Tag: Religion

Sunday Morning.

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[…] Faith surrounded me, inspiring my poetry. But I wanted to participate: I wanted to believe in belief, the religious kind, the God kind, and find my own way into this sacred landscape. Mostly, though, I remained a stalker of other people’s devotion. The Bhutanese monks with whom I sat practicing lotus mudra 108 times, the Tamil pilgrims I followed who put skewers through their cheeks as an act of devotion to Lord Murugan. I was a religious voyeur, trying to feel a charge from other people’s worshiping currents. But faith? I didn’t have it. Faith requires no evidence, and I was still seeking. […]

I haven’t stopped believing… that the world’s sacred, nodal sites offer us flashes of transcendence. A moment for our souls to be attentive and still. But I know now that an encounter with the sublime can happen in the most ordinary of places.

I’ve come to understand as well why poets so frequently address the invisible in their poems, something or someone they do not know and cannot see. Call it God, fog, the future. It is our need for connection that makes us speak into the void. Not so much for a reply, but simply as an expression of belief that someone is there, and is listening, and may even stretch out a hand.

— Tishani Doshi, from “I Searched the World’s Holiest Places for a God” (NY Times, May 18, 2025). Doshi is a writer and dancer, is the author most recently of “A God at the Door,” a book of poems.

Photo Credit & Essay: Laurence Ellis Photo / Essay in the “Port” – “The Woman: Tishani Doshi“

Walking. God is not Dead!

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57° F. yesterday, Spring is in the air. I contemplate dragging out the outdoor furniture from the basement.

Then, this morning arrived. 20° F, feels like 3° F, winds up to 20 mph from the North. Brutal.

I walk, thinking about sitting on the outdoor furniture in the basement, reading a chapter or two — with a floor heater at my feet. Maybe the furniture goes out next month.

I walk. It’s been 1,762 consecutive (almost) days on this daybreak walk at Cove Island Park. Like in a Row.

The park, with its handful of regulars, has had a new entrant. Let’s call her Janet. Janet rolls into the park taking the same route each morning, skipping along the breakwall to the cliff, pausing for 5-10 minutes to belt out a tune at the top of her lungs, arms and hands clutching for the heavens. Unclear what she’s singing and why she needs to belt it out at earsplitting levels that can be heard at the far reaches of the Park.

So this morning, just another morning, here comes Janet. And there goes the Wildlife, DK and other park patrons quickly moving in the other direction.

Charlotte Wood: “The beauty of being here is largely the silence, after all.“

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Sunday Morning

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‘We have to try to cure our faults by attention and not by will…Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love. Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer. If we turn our mind towards the good, it is impossible that little by little the whole soul will not be attracted thereto in spite of itself.’ Simone Weil.

Our Simone once took me to task over my ‘sneering’ about prayer. My notion of prayer was juvenile: forget this telephone line to God bullshit, she snapped, hot with impatience. It wasn’t even about God, she said, which I thought must surely be blasphemous. Praying was a way to interrupt your own habitual thinking, she told me. It’s admitting yourself into otherness, cracking open your prejudices. It’s not chitchat; it’s hard labour. She spoke as if all this were obvious. I longed to understand her. It feels always that I am on the edge of some comprehension here but never breaking through to the other side.

At night, just before sleep, is when I am closest to reaching it. In the morning, when the birds start, belief is as thin as the light.

— Charlotte Wood, Stone Yard Devotional (Riverhead Books, February 11, 2025)

Notes:

Recommended.

Book Reviews:

Walking. With my Religion.

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4:00 a.m. I check the weather app: 18° F, wind speed 15 mph from the North, wind gusts up to 28 mph. Temperature feels like – 1° F. Winds from The Great White North, a reminder of Home. Add the presence of high tide, cloud cover of < 5% and there would be less-than-zero reason to be going out this morning, except one of the three requirements of a great morning trifecta being present, No Humans. Wally snuggles close, belly so warm, he snores. I tip toe out of the room, wood floors cold, body and bones resist, this Earth won’t stop spinning if I take the day off.

Last Night. Rachel asks if we would drive into the city to pick her up. Luggage, Sully, Christmas gifts, just way too much to haul solo on Metro North. The response was swift: Absolutely Not. Google Maps estimates ~90 minutes in both directions, if all goes well. Holiday traffic snarling. Tolls subject to surge pricing add to the misery. Now, why would anyone subject themselves to this? Well…It’s 8 p.m., and here I am, in the car, driving into Manhattan. Madness. 30 minutes to travel 30 miles. 60 minutes to navigate the last 10 minutes into Gotham. Think Mad Max in Thunderdome. Eastside highway traffic moving 55-70 mph, along NARROW, I mean a NARROW three lanes on something closer to a gravel country road than highway. Reach out your window and touch the yellow cab next to you. Reach out the passenger side, you’d be skimming the restraining wall of the East River. It’s less than one hour from bedtime, and here I am, bleary-eyed, hands clenching the steering wheel — the body knows, stomach cramps signaling high anxiety. I shift in my seat conscious of one errant move right or left and there is a pile up of massive proportions — followed by a 2 hour delay with cops, and accident reports. But, there’s something to prove here. Man-Child from small town Western Canada still has it — can make it on these tough streets of NYC. Cab driver behind me has his hand on the horn urging me to speed up, I’m going 60 mph. He passes giving me the bird, must be the Connecticut plates. I reciprocate with genuine kindness, turning on my high beams and tailgating him for the next mile or two, high beams flickering in his rear view mirror. Don’t mess with Country. He turns off at Exit 15. Still got it. Man-child.

4:30 a.m. I settle into my office chair. No longer reading the papers, nothing uplifting there. No longer following politics. I check the box scores. Check blog posts. Read another chapter or two, and then close my eyes reflecting on the drive into Manhattan, operating on < 5 hours sleep. “Yes, Lord, I am thankful today again for every reminder of how I have outlived my worst imagination. I will walk slowly through the garden of all that could have killed me but didn’t.” — Hanif Abdurraqib

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Walking. With a Sign?

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Can you find the Canada Goose in the shot above? I’ll wait until you find it. Yes, there. The speck, bottom right. Hold that thought.

It’s Thursday, 1514 consecutive (almost) days on this morning daybreak walk at Cove Island Park. Like in a row.

I step into the park. It’s dark.

I walk.

I’ve had a flurry of chatter around me about Signs.

They see signs in the spotting of Cardinals, Blue Jays, Feathers, Hearts, Sparrows, Robins, and even Moths.

Don’t you see it DK? There!

I’ve grown up. (A little.) I stare quietly, body language not giving anything up, offering a look of contemplation. The thought process having evolved from “are you kidding me, you don’t really believe that, do you? aka George Carlin style: Religion: A Bullshit Story.

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