"Random Acts of Kindness"
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 05/15/2015 - 20:44At the bookstore checkout
I asked the manager
if there were any more copies
of Levertov’s
“Sands of The Well”.
He motioned to a young man
standing near the counter.
“He just bought the last one.”
The young looked at me and said,
“Here, take it.”
“But you’ve already paid the price”
I protested.
“It is a gift,” he said.
All eyes turned to me.
“I don’t deserve this gift”
I thought to myself.
Another customer explained
that Robbie always did stuff like that,
“random acts of kindness.”
I accepted the gift with thankfulness
and wondered,
“Is this how Peter felt when Jesus washed his feet?”
And at the final day
will I ask, “is there any more forgiveness?”
only to hear
the manager say,
“Jesus bought it all”
Will Jesus say,
“Here, take it.”
Will I protest
“But you’ve already paid the price”?
Only to hear
“It’s a gift”
Will the prayer of humble access come to mind
as others explain
that Jesus always did stuff like that,
“random acts of kindness”.
#LoveBadeMeWelcome Day 2 - An Emotional Cartographer
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 05/14/2015 - 06:21During his plenary talk at “Love Bade Me Welcome” : Bringing Poetry into the Life of Your Church, Tom Troeger spoke about the “landscape of the heart” as a cultural context you understand God from. To illustrate this, he spoke about two churches he went to when he was young. One sang hymns like “Softly and Tenderly Jesus Is Calling” with very free interpretation of the music almost ad libbed from the piano, and the other sang hymns like “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah” played precisely from the pipe organ. They both reflect different landscapes of the heart that we go back to when we think about God, worship and music. He suggested that the wholeness of God is not known if you stay within one landscape of the heart.
I thought about my own nomadic religious journey, starting off Congregationalist, drifting through Baptist, various evangelical and charismatic churches before settling down to currently being an Episcopalian. The idea of knowing many landscapes of the heart, or perhaps mapping the relationship between these landscapes to see one larger broader landscape is especially appealing to me. As our society becomes more multicultural, how do we map in the landscape of Jewish or Muslim hearts? What about adding in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Shintoism?
Pushing this idea of emotional cartography further, I had to wonder about those not brought up in the church, the unaffiliated skeptics. What does the landscape of their hearts look like? How do we map it? How do we find the connection between these landscapes and the landscapes of those brought up in the church?
As science progresses, how does this change the landscape of our hearts? Is science moving beyond the abilities of our imaginations to use it for good? How must the landscape of the heart change as science changes? How do we keep the idea of being good stewards of God’s creation in a world overheated by climate change?
A secular part of the landscape of my heart includes the great song by the Canadian folk singer, Stan Rogers, “Northwest Passage”.
Ah, for just one time I would take the Northwest Passage
To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea;
What are the landmarks for a northwest passage of the heart, including various Christian landmarks, landmarks from other belief structures, landmarks from the skeptics, landmarks for scientists, to bring balance back to reason and imagination?
#LoveBadeMeWelcome – Compline Reflections, Day 1
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 05/13/2015 - 06:25With these first few words, I’ve already probably broken several times one of the most important messages of Christian Wimaan in his opening plenary talk the conference, “Love Bade Me Welcome” : Bringing Poetry into the Life of Your Church at Yale Divinity School.
Especially in light of the new Pew Research Center on Religion and Public Life report, America’s Changing Religious Landscape, Wiman recommended that when we write, we should think of the skeptic in the audience. What are we saying that makes it harder for the increasing number of religiously unaffiliated Americans to access what we are saying, to cross, as it were, the sacred threshold?
I imagine that talking about poetry, a conference at a divinity school, talking about churches, and using words like “bade” is enough to drive off many of my readers, but if you’ve made it this far, thank you, please stick around. I will do what I can to talk about divine mystery in metaphors to make it more accessible.
Instead of focusing on Wiman’s talk, I will focus on compline. Compline is the final church service, a completion of the working day. As my wife and daughter prepared to watch the final two hour episode the current season of SHIELD, I joined with several dozen other voices singing the great hymn, The Day Thou Gavest,
I would describe my singing as that of a weak bass. I like singing the bass part of songs when it is easy to pick out. Unfortunately, like church attendance, harmonic singing seems generally to be in decline. Not so around Yale Institute of Sacred Music. There were several basses around me carrying the part firmly enough so that I could feel comfortable singing along in harmony.
