August NonRequired Reading List

Contemplify / NRR #69

“The very best and noblest attainment in life is to be silent and let God work and speak within.”

- Meister Eckhart

My teachers used to write on my report cards that I should speak up more in class. Translation: I was too quiet. In a chatty culture, silence is suspect. Susan Cain wrote a whizbang book on this. I was quiet because I found people who talked incessantly annoying.¹ I still do. And there are a lot of people like that.² 

A few weeks ago I drove through the San Luis Valley. A scooped out valley that encourages bald men to ponder the various expressions of silence. And there are so many. The silence that anticipates laughter. The silence that covers our eyes when we wait for a word of diagnosis. The silence that peer pressures awe’s arrival. The stubborn silence that bites back and swallows unspoken salty words. The stunned silence of grief that cascades like a dry waterfall, waiting for the spigot of tears to be opened.³ These unchosen silences find us, flow forth from us, and envelope us. 

Then there are the intentional approaches to cultivating an interior silence. Sara Maitland in her sublime work, A Book of Silence, writes of ascetic silence and romantic silence. Ascetic silence. is the muzak of the 4th century Desert Fathers and Mothers. A silence of self-emptying that ricochets off exterior spaciousness. Romantic silence is the solitudinarian quiet of the Enlightenment, of the poets. A silence sought before grandeur to foster and graft an exterior identity of self. Ascetic silence is empty pockets, romantic silence is a full closet. One leads to kenosis, the other to self-expression. 

Both of these silences work on us to form us; one sheds what blocks us from the boundarylessness of Divine union and the other shores up the borders of particularity before beauty. Both silences reshape our relationship with the material world⁴. 

What I love about devoting myself to these two distinct qualities of silence, ascetic and romantic, is that they turn their backs on one another in an unresolved tension. A tension that stretches and ultimately invokes a deeper silence. A silence that expands across the tense connection to Mystery bearing witness to us as we presence ourselves to her. A silence that has not told me her name, but I believe is the mother of wisdom. 

The notes on my report cards were marks of encouragement to loosen my tongue. I get it. My teachers were well meaning and wanted me to thrive in a culture of noise. They were unable to see that I was apprenticing myself to silence. That I was preparing myself to someday lose my hair, drive through the San Luis Valley, and sing harmony with the silences ricocheting off the mountain tops.

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August NonRequired Reading List

We Walk the Path Together: Learning from Thich Nhat Hanh & Meister Eckhart by Brian J. Pierce, OP. Orbis Books, 2005. (Get it at the Public Library or Bookshop)

I had a recurring daydream while reading We Walk the Path Together—taking a sauna with Meister Eckhart and Thich Nhat Hanh. A lovely thought. Sitting with two masters and sweating it out in the heat of the silence. A word spoken here or there. Throwaway jokes and questions bounce off the cedar walls without looking to land on an answer. When the three of us have had enough, we step out under the night sky. Like the moon above we let it all be. Unlayered, we walk home smiling.

I enjoy my time with Meister Eckhart and Thich Nhat Hahn. Pierce clearly does too. In We Walk the Path Together he pins themes to each chapter for Eckhart and Thich Nhat Hahn to muse upon. Moved by the chapter on “The Breath of the Holy Spirit”, a contemplative liturgy flowed from my pen. The vivid metaphors of breath in Christian texts and the applicable emphasis of conscious breathing in Zen Buddhism merged to offer a concretization in a theo-poetical practice. Everyday breathing became a practice of love. Eckhart notes in one of his sermons, “The greater the love is that is in the soul, and the more the Holy Spirit breathes on it, the more perfect the flame…not all at once…the Holy Spirit breathes gradually on the flame.” (p.51)

In Pierce’s writing, he slows the pace to allow differences between the Buddhist and Christian paths to surface, crystallize, and converse with one another. This was clearest in Pierce’s approach to overcoming suffering and the practice of love. Even as he distills the differences of orientation and philosophy he “affirms that the prism of compassion is made up of many different colors.” (p.143). This is a book of conversations between Pierce, Eckhart, Thich Nhat Hahn, and the reader. When read in the spirit of which it was written you start to notice shades of the traditions in technicolor.

We Walk the Path Together works on the reader like the slow heat of a sauna. Relaxing and purifying in the present moment. A meeting place to enjoy the gifts of friendship across traditions. Sharing practices that can enrich one another. These sauna dialogues can challenge lazy patterns of thought and inspire new arisings. If you are drawn to Zen-Christian dialogues, this book is for you.

