I worry since Paul Kingsnorth has given a name to this version of Christianity, intentional or not, that it will be swallowed by the great marketing machine. Maybe that's the cynical American in me. I grew up in the shadow of Lifeway Christian Resources. I can see the products on the shelves in suburban America right now. And I really really don't want Martin Shaw to be seen as a new John Eldredge. I know the Wild Christianity being discussed today is not remotely the same as the Wild at Heart world but once filtered down through the marketing machine I wonder how it will be fed to the masses.
Jack, I greatly appreciate your practical steps to fostering a renewed vision of the world and ourselves. I believe its part of what is essential in breaking the spell we are living under.
JP- It is a very real danger, should it ping the right (or rather, wrong) radar screens. Wild Christianity branded outdoor gear! Luxury glamping Wild Christian-style! Wild Christian reality shows! All of it is possible. I don't think it is being cynical at all, but simply realistic. We've all seen too much of it to know it isn't parody.
I think one *possible* way to avoid some, if not all of that, is to flesh it out and define it before it gets coopted. Wild Christianity cannot be a kind of theme park or relaxing getaway. It needs to cut to the core. In that sense maybe it is truly an idea at this point for a minority. We shall see.
Mark from Metanoia of Vermont writes something similar today. It is worth reading if you haven't yet.
I do feel what is being discussed will require more than many are willing to do. And that may be its saving Grace.
Really at the end of the day this should not be a worry Paul or anyone associated with Wild Christianity can concern themselves with to much. To not discuss your ideas out of fear of it being devalued is a disservice to yourself.
The thought hit me though and I found it gross and unnerving. Thus is life at times.
Thanks for the link, Jack. Hadn’t come across Mark before, but really enjoyed the article. He’s definitely dialing it in. I’ll plan on reading a few more.
JP, that hadn’t occurred to me, but it’s certainly possible.
A devil’s advocate question. If folks are genuinely living the life being fleshed out among some writers, they’re probably not going to be interested in buying “stuff,” so marketing to them would be quite foolhardy from a profit perspective. But then, there would be the halfway folks who pop up, showing up in the “wild” in $90 shorts and a $200 backpack, so I suppose those folks could be a target.
Here’s the thing though, there are two words: “wild” and “Christianity”. And there are plenty of models of them. None who lived a materially cushy life.
Good to see you reading “Hesychasm,” Jack. It’s been one of the most consequential books of my life, and not for the faint of heart.
The wilderness of old was not an escape from, a road away, so much as it was road within, towards the center of the heart where Christ could be found. It was a dying to this world so that a tiny piece of eternal life in this world could be found and cleaved to so that eternity in the next world might come by the grace of God. Is that possible in the un-wild? Yes, but infinitely more difficult. The world builds us up with its distractions and materialism, the wild breaks us down as we begin seeing ourselves as quite small and we begin looking outside our pride for mercy.
The wild, such as I live in it, is not an easy life and certainly not “romantic” in the way city folk imagine it. Yesterday we had a blizzard. Keeping the road open required all my effort and was mostly a losing battle. Today, absolute exhaustion, and more snow and wind drifting it closed again. Tonight 30 below forecast and -8 for a high this afternoon. The propulsion on my small tractor froze shut and I had to jump off just before going through the garage door. Luckily that triggered a safety option when the seat popped up and stalled out the tractor.
This is life in the (somewhat) wild of rural Montana if you don’t have much money and take care of things yourself. But you know what? In the exhaustion and defeat often comes the most beautiful and connected prayer. The Fathers tell us this, of course, though it is hard to believe until you live it. The turning over of one’s life to the God that materialism rips from our heart and chews up.
Is this the way forward for ascetically or hesychastically minded folks? It is, in my opinion, if eternity in heaven is the goal of life.
Tim- I am glad you are here and commenting. It is good to have the perspectives of those out there actually living it. It gives hope. The question of forming small communities--what might be called a micro-skate--to share the burden. Most of us will have to learn the virtues and skills to make it work. It is worth doing.
It is blowing snow up here in the mountains of Colorado as well. Though thankfully not nearly as cold. Thank God for the wood stove here in the hermitage.
I do know Martin Shaw's writing. It is very good. Maybe all this could inspire something of a literary movement. I would like to see that.
Thank you, Jack. Funny, as I was writing the response to you I took out a line that said small communities of like minded folk might be an alternate way forward to “caves”, but where would one find those people? And then I deleted the line.
We have an Amish community here, and while I don’t subscribe to their theological perspectives, I think their idea of living isn’t so far off base. Or in your words, a micro-skete, or an old country village concept from a hundred years ago that the center of the community was a church.
Even in the original deserts those micro sketes often eventually formed. And in our age where we have nothing like the fortitude of those people, it’s not a bad idea worth fleshing out.
Something to think about: how many saints have come out of the deserts, caves and wildernesses, versus how many have come out of the huge city cathedrals all gilded and frescoed to the nines? Not a judgement, just a curiosity of mine. And then the question of course is why is that?
Tim- It may seem odd to say, but I think we need poets. I speak of poetry in the broadest way possible, about our intuitive sense of the deep down freshness of things. We will only really start looking for and finding each other when the deep poetry that motivates us points us in that direction.
I know the poetry I absorbed throughout my life has been poison. Pop music, sitcoms, bad movies, etc.
Scripture is a big part of finding a deeper vision of life. Just think how one reading changed the life of St. Anthony the Great. Also, we can develop literature that opens up the Gospel to us in new ways. Whether we know that's what it is doing or not.
It may be a big ask, but we might pray that God sends us our own Shakespeare, Dante, our Bach or Dostoevsky. That might change everything. But I think we can still start with whatever talents we have been given. Something I have been thinking about. -Jack
This is hands down one of the best comments ever on the internet. It took me a second to understand. Anyway, I hope keyboard difficulties are soon fixed.
I finished watching the video you recommended. This brings up the obvious question about we will feed ourselves out there in the wilderness.
Thank You. I did see that and it is sold out :( I really can't travel and take time anyway.
How we will feed ourselves?
My reaction to the Wild Christianity essay included the realization that those cave-saints never did ponder this question. He says they ate hazels and berries. I grow those things myself... they are there for a short time and certainly not year 'round. Good for a snack but in no way sufficient for my family. Sleeping in a cave in the wet... hypothermia? I hope I'm not being too literal about this, but I thought the point was that they had supernatural sustenance due to their extraordinary closeness with God. I know I haven't got that. As Paul said, the monk on Mt. Athos told him that they are "too soft" to achieve things that the fathers did.
I am not happy about knowing that I am too soft also. I think that to be in divine union with nature, as in the Garden, should be our ideal even as we know that there is a long road ahead. So to my understanding, going from a supermarket eater to a farm-fed eater would be huge step in the right direction. It would be lots more real and more appropriate considering I am not a cave saint but a housewife. And within farming practices there are lots of choices where we can simplify our needs and cooperate with nature vs. impose our desires and extract more. In my own small gardens I have already been bewildered by the choices that come up between these two extremes. Farming is really far more destructive than cave dwelling and wild food gathering. But far more practical.
My son likes to learn about wilderness survival stuff. He sleeps with only one blanket in our drafty old house far from the only stove. I sometimes try to convince him to use more blankets but he won't because he heard that one must harden oneself to the colder temperatures or else become "soft". I suppose with fasting and hardening of this kind we truly are capable of needing less. The native people who lived here in the past used to go barefoot in the snow and wear one arm bare right through the winters. I guess we are capable of far more than we think. Baby steps.
