Contemplify NonRequired Reading List Email for October 30, 2018
The October NonRequired Reading List
Contemplative Friends,
I bought a lottery ticket. What for? you rightly ask. Let me explain. This gamble was made with the full knowledge that being struck by lightning 40 times was more likely than winning the big payoff (hence I stayed indoors during New Mexico’s latest round of thunderstorms to not waste my luck on lightning). I had no illusions of winning. Every couple of years I lay down my two bucks for the ‘chance’ to win. In actuality, I desire to witness what arises in me as I imagine my course of actions with a windfall of resources. What would I do with the money if the odds were miraculously in my favor? I follow the trails of my thoughts which begin as personal benefit (putting money in college savings, buying a house) and then it expands to where I could gift others. Here is snapshot of my interior dialogue as it stretches beyond selfish returns...
Oh it’d be a hoot to pay off the mortgages of family and friends’ homes, school debts, and medical bills. Well, there would still be like hundreds of millions left. I could start a foundation for serving early childhood education or financially supporting parents so they can take longer maternity and paternity leave, or maybe go rogue as an angel who secretly sends money to strangers in dire straits. I could finance creative projects working on addressing climate change or racial injustice. Wait, this is ridiculous, what excites me about winning is being more generous in the arenas of life I am already involved in now. Why can’t I be more generous now with what I've got?
I never checked the numbers. I’m not even sure where the ticket ended up. My two dollar contemplative experiment came to its fullness from having skin in the game and seeing what arose. What I learned is that in imagining I won a Scrooge McDuck-size fortune revealed more about the directions I’d want to pursue if resources were not an issue. A life of boundless generosity. Bob Dylan sings, “Money doesn’t talk, it swears.” In this experiment I’d modify it to “Money doesn’t talk, it reveals.” It reveals what matters to you most, the fears and intentions that sit on your heart’s bedside table. I am quickened by the thought that my heart’s intangible desires are rooted in a generous and textured heart. My prayer to is water those roots and wander outward with spirited presence. In the here and now, I see the roots and hear the call to greater generosity regardless of my circumstances...all because I supposedly didn’t win the lottery.
With my wallet two dollars lighter, I offer this month’s collection of NonRequired Reading.
Here is this month’s NonRequired Reading List...
‘Rain and the Rhinoceros’ found in Raids on the Unspeakable by Thomas Merton (Get it at the Public Library or Indiebound)
‘Philoxenos in his ninth memra (on poverty) to dwellers in solitude, says that there is no explanation and no justification for the solitary life, since it is without a law. To be contemplative is therefore to be an outlaw.’ This quote goes out to all of you contemplative outlaws. Count yourself in this sacred lineage if you can. This is one of Merton’s most famous essays, and one I encourage you to read here if you can’t track down the book. The first half of the essay finds Merton reflecting on the gratuitous rain that falls on all of us, leading to further pondering on the core issue of mistaking one’s ‘unreality of the vulnerable shell’ for one’s true identity. The latter half of the essay connects this plight to the absurdist play Rhinoceros. Where a lone figure has discovered his fellow humans have all transformed into rhinoceros and he is unable to convince them of their human birthright. That lone figure has become the outlaw in society mad with their unreality.
“And it sounds like what the rain says. We still carry this burden of illusion because we do not dare to lay it down. We suffer all the need that society demands we suffer, because if we do not have these needs we lose our "usefulness" in society--the usefulness of suckers. We fear to be alone, and to be ourselves, and so to remind others of the truth that is in them.
"I will not make you such rich men as have need of many things," said Philoxenos (putting the words on the lips of Christ), "but I will make you true rich men who have need of nothing. Since it is not he who has many possessions that is rich, but he who has no needs." Obviously, we shall always have some needs. But only he who has the simplest and most natural needs can be considered to be without needs, since the only needs he has are real ones, and the real ones are not hard to fulfill if one is a free man!"
May Merton inspire you to lose your 'usefulness' and become an outlaw in the back alleys of your contemplative life. We are living in times where there seem to be many rhinos not interested in our shared humanity. The free contemplative has never been more sorely needed. I am biased to a fault, but the riches from the rains refresh and release you from the absurdist, rhino-sized, societal demands. It ain’t easy, but freedom never is.
Suspended Sentences: Three Novellas by Patrick Modiano (Get it at the Public Library or Indiebound)
The mystery of memory raises the hair on the back of my neck. My memory is amazingly precise in certain details of my life, like a file cabinet meticulously ordered in case one needs to know Magic Johnson’s career assist average or a quote from Thomas Merton on drinking beer. Other memories from my own life are unexplainably scattered in the fields of obfuscation. Patrick Modiano is a master wordsmith in digging the trenches of his memories and noting the moments when his shovel must come to a stop. When a memory come to a hard stop, the fiction must begin. As a reader I was charmed by the interplay between the two, unsure of what was true and what spaces were filled by his imagination. Modiano left me hanging with more questions on the imperfection of memory and the mysteries lurking beyond it. In the hands of a lesser writer, I’d be bitter about the lack of resolution in his stories. But true to life, Modiano doesn’t skirt around the impossibility of remembering all the minutia of his life. This blank space is where his art thrives. Why do I recommend this Nobel Prize winner in a contemplative reading list? The art of not knowing has never been so subtly celebrated by author with such elegance and humility.
Arts and Articles
(a new section of the monthly Reading List focused on shorter articles and the arts)
‘Yo-Yo Ma Wants Bach to Save the World' by Zachary Woolfe (NYT): I know little about classical music, been more of folkie my whole life. Bach is my go-to when calling upon classical music and usually I lean towards Yo-Yo Ma’s spin on the master. I knew little of Yo-Yo Ma’s life and mission, this snapshot of his latest project had me clapping from my office chair.
Six Evolutions: Bach Cello Suites by Yo-Yo Ma (Get it at the Public Library): After reading the article above, this may be your next click for craving some contemplative audible space.
‘The Bearded Seal My Son May Never Hunt’ By Laureli Ivanoff (NYT): This beautiful and powerhouse piece holds the tethers of climate change and loss as one seeks hope for future generations in remembering ways of life and tradition. Not to be missed.
‘Words for Worry’ (video) by Li-Young Lee: My wife and I welcomed our second child into our family this month (more on that in a future Contemplify episode). I was heartened by this poem, seemingly written just for me in a time such as this (hat tip to Teddy Macker for passing my way)
Contemplify Update
The three most recent episodes of Contemplify…
Wild Mystic Folk for Lovers, Gamblers, and Rovers Alike | Luke Redfield
Wendell Berry & Gary Snyder are Distant Neighbors | Chad Wriglesworth
(Subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Podbean, Overcast, or Contemplify.com)
May the outlaw in you be a contemplative, the rhino regain its humanity and riches be found in the generousity of your being.
Listen Well & Read Often,
Paul