May NonRequired Reading List
Contemplify / NRR #90
“What if rituals were meant to be expansive moments of separation, or letting go; liminality, or being in the unknown; and incorporation into our perpetual becoming, all enmeshed with the expansiveness of breath?”
— Cassidy Hall
While watching a mother brush her child’s hair Zen Master Thich Nhat Hahn realized what ritual meant. Ritual is care.1 When I read this phrase it landed as softly and gently and miraculously as if a butterfly had perched on my eyelashes. Of course ritual is care. Being absorbed in an embodied act that is contained and connective sans self-referential thought is care. When we ritualize life in this absorptive way, we are caring for it by our participation. Everyday rituals soften the attention to create the conditions for presence to birth love’s arrival in our midst.
(Brief sidebar - For those who participate in institutions that have very serious boundary markers on rituals—I am not singing their sacred songs here, as beautiful as they might be. No, the ritualizing I am musing on about is like busking with a broken banjo outside Home Depot.)
Rituals, like brushing a child’s hair, have a contextual expectation. All participants know the purpose and bring their full attention to the task at hand. Then expectations drop. One brush stroke at a time. Not brushing with the end in mind increases the sensation of care. When I brush one of my feral children’s hair it can be a painful experience for all parties if I don’t bring skillful means. Brushing out the twisted strands, matted spots, and bits of jelly requires an attention that is unhasty and open-ended. The brush. The hair. The hands. All move with effulgent holiness. Love is birthed2 in this steady absorption, sanctifying this prosaic experience. Everyday rituals like this invite participants to soften their gaze and alter their approach to engage in what is before them. Rituals hold the container in care so you don’t have to. Rituals are ways of canning the salty flavor that preserves and enhances life.
Ritualizing cares for life by honoring the contained rhythms that perpetuate life. I think of my favorite cardigan wearing piano man, Fred Rogers. Mr. Roger’s ritual of singing his song of belonging while swapping out shoes and sweater at the bookends of each episode is a prime example. If you watched him, you knew you were entering a alternative space of slow, realized care in service to a kind wholeness without dismissing the difficulties of life. Absorbed in realized care, we can be transformed by the zipping up of a cardigan. Nothing is too mundane for realized care.3 And if we choose to, the entirety of the day can be ritualized in care.
Communal ritual is care too. My local church community has some juicy ones. Anything seemingly mundane or casual that we have ritualized I have come to cherish; an annual retreat in the wilderness, hymn sings, and my favorite…prayers of the people. I have a tendency to drift off in church services due to a hurly burly ailment I picked up some Sunday morning years ago. Because this unfortunate and odd malady only flares up on Sunday mornings in church buildings, I spend most of a church service trying to keep my kids quiet enough so I can daydream between hymns. Then a creeping question slips in—what are we doing here? And the answer typically arrives in the form of the prayers of the people. The ritualized care of the prayers of the people brings me back to presence. We pass a microphone around and the community shares its aches, griefs, joys, and musings. When a person is done sharing, they say, “God in your mercy” and the community responds “You hear our prayer”. I love it so much. When you pray like that in a community that eats together, stumbles together, tills the land and serves the wider community together, sees marriages come and splits divide, welcomes babies and mentors awkward teens, honors deaths and other disruptions—these offerings cut through the noise to hear the signal. This is one way my community brushes each other’s hair. We do this to remember we are but fragile parts of a broken body, held in wholeness by the mercy of the Beloved in all moments.
My invitation to you is to consider the rituals at play in your life. Honor them for what they are and the care they provide in your rhythms of being.4 It is my belief, all these little rituals charm God as much as if we were brushing God’s hair.
Contemplify teaches me to rake the grounds of attention. Light work if the wind blows the ground clear, heavy work if the wind blows scattered thoughts into a pile. Trusting the wind to blow where it will is easy, working with attention to accept its direction is dodgy. I pursue this in the simplest way I can by kindling the examined life for contemplatives in the world. Starting with myself. Thank you to all who support Contemplify by dropping in on the offerings (podcasts, NonRequired Readings, Lo-Fi & Hushed Contemplative Practices). For those who wish to support Contemplify through monetary means, press the button below. Becoming a paid subscriber is a both show of kindness and supportive slap on the back. Your support humbles me and keeps the jukebox playing. Some folks want to support just for the sake of supporting Contemplify (a tip of the hat 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. Hope to see you there (see footnote 5 if you want to join the weekly practice but are not in a position to support).5
May NonRequired Reading List
Queering Contemplation: Finding Queerness in the Roots and Future of Contemplative Spirituality by Cassidy Hall (Get it at the Public Library or Bookshop)
Contemplation in the Christian west cornered itself in modern times. The tradition lead by men who look like me popularized a narrow scope and elevated a particular type of person (ahem, men who look like me) with a particular way of engaging contemplation. While not denying their goodness, what gets overlooked in this contemplative slot canyon is the expansive nature of perspectives and practices shared by contemplatives outside of these narrow canyon walls. As Tessa Bielecki likes to say, “contemplatives are not unique, but everyone is a unique type of contemplative.” Cassidy Hall’s book Queering Contemplation traverses in and through unique canyons, deserts, marshes, and jungles of contemplation with joyful clarity.
