Tag: Spirituality

How a new Quaker worship group came together

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

On the 12th, received two pieces of mail. The first, a list of local Friends and their addresses from University Meeting in Seattle.

The second, a letter from Swami urging me to stop procrastinating and return to the ashram.

A perplexing, even symbolic, clash but neither to be taken lightly. Especially a message from one’s guru stated directly and forcibly. Yet my guru-of-gurus, my heart, is not there. I am not ready to answer beck-and-call, to go back to a single trunk, to do no personal writing (or submissions). I have taken on responsibilities and opportunities here and perceive a need for Yoga/Quaker alternative to fundamentalist jangling, even before considering possibilities Native poets and others offer to my outlook.

Then yesterday received a challenging, derogatory rejection from Loon, as if to say, “Why are you bothering to write?”

24:X:76

Cold, damp, in a Binghamton mood / my aura dark gray, the one who has known God and is now out-of-light yet sitting in the morning, lifting me away …

And then a strange call from Tacoma Friends … me sounding phony yet happy to hear from another …

The 2nd Yakima Quaker gathering, my first, came after 17:XI … the phone number and directions for Tom and Carol’s …

Out Summitview to 74th, turn right up a grade with orchard on right, straight to end and take a left, West Lincoln going west a half-mile, starts to up over irrigation canal, a T go left, PRIVATE DRIVE DO NOT ENTER, around crush rock, past house under construction, the only house on left, go up to 2nd driveway, park on (?)

The Meeting here started worshipping in September, as if by my prayer … once a month, initially, with potluck and children …

21:XI:76 … got a letter from Tacoma Meeting and a call from Seattle Sunday night (arranging to be there).

Continuing 21:XI:76, first mention of Zenny and Bloom, who stayed over at our place … she was happy to have a shower, since they have neither a shower nor electricity yet on their blackberry farm … the house was uninhabited 11 years, in the woods with a wood-stove …

Kitty realized, from talking to them, how middle-class we’ve become — she’d been wondering (from her coworkers) if we were really strange

Extended talks with Zenny, and his Buddhist background, explored fronts of reconciliation between Yoga/Zen and Quaker traditions, “Eastern paths Quaker stumbled onto by fits and starts but without full knowledge of what it had discovered”

Also, how much wasted time in becoming convinced! How much unnecessary agony! How many fall away who could be helped by clearer direction?

So much bad information / misinformation is floating around out there!

Also raises matters of theatrics or colors rather than heart-essence. All around. (For Friends, the thees and thous or Quaker Oats figure.)

Already, I was glimpsing how the “Christ trap,” as I saw it, as Lord and Savior leads into “salvation” and “sinners” and the shallowness of “I’ve found it!” In this line of thinking, Friends were left vulnerable to the Methodist/Baptist pickings, depleting Quaker ranks.

Many seekers in Christian veins have been turned away by verbose non-answers (Fox: how they turn upon themselves), shallowness, lack of compassion, exploitation of man and nature (including persecution of others), and self-righteousness.

Yes, Jesus was divine. But what about others, too? “If I understand Friends correctly, all men are divine,” including women and children. (Today I would add that many turn their backs on it and despise it.)

Quaker faith is Christian and more. Sitting in silence returns us to our own hearts, our truest guru.

I do not mean book learning but rather the practice between a teacher and student, leading to an awareness within the student of his own God-nature, regardless of whether the term “God” enters into it (in many ways, the Quaker term “Light” is far better — no images of the Sunday School

[Today I’m surprised how closely these early observations develop into LightSeedTruth.]

29 nov, note another letter from Swami Lakshmy, for money (again) and questioning increasingly deeply …

Need for sacrifices, even though we are not making it financially — in fact, most of my pay steps from Fostoria have gone into rent (from $50 a month to $135 ti $275) and then into art supplies, food, and clothing … the car still the same …

4:XII:76 still bummed out by Swami’s (increasingly) harsh/strident letters, because I was already in the midst of a what-am-I-doing-here contemplation in the weeks before and been suffering root rot regarding writing — a dry, dryest of hearts: loss of laughter) …

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

If only I had owned a digital camera back then

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In revising my novels Nearly Canaan and Secret Side of Jaya, I created several lookbooks slash storyboards from images found online to sharpen details in some of the passages. It’s a great writer’s hack, by the way. You pick up bits you overlook at the scene.

