Jan 31
NONREQUIRED. I detonated our Zen garden. In the future it would be prudent for a Christic beast like myself to be chaperoned while strolling through a Zen landscape. Likely you have seen one of these miniature Zen gardens; a regal looking school lunch tray containing a handful of sand in one compartment (often outfitted with a lego-sized rake) and polished rocks in the other. A contemplative accoutrement indeed. My wife had acquired it for free and I knocked it over at great cost. As it began its descent I cursed my blundering actions. The fine-grain sand funneled in slow motion into our printer’s gaping mouth. And rocks–once mindfully constructed into cairns–pelted dust bunnies before dispersing into the four corners of the room. The tiny rockslide delivered an oversized annoyance. Again curses rained down from my flaming lips. It was as if a thumb was jammed into my third eye and monkeys tugged on the hairs under my armpits. A moment of pause ensued. The irony was realized immediately; what was intended to bring calm and mindfulness had brought racket and filthy words. My overreaction was soon eclipsed by my heart’s laughter licking my beginner’s mind awake. The trouble with contemplative practice is that it reveals the current state of your soul as it cultivates it.
Read the rest of the January NonRequired Reading List here. And sign up to get the next one sent right your inbox here.
Jan 30
BEGINNING OF THE END OF AN ERA. It has been a hoot to be a part of this project.
Jan 28
IF I HAD A BOAT. Try as a I might, I can’t escape bumping into God. This Daniel Ladinsky take on Hafiz amuses my soul with resonance.
Two Giant Fat People
God and I have become like two giant
fat people living in a tiny boat.
We keep bumping into each other
and laughing.
Jan 26
FEAST OF SAINT PAUL. Yesterday was the feast day of my namesake. His writings are well worn, mystical, misunderstood, Christic, brilliant, overplayed, and poetic. His thumbprint is all over the lens of Christianity. A pal of mine gave me this icon of God “zapping” Paul. Cracks me up. If only transformation could always included a daffy image of “God’s hand” to commemorate it the actual pain of such a season (for those who know the hip-hop duo Run the Jewels, doesn’t God’s hand look like it could be on their next album cover).
“5 Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:
7 But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men”
- Philippians 2:5-7
Jan 25
COLD LATE SPRING BARK RIVER. That is the title of a tune that caught me looking. It fits easy and reminds me of my youth on the banks of Lotus Lake. I do hope a beer gets named after this Jeffrey Foucault song. I long to hear myself say to a barkeep “Cold Late Spring Late Bark River Beer for me and my friends here.” Until that day, let’s enjoy this fine song.
Jan 23
THE QUIET TRAVELER. My travels mostly occur in my imagination or within a frisbee throw of my house. In pandemic times, I am quite content to look at the world from my picnic table. From my perch overlooking the street, the relentless shake of the mufflers, the rattle of a rusty ten-speeds, and the roll of a feral dogs infiltrates my quiet lookings about. It reminds me that there is a man out there in search of the quietest places on the planet. Gordon Hempton is an explorer of silent space. Read his story here. I guarantee you the world will sound louder after this read and your longing for silence will increase.
Jan 22
WALLS. Tom Petty floored me with the song “Walls” when I was 16. I thought the song was about me. Flash forward a decade and change, I found the album that contained “Walls” in an apartment I was subletting. That subletter would become my wife. I then thought that song was about us. Jump another ten plus years to this week when a friend sent me a cover of “Walls”. I listened to it and watched my children dance around to it. Tears welled and now I think “Walls” is about them. This is why I love music so much.
Jan 21
POETRY IN THE PUBLIC SQUARE. The power of poetry in civic and public life. Thank you Amanda Gorman.
Jan 19
BELIEF THAT CAN WOBBLE. A poetic discovery in my dimwitted day often feels like finding a sawbuck on the sidewalk. I pick it up and thank the person who left it behind, unsure if anyone would pluck it from the asphalt world. Below, is the poem ‘Belief’ by the multi hyphenated talent, Lia Purpura. It is from her book It Shouldn’t Have Been Beautiful. By the way, this is the way the book opens…
Belief
Light being
wavy and particulate
at once
is instructive—
why wouldn’t
other things or states
present as
both/and?
For instance
I both
believe and can’t.
Holding these
together produces
a wobble, I think
it’s time
to take seriously
as a stance.
Jan 18
LETTERS. It is my practice on this day to read a letter from a man who found himself in jail for calling a country to become what it already said it was. You can read it here.
Jan 16
IMMERSION JOURNALIST OF THE SOUL. Fred Bahnson is an immersion journalist of the soul and one of my favorite public contemplative intellectuals. If you’ve been hanging out around Contemplify, you have likely heard his name or seen links to his work. And I am sure that won’t be changing anytime soon. His most recent piece appears in Harper’s Magazine and is called ‘The Gate of Heaven is Everywhere’. It charts the contemplative turning in our times with gusto, charm, and sustained attention to the deep roots of the Christian contemplative tradition. Check it out, you’ll dig it.
