Category Archives: Spirituality

The music of Iris Dement

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Last Sunday I caught an NPR interview with one of today’s finest country and folk music artists, Iris Dement.  Her music is not as well known as it should be, though it has been featured on several notable TV shows and movies.

I first heard Dement’s music in the final scene of the final episode of my favorite TV show of the 90’s, Northern Exposure.  The song, “Our Town,” from her first album Infamous Angel 1992, illustrates one constant in her work, an unflinching look at the losses and longings that permeate our lives.

And you know the sun’s settin’ fast,
And just like they say, nothing good ever lasts.
Well, go on now and kiss it goodbye,
But hold on to your lover,
‘Cause your heart’s bound to die.
Go on now and say goodbye to our town, to our town.
Can’t you see the sun’s settin’ down on our town, on our town,
Goodnight.

In the NPR interview, Dement said that for her, singing is prayer, and two other songs on Infamous Angel reflect the range of her spirituality.  The album’s title song is about redemption, imagined from the perspective of her evangelical upbringing, while “Let the Mystery Be” opened the soundtrack of Little Buddha 1993.

Everybody’s wonderin’ what and where they all came from.
Everybody’s worryin’ ’bout where they’re gonna go when the whole thing’s done.
But no one knows for certain and so it’s all the same to me.
I think I’ll just let the mystery be.

Dement’s second album, My Life, 1994, won a grammy nomination in the Best Contemporary Folk Album category.  The liner notes explain why it’s dedicated to her father who had been a fiddler but stopped playing after he was “saved.”  Young Iris was fascinated by the dusty violin case in the back of the closet and one day mustered the courage to ask her father to play a song.  He looked at her and at at the violin for a very long long time before picking the instrument up.  The few bars he played gave his daughter permission.  “No Time to Cry,” is her song about his passing.

Also notable on My Life is “Sweet is the Melody,” a beautiful song and fine expression of the nature of the creative process:

Sweet is the melody, so hard to come by
It’s so hard to make every note bend just right
You lay down the hours and leave not one trace
But a tune for the dancing is there in it’s place

Dement appears in Songcatcher 2000, a movie about an early 20th century musicologist collecting Scots-Irish ballads in the Appalachians.  She sings “Pretty Saro,” an expression of American roots music that parallels her own search for musical authenticity. Her most recent film credit is True Grit, 2010, where her version of the classic hymn, “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” plays at the end of the movie.  You can watch a clip in my review of the movie: http://wp.me/pYql4-up

The recent NPR interview follows the release of Dement’s fourth album, Sing the Delta, a reference to the Arkansas Delta where she was born. http://www.npr.org/2012/10/28/163560263/singing-is-praying-for-iris-dement.  She discusses the importance of her Pentecostal upbringing.  As the youngest of 14 children, she sang in the church choir and took her faith seriously as an adolescent.  Losing that faith as an adult is reflected in her new song, “The night I learned how not to pray,” yet Dement emphasizes her gratitude for what she was taught as a child, saying it gave her a message “about what’s going on underneath the waters of life.  My parents just gave me a gift I can’t even put a figure on.”

Though she left the beliefs that sustained her youth, Dement relates a lesson she learned from her mother, “My mom, who sang straight up until the day she died, told me one day: ‘You know, Iris, singing is praying and praying is singing. There ain’t no difference.’ So I think, even though I’ve left the church and moved away from a lot of the things that didn’t do me any good, I continued to pray — and that is singing for me.”

You won’t find music more sincere or heartfelt than this.

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This is post #17 in a series of reflections on spirituality and living that fellow blogger, Jason, has been posting every Monday. Each post relates to a letter of the alphabet. Who knew that “Q” could generate such a useful series of thoughts that are both timely and timeless? – Morgan

Jason E. Marshall's avatarLiving In The Now

This is my seventeenth post in a series, where each Monday (if possible) I will post about a point of reflection or insight that I will use to reflect and meditate on during the week. In order to make it a bit more focused and interesting, I will attempt to do this with topics beginning with letters from A to Z. I have often found that having a specific topic to reflect and/or meditate on during the week really lends itself to interesting insights and growth, because you not only have several days to reflect and meditate on the topic, but you have several days to put any lessons and insights that you discover to work in your every day life. For those that follow me on Twitter (@JasonLivingNow) I will try to write updates as the weekly topics come up during meditations, moments of reflection, or just during everyday…

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Lost, a poem by David Wagoner

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David Wagoner, a prolific poet and novelist, was born in the midwest in 1926.  In 1954, he moved to the Pacific northwest and said that crossing the Cascades and coming down into a Pacific rainforest “was a big event for me, it was a real crossing of a threshold, a real change of consciousness. Nothing was ever the same again.”  He has taught at the University of Washington since that time.

He based his marvelous poem, “Lost” on teachings the northwest coast Indians gave their children on what to do if they ever got lost in the forest.

Lost

Stand still.  The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost.  Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes.  Listen.  It answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven,
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost.  Stand still.  The forest knows
Where you are.  You must let it find you.

