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Writing about what I have been reading and encountering in the media. |
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WELCOME TO MY BLOG! I comment on things I am reading, thinking about, encountering in media, and spiritual issues. I hope you will find something interesting. PS. I love feedback... |
| BOOK Verble, Margaret, When Two Feathers Fell From the Sky, Harper Audio, narrated by Caroline Slaughter, 10/12/21. novel The title is ambiguous. I like that! This interesting novel presents "Two Feathers," a Native American horse diver performing in a park in Nashville, TN in 1926. She suffers a tragic accident that changes her life as a consequence. Well written, the tale includes issues of racism, Native spirituality, and romance. There are very interesting characters that are well developed. There is a graveyard and a ghost. This is a good read. {image # 1445398} {image # 1445398} |
| BOOK Donner, Rebecca, All the Frequent Troubles of our Days, Little, Brown &Co. August 2021 (Audible, narrated by the author) Biography. Mildred Harnack was the author's great-great, aunt, an American college literature teacher who moved with her German husband, to Germany in 1932 to work on a Doctorate. Her husband, also a scholar, was a first cousin of Detrich Bonhoeffer, and like him, became involved in the resistance to Hitler's regime. Mildred and her husband became effective leaders and managed to get a lot done over a period of about three years or so. The details of their work are fascinating, and the historical information surprised me. For example, I had not known that Stalin knew Hitler was going to invade because he had been told several times by his own spies, but he did not believe it and did not prepare. Some of the historical information about Hitler's and Stalin's behavior is very disquieting and remarkably similar to Putin's current behavior. The narration of the audible version is excellent, but it would be a good read no matter how you access it. I highly recommend this book. |
| Book Auden, WH, Another Time, Faber & Faber, London, UK, 1940, 1996, 2007. This is the book with some of Auden’s most famous poems: “Musee du Beaux-arts,” “the unknown citizen,” “Spain 1937,” and “September 1, 1939.” I had the privilege of hearing Auden in person very late in his life but had read only a few of his poems. Then, I read the biographical memoir of Auden by Alexander McCall Smith which inspired me to acquire this book and read it carefully. The poems are so tuned into the events of his time that I identified with them as though he wrote them yesterday. I was especially taken by “Gare du Midi” which appears to me to be about fascism arriving with no particular welcome and no particular notice at a train station in Belgium. The title in English is “south station,” and refers to a train station in Belgium, first built in 1839. The station entrance was a victory arch with a statue of Nike, the Greek goddess of victory riding a chariot. “A nondescript express in from the South, Crowds round the ticket barrier, a face To welcome which the mayor has not contrived Bugles or braid: something about the mouth Distracts the stray look with alarm and pity. Snow is falling, Clutching a little case, He walks out briskly to infect a city Whose terrible future may have just arrived.” The image of an express train that is non-descript conveys the sense of power, both mechanical and human, arriving as if hidden by all the activity, yet carried by it. It isn’t welcomed, nor is it discouraged. There is a warning if one looks, but no one is seeking. It is noticed only by a “stray” look that is distracted, pulled away, by feelings of alarm and pity: for the viewer, or the viewed? It is a cold day of arriving, perhaps a bit muffled and soon to be covered by snow. We don't know what is in the suitcase. The city is unaware, yet, and its terrible future remains undescribed. It could be about COVID or about the rise of modern authoritarian governments, especially Putin’s Russia that is attacking Ukraine as I write. Then there is “In Memory of Ernst Toller,” a German Jewish playwright who had been forever changed by service in the German army during The Great War. His books were burned in Germany in 1933, books written while he was in prison for treason because of his efforts to establish Bavaria as a Social Democratic free state. After the book burnings, he escaped to various countries, finally to the USA. In 1939, after his relatives were killed in a Nazi concentration camp, he committed suicide in New York. Auden, clearly an admirer, and one who comprehended Toller, makes some statements in this poem that make “Gare du Midi” seem all the more prescient. I was going to quote a couple of lines, but I think I just need the whole thing: “In Memory of Ernst Toller (English) (d. May 1939) The shining neutral summer has no voice To judge America, or ask how a man dies; And the friends who are sad and the enemies who rejoice Are chased by their shadows lightly away from the grave Of one who was egotistical and brave, Lest they should learn without suffering how to forgive. What was it, Ernst, that your shadow