I am rambling on, but my point is that what we feed ourselves is
Clara- I think what the Shawn and Beth Dougherty are promoting would need to be the base, the economic base, of any sustainable culture of Wild Christianity. I only watched the one video. But what they are talking about is best illustrated in the fiction of Wendell Berry. A collection of smaller farms and surrounding a small town with some basic services, like a barber, etc.
There is, or can be, more to it, however. Berry prefers to remain outside of any institutional religion, best I can tell. But the Doughertys are Catholic and associated with a monastery. The monastery would be the spiritual base in this version. Within those two foundations various smaller lay contemplative communities would find their place. From that might grow some micro-sketes. And finally, perhaps a cave Christian or two.
I know nothing about farming, but there does seem to be an asceticism built into it. Getting up to milk the cow at 5 am in the winter for example. And, also, a kind of contemplation in silence and stillness and slowness. Being out in nature and in the flow of giving full attention to one's work. There is a reason those who live in rural areas find city-folk so nervous and jumpy. And they are right!
As I said in a previous comment all of this would not simply be for itself, but to undergird a life of prayer, worship and thanksgiving and connection to nature, one another and to God. This is the broader vision perhaps that all of us are trying to get at for a Wild Christianity.
Yes! I think this is the vision that I long for. Wendell Berry does attend the local baptist church sometimes but it seems that it drives him crazy. Imagine him listening to the sermons. He complains that the organization sends young, low status preachers to his town and never keeps them there long enough for them to get to know the place or people.
I have been worrying about church. Our Quaker meeting is increasingly unworkable... just a manifestation of political affiliation for most of the people most of the time. In thinking of moving I have wondered if we'll have to do what Wendell does and just swallow our qualms and attend a little local church no matter the quirks. I have no experience at all of catholic church although I read things from a wide variety of Christian writers and relate to many. My husband and I have each other and that is our sustenance and accountability.
There you go dreaming of micro-skates again! Once wild christianity catches on the spell check will start recognizing these words ;)
Maybe the deeper question in all this is how do we reintegrate back with nature and still meet our basics needs without destroying everything? Can we work with nature rather than dominating? How do we invert the materialist hierarchy of needs and find a way of life with the most important aspects front and center? We can call it Wild Christianity or not, but I think those are the questions worth asking and answering.
Re integration into nature, is that not the ‘material’ element of Salvation? After all, our predicament is rooted in our alienation from Creation and the One who dwells within it? City living destroys the soul, and fast.
I do think this is one of the places where 'the rubber hits the road'. It can be difficult for us to even know where to start. I think it's not only our modern habits, but even our nutrient deficient soils and pharmaceutically weakened bodies that make it hard to imagine living from the land.
I think both learning to fee ourselves from the land and how to live with less can be complementary paths. I do think the contemporary gardening/small scale agriculture/permaculture is a fine place to start, as well as slow 'baby steps' of experimenting with fasting and abstinence. I agree, though, it's quite humbling reading the accounts of both the saints of old and of the indigenous people of fairly recent times.
That's wonderful that your son is exploring these things in his own way!
Yes, that is a good point. They say that in those times of the Wampanoag one could just walk along Pleasant Bay and pick up shellfish the size of my laptop. Living from the land was a different proposition, the health and training of the people was so different. We must approach the task with humility and faith.
I find it interesting that there are signs of a resurgence of asceticism in the popularity of cold immersion and intermittent fasting. Now, much of the impetus for this is for physical well-being. But that isn't necessarily opposed to the spiritual benefits. A slight shift in thinking might do the trick to broaden the understanding of its benefits.
I do believe that we are capable of far more as human beings. I know I can harp on technology and comfort as forms of human atrophy, but it is undeniably true to me. Atrophy is atheism, in that sense. Maybe all the cold showers will start to wake us up in a far deeper way than is intended.
I like hearing that your son is inclined toward asceticism. I have had that inclination most of my life as well. There is a great joy to it if done right.
oops, hit post accidentally. I don't know what my point is. I guess it is just that I feel the need to get closer to that far off ideal, to trust more and become more real. We are so pampered. Clara
Thank you for this thread. I’m an Anglican priest and been in my current parish 12 years. The questions you ask about ‘church’ bumble round in my head continually. The Institution is so mechanistic it’s a constant fight to keep things remotely Vital.
And yes to food. We can’t all live off wild berries! (We’ve just made some fruit paste though from NZ crab apples foraged from a house we stayed in for a few days. The owners just wanted the tree as an ornament! )
I've always enjoyed your comments on here but never knew you were a priest! My husband and I grew up in a non-denominational evangelical church that emphasized "discipleship" (as opposed to academic training) and church planting. Being sincere youths we found ourselves planted into Trenton NJ and became the pastor and the pastor's wife. We always read a lot, however, and eventually were cast out of this particular church group because we could not agree to all the doctrines, teachings, and mandatory stuff we were supposed to go along with. That was kind of a defining moment of our lives. Ever since we have tried to 'go to church' but never found one that seemed alive and well. I suppose it is simply up to us to be alive and well ourselves and trust God to work things out. It feels wrong to raise our children without church community, but the Quakers we have been worshipping with for 7 years have failed to spark anything much the kids could grasp on to. I do love the silent worship after having endured sermons of varying quality 3 or 4 times per week for the first half of my life. I'm sure I'd love to be in your church -- I have no fantasy of looking for perfection -- just earnest companionship as we follow The Way.
Thank you, but fortunately for you, my church lies the other side of the Pacific Ocean :) Yes, earnest companionship, people with whom to share bread :)
I appreciate the Quakers. George Fox’s famous pulpit was but a few miles from where I grew up in a quiet corner of Northern England.
As to churches that are ‘alive and well’, I think they need to discover that God is their Life, we all do. It’s a demanding work to find our satisfaction in God. In my tradition we’ve entered Lent, a time for reflecting on our dusty existence which cannot of itself live. There may be hope in the exhaustion of the modern church which implicitly says to God, “we’ve got this! See you at the end!” but is running on fumes. Eventually we all fall into Gods Arms, better to stop avoiding it - but I’m rambling also :)
Feb 22, 2023·edited Feb 22, 2023Liked by Jack Leahy
A great read all around. This bit hit me particularly hard:
“The road out to the wilderness of the desert yet remains open. In remembering who we are we see that the purpose of our lives is to be filled with the energies of the Divine, with the Holy Spirit, and not with material abundance. Not I, but the Wild Christ who lives in me.”
I love the addition of “wild” there. That was really something. Thanks for your contribution of this Wild Christianity idea. I stumbled upon Paul Kingsnorth’s larger article on it yesterday and your post today. Seems like the idea is certainly moving on its own. Praise God for that.
I think Paul's idea of Wild Christianity ties together a lot of notions swirling around at the moment. It provides us with a central metaphor. It is the beginning of a mythos--a different sense of our telos and where it can best be found. I am encouraged by it and feel it is worth developing.
The idea of a Wild Christ is not mine. I am pretty sure Paul has used it. And Martin Shaw. It appears in the comment sections, etc. But it is a powerful idea.
I am a run-of-the-mill agnostic as far as my upbringing goes.
But more and more I believe (and I FEEL) that I need to get closer to God (that light, that gentle breeze, that mother to her chicks) and that getting closer to God is closely linked to one's proximity to the machine. I do not know which triggers what - does closeness to God trigger one's desire to run out of the machine, or is it the other way round, we run away from the machine to make room for God?
