October NonRequired Reading List
Contemplify / NRR #83
“He who binds himself to joy
Doth the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sunrise.”
— William Blake
Imposter Syndrome: the persistent inability to believe that one's success is deserved or has been legitimately achieved as a result of one's own efforts or skills. Quick show of hands…how many of you have experienced “imposter syndrome” in some area of your life?
There are multiple leans on imposter syndrome, today I am careening towards its value in spiritual practice. Imposter syndrome is when you don’t believe your success is deserved, achieved, or the result of your effort. Good. It's not. Our effort in contemplative practice is showing up with consent and having it be done unto us. Whenever someone tells me how ‘good’ they are at practice, I wince, it is like flexing about your tic-tac-toe skills. Only yesterday a new pal told me he had been practicing zazen for 50 years and still considers himself a beginner. A friendly silence hung like a hammock between us. Stretching out in this silence, a comic strip thought cloud bubbled out before me, deposited with the words, “There is much I can learn from this man.”
Contemplative practice is an unpinable force. Spiritual masters opine theories and stories of this malleable art. Then concomitant with parables and conjectures is the exercise of contemplative practice itself. Either one does it or does not. I can practice well and I can practice poorly. Practice makes practice. This broken shell game has led me to meditating on a string of pearls from Wendell Berry. Berry writes that we “must somehow be reduced to the scale of our competence.”1 Originally expressed in relation to planetary malnourishment, this statement also presents a truth that runs on the ridges of our present spiritual challenges.2
This line—“we must somehow be reduced to the scale of our competence”—lands like the first bite of a fuzzy peach. A juicy and chiffon humility.3 “Scaling up” on the other hand is licking a battery. A metallic jolt charges up the addictive mentality of more, for the sake of more. Doesn’t matter what, could be more Jesus or more Tupperware, as long as one pursues more of it. This is the “undisciplined pursuit of more.”4 The perfect tagline for the pathway to planetary and spiritual destruction. The danger of this mentality of ‘moreness’ is its theoretical posturing beyond competent practice. Maybe we could call this posturing syndrome, because in practice it leads to listless busyness not truth, to bureaucracy not beauty, and to dull mediocrity not goodness. We have a tendency to aggrandize the impact of the speculative “more” while forgetting that saints and mystics praise God for their limitations and stumbling blocks.
Our addiction to “more” is merely escapism from the ever-present enoughness of you—all of you—that is sitting right here, right now, reading this. Slow your scroll. Breathe with this image. The Berryian reduction is like the first ray of sunrise breaching the horizon, unleashing the fullness of its available light. We revel in the pastel colors and heat reaching out to us now, yet the completeness of the sun is unrevealed. This is enough. From a stance of satiated enoughness, we hail the revelation of repleteness rising still. Even now. Pause to consider, how is the fullness of your available knowledge and love hitting the concrete of your day? Are you open to further revelation from the fullness lying in wait, loitering about until tapped by a patient and attentive presence?
Take stock of where you dwell in the details of daily life; tending to loved ones, cooking wild rice soup, clipping toenails and so on. Grand plans easily become day-denying schemes justifying ego enhancing behavior on the sly. Spiritual practices are graciously ass backwards. Contemplative practice daily unemploys your ivy-league will so that the work can begin. Taut efforts get exhausted and confused, and consenting in practice can feel dangerously boring. Scaling down is a trojan liberation, for when one pulls up a stool for unknowing to sit at the table, the conversation changes. Practice patterns get released into the habits of the everyday humdrum. You realize that whether shaving or arguing, you have equal opportunity for exercising a pregnant competence of love. Hints of an abiding fullness of love rise and reach the far edges of consciousness. The Little Flower, Thérèse of Lisieux, said “little things done out of love, are those that charm the Heart of Christ….but the most brilliant when done without love are but nothing.” Being reduced to the scale of your competence increases it.
