June NonRequired Reading List
Contemplify / NRR #67
The act of reading makes the reader become a different person; reading cannot be separated from living.
- Esther de Waal
We live in an accelerated age. I witness myself and my fellow human passengers process the multitudes of this existence at an accelerating rate. In a perverse way it is kinda breathtaking. Global human connection can start within seconds of waking. All a person must do is reach for their black mirror to check for a reflection, touchstone, or image. When I am feeling low I reach for this same accelerated connection. This leaves me wondering, what public consequences1 do these accelerated connective moments perpetuate by the aggregate?
This is not a confessional call to toss out my smartphone, slow down my wi-fi, or clench my teeth over social media. My beef is not with the tool, but the lack of first principles. In both design and in forethought of its primary user. I take umbrage with the unreflective pursuit of fastermore. It is wounding the human spirit.
This accelerated age of ours is stripping the skin off our thumbs from over-feeding our minds. The scrolling speed of our opposable thumbs now dictates the length of our attention spans. Things have run amuck. The hand’s greatest digit is in service to the commodification of attention. I am not against speed and efficiency, when counting the costs, I simply skew towards depth and lasting graces.
A contemplative alternative to the accelerated age is a walkable life. A “walkable life” is a mindset more than location2. More radical than Mayberry and less noisy than Gotham. A walkable life is an internal state that does not depend on moveable feet. Theologian Kosuke Koyama wrote a book entitled Three Mile an Hour God3. You only have to read the title to get the joke.
A walkable life is syncing the mind, heart, body, and soul. The accelerated life that dominates culture encourages the departure of the mind from a symbiotic relationship with the rest of a person. So when the mind’s task is to disperse itself across all landscapes of knowledge and extract the riches it finds, the mind becomes rootless and dislocated. The body, heart, and soul lag behind in the abandonment. The mind becomes a phantom presence they relate to through its absence. As the mind roams at greater speeds collecting surface knowledge the rest of the person fidgets in dis-ease. This desertion of the mind collapses the fragile ecology of the human person4. The mind that is frantic is unable to hear the whispering call of wisdom, the re-collected person is a whole person.
I desire a walkable life. A unity of being whose purpose is its own becoming. A becoming that uncovers the split to discover its healing in the Real.
So how do we call the wandering mind home for dinner? A mindfulness bell helps. Inviting the bell to ring can untie a captive mind so they can return home. Meditation, prayer, and deep reading help too. And dancing. Shake that ass and pump those fists. Once you start moving your body in vivacious and bendy ways your mind rushes home out of embarrassment, “What the hell do you think you are doing? Someone might see you!” The unintegrated mind gets nervous when the rest of the person draws attention. Singing or chanting does the same trick. Especially if you sing like a hoarse goose like this rusty contemplative shoveler. Or crying. Dare to read a poem that runs past the mind to cannonball into a pool of your own tears. Or perhaps attend to a moment with a mourning dove until difference dissolves. With patience and a little tenderness, a traveling mind will come home.
The mind is not a bad guy, he is an addict. The mind is rewarded dopamine hits for his acts of departure. The mind is a gift that needs temperance. The achievements in arts, sciences, and industry are in many ways thanks to the leadership of the mind. They have contributed to the betterment of billions of lives. The key is to integrate the mind to the whole, to not let the gift get out of hand. Those same achievements, when siloed by the mind, act as destroyers of the planet and the marginalization of her species who call it home.
This morning I slide my phone away. I sip my ginger tea. Tasting the pleasant sting of the flavorful root baptizing my tongue, I invite the walkable life. I pull out my journal and ask all of myself the question, what has been calling for our attention since the last time we all went for a stroll?5
June NonRequired Reading List
Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned by Brian McLaren (Get it at the Public Library or Bookshop)
Deconstruction of faith is all the rage in certain circles. And for good reason. The necessary examination of the pitfalls, traumas, and strains of being hitched to a religious tradition is thrilling in its honesty. And at its worst, deconstruction of faith can usher in unreflective cynicism. Brian McLaren offers a route of discernment of Christianity that is inquisitive and life-giving.
