MY RESIDENCY IN a yoga ashram introduced its own sequence of seasons. I address these in my novel, Ashram, where different individuals embody different stages in the progression from soul-cleansing to community awareness and service to spiritual illumination. While I limit the plot to the activities of a single day, there’s no way to escape the histories that led each participate to this place or to the conflicts and achievements they’ve already shared in their adventures on the yoga farm.
The ashram allowed a kind of spiritual season I no longer see on American landscape – a place for youths, especially, to undergo intense reorientation and ego-stripping. More traditional monastic settings often point the practitioner in a different direction, something more resembling a career path.
In retrospect, the institution itself was evolving through its own series of seasons. Originating as a kind of laissez-faire hostel and spa before moving into a more rigorous retreat center and monastery and then into a Hindu temple and children’s camp, each season manifested itself quite differently from the others, held together by Swami’s autocratic vision, strengths, and weaknesses.
In season, too, many of my doubts and concerns also bore fruit. When I was ordered to return to the community and refused, only to be ostracized, I was being faithful to a larger Spirit. A different set of seasons was unfolding.
If you want to see out-and-out prejudice by people who think themselves to be open-minded, here’s a good litmus test. Raise a matter of Christianity. Or, as a woman, wear a cross necklace. Then ask if it’s the same response you’d get had you presented something from another religion.
Put another way, I’d long ago been appalled by an assumption many of us liberals took in regard to Christians – and to be candid, I was once one who was self-righteously disparaging. Quite frankly, it’s out-and-out judgmentalism that hurts our progressive causes. It’s ignorant of the important support radical faith gave to many movements through the centuries and can still give to the future. It’s a point for dialogue with our opponents, if we’re willing to engage it.
Two common assumptions spring to mind here.
The first involves intelligence. There’s more to life, let me point out, than materiality. Think of love, music, morality, for starters – people with knowledge of ways of empathy, too. Extend that, then, to a recognition that to be a person of faith does not automatically mean stupidity, even if we do see way too many examples in the public arena – not just those of the Christian label, either. Nor do Christian do not come in a one-size-defines-all homogeneity – some denominations, for instance, refuse to bear arms or participate in war as a consequence of Jesus’ command to love our neighbor, while other churches rally around the troops. The ways of thinking and the emphases vary widely, from Fundamentalists to Evangelicals (yes, there are differences there) to Pentecostals to various strands of Calvinists or Lutherans (yes, again some key differences) to various Wesleyan (Methodist) and Baptist and Anabaptist (Amish, Mennonite, Brethren, Quaker) and on to the Unitarians. And that’s just among the Protestants. Add to that the Anglicans (Episcopalians), Roman Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox and you have a very rich mix, indeed.
Within those are some very intelligent and sensitive people, along with circles of personal growth and ethical accountability.
The reality is that religion is capable of engaging our innermost motions – our hopes and fears, especially. It’s a power that can run many ways, challenging the status quo as well as establishing community. The state and the establishment have many reasons to desire to curb it, as history attests. Even at a personal level, it can be scary stuff.
Pointedly, progressive movements have sprung from this source. For centuries, up through America’s civil rights revolution, social change has grown from radical Christianity. A central thread of the Bible has been the evolution of justice and then radical peace and equality. Read it closely, and what emerges remains a challenge to the status quo. Let’s not lose it now!
As the prayer goes, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth …”
Many of us see that as a more loving, just, and peaceful society. Mock it if you wish, but think of the alternatives. Are they really progress?
All of that, of course, leads to my second point: the so-called Christian right, of the political sort, hardly owns the mantel of Jesus. And since any religion has the potential of engaging those most soulful endeavors of human existence, we see across the spectrum instances of appealing to fear and oppression, on one side, as well as forgiveness and oneness, on the other. Religion in this dimension presents an opportunity for conversation and growth, if we allow it.