I am not sure, but I know this:
The machine never allows you time to breathe, time to listen, and time to think.
The machine never lets you wonder about your purpose, apart from being a consumer or a little cog of course.
When I pray, I realize that my body wants to breathe, breathe deeply, and it does, and it feels refreshed.
When I pray, I suddenly get still enough to listen, and there is space for thought.
When I pray, I am reminded that I am not just a consumer or a little cog.
When I pray, I am convinced that God (the light, the breeze, the mother with her chicks) is real, and is close by.
And last night, as I prayed, the final bit of "Fahrenheit 451" came to my mind: Montag, with his precious hidden bounty ("Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin" ") moves out of the city and into the wilderness, meeting others like him as civilization crumbles around them.
For the first time I realized that Montag's verse is a reminder of how the lilies are not consumers or little cogs, and God lavishes love, care, and beauty on them nonetheless.
Quakeress, I think you have articulated beautifully much of how I came to God/Faith after years of active avoidance. I wrote elsewhere that I didn't know how I got here, or what the catalyst was but I am now very grateful that I did.
Almost every line you've written has me going "YES, me too!"
I will give this a better fleshing out later, but I need to pray right now before work intrudes.
Once we know (with the desert fathers and their current disciples) that our calling is to prayer: it is time to pray. Invoking the Name of The Holy One. For as many minutes and hours as we can manage. Other occupations shrink --- without decision on our part -- because "the things of earth grow strangely dim in the light of His Glory and Grace".
Amen to this. How much more do I need to know to come to this conclusion. As much as I see the sickness and addiction at the heart of our current iteration of civilization, I hesitate at the door leading out from it. "Just a few more things, and I will be ready". It is a strategy of postponment and procrastination. I know what I need to do. When will I take the leap and simply do it?
Feb 25, 2023·edited Feb 25, 2023Liked by Jack Leahy
It seems to me that wild Christ-Like Christians would be openly talking about and praying to the Father like Jesus did and pointing others to that same walk and talk he had. Yes, saying, Father, for as Jesus said, “the mouth speaks what the heart if full of” and he was full of the reality of the Father. Shouldn’t we also if we are full of the Holy Spirit? I don’t feel or sense in the authors you quote the robust spirituality I read in the Gospels or Acts or Psalms. It feels enervated and remote and not for the ordinary person. I have read Christ the Eternal Tao and many other Eastern Orthodox writings.
Jeff- We are all trying to get our bearings on this idea of wild Christianity. Speaking for myself, it is still in the very beginning. What can I say? Christ the Eternal Tao *does* speak to me in very intimate ways. It is profound to me. If it isn't for you does that constitute a problem? Not in my mind. My assumption in all this is that all of us engaging this are doing the best we can to find our way forward. Some will emphasize things that other won't. Again, I don't see this as a problem. Do as you see best. I will do the same. We take what we can as we can. At the points where conversation can be fruitful, then good, so be it. If not, I leave it be.
I only offer what insight I have, paltry as it is. I don't seek to convince anyone.
Thank you for your comment. I hope you are well. -Jack
Feb 25, 2023·edited Feb 25, 2023Liked by Jack Leahy
I guess I am content with the Bible as a guide to my walk with God, meditating on it and aiming to duplicate in my own limited way what is presented as the knowing of God. For me it feels closer to source than later writers. One later writer I do resonate with is Saint Patrick https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/pat-confession.asp
Thank you for this post, Jack. I think you are articulating this dynamic well. It's remarkable to me to hear you say that this is based very little on your own direct experience, given how much what you're writing resonates.
I think the role of the Wilderness and of lay contemplative communities can go hand in hand. Time in the truly wild lands can support the movements of inner purification, break from the 'spell' of the world and its systems (ever more pervasive in the digital age), and awakening to the life of God and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, etc. Very few can live in the wild lands permanently, but I think most serious Christians would benefit immensely from time spent in wild retreat. The key question then becomes where to land ourselves, physically, after the wilderness immersion. As you mentioned, many people don't really have much agency in this regard. But for those that do, it seems crucial for there to be communities and systems of daily life that can carry on the same dynamics of inner work. What is wildly intense in the wilderness can then be supported in a slower, ongoing way in a community grounded in prayer.
This is one of the dynamics we are trying to work out at Metanoia - the ongoing dynamic between wilderness and community/daily life. Before Lisa and I had children, we'd each take a roughly 5-day wilderness solo each year to keep that aspect of faith 'hot'. We're trying to figure out ways in which it will be possible for each person in the community to lean in to the wilderness, in a way that is in harmony with their current state of life.
Mark- As you state here, there can be--needs to be--a broader conception of Wild Christianity than the cave Christian. That would limit the idea to probably about 37 people worldwide. But the cave dwellers can be the most intense experience and formulation of it. From there it can be modified as necessary while attempting to keep the same wild spirit. I think working out the interconnections between the various "levels" is key. Having this conversation and being bold enough to try it out to see what works is the only way to bring this further into being. There will be plenty of mistakes and blind alleys.
Well, I guess I don't want to overemphasize my own direct experience--whatever it amounts to--when I am leaning so heavily on the words of others of far greater spiritual attainment. And I don't want to step on any toes, if I can help it. For what it's worth. -Jack
Yes. The other "levels" would reflect the aspirations of the cave hermit in their own differing ways. All the various levels should support and mirror each other. Like a fractal.
I have spent the bulk of my adult life richly cultivating unworkable schemes for happiness. I know them so well! And they are tenacious little buggers, as you say.
I hope quitting your job becomes a reality much sooner than you think.
Jack, interesting because I have an MFA in Poetry and published a book when I was younger. Let me flesh this out a bit.
Poetry, like almost everything else in our culture, has been commodified (or sucked into the Machine). Students take on enormous debt to learn the art of writing, get out of school and also try to become teachers in MFA programs charging the next round of students enormous sums of money. Teachers also have consumers for their poetry in their students, because who else reads or buys poetry anymore? Round and round it goes…
And poetry as a result has become cheap (think Bonhoeffer’s cheap grace as an analogy), politicized, and worst of all boring in its fake revolutions.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe you mean something deeper. The great poets (generally speaking, not just writers of verse) whose hearts have been softened and have touched their own souls in a way that they can universalize that and communicate it to others so that their hearts also soften and perhaps touch something eternal.
If I’m almost correct in your thinking, I agree wholeheartedly. The world needs softer hearts touching the eternal. You saw Paul’s essay today. I don’t disagree with what he’s saying at all, but the idea of “poets” and caves and hermitages (even connected in clusters of not too close micro-sketes) is more appealing to me personally than political answers, even if the politics is only superficial. The problem of political structures, even on a small human scale, is that the devil easily corrupts through power and pride. Political structures are the epitome of power and pride. And so, even soft political structures can become too easily corrupted and corrupting destroying the project. And lastly I don’t think God has set any of us out to change the world. Christ’s call is to change ourselves. We know what the world is, and we know how it ends. None of us are going to change that except on the most tiny scale. Perhaps ourselves, our family, a few friends. Any larger project is dreadfully close to filling oneself up with pride.
I think, broadly speaking, we can think of God as a poet. Christ and the Holy Spirit as well if we dig in. Perhaps we can become poets too (true poets) by touching a piece of the heavenly home we are all called to through the intense prayer and the grace of communion that only a hesychastic or ascetical life brings? I don’t know the answer to this. It’s what I’m exploring in the last chapter of my life though.
