Tag: Thoughts

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.

Is anyone reflecting you or those you know?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Look in the public media around you and tell me where you see your life presented. Is there anywhere in TV shows, movies, advertising, magazines, newspapers, or novels that reflects life as you know it? Beyond that, is there anywhere that voices your aspirations and values? You know, where you want to be?

Writing this is a painful admission, but true. Somehow, though, I don’t picture myself in a typical suburban strip mall, either, no matter how often I’ve wound up there or been stuck in associated traffic.

What I do see, though, points to the reality that so much of what’s being presented and ingested is an escape from the daily grind. I don’t intend this as a judgmental stand, though I would counter it with the spiritual approach of trying to live in harmony with life as we encounter it in a specific place. Still, what I’m seeing generally rings hollow.

I’d issue a call for revolt but doubt that anyone would follow. Oh, well.

My, I didn’t expect to be hitting at the psychological malaise in the national soul, definitely not this quickly, but here we are. Just don’t hand me a cape and expect me to save anyone. I’m just a lowly writer, remember? Well, you could hand me a very dry martini (gin with an olive), but that would be my own favorite escape.

Now, to return more or less to the topic.

During my stint as a field representative for a major media syndicate, I called on newspaper editors in communities across 14 states. What struck me was how little sense their papers gave me of a unique local identity. There was rarely a distinctive voice in the generic mix. Maybe I’ll wax on some outstanding exceptions as a future post. I did try, mind you, to accomplish some of that where I was as an editor.

~*~

When I entered the workaday world, it was in the height of the hippie explosion, as well as the Vietnam quagmire and the first moonwalk and civil rights and, well, you could say generally everything was in flux and has remained so.

The pace of daily journalism, however, left me feeling there was so much change in the works that we were overlooking, especially in any in-depth way. For me, my impressions became fodder for fiction, which would allow me some leeway and definitely free me from footnotes and fact-checkers, not that I’ve veered from relating what I witnessed or even imagined as truthfully as I could, even with a degree of inventiveness and aspiration.

In that journey I wound up living in places that were outside of the big media spotlight, and what I faced ultimately differed from what was coming out of New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, or similar backdrops. My record reflected, I hope, just everyday folks who had to muddle on, best we could, in irreplicable circumstances of human progress or tragedy.

Ultimately, I tried to distill what I experienced from these unique viewpoints into novels that originated as “contemporary fiction,” though I’ve come to see the paradox of the label. Even without the scheduling conflicts of working a “day job,” I was caught in a time-delay of drafting and revising, even before trying to find publication. At the least, that would be a two- or three-year gap before a piece became public. Tastes and trends drastically change in that span. And here I am, shrinking from the crap shoot of fashion.

Or, now we are, decades later, perhaps trying to make sense of it all.

Not that I was alone. Every book author was running behind the frontlines where even the boldest got shot down, should they make it that far.

The consequence, quite simply, is that too much has gone unexamined beneath the superficial rush of what we once Baby Boomers and now creaky seniors and perhaps great-grandparents lived through, individually and jointly, from Watergate to today. No wonder things are such a mess. Look, kiddos, it wasn’t all our fault. Do note, I’m among those who wants to lend you a hand.

Mea culpa, then, though I’ve left some evidence of sorts to build on. Please stay in touch. That matter of “Don’t trust anyone over 30” was a brilliant slogan but ultimately BS.

As I’ve noted, we definitely needed elders. And so do you, on the frontlines now.

You can find my ebooks 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. They’re also available in paper and Kindle at Amazon, or you can ask your local library to obtain them.

A true confession of one writer’s life, in perspective to date

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

If we’re counting from the time I got hooked on what became a journalism career, I’ve pursued a writing life for six decades now.

It began with hope, of course, including the dreams of glorious success and celebrity. You know, prizes and bestsellers and fame plus fabulous romance, family, and social life all reflecting intellectual brilliance. These were all wrapped up in the dream of a teen and beyond.

The reality, as you’re probably already about to pipe up, is that the practice of writing – whether literature or any of its other forms, including newspapers – is ultimately grubby work with none of those high-life perks for most of its faithful ranks.