Over the years, my own spiritual practice has undergone many changes. In the essays and notes of my Seasons of the Spirit collection, I touch on struggles that led me to reject the mainstream Protestant teachings of my childhood as well as my leap into the monastic life on a yoga farm before I chanced into the Society of Friends, or Quakers, where I’ve remained for more than four decades.
I arrived as an ABC Quaker – “anything but Christ” – but many sections in this collection arise in a subsequent, evolving evangelical encounter and language, especially as my community of faith moved into the more historically active strands of Quakers in Ohio Yearly Meeting and then into Mennonite and Brethren extensions.
That tone and scope of thought moderate as I grow older, living and working an hour north of Boston.
A crucial influence through much of this volume reflects seasons of relationship – intimate companionship, family, and friends, as well as the workplace. Cycles, too, like those of progressing from childhood and parenthood into retirement or release.
Even in a tradition like the one I’ve embraced, seemingly free from an annual liturgical calendar or its outward emblems, cyclical changes mirroring those of the seasons do appear. Since much of this time has been spent within the Society of Friends, or Quakers, I’ll give one example from Salem Quarterly Meeting in Ohio, where the session each Fifth Month (that is, May) meant rhubarb in the applesauce. See it as sacrificial and special, a kind of unwritten liturgical calendar waiting to be observed through repetition.
In speaking of this awareness and growth as Seasons of the Spirit, we may also consider their interplay with the Seasons of the Flesh – and ultimately, their unity, contrary to Descartes and conventional teaching. From my perspective, perhaps with a Buddhist twist, we can proclaim an alternative:
I breathe, therefore, I am.
Spirit, after all, is the very core of the word inspiration —and at its heart of meaning. I’ll also focus on Spirit as the Holy Spirit — the Spirit of Christ — in contrast to other spirits, such as jealousy, anger, envy, and so on. Translate this as you wish.
Seasons of the Spirit
Whatever the pathway, there are times of struggle, doubt, and distrust. Times of whirlwind passion and excitement. Times of discovery. Times of drought or deep winter, relying on what’s brought out of storage. Times of renewal and recharge.
This has manifested as periods where I’ve been able to dedicate significant time to meditation, solitude, travel in ministry, prayer, Bible study, research into history and theology, organizational service, teaching, correspondence, or writing, as well as to regular disciplines such as fasting or physical spiritual exercise (the hatha yoga sessions or even wilderness hiking). Emphatically, however, one would predominate while others would likely be absent or greatly diminished. In addition, they would be strongly impacted by the events of my daily life itself – whether I was single, married, divorced, or “in relationship,” my hours and nature of employment, my friendships and faith community, my driving patterns through the week.
The result of all of this would be a crazy-quilt tapestry or a ricochet trajectory if it weren’t for a spiraling within it. That is, over the years, various periods and interests begin to overlap one another, creating a kind of harmony or accumulated depth. My asparagus bed in New Hampshire has roots in my experience of asparagus along irrigation canal banks in Far West desert three decades earlier. A dog sitting through Quaker meeting here is a reminder of dogs sitting through predawn meditation sessions in the Pocono Mountains, or of the cats aligned on the scaffolding outside the windows, as if they, too, were deep in concentrated worship. I read a particular Psalm and see the passage taking twists I hadn’t perceived earlier.
In my own life, my childhood was filled with natural science, hiking, and camping, each with its mystical visions and moments. Adolescence led into politics, classical music, opera, and writing complicated by unrequited sexual yearning. Without romantic companionship, a Lone Ranger journey. Rejection of existing creed while ensconced in youth church office was followed by flight into atheism and hippie excess landing, inexplicably, in a yoga ashram with its hatha exercises and sustained meditation. From there, into liberal Quaker practice, where the ashram lessons were applied in circles of deepening prayer life. By steps, I moved toward Christocentric and Plain speech, and an especially faith fervent language. Among the traditional Wilburite Friends as well as Mennonites, especially, I came to wrestle within Scripture while simultaneously undergoing repeated Dark Night journeys and questioning. Turning to emotional therapy, I wondered if anyone could come along with me through all of this – my career moves, spiritual shifts, and geographic relocations. By now, too, I was no longer meditating to get high, or transcend, but rather to center down to what the early Quakers emphasized as the Seed. Here, too, with all of the Quaker committee work, I was engaged in a religion that combines mystical experience with social witness and activism. In a nutshell, then.
