Tag: Religion

RANTERS, THEN AND NOW

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

One of the most remarkable periods in world history came in mid-1600s Britain, an outbreak that included the execution of the monarch by commoners (rather than a rival for the throne) amid a host of social, economic, and political upheaval. For an overview of the ferment, you can read Christopher Hill’s The World Turned Upside Down or Antonia Fraser’s Cromwell, Our Chief Among Men.

My primary interest, of course, focuses on the rise of the Quaker movement out of the waves of conflict – with the rise of a two-party political system and a loyal opposition as a byproduct of a pacifist faith. I also see parallels with much of the counterculture experience I’ve known from the hippie era on, where some have remained faithful but many others have flaked away.

The waves of English radicals can be fascinating, from the New Model Army and Levelers, Diggers, and True Levelers on through the Muggletonians, Fifth Monarchists, and others, but for Quakers, the Ranters presented a special cross to bear.

Like Quakers, the Ranters espoused personal experience of ecstatic faith, and the two movements were often confused with each other by the wider public. Unlike the discipline and discipleship among Quakers, though, Ranters had no qualms about sexual promiscuity or any other limitations (it was all God’s will, in their eyes, no matter any hurt to others), at least until persecution hit and they readily recanted. Not so the Quakers, who insisted on eternal Truth. God doesn’t change.

So here we are. What are our deepest values? Where do we stand firm, and where do we yield and bend? What is principle and what is opportunistic? How far out is our vision, and how much a matter of short-term maneuvers?

Where are we – each of us – truly accountable?

Anyone else feeling uncomfortable?

WHY WOODPECKER CAN’T KEEP UP

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Many days in the newsroom I had the feeling of same-old, same-old. I’d seen it all before. Another election, just different names and tallies. Another car crash or house fire. A store opening or a restaurant closing. Graduations or obituaries. It’s a long list. And then something refreshing would come along, something that prompted the exclamation, “I’ve never seen that before!” Contrary to the doom-and-gloom image of the business, many of us at the newspaper loved having something uplifting to present.

These days, though, it’s more likely to be along the lines of this couldn’t be happening, could it?

The American presidential campaign is just the most obvious. The Woodpecker Reports appearing at the Red Barn are supposed to be a reminder of the underlying currents we thought would be shaping this election season – the history and power-brokers moving behind the scenes, especially. Things we’d seen before, round after round, including the same players or their disciples. Woodpecker can hammer away in the infected trees, as he’s been, but when the forest catches fire, he’ll take flight. I know this: things are spinning too fast to keep up. And that’s before we get to the climate instability that’s more glibly called global warming.

~*~

I’m still aghast at the reports of Sen. David Perdue’s “joking” when he encouraged participants at a religious conference to pray that President Obama’s “days be few,” a reference to Psalm 109. The audience apparently picked up on the calamities to be inflicted not just on the transgressor but on his spouse and children, too – evil thoughts, without question. In the text, however, King David is pouring out his soul in response to political persecution, a situation the Georgia Republican blithely ignores. King David’s lines certainly fit as a cry for help from Obama: “Wicked and deceiving words are being said about me, false accusations are being cast in my teeth,” as verse 2 reads in the New Jerusalem translation. “In return for my friendship they denounce me. … They repay my kindness with evil, and friendship with evil” (verses 4-5) match the good intentions Obama had for reasoning with a Republican Congress. As for the evil man oppressing the king, “He had no thought of being loyal, but hounded the poor and needy and the broken hearted to their death. He had a taste for cursing; let it recoil on him!” (verses 16-17).

Taken in its fullness, the Psalm – perhaps even the Holy One – could point to Perdue and laugh, “The joke’s on you.”

Except that this is serious, deadly serious. Prayer is never a joke, not for the faithful. And the Fourth Commandment (Exodus 20:7) warns: “You shall not misuse the name of Yahweh your God, for Yahweh will not leave unpunished anyone who misuses his name.” (The New Jerusalem here gives quite a different insight than the more traditional take of “taking the Lord’s name in vain,” usually seen as colloquial cursing or words not uttered in polite company.)

In a broader context, we can remember that King David could be both passionate and brash, qualities that got him in deep doo-doo more than once, and thanks to Abigail, he even had to recant one of the curses he was about to impose on her husband and all the males in her extended household (I Samuel 25).

While we’re at it, we can also leap ahead to Jesus commanding his followers, “Love your enemies,” and to look for the plank in their own eyes when faulting the splinter in another’s.

Nowhere do I accept an argument that it can be OK to pray for evil.

~*~

Only hours later came the massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, the worst mass slaying by a solitary gunman in the nation’s history.

As I read a few headlines quoting people who were suggesting the sinfulness of the lifestyle was the reason for the tragedy, I once again found myself aghast. (When I reread the reports more carefully, this was not their argument; rather it turned against Islam and its followers. Still, I have no doubt the original line of anti-LGBT argument is circulating through many circles.)

