This is a post on everything Sometimes, I don't like feeling like a human. I like feeling extraterrestrial. I like transcending time I like not labeling, like the punctual brains e.e cummings labeled (As much as he hated labeling) They deserved a chain of signifiers. I like slipping away from the imminently practical And taunting them with freedom Like a 5-year old Knowing he's not supposed to And wondering why. Is it the minutes labeling life? the years? Or is it the immeasurable, Unascertainable Sigh she sighs when at long, long last Every deep breath and quiet kiss Falls under the expanse of time. And I wonder like Dickens and Twain And every person struggling to write If perhaps there's something larger than the force to die And if perhaps this something's in the sigh Dear Reader, (dear self), when you are whittled down to the essentials with all superfluous distraction removed; when, as a tiny speck in awful wonder, you stand with nothing in hand but raw emotion and bare humanity; while in this glorious and terrifying moment you exist, know this. In the eyes of your creator; you're enough. With this knowledge: seek reverence, show affection, practice virtue, conceptualize perfection, and when, by sheer fortune, those rare and delicate moments surface, let gratitude lend you the ability to perceive and embrace them. And as you embrace them find the depth of emotion necessary to know the authentic, hard-working, unquenchable joy of truth coursing through your veins, filling up your lungs, and flowing through your soul. This concludes my weekly posting for the year of 2019. Thank you for being here.
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How to Be a Poet By Wendell Berry (to remind myself) i Make a place to sit down. Sit down. Be quiet. You must depend upon affection, reading, knowledge, skill—more of each than you have—inspiration, work, growing older, patience, for patience joins time to eternity. Any readers who like your poems, doubt their judgment. ii Breathe with unconditional breath the unconditioned air. Shun electric wire. Communicate slowly. Live a three-dimensioned life; stay away from screens. Stay away from anything that obscures the place it is in. There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places. iii Accept what comes from silence. Make the best you can of it. Of the little words that come out of the silence, like prayers prayed back to the one who prays, make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came. About three weeks ago Berry’s poem branded my mind, and since then I’ve been holding it there like an unwrapped package.
There are no unsacred places // there are only sacred places // And desecrated places My immediate reaction is hope. If Berry is right, and there are no unsacred places, we need to restore the desecrated ones. But immediate reactions stem from point of consumption, like eating a McChicken when I'm famished. I need to wait for a better time to assess. I am not an expert in Literature Criticism and Theory. I have some coursework, an old textbook and a Google search bar, so I am going to run with it. Literature criticism is less like criticism and more like a pair of those National Treasure glasses used to read the constitution. Each theory shows text in a new color. Two macro lenses to consider are Author Criticism, and The Text and The World. Here's a brief description of the author and the world. Wendell Berry is a Midwestern American, writer, activist and farmer. He cares about literature, soil conservation, nature, America, farming and community. The text emerges from, New Collected Poems and I'm not sure the exact date it was penned. It could have been written at any point between 1950 and 2013 and things have changed a bit since 1950. A few rapid alterations over the last 60 years have come in the areas of production, consumption and innovative technology. Berry reminds himself with strong language he does not require speed or technology to be a poet. Taking the approach of Narrative theory--"Narrative criticism is a type of literary analysis that is used to identify the larger narrative picture of a text” –we are to understand this poem is written by Berry, “to remind myself”. Berry is reminding himself his work is best done in focused, organic, silence. Chronologically this poem is delivered in three simple stanzas.
