Musings

NOVEMBER NONREQUIRED READING LIST

To know that this world is still somehow home, is a practice. Distractions everywhere flutter our eyelashes.1 This homemaking practice in, and of, this world is good, wild, and sacred. It is easy to venture far from this belonging. Walls and wireless masquerade as safety and connection but are just as likely to be grounds of isolation. This is key to our learning now. I remind myself not to beat down my clumsy attempts at belonging. Imperfection is an ally in this world. It agitates you. Let it. Let it toss you out of doors, out of air that has been conditioned to be comfortable…Read the rest here.

ANSELM

Last week, I dipped into the local independent cinema and saw Wim Wender’s Anselm. A portrait of Anselm Keifer routes in, around, through the art world. A contemplative kiss on the neck, squeeze of creativity, a poem came to me in the middle of the film. I chicken scratched it out in the dark.

(2/18/24)

A STILL SMALL VOICE

No words necessary.

THREE THEORIES FOR WHY YOU HAVE NO TIME

A quote worth pondering. “Better technology means higher expectations, and higher expectations create more work.” You can read the whole Atlantic article here. It’s behind a paywall, but I think the quote shared is what lingers most. (8/21/23… h/t to Shawn)

A THOUSAND CASTS

I meant to just watch a few minutes of this documentary, ended up spending my lunch hour with this story of Oliver White. (8/16/23)

CAN YOU HEAR ME SMILING?

The music of Scott Ballew hits me right between the front teeth. Winsome turns of phrase and imagery that smartly paints on the inside of your eyelids. The man has walked through some swamps too. This short documentary captures his spirit, much the same way I hope my conversation with him from a few years back does too. Listen to my conversation with Scott here and watch the doc below.

THE FALL

Gregory Alan Isakov is a gift. Looking forward to this whole album.

FIRE AND LIGHT PODCAST WITH TESSA BIELECKI & FR. DAVID DENNY

Tessa Bielecki and Fr. David Denny, are “two old friends who lived in monasteries out in the wilderness for fifty years. Now we’re “urban hermits” in Tucson, Arizona and long to share conversations with you about living sanely and contemplatively in the midst of engaged lives in the world. We wonder how to keep love alive and celebrate everyone in the great Circle of Life. We’re honest about what sometimes keeps us awake at night and offer stories of hope that can bring us light and set our hearts on fire. Join us as we ponder life, love, and soul.” It is an excellent podcast with wise elders, check it out here!

THE ‘WORLD’S HAPPIEST MAN’ SHARES HIS THREE RULES FOR LIFE

Don’t buy the headline too much. I am a fan of Matthieu Ricard ever since I read The Monk and the Philosopher. He shoots straight, trusts the wisdom of practice, and the neuroscience. Compassion is everything.

“Not to reduce 2,500 years of contemplative science to a single sentence, but is there a thought that you can suggest to people that they can carry in their minds that might be helpful to them as they go through life’s challenges? If you can, as much as possible, cultivate that quality of human warmth, wanting genuinely for other people to be happy; that’s the best way to fulfill your own happiness. This is also the most gratifying state of mind. Those guys who believe in selfishness and say, “You do that because you feel good about it” — this is so stupid. Because if you help others but you don’t care a damn, then you won’t feel anything! Wanting to separate doing something for others from feeling good yourself is like trying to make a flame that burns with light but no warmth. If we try humbly, with some happiness, to enhance our benevolence, that will be the best way to have a good life. That’s the best modest advice I could give.” Read the whole interview here. (8/15/23)

WANT TO THRIVE? YOU HAVE TO ‘DIE’

What do you do after the metaphorical reaper comes to your door? This is question that rings my bell. There are over simplistic elements of this brief article that give me a wedgie, but the thrust of the idea I stand behind. Keep death before you, it focuses attention and action. Check out the article here.

HOW HOKUSAI’S ART CRASHED OVER THE MODERN WORLD

Ageless influence is moving in artificial times (NYT article).

