7/31/20
NONREQUIRED. An exploration of words and silence in the pursuit of a quiet mind. Recommending some gems by Louise Glück, Jean Giano, and Gabriel García Márquez. It should be in your inbox by now, read online here, or sign up here to receive next month’s Contemplify NonRequired Reading List email.
7/30/20
MYSTIC JORDAN. I watched a lot of hoops in my day. My attention in my youth was on Magic and Bird. As the Chicago Bulls came into their own in the 90s I cheered against them while marveling at Michael Jordan’s ability to take over a game at will. I’ve watched The Last Dance documentary focusing on the final championship run of the Bulls (but it is so much more than that) with laser nostalgic focus. Towards the end of this documentary one commentator calls Michael Jordan a mystic. He speaks of Jordan’s ability to live in the present moment and hold the perception of possibility in each second. I paused the film and pondered the question of mysticism anew with Jordan in mind. I could hardly disagree. I wonder if this a plus of competitive sports that has been neglected?
7/29/20
MAY ALL YOUR FAVORITE BANDS STAY TOGETHER. After a stroll to the park last night, the kids and I came home to find the my wife rocking to one of her favorite bands, The Steel Wheels. Music is part of the magic sauce of our family. The tastes are broad and specific. An appreciative nod is sought in all of our musical adventures. The Steel Wheels were streamed a socially distant show last night and closed with a cover song the cracks my back into a nostalgic posture of the sweetness of young adulthood, proclaiming yourself an adult but not entirely confident you will live into it. Check out the original Dawes version below.
7/27/20
SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS. Are the kids going to be alright? Lots of us are paying close attention to the youngest members of our crews in these days of pandemonium and pandemic. I am reminded of a story about Dorothy Day (from memory, so some details could be way off) who co-founded the Catholic Worker Movement. When she was a little girl there was an earthquake that shaked, rattled, and rolled her community. It frightened her to feel the ground shift beneath her feet and see the destruction from the earth’s twerk. But then she saw how neighbors started to support, feed, and house one another in the aftermath. It cheered her spirit to see each neighbor unspooling their piece of the connective web. They were tied to each other by common humanity. She credits this with the inspiration for beginning the Catholic Worker Movement with Peter Maurin.
In an article in The Atlantic, a father reflects on what his kids are learning outside of school walls amidst the pandemic and the protests in the streets. It brought to mind Dorothy Day and the mystic activists who are being formed under the thumb of harsh circumstances.
“Life settled into a kind of rhythm again. But when we tried to return to our pandemic routine, it wasn’t easy. Something felt changed. We couldn’t put our finger on what it was. It didn’t feel like the end of the world anymore. Somehow, it felt like a beginning.”
Read the whole article here.
7/26/20
ZUIHITSU. “is a genre of Japanese literature consisting of loosely connected personal essays and fragmented ideas that typically respond to the author’s surroundings” (wiki). This is a genre as form-fitting to me as sweatpants that read ‘juicy’ on the ass. A form that is endlessly evocative and in quarantine times, exponentially necessary. The poet Khadijah Queen has dropped a fragile zuihitsu for readers to catch and carry with her in the first few months of quarantine. Read here.
7/25/20
THEOTOKOS. On April 22nd of this year, I took this snapshot of Mary .
Here is a photo I took of the same tree 3 months later.
Mother Mary is fading into the tree. Her features and color are disappearing. The flowers long gone. I have been to this park dozens of times since her presence first surprised me. Seeing Mary fade like a photo in Back to the Future tilted my mood reflective. In the early days of the quarantine there was an early and whimsical naïveté. I remember asking the question, who do I want to be on the other side of this? The months have waddled at a turtle’s pace while there has been multiple calls to stay in our shells. The number of infections and deaths has sharply risen. People have taken to the streets to call for police reform after the murder of George Floyd. Cities have federal agents swarming in. Unrest surges in our midst. The pockets of many of my countrymen and women are empty, a few top dogs have lined their own with unthinkable wads of cash.