unwittingly said? O did the child see something horrid in the woodshed Long ago? Or had the Europe which took refuge in your head Already been too injured to get well? O for how long, like the swallows in that other cell, Had the bright little longings been flying in to tell About the big friendly death outside, Where people do not occupy or hide; No towns like Munich; no need to write? Dear Ernst, lie shadowless at last among The other war-horses who existed till they’d done Something that was an example to the young. We are lived by powers we pretend to understand: They arrange our loves; it is they who direct at the end The enemy bullet, the sickness, or even our hand. It is their tomorrow hangs over the earth of the living And all that we wish for our friends; but existing is believing We know for whom we mourn and who is grieving.” So sad, and so true. Auden had not experienced the trauma faced by Toller, but he had seen war in Spain, and he had seen the rise of fascism as had Toller. He did not have the experience of being Jewish in that intolerant Germany, but he still knew. How did he find these words that could be about so many other brave souls who saw and talked publicly and honestly about the ill doings of mankind and suffered for doing so? Just think of the many names that could be put in this poem. The next to the last stanza expresses a sense of powerlessness that Toller must have felt deeply as he came closer and closer to taking his own life. Then the last stanza condemns us all accusing us of a pretend existence as we blind ourselves to the upside-downness, the injustice that led Toller to such despair. Auden appears to be talking about the closed eyes and ears that permitted the horrors of the Nazi war machine, that were closed partially by the nazis, that had clearly begun something too horrible to name. He expressed anger about the situation that leads to such silencing of one so brave and insightful as Toller. This poem is also a warning. In his poem “In Memory of WB Yeats, he expresses a sense of futility over the warnings from poets quite directly while ending with "it still survives": “For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives In the valley of its making where executives Would never want to tamper, flows on south From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs, Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives, A way of happening, a mouth.” In the end, he has recovered some sense of purpose as he writes: “Follow, poet, follow right To the bottom of the night, With your unconstraining voice Still persuade us to rejoice; With the farming of a verse Make a vineyard of the curse, Sing of human unsuccess In a rapture of distress; In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountain start, In the prison of his days Teach the free man how to praise.” Here he has reverted to a ballad style of writing that seems more "sing-song" and less powerful than the first two sections of the poem. Yet, the ballad is easier to remember and does not necessitate the use of print to pass it on. He expresses a sense that the creation of poetry will and must be done. And yet, there is a sense of struggle, as if the poet must free self from a net or prison, from the rigidity of traditional structures. Or is he saying "use traditional structures if your modern forms are ignored?" There is hope, he assures the reader, but the struggle is difficult. And so it is. {image # 1445398} {image # 1445398} {image # 1445398} |
| As Christians, we are taught that when things seem intolerable and we feel powerless, we should be still and trust in the Lord. As a child, I was taught to pray before meals and before bed but not how to listen for God. When I was taking catechism classes and was very intent on learning all about God, I took the admonition to listen to God quite literally. I listened and listened and listened, and I heard nothing. This was frustrating. I suspect most, if not all, of us, confront this issue at some point in our lives. Today, I hope to address a few questions: If we aren’t listening for verbal direction from God, what are we listening for when we are still? What does it mean to be still? How does one listen? How does one trust in the Lord? In today’s lesson from Genesis, we are told that God gave Joseph specific directions through dreams to rescue his family, the very people who sold him into slavery. It is not my place to say whether this is literally true. All I can say is when God directs me, it is not through speech or dreams. In today’s Psalm, we are told to not fret over what someone else has or does, but instead to have faith and to trust that our needs will be met and that God has made a place for us. The Zionists took this quite literally in fighting for a homeland for the Jewish people after the holocaust with the belief that this would be keeping God’s promise. When I look at what happens between the Jews and the Palestinians who had been there as long as Jews had been there, I suspect that taking this literally might not be such a good idea. When Europeans saw these American continents as the land promised by God, they, our ancestors, didn’t consider the people