Have you ever thought about scaling up your contemplative practice? Like become a really good contemplative by being more present to the presence of God infiltrating every God blessed moment. Impossible. You can’t scale the presence of God. That is posturing syndrome. Your practice is right now or never. Your practice reveals rather than builds. “Be reduced to the scale of your competence” and simply show up before Mystery. Be an imposter unworthy of posturing, consenting to what the Mystery of God is up to in the recesses of your heart, expanding you in all direction at a pace you can not predict. Be the ever becoming sunrise breaching the horizon, dazzling color and warm. Behold and be held!
Raising a glass to all those supporting Contemplify! Check out the ways to support Contemplify by caressing the button above. Becoming a paid subscriber is a kindess and show of support that humbles this ol chunk of coal. Some folks want to support just for the sake of supporting Contemplify (raising my glass even higher at the thought), but paid subscribers are automatically invited to the weekly Lo-Fi & Hushed Practice Session. Good clean and unglamorous contemplative fun. Contemplify never wants money to be a filthy barrier to practice, so if you want to practice weekly with this contemplative basecamp but aren’t able to offer support, no sweat, follow the instructions here.
October NonRequired Reading List
The One-Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka (Get it at the Public Library or Bookshop)
The One-Straw Revolution is a philosophy book about natural farming. Or is it a farming book about philosophy? Masanobu Fukuoka spent the bulk of his adult life doing what he called “do-nothing” farming. In this method of farming he seeks to fully join in the rhythms of nature, rather than correct it or amp up its output. Fukuoka’s method transcends labels like subsistence, family, or organic farming.
Masanobu Fukuoka moved like water as a tinkerer in farming. He paid astute attention to the ways his local watershed sought wholeness and self-corrected to balance out. Fukuoka mimicked nature in his farming, doing as little as possible to disturb the natural fecundity of the fields. Fukuoka’s slight altercations were means of encouragement for the land he farmed and was gifted with diversity of food, nutrient-rich soil, and an abundant yield. It was apparent to him that post-war Japan was following the example of the western way of expensive machinery, chemical farming, and a new diet that would poison the land and the people it meant to sustain. For Fukuoka, these means were steps away from a person’s first calling of attention, “rather than studying philosophical theory to reach an understanding of food, it is better to arrive at a theory from within one’s daily diet.”5
The One-Straw Revolution is the story of Masanobu Fukuoka evolution from scientist in a lab to becoming a “do-nothing” farmer. He quotes wisdom from the trees, Buddha, and other farmers. Fukuoka reports on the wealth of his soil from a slow approach with tender care. He reports on the loss of health in the soil (and souls) of neighboring farmers. Masanobu Fukuoka was a practicing prophet calling upon us to joyfully repent into another way of becoming fully human.
The One-Straw Revolution is for readers who wish to taste their philosophy of life.
Hope Leans Forward: Braving Your Way Toward Simplicity, Awakening, and Peace by Valerie Brown (Get it at the Public Library or Bookshop)
Valerie Brown had me at Buddhist-Quaker. There is an intuitive bridge between these two traditions that supports me. Valerie Brown walks both paths with integrity and sharp awareness. She begins Hope Leans Forward with the introduction to the global pandemic we all experienced, as well as the particular pandemic encircling her life at the time. I immediately felt her to be a trustworthy guide. Brown organizes the book by the seven factors awakening, concludes each chapter with a lived experience other than her own, and a practice to integrate the theme of the chapter into practice for the reader.
There is a serious practicality to Hope Leans Forward. Valerie Brown has lived on pathways of power and prestige and ultimately found them unsatisfying. The ends of these roads offered new beginnings. Brown teaches and guides with a deep remembrance of that hectic false road. This humility teaches outward, and it is alluring. So when feel Brown’s exhaustion in the hustle and she teaches her practice of “do-nothing breathing” you feel the sweet relief of presence. Life brings Brown to multiple pilgrimages of place; towards Pendle Hill, Ghost Ranch, and Plum Village. Each location holds a gift that can only be unwrapped by the land or the community. I am a big believer in pilgrimage (in all of its formations) as a primary need for western seekers. It starts as intuition and often ends up being a lifesaver.