The poem starts with a present-tense active verb, “make a place to sit down.” An empowering command and perhaps a nod to the necessity of being intentional with silence. We then receive a mental inventory of Berry’s personal necessities, acknowledging he is dependent/lacking. Each of these traits he lists could be interpreted as attributes for success in life, but this is reader-response not innate meaning. To close stanza I Berry references readers, saying if they like what they read their judgement should be doubted. Here we have several opportunities to infer meaning. This could be standard Midwestern self-deprecation. It could be a slight at people for not understanding the true meaning of his poems. It could be a response to reader-response theory, which gained popularity in Literature Criticism during Berry’s career. –Reader-response criticism is a school of literary theory that focuses on the reader and their experience of a literary work, in contrast to other schools and theories that focus attention primarily on the author or the content and form of the work. –. It could be an expose of his self-doubt and insecurity. It could simply be a reminder to himself critics and readers are not his source of affirmation What does it mean to you? Lines 9-11 of stanza II are the sweet spot. “Unsacred” is a made-up word, but we all understand it. It means something is not sacred. Berry uses the double negative, “nothing not sacred”. Or, everything is sacred. He affirms this with the next line, “there are only sacred places.” And then speaks into the confusion with the final line “and desecrated places.” There could be great time spent debating innate goodness, but this is not that time. Whether organic or learned, bad things are done, and the necessity for restoration exists. Examining the author and the time sheds some light on potential meaning in the poem. I mentioned one of the things Wendell cares deeply about is soil conservation. I was listening to someone talk about soil once, and it was as if he were excitedly explaining a magical world. Soil is important for all the living things in the world to grow. I am not a scientist. I do taxes for a living. But I know yields are important for business growth. I also know short term yields are good in the short term and long-term yields are good in the long term. One thing good businesses focus on is long-term, consistent yields. Unless they have short-term financial pressures or are short-sighted people. In which case they care a lot about making money as quickly as possible. They forget about things like silence, reverence, consistency, long-term yields and sustainability, because the pace of life directs all decisions. The unfortunate result when this happens in farming is the soil takes a huge hit. The rich life giving nutrients to plants and animals and humans is depleted, and the sustainable growth of everything is truncated. Yields suffer. Once the life-giving sacred thing is desecrated, corrective action is required. There are a few different methods for revitalizing soil. A topical, cosmetic application of chemicals (a short-term fix), crop rotations, cover crops, biosolids, and patience. I'm going to extract a moral, and please remember this is reader-response and may not have been the intention of the poet's original words. Reverence and sustainability work together, because without reverence things fall apart. There are many times when people say “this soil is bad” or call a place desolate or depleted. In her guideposts for Wholehearted living Brene Brown tells people to "cultivate" 10 different characteristics. They are characteristics that emerged in people who seemed to hit the metrics for living well. Cultivate, in farming, means to prepare soil for planting. There are too many metaphors to harvest and too many parables to reference so I will leave you with this. To Wendell Berry, words, marriage, soil, and nature were practical and sacred things. We are made of soil and we are becoming soil and in between the soil gives us life. Reverence is cultivating sustainable yields, and restoring sacred places. There are no unsacred places // there are only sacred places // and desecrated places Accept what comes from silence. Make the best you can of it. Of the little words that come out of the silence, like prayers prayed back to the one who prays, make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came. I am going to hand you one more lens. Figures and Tropes Criticism–literary trope is the use of figurative language, via word, phrase or an image, for artistic effect such as using a figure of speech—What is the picture it is painting? There is a beautiful back and forth rounding out the final seven lines of this stanza. Prayers returned, reverent silence, quiet creation. It is tempting to shout for a voice in a fast-paced world. Tempting to clamor for the minutes of fame and attention and affirmation. Step out of that and do the hard work of cultivating. Restore the sacred places. Let's start with a moral: “Reverence collides with minimalism in this concept: To get to the holy we have to leave what’s heavy.” Warning: This post draws heavily on Christianity as it is my religion and frame of reference. However, reverence supersedes religion. Don’t let a differing worldview stop you from cross-selling. Let’s start with the Orange Juice Caps. I am one of 9 children, and I had an excellent childhood. I loved it and it shaped me into a decent member of society. But as is sometimes the case with children, I occasionally felt like a burden to society. My parents loved me dearly, but if you’ve been the tail end of a large family you know what it’s like to be the offspring 99% of couples won’t have. People judge. It’s just the tall and short of it. I understand as I grow older that it’s probably more shock than disdain, but if you’re a relatively perceptive youngster people’s reactions can wear on your soul. And the more towards the back of the line you are the easier it is to feel like the problem. So, despite the best efforts of my parents and people close to me I sometimes felt extraneous, and those sorts of feelings tend to follow a person into adulthood. I came into the idea around 7 or 