Wednesday, December 13, 2017

A Holiday List from the Contemplative Reader

I wanted to share the list of my recent, recommended books for holiday shoppers.  Reading is key to a happy and contemplative life, but it is also a personal decision, so know what your reader (or you!) can stand.  Here is my list of ten recommended reads for gifting and for your own reflection and pleasure:


  1. Harold Bloom, Falstaff.  This little volume is the beginning of a series of Shakespeare's major personalities by the venerable Bloom.  Although he can be irascible and controversial, he does know how to read a text, and he is a master on Falstaff.  A scholar in his eighties, Bloom distills years of teaching Shakespeare in a readable and accessible manner.  Be forewarned, though, that if you like the Falstaff in Merry Wives of Windsor (which Verdi and I do, among many venerable others), Bloom is not your man; he is strictly concerned with the Henry plays.
  2. Michael Sells, Approaching the Qur'an: The Early Revelations, second edition.  If you have ever tried to read the Qur'an from beginning to end, as I have done, you find that you hit some of the most vexed texts first.  Sells' edition is translation and commentary on the earliest suras (the organizing unit, like books in the Bible).  He provides a necessary framework and helps you navigate the beauty of this compelling religious text.  Everyone in America especially should know something about the Qu'ran, especially given the political obfuscation practiced on the right built on the backs of several misreadings (deliberate for political aims) of Islam; Sells provides an accessible and beautiful rendering that is highly readable.
  3. Camille Paglia, Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism.  As always a controversialist and provocateur, a former pupil of Harold Bloom (referenced above), Paglia is nonetheless at times a wise and insightful reader of texts and our times.  This collections spans her career, even excerpting the most important chapters from her immense work Sexual Personae (a bestseller at the time of its publication that I believe few read).  I could almost get behind her libertarianism (but as a socialist, I cannot quite!).
  4. Otto Penzler, editor, Bibliomysteries: Stories of Crime in the World of Books and Bookstores.  Penzler is becoming a powerhouse of publishing in the world of mysteries.  This collection is entertaining and, for the mystery-lover, a nice volume to dip into for a few minutes of repose.
  5. John Berryman, The Dream Songs.  The complete volume of Berryman's The Dream Songs deservedly won the Pulitzer in poetry.  This complete edition shows just how strong of a poet he was, and how much he still speaks to today.  At times obscure, but always engaging, Berryman provides a powerful example of controlled but unique form over a long period.  As good, I would add, as Ezra Pound's The Cantos, but more accessible.
  6. Agatha Christie, Hercule Poirot's Christmas.  Published originally as Lord Edgeware dies, this novel is pure Christie brilliance.  She is one of my all-time favorite writers, and this one is a gem for any season, including these!
  7. Tarif Khalidi, translator, The Qur'an.  A very readable and complete edition of this world literature masterpiece; a great next-stop after the Sells at #2.
  8. Richard Dawkins, Science in the Soul: Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist.  Like #3, a collection that spans a lifetime of reading and reflection.
  9. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, translated by R. Kevin Hill and Michael A. Scarpitti (Penguin Classics).  This translation is a revelation, returning to the notebooks and ignoring the ordering and changes made by Nietzsche's sister, who controlled his legacy for the first forty years after his death.  Simply, this volume is a revelation which will continue to set the tone for Nietzsche studies for years to come!
  10. Jane Austen, Mansfield Park.  Now is the time to read (or re-read) this Austen classic countryhouse tale, and my personal favorite of all her works (and the text I have taught the most of any text in my 27 years of teaching).  
Happy reading, friends!

Friday, November 24, 2017

Somewhere over Tea (on Literature and Beginner's Mind)

I have been working on centering myself and building from a position of strength and self-assurance, relying on the Grace of God to supply all of my needs.  Toward that end, I have been reading Richard Rohr's Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (1999), a book--and an author--that has been recommended to me may times before.  Although I find him striking a wrong note every now and then (he seems to have beefs with groups I am closely associated with and I do not think his comprehension of political correctness is correct), he is insightful and probably a good first step on the path to what the Buddhist's call "beginner's mind" (a place from which we are always departing and returning again and again, so even "advanced" contemplatives still need to re-situate themselves there).

What has brought much of this on has been a difficult class I have had this term, a section of my ENG 231, Women in Literature.  I am teaching two sections of this course, and one of them is going swimmingly, but the other is mostly tuned out.  I have come close to, for only the second time in my 26+ years of teaching, telling someone to leave for disrupting.  They are not tuned in, and in part I am having to retrain them on the "basics" (or beginner's mind) in approaching literature as a tool for contemplation and self-evaluation.  If I can teach them mindfulness, even rudimentary in nature, then I will have accomplished something.  To that end, I have been reflecting on and sharing excerpts with them from non-sectarian writing on mindfulness, such as Oprah Winfrey's book The Wisdom of Sundays, and challenging them to use and class time to develop mindfulness.  This is not an easy task.

