Oct 31
NonRequired Reading. This month’s offering was shipped out with the sunrise in hopes of stirring attention and pulling the sheets off perception. Hopefully someone had already brewed you some coffee. You can read the latest missive here and sign up here to get the next NonRequired Reading List.
Oct 30
UNDER PRESSURE. I put the song “Under Pressure” by Queen with David Bowie on the stereo during my wife’s laboring with our first kiddo. She got a kick out of it. Now we have been gifted a version by Willie Nelson and Karen O who don’t compete with the original but make it their own. This rendition, of this tune, at this time in 2020 feels about right. The raggedy and rough exhaustion of pursuing love in the year of insanity has felt under pressure.
Oct 29
YOU CAN’T BE IN A HURRY. The coo of the call to the contemplative way is just outside my window in common song birds and musty pigeons. Been looking at the birds of air and the words from Taoist Master Hsueh pecked my mind. Here is his guidance on cultivating practice from Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits by Bill Porter:
“…you can’t be in a hurry. You have to be prepared to devote your whole life to your practice. This is what’s meant by religion. It’s not a matter of spending money. You have to spend your life. Not many people are willing to do this….You have to practice before you can understand. Lao-tzu teaches us to be natural. You can’t force things, including practice. Understanding is something that happens naturally. It’s different for everyone. The main thing is to reduce your desires and quiet your mind. Practice takes a long time, and you have to stay healthy. If you have a lot of thoughts and desires, you won’t live long enough to reach the end.” (p.82)
Oct 22 – 28
SILENT RETREAT. Hey there. I thank my lucky straws that I am able to suck up some space for my annual silent retreat. I will be off the Contemplify technology drip until next week. I will be holding you in this silence and, if you think of me, send some care bear stares my way. Thanks. A poem from the indelible Chris Dombrowski to hold you (and me) fast.
Coda
by Chris Dombrowski
Under a winter’s worth of melting snow,
Swan Lake is a fresh sheet of rice paper
and the half-sunk round of larch
charred from an ice fisherman’s fire
the precise place the Great Poet
rested her ink-wet brush momentarily
before raising it, and abandoning
the poem for the view.
Oct 21
GILEAD. I read the novel Gilead by Marilynne Robinson when I was biking across Montana. After a day of cycling and eating snickers bars dipped in creamed honey for fuel warmth of reading Gilead was luxurious experience. The tone and measured heart of this story transported me to a place I thought only Wendell Berry could take me. Robinson deserves all of the accolades and admiration she has gained. Now you can watch and listen to Ethan Hawke (a public contemplative I might add) read an abridged version of Gilead at the 92Y. You can buy tickets here and watch Hawke below describe Robinson and Gilead‘s impact on his being. (h/t to Lee)
Oct 20
IF YOU CLOSE YOUR EYES IT BECOMES SO EASY TO SEE. The grandmaster of songwriting has slyly slipped a new album into the audio stream. Sturgill Simpson has released a bunch of his older tunes as bluegrass songs. Simpson cuts through the thickheadedness of our days with humor, craft, and the finest songwriting this side of the 21st Century. This song goes out to Husker.
Oct 19
EVERYBODY NOW. A new episode of Contemplify is out today. Though Contemplify’s role in it was small, “Everybody Now: Climate Emergency and Sacred Duty“, is an episode that is a part of a podmarch attempting to circle attention on the dire conditions of our planet, our species, and our brother and sister species. Big tip of the hat to Tim Nash and David Benjamin Blower for planning and putting this together. May it play its role beautifully in the great turning.
Oct 17
TRUE ENDEARMENT. After a couple of nights of hide and seek with sleep due to the coos and cries of our cubs, I reread Chris Dombrowski’s sublime essay “My Anti-Zen Zen” in The Sun. My drowsy disposition was no match for Dombrowski’s pen. This essay reminds me that parenting is a contemplative art (and this art is being stretched every moment of the pandemic). Read this article and send it to the blurry-eyed parents in your life. A smile will be spackled across their faces. Laughter will give way to a silent nod.
Parenting is being tossed assbackward into a pool with cement flippers. The responsibility, buffoonery, tilted joy, and shared madness of it all congeals into something called love and keeps you afloat til you reach the edge of enlightenment. Read an excerpt below and the whole shebang here.