I do wish I had my own photographs from the decade of journals we’re sampling, but often I had no camera, much less training in how to use anything except the simplest point-and-shoot.. I did, however, work with some of the best photojournalists and knew some outstanding fine arts photographers as well. It would have been wonderful to work with them on these posts, but time has intervened. Well, I still have memories, faded as many are. And with a camera, I wouldn’t have worked so devotedly on writing, no doubt. There’s only so much time in a day, even without a paying job to attend to.

For a sense of my visual encounters in the Pacific Northwest, take a look at these free PDF albums at my Thistle Finch editions site: Apple Crates, Glorious Mount Adams, Know Your Salmon, Reflecting the Coast, Unexpected Northwest, and Yakama Beadwork.

Not that I haven’t attempted to re-create that world in immortal words.

Pick one or pick these booklets for your armchair travel.

Welcome to another Rabbit Hole on the Internet.

Step by step somewhere into the wild

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Walking unrushed, meaning outdoors, in fresh air, releases something within me: I feel freer. When I begin, I’m like a slightly out-of-tune violin. I enter the woods full of thoughts, problems. The office is still with me, along with many worries. The wind may scurry up leaves, and I jump and then freeze, startled that I may have scared up a large animal of some sort. Or perhaps it’s be a twisting item that resembles a snake. Sometimes the sun stings my eyes. I adjust, from one system of time and timing to another.

As I fall into a rhythm, my mind clears. Poems begin.

In the hills or mountains or along the water, the world is always fresh: sunlight on branches or water.

 

Is a job search always a tribulation?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

After reviewing old clippings: “How close my writing has come to greatness … or to babble.”

At the RT, how much our photography carried us, especially considering how thin, until the end, our local coverage was – how important our Saturday front-page feature was in setting us apart and giving the staff a fairer schedule. .

Morning on long-distance calls to Bordner, Aldrich, Swaisgood, L. Nighswander.

Other fronts, Russ called back, said Larry Hale expected an “editor’s position” in several weeks … So much confusion, would I really want to go back there?

And the letter from Tacoma, $20,000 arts and entertainment, if they get the opening … What do I make of this? McClatchy upswing versus Gannett versus a fighting crew at the foot of Pike’s Peak?

 

So what about Colorado?

Imagination still reeling with thoughts of the Rockies. A place to be at peace? Low pay may be an incentive to freelance or grow.

The West may spur a novel. I’m too boxed in here.

On the brink of Colorado. A time of despair, anxiety, and waiting through the layoff.

Early May, Colorado Springs, round-trip ticket, $189.

On flight out: half of southern Indiana is forest. Region defined the sudden shift to farmland where the hills give way to flatness.

Contrasting smoothness of disked fields next to rougher plowed.

Strip-mine lakes outside Terre Haute.

~*~

Colorado Springs Sun: Don’t feel there’s much I can do here – to many “trained incompetencies,” exhausting and routine-work hours. B.B. [the editor who was to hire me] is leaving for Detroit after eight months here.

No local color in the paper. Newsroom looks and smells like RT. Computer (VDT) may help – question is, how much?

Upon seeing first UPI lead, realized how clear, precise, and simple my own style has become. Newspaper work may destroy that – at least, I feel it slipping away.

No sense of nuance, of grace, of individual voice – that is, true style – in this news writing, which exists as stilted and artificial as any literary style. It is divorced from the human voice and from American speech.

 

Another Far West facet

All along during my stint as a research associate, I was reading technical material on Indigenous artwork. Here are some sample entries from my Bloomington journaling.

