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Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Conversation with Stanford Professor Chris Bobonich on Philosophical thinking and making good and bad decisions

Chris Bobonich, Professor at Stanford University
Chris Bobonich, Professor at Stanford University (Courtesy Stanford University)

by Peter Menkin

My visits of American stories as reported from my beat, United States, emphasizes the regional appeal of various topics related to religion. My hope is to catch a flavor of the United States and make a statement on religion in its news sense. I focus on regions, so the reader gets an idea of regional flavors to gain an understanding of the national religious identity. In this story from the Western Region of the United States, the subject is Stanford University, one of the major universities in this area and even America.A sometimes arrogant attitude held by the University demonstrated in contact with various communication people and sometimes, though not so often, professors themselves. The school is an elite institution with an honored collection of faculty preparing young people for a role in society that serves in leadership positions of authority. This is not news, but is nonetheless a remaining fact of the school’s life and purpose since it was founded in California. It is a school that can be compared in status and academic achievement, so it is said, wiale, Princeton and a list of other fine institutions.In this piece we take a look at one teacher’s work whose goal is to prepare students in an undergraduate level class in Philosophy to think and to make decisions in their coming school years, and their life after graduation.

Though Chris Bobonich, Professor, is described as teaching a course that is touted in this manner by “Stanford New,” Stanford philosophy professor calls for a generation of more responsible thinkers, it is more fully explained by the Professor this way: “Both Plato and Aristotle are – for quite different reasons and in quite different ways – more favorable to the idea that ethical knowledge is a rare intellectual accomplishment…” Leah Stark, author of the Stanford News report goes on to say of the class purpose: “Finding inspiration from the ancients, Stanford philosopher Christopher Bobonich underscores the moral consequences of reflecting upon bad means to good ends.”
The reason this Religion Writer chose to report on Professor Bobonich’s class is a result of the concrete need for religion to touch on the practical and to engage in the kind of decision making in the real world with its critical skills that the Professor offers in his class. This class in philosophy serves to illustrate some methods of thinking and approach to contemporary difficult decision making. Hence, it fits in a tangential but still contributory way to better or good thinking in the real world, where religion and its purposes of contributing good to the concrete world play such an important part.

A key element for future decision makers like these students is the same as for contemporary decision makers in elite situations, including those where life and death are involved even to the extent of sending drone aircraft to take lives and destroy property in our American strategic international work of settling various conflict situations. This is what the Professor makes as one of his key points for the class, and probably the major emphasis he holds for decision making at many levels: “Maybe we shouldn’t get very much credit for doing the right thing, even if we are doing the right thing, if we do it unreflectively,” Bobonich argued.

This is one of the questions asked of Professor Bobonich during the course of this Religion Writers conversations with him (by email).


Peter Menkin: Talk a little about teaching students, especially the Stanford student, and of course students in general. 

Professor Chris Bobonich: What I think is absolutely vital is to get the student to reflect on what they think and what they do with it. To think on questions like: one doesn’t go to a philosopher to (find out) why there is an earthquake. We don’t have a special science as to why knowledge is possible. These are paradigmatic questions.

We are going to find answers to these questions. We are going to find out what we think about them. It may seem trivial. What I am going to try to show them that’s false, they are going to wind up puzzled by what they believe. In good Socratic style they are going to find hey [they] are going to contradict themselves. If they contradict themselves. They should believe, Hey, I have to give up something.

I’m trying to get them to read the text with great care and to think about why they believe one thing instead of another and believe things sympathetically… They should not assume that the only reason why someone disagrees with them is that he or she is a bad person. One thing I would like to do is give you an example of this:

First example: After graduating from Stanford, you get a job as counterterrorism professional. To get attention to their cause, they (those you are dealing with) are going to torture ten small children for publicity purposes. The only way to find out about this is find out which school will be attacked. She (the terrorist) declines.