I think often of Barry Lopez’s words I heard him speak in a jam packed lecture hall years ago. When asked how one should respond to climate change he responded, “Pay attention to where life is happening, go to where you find life.” In my Christian tradition, Mother Mary is the God-bearer. She bore and raised a child in chaotic times. A man who saw life and possibility in the blind, the fisherman, the downtrodden, and cursed. He spoke challenging words to the politicos and power brokers of his time. Those who sought to pay attention to life, followed him.
I have no idea how things are going to shake out. Personally, I am asking myself the same question, who do I want to be at the end of this? That is dictating my decisions. Additionally, I am asking where do I see life right now and how do I participate? A great turning seems upon us right alongside abounding confusion, but perhaps we can remember and become like Mother Mary daring to birth new life in the shadow of uncertainty. May we have the audacity to walk in faith that life continues to endlessly birth within us if we have the eyes to see beyond the fading colors.
7/23/20
ELEGY. Leif Vollebekk’s album Twin Solitudes is a misty morning treasure. It sounds like coffee tastes in a pleasant fog seconds before lifting. This number is called “Elegy”, a gorgeous reflection on death and being left behind. Also Leif’s dance moves should inspire everyone to dance any damn way they please.
“As I recall you were standing there
You was holding your rosary beads
Everyone around you seems to think he knows what he needs
Seven ugly reasons kept me away from you then
Nothing is much weaker than the resolve of most men
I remember when we was alone in your room
Staring out your window we knew you’d be going soon
And I was so young babe
I hoped that you knew that I meant well
And when I looked in your eyes
I thought I knew you could tell
Now I’m going back from the cemetery gates
You who I loved dearly now I must wait
To be reunited in the sky when it opens
Well, my feet are so tired baby
But my spirit ain’t broken
Take a look at me now.”
– Leif Vollebekk
7/22/20
CANCEL CULTURE. This is a not a couplet of words that I employ regularly. Language, free speech, and messaging are complex activities in play with subtle and overt intentions in public life.
What is a contemplative perspective on cancel culture? If I think of some of the mystics and contemplatives I admire who were put to death or labeled a heretic for scratching an unpopular itch. There were others who I don’t admire who met the same fate. The question that remains for me is this, how do I hold a multitude of perspectives that sit on my personal spectrum ranging from complete agreement to a head shaking ‘hell no”? It is tough. I hold the belief that we are all united in the Body of Christ that requires a nodding to the spark of the Divine we all share. It opens me to the skill of listening with an inner ear. I have learned immensely from folks I don’t see eyeball to eyeball with and they have helped shape the boundaries of my perspectives (and where I need to reevaluate). For further reflections, read this opinion piece from philosopher Agnes Callard called “Should We Cancel Aristotle?” (NYT)
7/21/20
ENDURANCE. Much has already been written about the life and integrity of John Lewis. I suspect that as time unfolds deeper reflections and admiration will follow in holding up this exemplar of humble courage. As he rests in peace may we reflect on the currents of his life that reached our shores, calling us to swim further than we imagined for the sake of the whole. Here is one of many eulogizing pieces on John Lewis.
7/20/20
EATING BOOKS. Simone Weil wrote “I only read what I am hungry for at the moment when I have an appetite for it, and then I do not read, I eat.” (Waiting For God, Simone Weil, 69). Carnal reading for life-giving sustenance is perfectly relatable to me. There is a hunger within that shoves me into a transrational meal between a text, author, and my being. I eat a book slowly to taste each morsel, to satisfy internal longings. A happy belly burps a new thought. Full of words and images, I can’t take another bite. A long jaunt after such a sumptuous meal aids in walking off the fluff and digesting the meat.
Eat well, my friends.
7/18/20
SHOVELS & ROPE. In a rare block of free time I watched the documentary The Ballad of Shovels and Rope. It chronicles the journey of husband and wife musical duo Shovels & Rope in the creation of their barnburner of an Americana album O‘ Be Joyful. Their creative pursuit is contagious. They empty everything out of their pockets and spirits with gritty wit and foot-stomping artistry. Can’t recommend enough.
