Contemplify NonRequired Reading List Email for August 30, 2018
The August NonRequired Reading List
Contemplative Friends,
The summer days secretly got together to concoct a plan to lure me away from the warm glow of the computer and into my favorite swimmin’ hole. And it worked like gangbusters. My only regret is that I wasn't able to keep up with sending out the reading list over those dog days of summer. I'm sorry about that. Now I have toweled off, found my way back to my home desert (with not a lake in sight), and am eager to share the non-required reading recommendations for August.
Bob Dylan has been in my ears a lot this summer. And particularly that season of his life when he was poking the comfortable, rousing the young, and singing songs equal parts prophetic and playful. ‘Talkin’ World War III Blues’ is a standout example, especially the final stanza:
Well, now time passed and now it seems
Everybody's having them dreams
Everybody sees themselves walkin' around with no one else
Half of the people can be part right all of the time
Some of the people can be all right part of the time
But all of the people can't be all right all of the time
I think Abraham Lincoln said that
I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours
I said that
I’m a Dylan fan through and through, his verses run through my veins so take my appreciation for what it’s worth. What I am really getting at here is this, my practice of paying attention to the artist is a contemplative discipline in which I am most committed. I’m delightfully aware that the prophetic power of musicians hasn’t waned one iota since Dylan wrote that song, but is rather bursting forth in all genres of music. Recent contributions from The Carters, Childish Gambino, and Kendrick Lamar are raising consciousness that also poke the comfortable, sing or rap prophetically and playfully, and rouse the young. Barbara Holmes writes in Joy Unspeakable: Contemplative Practices of the Black Church, ‘The rappers . . . [tell] the stories that need to be told, remind the community of its history and potential, while chanting desperation and hope.’ (p.195). As a white man raised in the suburbs my first introduction to hip-hop was through a segment on Sesame Street. A lifelong appreciation for hip-hop began in that moment, but it was Barbara Holmes who gave me eyes to see and ears to hear hip-hop as a contemplative practice and platform for prophecy, storytelling and healing. My own hip-hop insight and assessment has been limited by my experience, but I’m grateful for the nuanced seeing it evokes in me as I learn from the wisdom of others.
With that in mind, may this be a month of poking our comfort, hearing a playful prophet’s tune, and rousing our young to embodied empowerment. Even when the world is on fire, may we listen for the artist’s cry as we seek to do our small part in the healing of the world.
Here is this month’s NonRequired Reading List...
The Monk’s Record Player: Thomas Merton, Bob Dylan, and the Perilous Summer of 1966 by Robert Hudson (Get it at the Public Library or Indiebound)
Famed contemplative hermit Thomas Merton wrote in his journal in the mid 1960s, ‘Should a hermit like Bob Dylan? He means at least as much to me as some of the new liturgy, perhaps in some ways more. I want to know the guy. I want him to come here, and I want him to see one of my poems.’(p. 107) And after hearing Dylan’s album Blonde on Blonde, Merton pronounced, “One does not get ‘curious’ about Dylan. You are either all in it or all out of it. I am in his new stuff.” (p.2)
Robert Hudson has written a book that seems tailor made to my interests. This book is for every Merton fanatic, Dylanphile, and those whose ears perk up at the calling of the artist as a contemplative vocation. A master wordsmith, a recognized Bob Dylan scholar and a member of the International Thomas Merton Society — Robert Hudson is the perfect person to have penned this book. I’ve been waiting for a book like this my whole life. Hudson breathes poetic life into the retelling of the intersection of Bob Dylan, Thomas Merton and the summer of 1966. Beware, this book is a page-turner of magnetic proportions on the themes of love, fame, solitude, death, vows, contemplation, art and justice. You can hear my conversation with Robert Hudson here.
There is also a lingering challenge that I hope another Merton scholar will take up. Hudson notes that right after the Dylan obsession, Merton became fixated with John Coltrane’s Ascension. This album was speaking at such mystical volumes to Merton that he shared its spiritual and social implications with the novices under his tutelage. I hope someone with the same skillful means as Robert Hudson is up to the task of weaving Coltrane’s prophetic mysticism with Merton’s.
The Prayer Wheel: A Daily Guide to Renewing Your Faith with a Rediscovered Spiritual Practice by David Van Biema, Jana Riess, and Patton Dodd (Get it at the Public Library or Indiebound)
Imagine an artfully designed wheel, a wheel with nesting concentric circles within it. Each circle holding the sacred text and ancient contemplative practice of a devoted community of monks. This sounds a lot like something pulled from Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, but this is the framework of the The Prayer Wheel. When I was in conversation with David Van Biema, one of the co-authors of The Prayer Wheel, I described the image of the the prayer wheel itself as the love child of a chore wheel that mated with a pie chart whose interior life was formed at a Benedictine monastery.
The functionality of the prayer wheel as a practice is what made it sing for me. The wheel provides ample opportunity for creative connection on the Christian spiritual path based on the sacred texts of the Christian tradition. And it’s playful. Part choose your own adventure, part sinking into the the monastic tradition that has been the keeper and beating heart of the contemplative way in Christianity. This book and practice is for those who appreciate an imaginal path with Biblical underpinnings (and being an unabashed lover of chore wheels doesn’t hurt).
‘Dishes’ from Blood Brothers by Jeffrey Foucault (Get ‘Blood Brothers’ at jeffreyfoucault.com)
This album, Blood Brothers, pierces my Midwestern heart and has rightfully become the soundtrack to my summer. Last I saw Jeffrey Foucault was in a band shell in Albuquerque. It was right after one of those ragged days of work where I left feeling crow-pecked by burdensome details and fruitless meetings. When I got home, my wife in her infinite wisdom damn near pushed me out the screen door to go hear Foucault play. She knows that when I get world weary my soul needs a good scrub behind the ears from a melodic poet. I went by myself, found an overpriced beer, and a tree to call a backrest. Foucault stepped on stage and sang…
‘Do the dishes / With the windows open...’
And I felt my heart double down on joy.
I am a man of simple pleasures (or so I like to think). Cold beer. Sunshine on my neck. Watching my daughter’s gait. A honest book. Washing dishes. A raised eyebrow from my beloved. So when art meaningfully gets beneath the unpolished details of life and highlights its beautiful edges and accentuates the shadows, I’m all in.
Next time despair for the world grows in me, I'll be sure to park myself against a tree, with a hoppy beer in hand, and listen to Foucault sing of the beauty that is my one mundane and precious life.
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May the songs of a prophetic artist stick to your ribs. May a newly discovered practice at hand enliven your spirit, and may the sink full of dishes be a joyful reminder of last night’s party. Gratitude abounds for your conscious ears and hearts tuning in, your emails of encouragement and wonder (& guest suggestions), and your presence in stoking the Contemplify fire.
A deep bow,
Paul
P.S. Let’s not forget the inimitable and uncategorizable Kamasi Washington as a prophetic artist and genius (hat tip to Cliff)
P.P.S. Read the great Teddy Macker's reflection and poems on eros. This man/poet/orchardist is another inspiration to me as he sinks his teeth into all of life.