It is interesting to read that the hymn was written for missionary meetings since it is such a wonderful close of day hymn. This idea of the day being given by God seems so foreign to how I believe most of my skeptical unaffiliated friends think of their days. Instead, it seems many of them live lives of quiet desperation, to borrow Thoreau’s words, in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, to follow on with words from David Foster Wallace’s famous “This is water” commencement speech.
Before compline, several of us stood outside in the warm May evening, as a strong but gentle wind caressed us and the sun provided spectacular end of day light. Yes, the day, the evening, the compline service, was a gift from God, and it is hard to remember these blessings in our desperate day to day battles. It is hard to remember these blessings as we read the news of man’s continued exploitation and oppression of their fellow men. It is hard to remember these blessings as the pinnacle of beauty or wit is too often thought of in terms of Facebook memes, or at best the season finale of a television show.
At compline, we listened to scripture, to the words of more great poets like Langston Hughes and Denise Levertov. We sang in harmony. We worshiped the Lord in the beauty of holiness.
How do we speak to the skeptical unaffiliated people of our nation? Perhaps, first we reconnect with the beauty of holiness, and then let the Lord speak through us.
When I ran for State Representative, I remember being struck by the importance of the verse from the psalms, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.” It struck me that most politicians will say what they think is expedient and not what is rooted in their core beliefs to get elected. I wonder how often people in the church, trying to reach the skeptical unaffiliated do the same thing.
The title, “Love Bade Me Welcome” comes from George Herbert’s poem “Love”.
LOVE bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd anything.
I entered this conference like the guest in Herbert’s poem, guilty of dust and sin, but Love did bade me welcome and made itself manifest at compline on the first day of the conference.
Other
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 05/12/2015 - 14:00It is hotter and more humid than it should be in May, as I take my lunchtime walk at work. I am preparing my mind for going to a conference on bringing poetry into the life of the church. In many ways, it is a major shift from being a social media manager at a health care center dedicated to caring for the underserved, but there are many similarities as well.
I have the typical anxieties of going to a conference in a new place, on a new topic, with people that will most likely be new to me. It is heightened by the signup form, where they asked what I did. The choices were all around roles in the church; clergy, worship leader, music leader, and so on. I chose the final option, other.
I always hesitate to call myself a poet. Sure, I try to write poems, but it isn’t my career. It’s only recently that I started writing more poetry, and I haven’t had anything published, or sought publication of anything in probably over three decades, other than what I publish on my blog.
Other
It is a word full of meaning, ambiguity, and perhaps a little fear; fear of the other. Yet we often don’t own our own otherness. When we do, we perhaps wear it as a badge, and a little bit of a shield.
Can I be open, vulnerable, there to learn, and not be defensive, and trying to assert my self-worth? What can I learn? What are my learning objectives, or to borrow from the rhizomatic group, my learning subjectives? How can I get something out of this if I’m disappointed? What can I learn about embracing my “otherness”?
Digitally Questioning Authorities
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 05/11/2015 - 20:27Dave Cormier commented on my previous blog post and it seems that my reply deserves a blog post of its own.
Dave expressed a lack of fondness for the digital immigrant language. To which I reply:
I recognize the difficulties of the digital native / digital immigrant construct. Determining whether someone is a digital native or digital immigrant is not simply a question of age, and I suspect there are more options than the dichotomy. Personally, I’ve often referred to myself as a digital aborigine.
He then goes on to talk about how digital media is affecting power structures in health care and education. To which, I reply:
In terms googling medications, or asking for a link, this is a big topic in healthcare and I suspect it parallels discussions in education and beyond. It probably reflects some larger issues. In health care, we talk about the e-patient movement and participatory medicine.
Is it polite for me to ask my doctor for a link to the medication she is suggesting?
Yes. It should be encouraged. Ideally, the doctor should be able to provide a handout with a link, or send a message via a patient portal with a link for more information.
Can i come in with the website that told me what's wrong with me?
This gets a little messier. One problem is that some people have a tendency to Cyberchondria. Also, the amount of information that patients bring in can, at times, be excessive, especially in these days of life logging. On the other hand, for special situations, patients may have access to more information than their doctors and bringing in information can be a great help. It also depends on how well the doctor responds to information being brought in or whether there is some other power struggle going on.
The final question Dave asks is Is it polite to digitally check an expert?. This, it seems, is the key underlying question. Years ago, I wore a T shirt saying Question Authority. I’ve always believed it is not only polite, but important to check experts, no matter whether we do it digitally or using other media.