What angered me in my reaction was the notion we see all too often of blaming the victims. If their lifestyle were to blame, how then do we align that with shootings in churches, schools, even movie theaters, as we’re seeing? You’re going to blame Amish children or their parents? Come on, now! Or is something else the cause? At the moment, the United States has more guns per capita than at any previous time in its history; firearms were relatively scarce, even on the frontier, as you’ll discover reading wills from the period.

Let me suggest another calculus:

The more guns, the more murders. Period.

~*~

I just wish that mass shootings weren’t becoming same-old, same-old news in America, with only the numbers and frequency rising. Or that the anger weren’t fueling hatred.

Maybe I need to head out to the garden to see what’s new there. Even picking weeds might be uplifting.

OVER THE YEARS OF SITTING SILENTLY WITH OTHERS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

When I first took up the practice of meditation, my goal was to get high – a natural, chemical-free experience, but a kind of escape all the same.

Moving to the ashram took that a step further. The goal became to transcend this mundane experience, entering into hours of unconscious ecstasy and returning to daily life with a heavenly vision.

Over the years, though, the practice has shifted. Yes, I still value those moments of natural high and clarity and oneness with the universe, but my bigger aim these days is to get grounded. To sit and move in that which is eternal, or my true nature. To be open to the divine around me. To be authentically loving and kind and …

The practice itself still means sitting with others in silence. That hasn’t changed!

REGARDING THE EXISTENCE OF SPIRITUAL REALITY

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

A materialistic outlook misses so much. As does an emphasis on concrete reality or causality.

How would you explain love, for starters? Much less admit passion? Why does music move us the way it does? And pain, be assured, is more than a neuro-chemical calculation. Why does social injustice to others spur our own anger? How could those who own all the creaturely comforts ever feel lonely?

The materialistic reaction to these, I suspect, prompts what we call addiction. Though it’s not always to alcohol, tobacco, illicit drugs, food, or even sex.

For liberation, a spiritual dimension will open. Or else.

NOT JUST A SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 6 Comments

Each week I go to the post office to get the Quaker meeting’s mail. A while back, I wound up going after regular counter hours (the lobby’s open longer) only to find a notice that we’d received a package too big to fit into our rental box. That meant a special trip early the next week to pick it up.

I assumed the mystery mailing would be a big envelope for our finance committee or maybe a box of books for the library or religious education.

No, it was smaller than that, from the apparently richly funded Liberty Counsel Project in Orlando, Florida. I opened it to find a DVD addressed to

PASTORS
&
PATRIOTS

and must admit to being offended.

It’s not that I’m opposed to defending “faith, freedom, and family,” as they put it, but I do take Ephesians 6 seriously. No carnal weapons, only those of the Spirit. Besides, I see no awareness of the impact of corporate employers and economic forces and even popular entertainment culture in the “systematic assault on our liberties” – meaning, if you read between the lines, an imposition of their standards upon the rest of the populace.

The mailing’s title phrase reminds me how much our understanding of the Bible teachings  (and I include Mennonites, Amish, and Brethren in this stream) differs from many other denominations. To me, “patriot” carries too much of the nationalist strain, denying what one Mennonite minister expresses simply as, “We believe Christ came for all people, not just Americans.” The patriot image also inevitably carries a musket, and no intention to “love thine enemy,” much less feed one. And then there’s Samuel Johnson’s observation that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. Ahem!

How much I’d prefer instead to see

PASTORS
&
PEACEMAKERS

as a recognition of a higher path and calling.

The subheading, “Silence is not an option!” is also troubling from my perspective, one that embraces silence as strength and speaks quietly in Truth. Shouting (as the exclamation point suggests) too often seeks to drown out all others’ … including the Holy One. Well, the group does keep talking about “doing battle,” but from everything I’ve read, Jesus takes up a cross, not a sword, and urges us to do the same.

Curiously, I was not the only one to first read that line as “Science is not an option” … but then, real scientists don’t shout, either. Still, in the overall scheme of their argument, this may be altogether fitting in their larger stand.

As I continue to reflect on the mailing, there’s no way of escaping many of the ways people and institutions keep trying to wrap God and Jesus (among others, depending on the place and its populace) in flags and partisan causes, rather than opening themselves to the Holy One’s larger mission.

It’s enough to have me thinking of a new bumper sticker:

LET’S SAVE JESUS!

Amen?

AWAITING THE WISDOM OF SERPENTS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

Failed Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson’s recent endorsement of Donald Trump is disturbing on several fronts.

First, Carson was seen as morally pure, if nothing else, up to this point. Maybe even as innocent as a dove, as Scripture puts it. Not so anymore. He’s cast his lot with, well, dare we say those of ungodly ways?

Second, though, is his reasoning, that Trump is saying one thing in public but something quite different in private.

(Huh? Which one can we trust? Carson believes the words in private, but coming from a con man, can you ever be sure you’re not being sold only what you want to hear? A private conversation can be awfully seductive.)

