Quarantined Qontemplative

Nov 30

NOVEMBER NONREQUIRED READING LIST. Tucked in and beaming innocent expressions, my children bear their nightly benediction, “I love you so much, I am so glad you are here” I say.  They receive my words with childlike reception and ambivalence every time I put them to bed. Truth spoken plainly in love needs little commentary, I tell myself. In the mornings I place a rotation of love, ribald, and foolish notes on my wife’s coffee. The sacred and the profane have never felt as cozy as they do in those notes. I say this benediction and write these spark notes for my beloveds. I say this benediction and write these spark notes for me. 

Read the rest here or check your email if you have already signed up for the monthly missives…

Nov 29

ADVENT OUTPOST NUMERO UNO. My wife and I started an Advent neighborhood get together last year; soup, wine, bread, cheese, poetry, stories, hymns, and children bellowing. A eucharist of sorts, but more with an ancient turn to honoring both the light in the darkness, and the darkness itself. Due to Covid this will not be happening this year.

So I am attempting to put the spirit of what I experienced in that neighborhood Advent get together into a Contemplify Advent series. Something not churchy, but more in line with the wonder of seeing a coyote’s hideout in my neighborhood park or the clang of Mystery’s one hand clapping while the other hand tries not to spill the wine. I trust you already know where to receive the traditional advent fare and those blessed gospel texts that nestle in and embrace the Advent season. Consider this your backporch Advent outpost. A slipping out of doors to howl in the darkness and toast the light. 

I’ve asked a few friends to stop by and offer a few words. In this first Advent outpost, I begin with a story and reflection, then I pass the mic to the poet Todd Davis who shares a poem from his book In the Kingdom of the Ditch. And contemplative teacher Beverly Lanzetta closes us out with a prayer titled “Canticle of Silence” from her forthcoming book A Feast of Prayers. Listen to this Advent Outpost where you get your podcasts or below.

Nov 24

WORK AS A NARCOTIC. The wrapping up of the calendar puts reflective montages on the tv, or for the unscreened, listicles of the best books, or for the interior landscaper, digging into their personal journals of 2020. All in hopes of proof of accomplishment by whatever gauge matters most to them.

Thomas Merton comes to me in times of reflection on time, on production, on work. Merton writes,

“Technology as Karma. What can be done has to be done. The burden of possibility that has to be fulfilled, possibilities which demand so imperatively to be fulfilled that everything else is sacrificed for their fulfillment.
Computer Karma in American civilization.
Distinguish work as narcotic (that is being an operator and all that goes with it), from healthy and free work.
But also consider the wrong need for non-action. The Astavakra Gita says: “Do not let the fruit of action be your motive and don’t be attached to non-action.” In other words, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. Work to please God alone.”
(p.25, Woods, Shore, Desert by Thomas Merton)

Nov 23

CONTEMPLATION. Wisdom teacher Beverly Lanzetta writes this description of contemplation in her newest book, A New Silence. It is a textured and delicious definition that I hope you read and chew on over the course of this day.

“Contemplation is not a name for God. It is a condition of being-in-the-world that is necessary in order to bear (in the world) the divinity of the world. As a spiritual practice it can never be absolutely achieved or made fully transparent. Rather, it is an orientation that implies living in service of the daily, and cosmic, unfolding of the indwelling divine image and likeness. It is a spiritual practice that strengthens one’s ability to withstand the intimacy of life, and the inevitable loss of identity that makes the self tremble and lays the heart bare. It is a mystical being-in-the-world that refuses the daily distancing that informs public discourse. It is a bearing of a vulnerable and unveiled contact with the untidiness of life for the sake of every other. It is allowing oneself to feel the profundity and beauty of creation, to be pierced by the unbounded generosity of nature, and to be felled by the utter sensitivity that gives rise to love. It is a discipline that constantly seeks to be literate in reading the heart’s passion: to bear wounding and betrayal, but to disallow closure and retribution.”

Nov 19

ON AGRUPNIA. Hat tip to Mike for raising this quote to my eyes (bolded is mine),

“Our conditioning as members of a consumer society prevents us from abandoning hope that, with sufficient planning, we might yet be able to see and do everything. To move slowly and deliberately through the world, attending to one thing at a time, strikes us as radically subversive, even un-American. We cringe from the idea of relinquishing, in any moment, all but one of the infinite possibilities offered to us by our culture. Plagued by a highly diffused attention, we give ourselves to everything lightly. That is our poverty. In saying yes to everything, we attend to nothing. [But] One can only love what one stops to observe. ‘Nothing is more essential to prayer,’ said Evagrius, ‘than attentiveness.’”