that were already here and had been here for 20,000 or 30,000 years. Our ancestors used scripture to justify taking the land. They saw themselves as Christian but overlooked the Psalm for this morning that tells us to be patient and trust in the Lord. They overlooked the lesson in Luke to love your enemies and be kind to those who persecute you. Sometimes I feel as if some Christians have actually turned this around and developed the expectation that when we persecute others, we should expect them to love us. It appears to me that slaveholders did just that while preaching to those they enslaved to be still and accept their lot as their reward would be in heaven. When voices today say we shouldn’t help the poor because we will undermine their work ethic, I hear it the same way. I find these statements coming from people who profess Christian beliefs very confusing and I feel impatient. I want God to speak to them and clear the whole thing up. But there is no burning bush, no words etched into tables of stone to settle the confusion, and even when these things did exist, confusion was not eliminated. Today, we ponder “be still”. How do we do that? Is discussion for clarification a way of being still? Is arguing and fighting over land so we will have a place to be still going to help? Is choosing not to act in the face of another’s need a way of being still? Is praying for God to bless this whole creation in the face of global warming enough? How do we know when to act and when to be still? As a mental health therapist, I taught people decision-making skills so they would better know when to act and when to walk away. I developed a decision tree on the subject and handed it out teaching how to use it. I encouraged people who confessed faith to use the serenity prayer. I used and still use these things myself. However, there is nothing in those skills that tells me when or how to be still. The traditions of Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity each trace their origins to the teaching of a single individual person. Each of these men began by being still and alone for a long time. Buddha never stopped his stillness though he did do a lot of teaching. His teaching focused on being still as a means to develop wisdom, to develop deep understanding of what is important. Mohammad developed and taught life rules or “Pillars” including specific times for prayer and contemplation each day. Jesus taught others to pray and listen for the voice of God. He demonstrated being calm and trusting in the Lord while confronted by cruelty, and calm while experiencing torture. To be still is to stop resisting. It is an attitude of radical acceptance. Basically, you say to yourself “what is happening now is what is supposed to be happening right now. This is where I should be.” You calm yourself by slowing and deepening your breathing. You pay attention to what is around you and within you, but you do not try to control it. You accept it and let it move on through and out of your attention as you focus on calm breathing. You make no judgment, but instead, accept what is going on. Be still, my parents said as they put me to bed and taught me to focus my attention on God through prayer. Be still the dentist says while repairing my teeth. Be still they told me when doing my biopsy. Cancer and chemotherapy actually forced me to be still more than I have ever been before. And all of you exhibited trust in the Lord. Did I survive because I was still and trusted in the Lord? I don’t know. I do know that trusting in the Lord dramatically reduced my anxiety allowing my body to use more energy for healing than if I had wasted energy on anxiety. I also know that trusting in the Lord eliminated any fear of dying. I knew I might die but wasn’t afraid of that even as I knew I wasn’t ready to die. This isn’t because I feel I know what comes after death because I don’t. It’s because I know God will take care of me as always whether I live or die. I learned this from watching my parents face death from an attitude of stillness. I learned from the Christians in Charleston who died at the hands of Dillon Roof while they were praying for him and offering their love to him from a place of stillness. I learned from Thomas Merton who recognized his need for stillness to grow in his faith and practiced stillness daily. From his place of stillness, he taught others what he learned in his stillness. I learned it from Jesus who faced crucifixion from a place of stillness after directing his followers to be still in the face of his arrest and persecution. Stillness is trusting in the Lord. Trusting in the Lord allows us to learn to trust ourselves. Stillness allows us to recognize those who would help us and care for us and allows trust in them to grow. Stillness allows us to access knowledge gained through study and other experiences. We are still when we listen to others with an attitude of loving acceptance. Stillness allows us to experience beauty. Stillness and listening allow us to experience love. God speaks to us through beauty and love Stillness allows us to experience God. {image # 1445398} {image # 1445398} |