Do you threaten to torture her? That doesn’t work. Clock is still ticking. Are you wiling to torture her to extract the information? She has with her her innocent six year old child. Are you willing to threaten the child in the presence of the mother (the terrorist you have in custody).
Threatening the child doesn’t work. Are you willing to torture the child to extract the information? Three out of 200 are willing to do this. But if we could save 10 children or 1 from some impending disaster, we

Professor Chris Bobonich in his campus office at Stanford University located in Palo Alto, California about an hour's drive by car South of San Francisco.
Professor Chris Bobonich in his campus office at Stanford University located in Palo Alto, California about an hour’s drive by car South of San Francisco.


would all choose to save the one rather than the ten. In this care, we prefer that one bad thing happen rather than ten. In the torture case, it seems we prefer 10 bad things happening rather than one.
How is that possibly consistent? Perhaps they would say that they don’t know if the torture would be effective. But if they thought it effective would they do it? Do they say, Even if to prevent the ten, I’m not going to do it?

Sooner or later one will say] I am allowing a bad thing to happen when I save the one child from some disaster, I’m not actually doing anything bad. I’m not actually doing something bad. There is a moral issue of doing something bad and allowing something bad to happen.

In law, very few states have strong good-Samaritan laws if you pass by the Samaritan you’re not liable. So if you just pass by someone on the side of the road and they die you aren’t guilty. Thus, both common sense and law say doing something bad and allowing something bad are different: Appealing to something bad and allowing something bad.

The Ancients didn’t confront this issue; it is more a medieval and modern issue. It is the Catholic Church’s double effect issue…

You’re on a train and in the engineer’s compartment going down the track. The Engineer keels over, dies of heart attack. You can’t open the door. There are ten small children playing on the track. The brakes don’t work. There is a button on the steering wheel. If you push it and change the track… If you switch the train you do something and don’t allow something to happen. On the left hand track there is one small child playing. Most of us would switch the track. But in this case, we’re willing to do something bad and not just allow it to happen. So there is doing something or allowing something to happen.

Please note that these are examples that are highly artificial.
In the web site description, this quote noted by Stanford of Professor Bobonich: “Morality is tremendously demanding,” says Stanford philosophy professor Chris Bobonich, who encourages students to consider whether ends justify the means. Philosophy at Stanford

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/january/bobonich-morality-philosophy-010814.html
Chris Bobonich (Ph.D. Berkeley, Philosophy; M. Phil., Cambridge, Philosophy; B.A., Harvard, Government) is C.I. Lewis Professor of Philosophy and Professor, by courtesy, of Classics at Stanford University. He is the author of Plato’s Utopia Recast: His Later Ethics and Politics (Oxford, 2002). He has also published a number of papers on Greek political and ethical theory and ethical psychology. At present, his work focuses on the relations between knowledge and action in Plato and Aristotle. He previously taught at the University of Chicago, was a Fellow at the Princeton University Center for Human Values, and Junior Fellow of the National Center for Hellenic Studies. At Stanford, he was a Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center, a recipient of the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching, a Marta Sutton Weeks Faculty Scholar, and is currently Barbara Finberg University Fellow in Undergraduate Education.

There is more about the Professor and his teaching on the Stanford website. It is here: http://philosophy.stanford.edu/profile/Christopher+Bobonich/
http://plato.stanford.edu/

Peter Menkin: You tell me about morality as taught in your class and how it is presented in the Stanford class–if you like.
Professor Chris Bobonich: There are two purposes to teaching courses on ethics: To know what significant thinkers thought about these questions…and… There are intellectual purposes about morality.

Morality is more practical for we all must make moral decisions in our lives. It is particularly important for Stanford students to know about morality in their lives, because many of them will be going on to affect individuals. They will be going on to be leaders and affect other human beings. It is very important they think about other human beings and reflect about them in the best way they can.
Here are some thoughts about the purpose of the class…

The most relevant course I teach every year at Stanford is a course called Thinking Matters; and this is designed primarily for freshman. It is to give them an introduction to college thinking. It’s designed to be an introduction for making the transfer… to making the correct answer and how to find right answers and deal with right answers. Including the how to find right answers—to call their beliefs into question.

Schools vary a lot in what they do and even good schools don’t have a course in such matters. Otherwise students can just go on and specialize in their major and not think about their major.

As the Professor points out: I also teach undergraduate and graduate student courses in ancient philosophy. For this is a course I also teach undergraduates and graduate students and students in ancient philosophy.