“The practice of paying attention is the rarest of gifts because it depends on the hardest of disciplines. So uncommon is it for us to grasp the beauty and mystery of ordinary things that, when we finally do so, it often brings us to the verge of tears. Appalled by our own poverty, we awaken in wonder to a splendor of which we had never dreamed.” —Beldon Lane, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes 189, 191

Nov 18

APPRENTICE TO THE SLOW IMMEDIACY OF DAILY LIFE. It took me months to read Blue Sapphire of the Mind: Notes for a Contemplative Ecology by Douglas E. Christie. I found it a joy to read slowly, soaking in the poetics married with scholarship on the Christian contemplative tradition which I so dearly love. It read like a love letter, albeit in academic one, to a tradition that is still bursting with so much fruit waiting to be tasted by the many. I think it will wet your contemplative whistle, disarm any judgements, and welcome you to be a part of the great contemplative conversation. Our conversation highlights a few arrows from Blue Sapphire of the Mind that struck my heart. We talk about contemplation and parenting, memento mori(remembering death), a painting by George Inness, apprenticeships, contemplative practices and so much more. Listen to my conversation with Douglas E. Christie here, below or wherever you get your podcasts.

Nov 17

JULIAN IS A MYSTIC FOR THIS MOMENT. I have shared numerous times throughout this pandemic that Julian of Norwich has been a companion. She knows the woeful patterns of a pandemic and waves of the Beloved’s joy. If Julian would be a welcome voice in your life’s conversation check out Mirabai Starr and Matthew Fox’s course on Julian. (I should note in this day and age–this is not an ad–I don’t get paid for anything I recommend). It does cost three hundred smackaroos. Learn more here. You can also listen to the Contemplify episode about Julian from way back when here.

Nov 16

THE JOY OF THE LORD IS DAVID RAWLINGS PLAYING GUITAR. I have been graced with the good sense to see Gillian Welch and David Rawlings play a handful of times. Each time has been a mesmerizing musical experience. The first time I saw Rawlings bring his guitar to blistering life, I said to myself, that is what the joy of the Lord looks like. An arcane religious phrase turned over a new meaning that a lit a torch for me that night. A quick glance towards Welch and I saw that she animates the same anguished joy when she sings.

I am not the only one who agrees,

“Welch sings with her entire face — when a song bends toward joy, she almost can’t help smiling, and when a song bends toward sorrow, she looks contemplative, sometimes heartbroken, sometimes resigned to whatever the song’s fate may be. But her voice is consistent and clear, always. It resonates in the heart first: She sings as though she’s either mourning or preparing to mourn. Rawlings is the more animated of the two — he’s tall and athletic and energized. When he plays his guitar, his entire upper body twists and turns in small but ferocious movements. Their combined voices operate beyond simple sonic harmony. There are emotional inquiries at play. If Welch’s voice delivers the good news or the hard news of the world, Rawlings’s voice comes underneath, asking how much deeper the sadness can go or what fresh heights the ecstatic can climb to.”

Do read the whole article about these two grounded, gifted, and genius artists here. And once this pandemic is over, may you be lucky enough to find yourself in their presence. Until then, you can watch them play below.

Nov 15

THREE SECONDS. What is your take on American megabillionares building rockets to colonize space? A nagging question thorns my side when I think of it – do we as a human collective not need to attend to our home planet before jet packing to a new one? Our species has done a number on Earth, siphoned resources for cheap food, oil, and minerals for electronic gizmos. I am a greedy part of this problem. I do my best, and yet, I am a part of this western culture that does its worst.

The video below is not meant to be a pious shot at “those who don’t get it”. This is a conversation for everybody in the hyper-paced industrialized markets. The weight of climate change, turmoil, catastrophe, shitstorm is a legacy burden. This is a hope that we can see the planet as interconnected spun web infused with Christ. Can we honor its hospitality for our species even as we subdued its givings with reckless care? Pray for the megabillionaires that they might anchor up on their home planet and put their resources to the planetary human and non-human community that surround them. And pray for all of us in this mixed up materialistic (in the worst sense of the word) culture that we might bend to reality’s pressures to imagine a new way of being humans on this planet. Lord have mercy.