“Man enters the space of mental stillness when his soul is filled with the energy of repentance and the Spirit of God. Then, enclosed in his little cell ‘as in a palace’, he sits on a small stool which becomes a throne of Cherubim from whence he watches over his heart with the words of the Jesus Prayer.
However, one does not easily reach such a state. For this ascetic labor, constant tension is required. Man’s spirit might be still, but in order to stand in this stillness it is in constant tension. An electric wire seems lifeless, but if touched, the current flowing through it is lethal; so too the Hesychast may seem lifeless in the eyes of the world, but a mighty, rushing current of life runs through him. In the eyes of God, he is indeed ‘alive’, carrying within him ‘life in abundance’.” Hesychasm
It makes me wonder whether this deeper poetry is a form of seeing and expressing the sacramental cosmos. Without it expressed poetry withers and dies. Which is what happened.
Beautiful! You are the perfect person to discuss this with. It is interesting to hear your experience with getting an MFA in poetry. I dated a woman long ago who had gotten a PhD in poetry. It was interesting, to say the least, to compare her approach and understanding with my own amateur interests. Often very different.
But you have expressed my point very well. I am looking for the poetry beneath the poetry. Which consists of an implicit and intuitive combination of myth, philosophy, theology, practice, metaphor, insight, etc. Or rather the underground river (ocean?) by which all the above are fed. Beneath that, as I fathom it, is a deep, infinite silence. How can we cast our little rod and reel into those depths? It is from this that the deep poetry emerges. This is what we all resonate with and seek. I have thought about it for a long time and am trying to articulate it more completely.
I am drawn to the Classical Chinese poets (albeit in a very amateur way. I make no pretense to having a real knowledge). I only know it in translation, but nonetheless something shines often shines through. It isn't merely talking about life, it is life. If that makes any sense. Any some of the Zen Hermit poets, e.g. Han Shan, seem to get at "consider the birds of the air" as a way of life better than I have seen elsewhere. I think it is a source of renewal for Christian poetry, in both in the standard sense, and in the deeper sense as we are using it here.
Are you aware of any contemporary poets that approach this? I know that might be a difficult request, given how vague I am being. Or a writings about poetry that touch on this?
Jack, I don’t write anymore. I worked on a second book for 15 years. All of the poems but one were published in significant literary journals, but by then the poetry world had passed me by. There was zero interest in poetry as prayer, as reaching towards the eternal. So I stopped cold. Quit drinking. Converted to Orthodoxy, which I’ve come to see as almost incompatible with most contemporary poetry which is more concerned with the self and politics. Or at least that’s the way it was headed. I haven’t read anything new in a decade.
Now I reach toward the eternal through stillness, not words.
Contemporary American Poetry is about the young and their revolutions and pride and self. Orthodoxy is the opposite. It’s about the elders and Fathers and the tradition and humility and the other. Totally different ways of looking at the world.
You’ve probably read the Catholic priest, Gerard Manley Hopkins, but if not he was a fantastic poet and had a great early influence on me. Not contemporary though. Bei Dao is a well regarded contemporary Chinese poet that has stillness at the center of his work, and to my ear the fulcrum of that stillness is spiritual. He’s older now. My teacher LS Asekoff, though an atheist, always had a deeply spiritual undertone to his work. He’s in his 80s now, and no longer writes either. Franz Wright had a spiritual tension in his early work even through the self destruction and pain, and then converted to Catholicism at the end of his life and wrote some beautifully religious work before he died. Nathaniel Mackey is more experimental, but to my mind the best living African American poet. He has a spiritual sense to his work, but hidden away in the experimentation. Kind of like Coltrane or Pharoah Sanders did in Jazz, and I think Mackey would cite them as influences in his work. As sole literary editor of the legendary Hambone magazine, he always supported my work through the years. The great German Rilke is not a contemporary poet, but if you haven’t read the Duino Elegies they are incredible. Opening of 1st elegy:
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels' hierarchies?
and even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart:
I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Every angel is terrifying.
And so I hold myself back and swallow the call-note of my dark sobbing.
Ah, whom can we ever turn to in our need?
Not angels, not humans, and already the knowing animals are aware
that we are not really at home in our interpreted world.
Tim- I understand about not writing. I got my BFA in Music Composition. A few years back I decided to hang it up. The whole music scene was just poisonous and found it spiritually degrading to continue to involve myself. I do sing in the two-man choir at Liturgy up here at the monastery. Which is a great joy.
I do know Hopkins. At the moment in my very early draft on getting the poetry right I am using a line of his as the title. That is always subject to change. But he seems to me to be the perfect poet for what am I groping toward--a sacrament poet and a nature poet. I read a lot of Rilke when I was younger, and his The Man Watching had the deepest resonance for me.
I know nothing at all of contemporary Chinese poetry but Bei Dao seems to be an interesting extension of classical poetry. I may get a copy of some his work at some point. Thank you for the recommendation.
In thinking about the poetry beneath the poetry--a poetics of stillness--it is that part of us which is actually in contact with reality. From the world around us to intuitions of the Divine. Our current machine poetics is divorced from reality, as you say, it is about, "about the young and their revolutions and pride and self". It is the deep poetics that drives it. A deep poetics that is very shallow, if I may phrase it so paradoxically. I wonder how this might be shifted.
I am also a long time reader of TS Eliot. I find the trajectory of his whole body of work--from the powerless despair of Prufrock to the mysticism of The Four Quartets--as very relevant to what I have been meditating on lately. There is a record there of at least one man's exit from the wasteland. What would be the version of it for our day?
Anyway, thank you for the discussion. I hope it is at least a little bit warmer up in Montana.
I sent this to my Kindle to read later, and I’m so glad to have come back around to it. Religion has played no role in my life but the underlying messages here, I think, speak to the essence of our place in the world and also our place within ourselves. Bill McKibbon having already declared the end of nature in 1991, the concept of hyperobjects, the fact that there are around 3000 tons of built environment for every human being on the planet—Wild Christianity may not only be desirable but necessary if we want to make it through the next decades with any degree of sanity. Or at all, for that matter.
I worry since Paul Kingsnorth has given a name to this version of Christianity, intentional or not, that it will be swallowed by the great marketing machine. Maybe that's the cynical American in me. I grew up in the shadow of Lifeway Christian Resources. I can see the products on the shelves in suburban America right now. And I really really don't want Martin Shaw to be seen as a new John Eldredge. I know the Wild Christianity being discussed today is not remotely the same as the Wild at Heart world but once filtered down through the marketing machine I wonder how it will be fed to the masses.
Jack, I greatly appreciate your practical steps to fostering a renewed vision of the world and ourselves. I believe its part of what is essential in breaking the spell we are living under.
JP- It is a very real danger, should it ping the right (or rather, wrong) radar screens. Wild Christianity branded outdoor gear! Luxury glamping Wild Christian-style! Wild Christian reality shows! All of it is possible. I don't think it is being cynical at all, but simply realistic. We've all seen too much of it to know it isn't parody.
I think one *possible* way to avoid some, if not all of that, is to flesh it out and define it before it gets coopted. Wild Christianity cannot be a kind of theme park or relaxing getaway. It needs to cut to the core. In that sense maybe it is truly an idea at this point for a minority. We shall see.
Mark from Metanoia of Vermont writes something similar today. It is worth reading if you haven't yet.
https://metanoiavt.substack.com/p/a-place-to-come-and-die
-Jack
I do feel what is being discussed will require more than many are willing to do. And that may be its saving Grace.
