Contemplify NonRequired Reading List for April 30, 2021
April NonRequired Reading List
Contemplative friend,
My favorite mistake to repeat is this: I text a poem to a friend. It is a mistake because it is inevitably a poem that snuck under my ribcage and blushed while laying down a dowry before my soul. The poem arrived at the perfect moment. A moment of heightened conscious availability thanks to the ongoing alchemical process of my meditation practice mixed with evocative poetry compounded over time. Or maybe it was dumb luck that readied me to soak in the poem. Either way it stoned me.
I find salvation (again) in this invisible and unspoken pause brought about by the poem's altar call. My friend does not know any of this. All they received was a text with a link to a poem. Essentially I am attempting to transmit my moment of liminal space, a spark stolen from the campfire of the gods, via a text message. It does not work. It is unreachable. Now, it also may be true that my friend has their own hidden earthquake with the same poem. A breath quickened or perhaps a blink prolonged to collect the tears. Or maybe not. Who is to know their experience when the text received back is “Cool. Thanks.” My friends are wiser than I, they are not foolish enough to attempt to tie liminal space to a text message.
Poetry is the liturgy of liminal space. It blesses a thin space and carries it beyond its container into the thickheaded world. Oddly enough this does not make poetry popular. It does not advertise well. The language of poetry is too precise to be massified. This is why we trouble ourselves with memorizing and reciting poetry. We must ready ourselves for occasions so specific they are braided into the universal rhythms of human life; birth, union, death, and lost keys. We do this to remember that we humans have dared to steal the words of the gods singing around the fire. Words that make the third eye wink. Words that waft with the aroma of warmed over ponderosa pine needles. Words that taste like salvation.
My advice, typically worth less than a gumball, is to find poetry that stretches your ears to the edge so that you hear the moon howling back at you.
April NonRequired Reading List
Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth: New and Selected Poems, 2001-2021 by Yusef Komunyakaa
(Pre-order at Bookshop)
I got word that a new collection of poetry by Pulitzer Prize winner Yusef Komunyakaa was coming out. I gasped, dropped what I was doing, and desperately sought a copy. Komunyakaa holds a singular place in my poetry reading, he swoons me like a musician, flexes a strident tenderness with an eye on justice, and leaves imprints of wisdom on my shoulders. One could take his latest collection, Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth, and practice lectio divina with it. In a slow and receptive reading the words will twist, phrases will turn, and themes will spring out. This collection is worth meditating under the Divine lamplight. The incarnation of gods, God, and humanity are not embarrassed by their naked bits spotlighted in Komunyakaa’s poetry. Somebody has to say it as it is.
His new poems like, “A Prayer for Workers'' and “The Body Remembers”, build connective tissues. They have slipped into my ears and drawn blueprints to tunnel new channels to my heart. I also rappelled into old poems by Komunyakaa where I could not see the bottom, poems with a surprising yet natural finish to an uncharted path. As in “Dead Reckoning”,
“Now,
as if on a journey of lost souls,
love & desire dance with death,
twirling bright skirts till flesh & cloth
turn into ashes. What did they do
to make the gods angry? Forbidden
laughter of the mermaids fills the night,
& if humans try to sing this laughter,
their voices only cry out in the dark.”
(from “Dead Reckoning”)
Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth: New and Selected Poems, 2001-2021 is for readers who enjoy purifying their souls through poetry.
The Mountain Poems of Stonehouse by Stonehouse (translated by Red Pine)
(Get it the Public Library or IndieBound)
I first picked up a book by Red Pine, aka Bill Porter, on a silent retreat this past Fall. The Road to Heaven covered his spiritual travelogue in search of Buddhist and Taoist hermits speckled in the Chungnan mountains in China. Red Pine’s reputation as a translator rests on the top notch, so I was eager to pick up his translation of the poetry of Stonehouse. A fourteenth century Buddhist monk, Stonehouse became a mountain hermit at the ripe age of forty. Think about that life choice next time you wonder if it is too late to drastically shift careers.
Stonehouse reminds me of John Prine, a wise acre poet whose words cause you to rain down tears into pools of reflection.
“The flux of attachments is easy to stop
but it’s hard all at once to end love and hate
I laugh at the mountain for towering so high
and the mountain mocks me for being so skinny”
(p. 97, The Mountain Poems of Stonehouse)
The Mountain Poems of Stonehouse is for folks who like to park their seats in wild faraway corners to hear the mountains preach.
Saint John of the Cross: Devotion, Prayers & Living Wisdom edited by Mirabai Starr
(Get it the Public Library or Bookshop)
I learned a few years ago that when the Discalced Carmelites paired off for walks in nature the brothers all wished to go with St. John of the Cross. His resplendent humor and demeanor made him easy company. Spiritual geniuses tend not to be dullards and I have been drawn to him ever since.
Mirabai Starr is a master translator of mystics. In Saint John of the Cross: Devotion, Prayers & Living Wisdom Starr captures John’s spirit on the page through inspired editorial choices of distinct passages from his writings, poems from contemporary contemplatives, and poetic reflections of her own to elevate the mystic. A selection from St. John of the Cross,
“Keep north, you winds of death.
Come, southern wind, for lovers. Come and stir
the garden with your breath.
Shake the fragrance on the air.
My love will feed among the lilies there.”
(p. 23, Saint John of the Cross: Devotion, Prayers & Living Wisdom)
Saint John of the Cross: Devotion, Prayers & Living Wisdom is for the contemplative who wishes to pluck from the many voices inspired by St. John of the Cross and integrate his call to union as a part of their devotional path.
Contemplify Update
The four most recent episodes on Contemplify…
These episodes are available from Contemplify through these fine outlets: iTunes, Stitcher, Podbean, or Overcast
Arts & Articles
“Untitled #4” by Scott Avett (YouTube): Walking the neighborhood sidewalks I point out the man who knows himself and the man posturing for invisible onlookers. I prefer clinking glasses with the man who dares examine himself, emptied his pockets of expendables, and found the pearl of great price. That is how this tune hits me.
Contemplating Now by Cassidy Hall (Christian Century): There are five episodes of this podcast out and I am eager to see how Contemplating Now continues to takes flight. Cassidy Hall explores the intersection of contemplation & social justice in this podcast. I am grateful to see more contemplative podcasts out there in the world.
“I Want to Think About Trees” by Annie Dillard (Contemplify Musings): I find that folks who think, relate, ponder and dance with trees are the company I want to keep. Annie Dillard is one such tree dancer. There is poetry in Dillard’s prose and this passage is one I return to often and with a mug raised high.
I close with the words of Meister Eckhart,
“Leave place, leave time,
Avoid even image!
Go forth without a way
On the narrow path,
Then you will find the desert track.”
(The Mystical Thought of Meister Eckhart, p.114)
Flossing for poems between my teeth,
Paul
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P.P.S. The postings to kindle the examined life in a quarantined world have been tossed in a box labeled "Quarantined Qontemplative" and placed in the shed. It has been replaced by a new offering (but very similar essence) stickered "Musings" at the Contemplify basecamp.