several hair and nails salons, a cigar store or two. (I’d planned to make a list someday.)

Yesterday I even arrived in time to tour the Armenian Library and Museum of America,  which incidentally had free admission this week as an offering of a quiet public place for the community to heal from the tragedy on Monday. (The irony of the free admission now comes, of course, in the closing of the town itself.) As the center of Armenian culture in the New World, Watertown has much to say about genocide and suffering over the centuries.

I was still reflecting on that experience as I ate, until noticing the repeated images on the large-screen TV on the restaurant wall as it showed footage of the two suspects shortly before Monday’s bombings. A man at one table got up, pointed to something on the screen, and commented on a detail, which prompted discussion from other tables. People were paying attention.

From there it was on to rehearsal. A magnolia and the daffodils in front of the church were in full bloom. Spring was in the air. Even afterward, as we returned to the street, we wanted to linger.

Who could have anticipated the state of siege that would erupt a few hours later?

Social status versus social value

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

You see the lists from time to time: America’s richest individuals or families.

You also see how proud people are about finding loopholes to cut their own taxes or lobbying for another advantage over the rest of the public.

Seems we’ve had it wrong. We should be according that respect to America’s top taxpayers. Yes, let them compete for the status of being the most generous Americans, the ones who step forward for their country. We could even break this out by occupation, for extra Top Ten lists. I’d even be in favor of having a monument in Washington inscribed with their names.

Let the rest of them be considered shirkers.

SEASONS OF THE SPIRIT

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

To perceive a spiritual journey as Seasons of the Spirit acknowledges how much of it is out of our own hands, like the weather. We yield to the Spirit and are guided by it, to the extent we are faithful. “Which Spirit is thee speaking of?” I hear echoing, a memory of elder Mary Hawkins of rural Ohio before she counseled me of other spirits, such as anger and jealousy and so on. For the record, then, this is what I now call the Spirit of Christ – specifically, the Light and Life addressed in the opening chapter of the Gospel of John. You may define your encounters as you may. My interest here is with an experienced connection with the Divine and a heightened awareness of its manifestations among us.

While everyone talks about the weather, few openly discuss religion. Too often, those who do raise the subject seem unwilling to listen, at least openly, and their arguments are cast along the lines of dogma or creed. Again, my focus is not on what we have been taught about faith, but what we can say about its workings in our own lives. When we can get past the formulaic responses, a discussion of religious experience allows us to search some of the deepest desires and fears of human existence. It can also unleash extraordinary social reform, as we might see looking through history, or be constrained to do the precise opposite.

 *   *   *

To speak of Spirit in this manner requires us to search for the ways it becomes embodied in our lives and our world. That is, how it takes flesh. What is abstract reveals itself in concrete decisions and actions, as well as thoughts and emotions.

A LIVELY CAST

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

One of our favorite TV comedies has been Little Mosque on the Prairie, a Canadian series about a small, struggling Muslim community the fictional prairie town of Mercy, Saskatchewan. I’ll let those of you in other faith traditions weigh in on the parallels, but I suspect you’ll find each of the show’s characters already existing in your own congregation.

You’ll also see many of the same dividing lines and tensions. Traditionalists versus modernists, for instance, or those bred to the faith versus converts. There are even the basic questions of identity and self-identity or motivation and discipline.

As I look at my own Quaker circles, I sometimes see a line between those drawn to the hour of worship itself and those drawn to the peace-and-justice witness, such as gender and racial equality, global non-violence and fair trade, prison reform, environmental concerns, and the like. Sometimes the difference shows up most sharply in the announcements that come at the end of our period of silence – those who want to leave quietly, savoring the calm, and those who instead urge us to attend all kinds of lectures, discussions, demonstrations, fundraisers, and other gatherings in the coming weeks.

Sometimes the lines even cross.

THOSE LIVE BROADCASTS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

A confession: I’m one of those rare aficionados of radio, rather than television. It’s not radio in general, however: rather, it’s for classical music, essentially, along with jazz and folk music and, these days, Boston professional sports coverage.

At its best, there’s an intimacy – the host speaks directly to you, in your home or car or, during the summer, as I sit outdoors in the shade. There’s a sharing of good taste, too: here’s a new recording, a composer you ought to know, a fresh performer.

Unfortunately, ever since the Federal Communications Commission changed the ownership rules to allow a few companies to monopolize all the commercial stations, the overall variety and vitality of the airwaves has plummeted. Apart from athletics events, there’s little live coverage, especially at the local or regional level. As for the call-in programs, I’m left yearning for civility and balance. Please!

What survives as radio done well happens on the noncommercial stations. I’m fortunate to be within range of one that makes a special effort to present live concerts, including the Boston Symphony and Boston Pops as they happen on Saturday nights from fall into spring and their Tanglewood performances Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays through the summer – plus groups that come to play at the station itself or live recordings from concerts throughout New England. The extra touches, too, are important: interviews with the performers, delving into the archives for historic recordings, or news of upcoming events. I love the quirkiness of their late-night host, as well as his comments on the changing weather.

Likewise, the Saturday afternoon Metropolitan Opera broadcasts have undergone a remarkable transformation. As one who began listening when the legendary Milton Cross was host, I find the Margaret Juntwait and Ira Siff announcing booth team an exciting – and often unpredictable – leap forward, along with all the live backstage links during the intermissions. As you could say, it’s Good Radio.