WHEN NIKKI GIOVANNI WAS YOUNG, BRILLIANT AND UNAFRAID

Some poets look longer down the road from their present moment. If that isn’t true, it appears that way. Nikki Giovanni had a vision, her passing this month was the loss of another giant with a wake of poetry that reads like “she really never stopped working, there was a sense of urgency, that the wordplay, the history lessons, the dreaming of the future, the prose tartlets of optimism, inspiration, curiosity, compassion, really mattered.” Read more about Giovanni here.

(updated 12/19/2024)

NICK CAVE WILL TAKE A SELFIE WITH YOU, IF YOU INSIST

“Mr. Cave started the Red Hand Files in part to process Arthur’s death. He has said that loss now defines him, that he sees grief as a universal language connecting all people and that walking through it has made him a bolder artist. “There’s an understanding that we are all creatures of loss,” he said. “That we’re all in the same boat, in some way, that what happened to me is not special.” Nick Cave on grief, connection, and art. A lovely article. Read the whole thing here.

(updated 12/13/2024 – h/t to Lisa)

RIDING THE LINE: COMPASSION AND BIKES AT THE AMERICAN BORDER (FILM)

“Riding The Line” is a new film documenting my pal Dawson Allen’s bike ride from Tucson down to the U.S./Mexico border and back north to Patagonia, Arizona, where Voices from the Border, an organization that supports migrants near the border, is based. Watch the film below and you can donate directly to Voices from the Boarder here.
(updated 12/13/2024)

THE THANKSGIVING MYTH: NOT A BAD START

Rev. Dr. Randy S. Woodley writes, “Many of my fellow Native Americans who view the holiday as a national day of mourning, will not celebrate Thanksgiving at all. They will once again disseminate stories pointing out the many massacres of Native Americans by the Pilgrims. I don’t blame them… but I won’t join them either.” Enjoyed this nuanced article immensely; owning the history while celebrating gratitude and hospitality from the Native Americans. Read the whole HuffPost article here.

(updated 11/23/2024)

KRIS KRISTOFFERSON’S STORIES WERE WONDERFULLY LARGER THAN LIFE

Kris Kristofferson was a songwriter whose pen I envied. To be held by a poet in the grind of becoming an Army Ranger, Rhodes Scholar, janitor, actor, and more I am sure. He lived a hellua life. “To Beat the Devil” is my favorite talking blues song. Read this article and then spin it.
Read the whole NYT article here.

(updated 10/20/2024)

FOLLOW NORWAY’S NATIONAL PAINTER THROUGH A LANDSCAPE OF MOUNTAINS AND FJORDS

When I lived in a small mountain town in Norway, any chance I got to see Harald Sohlberg’s “Winter Night at Rondane” I would snatch it up. It was the first painting that stunned me into a cold presence. I would sit before it, time would flex.

It held me as I beheld it. One of these days I will purchase a print of it, for now, my memory of this winter night glows on.

Read the whole article here.

(updated 10/15/2024)

AGAINST KILLING CHILDREN

Wendell Berry is in his nineties. Each new essay his readers receive is an undeserved gift. His latest arrives in The Christian Century and is a full dose.

“In the descent of our understanding of ourselves from “made in the image of God” to only humans to animals to machines, I don’t know exactly when or how free will begins to be replaced by determinism. It is clear to me only that materialism itself is deterministic to the extent that it disables the high principles and ideals that we once looked to as motives—love, reverence, beauty, mercy, faith, sympathy, compassion, kindness, and the rest—which are not materials and do not necessarily lead to material results. Under the rule of materialism, we are motivated by what we perceive as the goodness or the good consequences of material commodities—ease, comfort, speed, facts, wealth, power, and so on—with which we are now obsessed.”

Read the whole article here.

(updated 10/15/2024)

WHY NOT BE UTTERLY FIRE?

There is much to learn from monastics and Katie Gordon is learning from them in an embodied and thoughtful way.

“I have learned a lot about the reality of death by living in a monastery for the last several years. I moved into this intergenerational community in order to learn from elders, and one of my beloved teachers died last year. In the days, weeks, months that followed, I saw how differently each of us grieve. Community became a container that held space for the many forms that grief can take, and ultimately a container to carry us back into life after the reality of death.”

Read her reflections here. I recommend subscribing too, always much to glean.

