Category: contemplative life (Page 1 of 4)

News Fast

March 14, 2025 / / 0 Comments

I wasn’t going to do a news fast because I thought it was important to pay attention to all the crazy stuff happening since January (since November, really). I thought consuming news was crucial to keep abreast of STUFF. Stuff that’s important. Stuff that’s going to hurt people (is hurting people). Stuff that’s going to be pretty forking bad, so I needed to know all the stuff. Or most of the stuff. Or, heck, just some of the stuff.

But I’ve decided there’s no way to dip my toe into the sludge of stuff without getting sucked in. A little bit of news, even just a check of the headlines or whatever, is enough to send me off into the vast, ugly maw of all the hellscape stuff that’s happening right now, and I just–

I can’t.

A little bit of news suddenly becomes a lot of news becomes too much news. So I’m cutting myself off from the news.

Near-total fasting. Occasionally a crumb from a newsletter (that isn’t normally political) will wedge itself between my teeth, but other than those stray, unintentional crumbs, I’m going off the news.

In fact, I unsubscribed to a bunch of newsletters just so I could shut out the world.

I blocked the New York Times and Reddit on all my devices.

I marked “Not interested” on every slightly newsy/political video that pops up on Youtube.

The only radio that passes my ears is the local classical/jazz station or a music show on WDET.

Total. News. Fast.

I don’t know how long this will last, but I can report on how it’s been for the past two weeks.

Reader, it has been glorious. Maybe not for the world, but for my sanity. For my writing and creativity. For my mental and physical and spiritual health. For nearly everything.

It has not been easy, or at least, it wasn’t easy the first week. Fasting from the news meant a total reorientation of how I spend my days and my time. Cutting out the news without filling my time with something better is a recipe for lapses and failures. As such, I’ve been listening to more audiobooks and RPG-related podcasts. I’ve spent spare moments reading my kindle or a library book.

I’ll admit, there are times when I really don’t feel “ready” to commit the mental energy needed to listen to an audiobook, or I resist the “slowness” of reading a book. There’s no clicking of links. No jumping from outrage to outrage. It’s been revelatory that I’m so resistant to sustained reading. I never thought I would be someone who would resist reading a book.

But that’s what happened (and still happens) once I started the news fast. The prospect of picking up a book to fill that time (time once-filled by Reddit and NYTimes articles and such) has become a daunting prospect. I realize now how “light calorie” the news was for me. Easy to digest. Not nutritious, but if I ate enough, eventually filling. A sick, greasy filling, but enough so that I would be satiated.

Reading or listening to an audiobook instead has meant a bit of struggle at the beginning. I resist. But then, it’s either listen to a book or read one or simply sit with my thoughts, and I realize that all three of those is preferable to the news, so I sometimes do sit with my thoughts, or jot down ideas in my pocket notebook. And sometimes I open the kindle just to peruse and suddenly find myself pulled into a story or essay. Or I’ll open that audiobook of Ray Bradbury stories that I’ve been neglecting and before I know it I’m crying or cheering or overwhelmed with awe, and it was all worth it, that initial struggle, that bit of resistance: I’ve pushed through it to the somewhat “harder” pleasure of reading a book and found the reward to be much greater than any I’ve ever had with reading the news.

I’m not sure the news fast can be sustained indefinitely. I may, with time, start listening to the radio again, just to keep up. But I might continue to block the news websites and be much more selective about the podcasts I listen to. I’ve gotten better at filling my spare time with reading (and not news); I don’t want to lose my new-found ability to engage with the deeper, harder pleasures of books. The spare moments don’t have to be filled with news and outrage. They can be filled with reading. Or thinking.

Or with nothing at all but quiet.

Winter

January 5, 2025 / / 0 Comments

I really like winter. I think this is one reason why my husband and I were made for each other. We have no desire to live in a warmer clime. We like the snow and cold. Maybe it’s a kind of weather Stockholm syndrome, maybe all these Michigan winters have brainwashed me, but I love them. Even the gray. Lots of people like winter in Minnesota or whatever, where it’s sunny even when it’s cold. But here in Michigan, we are cloudy and gray and cold for much of winter. And I love it.

Obviously, winter can also be horrible. When there’s ice, when I have to drive through a snowstorm, when we lose power and there’s an Arctic vortex or whatever happening. Winter is horrendous at those times. I’m sure for the people going through an ice and snowstorm right now, winter is the worst. And deadly.