Really at the end of the day this should not be a worry Paul or anyone associated with Wild Christianity can concern themselves with to much. To not discuss your ideas out of fear of it being devalued is a disservice to yourself.
The thought hit me though and I found it gross and unnerving. Thus is life at times.
Thanks for the link, Jack. Hadn’t come across Mark before, but really enjoyed the article. He’s definitely dialing it in. I’ll plan on reading a few more.
He is another one out there living it. I think his insights are important.
JP, that hadn’t occurred to me, but it’s certainly possible.
A devil’s advocate question. If folks are genuinely living the life being fleshed out among some writers, they’re probably not going to be interested in buying “stuff,” so marketing to them would be quite foolhardy from a profit perspective. But then, there would be the halfway folks who pop up, showing up in the “wild” in $90 shorts and a $200 backpack, so I suppose those folks could be a target.
Here’s the thing though, there are two words: “wild” and “Christianity”. And there are plenty of models of them. None who lived a materially cushy life.
Good to see you reading “Hesychasm,” Jack. It’s been one of the most consequential books of my life, and not for the faint of heart.
The wilderness of old was not an escape from, a road away, so much as it was road within, towards the center of the heart where Christ could be found. It was a dying to this world so that a tiny piece of eternal life in this world could be found and cleaved to so that eternity in the next world might come by the grace of God. Is that possible in the un-wild? Yes, but infinitely more difficult. The world builds us up with its distractions and materialism, the wild breaks us down as we begin seeing ourselves as quite small and we begin looking outside our pride for mercy.
The wild, such as I live in it, is not an easy life and certainly not “romantic” in the way city folk imagine it. Yesterday we had a blizzard. Keeping the road open required all my effort and was mostly a losing battle. Today, absolute exhaustion, and more snow and wind drifting it closed again. Tonight 30 below forecast and -8 for a high this afternoon. The propulsion on my small tractor froze shut and I had to jump off just before going through the garage door. Luckily that triggered a safety option when the seat popped up and stalled out the tractor.
This is life in the (somewhat) wild of rural Montana if you don’t have much money and take care of things yourself. But you know what? In the exhaustion and defeat often comes the most beautiful and connected prayer. The Fathers tell us this, of course, though it is hard to believe until you live it. The turning over of one’s life to the God that materialism rips from our heart and chews up.
Is this the way forward for ascetically or hesychastically minded folks? It is, in my opinion, if eternity in heaven is the goal of life.
Another substack writer that has explored a Wild Christianity is Martin Shaw. If you haven’t come across him his “Seeking a Liturgy of the Wild” series is quite good. He’s another recent Orthodox convert: https://martinshaw.substack.com/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=substack_profile
Tim- I am glad you are here and commenting. It is good to have the perspectives of those out there actually living it. It gives hope. The question of forming small communities--what might be called a micro-skate--to share the burden. Most of us will have to learn the virtues and skills to make it work. It is worth doing.
It is blowing snow up here in the mountains of Colorado as well. Though thankfully not nearly as cold. Thank God for the wood stove here in the hermitage.
I do know Martin Shaw's writing. It is very good. Maybe all this could inspire something of a literary movement. I would like to see that.
I hope all is well and you are warm enough. -Jack
Thank you, Jack. Funny, as I was writing the response to you I took out a line that said small communities of like minded folk might be an alternate way forward to “caves”, but where would one find those people? And then I deleted the line.
We have an Amish community here, and while I don’t subscribe to their theological perspectives, I think their idea of living isn’t so far off base. Or in your words, a micro-skete, or an old country village concept from a hundred years ago that the center of the community was a church.
Even in the original deserts those micro sketes often eventually formed. And in our age where we have nothing like the fortitude of those people, it’s not a bad idea worth fleshing out.
Something to think about: how many saints have come out of the deserts, caves and wildernesses, versus how many have come out of the huge city cathedrals all gilded and frescoed to the nines? Not a judgement, just a curiosity of mine. And then the question of course is why is that?
Tim- It may seem odd to say, but I think we need poets. I speak of poetry in the broadest way possible, about our intuitive sense of the deep down freshness of things. We will only really start looking for and finding each other when the deep poetry that motivates us points us in that direction.
I know the poetry I absorbed throughout my life has been poison. Pop music, sitcoms, bad movies, etc.
Scripture is a big part of finding a deeper vision of life. Just think how one reading changed the life of St. Anthony the Great. Also, we can develop literature that opens up the Gospel to us in new ways. Whether we know that's what it is doing or not.
It may be a big ask, but we might pray that God sends us our own Shakespeare, Dante, our Bach or Dostoevsky. That might change everything. But I think we can still start with whatever talents we have been given. Something I have been thinking about. -Jack
For some reason I am unable to edit comments. It should be, of course, micro-skete. I didn't catch the sneaky autocorrect.
Words by the Bishop Kallistos Ware in his book The Orthodox Way from the first chapter entitled God as Mystery. “he is personal and he is love”
having kebard difficulies... sme kes brkn....will respnd lader.
Clara
Clara-
This is hands down one of the best comments ever on the internet. It took me a second to understand. Anyway, I hope keyboard difficulties are soon fixed.
I finished watching the video you recommended. This brings up the obvious question about we will feed ourselves out there in the wilderness.
Speaking of which, have you seen this?
https://www.thehealingland.com
-Jack
Thank You. I did see that and it is sold out :( I really can't travel and take time anyway.
How we will feed ourselves?
My reaction to the Wild Christianity essay included the realization that those cave-saints never did ponder this question. He says they ate hazels and berries. I grow those things myself... they are there for a short time and certainly not year 'round. Good for a snack but in no way sufficient for my family. Sleeping in a cave in the wet... hypothermia? I hope I'm not being too literal about this, but I thought the point was that they had supernatural sustenance due to their extraordinary closeness with God. I know I haven't got that. As Paul said, the monk on Mt. Athos told him that they are "too soft" to achieve things that the fathers did.
I am not happy about knowing that I am too soft also. I think that to be in divine union with nature, as in the Garden, should be our ideal even as we know that there is a long road ahead. So to my understanding, going from a supermarket eater to a farm-fed eater would be huge step in the right direction. It would be lots more real and more appropriate considering I am not a cave saint but a housewife. And within farming practices there are lots of choices where we can simplify our needs and cooperate with nature vs. impose our desires and extract more. In my own small gardens I have already been bewildered by the choices that come up between these two extremes. Farming is really far more destructive than cave dwelling and wild food gathering. But far more practical.
My son likes to learn about wilderness survival stuff. He sleeps with only one blanket in our drafty old house far from the only stove. I sometimes try to convince him to use more blankets but he won't because he heard that one must harden oneself to the colder temperatures or else become "soft". I suppose with fasting and hardening of this kind we truly are capable of needing less. The native people who lived here in the past used to go barefoot in the snow and wear one arm bare right through the winters. I guess we are capable of far more than we think. Baby steps.
I am rambling on, but my point is that what we feed ourselves is
Clara- I think what the Shawn and Beth Dougherty are promoting would need to be the base, the economic base, of any sustainable culture of Wild Christianity. I only watched the one video. But what they are talking about is best illustrated in the fiction of Wendell Berry. A collection of smaller farms and surrounding a small town with some basic services, like a barber, etc.
There is, or can be, more to it, however. Berry prefers to remain outside of any institutional religion, best I can tell. But the Doughertys are Catholic and associated with a monastery. The monastery would be the spiritual base in this version. Within those two foundations various smaller lay contemplative communities would find their place. From that might grow some micro-sketes. And finally, perhaps a cave Christian or two.