LEWIS H. LAPHAM (1935 – 2024)

Lewis H. Lapham was a herald of news integrity. I missed the news of his passing in July, learning a month later would probably suit the man who revitalized monthly and then quarterly magazines.

Read the a remembering from the magazine he brought back to life here.

THE UNIVERSAL FIRE

When Jeffrey Foucault puts out an album I rejoice with a pot of coffee and the knowledge that a fine purveyor of musical craft and lyrical intelligence still has a place in this world.

Listen, buy, gift this Foucault’s latest, The Universal Fire here.

IN SEARCH OF A WAY: WALKING THE CHRISTIAN SPIRITUAL PATH

Listeners know that one of my favorite scholars is Douglas Christie, who carries a unique poetic depth, you can hear my conversations with him here and here. Now you can take a course studying the Christian mystics with him! Read the full details and register here. Check out this course description, if it calls to you, I encourage you to pursue this way:

“Walking a path. Following a way. The journey. The impulse to walk is so strong within us. Perhaps because of this, it has proven a durable and useful metaphor for spiritual longing. At the very heart of Christian spirituality stands the image of a path: the hodos or “way”; a key to understanding both the identity of Christ (“I am the Way”) as well as the life of faith (“the Way, the truth the life”) and the meaning of community (Christians were often known simply as “people of the Way”). Walking or journeying would remain critical to the Christian spiritual imagination for centuries afterward. Not only among those who took up pilgrimages, to Jerusalem or Santiago de Compostela or Canterbury.  But also for those who envisioned the encounter with God–in prayer and in community living–as a kind of path or journey: the early monks’ journey into the desert; the long, difficult passage through the darkness envisioned by Gregory of Nyssa in his Life of Moses; Bonaventure’s elaborate and subtle Itinerarium: The Mind’s Journey into God; John of the Cross’s intense path of purgation outlined in his Ascent of Mount Carmel; Teresa of Avila’s long descent into union with God evoked so beautifully in her Interior Castle. There is a recurring sense here that walking, of following a path, traveling along a route both familiar and strange, is somehow essential to our capacity to grasp the meaning of our own spiritual experience, to help us know who we are (in God). Itineraries found in Christian mystical traditions have a particular importance to play in illuminating what it means to be “in search of a way.” Members of the class will be invited to engage and critically respond to these traditions and to consider how learning to “walking the path” can draw us closer to God and one another in love.”

(Updated 8/25)

NICK CAVE

Nick Cave and Stephen Colbert have a public conversation on the power of music and grief. Finish your snack and lick your fingers before watching, bring your full attention.

(Updated 8/17)

HASHTAG

Gillian and Dave are American treasures. This song is a tribute to Guy Clark, who first took them on tour, I can’t take it how beautifully they honor the lineage they are carrying forward. There is a lesson in it for us. Listen to these lyrics.

(Updated 8/9)

IT’S TIME FOR A FRANCISCAN RENAISSANCE

Brian McLaren and Patrick Carolan wrote this article a few years back, a snippet to wet the beak. “Thomas Berry wrote in The Dream of the Earth. “The deepest crises experienced by any society are those moments of change when the story becomes inadequate for meeting the survival demands of a present situation.” We are experiencing that crisis today, in the world and in the church. A Franciscan Renaissance will not come easily; it will be costly, challenging, even disruptive. After all, if renewal were cheap, easy, and convenient, it would have happened already. If we are willing to count the cost, commit to the challenge, and persist through obstacles, we can be agents of a true Franciscan Renaissance.” Read the whole thing here.

(Updated 8/8)

ALL THAT IS SACRED

Been real excited to see this.

(Updated 7/9)

92Y / THE PARIS REVIEW INTERVIEW SERIES: GARY SNYDER WITH ELIOT WEINBERGER

I listen to this every few years to charge my batteries on Gary Snyder’s boots.

(Updated 7/9)

HOW THE PHILOSOPHER CHARLES TAYLOR WOULD HEAL THE ILLS OF MODERNITY.

A more poetic philosophy for engaging with the world, a few highlights from the article on Charles Taylor’s way of viewing the world.