8-years-old that collecting caps from orange juice cartons would be a great idea. I could fill a shoe box and I could do something with them—use them like currency or make some cool project or just sit and stare happily at my treasure. There's not a good explanation I can give you why the orange juice caps were valuable to me. But I had wealth no one else I knew had, and that was important to me. I think this is a basic human instinct and based on your own frame of reference or field of expertise you could probably explain my actions. The more I experience life the more I see this instinct feed off insecurity. My insecurities about my worth and my extraneousness somehow got a little tied up in my collection of caps. I started collecting milk lids too, coke bottle caps, and the occasional water bottle cap if it felt significant. I’m not sure when I stopped collecting this specific item, but as a rule for combating insecurity I’ve continued collecting until fairly recently when I adopted minimalism as a more reverent posture. There is a line between collecting and hoarding that various scientific journals and reliable medical websites can tell you about, and collecting isn't unhealthy. But minimalism is an important shift in mindset for me because my deepest insecurity is feeling extraneous or undervalued by society. And I will, irreverently, work on possessing in order to fill this void. Unfortunately, the more stuff I put in this space the less space I have, and the heavier I feel. Shifting towards minimalism redirects my physical state to align with my spiritual goals. Spiritual goals are a perfect segue into "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God". If you haven’t read this or listened to it, it’s a brief sermon given by Jonathan Edwards at a pivotal time in history. It is credited with fueling the Great Awakening and has had massive implications in the lives of many people. I take no stance on this sermon. Only to say it is an incredible study in doctrine, literature, and history, and looking at it through any of these lenses would be time well-spent. For the purpose of this blog I’m going to key in on a single concept Edwards reiterates in graphic detail throughout the sermon: Each living human is tethered by a bare and dwindling thread to the hand of a terrifyingly powerful being, and at any moment the thread may snap, plunging the wayward to eternal damnation and the fiery lips of hell. It’s riveting—inspiring and terrifying. Listening to Max McLean (over)dramatically read Edward’s sermon did not spark in me an intense motivation to live a guilt-riddled life of good deeds. It sparked awe at the raw and serious power of an intensely merciful God. A God whose greatness upholds the weak and bends down the arrogant. It ignited wonder at the concept of eternal justice and a great judge whose will I can rely on. It instigated feelings of terror to believe I am small enough to be cut at the mere inkling or notion of this violent God, yet important enough to be known and upheld and forgiven. To me, reverence, is appropriately applied fear. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." ~Solomon This is the persuasive kindling in Edwards literary fire. He appeals to reverence, and lets the guilt fall where it may. The problem with fear and guilt is that basic instinct makes us hoarders. And hoarded guilt and shame are feelings rooted in a bad sort of fear. (Guilt and shame can also be felt at the wrong times, like feeling guilty for making the cashier at Wendy's have to punch the button for a 9th chocolate frosty). There may be some purpose in a time should we need to know remorse, but these are not feelings we keep in a shoe box in the closet and add a little bit to now and then in secret. Self-deprecation is a poisonous form of validation. These are feelings to address and be done with. The soul is infinite and should be handled as sacred. Leave what’s heavy behind. Know the kind of fear that inspires, not the kind that desecrates. Don't be afraid that you are worthless. Be afraid of not knowing your worth. On to Mike Ditka I saw this good fear and bad fear play out in a documentary on Mike Ditka. Ditka is a notoriously aggressive coach. An angry and inspirational leader well-known for creating a dominating Chicago Bears team in the mid 80’s followed by an abysmal Bears team in the late 80’s. Somewhere along the line there was a loss of reverence. His once-inspiring anger turned to petulant tirades. He didn’t inspire results through tough expectation, he perpetuated a cycle of guilt and arrogance. He wasn’t leading, he was trying to drag his team behind him, and the results were evident. Navigating fear and its role in things like accountability, motivation, inspiration, action, inaction, appropriate risk-aversion, courage, gratitude, and guilt, this is the point of reverence, and I’m certain it is something Ditka has contemplated. Conclusion A shoe box of orange juice caps may momentarily ease my fear of having little value, but it cannot replace the rest that comes from living in reverence. What I’m seeking is the affirmation that I am small, and so is everyone else, and together we exist in a beautiful creation with a magnificent creator, and an essential purpose to live out every single day. Dear reader, here is something important to know. We may die at any time. What drives your fear? What gives you life? “And the Lord said to Moses, take off your shoes, you are standing on Holy Ground.” ***There are a lot of really challenging emotions out there. This is a reminder to the reader that those emotions shouldn't be dealt with in isolation and there are people trained to help***
Why reverence? Because reverence kindles warmth in friendship and family life. And because without reverence things fall apart. ~Paul Woodruff This is an introductory post At the end of January I set a goal to write every week until the end of 2019. I am entering the final month and closing with 4 posts on an essential topic, a topic that permeates all topics. If you have been a faithful reader, thank you, I hope this is the close you need. If you've read some, or none, I hope this is the one you read because it is the most important to me.