I had the good fortune to have a conversation with Fred on his top shelf book Soil & Sacrament, his work in Harper’s, The Sun, and elsewhere, contemplative practices within family life, conversations with Barry Lopez, Irish music, and so much more. Listen wherever you get podcasts or right below.
Jan 15
CURIOUS FRIENDS. “I’ve always been fairly energetic and intensely curious about how certain people lead their lives which is, after all, the basis of friendship.” (Jim Harrison, Off to the Side, p. 302)
This sentence lassos the bucking spirit of Contemplify.
Jan 14
I GO TO MY HEART. The Avett Brothers’ Third Gleam is a remarkable contemplative album. This tune sinks into the soil of my heart and grows mango trees. It is wild to me to hear a song of such gentle depth on The Tonight Show.
Jan 13
IT’S THE EARTH THAT IS PRECIOUS. The Earth pulsates and moves with its inhabitants. The running cosmic joke is that the humans yodel to all creatures that we are the ones in control. We are not. We abuse, tickle, pillage, pluck, enjoy, and perform cosmetic surgery on the planet that embodies us. The damage done for a quick buck suffers the Earth twice; unrequited profiteering and the stripping of her dignity.
Reading a reflection on Barry Lopez’s life, outlook, and work from one of his pals spoke to rightsize my sense of place amongst the whole. We emerge from the whole, and return to the whole. From dust we came, and to dust we shall return.
“Not long ago, Barry’s heart stopped, briefly. Calling me from his bed in the intensive care unit, he reported the details of his brush with death in dispassionate detail, the way he might’ve talked about observing a polar bear hunting or diving beneath the Antarctic ice. Then he said, quietly: “We will all pass away. It’s the earth that is precious.””
– “The Story He Will Never Write: Remembering Barry Lopez“
By John Luther Adams Harper’s Magazine
Jan 12
ENTERTAINMENT WITHOUT OBLIGATION. When I play pretend with my kids I am the monster, pirate, or slinky armed bandit. They squeal and fall over laughing as they try to defeat me in whatever monstrous uniform I adorn. I am breaking from reality to play a larger than life character for the delight of my kiddos in a safe environment. This is appropriate imaginal play for kids, feeling the thrill of danger without real consequences.
There is a true danger when adults play in the world in this way as entertainment. Time passes in entertaining play without real risk and starts to feel real. The potentiality of transformation gets lost in favor for the sensation of extreme feelings. A favorite writer of mine, Karl Ove Knausguarrd, dares to mock popular culture through the sharp connections to Levitical law. Entertainment without purpose or obligations creates a nihilism. Nihilism is a trajectory back to infancy: strong emotions without self-responsibility.
“Popular culture still revels in these archaic transgressions, which in our totally rational universe, where everything down to the smallest atom has been mapped and thereby conquered, no longer present any serious threat and yet remain associated with primeval horror, in that we make use of them for our entertainment—entertainment being nothing but a space in which we can allow ourselves to feel the strongest emotions without obligation. Love, excitement, fright—pretend emotions in a pretend world.”
– Karl Ove Knausgaard ‘A Mutable Feast‘ from Harper’s Jan 2021
Jan 11
HOT DISH TERROR. Last night I felt the terror of the unknown. It might have been due to an overindulgence of tater-tot hot dish. I felt the anguish of an unknown future for my children with all of the barbarian invasions of our times. I repeated the Jesus Prayer over and over again, “Lord Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.” Old school contemplative practice that pierces my fear even if it does not dismantle it. The word ‘sinner’ doesn’t bother me in this, it does not wreak of wretchedness anymore, just my own infallibility, my own brokenness. So I repeat the Jesus Prayer throughout the day and often when my old friend fear cuddles up next to me.
I also recall the lines of Wendell Berry’s poem “The Peace of the Wild Things“, which opens with the lines “When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.”
Between those two prayers, I carry on.
Jan 10
WOKE UP WITH TWO. This morning I broke my sleep with two treasured thoughts. Tater-tot hot dish and the wisdom of Tessa Bielecki. I will spare you the hot dish, but I encourage you to revisit the Contemplify conversation with Tessa Bielecki. Her infectious joy, wise counsel, and rhythm of life are good Sunday companions.
Jan 9
RAHNER AND ROUTINE. My time in grad school studying under the Jesuits built my admiration for their way of life. This took the form of quick wisdom drops inside of jokes and the encouragement of my cross-eyed spiritual gaze over a drink. The great Karl Rahner, a Jesuit whose intellect is only surpassed by his love of God, spoke to me through his work. In Rahner’s Encounters with Silence there is a passage he underlines from Jan van Ruysbroeck that reverberates off my sternum and makes my heart do the jitterbug in my daily rhythm.
