Tag: Spirituality

Suicides along my trail

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I’m reflecting on the list – a best friend ever, a lover who was more passionate about me than I was of her, a woman I dated once and then backed off, the leading anthrax researcher who stayed with us for a weekend or week, the PhD naturalist from my high school (and brother of my first real girlfriend), even my ex- fiancée’s scarred wrists. Add to that the LSD physicist attending our Quaker Meeting or the French-Canadian Catholic up the road in Gonic, and the list of suicides along my life pathway has more examples than I would have expected even without getting into the many people I’ve known along the way but who vanished after.

It’s a dark side that’s usually overlooked but probably more common than anyone admits.

More and more my curiosity involves the question of life itself rather than matters after death.

I’m taking one mystery at a time, as it happens.

Remembering another dear Friend

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I’ve previously posted on the Quaker tradition of recording memorial minutes for “public Friends,” meaning those whose service extended beyond their local Meeting.

I have even posted some of those as examples.

As I’ve noted, a memorial minute differs from either an obituary or a eulogy. Its intent is to recognize ways the Divine has found service through the individual’s faithfulness.

After the minute is approved by the local Meeting, it is forwarded to the Quarterly Meeting, essentially a district of neighboring Quakers, and once endorsed there, sent on to the Yearly Meeting, where it may be included in a collection of similar minutes.

Here’s the draft for Charlotte Fardelmann, 1928-2023.

~*~

Deeply grounded in her faith of God and angels, Charlotte Fardelmann heeded spiritual nudges that bubbled up within her, an inner life we glimpsed in her warm smile and sparkling eyes, especially when accompanied by lively hand motions as she voiced a holy leading.

Many fondly remember her hospitality at her pink home on Little Harbor in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the scene of Meeting picnics, multiday silence retreats, or more mundane committee deliberations. From childhood on, she loved the water and wordlessly shared with us her sense of its wonder and renewal.

A quiet, gentle, self-effacing manner accompanied her nurturing presence amidst us, opening her to listen closely and actively in private conversations.

Raised in a family with two brothers in Minneapolis that enjoyed sailing in international waters, Charlotte experienced the privileges and discomforts of wealth. She did, for instance, sail her father’s 32-foot sloop around the Baltic Sea and later around Greece.

In college, Charlotte underwent a religious awakening, along with service in inner city neighborhoods of major cities, to the consternation of her agnostic father. She also took a spring break on Nantucket Island, where she was part of a circle from Wellesley who met a group of men from Yale who had access to a sailboat. With its occupancy limited, they decided to draw straws on who could go, and Charlotte’s led to Dale Fardelmann, who shared a sailing passion.

Charlotte and Dale married and had four children in Hanover, New Hampshire, while he served his medical residency. By the time they moved to Portsmouth, where he established a urology practice, she was worshipping as an Episcopalian, a faith shared with her mother-in-law.

Her family had experienced mental illness and other dark struggles, which she would continue to address.

In the adversity of divorce, she discovered an opportunity to be something more than a devoted mother and a supportive housewife. With her four children raised and headed in separate directions, she found liberation to pursue new interests, including professional photography and writing that led to her published books “Islands Down East: A Visitor’s Guide”; “Illuminations: Holding Our Life Stories Up to the Light”; “Sink Down to the Seed”; “Nudged by the Spirit: Stories of People Responding to the Still, Small Voice, of God”; and “Create in Me a Clean Heart.” Her freelancing appearances included a Boston Globe story that fronted its Sunday travel section, “Mom, You’re Not Hiking That Alone, Are You,” her account of backpacking the New Hampshire Presidential Range of mountains solo.

In the midst of the Vietnam conflict, she searched for a faith community that pursued peace rather than military programs and that functioned free of an implicit patriarchy. Peace and women’s rights mattered deeply to her. Ultimately, that brought her to Dover Friends Meeting.

A decade later, she undertook a nine-month residency at Pendle Hill, a Quaker retreat and studies center near Philadelphia, to deepen her spiritual focus. It was a life-changing experience. After returning to Portsmouth, though she was reluctant to appear as a public speaker, she created a photographic slide show about the center and presented it to Quakers around New England. That step opened other opportunities for her to share her spiritual insights, in addition to classes she taught at Pendle Hill itself. She also established ongoing close relationships of mutual spiritual support, including a prayer partner she spoke monthly for forty years. In her prayers, her style was boldly specific.