If you are anticipating these last posts will touch on topics like religion, minimalism or sustainability, you are correct. But if you don't share my religion or feelings about stuff or the world I hope you still feel the importance of reverence. Because reverence supersedes all these things. Keep reading. Understanding Reverence (sort of) There are many people who've issued beautiful definitions of reverence--with words and without them. As a simple definition it's: a deep awe or respect for someone or something. The key word is deep. It adds depth. Sometimes people say, "it's not that deep" when others (like me) attempt to make the mundane philosophical or poetic, assigning meaning, moral, or metaphor to nearly everything. Sometimes they are right. But sometimes, "do you want to stay in and order pizza" really is an inspired word because it's wrapped in reverence. There are frequent misconceptions of reverence's place and function. It's often portrayed as something confined to religious experience, moments of mysticism or ritual. But, reverence supersedes religion. Reverence is deep awe. And deep awe is in the mystic and the mundane. For the mystics or the creatives, reverent lives are lived searching for those moments of art that leave us moved and wrecked. They ride grand waves of influence and then pour out their experience for the rest of the world. Their reverence tides us through a heavy season. (If you don't know what I mean go to the Indianapolis Museum of Art and take in the Mobius Ship or stand on the Floor). Others, the people who inspire me most, are the beautiful humans whose reverent lives are spent in homage to every soul they encounter. The people who treat each person with the kindness and love revealing things that are more than human. Their virtue is in a smile, a modified tripod grasp, a knee bent to the ground to look someone in the eyes, a humility to learn, a compassion to teach, a scarred and calloused hand from years of hard work done for other people. These are lives resting in reverence. Reverence is a virtue. According to a guy who studied virtue ethics for a really long time. And this virtue can be cultivated. (Cultivators prepare land for use). To cultivate deep sense of childlike wonder for someone or something, it's important to be small and to recognize both pointlessness and purpose. When I saturate my life in this type of reverence, the organic flavor of my actions and words becomes more. It adds depth. When I forget to live reverently, I trend towards insecurity manifesting itself in arrogance, anger, and other ugly traits. Irreverence believes that the world, the people in it, and the creator of it, can be manipulated. And maybe they can. But it won't get the results I crave. The results I crave come from this truth from Paul Woodruff's book on reverence, "We are mortal, we are born and die, and in between each of these events each of us has time to make a fatal mistake." This is a recognition that what we do may or may not matter. But if it does matter, it is probably important for us to make an effort to live with some form of harmony. Here are a lot of what if statements. What if we believed our words and actions may impact the people we encounter? Would it change the things you say or don't say? What if we could hear "all creation groaning as in the pains of childbirth"? Would it alter the way we live our lives? What if we believed the thing that made a house a home were not in the seen but in the unseen? What if it we could express not just what we see but how it makes us feel? Would it change the way we create and consume? This was your introduction to reverence. As Simon Cowell would say, reverence is the "x factor". (Is it ok to use Simon Cowell and reverence in the same sentence?) It is this ethereal confidence in that which is more. And it is what remains as I let go of all the things impeding my sense of wonder. And when I let go of my control and cultivate reverence it deepens my sense of virtue, it lends warmth to my courage, sincerity to my sadness, grandeur to my grief, exuberance to my joy. If you have some time take a few minutes to think about what this poem means to you. How to be a Poet Wendell Berry i. Make a place to sit down. Sit down. Be quiet. You must depend upon affection, reading, knowledge, skill—more of each than you have—inspiration, work, growing older, patience, for patience joins time to eternity. Any readers who like your poems, doubt their judgment. ii. Breathe with unconditional breath the unconditioned air. Shun electric wire. Communicate slowly. Live a three-dimensioned life; stay away from screens. Stay away from anything that obscures the place it is in. There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places. iii. Accept what comes from silence. Make the best you can of it. Of the little words that come out of the silence, like prayers prayed back to the one who prays, make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came. Think of a way to cultivate reverence. Ponder it. Set it as the object of your thought. Soak it in. Next week I will talk about reverence as it relates to minimalism. |
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I'm a Hoosier. I like the outdoors. Taxes are my job. I write for a living. This Blog
Writing my way to an adult life of minimalism, sustainability, and joy rooted in Truth. I'm learning, unlearning, and relearning.
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