 

 

 

 

~*~

Back from the Rockies

Indiana feels too thick, too green and wet in contrast. My sinuses are acting up again. I’m out-of-place in America.

Horoscope says a month or two before big change. We’ll see.

Looking at the cons: long hours (nine to ten hours a day), ending at 2 or 3 am; low pay, publisher interference, no investigative reporting, and someone named Dana …

I’m having to admit that not getting that job was a blessing. I would have been engulfed. The trip was, though, at my own expense, devouring half of our savings. 

 

Just where might I be heading?

Doubts about “where I want to go.” Should we make the plunge into NYC? Find an agent yet? (I’d rather wait two more years.) I feel the necessity of steady income, yet also feel “duty to yourself” calling. Turned down music critic position at Herald Telephone. Hard for me to say No to any job, even with low pay. ($10/review; negotiate on features, say $50/page.) Don’t think I really want newspaper work. That’s hard to admit.

Copy editors are a kind of janitor and paid accordingly. Hence, I should concentrate on power-writing. (Like advertising?)

My own failings coming home as nobody wants to hire me, not yet, free me from the damn suspense/suspension with half of our goods packed in crates and warping corrugated boxes, the general feelings of inutility accented by this ungodly heat and humidity

Late June, returned yesterday from two days [of housesitting] at Dietz’ … and found a letter waiting from Yakima. Very exciting prospect, work split between copy editing and general assignment reporting. A nice balance, good pay, exactly where I’d like to be – the dry side of the mountains. And Kat’s very excited. Hope everything works out. (Received a formal job application to fill out and return.) Getting anxious to get the address situation straightened out and new pieces into the mail. …

Wherever we wind up, I’d like to publish a few chapbooks of my work, for free distribution to friends and critics (and some for sale). Would also like to get a typist to do final drafts of potential freelance pieces. Will need to arrange more office-type space … we need Kat’s extra income …

Already, we’re anticipating spending that extra income … new car, furniture (that’s her idea), new clothes, bigger place, airfares …

A call today from Center for Law and Poverty in Indianapolis, a job I’m not too crazy about but one that might be the springboard for the southern Indiana magazine/tabloid I’ve been pondering.

Other calls to/from Yakima, which sounds better and better but less and less likely, like an impossible dream.

Nancy Neubert saying Yakima is a very nice, good place: agricultural, wealthy, conservative, hydroelectric cheap electricity, good produce abundant and cheap, Spanish and English …

The m.e., there since March, Steve Kent, from Albany, New York, thus appreciated my Binghamton angle. A good phone conversation.

Located Snyder’s lookout towers on the map, though Sourdough was not shown. Some of the other sites he relates, though, were.

Spicer: “West Coast is something nobody with sense would understand.”

Good place to end this journal. 10:20 pm, night of new moon, unseen through the haze

~*~

From Spiralbound Hoosier, with commentary from now.

 

Aftermath of the layoff: anxiety and rest

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I have had the leisure of a year in these woods – some weeks, every day – to watch and learn and assume their changes. Meaning, I’m turning.

 My insecurity over income – as for antiques as a line, seems akin to Swami Rudi and his disciple (the routes not taken!) …

At least I was on unemployment compensation.

The dripping wet richness of these soils.

Meeting, with all the people I wanted to get to know better.

Electrical outage: Can’t write, can’t cook, TV won’t work, music’s silent, too dark to read. Our life has come to this?

Horses can tear up trails, too.

~*~

We lived on Leonard Springs Road, named for a ravine and at the time hidden cave beyond our home. My frequent explorations inspired a set of poems, which can be found at my Thistle Finch blog. The terrain, which included the then breached city water reservoir, has now become a public park, as you”ll find in a photo album at Thistle Finch. The woods had more than its share of trash at the time.

 

 

Images by Vmenkov via Wikimedia Commons.

~*~

Don’t remember this, must have been a Mtg picnic at the Dietz’:

Crazy sunfish, or some other board with two sails, won’t steer right, won’t steer left, the wind’s unsteady, shifting, blowing us over again and again.