That side’s not any different from all the fine pianists in our communities who never solo in public, despite their talent and passion, or the athletes who exercise daily and play unpaid in the parks on weekends, or a minister’s lifetime of well-crafted, scholarly Sunday sermons. The list of examples can go on and on. Practice, as I’ve come to embrace, is essential in many life activities, even in medicine and law. Forget the results, just do it.

While daily journalism paid my bills for most of my adult life, I was shunted to the editing side of the field, sharpening the prose of other reporters and correspondents and crafting headlines to capture the essence of their dispatches for a parade of readers rather than appearing under my own byline. Spare me the liberal elite label of the rabid right, please; real journalists, unlike the folks at Fox, put their leanings aside before touching anything. Facts are facts, which I see as important in fiction and poetry, too. Well, let’s not rule out their role in anything smacking of rationale behavior.

As far as my own writing pursuits went, I engaged in my free time in what I consider “the real stuff” – poems, fiction, work somewhere in between – much of it getting published in underground literary periodicals around the globe. It was enough to sustain me in the larger quest, no matter that the big successes kept eluding me, despite some near misses.

So here we are, at the beginning of another new year and a birthday soon to follow, and I have to admit the impact of aging, this time from the perspective of a writer. Narrow that to novelist, poet, blogger, and Quaker. One who finds there are still too many piles of drafted material remaining in the way to wherever comes after.

While I don’t have a new major writing project on the horizon – especially no new novel – I am feeling drawn to see what might still have energy in some of the drafts I’ve done in support of my earlier literary projects. There may be some fresh lessons to be gleaned or perhaps even wisdom in the light of time. It’s even an opportunity to reflect on a writing life.

An important elder for me has been the poet Gary Snyder, usually at a distance. This time, it’s from his Zen perspective of reaching an advanced age, almost a generation ahead of me:

My wife is gone, my girl is gone,
my books are loaned, my clothes
are worn, I gave away a car; and
all that happened years ago.
Mind & matter, love & space
are frail as foam on beer.

So for now, I’ll be going through the piles and clearing them away – before someone else has to. Yes, sort through the debris and move on.

It’s one more step in the practice of writing, something like daily prayer, something that needs to be done even if it seems nobody’s listening.

Now, let’s see where it leads.

Remembering my barn

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

A barn is a reminder of work once at hand. Some of it is ongoing, while in other instances it was and then put aside, perhaps for another time. Cows – even imaginary – won’t wait long. Everything needs repair or weeding. Feasting is countered by fasting. Again, the season turns. All together.

The barn was my own. A carriage house, actually – in a small city, the oldest settlement in New Hampshire and seventh-oldest in the nation. How I got there is a long story, told in part here at the blog and in part in the novels.

The barn was a central part of my domestic labors, with dreams of a loft studio, once more pressing house repairs were in place. At least its back half was no longer sinking toward collapse on rotted sills. In our possession, the structure did hold a mother-in-law apartment. The remainder provided storage.

A writer collects many materials – fodder for winter. More important, eighteen years after a divorce, I had remarried, this time with children. Once again, I was with gardens and this time, trails of toys, clothing, and chipped dishes. We did have woodstove heat in the kitchen ell.

Not that anyplace with children is truly idyllic. It was always a near-catastrophe, of the best sort.

Here these go again

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The random notes in no particular order continue:

  1. Did college recruiters ever come to my high school? We weren’t elite and we weren’t any of the other demographics they were hot for. How about yours?
  2. Our high school guidance counselors did little more than sign you up for a draft card, as far as I can see.
  3. Genji was a definite historical character.
  4. Argentata chard … doesn’t taste like chard … hardier and cleaner than spinach.
  5. Gentrification versus decay.
  6. An inept lover, too charming by his very incompetence, unintentionally funky, nothing more than some everyday world seen through myopia. So why am I bothered?
  7. I love some of the drone videos filmed around here. But definitely not all.
  8. And then we learn that the mayor’s involved. As we said in the news biz, this story has legs.
  9. Yes, I remember Hudson, it’s up in the Cuyahoga Valley, a lovely New England style village not far from the Cleveland Orchestra’s summer home.
  10. Some writers place most or all of their plots in a particular locale, usually a big city or perhaps a state. Just never mine.

 

The passing of my last aunt marks a generational change

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

News of the death of my dad’s youngest sister was not unexpected but a jolt all the same.

