April NonRequired Reading List
Contemplify / NRR #65
"God's word is a melody, and melody requires repetition."
- Kaveh Akbar
Startling the morning awake, my bleary eyed boy asks, “who wants to play with me?”1 Rubbing his eyes he stumbles out of his room to find me folded up on the couch with a book and a cup of tea. He is visibly disappointed. The only person awake is his third favorite playmate. But play he must! He charges at me. I throw my bookmark like a dart at the page and slide my tea behind a chair leg. He bounds to my lap. After slapping me with a new identity, he juices up magic stones on my earlobes. We have begun the most important work of the day.
In my adult life there have been multiple attempts on my life of play. Typically through slugging back the tonic of forgetfulness. The poisonous tonic distributed widely by low-end culture, politics, and religion2. Once ingested this tonic slowly works through the nervous system causing playus forgetfulness. Deadly if untreated3. The toxins crafted by the aforementioned distributors are maddeningly precise in making me forget the art of play.
It appears to me that most adults who do not forget how to play feel that they must forgo play to streamline their day in a productive society. So many matters of consequence to be considered before play can be prioritized. Play does not pay the bills or fill the bellies of the children. What is the use of play when trying to survive in systems that wallop the individual person? There is nothing playful about scraping by. Hold that thought while we run to the other extreme.
On the other side of the dial are folks who proclaim a special brand of nihilism via ceaseless play. Buffoonery is the technical term. Buffoonery becomes a strange attractor to the beaten down and exhausted. Why try? There are only so many damns to be given. Keep it light. When things get tough plop your head in the sand. You can’t see the hurting world with sandy eyes. Dear Lord, spare us from these insufferable playmates. All pizazz, no heart.
Tonics cause some adults to forget how to play. Others forgo play or fuse to play on their own accord. Where do I fall on the scale? My wife knows, but won’t say.
I seek the middle way of playfulness. I exercise routines that bore my nose hairs4; meditating, reading, running, etc. Nothing about silence, a library card, or hitting the pavement screams playful. Even after you add my other regular activities (work, the park, grocery shopping, putting the kids to bed) my nose hairs still seek out olfactory employment elsewhere. But when you lather playfulness on all of that mundanity, hot dog, you get a life that is rooted and open. Playfulness draws from the memory of all that matters and is open to all that is awakening. In the work of deep humor and wonder, play becomes the antidote to forgetfulness, self-importance, and ideological intoxication.
The three vows of the Rule of Benedict (stability, fidelity, and obedience) offer guidance in this area for me. The vows orientate me towards a life of play that builds upon itself through very basic demands, “the need not to run away, the need to be open to change, the need to listen. They are based on a commitment which is both total and continuing. And yet the paradox is that they bring freedom, true freedom.”5 Outwardly these vows sound boring as hell, but the internal fires are stoked by such conscious constraint. The shape of play is mysteriously expanded by its own limitations. How? It sets my eyes on the life before me, sustaining me, coming out of me, and within community. Play is the joyful expression of the celebration6 of the life given, not the one imagined. I promise you do not have to be a Benedictine to live a “boring” vowed life, but given their long history it might be worth looking in their direction to see how one could go about it.
A flashy nature without strong bones is betrayed by vacant eyes. A quiet spirit with an ungrounded spark is swept into the corner. Loud or shy does not matter, the middle way is self-donating play.
The only question worth asking upon waking is, who wants to play with me?
April NonRequired Reading List
April is U.S. national poetry month.
Coffin Honey by Todd Davis (Get it at todddavispoet.com)
Todd Davis writes poetry with a weight in Coffin Honey. Like pulling a stone from a stream, you feel its heaviness after you have extracted the meaning from the poem. Yet they are so satisfying. Davis examines trauma and grief in moving clarity. In the depth of grief, the reader holds and examines the preciousness of (unconditional/eternal) joy and the fragility of (conditional/incarnate) joy. I savored these poems.
The Beauty: Poems by Jane Hirshfield (Get it at the Public Library)
The Beauty were my morning poems this month. I was so absorbed in these useful poems you can see the my oatmeal drippings on each page. Awe resides in the ordinary. Hirshfield’s cadence, tone, and description is so precise I found myself certain I had lived out a few of these lines myself. This is poetry that lives on in you, poetry that invites your breakfast scraps.
Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu (Get it at the Public Library)
I have a couple of translations of the Tao Te Ching, and at this moment, refuse to recommend one version. Take this classic text and sit in the unburdened sun. Let it waffle you through poetic language that gets beyond the point. I was listening to the Tao Te Ching with my son in the car on the way to buy beer. My son fell asleep in the backseat so we skirted back towards home instead. We sat together under a shade tree awash in the Tao. It was nothing and everything all at once.
Contemplify Update
Season Two of Contemplify is complete. If you want to grace your ears with an episode, you can find the complete list of Season Two here.
Production of Season Three is underway at a leisurely pace.
These episodes are available from Contemplify through these fine outlets: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Podbean, or Overcast
Arts & Articles
THE THIRD THING by Donald Hall (The Poetry Foundation): A succulent take on the life of poets, love, ping-pong, and the third thing (h/t Lisa).
YOU GOT TO MOVE by Mavis Staples & Levon Helm (YouTube): These two bringing the heat is more than enough. What a gift to have this album coming out in full soon.
THIS PRESENT MOMENT by Gary Snyder (Penguin): A poem that becomes a daily mantra.
"This present moment
That lives on
To become
Long ago."
May you spill something on a poem.
May a poem make you cry.
You were born to revel in poetry.
Support your favorite poet today,
Paul
It might be the only question worth asking upon waking.
A longish and cheeky rant: Culture takes aim at play by enhancing a blistering sense of blasé through the encouragement of comparative life studies via social media, FOMO, and deodorant commercials. Politics and religion are favored by adults preconditioned to seek out high levels of inebriation and importance. Adults wet their pants over choosing political sides. Rolling out the red (or blue) carpet to a soapbox so they can blame the other fragile party for all wrongdoing, so proud of their ability to name what is right and what is left. Religion is muzzled but cheers on lowlife politics anyway. Typically toeing the sober line of moral policing and blanket pardons without acknowledging the heavy baggage they carry on their back. When consumed by comparison and self-importance, play is stripped of its rank by long term neglect.
First symptom is grumpy face, throat, and bottom
What about you? If you were to list the routines would you nod off before you got to the end? God, I hope so.
Seeking God: The Way of Saint Benedict by Esther de Wall, p. 55
I have always loved that Catholic mass is celebrated, its apex the Eucharist, is tasting the mystery of life and death.