Nov 14

VIA FEMININA. The sides of God’s faces are hard to capture in text. The side that entices you can unlock a door that you have previously passed over or had no idea existed. One can read a multitude of sacred texts and walk away with an exhaustive menu of God’s showings. One path that I am smitten by is the Via Feminina that teacher Beverly Lanzetta speaks. In her book, The Monk Within, Lanzetta takes the time to grace the reader with a multidimensional understanding of the Via Feminina.

“Via Feminina is a gentle path, subtle in its ways. It come silently, and in such deep interiority that often you do not recognize its call. And this is no wonder, since the sound of Sophia’s voice is so holy, and the form of Her words so profound, that even the purist soul struggles to hold and bear them in memory. It is as if our Beloved Mystery is calling you to give birth to Her truth, to cradle Her words in your heart, until you have the strength and the wisdom to let them be incarnated in and through you.” (p.86)

Nov 13

UNCERTAINTY THAT HAUNTS. In Blue Sapphire of the Mind, Douglas Christie writer that the Christian contemplative tradition takes the “struggle (disease, despair and death) deeply to heart, in its insistent affirmation of the fundamental goodness of the material world and its belief in the possibility of renewal and transformation, but also in its awareness of and attention to the fragility and dark terror of existence and the profound uncertainty that always haunts those who seek such renewal.” (p. 275)

Whenever a joyful song hits your lips or the melting taste of a perfectly roasted delicata squash swirls over your tongue, attend to this moment. Gratitude for what is given does not dismiss the mass terror in the air, but seeds a resistance to divide reality into sacred and profane. This dance is the dance of a contemplative outlaw at home in the world.

Nov 11

MYSTICAL SHOCK THERAPY WITH YOUR COCOA PUFFS. Bernard McGinn shares how Meister Eckhart employed a style of homiletic shock therapy to move the listener into silent union, from The Mystical Thought of Meister Eckhart (p.100 bolded is my emphasis)

“In PR. 95b, where Eckhart says, ‘The more a person denies God, the more he praises him. The more one ascribes unlike things to him, the closer one comes to knowing him that if one tried to express a likeness.’ The goal of this practice is the deconstruction that leads to silent union. ‘As the soul come s two knowledge the God is unlike every nature, it also comes to a state of amazement and is driven further and comes into a state of silence. With the silence God sinks down not the soul and she is bedewed with grace.’ “

This passage is worth pondering, reflecting upon, and praying with. What is it saying to you?

Nov 10

LETTER TO YOU. The Boss. The Hardest Working Man in Rock n’ Roll. One might now throw the title Elder onto Bruce Springsteen. His latest album is as charmed and poignant in its examination of the human condition as any other Springsteen album. David Brooks wrote a lovely homage (review is to crass a word) to the state of Springsteen’s life and art at the age of 71,

“It’s the happiest Springsteen album maybe in decades. “When I listen to it, there’s more joy than dread,” Springsteen told me. “Dread is an emotion that all of us have become very familiar with. The record is a little bit of an antidote to that.” The album generates the feeling you get when you meet a certain sort of older person—one who knows the story of her life, who sees herself whole, and who now approaches the world with an earned emotional security and gratitude.”

Read the whole piece here, attend to the wholeness of aging with a nod to the totality of the journey.

Nov 9

ONLY WAY TO SPEAK HIS TRUTH. Dave Chappelle rocks whatever boat he is on. The comically ignorant will downplay his genius knack for joke craft. They will say the packaging is off, the language too coarse, my toes were stepped on, and he damn near tipped my boatload of beliefs over! What gets missed is that his heart is open to the world. As Chappelle says, “the only way for him to tell the truth is to put a punchline at the end.” His jokes are designed to be rough, to penetrate a listener’s comfort shield and wound the well-protected places of belief. White folks, if you watch the monologue below, I hope you can laugh at our mass inconsistencies. Laughter is the rare release of tension that also breaks the status quo gauge and invites a further reflection on why the gauge needs to get busted. Pay attention to how these jokes make you feel and what truth might be laying behind them.