She served Dover Friends Meeting as a sensitive presiding clerk, as well as through many other positions, including its longstanding representative to the Ministry and Counsel committee of New England Yearly Meeting. She presented many workshops during its annual sessions over the years.

One of her practices was to set aside a day each week to listen to God. She nurtured a childlike delight in life, likely a response to the dark night journey of the soul she also knew.

A central discipline was journaling, often involving black ink or color sketching rather than words, as well as a midday gathering at Dover where all were free to similarly engage and share with the others, if so moved.

Add to that her delight in music, including participation in a 200-member women’s chorus in Portsmouth, Voices of the Heart.

Frugal and self-effacing, her one indulgence was travel, which included participation in Servas, a program that had her staying in homes around the world in exchange for welcoming those families to her home in Portsmouth. Other travel connections included her experiencing the Eastern Orthodox midnight celebration of Easter in the then Soviet Union, with its congregational exclamations, “He is risen! Truly, He is risen!,” a resonance that moved her deeply. She also went to Central America as a witness for peace during the Iran-Contra conflict, putting herself at physical risk, and to Hiroshima, Japan, among her other appearances on behalf of global peace. Additional trips took her to Friends in Cuba and Kenya, prompting Dover Friends to support a unique AIDS orphan.

She was not immune to tragedy and endured the loss of a beloved grandson and then, in roughly a year-and-a-half span, the deaths of both of her daughters and a cherished son-in-law.

The fortune she inherited came with her father’s instruction, “Keep it in the family,” meaning its principal, placing it in tension with many needs she saw in the world around her. With counsel from several other Friends from similar backgrounds, Charlotte found resolution in redefining family itself and, with the approval of her brothers and children, established the Lyman Fund to assist individuals and groups in following their unique spiritual leadings by helping them overcome financial obstacles in taking their next step. Carrying her maiden name, the fund had granted more than a million dollars to some 800 recipients by the time of her passing and is poised to continue its mission.

Last chance!

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to get back in shape – or even simply to get more physically fit, period – the characters in my novel Yoga Bootcamp will stand by you as inspiration. Or, as I’ve been confessing of late, as a reminder of what 50 years of neglect can do to you. (Some of the easiest hatha yoga moves are beyond my ability these days, and that’s before getting to my sense of balance. I don’t think I’ll get around to writing that story, though.)

Yoga Bootcamp tells of a back-to-the-earth funky farm not far from the Big Apple and covers a day in the life of its founder and followers as they seek to ride a natural high without tripping over themselves. As they discover, yoga is about much more than just standing on your head.

The humorous and insightful ebook is one of five I’m offering to you FREE as part of Smashword’s annual end-of-the-year sale, which ends tomorrow.

As they say, Act soon!

Get your copy now, in the platform of your choice, and then celebrate.

For details, go to the book at Smashwords.com.

Come on in to Big Pumpkin’s ashram

You don’t have to stand on your head for this bliss

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Some folks actually came to the ashram for their holiday breaks, and now through these pages, you can, too – for free. If you think this means getting away from it all, though, you’re in for a surprise. The real intent is to pare away to essential truths of life and the universe.

The answers, surprisingly, are often more down-to-earth than any mystical platitudes you were expecting.

In my novel Yoga Bootcamp, chaos and humor are essential components of their spiritual quests. The guru is better known as Elvis or Big Pumpkin than by the long Sanskrit formal name he officially goes by. As for tradition? Theirs is essentially American maverick, centered in the hills not far from Gotham.

This may even come as a refreshing turn after all of the frantic ho-ho-ho rushing this time of year.

The ebook is one of five novels I’m making available to you for free during Smashword’s annual end-of-the-year sale. Think of it as my Christmas present to you. It’s available in the digital platform of your choosing.

You may even want a stick of incense when you sit down to read it.

Hari Om Tat Sat and all of that, then. Namaste!

For details, go to the book at Smashwords.com.

Come on in to Big Pumpkin’s ashram

Retrofitting Jaya into the ashram led to a chain reaction

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I had expected that the deep revisions to my previously published novels in reaction to the appearance What’s Left would apply only to the ones related to Cassia’s father.

I was wrong, once again. I blame Cassia, by the way.

She had led me to present a more unified set of hippie novels and bring them more into the present. Now she wanted me to do something similar to my remaining works.

I could connect two more books through the character of Jaya. She was the center of my book that leads into the Pacific Northwest. By shifting her spiritual identity from Sufi to yogi, I could then weave her into the yoga novel, in effect creating a two-part series.

How would that work?