From, Travelling Light, Collected and New Poems, 1999

Up to each one of us

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Last weekend, I attend a teaching by Lama Pema Wangdak, a Tibetan Buddhist who was sent by the head of his order to teach in this country in 1982.  I invite you to read about his many humanitarian activities, which include founding schools in three countries and inventing a Tibetan brail alphabet. http://www.ewamchoden.org/?p=2093

Lama Pema

Lama Pema represents the next generation of the Tibetan diaspora, educated by traditional Tibetan masters, but fully acclimated to western culture.  He illustrates points of philosophy with current movies or ancient stories with equal ease.  He has a great sense of humor too.

Many traditional teachings are presented in simple phrases, called “pith instructions,” that are easy grasp with the intellect, but not so easy to grasp in depth.  For instance, we all understand the truth that “everything changes,” but it takes reflection to real-ize in the gut what that means in personal terms.

Because of this election season, some of Lama Pema’s comments ventured into the realm of politics.  He threw out some of his own deceptively simple concepts, which I’m still pondering and want to pass on.

One of his constant themes is individual responsibility, moment by moment, in trying to create the kind of world we want to live in.  “The peace of the world hinges on you and me,” he said.  I jotted down some of his other comments.

“We expect the world to be ‘right’ and to make us feel good.  In fact, we are in the midst of chaos and it’s up to us to make it right.”

“There are some people who can improve situations by their very presence, by their inner nature.  There are others for whom it’s not quite right, and when they are done, it’s much worse.  Both capacities live within each of us.” 

“We have to stand up for what we believe in, be decisive about what we are aiming for…To belittle oneself, undermine oneself is a real sin…To take risks, even at the risk of being wrong, is far better than not taking risks.”

“A great part of our humanity is sustained by legends, imagination, and hope.  It’s all imagination.  To take life as a dream helps lower our blood pressure.”

Deceptively simple ideas.  The kind it’s easy to jot down in a notebook and forget about a day or two later.

One classic exercise with this kind of teaching is to take one of these points and focus on it for a day or a week or longer.  Mull it over, bring it to mind when we wake, while walking in from the parking lot, while waiting at red lights.  “What do I believe in, what do I need to stand up for?” for instance.

As if to underscore the idea, Lama Pema gave the example of Gandhi.  Even though we know it happened, it’s hard to believe one skinny little man could push the British out of India.  The core of all his action was knowing what he believed in, what he stood for, with unswerving certainty.

There was no suggestion that we are called to change the world in such a dramatic manner.  The suggestion was that at every moment, our thoughts and actions always change the world, either for good or ill.  The suggestion was to bring mindfulness to bear on our “simple” actions and see what kind of difference they can make.

This summer I met a hero

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It’s so easy to get caught up in negativity.  Sometimes all it takes is a quick scan of the paper or a click on a topical websites to make the world seem full of scallawags and scoundrels.  This summer, however, I was privileged to meet a towering figure of moral courage.

His Eminence Choden Rinpoche was born in eastern Tibet in 1933.  At the age of three, he was recognized as the reincarnation of a previous master, and he took novice ordination vows at seven.  He chose not to flee Tibet after the Chinese takeover, and beginning in 1965, during the cultural revolution, Rinpoche spent 19 years in seclusion, living in a windowless basement room at a cousin’s house in Lhasa.

During the cultural revolution, thousands of monasteries were destroyed and more than a million people, especially lamas, monks, and nuns were imprisoned.  When the Chinese burst into his room unannounced at various times of the day or night, they never found any incriminating evidence of religious activity – no texts or even prayer beads.  He was able to hide in plain sight because they thought him an invalid.

Like other spiritual giants – Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Martin Luther King – Choden Rinpoche used his time in what amounted to a cell to deepen his practice.  From memory and imagination, he recited texts and performed rituals he had learned, internalizing Buddhist philosophy.

“From the point of view of spiritual practice, there was great accomplishment in living as I did…If I had gone with the Chinese, I would have received a house, a car and high rank, but I would have had to harm people and cause much suffering…I didn’t have to experience any of this.  These were the advantages of living as I did.”  – from a pamphlet published by Ananda Dharma Center, San Jose, CA, 2012. 

In 1985, Rinpoche was able to leave for India, and he has been teaching around the world since then.  I was a beneficiary this summer and attended a very special series of teachings he gave at his US home, the Ananda Dharma Center in San Jose.  http://anandadharma.org

On July 28, I went to the final event of the summer, a long-life puja for Rinpoche.  It’s a beautiful ceremony in which students, friends, and other lamas essentially ask him to stick around in his present incarnation as long as possible.  Choden Rinpoche is a Tulku, a word for those believed to be able to chose the time and place of their next birth.  For the rest of us, the puja is a way of saying, “Hang on – don’t leave yet!”

Rinpoche has had trouble with his knee.  On Thursday, he flew to Taiwan where some of his students are doctors.  Today he undergoes knee replacement surgery.  Friends and students around the world are sending prayers and good wishes in his direction.  With that in mind, I decided to write that post, knowing even as I did so, that I am really the one it benefits.