“My dying teacher could not wipe himself,” wrote Ikkyū. “Unlike you disciples / who use bamboo, I cleaned his ass with my bare hands.” The old monk, who also called himself “Crazy Cloud,” might strike one as a bit irreverent, but he is simply stating the rules of engagement, the terms of true endearment. Last fall my friend’s bird dog had pups, and whenever the proud mother returned to the truck after a hunt in the fields, she’d be beset by seven hungry puppy mouths leaping for her teats. I took a picture of the scene with my cellphone and sent it to Mary, who was home taking care of the children, more than likely nursing Lily while reading a book to Molly and helping Luca construct some elaborate Lego vehicle. “Funny,” she responded in a text message, “and true.”
Oct 15
LEAVE THE LIGHT ON. What does it mean to be a good neighbor? Some neighbors I know by name, others by face mask. Swapping pleasantries or jumping dead batteries. These small interactions build up a relationship that one might call neighborly. My family arrived home from a mountain excursion to find the police in front of our place. The concern was my neighbor’s whereabouts. My favorite neighbor in fact. A rascally voice and a busted car, he is man with a tender heart tucked in the front pocket of his shirt. Never had two nickels to jingle in his pocket, but a laugh light enough to change the tune of your day. Within the hour, the paramedics arrived and the door was opened. We watched them carry him out on a stretcher. We were uncertain if he was dead or alive, we still don’t know. But one of the paramedics flipped the front porch light on before they left. The porch light pulls my attention every time I glance across the street. I offer feeble prayers for his health or if he did pass, that he passed in the presence of love. I’m still searching to find out. For now, the porch light is a prayer candle I didn’t light. This song, Leave The Light On, is for my neighbor.
Oct 9 – 13
OUT OF RANGE. Taking to the mountains to restore my eyes to knowledge beyond the screens. Please enjoy this poem in my virtual absence.
Dept. Meeting
Listening to the speaker—disclosure, she said, consequence—
he could literally hear his soul
withering—sound of a swallowtail smashed midflight
frying on the semitruck’s chrome grill—
which was fine because prior to this the soul’s existence had seemed
disputable, but now—objectives, goal-based
outcomes, interdepartmental checks and balances—
he was certain he could feel
yellow wings adorned with dark whorls folding open,
fanning abandoned coals inside his chest,
smoldering away decades of academic bleating, vague
apolitical sterilization—and even if
this sensation were mere delusion, heartburn hallucination
brought on by faux-crab dip
catered by a food service staff under budgetary restrictions,
he vowed to view it as visitation: contact
with the actual, scant but inimitable wind that was suddenly
the only thing he heard.
Oct 8
A BECOMING-TOGETHER. I like lingering at the edges. Playing in the places of intersection, of porous boundaries, of field and stream. The life that gets entangled and exchanged on the edges sprouts new arisings. Bayo Akomolafe’s book, These Wilds Beyond Our Fences is an invitation to his embodied path into such living. These words stick like maple syrup to my lips.
“We are learning to see that we are in this together–and nobler words could not be spoken at this time of vexed exclusions, legitimized exterminations, and weaponized boundaries. This is a time to linger at the edges, to lean into the troubling intersection points where the differences between me and you, us and them, queer and straight, nature and culture, living and nonliving, man and world, are not given and done, but still in the making. This is a time to stay with the trouble of knowing that there is no becoming that is not a becoming-together.” (p.284)
Oct 7
SON OF THUNDER. Today marks the birth of my son. The moment we received him into the beautiful mess of this world, thunder clapped and rain poured in the desert. This is not a common occurrence. My mythic nordic imagination made me wonder if we should name him Thor.
I wrote a letter to my boy before he was born, you can read it below or listen to it here. It seems especially relevant in these trying days.
Dear Son,
We just finished an appointment with the midwives. I sat on the couch opposite your Mama as she laid back with her baby belly in the air. I couldn’t see your Mama’s face, just the belly housing you. Inwardly I was chuckling, your Mama was all belly and legs. But then our Midwife smeared that celestial goop on her stomach and massaged a heart monitor on the barrier between you and the world. Bah-dump, bah-dump, bah-dump. Your tiny heart called me to attention, and my eyes misted with the primal recognition that you would be here soon, screaming and breathing, and laid into the crook of my arms. Your Mama repositioned, we locked eyes and she gave me a quick wink.