| OF PENTECOST, MAY 23,2021 It is a great honor to be invited to the pulpit on this day of all days. This is the celebration of the first harvest, the celebration of the birthday of Christianity, and the celebration of spiritual renewal. To me, this is the celebration of celebrations, the day of the great opening, the day we acknowledge what has always been and will always be true in all people in all places. There are many stories from many cultures that try to waken us or re-awaken us to the core truth of faith. Each of these stories is told from a cultural bias, and that cultural bias tends to limit understanding to that particular culture. The story of Butterfly Maiden by Arvin Saufkie “Hopi”, (See photo below), which is known to me only through the Kachina, may be better understood inside the language of the Hopi people, an ancient people who continue to live and express their spirituality as the Hopi Nation in New Mexico. This Kachina came to me with no explanation so what I know of it is what is in front of me. It is a spiritual expression and I hope my faith opens my eyes to her spiritual wisdom. Let’s review the events of the day we now call Pentecost. The apostles and their followers had gathered to celebrate the Festival of Weeks, a Jewish tradition established by Moses. In that climate, at that time, there was a minor harvest celebration called First Fruits around the time of the barley harvest. Then there were two major celebrations, the Festival of Weeks related to the wheat harvest and a fall harvest celebration. The wheat harvest always fell sometime during the middle of the month of May or sometimes in early June (rather like the first cutting of hay in the Ozarks.) To determine the date of the Festival of Weeks, according to the Old Testament, you would go to the day of the celebration of First Fruits and begin with that day, you would count off 50 days. The fiftieth day would be the Festival of Weeks, the beginning of a three-day celebration of renewal. So, First Fruits is the beginning of the barley harvest, and The Festival of Weeks the celebration of the beginning of the wheat harvest which came to be known as Pentecost, literally the fiftieth day. Peter and the other apostles and their followers had gathered in gratitude for another harvest as had been done since the beginning of agriculture. They were gathered in grief over the loss of Jesus, and in confusion over the news of the resurrection of Jesus and what that would mean, and what would they do next? Somehow, unexpectedly, something happened a great awakening. When they described it later, they used simile: it was like a rushing wind; it was like tongues of fire; it left us with the capacity to understand no matter what the language, no matter the cultural context, the gifts of the holy spirit. They remembered Jesus telling them he would send the Holy Spirit to them. As a consequence, they now had a cohesive set of basic ideas to share and the words came to them as new tools for sharing it. This is the day of Peter’s first sermon and the birthday of Christianity as a separate entity from Judaism. Here, I would like to share an awakening I experienced, not on a holiday, not in the context of the church, but in a conversation with a child telling me about a difficult time in her life. She said, “The angels helped me. They are with me now. There is one right over there,” she said, pointing to the corner of the room. “Do you see it?” I told her I did not but that I believed her statement that the angel was there. She went on to tell me they were always with her and had been with her all her life. After that, she gave me gifts of angels so that I would be able to see them too. That little child saw angels who came to help her. Angels came to Mary, pregnant at 14, to explain to her what she needed to know. There are many stories of angels arriving out of “the blue” with important information or resources. It didn’t come to the child because she had faith, or because she confessed her sins, or because she believed in Jesus. The angel came to her as an expression of goodness in a moment of need, as pure love that sustained her. It came with no conditions. It didn’t offer her help if only she would believe. It just came. I believe this is how it happened on the day the apostles gathered for the Festival of Weeks. The mystery is how did it get there? Where did it come from? How is it that it seemed not to be there and then seemed to be there? Over the years, I talked to many survivors of trauma who had depended on spiritual resources to survive. It always seemed to me that this was not so much about physical survival as about staying connected to goodness. Jesus did not let the rage of his critics distract him from the spirit within him. He trusted the spirit and walked with it through his own reluctance, the lashings, the humiliation, and the torture of his death. As he was doing this, he also pointed the spirit out to those around him. His followers somehow got the idea that he was telling them he was the way to find this goodness. I think there is truth in this perspective, but I have never believed the Holy Spirit was that small, that inept or that limited that it is only available to believers. Jesus