I’m not immune to the fears of winter’s deadliness. I feel them. I know them, in fact.

But I also know that I don’t want to live in a warmer place. I tried Southern California in autumn. It was the pits. I couldn’t imagine never feeling the snow and cold, never tasting the air when its below zero, never catching a whiff of fireplace smoke drifting through the pale-pink evening on a short walk through the silent street.

And when the cold gets so bitter against my skin, I can feel the sting of it on my cheeks, and my nose is dripping like crazy, and the house is just ahead, and my lungs are stinging from breathing the brittle air; I catch the doorknob, push open the front door and step into the embrace of my home’s warmth: that’s when I love winter. I love it for the daunting coldness and the challenge of a long walk through the falling snow, but also for the way it lets me come home. A chance to sit beside the window and watch the light fade, drinking tea or cocoa, wrapped in a blanket, feeling my cold cheeks with the back of my hand. Feeling content.

That’s what I love.

Caesar’s Triumph

November 6, 2024 / / 0 Comments

We started watching Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar today in my AP Lang class.

I didn’t feel like teaching. Thinking about the play, the class, being around other people, all of it made me sick. I wanted to crawl into my Bandcamp app and listen to midwestern alternative rock for the rest of my life. I didn’t want to teach. Not today. Not today of all days, and definitely not this play with all that it is.

But as the opening scene started–Act 1, Scene 1– and “Oh Caesar, Caesar! Caesar, Caesar, Caesar!” and the drumbeat and the triumph of the plebes started, I was struck in a way I did not expect.

I always knew art could be a balm. It could be an escape.

But this was different. It was clarity. A startling truth, and with that truth some measure of consolation.

We are in a cycle. This pattern–the pattern of human behavior, of politics, of leadership, of self-interest, of anxiety, of helplessness, of being seen, of needing to be seen, of finding champions who will mirror your desires back to you, of allegiances that shift like quicksilver, of worry, of glories long-past, of the need for some cash, of the need for some scapegoats–all of it is a wheel, turning and turning, each spoke of the circle destined to repeat.

I cannot hate the plebes (of which I am one and not one all at once), as I cannot condone the condescension of the patricians, even if my head agrees. Once we get to Caesar’s triumph into Rome, it’s too late. Brutus never had a choice. Conspire, don’t conspire. None of it mattered. Rome was going to fall to Caesarism no matter what.

The play is incredibly dark, but not untrue. Watching that opening, as the tribunes chastise the plebes, as the plebes want nothing so much as a holiday, as we await the ominous fate of Flavius and Marullus (“they are put to silence”), we know where the train is headed and that it can’t be stopped. Once the triumph starts, the play is on its way. It can only end with Octavian’s raised fist and “this happy day.”

I don’t know why, but watching it unfold on the screen–a dramatization of the pattern we simply cannot escape–was strangely comforting. There are artists, writers, poets who have seen what we have seen and they have responded to it–not with despair, but with creation. Not much can be done, in the immediate, but art can be done, and it can last, and generations hence shall act this lofty scene “in states unborn and accents yet unknown!” and that’s more than a comfort.

It’s a call, a voice out of time, a reminder that poetry still stirs the heart. That theater and performance and art and imagination are not dead. They are part of the cycle too, and they are destined to keep turning.

“Rule 2: General Duties of a Student: Pull Everything Out of Your Teacher: Pull Everything Out of Your Fellow Students”

September 28, 2024 / / 1 Comment

Who are my teachers? Who are my fellow students?

Finding teachers (recognizing them, really) wasn’t too hard, but this Rule also mentions fellow students and that was a much harder find. Who exactly are my fellow students? Without being enrolled in a school or class, I’m kinda just on my own. My teachers are the successful authors and artists and thinkers whose books I can study, but who then are my study-buddies?

Perhaps the real answer is one I’ve been avoiding for over a decade now.

My fellow students are my fellow writers who are at or slightly above where I’m at right now in my craft and career.

The trouble is that I am resistant to joining writers’ groups. I always have been. I’m not sure why either, other than I’m not naturally a joiner and I am painfully shy and awkward when it comes to meeting people and making friends.

The other problem is that I’m not exactly sure where to look for fellow students who are at my same level. I can find beginning writers easily enough. But I’m not sure how helpful that would ultimately be for my own growth.