But back to Richard Rohr:  I have found myself resonating with and "starring" several passages in his chapter "Cleansing the Lens."  In one paragraph, he writes that "We must find out what part of the mystery is ours to reflect.  There is a unique truth that our lives alone can reflect.  That is the true meaning of heroism as far as I can see."  Yes, yes, and yes!  He goes on to say that the "comparison game" we play with other saints/contemplatives and defining spiritual greatness restrictively (his example is someone saying that only the Mother Theresas of the age represent what is holy or saintly) is a game of the ego that we must reject.  "All I can give back to God," Rohr writes, "is what God has given to me--nothing more and no less!"  It reminds me so much of the prayer we say over the offering, and adds so much more to the meaning of that little homage.

In one of the subsections of this chapter, "Wiping the Mirror," Rohr goes into what I can only call a tirade against the erosion of the notion of free will.  He writes "Nobody seems to believe they are free.  We don't believe we have personal responsibility."  I think he is short-sighted here, but this is also an error in our larger society.  Many have mistaken a social-constructivist or Marxist explanation of why individuals act the way they do as a  prescription.  These philosophies are handy tools for knowledge, and awareness--mindfulness, observation--are often the first steps toward change and healing.  As he writes aptly, "The wounds to our ego are our teachers and must be welcomed." 

He is absolutely on-target when he writes that the "contemplative posture faces reality and sees the presence of God.  So there is ultimately nothing to fear."  Living into that space beyond fear, resting in the Spirit or Grace or the Stream of Life (his and many other contemplatives' image) is so necessary and so true in its essence and approach.  It is what we strive for.  It is what I strive for when we read literature as well.  Detached but invested, reading a poem or novel draws us in to a framework of observation and participation.  Ah, the discussions I have had over my years of teaching about conversations had in the novel of manners (think Jane Austen or Henry James here)!  We can dissect those moments so beautifully and get ourselves to really listen.  (It has happened in the class mentioned before in moments in discussion of Elizabeth Bowen's "The Demon Lover," for instance.)  Open, yet detached; willing yet living above (beyond fear): that is the essence of beginner's mind.

Friday, November 17, 2017

On the Quest for Purity of Heart

It has been a while since I have written a blog post, and that is about to change.  I know that it is important to remain modelling that contemplative spirit in reading that has been such a core, along with writing, of my spiritual practice.  One of my "peeps" suggested that this is the place where I can teach in my ideal way, writing what I want to say and want to do, even if I cannot always do that in the classroom.  So here goes (again)...

So I am here, in my office, listening to Carol King radio on Pandora, which has shifted to play The Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun."  Perfect song with an amazing lyric!  In the gym in the mornings and elsewhere, I have been studying--meditating really--on the rule of Benedict and the commentary of Georg Holzherr, recommended by the abbot of the monastery where I am a confraternity member.  The last couple of days, I have been reading in the Rule and the commentary on humility (Benedict's seventh chapter in that translation).  I struggle with this virtue, because I feel that it must be distinguished from denigration and, following close on denigration's heels, despair.  I think people who have suffered abuse, and particularly those who have been members of abused minorities (such as people in America of African dissent; #BlackLivesMatter) have a hard time knowing the difference, because too often they have been forced to be humble or have been humiliated (and continue to be), but not in a holistic, life-affirming manner that Christ teaches.  (I have been teaching Alice Walker's "In Search of my Mother's Garden" today, and that essay draws a very similar point.)

In the Rule, St. Benedict lists eleven "steps" of ascending through the practice of humility toward full compliance with God.  Benedict's first step is to keep God "always before" your eyes.  It is accepting the fact that God is panoptical, an idea that (when practiced socially) is quite destructive (see Foucault, Discipline and Punish), but which I take to mean that we always keep ourselves mindful of God, praying constantly, or keeping the lifeline to The Spirit open (Thich Nihat Hanh talked about this connectedness beautifully on Oprah's show Super Soul Sunday, which available on OWN network On Demand) at all times, walking in peace and centeredness.  It means that we are surrounded at all times by love and grace!  What a wondrous thing that is as a first step on the ascent of humility!  Amen.

Explaining this step, Benedict writes that "we are forbidden to to do our own will, for as Scripture teaches us: Turn away from your desires (Sir 18.30)."  Later in the same passage in the Rule, Benedict cites the continuation of Sirach 18:30, which wisely counsels: "Pursue not your own lusts." (Love the Wisdom of Sirach!!)  I struggle with the question of distinguishing my own desires from God's desires for me.  That connectedness to the lifeline of the Spirit is so key, as we walk in His insight and His light.  For Benedict, this means obedience to God and to the Abbot which, along with stability and conversion, are the hallmarks of the Benedictine way.  I think we are given those in our lives to trust in and obey as well--our priest may be one, or a personal trainer we trust; a partner who we know as deeply as they know us can also help here as well.  And this obedience is not mindless, but reverent.  Also, not everyone deserves that respectful, thoughtful obedience; a boss at work is not in the same position, for example, for we are not meant to mindlessly follow anyone, although we should respect those who have been granted authority over us.

The second step models this as well, focusing on Christ's statement (in John 6.38) that "I have come not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me."  We much be attuned deeply and reverently to God and those we sense a mutual Godly spirit in (as is related, the Spirit moves as it wills) to detect and follow what God's wants for us and our lives.

More anon...