was showing us that the spirit comes to us unbidden and requires nothing of us. It required nothing of the child who taught me about her angels. It required nothing of the men crucified with Jesus. He didn’t say “today thou shall be with me in Paradise if. It was an unconditional promise: It will happen. On the day of Pentecost, the spirit was salient to everyone at one time. No one was excluded from the experience and there is no record that anyone doubted they had indeed experienced the presence of God. Perhaps this is always true when people gather who need or desire connection to the spirit. Scripture says it is true. Buddhists that I know talk about the strengthening effect of meditating together. They experience greater spiritual awareness when together. Indigenous people that have given me glimpses of their experiences seem to find increased spiritual awareness in their connection with each other. Jesus, however, experienced it when alone. The child who saw angels experienced it when no one present was in any way supporting or helping her or seeking spiritual presence or awareness. There is no greater aloneness than being a child with no one to care for you at a time of need. The spirit is there at all times and in all places for us to gather into our awareness. When you gather it, how does it happen that at some point you still die? Well, it seems to me that Pentecost is when we celebrate that dying is not something that separates us from the spirit. It separates us from loved ones. It separates us from the earth and its resources. It does not separate us from the holy spirit. In my work listening to survivors, I was acutely aware that not everyone who suffers survives. We all know of someone who has died and those around them said “they are no longer suffering.” Death ends suffering. Death does not end the life of the spirit. Equally important is the fact that the spirit comes to us of its own volition. The fact of our existence is a fact of the presence of the spirit. There is no “if-then” about the Holy Spirit. Some theologians and faithful Christians disagree with me about this. They tell me we must believe; we must obey, we must work at the business of experiencing the Holy Spirit and it can only come to us if we invite it. This is true of community. We can only be part of a community if we deliberately choose to participate. This is not true of the Holy Spirit. The spirit sustains our efforts to enter into wonder and beauty in our daily life. The spirit brightens and increases in energy when we join in its existence. The experience of finding spirit inside ourselves moves us to do good. It does not, however, require anything of us. It never leaves our life. It functions like nutrition to power our actions. It functions like rest, to separate us from distress. It functions like nurturing to strengthen our goodness and give us direction. The Holy Spirit sustains us through birth, life, and death and beyond, unconditionally. Within its power is the power to discern goodness, to give and receive forgiveness, and to retain goodness in the face of evil. The language we use to express our fear of separation from the Holy Spirit includes the words death, evil, hell, and rejection. Faith is understanding that none of these experiences has power over the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not afraid of these things and cannot be controlled by them. The Holy Spirit is in charge at all times and in all places. Suffering comes when we lose sight of this fact. We can shed suffering like a snake sheds its skin by reaching out to the Holy Spirit with our eager or hungry or suffering spirit and walk through ignorance into bliss no matter who we are, no matter where we are, no matter what scripture we read or believe. When we do this, we are one with the spirit. Jesus showed us this. Pentecost is the awakening of this awareness. We celebrate Pentecost routinely on a certain day, but awakening is happening at all times in all places where spirits of living beings hold on to goodness. This is a statement of my faith: Elizabeth Hykes |
| Watterson, Megan, Mary Magdalene Revealed: The First Apostle, Her Feminist Gospel, and the Christianity We Haven’t Tried Yet, Hay House, Audible, performed by the Author, 07/09/19. Mary Magdalene, the much-maligned companion of Christ, wrote a gospel that was banned in the 4th century, hidden in the desert, and rediscovered in the late 20th century. Megan Watterson, a theologian, went to great lengths to learn all she could about Mary Magdalene and then to share what she learned in this inspiring book, as well as through preaching and teaching. Throughout the book, the author quotes from the Gospel of Mary and then applies what she learns from that to her search. Ms. Watterson traveled to France to learn all she could there and shares her experiences as she traced the steps and learned the traditions that developed around the person many believe is the post-crucifixion Mary Magdalene. Along the way, the author learns “the prayer of the heart,” a meditation technique that is compatible with, and that enriches the writing in the Book of Mary. Not the first person to say so, Ms. Watterson describes the inner process that leads to the deep and spiritual love Jesus taught us is the center of Christianity. I very much enjoyed this book and the author’s enthusiasm for the subject and hope to read it again. |