I am writing to you from my desk, pen in hand, on a sunny autumn day in Albuquerque, New Mexico just a couple days after my 38th birthday and hopefully a few days before yours. You have been bumbling and stretching in your Mama for 9 months now. We are eager to meet you little one, for your awakening into this world is also our own. We will see afresh the miracle of being human. You may find that to be the best part of your new life, your presence reminds everyone else that life is a miracle. No doubt your first prerogative is to locate your big sister, whose been hugging you from the belly side of the womb. She will be quick to give you the lowdown on your Mama and me and catch you up on all of the essentials, like how to track down the moon in the night sky and where we keep the band aids. Stick close to her, she’s a blonde Bodhisattva.
Since you will be new to this life, I thought a word or two about the world as I see it and the family you are entering might be welcome. I reckon it’ll be an equally useful practice for me. I wanted to get these offerings on paper before we give you a name and I am overwhelmed by the joyful flurry of your first few months. I’ll share the most pressing thought first, it’s good to be human. Life is a wild, wild trip full of adventures if there ever was one– you’ll find struggle and love and forgiveness drawing you ever forward to a fullness you suspect is just beyond the horizon. And sometimes, sometimes, when a soft wind brushes your arm and wakes you, you will taste its fullness in the present moment if you can bear it. But more on that later. The second reason for this letter is that I’m nervous. See, my role in your life as one of your parents, is to love and guide you on your unfolding path…a responsibility I don’t hold lightly. It’s been a hoot being a dad to your sister, but adding you to the mix is hard to fathom. To imagine a third human so tightly tethered to the strings of my heart is difficult. Yet I know when I first glimpse your squirmy little body that I will love you as fiercely as I do your Mama and Sister. I can tear up just watching your sister play with your mom (you’ll have to get used to this). It is in these moments, these snapshots of the Kingdom of Heaven, flashing before my eyes when I am most burdened by the fragility of this life. The beating hearts and rhythmic breaths of my beloveds can cast me into a reflective space, a tender wistfulness. I am slow to talk about this. For it is always on the backburner of my mind, the impermanence of it all, of our precious shared lives. How many years will we have together? Will we forge a strong enough bond to sustain the bumps and miles between us over time? Impossible to answer now, but these questions will be fretfully occupying my mind for years to come. The master poet comforts me when he writes, ‘Another word for father is worry.’ (‘Words for Worry’, Li-Young Lee)
Son, you are entering the world in chaotic times. But don’t be saddened by that, each member of our human family has always been welcomed to this planet by the rattle of chaos. The Dagara people in Burkina Faso have ritual where the children of the community are present at a birth, they respond to the first cry of a newborn with cries of their own, to assure the new baby that they will not journey through this world alone (Joy Unspeakable, Barbara Holmes, p 35 -36). I love that.
Our human pursuits challenge the stability of our planet. We just can’t seem to get a handle on what to do about it. Or worse, the courage to change our course to a more believable one. It can be overwhelming to be a part of the human family. Our history is marred by war, genocide, racism, pollution, and pumpkin spice lattes. We have also contributed to creating some marvelous rituals, neighborhoods, songs, poetry and laughter. Oh son, laughter is one of the greatest gifts of this human experience. When you are graced with an uproarious belly laugh that hurts, causing you to grasp for that next gasp of air. Enjoy it. Sink into it. You’ll notice that as people get older their laughter becomes polite and stifled. Letting go into ecstatic laughter can be seen as foolish or even a sign of your mental health slipping. But Laughter is often the best response to the absurdity of life. I hope you laugh often and loudly. Your Mother was gifted the best laugh my ears have heard. I hope it gets passed down to you. Alongside laughter, kindness is another remarkable human expression for chaotic times. Despite all of the self-help books out there yammering about kindness, it often comes in the form of simply showing up and paying attention. You will be a natural at this for years to come, children can lift a sullen heart or put a smile on a stranger passing by just by showing up. There is a subtle art to kindness that we hope to help cultivate in you, but it will be a unique brand all unto you.