It all depended, I sensed, on the yoga novel. She would have to become one of the eight resident followers of the guru.

The obvious one, Swami’s right-hand disciple, was male. That shift would throw off the balance of having half of the followers being male and the other half, female. In addition, the interaction with Jaya and the guru, a female, would lack a basic tension.

Having Swami be a woman, as mine was, had presented a hurdle for many of my potential readers. The ashram was rogue enough as it was.

The gender change allowed for a more credible – and colorful – character. It also had a ripple effect through the rest of the cast.

In the end, the book had a new title and some renamed and otherwise altered characters while now leading organically into a series. Just where does she go when she leaves the ashram? You got it.

~*~

Finding the artwork that now graces the cover was a boost. Maybe it even prompted another sweep through the story to enhance the humor.

Much had happened in the yoga world in the time since I drafted the story and eventually published it. Many of the new religion organizations in America – and I’ll include yoga, despite the usual protests – had suffered serious scandals, either monetary or sexual. At least I had avoided that by keeping my story to a single day.

Bit by bit, I learned some of what happened after I had moved on. A chance encounter in a central Pennsylvania diner with one of the figures, who was waitressing on a very busy day, revealed one disturbing schism. Later, through the Internet, I heard from several key players from my residency and learned I hadn’t been ostracized, after all, but the operation had undergone a serious upheaval shortly before Swami’s death. And then I had some long phone calls with the figure who had been in the role Jaya subsumed in the revised novel. The relationship wasn’t exactly as I had assumed – or anyone else, as far as I can see. On top of that, a former girlfriend finally told me of her mistreatment when she visited. There were other dark sides I hadn’t suspected.

Repeatedly, they agreed that I was at the ashram during its glorious apogee. I missed later conflicts that erupted when the locals decided the place was a cult or events I see as fatal changes in direction, especially in terms of guru worship.

~*~

With the focus on Jaya and what she gained from her experiences on the yoga farm, I’m spared from going into an expose of a marginal spiritual community. For me, the time was a major turning point in my life, leading me to the Society of Friends, or Quakers, which to my surprise had been the faith of my ancestors.

I still believe as a nation, we could be doing much, much better. Something more like what I see in the Biblical Kingdom of God on earth.

Yoga had been a stretch for me. My preference would have been for Zen Buddhist, had a teacher appeared. Instead, this American woman in a pink jump suit came across my path. It still seems surreal.  In my hippie novels, it’s Tibetan Buddhist.

A good friend who had been an Episcopal nun had her own insights on monastic life, with many overlaps to what I had experienced. I’ve long been fascinated by American Shakers, too. More recently I’ve added Greek Orthodox examples and mysticism to the mix. And, curiously, my most “hippie” identity or fullness came during those years on the yoga farm.

There are lessons I’ve carried through life, but I should also acknowledge potentially damaging instances, including things that came up in therapy years later. My denial of emotions, especially.

Novels about yoga are surprisingly few. As touchstones for his book, I’ll instead cite non-fiction: Anagarika Govinda’s The Way of the White Clouds, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, collected writings of Swami Sivananda. Ram Dass’ Be Here Now, and stray bits by and about Murshid Samuel Lewis, and Kathleen Norris’ Cloister Walk, for a Christian parallel. Surprisingly, Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha left me cold.

 

Worshiping in another Quaker Meeting

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Vassalboro,
how many times I’ve driven an hour to worship,
even my own home Meeting

sunflowers outside the window
a gray morning
ten of us, now eleven

so many of the surnames from Dover
arrived here and abouts

edgewalkers
part of a message

the Zoom view of the Meeting room
shows only me
surrounded by white walls

“green walling,” a term I just learned
no, a green washing
by conniving corporations

a carpenter tells me of working on the renovations
of the schooner American Eagle

all new to me
but not for long

A multiparty political system is predicated on a loyal opposition

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Its origin, I’ve heard, arose in the Quaker peace testimony of 1662, with its refusal to swear oaths. Before that, political factions were supported by their own armies. The Quakers, or Society of Friends, promised to hold firm to their beliefs and yet not coerce others to their stand. Persuasion was another matter altogether. And William Penn, in the colony of Pennsylvania in the years we knew it as the Holy Experiment, insisted on having at least two candidates for every public office.

The Quakers not only refused to bear arms but also conducted their faith community business by consensus, without ever taking a vote. Minority opinions were respected, often leading to a third solution superior to the original options. This was not, do note, a compromise, seen as the lower common denominator, but rather something superior.