I was brought up Catholic and stopped going to Church in my 20s, and would describe myself as an agnostic. I certainly think that there is a real possibility that there is a God, but I am not convinced that there is. Certainly, I think using philosophical reflection of deciding what to do.
Regarding the Stanford student or college students in general: How many hours have they spent giving reasons for ethical beliefs they hold? Almost none. This disparity is really quite shocking to me.

From the time I was very young, 6th grade, I was fascinated by law and wanted to be a lawyer. One course had to take was history of political philosophy, and I fell in love with the question and text and topic of the questions of ethics. Ethics is practical. I have friends who are mathematicians and I ask why they decided on that life. They said they found the ideas beautiful. I do too. I find the ideas of ethics beautiful.

In Leah Stark’s Stanford News story the writer says this of Professor Chris Bobonich’s work: Bobonich said that in World War II, “The United States Air Force was feeling morally conflicted about area bombing.” The dilemma persists with unmanned drones today. Although the United States has the technology to more precisely hit targets, civilian casualties continue to be an ongoing risk…
…Bobonich said that reflection, whether performed by a national figure or by an individual, is the key to arriving at an answer to this complex debate.

“Morality is tremendously demanding. It requires enormous sacrifice,” Bobonich said….
….He struggles with the question of whether ethical knowledge can be intelligently gained and applied in the same way that, for example, a chess player might laboriously study the proper moves and become a grand master of chess.

Professor Bobonich claims this kind of work is a rare intellectual accomplishment. It is one reason this Religion Writer claims students at Stanford University, and especially of this class, are studying to be part of the elite in society. In fact, they are an elite to work with this kind of thinking and even as future leaders to be exposed to the kind of education Professor Bobonich offers in his classroom. (The complete article published by Stanford News is here: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/january/bobonich-morality-philosophy-010814.html )
Readers of this piece may want to catch another glimpse of Professor Bobonich’s work in the classroom.


The book 'Mortal Questions' written by Thomas Nagel: Quote from the Preface: It may be that some philosophical problems have no solutions. I suspect this is true of the deepest and oldest of them. They show us the limits of our understanding. In that case such insights as we can achieve depends on maintaining a strong grasp of the problem instead of abandoning it, and coming to understand the failure of each new attempt to a solution....
The book ‘Mortal Questions’ written by Thomas Nagel… Quote from the Preface: It may be that some philosophical problems have no solutions. I suspect this is true of the deepest and oldest of them. They show us the limits of our understanding. In that case such insights as we can achieve depends on maintaining a strong grasp of the problem instead of abandoning it, and coming to understand the failure of each new attempt to a solution….


The book, “Mortal Questions,” by Thomas Nagel, as published by Cambridge publishing (Canto Classics) is a title he recommends. The Amazon page for the book is here: http://www.amazon.com/Mortal-Questions-Canto-Classics-Thomas-ebook/dp/B0014DL3L2 The publisher’s page is here: http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/philosophy/philosophy-general-interest/mortal-questions-2?format=PB
There is a point where the subject of thinking and decision making includes involving one’s life and how to live it. Professor Bobonich makes this statement, and with this statement of his the article ends:
Here is an example of the Reflective moment: One of the great lessons of ancient philosophy is the need for How shall I live. All the ancient philosophers answer that question by asking themselves why and reflect on it. For many of us, if we ask why we ask why we do what we do; it is.
This is an unreflective example: I live in Palo Alto. It is very nice here. What if they just adopted these views out of habit? What if they adopted their beliefs in Nazi Germany or slave owner society? When our thinking is unreflective, we end up doing all sorts of horrible things.
(Reflection is a jumping off place and it is also an ongoing practice of life.)
In a classroom and the discussions I have I do think that often our behavior is formed by desires and beliefs we are not aware of. At a conscious level, on an ethical level, in the religious sense, even the practice of confession…we need some sort of reflection on what we are doing and why we are doing it.