Nov 7

HARD TIMES. Relief eases out my lungs at the moment, uncertainty will find its path back to my doorstep I am sure. Day by day, we humans do the best we can to carry on. Love our neighbors, love ourselves, and love our God. It is a bear to be a human, just as it is a bear to be bear. Life cracks on with politicos new and old, we pray the new will serve better than the old. Our planet spins a little lighter hoping that we get back into the right two-step with her. Our greed for comfort and ease are thorns in our sides. Our systems are overgrown with weeds. But today I will breathe a little lighter and continue the work at hand. Hard times ain’t gonna rule my mind.

Nov 5

I VOTED FOR MORE FALLOW TIME TO CULTIVATE WILD FLOWERS. Some poems sing in a choir of one. The voice multiples over itself and beckons you to join in. ‘Election’ by Alfred K. LaMotte is such a poem. (h/t to Cliff)

Election
by Alfred K. LaMotte

I voted.

I voted for the rainbow.

I voted for the cry of a loon.

I voted for my grandfather’s bones
that feed beetles now.

I voted for a singing brook that sparkles
under a North Dakota bean field.

I voted for salty air through which the whimbrel flies
South along the shores of two continents.

I voted for melting snow that returns to the wellspring
of darkness, where the sky is born from the earth.

I voted for daemonic mushrooms in the loam,
and the old democracy of worms.

I voted for the wordless treaty that cannot be broken
by white men or brown, because it is made of star semen,
thistle sap, hieroglyphs of the weevil in prairie oak.

I voted for the local, the small, the brim
that does not spill over, the abolition of waste,
the luxury of enough.

I voted for the commonwealth of the ancient forest,
a larva for every beak, a wing-tinted flower
for every moth’s disguise, a well-fed mammal’s corpse
for every colony of maggots.

I voted for open borders between death and birth.I voted on the ballot of a fallen leaf of sycamore
that cannot be erased, for it becomes the dust and rain,
and then a tree again.

I voted for more fallow time to cultivate wild flowers,
more recess in schools to cultivate play,
more leisure, tax free, more space between days.

I voted to increase the profit of evening silence
and the price of a thrush song.

I voted for ten million stars in your next inhalation.

Nov 4

GROUNDING. Here we are, gifted with another day of life. The complexities continue to reign down as does the mercy of God. Both exist. Ground in one and allow the other. My fine employer put this 2-minute meditation out this week, you’ll recognize the voice but the rest came from the whiz bang creative team.

Nov 3

OUR REAL WORK. A professor once told me that the government at its best can only hold back some of the evil. It was a curious statement to land on my teenage ears. As the years pass, I find it best not to lionize or demonize our political leaders (though I am guilty of both) because it often seems they are marionettes to stability, ‘other interests’, or a mirror of America’s blandest values. It gets in the way of the real work. And that is where we should cast our attention and shoulder our efforts. May today energize your real work.

Our Real Work
by Wendell Berry

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.

Nov 2

STAY CLOSE TO THE EDGES. Mayhem collapses on itself in centers, dragging knuckles bloodied by the fisticuffs for power. Out beyond the fences a fruitful exchange happens, at the edges, in the overlapping circles of cooperation. The birthing of new configurations that occurs outside of the spotlight. I take solace in this quote from Soil & Sacrament from Fred Bahnson.

“Edge is not so much a place as it is a heightened transfer of energy that happens in the meeting of two distinct entities: field and forest, ocean and estuary, scrub and grassland. These interstitial zones between ecosystems are where the greatest exchanges of life take place…’If change is to come, it will come from the margins,’ wrote Wendell Berry in The Unsettling of America, ‘It was the desert, not the temple, that gave us the prophets’…In farming, and in life, pay attention to relationships. Stay close to the edges, for that’s where you’ll find the greatest energy.” (p.115-16, 117, 119)

Nov 1

ALL SAINTS DAY. A poem by Robert Graves for your rumination today on this All Saints Day.

Not Dead

Walking through trees to cool my heat and pain,  
I know that David’s with me here again.  
All that is simple, happy, strong, he is.  
Caressingly I stroke  
Rough bark of the friendly oak. 
A brook goes bubbling by: the voice is his.  
Turf burns with pleasant smoke;  
I laugh at chaffinch and at primroses.  
All that is simple, happy, strong, he is.  
Over the whole wood in a little while  
Breaks his slow smile.