Tag: Religion

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~*~

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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~*~

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BEYOND SUPERFLUITY AND VANITY

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In college, I went through a soul-searching crisis that questioned whether we could justify subsidizing symphony orchestras or opera companies or art museums and the like in light of the economic inequities in our nation and world. And then I noticed how much of an entertainment industry flowed through the ghetto and Third World, too. That is, everybody has art (even those old Quakers, in a few restricted forms) — it’s not necessarily about money but a need for expression. And all of the emotions and aspirations that go with it. As well as the big bucks, for the big jobs.

In my trials after college, I eventually found myself moving among Friends and then, in time, a few who had grown up under the old restrictions that banned fiction, theater, and even music. Harsh as the old discipline was (and I could have never lived under it), there was also a valid criticism – especially of the superfluous nature of so much of the artistic effort and the egotism so rampant in its ranks.

Maybe the early Friends saw, too, how much the arts were a function of the royal court and its fashions. Or a gilded church. Even the way arts were used to veil the upper crust from the populace and its labors. It turns outs the original Quakers were also picking up on a dialectic from the earliest days of the Christian church, one that contended acting arose in counterfeiting thoughts and actions, many of them of an evil nature.

Within the memory of Quakers, at least, the fine arts have come a long way from the 1650s, pro and con.

Still, proscribing many of the arts did focus Friends on other matters, including abolition and nonviolence. It channeled creative energy into mathematics and science, architecture and industry, poetry and journalism (“We Friends only read true things,” as one Quaker purportedly said, regarding a neighbor’s stack of novels). Go ahead, tally the other fields.

On the other hand, how much of our own focus is deflected by our apparent indulgence? Or how much of it is enriched and deepened?

So how do we make peace with that seemingly artless side of our legacy? Let me suggest we begin with a consideration of “only true things” in our practice. Back to the deeper expression, the part that reflects Truth that goes beyond quantifiable facts. We might even begin with questions of quality or justice or compassion. And then, as they say, the plot thickens.

ON THE TWELFTH DAY OF CHRISTMAS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Contrary to the proclamations of many retailers in their countdown to December 25, today is the Twelfth Day of Christmas.

In many parts of the world, January 6, also known as the Feast of the Epiphany or Three Kings Day, is the day for unwrapping gifts and similar Christmas celebration. In our circle, it was time for a party where all the kids who had made gingerbread houses early in December would reunite, bringing their gaily decorated structures to be festively … smashed to pieces! Initially, I was aghast at this custom before learning that it’s real purpose was to liberate all the candy and frosting that had been used to decorate the little dwellings. There was also a cake with three almonds hidden away to determine that year’s Three Kings. Alas, the kids are all grown and the next round hasn’t yet appeared.

Thanks to my wife and her traditions, I’m among those who advocate observing Advent as a way of toning down the holiday stress and hysteria. The commonplace letdown is replaced by a slow easing into winter. Since our Christmas tree wasn’t even cut down and brought indoors till Christmas Eve, we’ll leave it up and decorated until Groundhog Day or later. It brightens those chilly mornings.

So here’s to the gifts of the three Magi.

SECOND TAKE ON THAT BUMPER SLOGAN

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 5 Comments

I’ll admit I laughed when I saw the sticker:

WHEN RELIGION RULED THE WORLD
THEY CALLED IT THE DARK AGES

But then I started thinking of the ongoing reconsideration of the era itself, which suggests a far richer and more varied culture than we’ve admitted. Just look at the glorious cathedrals, for starters.

Add to that an awareness of the atheistic evils of the 20th century, beginning with Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and others. How many millions were murdered as their victims?

The sticker was on a tiny van parked at the trail head, and a bit further I came across its owner in a cloud of smoke.

Not to be judgmental, but I found myself wondering about his alternative. It looked pretty dark. As for me, I’ve seen enough to suggest religion – true religion – can release us from darkness as a people.

Let’s start with the civil rights movement, if you wish. But there are many others.

Think of religion as a sword that cuts both ways, depending on its user and that matter of love. And then ask, How else are we to aspire to a better world?

LEARNING FROM THE MONGOLIAN REINDEER HERDERS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 5 Comments

With my plunge into yoga discipline early in my adult years, I came to an appreciation of non-Western ways of perceiving the world around us. For someone rooted in scientific, empirical , Aristotelian logical thought, this came as a jolt. Or, as Gary Snyder has argued, every poet must have an appreciation of some archaic system of awareness, be it astrology, I Ching, tarot, palmistry, well, you get the picture. Just listen and look.

