March NonRequired Reading List
Contemplify / NRR #88
“When tea becomes ritual, it takes its place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things. Where is beauty to be found? In great things that, like everything else, are doomed to die, or in small things that aspire to nothing, yet know how to set a jewel of infinity in a single moment?”
— Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog
A sundried memory is revisiting me. The exact date is foggy, but the flashback is ripe. A few things I know for certain, it was pre-pandemic and took place at the Albuquerque Botanical Gardens bandshell. One of my favorite right-handed songwriters was set to play on a serene June evening. My wife was spent and didn’t want to go. Friends were preoccupied or unreachable. I had a grueling day at work and was not sure a crowded space would settle my mood. One song, I said to myself, wrung out as I am, go for one song as the sun dips down. When I arrived the lawn was full; families sprawled out on blankets, teens on awkward dates, old folks looking criminal sipping their wine in lawn chairs, and the occasional loner like myself. Surveying the scene, I saw an inviting cottonwood stage right and made a beeline for this new friend. Waylaid by the purchase of an overpriced beer, I chuckled, the beer cost more than the price of admission. Remembering the cottonwood, I hustled over and nestled in between two roots surfacing grass-side that squeezed my legs as I laid back against the trunk. Dear God, let me sit here in peace. Immediately a neighbor recognizes me and walks over. Popping a squat, we are now eye level and without delay they go full tilt into small talk. They gave it their best shot, and I am sad to report, I gave it my worst. Feeling dejected they feign the sight of another friend and hastened elsewhere, leaving the pieces of the broken conversation at my feet. Prayer and a bad attitude got me nothing so I practiced my thousand yard stare. Gazing over the emerald lawn, towering trees, and jittery birds with a soft breeze kissing my cheek had me getting downright happy. One song. That is all I need.
The songwriter, Jeffrey Foucault, takes the stage. Like Nathaniel sitting under a fig tree, Foucault found me agaze in meditative aloofness. Foucault opened with his poem “Dishes”. A tune that rang out as the holy invocation for all the dishpan hands and dirty nails in this freckled and blessed audience---
“Do the dishes with the windows open
Soak the dirt from under your nails
Pour a double, put a record on the table
The light is always perfect just before it fades”
Those laconic lyrics1 are a pretty accurate drum of how I approach my languid spirituality. Do the mundane. Pay attention to what is before you. Be of service. Celebrate the elemental, and why not sip something tasty and play some music while you are at it, life is as short as the alpine glow on the Sandias.
Two weeks ago, my family moved 2 blocks. It was a move made for a bit more room and to live a bit more communally. We also have a dishwasher. Over the past 15 years my wife and I have lived in 4 different abodes throughout the various seasons of our relationship and not once have we had a dishwasher.2 We are both looking forward to it. I am also nervous. Doing the dishes by hand has kind of been my thing, a ritual in my rhythm of life. God splashes me with symphonic whispers more often in the suds than in a sermon. Washing dishes slows me down to catch glimpses of the Beloved. And yet…how great will it be to not do a cartoonish stack of dishes every night?
With particular appreciation for the Amish I have been thinking about their approach to time-saving devices. They are discerning about technology, not anti-technology. A significant difference. Like the difference between nail clippers and the LA Clippers. Before accepting new technology into their community, the Amish ask questions like, how will this new technology impact my family’s ability to break bread together three times a day? How will this technology impact my relationship with my neighbors and God? Most of us are so hog wild for anything new and shiny, that these questions don’t even compute.
I am conscientious of how easy it is to adorn time-saving devices as saviors so we can wastefully time-spend on other devices. I am no different.3 Lately, I have been living with the awful discerning questions of the Amish.…what will I lose by this time-saving device?
My bristles brush up equally against the futility of language in regards to the ‘spending’ and ‘saving’ of time. What kind of relationship is that to the presence of being? We are mere matchsticks burning for a short while with regular emissions of strange sulfurish smells. There are no true accountants of time who offer expensive guidance on saving and spending time. Look to the moon for that kind of advice. There is also a new dimension of relating to time that we have not fully grasped as a culture, that is our capacity to bilocate in real time, all the time. Zoom for example magically transports us into each other's living rooms, offices, and bedrooms. All of the visuals make an appearance while missing the textures of touch and presence. It is a loss and it is a gift. The gift is assumed and the loss is bypassed. Holy Saturday is a good a day to dwell on what gets lost. The paradox of the gift and ungifting of such outfits as dishwashers and Zoom is one I overthink.4
The poet Kay Ryan says sometimes we need a backward miracle. Not something to expand, speed up, or transport us elsewhere. But to dig into the incarnational goodness of sitting under the shade of a fig tree like Nathaniel meditating, or, under a cottonwood listening to a well-crafted song sacramentalizing the ritual of dishes. Coming for one song and being washed away by it. Taking a day that had nothing good to say out for a night in the gardens, to slow it down enough to be present to the pleasant presence of a poem about doing the dishes.
Time to fill the basin.