For years, she had been something of a cypher in my awareness, originally when she came home from college or later in her visits from California, far from our Ohio.

Mom’s family, apart from her stepmother, was largely non-existent, except for a few encounters in Indianapolis, central Illinois, and Missouri. And she had her differences when it came to Dad’s clan, which did filter my perceptions.

I really didn’t understand the array of uncles, aunts, and cousins until I got heavily into genealogy. Before that, I was rather amazed at (and baffled by) the connectedness of one girlfriend’s Jewish family, which seemed to have cousins everywhere. Just what was a second cousin, anyway, much less removed a degree or two?

When Dad died, though, after a decline to Alzheimer’s, his last remaining sister insisted on flying out to the funeral, along with her husband.

And that’s when I finally got to know them – personally rather than abstractly. Thankfully.

The revelation began when she and her spouse, my Uncle John, came down the gateway at the airport and he swept our youngest up in a big bear hug while proclaiming, “It’s so good to have another Democrat in the family!”

The kid had no time to be appalled. He was instantly high on her list of rare approvals.

It was an effusive side of him I’d never seen. He was, after all, a retired University of Southern California dean and an ordained Presbyterian minister. And he was a warm, fun-loving guy. Who’d a thought?

It was the beginning of many other revelations over the next several days.

Slowly, I realized that his wife, that baby sister my dad called T.J. rather than Thelma, stood halfway in age between my dad and me – much more in my direction, that is, than I had thought. And it also dawned on me that she was the last person who might be able to answer many of the questions I had accumulated regarding my grandparents. Except, that is, she was equally in the dark on many of the answers.

In the months after the funeral, that questioning led to a fascinating round of correspondence between her and me and, at her insistence, our cousin Wilma, six months Dad’s junior.

It was an extraordinary research project, actually, one you can read as the Dayton’s Leading Republican Plumber sequence on my Orphan George blog.

At last, I came to know my grandparents for who they were rather than what they were supposed to be or weren’t. But I also came to know and appreciate T.J. and John and Wilma, too, and so much of what I had been missing.

As I learned, only Dad called his sister T.J., so I felt a responsibility for keeping the moniker alive, especially for some of the reasons she expressed.

~*~

Leap ahead, then, to a letter I had from her a few months ago relating that Uncle John had died of cancer – and that she, too, now faced a terminal prognosis. She agreed to chemo only to buy time, as she said.

That led to a long, difficult letter from my end and then, to my surprise, two phone calls – we had never talked on the phone, for whatever reasons. These two, of course, were strong exceptions.

On the second call, I shared the news that Wilma had passed over after Christmas, having reached the 100-year-old milestone. T.J. was glad I had included her.

And then, a few weeks later, a first cousin reached me by email using an address he was uncertain still worked – I’m not sure we had ever communicated that way. Usually, it was the annual Christmas card and letter exchange.

He had the sad news, as he said, that T.J. had died after a week in hospice, her body weakened but her mind still alert.

~*~

Thus, within a few months, the last three of the generation before me in our family have died, and that places me next to the top in the senior generation that emerges. Or the oldest male, if that matters. Not that I’ve heard from most of the others in years.

What strikes me, though, is a sense of exposure or vulnerability, like having a roof or an umbrella blown away overhead. Like it or not, I’ve moved into that elders edge that they filled. No longer do I have those more experienced to turn to, and I’ve been feeling how inadequate I am in comparison to the best of them.

Not just in the family, either, but within my religious circles, too. I’m now the oldest surviving former clerk of Dover Meeting, for instance, with all of the institutional memory that’s supposed to embody, even as I now reside 300 miles away.

What I have to also observe, with gratitude, is that through them, I’ve also known blessings and perhaps even wisdom. May I pass those along, too.

Thinking of Tim Gunn and those young fashion designers

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Binge watching the episodes of the runway project, I’ve been struck by how many times his sage advice included basic English words the younger generation totally missed.

Well, words that seem basic in our household.

Look, kids: A big vocabulary takes you from black-and-white to full, vivid color. And then beyond. It’s full of nuance and possibility. A spice of life, even.

It’s kinda like that fabric store you raid. And one more reason your mentor on the show is as remarkable as he is.