February thoughts

 I suppose it is time I had a post on my blog that doesn't include the word "Christmas."

January went by in a flurry of activity and New Year's celebrations.

This month, my most immediate goal is to get back in the routine of writing! I think about writing but there haven't been many words on paper.

My next goal is, more writing! Maybe this looks like totally new writing or maybe it looks like re-working and further developing some sections of poetry I have already written. 

In the meantime, here is a link to an essay that filled me with delight and new resolve.

You Have To Be Human by Freya India

I have read quite a few of Freya's pieces, but this is my favourite, and it really gets at the reasons I am still filling notebooks with drafts and occasionally sharing my deeply obscure poetry and essays on this blog.

I do a lot of things with my life: innumerable tasks and roles related to family, work, volunteering, dancing, crocheting, health, fitness. Every single one of those things is easier to talk about than writing, especially writing poetry. I could say, I'm a teacher! or, I'm a mom! or, Look at the new outfit I put together, or, My adult group is workshopping our new dance!, or Look at this cool thing I crocheted! and I'm pretty sure nobody would respond by saying, But why on earth would you bother to do that? That sounds completely pointless!

However, anytime I try to say "I write poetry," or even "I'm thinking about poetry," I feel like the most likely (and logical) response is "Why on earth would you bother to do that? That sounds completely pointless!" 

Of course it starts with my own internal dialogue. Probably several times a day, I have to silently argue myself out of dropping this initiative altogether. If you put me on the spot, I'm not sure I could tell you a single rational reason why I would spend time and effort writing poetry. If we were having a very honest conversation, I would go on to admit that I don't do the other things in my life for rational reasons either. I didn't start dancing or having babies or crocheting because somebody made a really good argument that I should do those things. Far deeper and darker and wilder feelings were involved. But the justifications flow easier. Dancing is good for your health. Volunteering builds community. Family is the basis of society. My job brings in income. Blah blah blah.

So why am I writing poetry again, after a hiatus of twenty-something years? All I can say is I have this stubborn conviction that it's very, very important. Behind this conviction, I believe, is the same sadness and uneasiness that drives Freya to argue for why we must try to remain human.  The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold, as Leonard Cohen would say. Poetry is what makes me human. The earliest things I consciously remember doing are making up poetry, dancing, drawing and doing handicrafts. Of all of those, poetry has a unique power because it names things.  I embody a creative force when I dance or crochet. But when I write poetry, I speak back to it.

Sometimes I have specific goals for the new year, sometimes I have a theme. I want to have specific goals for this year, and my writer's group is pushing me to actually come up with some. But my theme is going to be variations on "You Have to Be Human."

It feels right!

2024 depth sounding

Resisting the Machine: An interview with Peco Gaskovski - Jonathan Van Maren

Moving Mountains - Fr. Stephen Freeman

Our Godless Era is Dead - Paul Kingsnorth

Simple Acts of Sanity - A Seed Catalogue - Ruth Gaskovski and Peco

This were to be new-made when thou art old - Mary Harrington

Five thought-provoking articles I read lately: five points of view that I’m thinking about as I consider 2024. 

There are plenty of other interesting articles I could have showcased here of course, but these have stuck with me in part because I read them in this festive, but also restive, dark but also bright time of year. The Christmas meals and gift exchanges have come and gone, and now here I am with the gift of time.

It’s interesting to compare how I imagine this time of leisure will feel, versus how it actually feels. I imagine time without work schedules and activities will feel relaxing and peaceful, like putting down a heavy backpack and taking a long stretch. In reality, the absence of schedules and activities means unforeseen preoccupations bubble up. I have trouble sleeping. Anxiety suddenly attaches itself to…..almost anything. My body aches for no understandable reason. Until I learn to set a goal for each day, accomplish something myself and with the kids, it’s truly not very enjoyable at all. I have learned (but somehow also have to constantly re-learn) that every day needs to have some kind of a plot: a beginning, middle and end, and some sort of challenge or goal.

Anyway, I will challenge myself to pull a quote out of each article and link it to a thought or intention for the year. I haven’t thought a great deal about this, so I’m likely to surprise myself.  I’m going to publish this before it is complete, because then it’s easy to use my own links, and because I think it’s okay if it’s a work in progress.

A “traditioned” life is not a static existence. Instead, it is something of a co-existence. The givenness of life is allowed. The mountains get a vote (or even a veto). There are many “mountains” in our lives – it is an ever-present feature of a material existence. Our planet is “traditioned” in a very unique position. That position (and much else that has been given us) make life possible. Very slight changes to that position would make life (certainly human life) impossible. At some point in our future, the ravages of an ice age will return (and there will be nothing we can do about it).  —Fr. Stephen Freeman

My environment is full of the same kind of reminders that Fr. Freeman’s is. I am a fairly short drive away from the mountains, from wild areas that while not unmarked by people, are much more wild than civilized. But I also live in a city with many places that aren’t built to a human walking scale. So I’ve always been aware of this tension from my earliest years. My overriding feeling returning to a city as a child was that I was moving from something real to something less real.  As I got older I learned to also appreciate the beautiful things that people can create, especially by participating in something social. So that made the city more “real” to me.

But I still have a frequent desire to visit places where the schemes of humans are, if not completely absent (I’m not a wilderness survivalist!) then at least more humble. So for the new year, find ways to live with things how they are, not try to change them to fit a whim.