| BOOK: Morrison, Toni, The Origin of Others, Harvard University Press, 2017. This interesting content is from a series of lectures Ms. Morrison presented at Harvard as part of the Charles Eliot Norton Lecture Series. It looks at racism in the context of the broader social phenomena she calls "othering," the tendency of humans to define themselves by defining who is other than them. The introduction by Ta-Nehisi Coats places it in history not only of racism in America but also among other writers on the subject. This is a short work that triggers and requires thought, so I read and reread chapters as I went along. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in how we identify with and separate ourselves from others, especially but not exclusively in the form of racism. |
| Future Home of the Living God, Louise Erdrich, Harper Audio, 2017, narrated by the author, accessed on Audible. This multilayered dystopian tale reminded me a tiny bit of A Handmaids Tale, only it did not lead to a simplistic ending. For this I am grateful. A young Ojibwe woman, who was raised by a white couple, is pregnant. The book is her journal written to her unborn child. The context is the USA with advanced global warming. This book looks at the situation of dramatic change from the complex perspective of this dual cultural woman. There are practical mysteries, like how did she come into the care of white parents, and spiritual mysteries including the young woman’s Ojibwe stepfather’s daily struggle with finding reasons to keep living. There is a threat to the child and the mother that she sees and knows nothing about. What she does know is that pregnancy has taken on a whole new meaning and she, with her unborn child, is in danger. I read several reviews of this book. Reviewers either loved it or hated it with few in-between. The haters kept comparing it to A Handmaid’s Tale. This comparison seems to have totally undermined their enjoyment of the book. I don’t see much similarity except for the issue of reproduction in a collapsing society. I place myself in the category of a lover of this book. It never became simplistic or predictable, not even to the last ambiguous sentence. The characters have real depth. Relationships are complex and often surprising. It drew me in and kept me, but I wouldn’t call it a page-turner because taking time to savor this elegant prose and the underlying complexities make the reader want to stop and think. The narration was definitely an asset to enjoying this work. {image # 1445398} |
| The Universal Christ: how a forgotten reality can change everything we see, hope for and believe, Richard Rohr, Random House Audio, 03/05/2019, accessed through Audible. In this book, Richard Rohr redefines the first and second incarnations of Christ and supports his perspective with scripture and historical information about the development of Christianity. He presents some interesting thoughts about Eastern (Byzantine) Christianity and how it differs from the Western Church as well as discussing the relationship between Buddhism and Christianity. He states that Western Christianity has a lot to gain from learning more about and from both the Byzantine Church and Buddhism. In this context, he enters into an in-depth look at the role of contemplation in a rich spiritual life. I read this book as part of a study group. This means, because my short-term memory is showing its age, that I read each chapter 3 times as I went along, taking notes and writing my own commentary. This was such an interesting process! I highly recommend this to anyone who wants to challenge their perspective and discover how it can make you grow. I loved this book and have two more, lent me by a friend, waiting to be read. {image # 1445398} |
| Racked by a virus I rest in God’s hand. Fearful loved ones caught it from me I rest in God’s hand. Aggrieved by the death of George Floyd, I rest in God’s hand. Aggrieved by the death after death after death of members of my human family, century after century under the “protection” of an organizing document that says none of this should happen because all, all, all humans are created equal, I rest in the palm of God’s hand. Fearful for the Natives who keep us all connected, Earth and sky, life and land, who practice peace, who demonstrate what it means to be a people, I cling to hope offered in God’s hand. While living in God’s hand, I welcome George Floyd to this safe place. I welcome the multitudes of COVID sufferers and victims to the peace of God’s hand. I invite the confused the destitute of faith, the pitiful who think themselves mighty, and I invite those who think power and money matter more than the people without whom the mighty cannot survive, to rest and heal in the peace of God’s hand. I welcome them to receive God’s grace, to receive the love that fills the hearts of all who choose to rest in God’s hand. {image # 1445398} |
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