You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
The former home of Methodist Episcopal congregation in Edmunds, Maine, once looked out over the Lower Bridge across the Dennys River. The bridge disappeared after U.S. 1 was routed a quarter-mile to the east. The church, meanwhile, is being encroached by forest, a reminder of a more populous and more prosperous time. Its square belfry is long gone.
Below, remaining stone abutment of the bridge is seen on the Dennysville side of the river at low tide.
After reading Jewish authors complain about mistranslated passages from the Hebrew Bible, I welcome Hebrew scholar Alter’s thorough translation with an eye and ear for its innate literary qualities. A fine poet himself, Alter’s sensitive three volumes (including notes and footnotes that illuminate the working of puns and other devices) have become my go-to version in referencing passages and stories. The big and beautifully designed volumes are (1) the Five Books of Moses, (2) the Prophets, and (3) the Writings (Psalms and Proverbs, for instance).
Also of note are his The Art of Biblical Poetry and The Art of Biblical Narrative, examinations that challenge many earlier Biblical scholars’ contentions. I find both books to be excellent presentations of the craft of writing (and reading) both poetry and literary prose even apart from their Biblical subject.
Vassalboro,
how many times I’ve driven an hour to worship,
even my own home Meeting
sunflowers outside the window
a gray morning
ten of us, now eleven
so many of the surnames from Dover
arrived here and abouts
edgewalkers
part of a message
the Zoom view of the Meeting room
shows only me
surrounded by white walls
“green walling,” a term I just learned
no, a green washing
by conniving corporations
a carpenter tells me of working on the renovations
of the schooner American Eagle
all new to me
but not for long
Its origin, I’ve heard, arose in the Quaker peace testimony of 1662, with its refusal to swear oaths. Before that, political factions were supported by their own armies. The Quakers, or Society of Friends, promised to hold firm to their beliefs and yet not coerce others to their stand. Persuasion was another matter altogether. And William Penn, in the colony of Pennsylvania in the years we knew it as the Holy Experiment, insisted on having at least two candidates for every public office.
The Quakers not only refused to bear arms but also conducted their faith community business by consensus, without ever taking a vote. Minority opinions were respected, often leading to a third solution superior to the original options. This was not, do note, a compromise, seen as the lower common denominator, but rather something superior.
Theologically speaking, we sensed that Christ had a better answer for us, if we would only listen. “Mind the Light,” as we said.
Flash ahead to today’s death grip in the United States, where one party has steadfastly stood to obstruct anything proposed by an administration other than theirs. President Obama learned the hard way that they wouldn’t participate in crafting a third way. And he faced their open disrespect, which continued during President Biden’s term. Just look at the F— Biden flags for confirmation. Or their chants of “Lock her up,” regarding T-guy’s first opponent. Not that they would acknowledge the same for their guy, for far better documented reasons.
The Don Old, as we’ve seen, has significantly worsened the conflict and is threatening to imprison those who don’t agree with him.
The conundrum with a democracy could rapidly pivot on what to do with a disloyal opposition.
This could get very ugly, indeed. Before and after the national election.
Although she’s famed for her young adult fiction, what I appreciate more is her personal writing reflecting her life with a well-known actor, including the years of hiatus they spent in a 200-year-old farmhouse in Connecticut before they returned to New York City and his acting career.
Her candid reflections on being subject to prejudice from both liberal parties, who shunned her books for their religious content, and from conservative Christians, who avoided them for their universalism, speak of a painful reality for those of us who embrace a radical, even revolutionary, faith.
A devout Episcopalian, she mentions deep discussions with Chase, who turns out not just to be the father of a fine friend of mine but also a rector of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in Manhattan. My friend has mentioned babysitting her grandchildren in her apartment several floors above his family’s.
It’s not just a whole different way of looking at religion. It’s about intense life experiences and the ways we talk about them, hoping someone else will understand.
Quite simply, I believe everyone has a “religion,” even atheists. Just listen to ardent sports fans for examples from the secular side of the equation.
My book embraces that universal situation and then turns to the unique spirituality of early Quakers and the ways they used metaphor to guide each other in a revolutionary social transformation. Many of their advances you take for granted, no matter your labels.
Do take a look at my ebook Light Seed Truth at Smashwords.com during its annual July sales sweep. What do you have to lose? Remember, it’s free.
Here’s your chance to get two of my most recent ebooks free, thanks to Smashword.com’s annual summer sales sweep.
Light Seed Truth is an original examination of ways we use metaphor to think about things that aren’t things or even energy – and that leads to many no-things that are intensely passionate for you or me or the people around us.
Also free this month is Trumpet of the Coming Storm, a set of polemic poems I simply had to get off my chest.
In addition, I’m offering two other ebooks at half-price: Quaking Dover, a contrarian history of New England, and my playful Hamlet: A Village of Gargoyles poems collection.
To get you own copies, go to my Jnana Hodson author page at Smashwords.
The Q in my DLQ acronym doesn’t stand for Quaker, though it’s not that far off, either. Instead, it’s from Dedicated Laborious Quest, a concept I constructed from Gary Snyder’s Real Work, or life mission. It usually differs from daily employment or a career. Maybe the middle term should have been “labor-intense” or “labor-filled,” we can discuss the subtleties later.