What I’ve come to appreciate is the alternative wisdom carried by Native American elders, gurus of all sorts, and the range of those labeled shamans, East and West.

And so, at last summer’s sessions of New England Yearly Meeting of Friends, I was intrigued by an opportunity to view a movie on Mongolian shamans. It’s a remarkable work, by a registered nurse who has worked for two decades with nomadic reindeer herders in Mongolia. Having earned their trust and respect, and realizing their own vulnerability in the face of global changes, the shamans allowed her to film their healing ceremonies.

As I viewed the documentary, I was struck by how much of what she observed leads into Tibetan Buddhism, too.

This is remarkable work. What is healing, anyway? From a Christian point of view, I can say healing can differ from a cure. So just what happens in a shaman ceremony? And where can Eastern and Western health care interact? How much of our physical state is a reflection of our emotional and spiritual conditions.

We might wonder, too, how the Nativity stories would appear from the world view of the  herders, how much their insights would inform us about shepherds and angels. Would a stable be that much different from the homes where the shamans enact their rites? As for the Magi? Or the heavenly wonder? Or even an oppressive political and economic presence? As the Gospel message insists, the world needs healing, no doubt about it.

To learn more of the reindeer herder perspective, go to Nomadicare.

REVISITING THE EARLY CHURCH, IN PART

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

While walking to Quaker Meeting one Sunday morning, I heard a familiar hymn from my childhood wafting from the open doors at St. Mary’s. About a block later, still humming along, I realized it was the Protestant hymn, “Faith of Our Fathers.”

Well, I thought it was a Protestant hymn, especially now that this music is as likely to be heard in American Catholic services as in the mainstream Protestant ones, which have been drifting toward the newer pop-influenced praise songs. (A musically literate friend, by the way, dubs the rocking chants the Rupture songs.)

Imagine my surprise in learning the hymn in question was written to commemorate the English Catholics martyred in the schism that created the Church of England!

Either way, the questions remain, Whose father? And which faith?

And, as a digression seen in genealogy, we can add that it’s often the mother’s faith that’s followed.

Still, any way you want to look at this, I think it reflects a widespread sense of an earlier “golden age” of faith. Early Quakers, for instance, insisted that they weren’t intent on reforming Christianity, but rather restoring it to a richness from “before the great darkness of apostasy that set upon the church,” something I’d deduced meant from before the first Nicene Council.

And, for balance, many later Quakers looked and still look to the upheavals of that first generation or two of the Society of Friends as a golden era of faithful devotion, something a closer reading of history will challenge.

Now that image of the early church has in turn been challenged in my reading of Richard E. Rubenstein’s When Jesus Became God, which focuses on the tribulations leading up to the Nicene Council and then flowing out of it.

The fact that both major sides in this confrontation were so violent, often as roving mobs, continues to rattle me, along with their allegiance to priests and bishops and the secular power those clergy already carried, even when Christianity itself was at odds with the Roman empire.

More subtle is the emerging schism between the Greek-speaking Christians of the eastern Mediterranean, with their complexity of thought and love of philosophical speculation, in contrast to the more action-oriented Latin-speaking Christians to the west, who lost much of the subtlety of the debate. Already, the tensions between the metropolitan bishops, or theoretically equal “popes,” of the eastern Mediterranean sea and Rome were mounting. If Rubenstein is right, the schism between the Eastern Orthodox churches and the Roman Catholics was taking shape even before the Nicene Council, no matter how later history records the tragic events.

All of this leaves me asking just when the church moved from synagogues and home-based circles into a priestly class abetted by passionate mobs in the streets.

As Rubenstein repeats, there came a point when Jews were no longer part of the discussion but were rather persecuted.

Now, let us consider. Could that be when “the dark night of apostasy” arose?

MAINTAINING A GROUP IDENTITY IN A WIDER COMMUNITY

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Seeing radical religion continued through an elder-and-student succession over the generations also sets it apart from the wider society. In practice, it also invokes a circle of learning, all working together.

Sometimes, as in monasteries, the circle receives support from the wider society. At other times, it is based in circles of families whose identity somehow stands apart from the wider society. Upholding those values requires passing the teachings and practices down through the families.

