Tag: Spirituality

Religion turns off readers, and yet …

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

That’s an advice given to authors, though it’s something I cannot avoid in my own novels and even poetry. Where else can we fully address the deepest values we hold?

Politics doesn’t seem to be working that way, for sure.

Is science fiction the best we can do for now when it comes to grappling with philosophical issues?

Still, I’ve dug in, ranging from the spirituality of yoga and Buddhism in Zen and Tibetan traditions to Quaker and Mennonite Christianity to Greek Orthodoxy as well as Indigenous strands.

I tackle this most directly in Light Seed Truth, an ebook that includes four earlier booklets investigating the revolutionary impact early Quakers found in applying the metaphors of Light, Seed, and Truth. To that I add examples of the power of metaphor in modern secular society, just for balance.

My goal is to raise readers’ awareness and sensitivity rather than convert anyway to a particular faith.

With religion, I want to hear how faith is experienced by different individuals, rather than what they speculate they should be experiencing.

The best mystics I’ve known have surprisingly practical and humorous.

~*~

You can find it and more in the digital platform of your choice at Smashwords, the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, Sony’s Kobo, and other fine ebook retailers. You can also ask your public library to obtain it.

Avoiding the G-word while examining faith

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

One of the things I’ve learned over the years is that turning any discussion of religion away from the doctrinaire formulas and instead to direct feelings and experiences can be quite refreshing, even inspiring.

Essentially, that boils down to shifting from “head” speculation and instead to personal encounters, “heart,” if you will. It moves the focus from the abstract to something more concrete.

In my book, Light Seed Truth, I try to take that a step further by avoiding the G-word altogether except in direct quotation. Part of that stems from a Jewish tradition that considers the name of the Holy One to be too sacred to be uttered, leading instead to substitutes that include the all-cap LORD in English translations, meaning The Name. And part stems from just how different our individual perceptions of the word can be, often defaulting into an old bearded male of some sort, despite other options. Even Adonai and Elohim carry different connotations, not that I go into them. Just be aware.

Besides, the G-word can too easily create a wall between those who “believe” and those who don’t.

Add to that the surveys that find atheists, overall, are more familiar with the Bible than are members of varying denominations, and I do want to include them in the discussion.

In my ebook, I do hope to encourage an appreciation for wonder itself in our lives.

Not a bad place to start, is it?

You can find the volume in the digital platform of your choice at Smashwords, the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, Sony’s Kobo, and other fine ebook retailers. You can also ask your public library to obtain it.

Could this be how it ends?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The time to go has come. It should have arrived several years earlier, rather than continuing in so much wheelchair loitering, trapped in a dream-state. Now the phone call, “I don’t expect him to live another week,” leads into packing and flight.

Unable to awaken, fully, from the bewildering disconnections. This is not the heart attack or car crash I had predicted. Nor the old age of graceful evaporation into a vanishing point of history. No one will say now, “He lost his mind,” but the new names change nothing. This terminal illness, in stages, until the patient no longer remembers how to eat or breathe. Perhaps, mercifully, an angel will break through the sterile chambers of medical enterprise, and another nature will take its course.

This flesh, shrinking to bone, rather than feather.

Message from another era

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Art Newlin rose in Meeting and told of driving two- or twelve-hitch rigs as a young man. Once he hitched two strawberry roans to a tongue, and while they’d worked a rig before, they’d always followed and never really felt the bit or anything. Nonetheless, they performed well, even backing on command. Only later did he realize the risk he’d taken. “They could’ve become runaways. They could’ve killed me.”

He credited faith for protecting him.

From Orpheus to eternity

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Contrary to widespread opinion, hell is air-conditioned, though prone to frequent power outages. This is crucial, according to the dream, since hades exists largely as something akin to cyberspace – that is, its endlessly interlocked and hushed interiors are covered with wall-to-wall carpeting and bathed in recessed fluorescent lighting, each room assigned to a particular array of deceased souls. There, they may be called up on large-screen, high-definition television screens, although addressing them is an experience akin to conversing with an advanced Alzheimer’s patient. Unlike most funeral homes, these room contain is little furniture and no flowers.

The experience of hell is not fire, as commonly thought, but rather that there’s nothing to do. The result is endless boredom, with only the memories of a single lifetime to reflect on. There’s no music, neither harp nor lyre, and singing never emerges from the throat. Here, insanity is not an option. Escape is impossible from the utter silence. This is solitary confinement amplified, without even periodic meals for variation. The basis of humanity is awareness. In damnation, the awareness is amplified – awareness of nothingness.