We can’t go back, keep going in circles.

Two hours in May, cold lake water, chilled to bone before we run ashore on the dam.

Bill comes out in his outboard boat to tow us back.

A hot shower, group hug, and two cups of coffee couldn’t warm us from that.

Half of our goods packed, not knowing whether we’ll be here or faraway – no way to plan.

Kat upset (but trying not to show it) because her husband is a bum (she keeps wanting to see me working around the house, but I feel cramped in/crammed in) … I’m wondering how inert a human can be … she’s not working at her art, either …

 A break in the 90-degree weather: “bearable, even pleasant like Upstate bright sunlight amid small clouds.

~*~

From Spiralbound Hoosier, with commentary from now.

Workshop, part two …

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Plain sheet, “Session w. EO: 16 December 75”

Qs about my future direction: poetry/fiction or social science, technical editor? (Would like to pull them all together, in manner, say, of Norman Mailer.) We need to think these through.

If top-notch soc sci editor, need further methodological/statistical expertise (Tuftde’s reader?) Also, the Psychological Assn. stylebook. NEED TO EXAMINE TABLES IN OUR OWN MATERIAL. That means going beyond the text side of the work.

How does a niche writer/editor survive outside New York City/Washington? How does one get out of the newspaper game, with its dead end in the future?

Need to invest time in reflection, in serious review, in gestation of a piece (and of myself).

Schedule normal [regular] half-hour/week session with EO, putting more concerns on paper, increasing the communication between us.

With tables, I need to verbalize what’s happening: create sentences summarizing the data: check the data with the text. Haven’t been doing that.

Revisiting this, I cringe. The prophecy is on the wall.

~*~

A break, a vacation – chance to think, breathe, reflect – pushing too long, with too little success …

Notes of struggles at work, in my own literary efforts, and at home …

Pages of attempting to come to grips with editing statistics …

Induction / Deduction
Specific / general
To general / to specific (syllogism)

Probability soups, judgment soups, convenience soups, etc.

Frequency or distribution of measures: straight tables, numerical &/or percentage, as I noted.

~*~

3 feb 76: Valve blown on Omkara; engine will be torn down to see how bad the damage is. Long conversation with EO and RBP today. Feel they are half pleased, half unhappy with my work. Very frustrating. Job very demanding but feel most of the time I’m working in a vacuum. RBP wants more incision on statistical recitation, more devotion (upset at Thanksgiving trip away), more initiative (finding outlets and ways of repackaging our materials). EO needs more time to write, as does RBP. Send them memos, rather than speaking, unless in a meeting.

 Graduate Library, all the floor indication lights/numbers on the elevators worked today,

Vol. 40, blue IU, 5:III:76, opens: Layoff.

Portentous day

Kat gone to Louisville (w/ classmates?).

Meeting w/ EO & RBP expecting the worst on “the newsletter and the future” turned out to be two-months’ notice. “The time has come to realize our paths are diverging and to part while it’s still cordial.”

EO saw our different directions, the increasing math editing to come, plus the budget delays.

Pflum: “They always do it so gently.”

Looking at options for future, and whether Kat could complete her degree in a year. Freelance editing? “The insecurity scares me.” Among the scenarios I put on the plate: go to Sycamore, clean up Mom’s old place next door, learn antiques for a year or two …

“I feel abandoned and unbelievably alone. Haven’t felt this way since meeting Kat … Noz is lonely and trying to bat this pen”

I need to recapture and regenerate the joy of life, the simple contagious power to live …

WILD-ness and clarity.

 What an emotional stress the Workshop has been – the anxieties, deadlines missed, wild-goose chases; their anticipation of 60-hour weeks (yet also quality and originality), the deadening meetings and academic facades.

I sense one principal has never suffered. He lacks that depth, or didn’t learn from if he did, or else formed a shell.

These days I wonder how much the movement toward quantification in political science (statistics rather than theory or philosophy or psychology even) has led to the conundrum today: surveys and strategies for votes – an absence of moral values, convictions, or purpose.

