November NonRequired Reading List

Contemplify / NRR #105

Closing your eyes is not the answer to the riddle
I found it in the middle

— Jeffrey Martin

I had a dream a few Falls back. A big one. The type of dream that rolls in milky, shakes the sleepy heart to adventure, presents a choice and then cuts to black. Do you have an allergy to hearing someone else’s dreams? I sure can. This is the risk of telling a night story. Often dreams are painted boredly, or, a shade too intimate for public consumption, and the retellings fall flat between the frying pan and the plate. The dream that I share here has been shaved into my chest, saved for my wife, a few close mates, and my wizened spiritual director. This particular dream of mine keeps moving beyond comfortable fenced in storylines. This dream keeps pulling up the stakes. And I was surprised that this dream was ballooning to a place where the impetus to share it widely would be so keen. Oh God, how self-referential can I be in times like this? But the instinct did not abate, so I am following the muses and doling out the dream here. Yes, I am risking the rolling eyes of any reader who feels trampled by such night storied impositions. It is okay. I get it if you skip this one. Enough hedging, here is the dream.

The dream…

I was tasked with stepping in to teach a class at school where my wife and brother worked. This schoolhouse was like no other. It was difficult to tell where the natural world left off and the schoolhouse began. A hobbit inspired architecture. In amazement I entered the small rooted building only to discover grandiose hallways inside, warm sunlight kissed my shoulders from high windows in the earthen walls. I wandered about looking for my classroom. Passing children running free and laughing between rooms, I looked for my post. I could not find my place. Worry kicked in, where was my place? Since knothole doors led to open air, I stepped outside to catch my breath. I saw an elegant woman in a long flowing white dress walking towards an old growth forest. Without hesitation, I knew I had to follow her. Leaving the school behind, my nerves rattled and my steps quickened to follow this woman in white moving towards the dark mouth of the forest.

…then I woke up.

This dream became the center of my work with my spiritual director in our next session (I did not realize it would continue to hold the conversation for a couple more years). She encouraged me to write the dream down in detail; images, sensations, feelings, connections, etc. She recommended I search the old myths, fairytales, and stories for insight. I did so and continue to do so. For the past few years, the dream has remained a touchstone I regularly revisit.

About a year go I was on a work trip that brought me to a retreat center in the Pacific Northwest. A friend walked me over the grounds. We followed a grassy knob to its zenith and I stopped with a start. The old growth forest of my dream was staring back at me. A quivering sensation stood the hairs up on my arms. Gazing upon the dream forest I was held by her true dark and green stare. I kept this moment to myself. A few nights later under a string of stars my pal and I settled into a couple of rocking chairs on the front porch with a taste of whiskey on our lips. I confided in him what I had experienced coming upon the forest and the dream that had preceded it a year earlier. We rocked and sipped, not rushing to conclusions. We allowed the quiet embrace of night to hold us. I did not enter the forest on that visit (that would come later) as reverent distance was required. Intuitively, I knew I was not ready.

On my sabbatical this past summer my family made plans to return to this pulsating forest that seemed to know my name. I returned to this forest, my family and the same dear friend were with me, but I knew I had to go in alone. I entered its mouth, enveloped by all that I could not understand. With trepidation I walked the trails. I wish I could tell you that I had a mystical bolt light me up (believe me, I asked for it) to provide meaningful clarity. I walked slowly through the forest, accepting an invitation first encountered in my visceral dream. Asking, waiting, waiting…the understandably impatient shrieks of my kids called me back.

In the Christian tradition there are mighty stories of dreams invoking mysterium tremendum (terrible mystery). I do not dismiss the faculties of what I do not understand. This is the first time a dream has become a living place. It is the only time I have visited the mossy grounds of a night visitor. The old growth forest remains in the Pacific Northwest and I remain my residence in the deserts of the American Southwest. Yet the questions linger like a simmering pot on the backburner of my mind - what am I being invited to? Where am I being lead? This story is not folded up neatly, it is still being written.

Since then this dream has boiled over with living questions and experiences that are too fresh to put into ink. I must move slowly in this unfinished business of mine and protect what is not yet fully cooked. A wise man has written that one should be careful about sharing big dreams or visions too soon. Let them cook for at least a year before pulling the stakes for wider conversation.