I know nothing about farming, but there does seem to be an asceticism built into it. Getting up to milk the cow at 5 am in the winter for example. And, also, a kind of contemplation in silence and stillness and slowness. Being out in nature and in the flow of giving full attention to one's work. There is a reason those who live in rural areas find city-folk so nervous and jumpy. And they are right!
As I said in a previous comment all of this would not simply be for itself, but to undergird a life of prayer, worship and thanksgiving and connection to nature, one another and to God. This is the broader vision perhaps that all of us are trying to get at for a Wild Christianity.
-Jack
Yes! I think this is the vision that I long for. Wendell Berry does attend the local baptist church sometimes but it seems that it drives him crazy. Imagine him listening to the sermons. He complains that the organization sends young, low status preachers to his town and never keeps them there long enough for them to get to know the place or people.
I have been worrying about church. Our Quaker meeting is increasingly unworkable... just a manifestation of political affiliation for most of the people most of the time. In thinking of moving I have wondered if we'll have to do what Wendell does and just swallow our qualms and attend a little local church no matter the quirks. I have no experience at all of catholic church although I read things from a wide variety of Christian writers and relate to many. My husband and I have each other and that is our sustenance and accountability.
There you go dreaming of micro-skates again! Once wild christianity catches on the spell check will start recognizing these words ;)
Maybe the deeper question in all this is how do we reintegrate back with nature and still meet our basics needs without destroying everything? Can we work with nature rather than dominating? How do we invert the materialist hierarchy of needs and find a way of life with the most important aspects front and center? We can call it Wild Christianity or not, but I think those are the questions worth asking and answering.
Re integration into nature, is that not the ‘material’ element of Salvation? After all, our predicament is rooted in our alienation from Creation and the One who dwells within it? City living destroys the soul, and fast.
Trust the canyon is warming up!
- Eric
Darn that spell check.
Thanks for this, Clara,
I do think this is one of the places where 'the rubber hits the road'. It can be difficult for us to even know where to start. I think it's not only our modern habits, but even our nutrient deficient soils and pharmaceutically weakened bodies that make it hard to imagine living from the land.
I think both learning to fee ourselves from the land and how to live with less can be complementary paths. I do think the contemporary gardening/small scale agriculture/permaculture is a fine place to start, as well as slow 'baby steps' of experimenting with fasting and abstinence. I agree, though, it's quite humbling reading the accounts of both the saints of old and of the indigenous people of fairly recent times.
That's wonderful that your son is exploring these things in his own way!
Yes, that is a good point. They say that in those times of the Wampanoag one could just walk along Pleasant Bay and pick up shellfish the size of my laptop. Living from the land was a different proposition, the health and training of the people was so different. We must approach the task with humility and faith.
I find it interesting that there are signs of a resurgence of asceticism in the popularity of cold immersion and intermittent fasting. Now, much of the impetus for this is for physical well-being. But that isn't necessarily opposed to the spiritual benefits. A slight shift in thinking might do the trick to broaden the understanding of its benefits.
I do believe that we are capable of far more as human beings. I know I can harp on technology and comfort as forms of human atrophy, but it is undeniably true to me. Atrophy is atheism, in that sense. Maybe all the cold showers will start to wake us up in a far deeper way than is intended.
I like hearing that your son is inclined toward asceticism. I have had that inclination most of my life as well. There is a great joy to it if done right.
-Jack
He certainly isn't consistently inclined toward asceticism across the board. He does admire that wilderness, survivor, mountain man type.
oops, hit post accidentally. I don't know what my point is. I guess it is just that I feel the need to get closer to that far off ideal, to trust more and become more real. We are so pampered. Clara
Hi Clara
Thank you for this thread. I’m an Anglican priest and been in my current parish 12 years. The questions you ask about ‘church’ bumble round in my head continually. The Institution is so mechanistic it’s a constant fight to keep things remotely Vital.
And yes to food. We can’t all live off wild berries! (We’ve just made some fruit paste though from NZ crab apples foraged from a house we stayed in for a few days. The owners just wanted the tree as an ornament! )
Grace to you
Hello Eric,
I've always enjoyed your comments on here but never knew you were a priest! My husband and I grew up in a non-denominational evangelical church that emphasized "discipleship" (as opposed to academic training) and church planting. Being sincere youths we found ourselves planted into Trenton NJ and became the pastor and the pastor's wife. We always read a lot, however, and eventually were cast out of this particular church group because we could not agree to all the doctrines, teachings, and mandatory stuff we were supposed to go along with. That was kind of a defining moment of our lives. Ever since we have tried to 'go to church' but never found one that seemed alive and well. I suppose it is simply up to us to be alive and well ourselves and trust God to work things out. It feels wrong to raise our children without church community, but the Quakers we have been worshipping with for 7 years have failed to spark anything much the kids could grasp on to. I do love the silent worship after having endured sermons of varying quality 3 or 4 times per week for the first half of my life. I'm sure I'd love to be in your church -- I have no fantasy of looking for perfection -- just earnest companionship as we follow The Way.
Clara
Hi Clara
Thank you, but fortunately for you, my church lies the other side of the Pacific Ocean :) Yes, earnest companionship, people with whom to share bread :)
I appreciate the Quakers. George Fox’s famous pulpit was but a few miles from where I grew up in a quiet corner of Northern England.
As to churches that are ‘alive and well’, I think they need to discover that God is their Life, we all do. It’s a demanding work to find our satisfaction in God. In my tradition we’ve entered Lent, a time for reflecting on our dusty existence which cannot of itself live. There may be hope in the exhaustion of the modern church which implicitly says to God, “we’ve got this! See you at the end!” but is running on fumes. Eventually we all fall into Gods Arms, better to stop avoiding it - but I’m rambling also :)
Grace to you
Eric
A great read all around. This bit hit me particularly hard:
“The road out to the wilderness of the desert yet remains open. In remembering who we are we see that the purpose of our lives is to be filled with the energies of the Divine, with the Holy Spirit, and not with material abundance. Not I, but the Wild Christ who lives in me.”
I love the addition of “wild” there. That was really something. Thanks for your contribution of this Wild Christianity idea. I stumbled upon Paul Kingsnorth’s larger article on it yesterday and your post today. Seems like the idea is certainly moving on its own. Praise God for that.
Derek-
I think Paul's idea of Wild Christianity ties together a lot of notions swirling around at the moment. It provides us with a central metaphor. It is the beginning of a mythos--a different sense of our telos and where it can best be found. I am encouraged by it and feel it is worth developing.
The idea of a Wild Christ is not mine. I am pretty sure Paul has used it. And Martin Shaw. It appears in the comment sections, etc. But it is a powerful idea.
Thank you for your comment and kind words. -Jack
I am a run-of-the-mill agnostic as far as my upbringing goes.
But more and more I believe (and I FEEL) that I need to get closer to God (that light, that gentle breeze, that mother to her chicks) and that getting closer to God is closely linked to one's proximity to the machine. I do not know which triggers what - does closeness to God trigger one's desire to run out of the machine, or is it the other way round, we run away from the machine to make room for God?
I am not sure, but I know this:
The machine never allows you time to breathe, time to listen, and time to think.
The machine never lets you wonder about your purpose, apart from being a consumer or a little cog of course.
When I pray, I realize that my body wants to breathe, breathe deeply, and it does, and it feels refreshed.
When I pray, I suddenly get still enough to listen, and there is space for thought.