3 Responses to Talking with Stanford University’s Chris Bobonich: Making difficult moral decisions

  1. Martha Saul
    19/03/2014 at 22:57
    Peter certainly finds interesting people to interview!



  2. 20/03/2014 at 16:33
    THIS EMAIL TO CHRIS BOBONICH, SUBJECT OF THE INTERVIEW, SENT TO HIS PERSONAL EMAIL ADDRESS.THIS IS AN EDITED VERSION OF THAT EMAIL WITH ADDED MATERIAL.
    Dear Professor:
    I did finally get the videos to work, so they are in the story, too.
    Yes, many thanks. Maybe someone will comment. Your Good Samaritan story should ring some bells. In the Christian tradition walking by the injured man on the street is bad. As you know. In your commentary you say this is okay. But then you couldn’t make your highly artificial case to make the matter something to think about to do otherwise.
    As for me, I must read some of the examples a few times. The overall sense that the modern decision by the leadership is so difficult and unsatisfactory (unsatisfying—even morally(?)) is really a theme of the report. It is understandable that the moral and ethical dilemma of using drone attack aircraft is at best problematic. So you touch on the areas of good and bad well, or so I hope my report allows. (I note you do not use the word, “Evil.” This is telling in what you say of the matters at hand, for some consider such results of your problems Evil results.)
    I did use the videos to give a taste of Stanford as touted by the University. I was disappointed that most of the time in the Tour video by Stanford it spent time on sports and didn’t spend more time on the academic and even the world renowned reputations of some professors. I can only run so many videos, and as a “recruitment” video it tells people what kind of student Stanford seeks. I thought it still of great interest to readers in England and even Europe who are subscribers to the paper. There are many African readers, too.
    My hope is the piece will go to Religious Intelligence, London where from that website syndication is more possible—worldwide. But I cannot get into the website these days to find out, and I hate to bother staff with that kind of question of access right now.
    This piece is web only, though it may also go in the print version. They do not tell me these things.
    You can see I am involved with the report of your teaching and its themes in this class. It is not the usual fare for me, as it is not directly religious. But as you see from the writing it does relate so well.
    All the best,
    Peter Menkin


  3. Chris Bobonich
    23/03/2014 at 04:00
    My point about the connection with the Good Samaritan was that if we come to think that there isn’t a huge difference between doing evil and allowing it to happen, one reasonable response is to think that we are responsible for all the bad things that we could prevent. This is true even if the cost to us in terms of money and our own time and energy is very high. Although the motivation may be very different, this seems to me to have affinity with the Christian idea that I am my brother’s keeper and have a positive duty to alleviate suffering when I can. Thanks so much for the chance to talk with your audience.



    This work originally appeared Church of England Newspaper, London.

Wednesday, March 05, 2014

Guest Sermon by Jan Robitscher of Berkeley, CA on fasting in Lent



“Will you call this a fast,
     a day acceptable to the Lord?”
(Isaiah 58:5)
Lent I Friday                                                                                                     Jan Robitscher
            Isaiah 58:1-9a                                                                           All Saints Chapel
            Psalm 51:1-10                                                                          CDSP
            Matthew 9:10-17                                                                                   March 7, 2014
 
 
In the Name of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
 
Do you know what today is? It is Friday, March 7 and it is the first Friday in Lent. But do you know what else it is? It is the National Day of Unplugging, also known as the Sabbath Manifesto.  Yes, a “fast” from all things wired for a day. I took the pledge!
Sounds easy, but for some, not so much.  Fasting, in any form,  is not part of our culture, but this was not true in earlier times.
 
Fasting (at least from food) has two sides: one practical and the other spiritual. It goes without saying that the poor always fast out of necessity, and that for some who have health  reasons, fasting from food is impossible. Until recently (and still the case in some cultures) food, and especially meat and all things dairy) was scarce in the early Spring. So people, whether poor or not, fasted as much by necessity as by choice. And they did it together, as a community. 
 
But our reading from Isaiah takes us far beyond the practical. Clearing the cupboard was one thing; clearing the heart was quite another. The people Israel fasted all right, but it didn’t seem to do any good. They complained to God:
          Why do we fast, but you do not see?
                    Why humble ourselves, but do not notice?” 
And the prophet, with full permission from God, gives them the straight answer:
          Look, you fast only to quarrel and fight
                    and strike with a wicked fist.
          Such fasting as you do today will not make
                    your voice heard on high.
 
It is not enough to fast--from food or cell phones or other pleasures. It matters WHY we fast, what is the disposition of our heart, and what are its FRUITS.
 