Each swirl also stirs up something from before. What failed in earlier marriage or relationships reappears. What has been left unfinished is not left entirely behind. What has been shredded remains to be woven. I’ve heard this opera in its entirety a hundred times. Have I ever heard this note before?
I moved from the Midwest to the East Coast and back before heading on to the Pacific Northwest in what seemed an epiphany but instead shattered amid volcanic eruption and devastation. I left the wilderness for another kind of wilderness, back across the Rust Belt of the Midwest and then on to the East Coast. The pendulum, as they say. Here, I now see life as both linear and circular – that is, spiraling. The spirit requires flesh, or is it that the flesh requires spirit? Seasons include times that are full or overflowing, and times that are barren or dry. I now welcome the questioning that is not hostile is both essential and healthy.
My first spring in the orchard, I expected all of the trees to blossom simultaneously. They don’t. The apricots and cherry petals give way to plums, pears, and peaches. The apple blooms arrive last, when others are already gone.
Experiencing a new place through a full year or repeated years provides a much different understanding than a tourist gets – even one who spends several months there. Relocating requires a year-and-a-half to gain familiarity with the new surroundings – to get beyond the obvious, to establish friendships, to be oriented with the elements one finds essential or special. A favorite restaurant, a woodland pathway or place to swim, a boutique or gallery.
There are seasons for a person of faith, from winter to spring elation and then into fullness, dryness, struggle, or disillusionment. To harvest, perchance. Marriage? Family? Children? Extended into joy, compassion, humility, appreciation – one begins observing and naming.
The turning point in my own journey came when I accepted a new name – Jnana – while living in the ashram. The rest of the developments followed.
Those of us on the liberal side of the social and political spectrum like to think of ourselves as open-minded, which means the times we exhibit flashes of bigotry can be especially painful.
First off, we’re blind to it. Not us, right? But we do.
And sometimes we do it to each other.
An example comes in the gold cross a young woman decided to wear. She’s nothing along the lines of a Fundamentalist or even a committed believer, but she liked her grandmother’s jewelry and this particular piece. Difficult, though, was her experience of the reactions from her fellow college students and faculty, starting with their physical motion a step backward. Literally.
There were words that would not dare be said to Jews or Muslims or ethnic groups of any stripe – and assumptions that simply did not fit. In fact, there’s a presumption of right-wing positions accompanying an ignorance of the social-justice dimensions of other Christian communities and their actions. And there’s nothing of the nuanced theology that moves beyond the cartoonish criticisms we often hear.
For the record, Quaker tradition long frowned on any jewelry whatsoever as superfluous and vain. But I’m not wearing the distinctive Plain clothing of Quaker history, either. Now how would they react to that?
outwardly, my ways were simple
even austere or ascetic
my modest apparel
considered drab or seedy
still I was becoming
wary of self-negation
that denies the sweet
Bread of Life
* * *
when John from Tri-State Megabucks phoned the office
to report the latest week’s winning number, he asked
in an attempt to be friendly, if I had my ticket in hand
so I replied, “no, it’s against my religion” and then
sensed a stupefaction on his end of the line
there might be another position on this business
O Holy One
keep me tender in reaching across differences
where a holier-than-thou attitude accomplishes
nothing more than standing in faith
* * *
if there weren’t so much insufficiency all around
the homeless, unemployed, imprisoned,
impoverished, illiterate
quickly overwhelm
apart from family and spiritual community
within my neighborhood
how little I alone can do
against needs deeper
than those seen
where any sense of great inadequacy provokes
a hardening wall
while judging myself harshly
reminded
to my own consternation
of how I’m lacking
Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson To see the full set, click here.