“We are not atoms in a mindless universe, he argues, but agents in a metaphysically alert one, embodied and embedded in meanings we jointly create. Art is not an accessory to pleasure but the means of our connection to the cosmos.”

“The best way to heal the wound is through poetry and music, of the sort that doesn’t offer propositions but casts spells and enacts rituals.”

“Taylor extolls the communities of meaning that are drawn together by the interspace of enchantment. Yet, as he would be the first to acknowledge, such communities are, first of all, communities of practice.”

Read the whole thing here. (6/26)

THE SPIRITUAL INFRASTRUCTURE OF THE FUTURE.

What will the landscape of spiritual infrastructure look like in the decades ahead? No one knows, but not a bad guess is that “New technological infrastructure is agnostic about identity, time, and physical location. People of course still look for, practice, and develop all possible particularities in their seeking lives, but tech infrastructure doesn’t require people to forgo particularity to access the grid. Unlike religious infrastructure of old, tech platforms like Pinterest are trans-religious, trans-local, and trans-synchronous. They platform content from distributed networks of networks. And they are agnostic about the content being distributed.The religious infrastructure of the future will be too.” Read the whole thing here. (h/t to Dawson, 6/12)

THE LACK IS SACRED.

The poet Christian Wiman loosens rusted shackles from pious wrists. “Faith comes first from hearing, “literally, from the air, from sound,” which is the way that poetry works upon the hearer, and why, Wiman rightly says, poetry must be read aloud. Treat it like prose and you are searching for the meaning. But its meaning can only enter you through the sounds, just as the Word of God reaches a person through everyday occurrences.” Read the whole thing here. (6/12)

WHAT ONE MAN LEARNED LIVING ALONE IN THE WILDERNESS FOR 40 YEARS.

“So what has he learned, in a lifetime alone? His opinions about his life decisions remain firm: “I’ve spent the majority of my life living outside the conventions of mainstream society, and I’ll tell you what I think is weird, and it ain’t the hermit. It’s how entire generations of people have been conned into believing that there is only one way to live, and that’s on-grid, in deepening debt, working on products you’ll probably never use, to line the pockets of people you’ll never meet, just so you might be able to get enough money together to buy a load of crap you don’t need, or, if you’re lucky, have a holiday that takes you to a place, like where I live, for a week of the happiness I feel every day.” Read the whole thing here. (hat tip to Poff, 6/2)

REMEMBER SPIDER JOHN.

The great Minnesota musician passed away, his music and story is worth knowing. (6/2)

THE AMBLING MIND

Walking (or wheeling) on one’s own accord is a champion practice because of its indisputable slowness and connection to the land right below us. This piece smiles while proposing that “the act of walking might indeed prove revolutionary because it will afford us an experience of an alternative way of being in the world, one that honors the properly human scale of our experience.” Check it out here. (5/20)

DANIEL KRAMER’S YEAR WITH BOB DYLAN

Bob Dylan looms large in my personal mythology, his music was essential in my formative years and has continued to salt on head turners as I have aged. This photo series of Dylan as young man is telling. Check it out here. (5/20)

FRENCH POST OFFICE RELEASES SCRATCH-AND-SNIFF BAGUETTE STAMP

All is not lost for humanity. Read here. (h/t to Tyler 5/20)

THE INVISIBLE FIGHT

Good orthodox goodness, this movie joyfully plays with the Orthodox Christian spiritual journey and practice in a heavy metal way. With Kung-fu. What more could you want?

(updated 5/15)

KITCHEN MOTHER VERSION BY GEORGE ELLA LYON

Our Mother Who Art in the kitchen cooking us up hallowed may we see all that is Your kingdom here delivered into our hands Your will in children and trees leafing out on earth as if it were Heaven.

Give us this day bread we could feed the world and snatch us bald-headed if we try to swallow it all.

Don’t forgive us till we learn it is all for giving. That salve you’ve got in a pot on the back of the stove only heals when everybody has some.

And heed us not if we believe You look like us and love us best and gave us the True Truth with a license to kill Others writ inside. Deliver us from this evil.

