February NonRequired Reading List
Contemplify / NRR #87
“I swear to you that I have to force myself to write or to pronounce this word: God. It is a noise I make with my mouth or a movement of the fingers that hold my pen. To pronounce or write this word makes me ashamed. What is real here is that shame. Must I never speak of the Unknowable because it would be a lie? Must I speak of the Unknowable because I know that I proceed from it and am bound to bear witness to it? This contradiction is the prime mover of my best thoughts.”
— René Daumal
Frank Zappa famously said, “talking about music is like dancing about architecture.” A supposed steaming dig over analyzing music. But I think a better interpretation is as a call for architects everywhere to cut a rug.
Wordiness, the gift of gab, wanting to articulate exactly what we mean is a temptation in the unboundaried presence of Love Supreme. There is so much to say about the Infinite isn’t there? Looking over my shoulder at the vast images, metaphors, patterns, and poems of the Christian mystical tradition, my vitals tremble and perspire just considering possible locutions. The mystical pet names of God alone make me swoon into adoration. I mean…how can I not speak of the intimate Mystery I bear witness to?
On the other hand there is not much to say. What can I say about the Eternal Word ceaselessly speaking me into reality? Nice work, Big Fella, sorry for all the trouble. She is undefinable and ungraspable. Every word about the emergent architect of the Cosmos needs to be expanded, paradoxically corrected or it is just short of blasphemous. And blasphemy gets you sent straight to the Pope’s office.
My sense is that words and wordlessness are cyclical and reciprocal states of prayer. Intimate as breath. Powerful as Coltrane.
Let me pick at my morning practice for example. Typically I lurch onto my freely found zafu1 and sit criss-cross applesauce. Sighs and grunts alternate as I find a posture most conducive for practice. My breath wordlessly anchors my seat. Then I begin with words—be it a poem, a musing, or a word of reflection—and then those words, those stylized symbols of essence and principles are ground into a fine silence. A dusty silence that does not destroy or swallow the words, but transforms them. The words do not disappear but change shape, particles in the atmosphere of prayer. I breathe some of these reformed words in, others hang in suspension–shapelessly surrounding me—birthing an eternal silence thick enough to rest a spoonful of thoughts on.
Contemplative silence bears us as we bear witness to it.
Minutes pass.
Ding! My bell has been rung. My inner dog, Pavlov, drools and hops to attention. He herds disparate thoughts into a frenzy. Got to slow down the ol boy. I read words from the radical life and times of Jesus to resettle me in words that matter2. I pause…and turn to other forms of prayer. I struggle to read the handwriting, my own or others, of earnest intentions. Vocalizing my own prayers in words and wordlessness (sighs, grunts, and “Lord have mercys” are my greatest hits). In this morning practice I do not always know why I pray, or what I am praying for, or even believe it matters. Yet, also believes it matters more than I can understand.
Winston Churchill supposedly said, “'we shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us.” Architects shape our lived experience and that is worth dancing about. That is what I am prattling on about with prayer here too. Our words create conditions to honor the vivid emptiness behind them. Our wordlessness in turn is nicked by words sharpened by the edge of a hidden vastness. Words and wordlessness are cyclical and reciprocal states of prayer that shape one another, that shape the one who prays.
Talking about the Divine or contemplation is not separate from participating in practice. Words are simply the notes on a sheet of music. What moves me to join in the cosmic dance, is bearing the wordless space between and behind the notes.
If I were going to give this cosmic dance a more relatable name, I would christen it “the dance of architect”. Let’s go cut rug.
Contemplify is a workshop of wonder. Behind the jukebox near the back, there is a one-man shoveling shop. That is where I tend the fire and howl at the moon. Early mornings paired with a steady flow of ginger tea, I follow the muse—books, music, practices, and conversations—that linger in the sunrise. This is where I write (and rewrite) words as digital etchings of a contemplative way of being more akin to my lived experience. The simplest way I can speak of this pursuit is this - Contemplify kindles the examined life for contemplatives in the world. Thank you to all who support Contemplify by dropping in on the offerings. For those who wish to support Contemplify with filthy lucre, press the button below. Becoming a paid subscriber is a kindness and show of support. It both humbles me and keeps the jukebox plugged in. Some folks want to support just for the sake of supporting Contemplify (raising my glass higher at the thought of that), but paid subscribers are also automatically invited to the weekly Lo-Fi & Hushed Practice Session on Wednesday mornings. Good, clean, unglamorous contemplative fun.3 Hope to see you there.
February NonRequired Reading List
Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988 - 2000 by Lucille Clifton (Get it at the Public Library or Bookshop)
Lucille Clifton peels her poems down. The layers, edges, trimmings give way to the elegant core. Once the center is reached you recite the sweetest of fruits. This core is centered. There is no waste. The integrity of the poetry is held in what survives.
Lucille Clifton is a master craftswoman. In a Lo-Fi & Hushed practice session last month we worked with “blessing the boats”, allowing the rich imagery to roll over us. Meditating on this poem, this question met me, can I meet unwieldy situations with toothy grace and love? Others poems like “the photograph: a lynching” moved me to a prolonged, stark, bare reflection. Clifton does this over and over, the personal regales the collective and the universal plucks a single hair. The interconnectedness of story and lyric never breaks, but sapiently bends in expression. Pointing and saying, do you see, can you see what I see?
Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988 - 2000 is for contemplative readers who know you only need a little to go a long way.