And I can identify writers who are further along than me, but they won’t want me in their groups for the same reason I’m resistant to joining a group of beginners: too much gap between their skills and mine.

Finding fellow students is probably a good project for me to undertake, but for now, for this week-to-week experiment in following Sr. Corita’s Rules, I’m fudging it a bit and defining fellow students as those writers and artists whose newsletters I subscribe to. They are also, in a lot of ways, my teachers. Teacher/student is a fluid designation, then. Those who can teach us are also themselves students.

I am both teacher and student too. In some ways, Rule 2 and Rule 3 are leading to the same destination: pulling everything out of everyone. Who the teacher is and who the student is may change and shift at times, but our “General Duties” remain the same.

But how to do that pulling? How does it work to “pull everything out” of one’s teachers, one’s fellow students?

What I did this week was read and listen and watch more deliberately. I took more notes on what I was reading. I spent time with pieces of advice and examples and words of wisdom from my various teachers, reflecting on these small lessons in my notebooks, mulling them over and trying to make connections. I spent more time copying quotes and ideas down, letting them sit for awhile before moving on to the next chapter or the next video.

Essentially, being more attentive and more thoughtful.

Also this week, I just started reading In Praise of Slowness, and I think its thesis fits with my idea that “pulling everything out” requires thoughtfulness and deliberate study. It requires a slowing of the pace so that ideas can sink in and take root. Carl Honore’s book is also proving to be one of my teachers at the moment, so I need to make sure I pull everything out of his book that I can.

I’ll admit that following Rule 2 this week was harder than last week’s Rule 1. Rule 2 requires a lot more slowness, more time for inquiry. It’s not just about being in a place but about relationship between people (even if those people are only coming to me through the pages of a book). Relationship, study, learning: these things take time. If things are too haphazard, the “pulling out” of everything turns into a half-hearted scurrying for crumbs.

I tried hard to do more than scrape up crumbs this week, but I’m not sure how successful I was. Got some good lessons and ideas from my teachers (namely, Derek Sivers, James Scott Bell, Ursula Le Guin, Mervyn Peake, and Rebecca Roanhorse). But reflecting back on the week, I don’t think I’ve quite achieved EVERYTHING.

Maybe the lesson is that this Rule requires persistence. Pulling everything out of one’s teachers and fellow students requires patience, diligence, and humility. It can’t be achieved in a week. Not even a semester or a year. We often only have limited time with our flesh and blood teachers and students, and so trying to pull everything out of them in the school term can feel like an impossible race against time.

But what if we continue to pull things out of our teachers even after the last bell has rung and summer vacation beckons? What if we hold onto their wisdom, their advice, and keep it rolling around our brains, peppering our journal entries with their ideas, mulling things over well past the semester’s end?

I often think back to things I learned in classes gone by, of wise words from my teachers, of projects and lessons done in a classroom or workshop. I continue to pull new things (and old things renewed) out of those experiences. The general duties continue even as the classes have ended. Even decades after.

Just as I am continuing to trust my place in the downstairs room, I have to continue to pull things out of my teachers, my students, and myself. Attentiveness and trust. Thoughtfulness and patience. Slowing down and sitting with things for awhile. Openness and humility.

Rule 2 is a general duty. It’s always there for us to follow. We must never stop the work of drawing forth the good and the true from one another. We are all of us teacher/student. Not just for a week, but always.

Finally Feels Like Spring

May 4, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Today, it finally felt like a real spring.

We had a false spring — a false summer, really — in the middle of April, when the temperatures got up into the 80s, but after that it was cold, colder than normal, and snowy too, a few days.

Now, it’s finally warm enough to go out with only a sweater or light jacket, warm enough to feel the breeze against your cheek and it feels good, not biting or cruel.

I went for a walk, my usual route down the main road near our house, and the smell of freshly cut grass and wet earth and lots of running stream water was everywhere. And I listened to Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks and got ideas for a couple of stories, one a new idea, the other a wrinkle to add to an idea from last week.

Spring is the best walking weather (maybe autumn is tied with it too) because it’s usually never too hot, and the coolness is bearable with the right jacket and accessories. And everything is coming alive, so for me, story ideas seem to come alive too. I just hope we get a few more weeks of real spring before summer’s heat descends and makes afternoon walks too scorching.

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