In the historical overview that forms the core of Seekers Found: Atonement in Early Quaker Experience, Douglas Gwyn casts his net wider than the circles in northern England of the mid-1600s who formed what we’ve come to know as the Seekers. What he traces is a broad undercurrent of radical faith from the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation, an alternative Christianity in which an Indwelling Christ or Inward Light is to some degree acknowledged and which, in turn, leads to rejection of many or all outward sacraments or ritual in worship. It turns out to be far more widespread before the Quaker movement emerged and gave it distinctive voice than I’d previously seen.
Frankly, as he focuses on seminal figures who advanced this thinking, I’m amazed that his brain didn’t simply explode. Remember, he’s following not just one person but many, all with flashes of nuance and insight that begin to overlap and also to diverge. Nothing is static.
Of course, we face similar problems looking at the counterculture movements of our own time. Just who, for starters, would we look to as voices of hippie thought and lifestyle?
When Gwyn remarks that “many of the Seekers-turning-Quakers … started out as hyper-Puritans whose idealistic moral absolutism made them unbearable to themselves and to those around them,” I feel an echo in my own hippie passage. Many of us seemed to be doing something similar. My, could we be intense! (That, along with the emphasis on “mellow.” Go figure.)
It also has me wondering about the spiritual starting point for many of the teens and young adults in our wider society today. Just where would deep conversation and inner growth begin? What are the driving forces in their lives?
Historically, the focus on events in England also leaves me sensing a gap in awareness of the radical advances in New England from the 1630s, exemplified in Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, and Samuel Gorton, as they prefigured those in England in the 1640s. I’m not faulting Gwyn here, since his thesis is on the forerunners and emergence of the Quaker movement, but it is a topic ripe for exploration. Let me suggest John M. Barry’s Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty (Penguin, 2012) as a starting point. The New Englanders, quite simply, seem to be ahead of their Old World compatriots. Maybe the British court records present a fuller picture, but until the end of censorship in 1642, we seem to have little else to go on.
It’s all a potent mix. When the first Quakers came to New England, they found fertile ground.
What Quakers added, according to Gwyn, was a means of putting that seeking into action within daily lives. It was a matter he views as apocalypse. Somehow, our hippie adventures never got that far, which leads to a whole new set of considerations.
~*~
More of my own reflections on alternative Christianity are found at Religion Turned Upside Down. You’re welcome to take a look.
WATCHING THE FLITTING flashes of my mind, I jot down notes. Many of them later prompt poems or a scene in fiction or a line of thought that later bears fruit.
Some fall by the wayside. Others find development decades later. Consider:
Seasons of flight.
Seasons of nesting.
Seasons of doubt.
Seasons of turbulence.
Anger, jealousy, hurt, fear.
Encountering the demons: the Dark Night journey, melancholy, depression, loss, etc.
Seasons of awareness: times when we’re more open to revelation that others. Our usual defenses are stripped away, and we leap into change or retreat into solitude. In the immediate aftermath of divorce, for instance, or a close death.
Times of dreaming deeper or in new ways.
Seasons of praise and assurance.
Seasons out of the spirit: war / greed / oppression and oppressing.
Add to these and amplify them as you wish.
~*~
Few are prepared or willing for total immersion in the Spirit. Especially when we’re feeling our lives are already full.
There is reason to fear falling into the hands of a Living God.
This is acknowledged, “Thank God for the good old Church of England. It’s our last line of defense between God and ourselves.” Substitute your own institution or practice, as needed.
Giving, with nothing in return. (So it so often seems … route for burnout.)
~*~
Moses and Aaron, confronting graven images:
Aha! They’re fleeing sleek Egypt, so visual – they instead use words, an entirely different focus for worship from the image-driven supplication in Egypt.
