June NonRequired Reading List

Contemplify / NRR #112

“People have forgotten to be ecstatic…emptiness is never going to get us up to do anything, but ecstasy might.”

- Mary Oliver

Complaints. We all carry them. There is no other way in the Kingdom of God. That blessed Kingdom that is here, and not yet here. Part of the “not yet” is intuiting what lacks. My pockets are full of complaints, from minute details to very large arrays.¹ Rather than list my mangy complaints (to avoid rage bait) in the here and now, I will tie my shoelaces together with a heart full of love and fall face first into my own examination of complaint.

For there is an abundance of complaints that dwell in me and the softer side of my animal nature has a tough go at coming out to play when my innards are so crowded (“Do not think me gentle / because I speak in praise / of gentleness”).

My complaints are not new, but emerge from an ancient angst magnified through my particular experience in time and place. I have to scratch away the bluster to reach the roots of my anger. An anger that burns hot at perceived greed, selfishness, and short-sighted thinking. It points outward and within. Magnified complaints in contemporary manifestations can be helpful, but the steady overuse of the magnifying glass to show others quickly burns what is being examined. Learning how to see what is hidden from the naked eye without flaming out is the challenge at hand. For me, it burns my personhood. A burning without enough examination of my place within the broader landscape, without respect to what naturally sustains the places I belong. My complaints become privatized when they are cut off from this communal conversation with the human and non-human world, with this Kingdom here and still arriving.²

Integrity, I propose, is how painfully aware I am of the complaints that sublease my soul and walk the streets on my behalf. Lately I have been wondering if a true mark of internal growth relates to one’s complaints, how tightly one clings to the complaints carried inside and how they go about expressing them. Complaining in a world gifted with duckbill platypuses, Lake Michigan, and sour gummy bears is a fool’s errand. Complaining in a world with rapacious data centers, vanity wars, and a growing wealth gap is a must. So dig beneath the complaint to see what can be found. Digging until you reach the roots of one’s complaints requires the attention of a botanist. In a world that befuddles its beholden with both splendor and piggishness, attention is a spiritual act of sanity.

Petty complaints, charged complaints, I got them all. I can taste the complaints rolling around in my mouth, searching for a smidgen of truth, before I spit them out the gate. Born in the heart, the complaints rise and run roughshod over my tongue tarrying to be released. I often elucidate the complaints that come to the tip of my tongue. The diving board of expression. A released complaint hangs in the air ready to meet the moment. Will the complaint rip dive or cannonball? My tongue flicks the air like a snake tasting the quality of conditions. This perfectly late quality control yields three common scenarios in my complaining experience.

If a complaint is truthful, a grace-tinged vapor trail follows this soured form of speech.

If I do not believe a halfway-spilled complaint, I grab it by the spandex and pull the rest back onto my tongue before it is fully voiced and wash my conscience clean.

If a complaint tastes impeccably false or funny on my tongue, but I let it rip anyhow, I know a belly flop is coming. When these clumsy quibbles trip out my mouth without belief (or a self-serving one at best) its nasty finish leaves me with a red belly for the rest of the day.

In a culture of relentless speech, sharpened tongues command podiums with words of complaint fixed for accommodating audiences. I cannot hear my heart beat in such large chattering crowds. I wonder how others do. My complaints find quieter corners and can be just as gross as they belly up to the bar and belch into the ears of friends and neighbors. Whatever your preference, complaints leak out in crowds or in quiet conversations. The next step is what I find most fascinating. In the aftermath of my own complaining, I hunker down into the cave of my heart to decipher the immediacy of meaning of the complaints spoken, rue or thoughtful. How do my complaints impact my communities when they surface from my lips? These retrospectives tend to lead to one of few actions.

I go silent, welcoming the dumbing of my contribution and sitting in the stun of my own stupidity.

I repair, apologizing for my subterfuge.

I jest, put some jelly on the sticky peanut butter.

I try again, to craft a truer statement that might benefit the previously spewed halfpriced complaint.

There are even times when my mind moves too quickly and I attempt all of these responses at once. My slow midwestern mouth is unable to keep pace with my frenetic mind attempting to form a string of coherent sentences to make sense to those within earshot. This mushmouth is more common than I care to admit.

Other times, rare times, I surprise myself by speaking about what was lurking below the complaining surface. A foundational truth that is resting easy and not sashaying to exit my piehole. A true complaint. These curious moments are ordained by a pause. Speech born of pause sounds different. The pause settles the receptive pools to recognize what I hold true at the depths. Pause-born words dive into sound without a disruptive splash³, a stillness that disturbs, that warns all of my shallower complaints.