On Ash Wednesday we heard the components to our Lenten practice:
          Self-examination and repentance
          Prayer
          Fasting
          Reading and meditating on God’s Holy Word (BCP, p. 264)
 
Although alms-giving is not specifically mentioned, it is certainly implied. Moreover, these practices are interrelated, as the Early Church Fathers knew. St. Peter Chrysologus, Bishop and Doctor of the Church, preached about fasting. Although he named the practices differently, his point is well-made:
          There are three things...by which faith stands firm,
devotion remains constant and  virtue endures.
          They are fasting, prayer and mercy [alms-giving].
          Prayer knocks at the door, fasting obtains, mercy
          receives. These three are one and give life to each
          other.... Let no one try to separate them...
 
The fast that God chooses, then is borne out in acts of mercy:
          To loose the bonds of injustice...
          To let the oppressed go free...
          When you see the naked, to cover them...
          Not to hide from your own kin...
 
In our Gospel reading, Jesus turns fasting on its head by eating with tax-collectors and sinners saying: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick”. The disciples ask why John’s disciples do not fast. Jesus assures them that they will fast “when the bride-groom is taken away from them.” Jesus, by his life, death and resurrection, came to overcome sickness, evil and death, and he comes still. If our fasting is a front for a heart fraught with quarreling and the “wicked fist” of anger or ruptured relationships, we need the healing Jesus offers. If we have separated fasting from prayer and alms-giving, we need Jesus’ healing to help us reconnect them for the fruit of good works. 
 
St. Peter Chrysologus
So, while we are not constrained to fast or abstain from food by dietary laws or by the scarcity of food, or even by the Church -- and while we don’t have to take the “Un-Plugging Pledge”, maybe we have, in Lent, an opportunity, to use  our fast from these things to turn our energies a different way, toward God. St. Peter Chrysologus put it this way:
          When you fast, see the fasting of others. If you want God
to know that you are hungry, know that another is hungry.
          If you want mercy, show mercy. If you look for kindness,
          show kindness. If you want to receive, give....
 
Then, says Isaiah the prophet:
          Then your light shall break forth like the dawn
                    and your healing shall spring up quickly...
          Then you shall call and the Lord will answer;
                    you shall cry for help and he will say,
                              Here I am.
 
Maybe we could fast with hearts made clean by healing and forgiveness. And maybe we could fast not alone, but in community. Such fasting might bear fruits--of the fast that God chooses-- that could make Easter for us a whole, new, amazing experience!
 

Tuesday, March 04, 2014

Interview: Quaker poet Jeanne Lohmann of the Great Northwest..."let there be music in me past words"

American Quaker Poet Jeanne Lohmann, on her life and work (she near 90)

 What is the spiritual practice of poetry? I think we fool ourselves with such divisions, separations. Practice is practice is practice, and requires us whole, body and breath that animates…vocal chords and song, imagination and word, story and story-teller.


Jeanne Lohmann, poet of America's Great Northwest--photo by Grace Duda
Jeanne Lohmann, poet of America’s Great Northwest–photo by Grace Duda
by Peter Menkin
There is no doubt that Jeanne Lohmann, Quaker poet, is a remarkable woman who in her elder years (almost 90) has a warmth and charm that makes talking to her by phone a pleasure. I spoke with her in interview on a number of occasions spending more than an hour developing this conversation about her work and even her life. We started talking, she in her Washington State home in the Great Northwest of the United States, and I just north of San Francisco by about 11 miles in my home located in the small town of Mill Valley. She lives in Olympia, Washington. We began about December 31, 2013 and ended February 8, 2014. It was a friendly conversation and at one time I interrupted her watching the beginning of the Olympics and so had to call back the next day. Another time, before that, the phones didn’t work—hers, we thought.

There is more to this interview than one conversation with the poet. There is also a conversation, brief, with the editor of Daniel & Daniel, located in California. More on that in a minute. Let me offer this statement on poetry from a packet sent to me by Jeanne Lohmann of her notes and diary material. This Religion Writer wants to set a tone about poetry more than about the article to come, important as that is in this introduction.

The statement on poetry from one of Jeanne Lohmann’s diaries (circa 1978 and beyond):
What is the spiritual practice of poetry? I think we fool ourselves with such divisions, separations. Practice is practice is practice, and requires us whole, body and breath that animates…vocal chords and song, imagination and word, story and story-teller.