Now, if I could only get the truly eccentric Harvard station to come in on the air – we’re just out of range.

THE SHRINKING PAGE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

l look down on the newspaper page and think how narrow it’s become – about half of the width of the pages I designed at the beginning of my career. The broadsheets of today are about the width of tabloids back when.

It’s all cost-saving measures, of course. Like the shrinking candy bar. Yes, I remember when the joke circulated, “It’s hard to find a nickel candy bar for a quarter these days.” Ditto, for the cola.

So we keep hearing the economists warning about inflation. Not a word, you notice, about the corresponding deflation of the product itself.

WHAT SILENCE? WHERE?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 5 Comments

Yes, we’re called a silent meeting. But there’s silence and, well, then there’s silence. As nuns would tell parochial school students at the beginning of chapel, “Quaker meeting has begun, no more talking or chewing gum.” Who knows where that originated, much less why certain people – such as the priest – might be considered exempt. Let me declare, I know of no authentic silence. Nowhere on this planet! (Outer space, maybe? Deafness?) Even when we have no spoken messages arising in our worship, we still have the pulses of breathing, to say nothing of the clock, with its measure annoying some and reassuring others. Waves of restlessness, late arrivals, and traffic and sirens along Central Avenue, too. In summer, birds and crickets. Maybe a bagpiper at the edge of the cemetery. In winter, the furnace kicking on, children murmuring, a cough or sneeze. A coat crackling as it’s taken off or put back on.

There’s even silent noise arising in stray thoughts. Imagined lists of things to do. Recollections of things done in the previous week or decades earlier. News reports echoing through our minds. Sometimes, rain. Or simple wind. Maybe “stilled” is a more accurate description than “silent” or even “unprogrammed.”

Yes, I’ve heard stories of city dwellers who come to the countryside and are soon troubled by its relative quiet. I have to chuckle, realizing how much they miss. I think of a meeting for worship one May morning along Broadway in upper Manhattan, when I heard little else outside the room but birdsong, countered a week later in rural Ohio by loud farm tractors and semi-trailer rigs. Remember, too, a few Mays before that, when the kids came into the meeting room, saying that the boom heard a little earlier was Mount St. Helens exploding. Their classroom faced the west and the volcano eighty miles away, with its inky squall line soon blotting out the noontime sun.

What we have, of course, is a practice of acute listening, capable of detecting far-off explosions as well as the motions of the heart. What we enter is not silence exactly but something I often find more akin to swimming underwater. Something that can be calming, peaceful, refreshing, renewing, good – as in good to eat, too. Filling. “Has thou been fruitful?” as they used to say.

My description of what we have is QUIETIST worship, rather than “silent” or “unprogrammed.” Hushed, still, clearing, typically peaceful, not showy, and unobtrusive being a few of its earmarks. Though this hardly covers the experience, either.

While Quakers traditionally did not hire preachers, they did recognize individuals who had abilities as lay ministers and others with the spiritual gifts of elders (that is, bishops, within the congregation) and still others whose skills might help the members in their everyday struggles. When Meeting gathered for worship, these “weighty Quakes” would sit at the front of the room, in what we know as the “facing benches.” Somehow, their presence still lingers in the room, sweet as it is.

SUMP PUMP

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

I’ve learned to listen whenever we get heavy rain. Check to see that the jerry-rigged sump pump is still upright and its line’s not clogged.

Yes, indeed: too much rain, and the sump pump kicks in. Or else the cellar floods, along with the furnace.

It’s all a matter of perspective.

TOO BIG TO WHAT?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

When you invest, even if it’s just for retirement, you’re told to diversify your risks.

Why is it, then, that it seems OK to keep having big corporations merge into less and less competition? During the Bush I and Bush II regimes, we saw what that meant for the banking industry: big bailouts on the taxpayers’ tab.

We were, after all, faced with another Great Depression.

Seems to me it would be far healthier to spread the risks here, too: break out into smaller companies – which would make more of them, too.

Along the way, there would be fewer layers of high management – and think of all the savings in executive pay along the way.

Those who advocate a free market need to remember: any company that’s too big to fail without taking down the rest of the economy is a threat. Period.

THE DISAPPEARING INDIVIDUAL

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Not too long ago, the pharmacist owned the drug store, the corner bank had its own president, the local publisher owned the newspaper, and so on. Each one knew the community, and each one could make independent decisions. Each one also had a desire to be respected by those he or she served. Often, too, it was a family affair.

Now, of course, the pharmacy is headed by a manager who reports to a district supervisor who may report to an assistant vice-president somewhere who reports to a president of a subsidiary who reports to another vice-president of a conglomerate who reports to a president who reports to a CEO who probably has little real decision-making power, thanks to all of the policies that must be followed, thanks to a board of directors beholden to the major stockholders. As if you could name any of these people. Ditto for the bank and the newspaper and what used to be the local department store.

At each level of hierarchy, there’s little room for discretionary action – it’s all a matter of enforcing policy, especially as it relates to maximizing short-term profit.

Important local leaders have been reduced cogs following orders from afar. And the big money follows. Note, too, that the emphasis is on stockholders, not shareholders, who would include the workers, their communities, and even the faithful customers.

How, then, do we reclaim our full community, and heal the damage? It’s a basic question for democracy, after all, if the American Experiment is to continue, especially with any sense of equality and fairness.