7/17/20
YOU ARE STILL ALIVE. Douglas Christie’s endlessly evocative book The Blue Sapphire of the Mind continues to put cream in my coffee. Just when I think it can not get any better, he slips in quotes that require one to remove their shoes. The ache of the heart pours through the soles of your feet and draws remembrance to your brief role on the planet. Below is a quote he lifted up from Paul Harding’s Tinkers on mortality, dis-ease in the world, and the surprise of being present to it all.
“Your cold mornings are filled with the heartache about the fact that although we are not at ease in this world, it is all we have, that it is ours but that it is full of strife, so that all we can call our own is strife; but even that is better than nothing at all, isn’t it? And as you split the frost-laced wood with numb hands, rejoice that your uncertainty is God’s will and His grace toward you that that is beautiful, and a part of a greater certainty, as your own father always said in his sermons and to you at home. And as the ax bites into the wood, be comforted in the fact that the ache in your heart and the confusion in your soul means that you are still alive, still human, and still open to the beauty of the world, even though you have done nothing to deserve it. And when you resent the ache in your heart, remember: You will be dead and buried soon enough.”
7/16/20
TENSION OF SEEING. Czeslaw Milosz was poet who stood in the midst of the world’s thunderous terror. Frozen at times, while at other times swerving to avoid easy optimism offered by friends. He wrote through it all. Milosz called poetry the “passionate pursuit of the Real.” His 1980 Nobel Lecture was introduced to me through Douglas Christie’s standout book The Blue Sapphire of the Mind. Below is a section on the moral responsibility of the poet, the tension of seeing from within and afar.
“A few minutes ago I expressed my longing for the end of a contradiction which opposes the poet’s need of distance to his feeling of solidarity with his fellow men. And yet, if we take a flight above the Earth as a metaphor of the poet’s vocation, it is not difficult to notice that a kind of contradiction is implied, even in those epochs when the poet is relatively free from the snares of History. For how to be above and simultaneously to see the Earth in every detail? And yet, in a precarious balance of opposites, a certain equilibrium can be achieved thanks to a distance introduced by the flow of time. “To see” means not only to have before one’s eyes. It may mean also to preserve in memory. “To see and to describe” may also mean to reconstruct in imagination. A distance achieved, thanks to the mystery of time, must not change events, landscapes, human figures into a tangle of shadows growing paler and paler. On the contrary, it can show them in full light, so that every event, every date becomes expressive and persists as an eternal reminder of human depravity and human greatness. Those who are alive receive a mandate from those who are silent forever. They can fulfill their duties only by trying to reconstruct precisely things as they were, and by wresting the past from fictions and legends.
Thus both – the Earth seen from above in an eternal now and the Earth that endures in a recovered time – may serve as material for poetry.”
7/15/20
GENERATIONS. Joy Harjo is the United States poet laureate and a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation. Her reflections on the recent decision of the Supreme Court on McGurt vs. Oklahoma is quite something to behold. Below is a snippet, but do read the whole thing should you get a chance.
“The Old Ones have always reminded us that we will be here long after colonization has worn itself out. An elder explained to me once, pressing her fingers together, “See this?” I could see no light between her fingers. “This is the time since European settlement.” Then, she spread her arms from horizon to horizon: “This is the whole of time.”….The elders, the Old Ones, always believed that in the end, there would be justice for those who cared for and who had not forgotten the original teachings, rooted in a relationship with the land. I could still hear their voices as we sat out on the porch later that evening when it cooled down. Justice is sometimes seven generations away, or even more. And it is inevitable.”
7/14/20
SUBTLE SACRAMENTS. Hustle over to your inbox to read the latest Contemplify Quarantine Edition #10! So much popping in the world and the question arose, what are the ways we can open our days so the Spirit can slip in? You can sign up for the Contemplify NonRequired Reading List here. You can read the Contemplify Quarantine Edition #10 here.
7/12/20
LIBERTY, MYTHS & MONUMENTS. What is liberty? That is a question worth lingering on. James Baldwin and Ken Burns spend a moment pondering it in this video and its relationships to monuments erected across the United States.