Making use of poetry, adopting the habit of poetry, I write and revise, perform poems…learn how. Practicing poetry: I’m open to invitations from anywhere. I create my own rhythms, plod when I must, fly when I can. Maintaining the habit, I work to forego the habitual, the trite and easy.
Learning poems for my life, they save me over and over. Poetry swings my arms when I walk, spills around me in specific details, insights. Word-music shaping answers to questions I didn’t know how to ask, teaching me to re-think answers I thought I had: how to honor the awkward, the homely, and the broken.

On about December 5, 2013 John Daniel of Daniel & Daniel is noted in my pages as responding by email to questions about the publishing house he started and where he is editor. You will find more of that interview at the end of this conversation below with Jeanne Lohmann. To the first question John Daniel answers:

Yes, we (Daniel & Daniel, Publishers, which includes Fithian Press), do publish poetry. We also publish memoir and fiction, and our most successful line of books consists of mystery novels, which we publish under our Perseverance Press imprint. As for the state of poetry publishing, I observe that it’s becoming more and more a cottage industry. Judging from the number of submissions we receive, compared with the number of books we sell, I get the feeling more people write poetry than read poetry. But we soldier on, publishing books we like, by poets we like. We’re proud of what we do and want to stay that way, which is why we’re so choosy. We reject most of the manuscripts we receive.

But let me tell you more about Jeanne Lohmann. Her most recent poetry book is, “Home Ground” and it has much of her previous work in it. Published by Daniel & Daniel, it is found on Amazon.com here.  Much of her work sells, and this over the years. She strikes a chord with people, especially with moving themes of death…death of her husband and love between a man and a woman. Here is an early remark by one reviewer of one poetry book, “Gathering a Life.”
“Lohmann does not wish her husband’s life to be forever fixed in time and place, but to remember him with some charity of truth so that he might return and be the person she loved. This is a diamond, cutting hard.” Written by Sally Bryan, University Meeting/ San Juan Worship Group Society of Friends. (Date unknown).

This Religion Writer’s earnest hope is that the interview will catch something of Jeanne Lohmann’s sensibility and personhood. Without further words, the interview.

INTERVIEW WITH POET JEANNE LOHMANN BY RELIGION WRITER PETER MENKIN

Not sure if I’m a Christian or Quaker poet, what category I fit into — religious, perhaps, my work as poet definitely a vocation, a calling.
–Jeanne Lohmann in an email to Peter Menkin, February 8, 2014

  1. 1.     Now that you’re older and the years have passed, as you approach your 90s, and say you don’t know if you have enough stamina to write another book of poetry: talk to us about stamina. How did this last book of poetry titled Home Ground published by Daniel & Daniel that took a year to do—rank it compared to other works in terms of effort and strength to put together?
“Home Ground” [the book of poetry] took a year to put together because it was so many parts of my life. With Home Ground I was trying to do a broader scope: family and growing up, and in the religious sense what anchors me in the past. It was a combination…so far as doing another book of poetry…I do keep on writing and I have been thinking of putting unpublished poetry in a separate folder and putting that together. But my main concentration is putting together a book of prose.
Its tentative title is, “In Parallel Light” which embodies the two strands of imagination and autobiographical. Its short fiction sketches, creative non-fiction they call it these days. I’m not writing new pieces for this; it’s how sections fit together. It’s not new stuff. There’s a take-off on the fairytale Cinderfeller. A children’s story, “Don’t Worry about It,”… and there are accounts of being hassled on a walk by an old man and I wasn’t interested.  There is a piece about a child dying in the hospital of leukemia. The book is a real mix.
Part of my energizing as a writer comes with my working with other writers who are in groups that come to my house. We have a four-time a-year writer workshop where we have new writing and have exercises and set up our projects. I seem to work better in late afternoon. Sometimes I seem to stay up late and take notes. Lately I revise pieces and…enjoy the revision process very much.
I work when the muse comes, but usually give myself an assignment. Sometimes something from memory and that is not always the muse. Without the gift of the muse you wind up, in my experience, with something dead in the water. You need to have something that pushes what you do. It is a matter of exploration for me. What I do is very different from where I started.
In writing a poem, often, I begin with an idea, a line, a phrase and sometimes in writing that poem I will circle round to that beginning and make that poem a complete entity. Sometimes I will leave the poem where the reader wants to go with it—open at the beginning. We do what we can.


