Contemplify NonRequired Reading List for July 31, 2020
July NonRequired Reading List
Contemplative Friend,
The practice of the quiet mind galvanizes my rhythm of life. This is why I meditate, read poetry, and go for as many walks as a day can hold. The circuit board of the head, heart, and body needs a current to realign them into one charge so the soul can animate the day's activities. In Eckhartian lingo, this is the merging of my will with the Divine will. In this union of wills, I have found that words and silence perpetually exchange the roles of both the tortoise and the hare in the practice of quieting of the mind. It can be perplexing to say the least. And like all contemplative practices worth their salt, I find it useful to reflect on its meaning, on the roundabout ways words and silence quicken--or deaden--the quieting of the mind.
A quiet mind is not dollar store spirituality. A quiet mind is not cheap inaction. I saw her slap confusion’s face just the other day. I have observed a quiet mind blush under tender attention. A quiet mind thrives in low light, among the morels before the elms leaf out. That is where I am calling us to forage, in the voiceless forest where the bloom is in waiting. Silence paces itself among the trees, knows where life is seeded and waters the ground lavishly. It is also true that the lush landscape of a quiet mind can retreat into a sardonic graveyard. And it is a vile thing to watch undead bodies dig their own burial plots spewing high calorie, essence-free words.
Right now my mouth is brimming with chewed up words. I hold them back, praising the unspoken. I must disperse this crowd of words, but how? I cannot risk swallowing a meaty word nor can I spit them out in any logical order. An innocent silence turns fugitive. The words I am searching for are feckless outlaws hiding out between back molars. Some words just won’t share the spoils. So this quiet mind is paradoxically imprisoned by words in a stubborn pursuit of freedom. The word ‘insouciance’ is lounging on my tongue like it is a beach towel, snoozing through my attempts to loosen figurative gems. The sequestered words are insubordinate Lollards, dallying in a hot tub of saliva and stubbing out cigars on my uvula.
Words are heavy weights. A pregnant speaker can not safely lift these tiny barbells made of iron flesh and dusted with cinnamon. When I find a new one on the street, I brush it off and pop it in my mouth. A nasty habit, but in my defense I can’t resist the tasty zing. I aspire to build wordsmith muscles to flex when called upon. These convivial moments are as likely as Lois Lane recognizing that Clark Kent is Superman in bifocals.
My efforts for right speech have forced a beard to overgrow on my face to collect the harum-scarum words that gambol out my yapper. My mustache gets in the way of kissing my wife, which I deem a higher calling than wordplay, so I shave it off. Now when I eat, distasteful words fall out and stain my shirt. So it goes. I’ve heard of word-drunk, but I am a sloppy word drunk. Too inebriated to know that each word I drink in, swish around, and swallow has a sobriety of their own accord. This parched body craves absorptive words to sustain this play. I seek to slice through the macramé pinata, feathering cliches about the air with their unspoke candied essence until they drop dead on the dumb ground. Did you know that cliches will not float in the currents of culture? They go the ways of stones, but for the poet, they hang ten on a moth’s rump in flight to an explosive metaphor beyond the azure horizon.
Words are not all we have, we have silence. Silence and speech are eternal officemates. Speech dictates every obnoxious thought aloud, silence is the receptionist who takes copious notes with invisible ink. The Desert Fathers and Mothers understood this and took great caution with their silver tongues. I am lazier than that. Or less serious. I am smitten by the wordplay of Meister Eckhart, but look where that got him. In a moment I can take the precision of words seriously and then mock them with a reckless word party the next. As someone wise once said, ‘Silence is the language of God’, but I’d bet a two dollar bill that a loon call is God’s second language. Both words and silence hold the potential to quiet the mind.
I care most about occurs before words take sound and what happens after they land in open ears. The responsibility of speech is salty; on wounds it stings and on sweets it intensifies. And between us humans, is it not true that we incessantly craft, deliver, and read love letters doused in unsaintly expressions? It is a daily conundrum for me. There is a silent intent and impact of words that bind the speaker and listener in knotty ways. When the impact is foul, a quiet mind can untether intentions from speech and beg forgiveness. In such instances silence calls our words back in to have a word with them.
The pickle is this -- I am not my words, but they play me on TV. I am not my silence but it speaks to me. Let me not confuse the two for the ground of my soul. My soul shares the ground with God, but is not God. The quiet mind strolls about freely on this sacred ground. This ground is where I begin, speak, contemplate, and die though I may not always know it. In a moment of quickening devotion I see the practice of the quiet mind unfold. It begins by reading the words of God in reality, an unsayable mystical inbreaking, and I am free to forsake the reader for the balm of God’s breath in mine.
The Wild Iris by Louise Glück (Get it at the Public Library or IndieBound)
This book of poetry took longer to find me than one might expect. It channels a contemplative rhythm where the poetry titles mimic the liturgy of hours in multitudes (there are 7 poems titled ‘Matins’ and 10 titled ‘Vespers’ by my count). This little book is religiously devastating and without a shrug of humor. The intensity wraps the reader in a steel wool blanket, bristly and warmed by despair. And yet I recommend it. Glück is unafraid to step inside of anguish and let her poetry out on parole to warn the free but apathetic sleepwalkers. Not for the depressed or those weighing the balance of well being, but a force of intensity to disturb the waters of a placid heart.
The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giano (Get it at the Public Library or IndieBound)
The poet Teddy Macker recommended this classic to me and it sings with humility and dedication to good work (a helpful read after The Wild Iris). Giano is a gifted storyteller penning a tale of what a radicalized life in this world can look like by taking the little way. It is a way of continuous small changes that swells into an entire landscape of transformation. Life attracts life. I plan to read this gem to my 5 year-old daughter to plant imaginative sequoias in her fertile brain. The Man Who Planted Trees is a fable that will confound the proud and rentseekers alike, but cling to those who cherish the imagery of what a mustard seed can do.
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez (Get it at the Public Library or IndieBound)
My wife recommended this book to me ten years ago. I picked it up, got to page two, put it down. Five years pass. I pick it up again and struggle to page ten before letting it be for another 5 years. This time I fully embraced the world of Márquez and treasured each page with curiosity and delight. The Buendía family who centers the book represents the scattered virtues and vices of humanity, playing their roles (or rebelling against them) in this fecund realm of Macondo, Columbia. The pandemic of sleeplessness, revolving rains, civil war, and an oppressive banana company that most are unable to recognize. Márquez speaks to the monotonous stress of our pandemic and current societal turning. This world holds the thin curtains open between reality, magic, the notso dead past, and the grief of living. If you pick it up and it doesn’t draw you in, my advice is to wait five years and try again.
Arts, Articles, & Practices
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 genre is 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.
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.
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. And Lewis' posthumously published essay, "Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation" is a must read.
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May the lockjaw of words be loosen and silence ring in your ears as you enter the quiet mind. Plant trees that will shade days you won't live to see. Grieve loudly and intensely even in private. May the magic of this world never cease to draw you in.
In quiet,
Paul
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P.P.S. For the time being the daily(ish) postings to kindle the examined life in a quarantined world are being afixed at Quarantined Qontemplative.