For it is Yours, this kitchen we call Universe where you stir up our favorite treat, the Milky Way, folding deep into sweet our little sphere with its powerful glory of rainforests and oceans and mountains in feather-boa mist forever if we don’t blow it up and ever if we don’t tear it down Amen

(Ah women Ah children Ah reckon She’s about fed up. We better make room at the table for everybody before She yells “OUT!” and turns our table over, before She calls it off, this banquet we’ve been hoarding this paradise we aim to save with bombs.)

(updated 5/12 from source)

COWBOY CARTER

I was late to this party, but am staying to the end. Beyoncé has made a complete album, highlights are aplenty and layered. Tip of the cowboy hat. (updated 4/2)

THE NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING PROFESSOR WHO LIKED TO COLLABORATE WITH HIS ADVERSARIES

Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman called it “adversarial collaboration”. It is when you engage in a project with someone who you are in deep disagreement, based on the data of your study. Working together you might learn something new, and might be of wider service to the world. Man oh man, this is my jam, can we get some more “adversarial collaboration” in politics, religion, and the media? (updated 4/2)

SUGGESTIONS FOR REBOOTING THE MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE FROM FARMER, ESSAYIST, AND POET WENDELL BERRY

The folks over at McSweeney’s sure know how to make a fella howl.

“When despair for the world grows in me, and I wake in the night at the least sound, I sometimes go down to the local theater and check out the latest Marvel spectacle, preferably in 3D, because it’s more abundant in real pleasure.” It goes on with many a Berry reference upon Marvel buffoonery. Delightful comedy writing. Read the whole thing here. (h/t to Lee, 3/25)

A COUGAR ATTACKED THEM. THEY FOUGHT BACK FOR 45 HARROWING MINUTES

This headline alone will find the readers it needs to find. Tip of the hat to these fierce women. (h/t to Gail, 3/25)

ME & BOBBY MCGEE

This song and that voice are made for each other. (3/10)

LOVE GRIEVES BUT REFUSES DESPAIR: AN INTERVIEW WITH DAVID JAMES DUNCAN

Sun House is a book that continues to read my life. An offering so generous that another page of the 800 page behemoth would have been asking for too much. Friend of Contemplify, Fred Bahnson, interviews David James Duncan on Sun House, an “Eastern Western”, positing possibility and a way to consider a life hidden in the deepest waters. A snippet:

“You can avoid a lot of corniness if you bear in mind that life is loaded not with sweetness, but with bittersweetness, the way nature makes you feel both when you come across a beautiful high meadow in which whitetail fawn carcasses left by predators are also present. Every trout’s rise equals a dead insect of graceful beauty. Every hawk whose majestic soaring elates us is looking to make a kill. Every bald eagle cruising river corridors is watching for Canada goose goslings as easy to spot as chartreuse tennis balls. Keeping all of that plus the sufferings of the observers in play fends off smarmy nature writing.” Read the whole piece here. (h/t to Fred, 3/6/23)

LAUDATO DEUM REFLECTIONS

Brother Coyote, aka Gary Nabhan, is posting daily reflections for Lent on Pope Francis’ Laudato Deum (“Praise God for all his creatures”). Brother Coyote claws, praises, and adores in words only fit for a Canis. Here is an example:

“In a few words, the Bishops assembled for the Synod for Amazonia said the same thing: “Attacks on nature have consequences for people’s lives”.

We all know how it feels to be attacked—the fear,

But also the humiliation and sense of injustice that befalls us.

How do we move past anger and an instinct for self defense,

To be inspired to act with collective, multigenerational defense

Of all the peoples and species with which we are engaged

Socially, nutritionally, economically, and spiritually?

Those who suffered must have always lived on the margins:

The edgy ecotones, the edges of river, oceans, and ponds,

The makeshift barrios, colonias and ghettos at the city limits.

How do we help those who live in landfills, cemeteries,

Railroad yards and beneath bridges. How can we be their bridges?”

Head over to garynabhan.com for more. (updated 2/18/24)

ASH WEDNESDAY

Brian Doyle has poem that should bless the ashes that will return to the earth. Read it here.