Hope Leans Forward serve many a contemplative reader, but I think it holds a bright candle for those immersed in the hustle of busyness. One can take each tenet slowly and allow it to work on them.
Ice: Poems by David Keplinger (Get it at the Public Library or Bookshop)
Ice preserves and cools. It could be food, a severed finger, or creatures of millennia past. Ice also is a temporary arrangement, when the conditions are just right it easily transitions to vapor or liquid. When ice transitions, revelations occur. In David Keplinger’s tear-stained (joy, tragedy, loss, laughter, life!) collection Ice meets your morning and you absorb it slowly. Sometimes I read the same poem a couple times without moving on. This happened multiple mornings in a row with the same poem. I could not get past a poem, it leveled me and remaining on my back was the only option. Check out “Two Horses in a Field”…
Ice is for readers who are facing the terror of climate crisis with beauty and pie-faced pondering.
Contemplify Update
Season Four is tall drink. Getting taller and yet almost out. My gratitude continues for sprightly taste. As always you can find the complete list of Contemplify episodes here and below are the five most recent episodes of Season Four.
Kim Haines-Eitzen on Practicing the Cello in the Dark and Sonorous Deserts
Lo-Fi & Hushed Contemplative Practice Session (September 2023 / Autumn Equinox)
David Shumate on When Words Become Thunder (Season 4, Ep 7)
Douglas E. Christie on Depth Without Resolution (Season 4, Ep 6)
All episodes are available from Contemplify through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you prefer to get your podcasts.
Arts & Articles
LIFE AFTER ‘CALVIN & HOBBES’ by Rivka Galchen (New Yorker): My kids have picked up Calvin & Hobbes for the first time. They are drawn to different aspects of the comic strip, but giggles follow both. I have been waiting for this day. Now I have discovered that the creator Bill Patterson has a new book out, The Mysteries. The resonating line for me, “Watterson has written, “Whenever the strip got ponderous, I put Calvin and Hobbes in their wagon and send them over a cliff. It had a nice way of undercutting the serious subjects.”
COULD YOU LIVE LIKE A MONK FOR A MONTH? IN THIS UNIVERSITY CLASS, IT’S THE FINAL PROJECT (cbc.ca): Have university courses gotten more interesting or is it that we just know more about what is being offered nowadays?
DOWN WITH EFFICIENCY! (WHEN WE GET AROUND TO IT.) by Parker Richards (NYT): The insane desire to make life efficient is a gross exaggeration of thoughtfulness. Hustling through and never lingering on. Coffee breaks and silent pauses are becoming things of the past. I applaud this goofy approach to expediency. We are culturally with great expedience rushing to the end of our lives. Ever wonder why there are so many articles like this and so few examples of people living an un-hijacked life?
Be reduced
to the level
of your competence.
Face
the paradoxical joybreaker
of terror
& mystery
sending
you
off
a
cliff.
In the speechless speech,
Paul
All Bookshop links give a kickback to a local New Mexico bookstore and to Contemplify. Thank you kindly for your support.
Berry, Wendell. What Are People For? North Point Press, 1990, p. 200.
Of course planetary and spiritual health are intertwined.
Let me confuse matters a stitch. There is an inexcusable air of false humility that can be exercised like a fart in a car with this thread of thinking. I am not diminishing what humans can accomplish. As a species we have launched some impressive projects: the speed of the Covid vaccine, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Gillian Welch's entire catalog of music. But the paradoxical rub for me is in our efforts to scale, we bumble and break community ties, ecological tendrils, and human dignity. We cannot create if we do not act. But unskillful action serves the crust without the bread. I lean heavy on one side until we bring the whole loaf.
Collins, Jim. How the Mighty Fall. Jim Collins, 2009, p.45,
Fukuoka, Masanobu. The One-Straw Revolution. New York Review Books, New York, 2009. p. 146.