I’m biased, but you won the lottery in the Momma department. She is much wiser than I, more embodied and in tune with the banjo of life. This doesn’t mean that I don’t have anything to offer, it simply means that I’ve learned more about being human from her than anyone else. That’s a marker of wisdom that I pay more attention to than ever, stick close to those embracing the fullness of their humanity. To your young ears that must sound ridiculous. Trust me when I say that this world is full of folks seeking to become someone or something other than what they are. Some call that spirituality, I call it the Gatsby delusion. But it’s partly true for all of us, the temptation to peel off our innate layers and wear someone else’s skin. And even worse, others will try to tell you who you should be. Discerning between charlatans and heartfelt humans is one of the major tasks of life, and often both exist within the same person. Jeez, see, I’m getting all existential, another reason to pay more attention to your momma’s way of being in the world.
Let curiosity be your guide, son. This world is full of so many marvels, histories, cultures. Let your boredom be a resting ground, because soon enough your curiosity will peek through a doorway you’ll want to walk through. Boredom is completely misunderstood in the world you’ve just entered. Unfathomable resources are being poured into goods and gadgets that will distract you from your God-given right to boredom. Boredom is a signal for so many offerings. You might just need a rest from the cacophony of life. You might be in the wrong line of work or relationship. You might be in the right line of work or relationship and just need the courage to dig a little deeper. Curiosity is your best pal for working through these vital questions when they arise.
Go inward, son. The world is not the only terrain full of marvels and mysteries. Your inner life is a confluence of many unfolding riverways; some will grant you solace to sit by, offering fruit and easy beauty. Others run underground, reluctantly showing themselves only in broken openings. Over the years you will wonder aloud, who am I? How did I become this person? You will discover your light and shadow are ceaseless dance partners. Watch how they touch, kiss and who takes the lead when. You’ll be tempted to dismiss one or both throughout you days. Now I’ve mixed metaphors, rivers and dance partners. But how could it be otherwise to attempt to chart out a picture of your inner life? For the paradox of life is found only in metaphor, in light and shadow, rhythms of being and spontaneous creativity, you become the answer to the questions you ask with each exhale…until your very last.
You should know that some of my best friends are dead. You’ll find their books lining our walls. I hope to properly introduce you to all of them someday, for now its good to know just a few; Merton is a cut-up who is always hanging around, Thoreau tends to be on a walk whenever I am seeking his counsel, Teresa is the first to break into song, Lao-Tzu knows more than he lets on, and Rumi, well, he is always up for pint down the street. I just didn’t luck out to be walking the planet at the same time as them. No matter. The friendships grow in their own way. My hope is you strike up rich friendships with some of my dead friends too.
Life is hard, son. It can be really hard. Your Mother and I will make mistakes. We will say or do, or not say and not do, things that will hurt you. You will also make missteps. Systems around us will confine you. Illness and death come for everyone. Responding with kindness, attentive discernment and laughter go a long way in these seasons of life. When in doubt, take a deep breath, go for a stroll under a canopy of trees and do the next most loving action. It will not solve or stave off the hurricanes of life, but it will increase your fortitude. You will need the support and love of family, friends, and neighbors too. We all need help, especially now. Why now? Because we always need one another; to expand our notions of love and with the same fierceness, receive it. Love is one of those intangible aspects of life. It comes quickly at times, others times not so, and needs the sustenance of attention, humor, gentleness and at times a bold edge.
You’ll be born into a white male body. This will grant you privilege in our world. And with privilege comes power. You need to know that. It doesn’t mean you get a pass on the hardships of life mentioned previously, but it will be easier for you. It also means you have the responsibility to recognize that privilege and do your part in dismantling systems that uplift the few and oppress the many. I imagine that sounds like a lot for you as you haven’t even taken a breath outside the womb yet. But I’ll remind you, it’s not all up to you. This is the work of loving community, which you are one fabric of. Celebrate your smallness and your greatness in being part of it. Call that humility. The brunt of those who imagine it is theres to do, and do all by their lonesome is too much to bear and asks them to become inhuman in doing so. Stay humble, do the work.
I’ll say it again, it’s good to be human. You may forget this at times. I do. All too often. One of the ways I am reminded of this is by your Mama, Sister, Friends and Family. Strangers too. Also, God. This is no religious letter in the institutional sense, but a sweaty, breathing one. I’ve had experiences that have marked me in relationship with the Christ Mystery. A God so intimate, that she tells me when my breath stinks. A God who is mostly known by forgetting what I think I know about him. A God who gets the joke, even when its a cosmic one. A God of the collective. It’s the most enriching and frustrating relationship I have on the books. I don’t always feel God, or believe in God, or know where God is buying the next round. When I’m in that space, I lean on my experience, my community and the wisdom traditions to trust that the Mystery is within, and without, for any wisdom I’ve gained is because I’ve humbly paid attention to her muses showing up in forms both known and unknown. The Divine is wily in that way. Take these wondrous words from A Natural History of the Senses to heart, Son. Eat them. Digest them. Live them.