If you touch Christianity in any primary relationship in your life, read this book. There are three sections of the book responding to the question, do I stay Christian? No. Yes. How. McLaren offers plenty of reasons to join, stay, leave, or remain outside the Christian faith. You gotta row your own boat. Do I Stay Christian? gives you guidance on how to handle the oars with purpose. What sets McLaren’s book apart is his care for the reader’s journey and context. He supports the reader in making a decision of integrity that will offer the most liberatory and gracious path for them.
I highly encourage you to read this book. Brian McLaren holds this conversation well while inviting the reader into vulnerable spaces of vetting the tradition. And this season of his podcast, Learning How to See, focuses on the themes of Do I Stay Christian? They pair well.
Seeking God: The Way of Benedict by Esther de Waal (Get it at the Public Library or Bookshop)
I have read The Rule of St. Benedict a few times. There are snoozing sections and pages of pizazz. Like most reads over a couple centuries old, a commentary aids in comprehension and application. Esther de Waal kicks up helpful reflections on The Rule to breathe in.
One of my favorite passages relays how St. Benedict assumes that reading is a full body practice. De Waal writes, “the act of reading makes the reader become a different person; reading cannot be separated from living.” (p.148) As a reader of this email I imagine that lands squarely in your heart as well. Reading impacts the flourishing of the whole person.
I read Seeking God with my community and recommend doing it that way if possible. A slow conversational read on the movements of the Benedictine rhythms and pathway. Seeking God gives you a chance to shake off the dustier sections of The Rule to hear the Spirit’s reverb off this ancient document.
The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgård (Get it at the Public Library or Bookshop)
There is dividing line on Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgård’s previous series, My Struggle. Readers tend to be intense super fans or sharp critics. There is no middle ground. The Morning Star is all middle ground. In this book Knausgård applies his precise craft of applying specificity to each character internal thought life but on a non-linear playground in a gray sandbox.
The primary question he sets before the reader; in an age of massive scientific understanding and religious dismantling, how do humans respond to a phenomenon that they cannot explain? It is six hundred pages in hot pursuit of this question. It all begins with the appearance of a new star in the sky. Further phenomenas emerge as some characters start seeing the dead, visiting an afterlife, or bizarre subtle happenings like when thousands of crabs retreat from the sea. The Morning Star is all pursuit and few answers, though rumor has it this is just the beginning of a trilogy.
The Morning Star6 is a puttering work of intrigue for readers who like a healthy dollop of theological query in their mystery stories.
Contemplify Update
A musing on “Old Growth Forests” was released yesterday as Season Three continues to marinate before being tossed on the grill. If you want to lend your ears to a previous episode from Season Two, you can find the complete list 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
CONFESSIONS OF A ZEN MULTITASKER (Podcast) The title is enough, but those who want to go all the way into this I suggest you listen without multitasking.
HALL OF DEATH (YouTube) Superwolves is a band to experience. They sound like themselves without the shake of commerce. Ten years between albums. I saw them last month when they opened for a death metal band. I stuck out like a contemplative at a death metal concert. This tune is about one of the members visiting his mother in an Alzheimer unit. It made me cry and raise my rock fists in support.
OUTHORSE YOUR EMAIL (visiticeland.com) Let a horse respond to your email. For reals. (h/t to Alan)
May you decelerate
to a walkable life
that strolls with
all of your self.
May that be more
than enough.
Slowing to a walkable life,
Paul
A collective accelerated life is what politicians rely on to cover their tracks through communal forgetfulness so they can continue to avoid risking a decision that could disturb their bankrolls. Grownass men (usually) afraid of losing their blood money allowances. An overwhelmed public at a loss, without cultural grieving processes, seeks distractions from the pain.
Folks who live in rural places have to drive to school, grocery stores, church, but can still live a walkable life. City folks may only walk to those same places, but can live an accelerated life.
To this contemplative shoveler, the collapse of the whole person is the driver of climate collapse.
How might this move beyond the individual person? I am glad you asked. Solidarity is also part of the solution to an accelerated life. Building solidarity with persons and places is loving action. Commonplace is the flourishing of a present place. Present to the grief of the broken branches on my tree. To wonder how it came to be. To disrupt the accelerated life is not think it out, but a raw body tumble towards solidarity. To slip out, slow the grief down, allow it to course through and unlock your love and expand its shape.
One should also note that ‘morning star’ is a term (the only one I believe) that appears in the Bible, once as a reference to Jesus and another time to Lucifer.