Last week I went to a talk by Philip Connors, a journalist turned firewatch in the Gila National Forest. Connors spoke of his experience of being a fire lookout, being in intimate relationship with a mountain, forest, and the present and ancient communities that inhabit the Gila. Just like the generations of people who preceded him, Connors lives closely with the patch of earth he tends and this relationship is stitched together with fire and rain. After his talk, Connors took questions. I raised my hand, sounding very much like a young monk approaching a desert father for a ‘word’, and said, “I think about you a lot. More than I should admit in public. I imagine you looking through a fire lookout window to the mountain before you. Then I think of the masses of people who stare into the window of the internet countless hours a day. What word would you have for those of us who are being digitally overserved everyday?” His response was direct—and wouldn’t you know it—he quoted one of my favorite poets back to me. Connors said, “Jim Harrison said, ‘Some people must remain outside’. Not just out of doors but outside the center of culture. As a journalist I was immersed in the endlessness of the inside. We each have to make that choice. Either way comes with a cost. In the life of a fire lookout I am not successful by the measures of the inside, but I would not trade it for anything. I am right where I am supposed to be.”

These were words spoken by an outdoor cat gleaned from direct registering on the fields of their dreams. I muse aloud here, not tugging for answers, but to reach out to all who are on the crags of unfinished stories, grappling for the next hold. These are the musings of the middle and outside the center. Wrestling with welcome, yet uninvited, dreams. Playing with what has been shown while searching the terrain for unmarked cairns to guide the next step. Lord knows I would take a tidy ending for myself and for all those reading this residing in the middle, but neat bows are difficult to tie.

In his books Philip Connors has taught me about restorative fire, natural and healthy for the regenerative cycle of the forest. Our times, chaotic and tumultuous as there, have been unwanted lessons in the fires that are destructive and profiteering, as unnatural as the bits and bytes of glowering screens tunneling our attention.

The world is on fire. We are looking through our windows and seeing it ablaze. On one hand we are all fire lookouts bearing its destruction with our own eyes and seeking to tend to what we love unescapingly set before us. And on the other hand, some of us are locked into the warm glow of the screen and have not made it to our lookout post yet. Wherever this missive finds you, my prayer is that a restorative fire is stoked in the hearth of your heart. May it be emboldened within as you provide refuge for those caught in the unnatural flames, searing those not being properly endeared. May big dreams flood you with what is possible, even if moving through the plot is shielded by smoke.

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Contemplify dreams of contemplatives mingling in the world. It is a gift to create and share freely. Some folks have sought to support Contemplify through monetary means. It is a kindness that I have learned to receive as it creates less unnecessary friction to do this joyful work. Each offering of Contemplify is free (podcasts, NonRequired Readings, Lo-Fi & Hushed Contemplative Practices).

Those who become paid subscribers are automatically invited to join the weekly Lo-Fi & Hushed Practice Session on Wednesday mornings. A regular communal contemplative practice that supports the rhythms of your wild and precious life. You can practice live with me and a top shelf community of practitioners or with the recording. Rhythmic contemplative goodness. If you want to join th the Lo-Fi & Hushed Practice Sessions but don’t want to (or cannot) become a paid subscriber—no sweat—just add your name and email to this form and you will be included in the practice for free. Money should never ever be a barrier to contemplative practice. Practice makes practice. Always delighted to add more practitioners to the circle. Hope to see you there.¹

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October NonRequired Reading List

The Barn at the End of the World: The Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd by Mary Rose O’Reilley (Get it at the Public Library or Bookshop)

The poet Todd Davis recommended Mary Rose O’Reilley’s The Barn at the End of the World to me in our most recent conversation (hear here). A book rich in slow cooked transition and transformation, ditching the beige comfort of academia for the sheep barn and a dance with the quiet center point. There is an archetype of the shepherd that fascinates me (another poetic force I recommend on this is The Shepherd’s Life: Modern Dispatches from an Ancient Landscape by James Redbanks), but O’Reilley is cut from another cloth. It is a complete leap, starting over as a novice in the rich heritage of tending sheep.

The embodied work of wrestling, feeding, inoculating sheep is written with a chuckling pen. This book is so damn funny, I would text passages to friends out of nowhere.

“With one sheep dead, I have become more than usually observant of the actions of the rest. One of the rams was hunched over, moving convulsively. “Ben! Is that ram sick?

“He’s ejaculating, Mary.”

I think I spent too much time in graduate school.” (p.40)

The humor is born of an apprentice’s humility. And of course she follows up this story with a Buddhist illustration to deepen her point. O’Reilly never paints in rosy colors, the work is difficult, wearisome, and deeply satisfying. The pages are truthfully backlit with pastoral meditations on life on the pasture. My mind would drift to Psalm 95, “We are the people of his pasture and sheep of his hand.” It does not stop there, it bleats with promises worn out in her dual life as a Quaker and Buddhist practitioner.

What happens when we become of a place? When the land and creatures we regularly relate to in the cold morning air, bear their birth and death, we become seasoned to a cycle that imparts wisdom from our attentive participation. This is not news to Indigenous communities, but for those of us who have sought success in mechanical measures have been divorced from the commonness of place. Breaking unhealthy bonds is a baptism into a new life.

The Barn at the End of the World is for readers who find the spiritual life hilarious enough to take seriously.

Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back): A Memoir of Recording and Discording with Wilco, Etc. by Jeff Tweedy (Get it at the Public Library or Bookshop)

I wish I had a natural musical ability. I don’t. My lane is in music appreciation. Which I do with gusto. A pal passed Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back) to me a few years ago, once I finally cracked it, I could not put it down. It definitely helps if you are a fan of Tweedy’s music (and his latest Twilight Override is a three album masterpiece), the stories will make more sense. When I was a young pup away at my first year of college in Canada I clung to Wilco’s album Being There. It dripped from my ears into my lonesome heart.

Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back) is conversational in tone, and soulful in delivery. Tweedy covers all the bases of his life, addiction, anxiety, and music. He clocks his warts and charts his growth in all areas of his life with humble humor. There is a particular passage (too long to quote here) that I read at least a half dozen times when he relays the experience of kicking out a bandmate of Wilco. It is a reckoning with priorities and integrity, begging the question - what am I doing about what matters most to me?

Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back) is for readers fascinated by artists who sing the soundtracks of our lives. I am eager to read his book, How to Write One Song: Loving the Things We Create and How They Love Us Back.

Becoming Fire: Through the Year with the Desert Fathers and Mothers edited by Tim Vivian (Get it at the Public Library or Bookshop)

This one is a bit of squelch, because I haven’t finished it yet and I do not intend to until next year. Becoming Fire has become a daily companion to start my mornings, so it demands a slow soak. Each day offers a brief word from a Desert Father and Mother from the Christian tradition. I love the Desert Abbas and Ammas, they embody a life of radical contemplation in times of sweeping transition. Sayings from these wiseacres offer guidance to seekers yearning to walk in their roughshod footsteps on the path of transformation. Here is an example:

“A brother asked Abba Tithoës, “How do I protect my heart?”

The elder said to him, “How do we protect our heart with our tongues wagging and our bellies always wanting more?” (p.315)

Or this gem:

“Amma Syncletica: “Just as a ship cannot be built without nails, so too is it impossible to be saved without humility.” (p.286)

When you get into conversation with these ancient friends their sayings form a chorus of particularity to an embodied life of wholeness. There are plenty of extreme examples in the Desert Tradition, but one must remember that their counsel was given to a specific person seeking a “word of salvation.” When you take the collective sayings to heart you can discern what “word” might be speaking to your own life and locality today.

Becoming Fire is for desert seekers, following the lavender scent of dusted-up wisdom elders.

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Contemplify Update

Season Six is complete! I hope it landed gently in your ears. Now I move back into a season of deep reading and preparing season seven (with a few musings before then I am sure). As always you can find the complete list of Contemplify episodes here and below are the episodes of this season thus far.

• Gail Straub on Embracing Our Human Family (Season 6, Ep 10)

• Mark Longhurst on The Holy Ordinary (Season 6, Ep 9)

• Haleh Liza Gafori Brings Water to the Thirsty (Season 6, Ep 8)

• Contemplative Parenting with Aizaiah G. Yong and Nereyda Yong (Season 6, Ep 7)

• [Rebroadcast] Dr. Larry Ward on America’s Racial Karma, the Fragrance of Wisdom, and Learning How To Suffer Less (Season 6, Ep 6 - Bonus)

• Amy Frykholm on Journey to the Wild Heart (Season 6, Ep 5)

• Todd Davis on Ditch Memory (Season 6, Ep 4)

• Sr. Laura Swan, OSB on the Radical Wisdom of the Beguines (Season 6, Ep 3)

• Patrick Boland on Contemplative Leadership (Season 6, Ep 2)

• Cynthia Bourgeault on Thomas Keating, Christian Nonduality, and Mystical Maps (Season 6, Ep 1)

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

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Arts & Articles

COME SEE ME IN THE GOOD LIGHT (Apple TV Trailer) directed by Ryan White: The poet Andrea Gibson left us this past summer. Grieving their loss, we can cherish they left behind. Their poetry rushes with life, their story is one that drops me to the ground to kiss the earth in gratitude for another day to dance my little dance.

ANIMAL POEM (Western AF) by Anna Tivel: A few weeks ago, I quietly sat with tears filling my eyes as I heard Anna Tivel sing this song. She played a show in Albuquerque with Jeffrey Martin and I swear you could not hear us desert folk breathing, we were enraptured by songs being slipped into our souls. Check out the whole album, Animal Poem. Repeat often.

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Stoke the hearth of your heart.
May it embolden you to provide
refuge
for those caught in unnatural flames.
May big dreams flood you,
even if,
especially if,
you move through a smoky plot .

In the middle,
Paul

All Bookshop purchase links give a kickback to a local New Mexico bookstore and Contemplify. Big thanks to all who support in this way.

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1. 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 thrilled to have you practicing with us.