Visitors to this realm must be careful not to be separated when a power outage strikes. Do not go to the bathroom alone or attempt to double your productivity by working multiple rooms at the same time. Should two members of a family obtain an unequal knowledge of the deceased – information gleaned separately during their quest to better know the departed, but not yet shared with each other – they may be told they cannot leave hell, but must themselves join its ranks. This is, of course, a bald lie, but getting through its sales pitch is emotionally exhausting.

The power outages occur to reinforce the awareness of eternity. That is, they retain a rhythm of time within timelessness.

Dante, we should note, wrote of inferno before electricity became part of human life. Had it been, he may have placed the worst offenders in electrical chairs, with continuous executions. It’s possible that happens in the deepest recesses, contributing to the power outages. I report only on what I’ve seen, briefly. I remember nothing of our guide, other than his dark, single-color suit and highly polished shoes leading us down a set of three steps into our last room.

~*~

My, I don’t quite know now where that originated in my mind. But there it is, from some deep past.

Hello, readers!

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I’m excited to announce that my lineup of ebooks is available as part of a promotion on Smashwords for the month of July as part of their Annual Summer/Winter Sale. This is a chance to get my novels, poetry collections, and Quaker volumes, along with volumes from many other indy authors, at a discount so you can get right to reading. Some of mine are even free, as you’ll see.

The sale begins today, so save the link:
https://www.smashwords.com/shelves/promos/

Please share this promo with friends and family. You can even forward the news to the avid readers in your life.

Thank you for your help and support.

And happy summer reading!

Where else can we jointly examine our deepest values and ideals?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Allow me to restate my argument that religion is important, along with a confession that in too many ways, at too many times, its proponents have betrayed its radical promise and its progressive direction, whatever their professed faith.

At its best, religion gives us individually and collectively a place to examine our hopes, dreams, and possibilities of a healthier, more justful, and more harmonious world. In short, moral and ethical guidelines. It can also provide the necessary foundation of community for pursuing and nurturing that goal.

Some of the sharpest critics of its practice at worst are prophets found in the Bible.

To see some examples of how that worked within the Quaker movement, visit my blog, As Light Is Sown.

Applying the Tao of food

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The Chinese mystic Lao Tsu, the founder of Taoism, once said, or I think he did, that when it comes to food, we should eat what’s in season and from the region where we live.

Living in a so-called temperate climate, as I have, makes the adage difficult to maintain day to day through a full year, but as a guideline, I’ve appreciated its merits. Besides, it’s not a bad concept to keep in mind when sitting down to ponder seed catalogs and ordering, and then getting the mailings and planting the seeds under grow lights, as many folks do at this time of the year.

Here are some foods as I see them applying. Many but not all are items foodies pay dearly to obtain. Others are the basic reason for gardening – or is the practice itself the reason and any harvest arrives as one more blessing?

  1. Asparagus: I came to love this herald of spring when I was living in an apple orchard. The sprouts grew wild, free for the taking, and glutting out for the month they sprang forth was a delightful challenge. I repeated the celebration with a bed or two in Dover, and do miss those.
  2. Fiddleheads: These ferns are another herald of spring and well worth the expense. We’re hoping to raise our own, as well as asparagus, as we get better settled in here.
  3. Strawberries: Just in time for a few birthdays in June …  
  4. Crabmeat: It’s available if you know where to look, but Betty’s (the best) is available only from late spring to early autumn. Fresh is definitely the tastiest.
  5. Lobsters: Again, year-‘round, but the price does drop as the waters warm. Not that they’re ever cheap.
  6. Blueberries, raspberries, currants, and cranberries: Our county leads the nation in the harvest of wild, low-bush blueberries. Cranberries are a more recent addition at a few farms. Raspberries and currants are whatever we can keep from the deer.
  7. Summer garden abundance: lettuce, sugar snap peas, parsley, basil, cucumbers, tomatoes.
  8. Potatoes: The skins are so tender when fresh, and the insides haven’t yet turned starchy. My, they are sweet and creamy, definitely worth the excuse to head up to Aroostook County, where culls can be a bargain.
  9. Garlic and leeks: We do store these, so the “in season” doesn’t always apply. But they do brighten up what we’re eating through the winter months.
  10. Scallops: Speaking of winter, getting these straight from the fishing boats is heavenly. Those you buy at the market or in a restaurant aren’t quite the same.

Fresh cider and pick-your-own apples, peaches, and pears were things we enjoyed in Dover but haven’t yet located here in Way Downeast Maine. We’re lookin’, though.