If this is the case – and Carson’s not the only one perceiving the public/private dichotomy – are Republican voters not being set up for another of the kind of candidacies that have been fueling their anger, the politicians who promise them what they want to hear and then do something quite the opposite in office as they do the bidding of their biggest campaign contributors? Is Trump cynically plying this into the biggest betrayal yet? Is his “telling it like it is” nothing more, as he knows, a big lie?

Of course, the alternative, his public pronouncements are equally terrifying.

Either way, this can’t have a happy ending, not with all the anger and hate that’s brewing.

ELDERS HOLD

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In Quaker practice, elders are what other denominations call bishops, except that in ours and other Anabaptists (Amish, Mennonite, Brethren), they’re found within the congregation, rather than over it. And elders can be young folks, if they’re so gifted.

Elders 1

For a free copy of my poetry chapbook, Elders Hold, click here.

ON THAT CONSERVATIVE LABEL

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

There were times I’d joke, “I’m the most conservative person around here,” back when I worked for what was often called an ultraconservative newspaper.

In some ways, I’m not that far from the Amish, at least in my sympathies, and you can’t get more conservative than that. Apart from my electronics gear and some original artwork, my household at the time was plainer than some of the old-order Mennonites I visited. I’m appalled by waste of any kind, and have been frugal by choice and necessity. You can guess what kind of cars I drive — it took me a long time to accept air conditioning over rolled-down windows. In the political sphere, I’m very much in favor of cutting government spending in the one place it’s truly bloated and out-of-control. (The part that doesn’t get audited.) In the realm of the mind, I love old-fashioned music (classical, opera, folk, jazz) and serious literature – the lofty visions of civilization I believe should be preserved for the future. Conservation and ecological awareness and sustainable economics and small-is-beautiful enterprises – don’t they all fit a true conservative outlook? And then there’s the garden and hiking and camping, all back to basics. My personal finances tend toward debt-free, apart from the mortgage and car payment. These days, many of my clothes come from yard sales. Gambling is out of the question. All that before we’d get to the radical Christian perspectives from the Bible (not legalistic mind you, but prophetic).

None of the candidates insisting they’re conservative seem to fit the daily description, even while insisting everyone conform to their political label. Long ago, I learned to look at actions more than words when it comes to trusting a person. Do they match up?

I just wish they’d call their strand something else, something more accurate. Or change their direction to fit the broader picture.

MINDING THE FAITHFUL LIGHT

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

Living in New England, I’ve become enamored with lighthouses. My fascination has nothing to do with the quaint impression many tourists carry but rather an awareness of the ways these now antiquated emblems of peril define our landscape. Along the water, if you can identify the light, you know where you are. Believe me, there are places that would otherwise be difficult.

The night ocean, as I’ve also discovered, can be anything but romantic. It’s a different world from the one visitors encounter during the day. Cold, windy, wet, threatening, even on many summer nights. Yes, on a balmy evening, especially with moonlight, it can be magical. More often, a night ocean can be downright spooky.

Along the dark coastline, the flash of light can help you place yourself in the scene. You triangulate your position using the lights. Each lighthouse beacon has an identifiable pattern – one flash every five seconds. Or ten. Or two flashes. Their colors may be unique in that place, too – blue, green, or red, instead of clear.

The most powerful beams reach out 20 miles or more over the water. Think about that – the light doesn’t scatter but holds together using a technology that predates the laser. How much we take for granted!

And to think, in the old days the illumination came from whale oil or similar fuels.

These days it can be a 110-volt bulb the size of your thumb.

The mechanism that shapes the beams is itself a remarkable piece of technology – the Fresnel lens. Developed by the French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel in 1823, it’s a large sculptured glass cone, where each overlapping leaf joins to focus the ray into one. The larger ones are the size of a child, with the light from inside. Remarkably, these are much thinner than a conventional lens for the job would be – thus allowing more light to pass through and the lens to be mounted in a rotating base. (One we’ve visited floated in a 500-pound pool of mercury.)

A section of a 4th order Fresnel lens is featured on the cover of my booklet.

Just as incredible can be the tales of the lighthouse keepers and their families – lonely work, often tedious, cold, staying awake through the night, put at risk by the storms. Nothing nostalgic there, being faithful.

As I look at the light and its tower, my mind leaps to the universal application of light as a metaphor of religion and spiritual experience. It’s especially prominent in the writings of Quakers (Society of Friends), where it frames an understanding of an alternative Christianity – one earlier generations never dared voice completely. Still, the Light led them in fresh directions – and can still do the same for us today as it reaches far, including into the human heart and mind.

Light 1~*~

For your own copy, click here.

AN ESSENTIAL ROLE

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Within a religious tradition – I’m tempted to say any religious tradition – there are wise, seasoned guides. The ones who know from their own faithful practice what temptations and struggles the aspirant will face and how to overcome them.

Known in the various traditions as guru, swami, roshi, rinpoche, abbot, mother superior, bishop, or simply elder, among others, the best of these are adept at listening and then asking the right question.

In doing so, they hold the individual and the spiritual teachings together. As I know from my ongoing Quaker practice and earlier training.

These poems pay homage to that role.

Elders 1~*~

For a free copy of the chapbook, click here.