God Laughs & Plays; Churchless Sermons in Response to the Preachments of the Fundamentalist Right by David James Duncan (Get it at the Public Library or Bookworks)
This book slipped in just in time. Hell, I was way behind on this. Didn’t know it existed, would have been really helpful to read about 15 years ago. Still useful today. Sometimes you have to wait for the book to bite you in the ass. God Laughs & Plays is an unshaven set of sermons. Sometimes it effectively reads like a circus barker outside the doors of the war machine, and other times, as spirited as a child running through a lawn sprinkler. Always with wonder at the center.
In the foreword, Laurie Lane-Zucker nails the importance of God Laughs & Plays “because we, the peoples of Earth, need a new cosmology that can effectively embrace both our innate thirst for deeper, often obscured and intuited meanings as well as the necessary rigors of our intellectual life.”(p. xi) David James Duncan brandishes his wit, study of the mystics, and incarnational observational truths to the writing table. You can see the seeds sprouting of his magnum opus, and this shoveler’s favorite novel, Sun House in it too.
My temptation to rally around each essay is waylaid by my commitment to simply recommend books, not give book reports4. It is worthy to note that Duncan’s praise of Meister Eckhart throughout transported me back into the nowhere of mystical play. It is a call to find the teachers that slack your jaw and flex your muscles, for there is “too much dead text and too little living intuition in American spirituality these days!” (p.181) Read the lively, leave the dead to bury their own.
God Laughs & Plays is for those who take the call to become childlike seriously. It is the entrance gate to the kin’dom in the here and now.
Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age by Katherine May (Get it at the Public Library or Bookshop)
Enchantment is another book on wonder, but the pages are cut heavier from the anxiety of our age. Where God Laughs & Plays confronts the woeful powers and uplifts the mystical, Enchantment is a slow, wandering walk. Katherine May’s empathetic eyes look out wide onto the world while even more eyes turn their gaze downward to distraction. Enchantment is quiet, like a kid with a mouth stuffed full of fruit roll-up. It takes time to chew that baby and pick your teeth clean.
The chapter entitled “Congregation” spoke most to me. I am constantly engaged in conversations around community, practice, and beliefs. Everyone wants it, nobody wants to settle. May shares about her reticence of being a part of a community of shared beliefs and practices, yet feels the draw “to be part of a group that makes me return to ideas that bewilder and challenge me.” (p.98). Experiments with Quakers and Buddhist sanghas follow this natural desire for a shared community, but it is the Zen Peacemaker Order that she lands in. The way of practice, interconnectedness, and bearing witness embodies something May has been seeking.
Enchantment is for readers heavy on solitude and seeking a reawakening of wonder in the strangeness of our daily lives.
Contemplify Update
A couple musings wait in the hopper to be recorded. Conversations have begun to be recorded for Season Five. As always you can find the complete list of Contemplify episodes here and below are the five most recent episodes.
Lo-Fi & Hushed / 2023 Winter Solstice Session / To Know the Dark (Season 4, Ep 13 Bonus)
Listen to the Rice, the Rice Will Teach You Everything with Lucien Miller (Season 4, Ep 12)
In Hard Times, In All Times, Eat Sacred Words with Carmen Acevedo Butcher (Season 4, Ep 11)
Kim Haines-Eitzen on Practicing the Cello in the Dark and Sonorous Deserts (Season 4, Ep 10)
Lerita Coleman Brown on Waiting for a Word in the Heart (Season 4, Ep 9)
All episodes are available from Contemplify through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get the snazziest podcasts.
Arts & Articles
ANSELM (YouTube): I dipped into the local independent cinema and saw Wim Wender’s Anselm. A portrait of Anselm Keifer’s route in, around, through the art world. A contemplative squeeze, a kiss of creativity, a poetry flickered in the middle of the film. I chicken scratched it out in the dark.
HOW AFROLATINE IDENTITY CAN EXPAND OUR UNDERSTANDING OF FAITH (Sojourners): This is a wise interview with Josué Perea, producer the film, Faith in Blackness. A film that explores the question, “How can the creator of the universe be smaller than me?” Black Latine people around the world practice a myriad of faith traditions. This short-form documentary explores dynamic identities of these AfroLatine people and their journey for a home, a faith in Blackness.
LAUDATO DEUM REFLECTIONS (garynabhan.com): Gary Nabhan, aka Brother Coyote, is posting reflections for Lent on Pope Francis’ Laudato Deum (“Praise God for all his creatures”). Brother Coyote claws, praises, and adores in words only fit for a Canis.
LO-FI & HUSHED (Contemplify): The Spring Equinox Lo-Fi & Hushed Contemplative Practice Session is coming up on Wednesday, March 20. This is a free and public contemplative practice of poetry, lectio, self-examination, and group reflection. It still rings my bell. Gorgeous yet unglamorous. Subtle ripples in a still pool. Learn more here and an invitation will go out to all subscribers the night before.
Words. No. Wordlessness.
Point verge does not give a shit,
so why should I care?
Cutting a rug,
Paul
All Bookshop links give a kickback to a local New Mexico bookstore and to Contemplify. What a kindness.
It is amazing what my wife finds online in local “free” groups
Always good to remember that the only time Jesus is ever mentioned to have written anything down was when he wrote in the dirt (John 8:8).
Contemplify never wants money to be a filthy barrier to practice, not everyone has the means. So if you want to practice weekly with this contemplative basecamp at Lo-Fi & Hushed but aren’t able to offer support, no sweat, follow the instructions here.
Or at least refrain from doing it too often