When I pray, I am reminded that I am not just a consumer or a little cog.
When I pray, I am convinced that God (the light, the breeze, the mother with her chicks) is real, and is close by.
And last night, as I prayed, the final bit of "Fahrenheit 451" came to my mind: Montag, with his precious hidden bounty ("Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin" ") moves out of the city and into the wilderness, meeting others like him as civilization crumbles around them.
For the first time I realized that Montag's verse is a reminder of how the lilies are not consumers or little cogs, and God lavishes love, care, and beauty on them nonetheless.
Quakeress, I think you have articulated beautifully much of how I came to God/Faith after years of active avoidance. I wrote elsewhere that I didn't know how I got here, or what the catalyst was but I am now very grateful that I did.
Almost every line you've written has me going "YES, me too!"
I will give this a better fleshing out later, but I need to pray right now before work intrudes.
Thank you!
Andrew, it's lovely to know that somebody out there is on a similar journey. :-) I'd love to hear more about yours.
Thank YOU!
Once we know (with the desert fathers and their current disciples) that our calling is to prayer: it is time to pray. Invoking the Name of The Holy One. For as many minutes and hours as we can manage. Other occupations shrink --- without decision on our part -- because "the things of earth grow strangely dim in the light of His Glory and Grace".
To re-coin a phrase, "Just do it".
Patrice-
Amen to this. How much more do I need to know to come to this conclusion. As much as I see the sickness and addiction at the heart of our current iteration of civilization, I hesitate at the door leading out from it. "Just a few more things, and I will be ready". It is a strategy of postponment and procrastination. I know what I need to do. When will I take the leap and simply do it?
Thank you for the reminder.
It seems to me that wild Christ-Like Christians would be openly talking about and praying to the Father like Jesus did and pointing others to that same walk and talk he had. Yes, saying, Father, for as Jesus said, “the mouth speaks what the heart if full of” and he was full of the reality of the Father. Shouldn’t we also if we are full of the Holy Spirit? I don’t feel or sense in the authors you quote the robust spirituality I read in the Gospels or Acts or Psalms. It feels enervated and remote and not for the ordinary person. I have read Christ the Eternal Tao and many other Eastern Orthodox writings.
Jeff- We are all trying to get our bearings on this idea of wild Christianity. Speaking for myself, it is still in the very beginning. What can I say? Christ the Eternal Tao *does* speak to me in very intimate ways. It is profound to me. If it isn't for you does that constitute a problem? Not in my mind. My assumption in all this is that all of us engaging this are doing the best we can to find our way forward. Some will emphasize things that other won't. Again, I don't see this as a problem. Do as you see best. I will do the same. We take what we can as we can. At the points where conversation can be fruitful, then good, so be it. If not, I leave it be.
I only offer what insight I have, paltry as it is. I don't seek to convince anyone.
Thank you for your comment. I hope you are well. -Jack
What a gracious and patient reply to my mini-rant! Thank you.
I guess I am content with the Bible as a guide to my walk with God, meditating on it and aiming to duplicate in my own limited way what is presented as the knowing of God. For me it feels closer to source than later writers. One later writer I do resonate with is Saint Patrick https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/pat-confession.asp
Amen. I meditate on scripture every morning.
It is obvious that you are a highly intelligent and well read man. I trust that you know what you are doing.
It is good to have you here. -Jack
Ha! “know what you are doing” I get there by the usual process of doing it wrong first.
You and me both.
I very much resemble that remark!
Don't we all? :-)
Thank you for this post, Jack. I think you are articulating this dynamic well. It's remarkable to me to hear you say that this is based very little on your own direct experience, given how much what you're writing resonates.
I think the role of the Wilderness and of lay contemplative communities can go hand in hand. Time in the truly wild lands can support the movements of inner purification, break from the 'spell' of the world and its systems (ever more pervasive in the digital age), and awakening to the life of God and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, etc. Very few can live in the wild lands permanently, but I think most serious Christians would benefit immensely from time spent in wild retreat. The key question then becomes where to land ourselves, physically, after the wilderness immersion. As you mentioned, many people don't really have much agency in this regard. But for those that do, it seems crucial for there to be communities and systems of daily life that can carry on the same dynamics of inner work. What is wildly intense in the wilderness can then be supported in a slower, ongoing way in a community grounded in prayer.
This is one of the dynamics we are trying to work out at Metanoia - the ongoing dynamic between wilderness and community/daily life. Before Lisa and I had children, we'd each take a roughly 5-day wilderness solo each year to keep that aspect of faith 'hot'. We're trying to figure out ways in which it will be possible for each person in the community to lean in to the wilderness, in a way that is in harmony with their current state of life.
Mark- As you state here, there can be--needs to be--a broader conception of Wild Christianity than the cave Christian. That would limit the idea to probably about 37 people worldwide. But the cave dwellers can be the most intense experience and formulation of it. From there it can be modified as necessary while attempting to keep the same wild spirit. I think working out the interconnections between the various "levels" is key. Having this conversation and being bold enough to try it out to see what works is the only way to bring this further into being. There will be plenty of mistakes and blind alleys.
Well, I guess I don't want to overemphasize my own direct experience--whatever it amounts to--when I am leaning so heavily on the words of others of far greater spiritual attainment. And I don't want to step on any toes, if I can help it. For what it's worth. -Jack
Agreed - the cave hermits are an incredibly valuable 'North pole' to hold in relationship with the rest of our efforts....
Yes. The other "levels" would reflect the aspirations of the cave hermit in their own differing ways. All the various levels should support and mirror each other. Like a fractal.
Mark- I changed the footnote. I was overcompensating for something. Worth digging into. Thank you for pointing it out. -Jack
"unworkable schemes for happiness" hahahahahahahaha!
About 2 minutes before reading this I was trying to crunch the numbers (for 50th time!) on how I can quit my job in a year.
Spoilers - its just not doable yet. But maybe an overdue break is :)
Arthur-
I have spent the bulk of my adult life richly cultivating unworkable schemes for happiness. I know them so well! And they are tenacious little buggers, as you say.
I hope quitting your job becomes a reality much sooner than you think.
-Jack
Jack, interesting because I have an MFA in Poetry and published a book when I was younger. Let me flesh this out a bit.
Poetry, like almost everything else in our culture, has been commodified (or sucked into the Machine). Students take on enormous debt to learn the art of writing, get out of school and also try to become teachers in MFA programs charging the next round of students enormous sums of money. Teachers also have consumers for their poetry in their students, because who else reads or buys poetry anymore? Round and round it goes…
And poetry as a result has become cheap (think Bonhoeffer’s cheap grace as an analogy), politicized, and worst of all boring in its fake revolutions.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe you mean something deeper. The great poets (generally speaking, not just writers of verse) whose hearts have been softened and have touched their own souls in a way that they can universalize that and communicate it to others so that their hearts also soften and perhaps touch something eternal.
If I’m almost correct in your thinking, I agree wholeheartedly. The world needs softer hearts touching the eternal. You saw Paul’s essay today. I don’t disagree with what he’s saying at all, but the idea of “poets” and caves and hermitages (even connected in clusters of not too close micro-sketes) is more appealing to me personally than political answers, even if the politics is only superficial. The problem of political structures, even on a small human scale, is that the devil easily corrupts through power and pride. Political structures are the epitome of power and pride. And so, even soft political structures can become too easily corrupted and corrupting destroying the project. And lastly I don’t think God has set any of us out to change the world. Christ’s call is to change ourselves. We know what the world is, and we know how it ends. None of us are going to change that except on the most tiny scale. Perhaps ourselves, our family, a few friends. Any larger project is dreadfully close to filling oneself up with pride.
