Tag: Relationships

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.

MUG, MORE THAN A CUP

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Seems I’ve always been a coffee lover, as far back as those “coffee milks” our Gran used to serve my sister and me on Sunday afternoons. Maybe that’s why I still prefer mine café au lait – half milk heated with a liberal dose of sugar or sweetener.

For decades now, my days have begun with a round of hot coffee, often abed – yes, how blessed I was after remarrying, when my wife would appear with the perfect mug when I needed to awaken. And how much I lament how that ceased, in part because the office rejuggled my schedule, meaning she never knew quite when I would be rousing.

For someone in a faith tradition that eschews rituals, I have to admit where they really appear – and be willing to acknowledge anything that’s an addiction, as well. (Remind me to take a coffee fast in the next year, OK?) Yes, maybe the editors of one poetry journal had it right when they admitted they were devotees of the Goddess Caffeina. (Oh, she has temples everywhere.)

More recently I’ve begun to question whether it’s really the coffee itself I like. That is, I can drink it black. And, yes, I also demand dark coffee – the darker, the better. I even like Starbucks, though that has nothing to do with my years in the Nevergreen State. (Remember, I lived in the desert side of Washington state.) No, I realize when the mug’s turned cold, my beverage tastes a lot like the cartons of chocolate milk we used to purchase in the elementary school vending machine – the ones that cost us a nickel. So maybe it’s that chocolate underpinning that grabs me.

Is it possible that even at six-foot-two, the chocolate stunted my growth? We can’t blame the coffee, now, can we?

LONG-DISTANCE MEMORIES

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In the email age, the personal letter has become a cultural artifact. Here’s what might be an example from someone or another wandering, perhaps in a private desert of Sinai.

*   *   *

Greetings on this sunny but nippy Valentine’s Day! How much nicer it would be to still be abed, next to you, both of us pleasurably sated and, well, how do you like your coffee? (A local roaster makes a savory version it markets, tongue-in-cheek, as Charbucks – “You told us you like it dark.”) But now, does that mean I have to untie those silk scarves? Or go find those tiny keys again? (Dream on, old man!) Here I am, on the first full day of my fifty-first year (gads, even saying that feels a bit like coming over the first crest on the Cannonball wooden coaster at Canobie Lake!) trying to recover from another grueling double-shift Saturday at the office – the weekly 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. no-letup newspaper editor’s nightmare. So I decided to stay in from worship this morning to try to catch up on some personal affairs, including setting down that letter I’ve been composing in my head the past several weeks – and which, now that I’m at it, I can’t even begin! Which thread should we pursue first? (Fact? Or fiction?) Yikes!

Suppose we should start off by saying how much I’ve once again enjoyed all of your confessions of the journey of the emerging psyche. One of the remarkable things you are doing is giving voice to experiences in a rite of passage for a generation coming of age but who remain so incredibly tongue-tied.

One of the incomprehensible elements is the psychological pain so many teens and young adults in America carry – this, from a generation that has received more physical comforts and leisure than any other in history – food, education, fashionable clothing, shelter, cars of their own. You admit the “emotional demons, trying to survive in the face of my fragile nerves and emotions.” I wonder how that involves the essential nature of being a creative person, someone drawn to the arts, who craves a deeper experience and more fulfilling explanation of life than the material/materialistic surface can ever provide – and how much reflects a very serious and deep breakdown in American society itself, one in which the pursuit of individualism at all costs and the ever-accelerating accumulation of more and more wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands simply leaves fewer openings for most of us to come together as meaningful community. Positions that once allowed genuine opportunities for decision-making and personal expression – like the local bank president or newspaper publisher – are now just mid-level bureaucrats. And physicians and surgeons are just beginning to be sucked up in this process, thanks to HMOs or hospital conglomerates. (As one was recently quoted: “I used to be a physician. Now I’m just a health care provider.” Or as I sometimes say, not entirely in jest: “I used to be a newspaper editor. Now I’m a copy processor.”) The field – and life opportunities – have certainly changed since I set forth, and not for the better, I fear.

So pains, yes.

Wish you were here.