“The great affair, the love affair with life, is to live as variously as possible, to groom one’s curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred, climb aboard, and gallop over the thick, sun-struck hills every day. Where there is no risk, the emotional terrain is flat and unyielding, and, despite all its dimensions, valleys, pinnacles, and detours, life will seem to have none of its magnificent geography, only a length. It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.” (p.309, Vintage Books, 1990)
Son, I don’t know what terrain lies ahead for you, but I do know that my love will be a backdrop for every shift in landscape and turn of weather. But…still probably a good idea to bring a sweater.
Much love,
Your Dear Old Dad
P.S. Son, these notes come out of my tattered life experiences, disregard much and retain what you can muster. You’ll be exploring life on your own terms. Your path will be all your own, yet springing from our foundation. I wanted to relay how I see things. Stand tall, son. I’m glad you’re here.
Oct 6
REST IN GOD, DEAR BOY. From a conversation between Jay Farini and W.H. Auden fifty years ago (h/t to Alan Jacobs)
“I’ve learned a little in my life,” he (W.H. Auden) said. “Not much. But I will share with you what I do know. I hope it will help.”
He lit a cigarette, looked at the ceiling, then said, “I know only two things. The first is this: There is no such thing as time.” He explained that time was an illusion: past, present, future. Eternity was “without a beginning or an end,” and we must come to terms with what underlies time, or exists around its edges. He quoted the Gospel of John, where Jesus said: “Before Abraham was, I am.” That disjunctive remark upends our notions of chronology once and for all, he told me.
I listened, a bit puzzled, then asked: “So what’s the second thing?”
“Ah, that,” he said. “The second thing is simply advice. Rest in God, dear boy. Rest in God.”
Oct 5
JUSTICE IS AWKWARD. Today, I want to share with some words from Bayo Akomolafe regarding the knuckleball of virtues…justice. Akomolafe writes,
“Justice is awkward. Awk-ward. Not forward. “Forwards” speak of gold plated futures in wait. “Awkwards” take note of something else. A Middle English word for “clumsy,” “backward,” or “perverse” was awk. The word itself evokes the idea of things lacking certain grace about them, being of many minds as opposed to walking resolutely in one direction. In spite of the many negative connotations attached to the idea of being awkward, awkwardness is a profusion of grace, and the absence of it.” (p.262. The Wilds Beyond Our Fences)
Life is awkward. Justice is awkward as it trips over certainty and falls toward entanglement. Do not be quick to follow a person shouting about a linear road to justice. Justice is a knuckleball, it jags and jets and jitters in awkward ways. Attention flowing from virtues and prayer (in my estimation) are excellent gauges for playing with the awkwardness of justice.
(Yesterday was the feast day for St. Francis. Francis understood that clumsy nature of justice, the upside down Kingdom of GodI hope it found in the arms of animals, under cover of jack pine, and feeling your too covered toes is in the dust of Christ.)
Oct 3
HOW TO BE A CONTEMPLATIVE. Wendell Berry is a mythic figure in my mind. He exists on a plane of reality that haunts me. I don’t imagine him perfect or living an ideal life. I imagine a man who has slowly and humbly opened himself up to his humanity as but one living part in dynamic exchange with nature. This is a call that I hear in his poetry. The poem below is called “How to be a Poet”, but I think it could also be called “How to be a Contemplative”.
How to Be a Poet
(to remind myself)
i
Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill—more of each
than you have—inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.
ii
Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.
iii
Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.
Oct 1
DESOLATION PEAK. When the culture of despair has blanketed my quiet with distress, I have romanticized the idea of being a fire lookout. After reading the works of fire lookouts Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, and Phillip Connors I would swoon in wondrous dreams of such solitudinal work in the wilds. I was sure I would be graced with the contemplative opportunity to find myself as a lookout for a fire season. This never came to pass. I honor the women and men who have heeded the call to this sacred post, to put their bodies on a perch, with astute eyes peeled for plumes of smoke. Watch this marvelous short film about fire lookout Jim Henterly on Desolation Peak.
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