Cassidy Hall skillfully writes about queering the foundations of contemplative spirituality; monastery, mysticism, ritual, and more. By queer, Hall means “the way I tilt my head to look at the world. Queerness, in my life, has been not only about sexuality but also about expanse, curiosity, openness, pleasure, weirdness, love, oddity, and liberation.”6 In this queering exploration of contemplative spirituality, Hall draws upon the wild roots of the tradition that have always been bursting forth and encouraging growth in unexpected directions. Her energizing reflections on kissing a tree, uncompromisable presence, and encountering deserts gratify the innate sense that all contemplatives are invited to celebrate the tradition by queering it.
Queering Contemplation is for readers eager to celebrate the weirdness (always a compliment) of the contemplative traditions that has been resounding with life at the margins for eons.
Life After Doom: Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart by Brian McLaren (Get it at the Public Library or Bookshop)
I love this world. Love is a piney word that needs to be whittled into a more readable shape. Love can not generically fit in your hand, it rips easily like worn tinfoil. Love fits if you cup your hand and receive it like water, drink or pour, you cannot pocket it for later. Love always has a more sweeping story to tell. Life After Doom is a love story. Brian McLaren loves this world and sees with clear eyes the trouble we are in, and, is inviting all readers to love the world back directly and in the snarling face of fear.
Brian McLaren gently invites readers to consider four common perspectives of the collapsing state of the world (climate crisis, institutions, etc.) without judgement. It allows each reader to find themselves at an equal starting point for this communal conversation. From there, McLaren kindly challenges each starting point as he examines the ways humans function and respond to calamity. With compassion, he outlines the slow and horrific historical bargains that have brought us to this brink while emphasizing the necessity of poetry, beauty, and seeking indigenous wisdom. This book will challenge your preconceptions, but will not abandon you. Throughout Life After Doom (and specifically in the appendices) embodied resources and examples are given to encourage a humble and incarnate way of being in this world before, during, and after doom.
Life After Doom is for readers accepting or fearful of collapse, but willing, to explore ways we can become esteemed ancestors by our attention, action, practice, and presence.
The Invisible Fight directed by Rainer Sarnet (Watch trailer here)
Have you ever wondered why you have never seen a movie that combined kung fu, death metal, and Orthodox Christianity in the landscape of Estonia? Me too. Well your wait is over. This wildly inventive and strange film follows Raphael a goofball metalhead seeker underwhelmed by the counterculture behind the iron curtain of the 1970s. He discovers an Orthodox monastery that appears to be practicing kung fu (his unskillful obsession) and seeks to join the monastery to learn their ways.
With newfound passion, Raphael, throws himself into this monastic life and quickly picks up grandiose spiritual gifts. The starets (wise teachers in Orthodoxy) are on the fence about his dedication to the path despite his seemingly speedy adoption of their ways. It is funny, odd, and not for everyone. But is a delightful and instructive primer on Orthodox Christianity that encourages resolve for embracing an everyday life of love and humility.
The Invisible Fight is for lovers of kung fu and Orthodox Christianity with a splash of death metal. Pretty sure that is nearly everyone I know.
Contemplify Update
Season Five is just around the bend, conversations are ready to slip out and meet your ears and hearts for drinks. As always you can find the complete list of Contemplify episodes here and below are the three most recent episodes.
Turn the Morning into Forever (Season 4, Ep 16 Bonus)
Reduced to the Scale of Our Competence (Season 4, Ep 15 Bonus)
Eat the Wild Thing (Season 4, Ep 14 Bonus)
All episodes are available from Contemplify through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get delicious podcasts.
Arts & Articles
THE AMBLING MIND by L. M. Sacasas (The Convivial Society: Vol. 5, No. 6): Walking (or wheeling) on one’s own accord is a champion practice because of its indisputable slowness and connection to the land right below us. This piece smiles while proposing that “the act of walking might indeed prove revolutionary because it will afford us an experience of an alternative way of being in the world, one that honors the properly human scale of our experience.”
FRENCH POST OFFICE RELEASES SCRATCH-AND-SNIFF BAGUETTE STAMP by The Guardian (The Guardian): All is not lost for humanity. (h/t to Tyler)
WILDCAT directed by Ethan Hawke (YouTube): Flannery O’Connor is an original writer that gooses the reader to reorder their life. She receives a biopic that fits her inventive mind, it is nonlinear and imaginative to the peacock tail end. O’Connor is magnanimously played by Maya Hawke, aching with questions on suffering, art, and grace. If you are looking for a more forthright telling of the of Flannery O’Connor read The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage. But Wildcat is an artistic gem.
LO-FI & HUSHED (Contemplify): The Summer Solstice Lo-Fi & Hushed Contemplative Practice Session is coming up on Wednesday, June 19. 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.
Ritual
is empty
care.
Less we
forget,
then ritual
becomes
careless
emptiness.
Ambling,
Paul
All Bookshop purchase links give a kickback to a local New Mexico bookstore and to Contemplify. What a kindness.
Murphy, S. (2023) A Fire Runs Through All Things: Zen Koans for Facing the Climate Crisis. Boulder, CO: Shambhala. p.36
There is no such thing as a quick birth, it is a wonder that the phrase “born again” does not mean nine months of spiritual gestation. I digress.
Did you know there is a prayer called Asher Yatzar in Judaism which one prays after going to the bathroom? These everyday rituals bless the ground they take place on. Sitting or standing.
And if you intend to add rituals, a few words to consider; 1) do not make them overly serious or self-referential 2) there are some rituals you should keep to yourself, for the safety of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. This is what keeps secret acts of service sacred.
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.
Hall, C. (2024) Queering contemplation: Finding queerness in the roots and future of contemplative spirituality. Minnapolis, MN: Broadleaf Books. p.6
Wonderful!!