(2/15/24)

HOW AFROLATINE IDENTITY CAN EXPAND OUR UNDERSTANDING OF FAITH

“Whiteness has co-opted [contemplative Christianity], where contemplation and meditation became equivalent with a certain ideology and identification of being white. But when we look at the different traditions that we have within the diaspora — including Christianity, Islam, and African-descended traditions like Lukumí or Ifá or Candomblé — there’s a deep contemplative root in all of those traditions that predates Europeanist control. [In a] way, we have had to become contemplatives by default: We’re in spaces where we have to wrestle with certain things inside our mind before we’re able to talk about them or publicly discuss them.”

This quote comes from an interview with Josué Perea who produced the film, Faith in Blackness that explores the question, “How can the creator of the universe be smaller than me?” Black Latine people around the world practice a myriad of faith traditions. This short-form documentary explores dynamic identities of these AfroLatine people and their journey for a home, a faith in Blackness. Josué Perea is a wise engaged contemplative. Read the interview with Josué here.
(2/6/24)

MERTON: AN INVITATION TO UNBIND HIM AND OURSELVES

Lesyle Colvin will weave a tapestry that provides a fresh perspective of Thomas Merton interwoven with glimpses of her journey as a child of the Civil Rights Movement era, and the systems that bind us all. Free to register.

SURPRISING REBIRTH OF THE BELIEF IN GOD

Great tellings by Paul Kingsworth and Martin Shaw of their roads to a belief in God. Listen to it here.
(h/t to Carmen 1/20/24)

HARD TRUTHS ABOUT SUFFERING, FROM A WRITER WHO’S LIVED TO TELL

Christian Wiman broke into my bookshelf with the My Bright Abyss: Meditations of a Modern Believer, then exchanged his poems with some pals, read him in Harper’s and now we have Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair. This quote from NYT review draws the shades and makes me want to crawl in the window, “He admits frustration with religion, “not simply the institutional manifestations, which even a saint could hate, but sometimes, too many times, all of it, the very meat of it, the whole goddamned shebang.” Read the article here.
(1/7/24)

THE GREAT MALFORMATION

A dive into the cultural mess we find ourselves in. The culture we have ingested and are burping onto our children. A gross image, but appropriate. How can we cultivate a more nourishing culture for now and for later? This is a complex, troubling, and sacrificial question. It will not be easy or attractive in the short-term. This quote spotlights the condition we are in. Look and see.

“We would be astonished to discover a human community that did not attempt to pass along to its children a form of life that had won the affirmation of its elders. We would be utterly flabbergasted to discover a community that went to great lengths to pass along a form of life that its elders regarded as seriously deficient or mistaken. Yet we have slipped unawares into precisely this bizarre arrangement. We devote an extraordinary share of our accumulated wealth and creative talent to the task of imprinting the young with an evaluative outlook most of us view with abiding suspicion.” Read the whole thing here. (h/t to Poff / updated 1/2)

THE BELOVED

The Beloved is a poetry and song collaboration with poet Gregory Orr and alt-folk group Parkington Sisters. This just what the day needed. (h/t to Gigi)
(updated 12/22)

ADVENT REMEDY

Contemplfiy friend Peter Traben Haas has some Advent reflections worth bringing to your attention. You can see them over at The Work of the People, a long time hub of contemplative inspiration.
(updated 12/13)

SCULPTOR

Jeffrey Martin has made a complete album. Tip to tail tells the truth in song and melody. The song below is breaking my heart over and over again by its devastating beauty. His latest album, Thank God We Left the Garden is here it is housed. I will listen to this album for the rest of my life. (h/t to Aaron for the introduction Martin’s music)

WHAT WOULD HERZOG DO?

A brilliant reflection on the weird, wild, allure of Werner Herzog. To follow his lead is to chart your own path. To learn from his muse is to dismiss his and find your own. Check it out here.

“Now, a week later, I am thinking about that experience, and how people like Herzog make good and hard work possible for others. If what’s impossible for others is possible for him, it’s possible for you too. You can ask yourself, when you find someone worth emulating, what would they do? You could make a bracelet, and whenever you were about to give up, when things got too hard you could snap it against your wrist and remember who you meant to become, get your gumption going again. What Would Herzog Do?” (updated 11/6/2023)

THE CONTEMPLATIVE POETICS OF FAITH DECONSTRUCTION

If interested, this ol chunk of coal is leading a virtual teaching session on Tuesday, Nov 14th. description below and registration here.