“Again and again I must take out the old notebook in which I copied that short but vital passage from Ruysbroeck many years ago. I must reread it, so that my heart can regrasp it. I always find consolation in rediscovering how this truly pious man felt about his own life. And the fact that I still love these words after so many years of routine living is to me a sacred pledge that You will one day bless my ordinary actions too.
‘God comes to us continually, both directly and indirectly. He demands of us both work and pleasure, and wills that each should not be hindered, but rather strengthened, by the other. Thus the interior man possesses his life in both these ways, in activity and in rest. And he is whole and undivided in each of them, for he is entirely in God when he joyfully rests, and he is entirely in himself when he actively loves’.”
Jan 8
MALEVOLENCE & THE BELOVED. St. John of the Cross rings out this week. The poem below is a translation from Mirabai Starr’s St. John of the Cross.
“The Beloved has always revealed
the treasures of his wisdom
and his spirit
to humanity.
But now that the face of malevolence
bares itself
more and more,
so does the Beloved
bare his treasures
more and more.”
– St. John of the Cross
in Sayings of Love & Light
(from Saint John of the Cross edited by Mirabai Starr)
image from carmelites.net
Jan 6
DRIFTING SHAWL OF MERCY. My desire to dry my tears with composting leaves, face plant into soil and be consoled by big mama earth strikes after each reading of the poetry of Teddy Macker. You can read and listen to his poem ‘To the End’ at terrain.org. And do pick up a copy of his collection of poems, This World.
To the End
by Teddy Macker
i say praise
praise the sound of this rain
i say lament
grieve shake collapse
throw up your hands
but praise
praise this hard passing rain
the prosperous near sounds
of dripping-from-eaves
the surround sound
of clement iris roar
and let the wonder come
that still it falls upon us
down to this earth
night’s kindness
total mother
filling the creek for the badger
gracing the sleep of your daughter
running its hooves on the tin roof
of the barn
hear it leave now move out
towards the islands
drifting shawl of mercy
drawn over anchored boats
bird-spattered buoys
touching the back of a dolphin as it rises
for a breath
touching the slick maximal back
two drops on the dorsal
which now slips back
under
into the cold
faultless
cathedral
Jan 5
THE COMMODIFICATION OF THE SELF. On days when large crowds rally together the term ‘mob mentality’ automatically presents itself to me. And then you take this mob mentality and stir it in with highly individualistic American culture, what do you get? I am not sure, maybe garbage pal kids? It appears as the individual in service to a mechanical ideological system. I bear witness to this in churches, politics, education, and romantic comedies. The invitation for rigorous self-examination in a humble spirit with a heart full of love is my attempt at a way out (perhaps I have just swallowed my own ideological pill). This article from the Los Angeles Review of Books is worth your time, a snippet below.
“In a culture in which work is always evaluated and rewarded under the iron rubric of productivity, in which the realm of freedom is never safe, and we must always suspect ourselves of utility, in such a culture how do you know that your commitments are authentic? Why do you think your work is worth doing?….What’s alien in what we want? What’s us?”
Jan 3
BEVERLY LANZETTA. I first met Beverly Lanzetta a few years back when the opportunity arose for a couple of us to gather in a retreat house in the desert of New Mexico. At the time, I had just completed reading her book, The Monk Within: Embracing a Sacred Way of Life and was moved by its holistic contemplative invitation. The words that inspired me in the book translated perfectly to the presence of the author before me. What conspired in those brief hours together was special and ordinary in the contemplative blooming of life. Beverly Lanzetta is a profound teacher who invites her readers and students to engage in the fullness of Mystery each day through the cultivation of practice and rhythm. I was elated to get my mitts on her latest book A New Silence: Spiritual Practices and Formation for the Monk Within. Our conversation flows out of this work, we talk about contemplation rhythms, parenting, the archetype of the monk, the via feminia and so much more. Reflecting on A New Silence makes up the bulk of our conversation today, but I want to really emphasize how A New Silence provides many exercises and practical ways of moving into a monastic way of life. A New Silence is for any seeker who hears the call to a contemplative path in their own context.
Listen below or wherever you get your podcasts.
Jan 2
FOLLOWING THE CREEK. I am drenched from splashing in the Braided Creek yesterday. I ring another poem out. This one made me do a reverse somersault back to beginner’s mind.
“I was born a baby.
What has been
added?”
Jan 1
BRAIDED CREEK. I hope this New Year retains that new year smell for you at least until February. There is a top notch organization called the Lannan Foundation just north of me that puts on conversations between authors. In the back catalog I found a reading and chitchat with Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser. The unbuttoned nature of their friendship, correspondence, and craft was on full display for those in attendance and any latecomer listeners like myself. Check it out here. Below is a tiny excerpt from the Harrison and Kooser’s joint poetry book, Braided Creek.
” ‘What I would do for wisdom,’
I cried out as a young man.
Evidently not much. Or so it seems.
Even on walks I follow the dog.”
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