Like his friend, the Dalai Lama, Choden Rinpoche’s mind is always fixed on what’s beneficial.  Some of the rest of us (meaning me) have to rely on the inspiration of people like this to bring unruly thoughts back to what really matters.

We have met the enemy…

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The Colorado shootings will forever cast a pall over the opening day of the latest Batman movie, the kind of action-adventure fantasy many of us were looking forward to as an escape from all the other bad news that fills the papers these days.

I cannot add anything to the expressions of grief and outrage that the people of Colorado have and will make, but I heard one thing this morning that gave me pause.

The governor of Colorado said, “This is the act of a very deranged mind.”  It’s a natural thing to say, and we hear the same words after every similar tragedy.  The Texas Tower.  Oklahoma City.  Columbine.  The first thing we try to do is assure ourself that the crime was the work of a nut or monster.  The last thing we want to hear are comments now emerging from people who knew the suspect and say he seemed “really smart,” and “a nice guy.”  It’s terrifying to think that an “ordinary person” or a neighbor could do something like this.

Thich Nhat Hahn, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk who Martin Luther King nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, was versed both in Buddhist and western psychology.  His teachings gave me the concept of “store consciousness.”

Thich Nhat Hahn

This is the part of our unconscious psyche where all possible tendencies reside, like seeds, waiting to germinate.  The ones we water with our attention, thought, and action are the ones that grow.  Like all Buddhists, Thich Nhat Hahn believes that we cannot know for sure which seeds we have watered in previous lives, but our proclivities in this life, for good or ill, give a strong hint.

Metaphysics aside, we can recognize the truth of the core concept – the seed tendencies we water are the ones that grow.  The only memorial we can make to the people who died in that theater is to stand beside those like Thich Nhat Hahn, Martin Luther King, and all men and women of goodwill of the present and past.  We can join with them in trying to give the water of attention to qualities like compassion, patience, and non-violence – the seeds we want to grow.

Those who follow this blog know how often I quote Walt Kelley’s comic strip character, Pogo, who said, “We has met the enemy and he is us.”  It doesn’t have to be that way.

Everything Changes

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Lewis Richmond, an ordained Zen priest and author of Aging as a Spiritual Practice, began his studies 40 years ago with the renowned teacher, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi.  Richmond relates that one day, after a talk, a student said, “Suzuki Roshi – you’ve talked for an hour, and I haven’t understood a word you’ve said.  Could you please tell me one thing about Buddhism I can understand?”

The master waited for the laughter to die down and said, “Everything changes.”

“Everything changes” is a truth we often would rather forget, but sometimes events make that impossible.  Our oldest dog, Holly, has serious medical issues.  She has come to the end of her life.  This month has been a daily exercise in letting go, in watching her, in trying to gauge the quality of her life and which interventions make sense.

The vet confirms that she’s not in any pain.  She is still feisty and cuddlesome in turn.  She turns up her nose at dog food much of the time, but still likes buttered toast and hot dogs, so antibiotics make sense.  So does medication to increase the blood flow to her kidneys, which are failing.  We take turns administering “subcutaneous fluid replacement therapy” each morning, which was scary at first, but has become a very serene, if bitter-sweet, time to bond with her and reflect.  With quiet music and morning sun slanting into the room, we calm ourselves so Holly calms down and stroke her head while 150 ml of solution flow through the drip.

We brought her home as a puppy when she was eight weeks old.  She’ll be 16 at the end of the month if she lasts that long – we don’t know – it could be days or weeks or months.  It’s hard to believe how quickly sixteen years goes by.

Is there anything that doesn’t change?  All of the major religions say yes, there are the ways to unravel the knot.  A reminder of why there is nothing more important may be Holly’s final gift.

Chants in the Desert

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Yesterday NPR interviewed two monks of the Benedictine Abbey of Christ in the Desert in Abiquiu, New Mexico, concerning the Gregorian Chants that are part of the fabric of their lives.

Monastery of Christ in the Desert

The occasion was the release of a CD of their music, “Blessings, Peace, and Harmony.”  Brother Christian Leisy explained that an email from Sony arrived proposing the recording.  “We thought at first it was spam,” he said, “but apparently someone at Sony felt the world wasn’t getting any better, and they wanted to work with a community that might focus on some of the peace elements.”

Chanting does exactly this.  Abbot Phillip Lawrence explained that scientific studies of the effects of contemplative chanting match those of meditative practice:  relaxation, stress reduction, lowered blood pressure and a general sense of wellbeing.

I bought my first album of Gregorian Chants in high school.  Even though I was usually given to rock n roll, there were times when I was drawn to this seemingly strange music with the power to draw me outside of ordinary concerns.  I’ve collected other music like it since then.  Abbot Lawrence understands the power of different types of contemplative music.  He stayed for a time in a Tibetan monastery and found that the deep chanting that is part of that spiritual discipline has the same power as the music he is familiar with.

I highly recommend the interview and the song samples to anyone interested in contemplative music:  http://www.npr.org/2012/05/27/153707577/deep-in-the-desert-monks-make-transcendent-music