My fussy complaints don’t subside when truth passes by, but they are disarmed by the attention it gets. Separating the knockabout egoic complaints from the hardline injustices are a part of daily practice, the daily work of attention. The muddy midland of complaints remain even when my honest edges gently flood toward the muck. Right attention brings sight to this phenomenon. Seeing rightly does not do much by way of outcome, but it strengthens the backbone and softens the landing to meet all that I cannot control (which is damn near everything). Seeing more clearly is a piece of the whole (or as Gary Snyder puts it, “ …to see the one who sees and thus makes seeing more true”⁴) of the Kingdom here and not yet.

Consciously stepping into the arena of life’s precocious systems, unconditioned relationships, and borderline landmines with sight is the necessary showmanship of truth. Without seeing, it is easy to slip into the tides of power that pummel you to a pulp. Bad news is that this pummeling will still happen even if you are reading reality with plain sight. There is no winning on the terms of complaining. Whether you are born under the boot of empire or are in position of tying its laces, everyday people are moments away from being squashed or flung afar.⁵

Creative possibilities exist but are dangerous to the touch. A gutsy, shared life in a crumbling empire is a dangerous and necessary position to hold for our kin, the birds and the bears, and our grandchildren’s grandchildren. My imagination is not large enough to solve most of my complaints and I do not harbor the hubris to think I can provide resolutions alone. The Kingdom that is now or never, the Kingdom that is here and not yet here, the Kingdom that drops stones of judgement is a shared Kingdom that requires life-blood, witted participation, and relentless repair. This is how the real work can be done.

There is beauty that renders one speechless, some complaints do the same. Words falter, stutter, and topple out but I have found that the complaints that first touch grief find a different courage, a solidarity of collective eyes. Loner complaints stand outside the dance and run hot on self-inflicted pity. A collective complaint first sweats the grief personally felt beneath the ribcage before truing one’s participation in the whole body. A person who carries a critique beyond their own border and bank account becomes a query for justice. Justice as a team sport is a cry against dominative forces. Hearing the rallying cries may be what causes one to break forth into a run only to realize they are standing at the starting point of a Kingdom here and not yet.

How did I get from complaints to here? Not a curve I question. For what I am repeatedly learning is that what we devote our attention to pinpoints what we can see. I have blind spots as a pal recently pointed out to me. It does not take a half-stoned Sherlock to see this. Taking heed of true complaints as correctives to the path, a shared path, that builds communities of place, not just networks of common aims and interest. Communities of place are less threatened by the kindness of disciplined tongues proffering encouragement-laced complaints for fuller seeing and participation in the still arriving Kingdom.

This is holy dissent, to ecstatically live out your holy complaints. Complain to save what is beautiful, complain about what is lost when culture trends towards maximal efficiency, complain about what becomes scarce without care. The Kingdom that is not fully here is counting on our shared willingness to see it, grieve it, cherish it, and tend to what we can, so we can become unhinged from our feverish desire to control outcomes by pre-determined actions claimed as our destiny.

This is how I want my complaints to carry me.

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Again, a deep bow to all who have been quietly supporting this contemplative work this past decade.

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June NonRequired Reading List

Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World directed by Sasha Waters (Find a showtime in your area or watch the trailer)

The mighty Mary Oliver has received a documentary that matches her spirit. It is hitting theaters July 3rd (see it on the big screen if it hits your town) and will air on American Masters on PBS in late August. Sasha Waters has artfully crafted a film that walks through the life and work of Mary Oliver, open enough to bring those unfamiliar with Oliver along and specific enough to delight those alrighty steeped in her poetry.

The opening scene brings us Stephen Colbert attempting to recite “The Summer Day”, but gets verklempt. This relatable moment is how many of us feel with a poem that has burrowed into our bodies and carries a wide range of emotions, relationships, and experiences. There was a time when I could not read aloud “A Poem for My Daughter” by Teddy Macker. I was simply overtaken. From the open to end, you follow the arc of Oliver’s childhood in Ohio to her launch further east, her love story with Molly, her insatiable devotion to attention, and discipline to her craft. The interviews with her biographer, friends, admirers, and fellow artists bring us a three dimensional picture to this extremely private poet. The film gives a respectful treatment to suffering she endured, her headstrong nature, and her vivacious vision for participating in a lineage that nurtured her.

After viewing the documentary twice, I was inspired not to live like Mary Oliver, but engage in her poetry as a guide to live my one wild and precious life with gusto.

Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World is for all readers of Mary Oliver, for contemplative wanderers, and for those who want a sneak peek into a well-lived life.

The Selected Letters of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder edited by Bill Morgan (Get it at the Public Library or Bookshop)

I am still on a tear with the work of Gary Snyder. And this collection of letters gave me a fuller appreciation for Allen Ginsberg too. I love books of letters. As the artform dwindles as the electronic version boringly takes over, collected correspondences like this grow in stature for me. Long time listeners may recall my conversation with Chad Wriglesworth who edited a collection of letters between Gary Snyder and Wendell Berry.