7/11/20
LIFE AT 3 MILES PER HOUR. It is true that I am writing this on the 12th, but alas, life was endlessly setting the table of responsibilities before me yesterday. I raise a glass to announce that my conversation with my wise and wily friend Jonathon Stalls is now available for your listening here (or wherever you get your podcasts). Jonathon talks about walking across the United States, walking as a contemplative practice, what it means to walk heart-to-heart with another, and much more. You can learn more about Jonathon at intrinsicpaths.com.
7/10/20
VICTORY. Some songs need the repeat button, this mystical number is one of them.
7/9/20
EVERY THING GURGLES WITH MAGIC. “Go, Paul, go!” my son shouted as I pushed him in the bike stroller that moonlights as a running stroller. It was early. I like running when the rising sun has not yet cleared the Sandia Mountains. The blaze of a New Mexico summer can overheat a parked car. When I can, I run at the crack of day to avoid this fate. Early risers are rewarded in other ways too. We are gilded by the magic of the morning. The scent of a summer morning is unrepeatable, the flora sees me approaching and mixes a new batch of perfume and wafts it over me as I run by. They wave as I glance approvingly at today’s offering, they prefer to not repeat yesterday’s concoction or allow me to predict tomorrow’s aroma. Today’s gift is enough. The neighborhood cats roll their eyes and shake their asses (or is it the other way around?) while dogs whistle at the stroller wheels on tarmac, they howl in admiration that my owner lets me off leash so early. This day is a alive with a sure-fire heat that has me peeling asphalt from my toes. The soul of the day speaks fluent French. I don’t understand a word, but I am in love.
Then I read this from a Paris Review interview with poet and hybrid man-dog Jim Harrison and I know that I am not alone.
“Antaeus magazine wanted me to write a piece for their issue about nature. I told them I couldn’t write about nature but that I’d write them a little piece about getting lost and all the profoundly good aspects of being lost—the immense fresh feeling of really being lost. I said there that my definition of magic in the human personality, in fiction and in poetry, is the ultimate level of attentiveness. Nearly everyone goes through life with the same potential perceptions and baggage, whether it’s marriage, children, education, or unhappy childhoods, whatever; and when I say attentiveness I don’t mean just to reality, but to what’s exponentially possible in reality. I don’t think, for instance, that Márquez is pushing it in One Hundred Years of Solitude—that was simply his sense of reality. The critics call this magic realism, but they don’t understand the Latin world at all. Just take a trip to Brazil. Go into the jungle and take a look around. This old Chippewa I know—he’s about seventy-five years old—said to me, “Did you know that there are people who don’t know that every tree is different from every other tree?” This amazed him. Or don’t know that a nation has a soul as well as a history, or that the ground has ghosts that stay in one area. All this is true, but why are people incapable of ascribing to the natural world the kind of mystery that they think they are somehow deserving of but have never reached? This attentiveness is your main tool in life, and in fiction, or else you’re going to be boring. As Rimbaud said, which I believed very much when I was nineteen and which now I’ve come back to, for our purposes as artists, everything we are taught is false—everything.”
7/4/20 – 7/8/20
OFF THE LINE. I’m offline for a few days, swimming in a lake and watching the night sky gaze down on me. Be well and stay safe, good people.
7/3/20
MEATY & THE DROLL. I was pranked by my toddler to wake before street legal morning time. He giggled through my attempt to coax him back to sleep. I humor him. What the hell does he know about time? I pick him up. My thirsty needed water and my boy needed to play. A cup of water was enough to remember that one of my needs could be satisfied. The stuff of life begins to flow through my veins, blood or lake water, too early to tell. I remember – This is life.
“The tree only intends what it is with its dictator genome. Like us they don’t see what’s coming. They often rot from inside out though it can take decades. When sawed down you smell the sharp ripeness of their lives, their blood.”
— Jim Harrison “Suite of Unreason”
7/2/20
DESIRE. “And so every desire for the beautiful which draws us on this ascent is intensified by the soul’s very progress towards it. And this is the real meaning of seeing God: never to have this desire satisfied.”
— Gregory of Nyssa
7/1/20
WE AMERICANS. Love in our hearts with the pain and the memory. (h/t to Mark)
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