High Water Mark: Prose Poems by David Shumate. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004 (Get it at the Public Library or Bookshop)

I bought High Water Mark from a used bookstore. The previous owner underlined at least half of every poem. I should have no reason to complain for I write in my books too. But this was jarring. I was so upset by this noxious behavior I began to worry about the anal retentive nature of the previous owner. Would I be able to get past it? He clearly loved these poems, but his ink marks were like scratches on a mirror. Midway through the book I found a post-it note that read, “I love you” with two bubbly hearts. It was surreal and unexpected. My heart popped a stitch and I had a meta-realization. Though I’d prefer an inkless book, the process itself was like reading a David Shumate poem.

Shumate is a rare bird not caged to linear time. His poems are scriptless truths sans fear, a top shelf original whose poetry knocks you up the backside of your heard. In smoking laughter or gasping truth, I could handle one, maybe two, poems a day. Their presence would trail my patterns of thoughts. I was being stalked by poetry. The rest of the day was elevated after one of Shumate’s poems would strike my thoughts.

Here is one of my favorites.

(see what I mean about the aggressive underlining)

High Water Mark is for readers who like to be surprised by turns, metaphors, and excavated bones. Hat tip to Todd Davis for the intro to Shumate’s poetry.

A Book of Silence by Sara Maitland. Counterpoint Press, 2008 (Get it at the Public Library or Bookshop)

My exultations for A Book of Silence are pressed above. I cannot help but say a bit more about Sara Maitland and her style. There is a sneaky humor and vivid imagery at play on her pages. A book focused on silence could easily slip into pretentious nonsense or dry cough boredom. In my lucky life I have spent a lot of time with folks whose lives are immersed in silence, they are anything but dull or humorless. Maitland is silence’s student and she has been transformed by it. We do not live in a world where those immersed in silence (particularly from those labeled as “lay” people) report back on their lives. Sara Maitland is a hermit whose writing craft allows us to peek into her silent days.

Let us honor those in prior days whose lives were enveloped in silence while we also wait with alert eyeballs for the words from those swimming beneath the surface of silence in the cold here and now. Sara Maitland has my attention.

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Contemplify Update

Season Three is among us. Thank you for your patience. First up is a trailer from the hermit hills, Red Pine dips in with a word from the mountain hermits, and now Paula Huston relays the wisdom from Big Sur. You can find the complete list here.

Season Three is in motion.

• Contemplative Gleanings from the Hermits of Big Sur with Paula Huston (Season 3, Ep 2)

• Bill Porter (Red Pine) on Zen and Taoist Masters, Mountain Hermits, & the Life of a Translator (Season 3, Ep 1)

• Here There Are Woods, Foxes (Season 3 trailer)

All episodes are available from Contemplify through these fine outlets: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Podbean, or Overcast 

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Arts & Articles

THE NEW MONASTICS (Podcast) Grateful for this podcast being produced by the fine folks at the Charis Foundation. Teachers from across traditions sharing a cup from contemplative waters. Probably goes without saying, the episode with Tessa Bielecki is my front runner recommendation.

GUARDIANS OF MEMORY (Harper’s Magazine) New article by one of my favorite public contemplative intellectuals, Fred Bahnson. One tug line from this piece that pulled me in was the diversity of contemplative callings in the midst of uncertain and violent times. Dammit, there is much to say about this piece, so I will say less. It will be a more satisfying read that way.

HE DROPPED OUT TO BECOME A POET. NOW HE’S WON A FIELD MEDAL. (Quanta Magazine) June Huh, is a unique fella. He has both a wandering, yet lazer-focused attention. When he collects his powers of attention for a purpose, mighty results occur. June also does not get hung up on conventional timeframes. Slow and steady enjoys the race. (h/t to Michael)

‘MORE & MORE’ PERFORMED BY NICK SHOULDERS & SIERRA FERRELL (Western AF) That high lonesome sound is enough for this contemplative shoveler.

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Rocky banks,
taciturn border.
A lake of stillness.
Pants and underwear
undone as one. Shirt
sacrificed to the thicket. Socks
to a tree branch.
A dry naked body breaches the border.
Silent frigid waters hush
all that does not purify and energize.

Following the Moon Home,

Paul

1. There are plenty of ways that I am an annoying bugger. Take it with a grain of salt all you, chatty charlies.

2. Oddly enough I can talk your ear off about the value of silence. Also, I cannot undersell the value of having a parent who modeled silence as refuge.

3. I am starting to feel like Benjamin Buford "Bubba" Blue.

4. I do not believe in a hierarchy of silences. In my relationship with ascetic and romantics silences, neither demands my complete allegiance. In fact, there is a multitude of silences that seek qualitative reciprocity. They all hum at once at manifold frequencies.