everyone contends with marginality
no-one maintains a complete sense
at least when they've been bumped around
by life a bit
no one maintains a sense of
O i'm in with the in crowd and i have no worries
young people allow themselves this illusion
and very young people if they are fortunate at all
don't have to worry about it
but people who experience the world for what it is
at some point are going to face up to their
relative marginality
can there be community at the margins
perhaps that's where community naturally is
i don't know
a person sits near a window
looks out to the world
sees the sky between the branches of the trees
can't think of anyone to call or talk to
his mind will not read a book
he doesn't have a clear sense of what he will do
or where he will go when he stands up
finished with his cafemocha
there are a significant number of people on the planet
who
every day choose to have a marked degree of empty space
for the eye to feast upon
large contained areas of empty space
vaulted ceilings of churches auditorium space
box stores
stadiums
these are places of huge congregation
these are places where it is possible to doubt
whether or not others exist
but it is nonetheless impossible to avoid them
they are all around you with the intention of
experiencing the same thing you are experiencing
i write from the margins
i write from outside the community
i write from the outside looking in
a perspective i had not considered
being this interesting
this very moment i am thinking of
sitting in the choirstalls
reciting the psalms
and knowing that i am in a community
normally right now i would be
preparing for mass and there knowing
i worship in a community
community is always a joint inquiry into
what will this day bring
insofar as i trust the prayers of others
i live in a community
and the distance is of little consideration
i'm going to say
today
community is a collection of people
who are very different from one another
who perhaps bear no common concerns
other than to
pray with and for one another
no matter how near or how far
the metaphysics of the 21st century requires
that we pray for one another
we are family
being in the world demands
a certain magnanimity
the dance is always
how to unleash or unfurl the
natural human tendency for magnanimity
community demands forgiveness
today
or
ReplyDeleteperhaps i'm being very presumpuous here
is magnanimity learned?
does it require examples
and if so
how do the exemplars acquire the
idea about
being
large hearted?
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteyou sound like another
ReplyDeletephony
, little man
like Royal Nonesuch. Your "poesy" the usual jingly jangling formless noise, ese
like maybe I put on the pigs on you and yr order chester
thanks for sharing your thoughts jh
ReplyDeletei can sense and try to imagine
what it must be like for you
to be away from the daily presence
of your brothers in prayer
nothing phony about that
your thoughts about magnanimity
bring to my mind pema chodron's teachings
which are largely about
learning how to open our hearts
more and more
sometimes i find myself
gobbling up her teachings
like a starving person
there is something in them
that i crave
and i think there must be
something equivalent within
the christian tradition
if i only knew where to find it
in pema chodron's teaching
this cultivation of magnanimity
can be a focus of meditation
one can recall to mind
examples of times when one
has felt one's self
shutting down and
closing off the heart to others
turning a cold shoulder
unwilling to give of ourselves
to another
in meditation we can bring
those experiences back to mind
and practice working with
that feeling of shutting down
the idea is to breathe in
the uncomfortable feelings
that make us want to recoil
or turn away
we can breathe in deeply
allowing our hearts to expand
to make room for those feelings
on the out breath we relax
and let go
in my practice i sometimes try
to make the letting go on the out breath
a sort of offering to God
offering up whatever i am feeling
allowing
asking for
God to transform and enlarge my heart
pema also teaches that
in this practice
we "drop the story line
but stay with the underlying energy"
so we recall to mind
past (or present)
experiences that have made us
close off our hearts
but we don't let our minds
get caught up in retelling
the story line
or obsessing about
what we should have said
or done differently
when we discover that we are
thinking about the situation discursively
we simply acknowledge that
by saying "thinking"
and we let the thoughts go
and return to the breath
allowing it to ventilate
the underlying feeling
she makes a point that
when our minds go off
into thinking about
and retelling the storyline
that that is our way
of avoiding the underlying
uncomfortable energy
and the point is to learn
how to sit with that energy
and experience it fully
without trying to escape from it
pema teaches
and i think she is right
that this sort of mind-training
this practicing dealing with
uncomfortable feelings
within the relative safety
of meditation
prepares us to better handle
the difficult situations
that come up in everyday life
we can begin to notice
in real-time when we
are closing off our hearts
and shutting down
and we can begin to
meditate on the spot
breathing in the discomfort
trying to enlarge our hearts
to make space for it
of course we aren't always
able to do that
but by practicing
we become able to do it
more and more
anyway
sorry about the lengthy discourse
i suppose this is something
i've been intending to write about
on my own blog
but it ended up coming out here
here's to cultivating magnanimity
in whatever ways work
if there are benedictine
or other christian practices
for doing this
i'd be interested
in hearing about them
&
Hola J!