As poet Donald Hall pointed out in his memoir Life Work, our labor falls into three categories: jobs, which we do to earn money; chores, necessary tasks that pay nothing; and work, which can be energizing. In his own case, he realized that when your work coincides with a job, life’s good. For most of us, work is a money-losing activity. More of his thinking along those lines could be found in the Talking Money category at my Chicken Farmer I Still Love You blog.
In one draft of what would become my novel Nearly Canaan, DLQ was the core of Jaya or her earlier figure’s life, a blend of yoga spirituality (only at that point it was Sufi), an arts engagement, and the altruism of her career. It also came to reflect Kenzie’s journey in the hippie stories, though not so overtly.
It may even be an expression of an individual’s magnetic center in the esoteric philosophy of P.D. Ouspensky. If I interpret this correctly, you have to have something you do with a sustained passion, such as an art or a sport, something that requires daily practice and discipline. Without that foundation, you cannot advance spiritually. Checking up on that, I’m seeing a whole literature on magnetic center in mechanical physics, making me wonder if it’s applicable to Ouspensky’s metaphor, if at all.
This goal isn’t for everyone. As the Bhagavad Gita says, only one in a thousand – or maybe one in a million – pursues it, and out of that, only one in a thousand – or a million – arrives at the summit.
Whatever it is, the yogis at the ashram, Kenzie and his Buddhist buddies, and Jaya all craved it.
~*~
The practice of writing is a big part of my own DLQ, but for a long time I felt vaguely guilty about the amount of time I devoted to it, as if it was a selfish endeavor when I should have been doing something more productive or even more worthwhile. Only after the prayer workshop at New England Yearly Meeting of Friends that one summer, when I was told that writing was a spiritual gift I needed to nurture, did I feel the permission to type away as needed.
My job at the time had me on a four-day workweek, which gave me a three-day weekend after a double-shift on Saturday. Following a suggestion from the workshop, I dedicated one day a week, usually Tuesday, to my writing and revision efforts.
It didn’t seem like that much, frankly, but looking back, I now see that added up to ten weeks a year, plus another two or so of my vacations. For perspective, consider how many people manage to draft a full novel in the month of November as part of the NaNoWriMo challenge.
For me, that time was allocated among fiction, poetry, and nonfiction projects – one of them resulted what became the Talking Money series at the Chicken Farmer blog after a book publisher backed away when a potential coauthor with financial counseling creds failed to mesh into the proposal. Submissions and queries also occupied some of that time.
~*~
It was also time taken away from other parts of my life: from my spouse or significant other, family, travel, hiking or camping, physical exercise, service on city council or a school board, friendships. Even reading got slighted.
From another perspective, I could have devoted it to an overtime shift every week, at time-and-a-half pay, which would have more than covered the mortgage.
~*~
What becomes apparent to me in these reflections is that the DLQ was essential for my sanity. My moves across the country and, for a while, up the management ladder, kept uprooting me, leaving much uncompleted in each place or, at a gut level, undigested. Writing was not only a means of recording highlights and depths before I lost them but also of releasing and letting go of self-imposed obligations to my past, freeing me to more openly face the present.
I rather backed into this project, beginning with the elusive question, “What do Quakers believe?”
It led me to something much bigger, ranging beyond the Society of Friends, but springing from the seemingly quaint language of its earliest voices in mid-1600s Britain. There are good reasons the time and place are referred to as the world turned upside down.
Centering their experiences in three interlocking metaphors – Light, Seed, and Truth – they created what’s been called an alternative Christianity, and though their thinking and process have been diluted over the centuries since, their foundation remains revolutionary, startling, and challenging. I’ll argue that it’s cutting-edge contemporary, as well, in a time of disbelief and skepticism.
For one thing, how do you see “truth” as a verb? It becomes something quite different from carved marble or courtroom proceedings.
While some of the chapters originally appeared as chapbooks at Thistle Finch editions, this newly enlarged volume of essays is now available on your choice of ebook platforms at Smashwords.com and its affiliated digital retailers. Those outlets include the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, and Sony’s Kobo. You may also request the ebook from your local public library.
The book now ranges far beyond religion and spirituality, by the way. Even atheists have their beliefs. Change the perspective, as I think I do, and you can find the exchange of first-hand experiences refreshing. How else can we talk about the deepest issues in life?
The move unites the essays in a single volume, rather than a series of four smaller chapbooks, and makes them available to a wider range of readers worldwide.
Do take a look.
My newest book, Light Seed Truth, challenges traditional religious teaching, the kind that results in “thou shalt not” combined with a fear of eternal suffering or some equivalent.
My book outlines an alternative to the legalistic framework found across religious traditions with their institutions and rituals grounded in second-hand retelling of mystical encounters. As you’ll see in the book, it’s not just religion, either.
Do note, though, the price will more than double shortly after the official release on June 7. So buying now helps you.
Preorders are one way of boosting the algorithm of first-week sales, and that can increase the title’s visibility on those ebook retailers’ bookshelves. So that helps me.
You can find it in the digital platform of your choice at Smashwords prior to the official release.
Be among the first to check it out. Thanks!
Jnana's Red Barn 