Contemplify sips its coffee in the corner back booth. Your presence is welcome. The tenor of conversation is mixed between long pauses, tom foolery, and earnestness. It is a hobo artistry I aspire to, a vocation to clear paths with and for others while pausing for hot chocolate between clearings. Early mornings with creaky ligaments, I follow the muse—books, music, practices, and conversations—that slinks out for a stroll before day breaks open. This is where I write 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 through monetary means, press the button below. Becoming a paid subscriber is a both kindness and show of support. It humbles me and keeps the jukebox plugged in. Some folks want to support just for the sake of supporting Contemplify (tipping my cap to you folks), but paid subscribers are also automatically invited to the weekly Lo-Fi & Hushed Practice Session on Wednesday mornings. Good, clean, unglamorous contemplative fun.5 Hope to see you there.
March NonRequired Reading List
Perfect Days directed by Wim Wenders (Watch wherever you can / trailer)
The last two movies I saw on the big screen were directed by Wim Wenders. I saw the documentary Anselm and now the feature Perfect Days. Both were charming enough (without being saccharine) to pull off a pace slow enough that makes drying paint shudder. They are contemplative invitations to forget the zip and zeal of storyless movies made on green screens. Watching Perfect Days felt human, like holding a child’s plump hand or your immediate reaction when a drop of rain hits the nape of your neck.
Perfect Days follows the central character Hirayama over the course of a few weeks as he cleans toilets in Tokyo. The rhythm of his day profits from attention to detail, shadows and light, consistency, the support of trees, and the presence of those overlooked. The thickening of the story that disrupts his routines and rituals reveals the subtleties of a universal love rooted beneath the surface. Hirayama shares it freely, without pious romanticism, in the dancing shadows and flickering lights.
Perfect Days is a quiet film that shows you how to look and see, how to really look and see what and who is present in you life.
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery (Get it at the Public Library or Bookshop)
It was over a couple of kombuchas (in middle age my beer intake has gone down, although my delight in it has not) that my friend Dave suggested The Elegance of the Hedgehog to the table. I bit, why bring the book up now? His response was—because the heartbeat of the book is the exact conversation we are having now.
The plot is simple, it follows the lives of middle-aged concierge Renée Michel and twelve year old Paloma Josse in an apartment building occupied by the upper class. Each character swaps narration, Renée conceals her intelligence and cultural adeptness because she is the ‘help’ among the bourgeois tenants. Paloma conceals her intelligence too but in a precocious manner while waxing on about the phoniness of the class elite. Funny, whimsical, and calling the reader back to the boorish ways we side-eye glance across class. The purpose of life and the relationships that animate our days is anchored on every page. One can not help but fall under the spell of self-reflection as they follow Renée and Paloma.
The Elegance of the Hedgehog is for those who prefer their philosophy baked into a story like a soufflé or a hot dish.
Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair by Christian Wiman (Get it at the Public Library or Bookshop)
Everything about Zero at the Bone grabs me by the collar, twists, and brings me close to the hot breath of life. The poet, essayist, and professor Christian Wiman came into my orbit with his meditative memoir My Bright Abyss. Ten years after that publication he turns up the heat against despair. Zero at the Bone is a combination of poems, quotes, musing, essays, and at least one ripping sermon.
The thing about Wiman is that he writes naked sentences; stripped down to the bare essentials and stands before them glorifying their collective bodies. Whether relishing in the genius of Lucille Clifton or the poetics of Job’s rancor, Wiman dazzles. His penchant for theological paradox—a la “Jesus promises both the fullness and annihilation of identity”—sit like stones on the tongue, watering the mouth with a serious heaviness. Half of my book is underlined, annotated, or marked with exclamation points…all pages I will return to with contemplative consideration.
Zero at the Bone is for readers who pick the despair out of their teeth with the bones of poetry.
Contemplify Update
Still carving out a moment to record a couple musings and Season Five conversations have begun to be recorded and I am eager to share. 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 delicious podcasts.
Arts & Articles
LOVE GRIEVES BUT REFUSES DESPAIR: AN INTERVIEW WITH DAVID JAMES DUNCAN (Orion): Sun House is a book that continues to read my life. An offering so generous that another page of the 800 page behemoth would have been asking for too much. Friend of Contemplify, Fred Bahnson, interviews David James Duncan on Sun House, an “Eastern Western”, positing possibility and a way to consider a life hidden in the deepest waters.
SIERRA FERRELL SINGS “ME & BOBBY MCGEE” (YouTube): This song and Ferrell’s voice were made for each other. Her latest album Trail Of Flowers came out this month.
SUGGESTIONS FOR REBOOTING THE MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE FROM FARMER, ESSAYIST, AND POET WENDELL BERRY (McSweeney’s): The folks over at McSweeney’s sure know how to make a fella howl.
Without
time
to spend
or lose,
empty
yourself
fully.
Doing the dishes,
Paul
All Bookshop links give a kickback to a local New Mexico bookstore and to Contemplify. What a kindness.
The whole song really
My wife will fact check me on this. If I am wrong, I will report back next month.
My wife is different, she is featured in Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport. Check out the book here.
And waffle between enjoyment of, snickering at, and crying over a little.