The unfolding path of faith is risky and unpredictable in its evolutions throughout life. At times faith can feel linear, clear, and light, only to lose its shine in the wreckage of unforeseen circumstances. Some outgrow the shell of their consummate sense of faith and feel a drizzle of hope call them onward and into the unknown. The complexity of faith is experienced across discovery, loss, stability, and mystery. In this workshop we will honor the poetic totality of faith experiences through opportunities to engage in contemplative practices, musings, storytelling, and personal reflection.
(updated 11/4/2023)

LIFE AFTER “CALVIN & HOBBES”

My kids have picked up Calvin & Hobbes for the first time. They are drawn to different aspects of the comic strip, but giggles follow both. I have been waiting for this day. Now I have discovered that the creator Bill Patterson has a new book out, The Mysteries. You can read a New Yorker piece about it here. The resonating line for me, “Watterson has written, “Whenever the strip got ponderous, I put Calvin and Hobbes in their wagon and send them over a cliff. It had a nice way of undercutting the serious subjects.” 
(updated 10/24/2023)

WILLOW, PINE, & OAK

Saw Bonnie “Prince” Billy play on Friday, someone captured this tune from the show. What a lyrical performer, captivating with each turn of phrase. I swear you can hear me laughing in this video.

(updated 10/23/2023)

WINNERS OF THE 2023 ASTRONOMY PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR

These photos make me feel small. Like I shrink back to child-size while my sense of awe becomes grandiose. Find the biggest screen you can and check out these stunning photos of our planet and universe here.
(updated 10/20/23)

COULD YOU LIVE LIKE A MONK FOR A MONTH? IN THIS UNIVERSITY CLASS, IT’S THE FINAL PROJECT

Have university courses gotten more interesting or is it that we just know more about what is being offered nowadays? From the article:

“Justin McDaniel has taught computer science students who code by pencil, and theatre students who only mime on stage.

Those students took a vow of silence and agreed to disconnect from technology in his University of Pennsylvania class.

McDaniel’s course, Living Deliberately: Monks, Saints, and the Contemplative Life — affectionately known as “Monk class” — pushes students to live an ascetic life and culminates in 30 days of total restrictions.

That means no speaking, no technology, no meat or alcohol (unless they kill or make it themselves) and no touching others. Students aren’t even allowed to make eye contact with others. They are allowed to send handwritten letters.

Unlike wellness approaches that emphasize social connection and group activities that are often promoted by universities, McDaniel encourages students to pull back and do less.”

Link to read or listen at cbc.ca

(updated 10/17/23)

I WON’T BE AFRAID

I like this fella.

(h/t to Kramer, updated 10/10/23)

DOWN WITH EFFICIENCY! (WHEN WE GET AROUND TO IT.)

The insane desire to make life efficient is a gross exaggeration of thoughtfulness. Hustling through and never lingering on. Coffee breaks and silent pauses are becoming things of the past. I applaud this goofy approach to expediency. We are culturally with great expedience rushing to the end of our lives. Read the piece here. Ever wonder why there are so many articles like this and so few examples of people living an un-hijacked life? (updated 10/5/23)

CLIP YOUR WINGS

This tune has been good company for the changing seasons.(updated 10/5/23)

TO FALL IN LOVE WITH THE WORLD

The news of the week has been crushing, loss after loss, insanity upon insanity. This photo-poetry journey is a gift. Watch slowly, drink it in my friends, welcome the pattern of life, death, and resurrection here. (updated 9/13/23)

ALL THAT IS SACRED

A new documentary was premiered this last weekend at the Telluride Film Festival about artists I admire in a knuckle headed season of their lives. Ambition, drugs, and creativity all met in Key West. Read the article and watch the trailer here and read some further thoughts here…apparently you can’t watch it anywhere else. The idea for this doc was spun up by friend of Contemplify, Scott Ballew. Can’t wait to see the whole shebang. An era drifting away in our midst. (updated 9/7/23)