We catch the early spring of the friendship between Ginsberg and Snyder at the start. The heyday of the Beat Generation, their letters swirl with the energy of jazz, sex, and exploration. As the years pass, there is a tempering of youthfulness that gives way to the brightness of becoming. The letters fly back and forth as they touch different corners of the earth, share drafts of poems, offer Buddhist gleanings, family updates, activism, and the details that surround the land and homes they are building at Kitkitdizze. A favorite letter of mine is when Snyder replies to Ginsberg’s question about what fatherhood is like:

“Fatherhood is like having a Zen Master in the house all the time. Talk about dignity, demands, non-verbal communication; and a mirror held up to yourself. And thoughts about karma. And koan: Where did KAI (Snyder’s son) come from? The same clear original face—ah.”⁷

Viewing a friendship from the outside you only get a primer of the actual. Letters like this provide a window into the trust, camaraderie, and joy of lifelong friendships. I walked away with an appreciation for what Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg meant to one another, and the friendships I belong to as well.

The Selected Letters of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder is for the letter writers and readers, who reckon the physical and emotional labor of letter writing is worth not losing in speedy times.

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Contemplify Update

Season Seven is out and about, enjoying the new rhythm of one episode a month. The June episode came early in May as to drop the same day as Beverly Lanzetta’s top shelf book). As always you can find the complete list of Contemplify episodes here and below are all the available episodes of Season Seven.

• Beverly Lanzetta on Birthing a New Mysticism (Season 7, Ep 5)

• Dr. Liza J. Rankow on Soul Medicine for a Fractured World (Season 7, Ep 4)

• Philip Connors on The Mountain Knows the Mountain: A Fire Watch Diary (Season 7, Ep 3)

• Anna Tivel on Animal Poem, Short Stories, and Checking Your Shoes (Season 7, Ep 2)

• Dr. Martin Shaw on Liturgies of the Wild (Season 7, Ep 1)

• Vision for a New Cabinet by Teddy Macker (Season 7, Trailer)

All episodes are available from Contemplify through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts worth their salt.

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Arts & Articles

THE EXTINCTION OF WONDER (Water in the Desert) by Gary Paul Nabhan: Wonder crosses healing waters, sacred rituals, and soil at our toes. Nabhan shares how he and some friends are taking a stand against those who love to build walls without the the forethought of land, plants, springs, and ceremony.

IN DEFENSE OF OUR COUNTRY: ON THE NEED TO RESIST AI AND AI DATA CENTERS (Front Porch Republic) by Teddy Macker: Data centers have been around and a new influx is coming with significant promise and slick talking representation. And these data centers are thirsty for water and energy. Teddy Macker writes with a holy pen on the complexity of what gets lost when AI is our first responder and AI data centers are built without consent. A snippet here:

“Americans have been in the habit of saying yes to everything for far too long now—whether through explicit acceptance or the dissipating effect of what Walter Brueggemann calls “achieved satiation” (the getting and spending that waste our powers) or a sense of helplessness.

Now, many Americans are saying this far and no farther. Many are saying there is some shit I will not eat. Many are remembering that we are the safe depository of the ultimate powers of this country, that fundamental decisions concerning the general welfare and the welfare of our children should not be made without us.”

REBECCA SOLNIT (The Interview) with David Marchese: Whenever I read or listen to Rebecca Solnit I try to absorb her wizened optimism. She is bold in her critiques of authoritative politicos, misogyny, and environmental degradation while enjoying what is and pointing out what is also possible with dedication, fortitude, and heaps of kindness.

THIS GARBAGE COLLECTOR LOVES HIS JOB BUT HAS A FEW BONES TO PICK (NYT) by Dwight Garner: How we think about trash is an important philosophical question about love, waste, outcasts, kindness. The book Trash! slinks into these ideas, with some tales to tell as well. After reading this review, I picked up a copy from the library and can’t wait to bury myself in Trash! (You can get a better taste of Trash! from this excerpt in Harper’s).

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The Kingdom is…
now or never
here and not yet here
dropping stones of judgement.

The Kingdom requires…
life-blood
witted participation
relentless repair.

Apply within.

Learning to complain better,
Paul

All Bookshop purchase links give a kickback to a local and independent New Mexico bookstore and to Contemplify. Big thanks.

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1. But not thee Very Large Array in New Mexico

2. Community is a must to reflect back the justification of complaints and critiques I carry. The plants and roadrunners have ideas.

3. Though it may disrupt the listeners

4. Gary Snyder, The Gary Snyder Reader (Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 1999), p.387

5. Barrel rolling away is the only move, and even that, paints a target on your back.

6. Contemplify never wants filthy lucre to be a barrier to practice. So if you want to practice weekly with this contemplative basecamp at Lo-Fi & Hushed but aren’t able to offer support (no sweat!), drop your name and email here, I will add you to the next practice. We would be delighted to have you practicing with us.

7. Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder, The Selected Letters of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder, 1956–1991, ed. Bill Morgan (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2009), 105.