Theologically speaking, we sensed that Christ had a better answer for us, if we would only listen. “Mind the Light,” as we said.

Flash ahead to today’s death grip in the United States, where one party has steadfastly stood to obstruct anything proposed by an administration other than theirs. President Obama learned the hard way that they wouldn’t participate in crafting a third way. And he faced their open disrespect, which continued during President Biden’s term. Just look at the F— Biden flags for confirmation. Or their chants of “Lock her up,” regarding T-guy’s first opponent. Not that they would acknowledge the same for their guy, for far better documented reasons.

The Don Old, as we’ve seen, has significantly worsened the conflict and is threatening to imprison those who don’t agree with him.

The conundrum with a democracy could rapidly pivot on what to do with a disloyal opposition.

This could get very ugly, indeed. Before and after the national election.

Now, for standing on my head

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I’m not sure when or where I began drafting my yoga novel or where, but I know the bones were in place before I began my self-declared sabbatical in 1986-87. Perhaps it was during my month of unemployment before landing in Baltimore. For one thing, I had revisited the ashram in the year before my big writing spree and perhaps even driven past it the previous year. I was hoping to get some answers for questions regarding my manuscript must say the encounter was unsettling. I wasn’t even allowed inside the center, and the woman who had taken over as guru declared herself too busy to say hi. A deputy was dispatched for that, with tea, while I sat beside Swami’s grave.

Well, that was a perk of being “on the road” as a newspaper features salesman, otherwise known as “field representative.” I even got my name in brochures and full-color ads in the industry magazine Editor & Publisher.

My ashram residency a dozen or so years earlier had been life-changing, but the connection broke completely when I relocated to the Pacific Northwest in 1976. Swami had demanded a large chunk of my meagre salary, and besides, I was newly married with a wife in college. The upshot, quite simply, was that I felt ostracized. I was certainly shunned it that social call. In the bigger picture, the yoga movement itself had gone into eclipse and my own spiritual journey had resettled in the Quaker vein.

Still, the yoga life in America was a largely untold story, even if it had put “karma” and “om” into the American vocabulary and mindset.

When I began drafting the book, I had no idea where everyone had scattered and had no way of contacting them. I mean, if I was ostracized, what was the point of contacting the headquarters? Did I even know that Swami had died? Perhaps, though some communication I had with someone who had been a regular guest and went from being a rock-band manager to a Messianic Christian comedian. I managed to make that connection through a wire-service news story I came across before my leap to Baltimore. So now I’m thinking the yoga novel originated even earlier than I’d thought. (I really do need to sit down with my journals for a very deep dive.)

I do see that some of the outtakes from Subway Hitchhikers were woven into what became my second published book, Adventures on a Yoga Farm, which came out as pioneering PDF ebook from PulpBits.com in 2005.

~*~

What do you do with a rogue outfit like ours? I definitely wanted to avoid the sticky sweet guru worship I’d seen in other books, and I definitely wanted to avoid a scandal-mongering expose, though I would later find that nearly all of the religious imports from Asia would face financial or sexual embarrassment. Michael Downing’s 2002 Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center would cover that reality in one of the more prominent and, up till then, respectable organizations.

When I sat down to write my novel, I decided to stick to one day in the community’s life. I created a composite of eight young yogis and their woman swami guru. Each resident student represented a different stage of development. It also involved compressing the two years of my experience into a single day. I’m guessing the one-day focus reflected the Greek theater ideal.

And I do stand by my original structure of eight disciples within a single day.

The book was republished via Smashwords in 2013, this time with more popular platform choices than PDF. My, have times changed.

What I really wanted, I think, was my own version of Be Here Now.

I don’t think I could have adequately presented the inner turmoil of a charismatic leader without a college degree now having a tiger by the tail much less uncovered all that got covered up in the frenzy.

Would anyone really care?

Here’s your chance to get my newest book for free

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

It’s not just a whole different way of looking at religion. It’s about intense life experiences and the ways we talk about them, hoping someone else will understand.

Quite simply, I believe everyone has a “religion,” even atheists. Just listen to ardent sports fans for examples from the secular side of the equation.

My book embraces that universal situation and then turns to the unique spirituality of early Quakers and the ways they used metaphor to guide each other in a revolutionary social transformation. Many of their advances you take for granted, no matter your labels.

Do take a look at my ebook Light Seed Truth at Smashwords.com during its annual July sales sweep. What do you have to lose? Remember, it’s free.