I think, broadly speaking, we can think of God as a poet. Christ and the Holy Spirit as well if we dig in. Perhaps we can become poets too (true poets) by touching a piece of the heavenly home we are all called to through the intense prayer and the grace of communion that only a hesychastic or ascetical life brings? I don’t know the answer to this. It’s what I’m exploring in the last chapter of my life though.
Now this is poetry!
“Man enters the space of mental stillness when his soul is filled with the energy of repentance and the Spirit of God. Then, enclosed in his little cell ‘as in a palace’, he sits on a small stool which becomes a throne of Cherubim from whence he watches over his heart with the words of the Jesus Prayer.
However, one does not easily reach such a state. For this ascetic labor, constant tension is required. Man’s spirit might be still, but in order to stand in this stillness it is in constant tension. An electric wire seems lifeless, but if touched, the current flowing through it is lethal; so too the Hesychast may seem lifeless in the eyes of the world, but a mighty, rushing current of life runs through him. In the eyes of God, he is indeed ‘alive’, carrying within him ‘life in abundance’.” Hesychasm
It makes me wonder whether this deeper poetry is a form of seeing and expressing the sacramental cosmos. Without it expressed poetry withers and dies. Which is what happened.
Indeed!
Love the electric wire illustration
Yes! And Amen!
Tim-
Beautiful! You are the perfect person to discuss this with. It is interesting to hear your experience with getting an MFA in poetry. I dated a woman long ago who had gotten a PhD in poetry. It was interesting, to say the least, to compare her approach and understanding with my own amateur interests. Often very different.
But you have expressed my point very well. I am looking for the poetry beneath the poetry. Which consists of an implicit and intuitive combination of myth, philosophy, theology, practice, metaphor, insight, etc. Or rather the underground river (ocean?) by which all the above are fed. Beneath that, as I fathom it, is a deep, infinite silence. How can we cast our little rod and reel into those depths? It is from this that the deep poetry emerges. This is what we all resonate with and seek. I have thought about it for a long time and am trying to articulate it more completely.
I am drawn to the Classical Chinese poets (albeit in a very amateur way. I make no pretense to having a real knowledge). I only know it in translation, but nonetheless something shines often shines through. It isn't merely talking about life, it is life. If that makes any sense. Any some of the Zen Hermit poets, e.g. Han Shan, seem to get at "consider the birds of the air" as a way of life better than I have seen elsewhere. I think it is a source of renewal for Christian poetry, in both in the standard sense, and in the deeper sense as we are using it here.
Are you aware of any contemporary poets that approach this? I know that might be a difficult request, given how vague I am being. Or a writings about poetry that touch on this?
Do you still write? -Jack
Jack, I don’t write anymore. I worked on a second book for 15 years. All of the poems but one were published in significant literary journals, but by then the poetry world had passed me by. There was zero interest in poetry as prayer, as reaching towards the eternal. So I stopped cold. Quit drinking. Converted to Orthodoxy, which I’ve come to see as almost incompatible with most contemporary poetry which is more concerned with the self and politics. Or at least that’s the way it was headed. I haven’t read anything new in a decade.
Now I reach toward the eternal through stillness, not words.
Contemporary American Poetry is about the young and their revolutions and pride and self. Orthodoxy is the opposite. It’s about the elders and Fathers and the tradition and humility and the other. Totally different ways of looking at the world.
You’ve probably read the Catholic priest, Gerard Manley Hopkins, but if not he was a fantastic poet and had a great early influence on me. Not contemporary though. Bei Dao is a well regarded contemporary Chinese poet that has stillness at the center of his work, and to my ear the fulcrum of that stillness is spiritual. He’s older now. My teacher LS Asekoff, though an atheist, always had a deeply spiritual undertone to his work. He’s in his 80s now, and no longer writes either. Franz Wright had a spiritual tension in his early work even through the self destruction and pain, and then converted to Catholicism at the end of his life and wrote some beautifully religious work before he died. Nathaniel Mackey is more experimental, but to my mind the best living African American poet. He has a spiritual sense to his work, but hidden away in the experimentation. Kind of like Coltrane or Pharoah Sanders did in Jazz, and I think Mackey would cite them as influences in his work. As sole literary editor of the legendary Hambone magazine, he always supported my work through the years. The great German Rilke is not a contemporary poet, but if you haven’t read the Duino Elegies they are incredible. Opening of 1st elegy:
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels' hierarchies?
and even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart:
I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Every angel is terrifying.
And so I hold myself back and swallow the call-note of my dark sobbing.
Ah, whom can we ever turn to in our need?
Not angels, not humans, and already the knowing animals are aware
that we are not really at home in our interpreted world.
Tim- I understand about not writing. I got my BFA in Music Composition. A few years back I decided to hang it up. The whole music scene was just poisonous and found it spiritually degrading to continue to involve myself. I do sing in the two-man choir at Liturgy up here at the monastery. Which is a great joy.
I do know Hopkins. At the moment in my very early draft on getting the poetry right I am using a line of his as the title. That is always subject to change. But he seems to me to be the perfect poet for what am I groping toward--a sacrament poet and a nature poet. I read a lot of Rilke when I was younger, and his The Man Watching had the deepest resonance for me.
I know nothing at all of contemporary Chinese poetry but Bei Dao seems to be an interesting extension of classical poetry. I may get a copy of some his work at some point. Thank you for the recommendation.
In thinking about the poetry beneath the poetry--a poetics of stillness--it is that part of us which is actually in contact with reality. From the world around us to intuitions of the Divine. Our current machine poetics is divorced from reality, as you say, it is about, "about the young and their revolutions and pride and self". It is the deep poetics that drives it. A deep poetics that is very shallow, if I may phrase it so paradoxically. I wonder how this might be shifted.
I am also a long time reader of TS Eliot. I find the trajectory of his whole body of work--from the powerless despair of Prufrock to the mysticism of The Four Quartets--as very relevant to what I have been meditating on lately. There is a record there of at least one man's exit from the wasteland. What would be the version of it for our day?
Anyway, thank you for the discussion. I hope it is at least a little bit warmer up in Montana.
-Jack
Merely Being Silent is fleeing the World
“What must we do to do the works of God?” is the World’s question, that of those enslaved to Moloch.
“Trust is the one He has sent”
Discover Psalm 131 and The Peace of Wild Things. The Kingdom is after all, a discovery, no?
Trust you are well - Eric
If there are Still Wells of Silence, The World’s Furies will be reoriented and will be saved.
This is the hope.
‘To choose silence as the mind’s default . . . is indeed a subversive act.’ Maggie Ross : Silence - A user’s guide
Long live such subversion!
The World is an incoherent storm
It lacks an eye which would bring order to the chaos. It would still be awesome but beautiful also. Silence is The Eye
At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
--T.S. Eliot. Burnt Norton. The Four Quartets.
I sent this to my Kindle to read later, and I’m so glad to have come back around to it. Religion has played no role in my life but the underlying messages here, I think, speak to the essence of our place in the world and also our place within ourselves. Bill McKibbon having already declared the end of nature in 1991, the concept of hyperobjects, the fact that there are around 3000 tons of built environment for every human being on the planet—Wild Christianity may not only be desirable but necessary if we want to make it through the next decades with any degree of sanity. Or at all, for that matter.