They leave civilization for wilderness, where certain words are carefully repeated.
On the lips, from the heart: What we know could become singing.
~*~
Or else simply rootless:
How do we reach out while being so fragmented?
A lack of continuity instills clinging.
How will our paths cross more frequently?
People come and go, and we make no effort to find out why.
Diversity is no strength unless drawn into the circle.
A phantom church, with no telephone listing.
Here we go, warbling.
~*~
Make sense, as you can:
A handcuffed person.
Movie night in the meetinghouse: double features, free popcorn: invite the homeschool crowd.
Opera orgies … Met broadcasts.
Yes, we want the cost-free pleasures.
The Hebrew lack of first-person personal pronouns – it’s not my house, but the house God has blessed me with or gifted unto me for safe-care.
what blows
to kindle sunset and sunrise
sprouts wings on the field
is faith planting
for a harvest at the end
all these tough nuts to open
amid rest
* * *
each day
always more
bands of light
turn within
fields and currents
tempted by more as well as less, but first
those cries being born
* * *
crossing water
invites rest
answering the call to dinner
2
when we are vanilla chocolate the strawberry rhubarb and asparagus a cake topped in cherries sweet corn and trout with apricots and peaches the scallions, leeks, garlic carrots, potatoes, yams spiced pumpkin whipped cream, fresh butter applesauce with pancakes a bowl of black walnuts yogurt and sharp cheddar or baby Swiss when we are sap returning to maple when we are …
when we are snow peas or sugar snaps a pear or … fordhooks or limas
3
I’ve had a taste of these things
Hindu Yogi
Zen Buddhist
Sufi
Amerindian
Mennonite, Dunker, Amish
Old-Style Quaker
all of them, with holy visions
Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson To see the full set, click here.
OF COURSE WE’RE PUZZLED to observe how many conversations begin with comments about the weather. Everybody can see it’s snowing or raining or feel the heat and humidity. What’s actually happening, of course, is the establishing of a commonality – putting ourselves in a shared space. You make a joke in reply, or a factual statement, and edge into conversation, however superficial or deep, gossipy or plaintive.
No matter how introverted or reclusive an individual is, being human requires social interaction. From birth, we require more nurture and protection than other animals do before we are able to move about on our own, much less survive. We learn from each other, and we are highly vulnerable, despite all our acquired knowledge. We are creatures of culture, not inherited instinct. We make bargains and trade. We court and seduce with words as much as our dance steps or glances.
While experiential religion demands individual practice and awareness, few of us undergo its labors and trials all alone. We find mentors and companions along the way, people who have also encountered and value these matters. Even a secluded monk has an abbot or guru; a nun, her mother superior. Confession is part of the practice. What we find of value we feel compelled to pass along.
Our affinity with these spiritual companions has its own intimacy. These friends hold a mirror to ourselves, to point to our shortcomings and prod us to reach for ever greater fidelity to our purpose. They provide harmony and, when we fail, counter self-loathing and blame with compassion and comfort. Ideally, this exists between husband and wife. Sometimes it is found between prayer partners – two people who agree to hold each other in prayer through the week. Much of the life in the monastic confines of the ashram endeavored on this plain, though the bonds broke down quickly outside of it. Whether one-on-one or within the circle of a community of faith, this companionship has the added dimension of spiritual presence and encounter. Sometimes it spans denominations, when the “invisible church” opens in conversation with another or in venturing into a small group along the way, as I have with Mennonites and Brethren. Sometimes it appears in the context of romantic relationship, in the quest for mutual aspirations.
As much as I’d like to say spiritual companionship is forever, the reality often proves otherwise. I’ve seen those who have maintained this through a lifetime, including couples who’ve become connected through the marriages of their children. More often, I’ve found intense periods where paths cross for a year or two and then part.
Typically, the interactions are words spoken together. Sometimes, as in the excerpts that follow, they arise in lengthy correspondence. Who knows what trail will be left from the emails of the Internet.