Hola S.
ReplyDelete--Scuzi my somewhat harsh assessment here (actually some of jh's scrawling amuses me), but scroll through some of the recent blog-bashing on Olson's site, and you will note how un-Christian KO really is. Alas jh routinely defends KO, and his jokey, irrational approach to theology... and life.
Im not sure what's worse...skeptics and cold rationalists OR biblethumping dogmatists. Jeffersonian tradition, however quaint, generally seems more important than Jerry Falwell tradition (--or, RCC tradition, IMHE). And Olson's far more Falwell than TJ.
thanks for the feedback
ReplyDeleteseems like everyone but you (and J)
has forgotten poor old jh
in the benedictine tradition
the emphasis on humility is
the entry way to charity the idea being that humility will bring about charity
and often the only real way to humility is humiliation
remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return
J J J J J J
what are we to do with you
i bet you gave your gradeschool teachers a hard time too
K O talks endlessly about locke madison jefferson that whole utilitarian government spiel he talks that all the time
a died in the wool lutheran is a far cry from a jerry falwell fundamentalism
i applaud kirby for stating his religious conviction and inviting anyone else in a truly ecumenical spirit to state their beliefs
his manner of provokation is really quite subtle if not ridiculous
that alone is a good manner
of understatement
he can handle atheists jews catholics a smattering of other portestants
it occurs to me to ask you
what do you hope to gain from your efforts in the blogosphere?
your intellectual bent is decidedly polical-cultural history...is such a way that i find it difficult to relate often to what you're saying
...i've never read much political philosophy it doesn't interest me now and i doubt i even give the spectre of american politics more than a passing nod from time to time...go to sally's blog go to my other blogs...we don't do much by way of politics...i like poems and thoughts about religious faith and practice and i like aphorisms...so if you'r trying to get a political rise out me you'll be eternally disappointed
i don't even go there with kirby anymore
it's all quite inane
i am interested on this blog here to facilitate some thoughts about community and how we live it or how we think it is meant to be
but it's sort of like a jigsaw puzzle i mean you'd like to finish the thing but if you don't it's no big deal now...is it??
bring on the gestapo pal
jh
i applaud kirby for stating his religious conviction and inviting anyone else in a truly ecumenical spirit to state their beliefs
ReplyDeletehis manner of provokation is really quite subtle if not ridiculous
that alone is a good manner
of understatement
Au contraire. He doesn't engage in debate. He may at times....sort of pretend at philosophical disputation of a type, but when challenged resorts to his zany schtick (though Touchstone's he's not). His hero Locke claimed ..."Faith must be subjected to the Court of Reason", mo or less. But KO.com is the Court of UnReason--Pathos and a little ethos, and no Logos. He doesn't, for instance, take on Aquinas's Five ways chestnuts, pro and/or con. He merely invokes them... Ad Verecundiam.
Actually I'm not opposed to ...quietism of a sort, at times--though mo Melville than Thoreau-- and enjoy some of your reflections and those of Miss Sally's. Yet anyone who values Thoreau-like meditations (or Wendell Berry) will find little in common with KO's pundit-Speak, or his shadowy pal JADL's Nabokov meets Ayn Rand routine. Maybe we could send a note to Prof. Berry and ask his opinion.
No Gestapo, at least not yet.
(Hola S.)
"""in a truly ecumenical spirit to state their beliefs""""
ReplyDeleteAgain, you're not reading the same blogrants I am. Olson's "ecumenical" only in the sense of allowing WASP and jewish conservatives to post (and JADL said he was jewish at one point, now claims ..RCC ish), and his preacherly friend Stu as the token liberal. He blocks my comments (I know something about Locke)
Im not particularly ..leftist anyway, in the contemporary, PC sense (tho...anyone who wants to take on Marx should know a bit about their enemy, which KO doesn't). However I reject Foxnews populism, tinhorn preachers, not to say Olson's pisspoor, colloquial writing. TS Eliot he's not--
Yr old guru Eddie Dorn would have detested that noise, jh