This has been the history of the Jewish people, for starters, the preservation of a unique vision of justice and philanthropy, a critical stance from the mainstream, the independent role of prophecy in which political and social rulers are placed under a more absolute authority, monotheism rather than polytheism.

We see it, too, to some extent in minority and ethnic communities as they attempt to maintain their unique identities and cultures.

The Amish, of course, stand out in America as they pursue this.

One of the complications is that it can lead to a relatively small gene pool when it comes to finding a spouse.

In the Church of the Brethren, the annual sessions, which alternated between the East Coast and the Midwest, were often followed by marriage announcements. In other words, it was the place to go if you were looking. The shared values heightened the chances for a successful union, we can suppose.

For Quakers, the boarding schools allowed for some wider mixing than one would find in the home village. Still, the lines could tangle in time, even with a strict ban on first-cousin marriages. I remember a conversation with one young couple who told me they were also third cousins or some such. Don’t think it was aunt and uncle, but it seemed that complicated at the time.

Maybe that’s why I wasn’t shocked by the complex, tangled family lines presented in Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex or even the incest. (As others have noted, the reason the incest taboo is so universal is simply that the practice has likewise been so universal.)

In the novel, persecution leads to brutal oppression and massacre. The generations are torn apart. And then, somehow, they continue. What shocks most is the violence and hatred and related moral failures of the more “civilized” ships that fail to come to the rescue of innocent victims. But that returns us to thoughts of the wider society, doesn’t it.

LIMITATIONS AS A FOCUSING LENS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The old strictures sought to keep Quakers focused on their religious calling. As Damon D. Hickey explains (The Southern Friend, Volume XXVII, Number 2, 2005) them, “This cross, this obedience that was called for, was in the broadest sense the death of self-will and obedience to the inward Christ. … Thus, worldly amusements, especially dancing, were a waste of precious time and unfit the mind for devotional exercises. Music was the devil’s instrument. The Lord called his people to leave the world’s friendships, vain fashions, … sinful amusements, which would include the movies, the theatre and the dance. Perhaps this part would not much apply to our readers, but … in nearly all the so-called Quaker Colleges and Preparatory Schools dancing is practiced.”

He continues to quote 1943-44 writings by North Carolina Wilburite Anderson M. Barker, who argued that by yielding to Christ the Ruler

He will rule out all hurtful reading, and preserve all from putting too much time upon the news, and other such readings, to the neglect of the Bible and other good books, which have to do with our eternal interests.

Then there’s the quotation, “We Quakers only read true things,” told by a boy returning three novels he’d borrowed from a neighbor. Or what is erroneously sometimes called a Quaker hymn from North Carolina, which is usually heard these days in folk music circles, “How Can I Keep From Singing?” Or the recorded ministers who dragged me to an apple barn in Ohio for my first contradance, only to hear the next morning an elderly friend wearing a bonnet rise and wag a finger into the air, warning us of “that evil amongst us known as folk dancing” – while others looked down, sheepishly, trying to suppress a grin.

From the beginning of the movement, we have Margaret Fell’s objection to the strictures of a “silly gospel” that took hold, all the same.

Or later Quakers who accepted things that bind and pinch, as long as they’re chosen.

Or the struggle to keep a vibrant faith and intellect, rather than a barren one.

Always, the tension, in Scripture, between one world, “And God saw that it was good,” and another, sometimes called the ways of the world or even the wayward world.

So the challenge is in keeping a focused life that avoids becoming simply barren.

Let me point to the proportions of the classic meetinghouses – elegance as simplicity – plus the emphasis on philanthropy. Poetry as prayer.

So here we are, with our love of movies, music, theater, visual arts – and a tad of guilt?

I hear an echo of my father, with his passion for big-band music and some of the old hymns, “It would be a lesser world without music.”

I think, too, of a couple who lived without electricity as part of a strict economy that allowed them to focus full-time on calling and playing for country dances.

So here we are, with a visitor asking after the rise of worship – “Are you the pastor?” Before I could say anything, a voice behind me: “He is, he just doesn’t know it.”

Look, I want everyone to sit on the facing bench (elders gallery) at least once a year. “Her turn – next, a child.” Facing each other across history.

~*~

Elders 1

For more on my poetry collection and other reflections, click here.

Light 1