 ...if God thinks and feels and speaks—if God has something like a ‘mind’—then maybe to be fully human means exercising our own mental functions, and not enfeebling them through excessive device use. Or, if God is face-to-face relationship as a Trinity, then our real center is not within us, but within the other—in our real relationships. And if God made the earth, plants, and animals, then maybe being human means staying physically close to these things.  

All that might sound very basic, yet in all these areas—mind, relationship, nature, embodiment—the ‘Machine’ competes against God, by framing every part of reality as a biological mechanism or a simulation, to be manipulated according to our caprice. I think this is where the real battle is—a battle to answer the question, “What is reality?” 

But this is not a question for Christians alone. It matters to all of us, and I think we need to wrestle with it in our families, our schools, even in our politics. We’ll come up with varying answers, but what matters is that we’re left with a robust moral awareness of the dark side of technology. Without that, the only thing left to wake us up will be suffering.  --Peco Gaskovski

I would like to keep this question in my mind for the next year: "What is reality?" and "What does it mean to be human?" As I've noted before, questions tend to stick in my mind most effectively. I don't know all the answers to these questions, but I think they are good for framing decisions and conversations.

...if commitment comes with risks, the price of trying to avoid those risks is higher still. Committing to family life may be to risk abandonment. But the manosphere, and it female mirror-image ideology of Sex and the City liberal feminism, is a sterile, futile war not just on emotional risk but the inevitabilities that stand behind that risk: time, ageing, and death. The advice offered by these ideologies is far worse than risk-taking: to eschew all the long-term commitments that make life meaningful, in case the sight of your partner ageing normally reminds you of the passage of time. Grow old anyway, and leave no legacy of love to nourish the next generation. --Mary Harrington

This paragraph probably sums up the truth I would most like to pass on to my daughters. So many contemporary popular fictions (aka politics, belief systems, ideologies)  have an unspoken assumption: namely, that one can (and should) live forever the way that one (might) live in one's twenties. From one perspective, this might look like personal autonomy, or even eternal youth. But it is a terribly brittle mindset, implying that the only good things in life are the things we choose and the things we control. Change and loss come for all of us, however. Things we cannot control, both welcome and unwelcome, happen to all of us. Just based on my experience, however, the things we do not control are sometimes the very things we need. It seems to me that the sane way to live is invest some time in figuring out what and who is important, stick with it/them, and not try to bulldoze every mountain that stands in the way.

A feast without a fast is a strange, half-finished thing: this is something I’ve only learned recently. We are coming up to the greatest annual feast of all, the one that most people, whether Christian or not, are going to end up celebrating. I’ve celebrated Christmas all my life, mostly with no religious trappings, and I’ve always loved it — more so since I became a father. But Christmas, in historical terms, is only one of a number of great feasts that make up the Christian ritual year, which was once — and still is in those parts of the world which continue to take it seriously — studded with saints days, festivals, processions, and feasts. --Paul Kingsnorth

There are so may paragraphs in Paul's essay I could have showcased. But I chose this one because the fast/feast rhythm is something I've been thinking about the past while. I observe how important holidays are when I see how my children feel about them. Christmas, Easter, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Halloween, birthdays: as soon as one holiday come to an end, they start looking toward the next one and talking about how to prepare for it. Of course they look forward to treats/gifts associated with these holidays, but that's not the only thing: holidays structure their year, as do things like the school calendar now that they are in school, and the various performances and festivals that they participate in through their dance program. I also observe the importance of making holidays about something more than just treats and gifts. If the focus is only on gifts, they get increasingly dissatisfied with them. After all, once the gift is opened, the mystery is over....and maybe it's a let down. So, I find myself trying to re-ritualize. This year, before they opened Advent goodies, I asked the girls to tell me one thing they were grateful for. Once they go used to this routine, they really enjoyed this. And it also seemed to help them appreciate the small gift they received, rather than complaining about it or immediately moving on to the next shiny anticipate things (which has a tendency to happen).

This is a long way from a fast, admittedly, but I think it's a step in that direction: bringing some mindfulness to the moment in a small way. I would like to keep looking for ways to do this in the new year.

My last featured article is Ruth and Peco Gaskovski's list of anachronistic practices compiled from an informal survey of their readers. They categorized them as follows:

• Technology use (reducing, altering, removing, replacing)
• Self-sufficient, minimalist practices
• Embodied & mental practices
• Children and family
• Spiritual and relational practices

I enjoyed reading (and contributing) to the list because it is a reminder that we do have choices in how we interact with each other and with, or without, technology. There are a few of the listed practices I already do, most of the time or some of the time. Perhaps there are some I would like to try or try more often. I don't know. It's not a proscriptive list; rather it's again about bringing mindfulness to daily routines, and asking that question "What is reality?" I find it interesting as a reminder that, oh yes, there are people who think about these things and people who have found these practices helpful. Any sort of intention has to be grounded in reality, in the things that we do.

So that's where I'm at. This isn't a list of "resolutions". It's more an effort to name the kind of music I am listening for as I walk through the market, or the meadow, or wherever I am at the moment. I guess one thing I can admit is I don't feel clever enough to decide on or specify exactly what I think would make my life better. It's pretty good as it is, with more than enough daily triumphs and challenges to keep me busy, way more than I can write about here. Also I'm never in the mood to create a long to-do list in January, which still feels like hibernation time.

But change and new growth often begins quietly, subtly, privately and that suits this time of year. I look forward to "growing" these ideas this year.

Completed between December 28th 2023 and January 6th, 2024