~*~

From Spiralbound Hoosier, with commentary from now.

Among unspoken initiations along the Way, befitting an Ashram Journal  

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

When we sit silently in worship, clouds that separate us may evaporate, allowing us closer to oneness, our own fullness, which is the essence of God.

The closer we get to Truth, the more tolerant and understanding we become of others. There can be no lasting revolution in the world until we’ve changed ourselves, as in reborn or liberated or enlightened, even self-realized.

 

There were a few continuing trips to ashram

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I have never meditated that it wasn’t productive, even when there were no thoughts.

At times I see yoga [or real religion] as a way of preparing for death; at others, I see it as a way of intensifying life. It is one thing to acknowledge something exists or occurs but quite another to embrace it. For the unenlightened, their glance is fleeting: as soon as they’ve identified the object or movement by name, they bounce on to something else. The yogi or artist or philosopher, for that matter, looks beyond the surface and into the structure and ways it fits into the whole of the scene. It’s looking with in a sense of oneness, blending the unity and changing faces of nature. This occurs very deep in the heart, or what the Psalms call soul.

Leaving the ashram can bring a period of “awari” and “subari,” as the Japanese put it – poverty and solitude – to test and strengthen the previous lessons with the master.

Inner strength is more than an idea or a philosophy: it is an exercise, an ongoing practice. When the routine falls away, how does one keep the core strong?

Sometime in March, Kat and I visited the Poconos ashram. We helped prepare for a Seder. Here, a room half-full of young adults raised Christian in a center ostensibly teaching a strand of Hindu faith, inviting a broader Jewish community to the celebration. One Spirit! A concept of communion taking a fresh depth and joy. This was also Holy Week, and the Seder was on Maundy Thursday.

When I returned to the ashram on another visit, I heard, “The realizations have been very heavy” or “We’ve been learning a great deal.” Same thing, over and over. My insight? What is learned is not as important as the experience of learning, or perhaps relearning. Human life is nothing more than consciousness.

In contrast, so much of life in the secular world reduces and dulls one’s existence. Routine, noise, responsibilities, focus on products deflect us.

The new meditation room is gorgeous and airy, like a cloud, rich big windows, spacious exercise mats, cherry wood paneling left unoiled … Swami’s baby grand piano amid plants in the alcove … a seemingly “homemade” Dharma Hall.

Kat fasted three days

What I also realized was that moving back to the ashram with Kat in tow was not a possibility.

~*~

From Spiralbound Hoosier, with commentary from now.

 

Some interactions with other poets …

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

D.W., envious of my electric typewriter.

Me, envious of the garage he converted into a large writing studio.

Poetry workshop, as we called it.

I was asked to read at the end of the evening – just as I was about to leave, actually. So I shared three pieces.

“Your poetry is very rich. It’s almost so rich you don’t know what to do with your wealth,” one person said to me afterward.

Pflum was very pleased. “You’ve improved a lot in the past year.” He enjoyed the suggestion, the room for the reader’s imagination. I told him I had a lot of help.

Earlier, I had sensed in his reading a real or whole person, despite his disclaimers.

A poetry journal I noted had a “Zen mood.”

Rejection 21:I:76: “… your poems lack vitality, are surface, not involved.”

Was surprised by our featured reader, who had contributed so little to the group and usually left immediately after reading. … She invited her ex-husband to come and hear her read of lovers and her abortion.

Am thinking about a style that requires a new turn in each line, so that the poem move forward by mosaic rather than each line alone

Pflum and Wade arguing over whether to discuss a work-in-progress or wait till it’s done.

In Pfingston’s poems, every word is right, exactly on target. His deceptive clarity is so much harder to achieve than is apparent, so that some might dismiss these as “so what.” Not me.

David Halpern on poets under 40: “There is no poet-public. Name a well-known living poet. Few people could.”

~*~

You never know where you’ll find inspiration:

 

~*~

From Spiralbound Hoosier, with commentary from now.