image(1)
Poet and her late husband Hank. The poet writes via email, “Stow Lake in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park ( a few blocks from our house), Hank is 63, and I am 62 years old…”


2.   In 1985 you became a widow and wrote a book (that seemed to me from the reviews I read) to come out of the long bout with sickness suffered by your husband prior to his passing, you wrote of your own grief and entry to widowhood, and even a kind of renewal that your Quaker faith offered, to you. I remember your written statement sent to me in your private collection of notes about the dance you had with your husband in the kitchen (Dancing in the Kitchen). Talk to us some more about grief, about offering strength and love to your husband at the end of his life, if that is a separate matter. Tell us how they connect, and if you have a poem that speaks to the subject?

There are two books I wrote related to this subject. All of my life we were a very fine companionable marriage doing things together—and four children. Looking at life in the same direction, as Rilke puts it. The two books relate directly. Hank’s illness was, “Gathering a Life” and “Granite under Water” (metaphor for the hardness of loss, and water being the faith that came from our family and the Quaker Meeting).

There is a newer book that has more distance on his passing, “As if Words,” published 2011. The title comes from the whole idea as if words could say what the unsayable says. Which is often what poetry is. They are love and grief poems, including a section called living alone. This was published by Daniel and Daniel. This was a well-received book by readers. It had an original press run of 500 or more. The editor has said my books sell well over time. Books get bought and then given to people in similar situations.

The Editor has a good designer who catches the spirit of the book, with covers and inside body design. When people look at books, they often look at especially the cover for poetry books. Daniel and Daniel have been enthusiastic and supportive. I like their work and they are appreciative of the kind of writing I do. It is not a big money making venture for any of us. People come back to me and tell me what it has meant to them (though). John Daniel is the company and he is the editor.
One of the favorites on my husband’s illness and passing was, “Granite Under Water” and, “Shaking the Tree.”

It is the worshiping community that you share; there is silence and spoken ministry. Quakers don’t worship silence, they worship God.

What comes to mind is remembering what I had to do, (so I say of him) I miss you in unlikely things. It is a litany of tasks we shared, that Hank did, and learning to forgive his absence. There is a line in the poem inspired by a phone call from my son who had need of his father, and I had to take that task on myself.  I was asked at one time, Where’s the rage… and I also wrote a piece called Rage. It’s not so much anger at a person for his leaving when you love and need him so much. It is anger at the situation.

Giving love and support for my husband was a separate matter. It was not. We did that all our lives through a 37 year marriage, giving love and support to each other.

The Capitol city of Washington State, Olympia Washington, a lovely rather new house my daughter and son and law built for me that is white in this dark weather. Upper part is rented as a studio to a friend of ours– an artist, who doesn’t live there. I have lived (in the house) ten years now, if I am right.

  1. 2.     We do not hear so much of the life of being a mother, of a wife. You lived that in part of your life. I see in your poem, “What You Almost Remember,” that you speak to love in the dance of relationship between man and woman with your husband. Again a theme of yours. Talk to us again of this man-woman relationship that was cherishment in your life.

It’s the relationship we were blessed with and we were married 37–years married in a Quaker meeting in Chicago. I have written not only about the wonderful parts, but the troublesome parts. The way to make it through is by holding on. In one we were very concerned with service projects. In other ways we were concerned with a picket line and it was Valentine’s Day; we went out walking with (undistinguishable) that would not admit black ladies to have babies in Lying-in (University Hospital). And this was about our … “my need was charity…” It was indicative of how there is tension in any marriage.

These are poems about our relationships in the book, “As if Words,” that includes love poems. [Let us turn to the poem, “What You Almost Remember”]

The last stanza of this poem is a dance with death. I don’t look at this poem the way you do. This is a poem of rejoicing and praise. This is a poem of later life is why you almost remember, for I almost don’t remember to be grateful. It is a Quaker poem in a way. It is a poem of return to a mystery you remember: A prayer of last resort.

I think this poem fits in the anchoring aspects of this book which is an expansive kind of book that fits in family and growing up and the Home Ground anchoring of faith. When faith is real, even the arguing we do, the arguing we do is the power of God. The wonderful side of faith is the gold in the throat metaphor, is the gold in the throat metaphor being able to hear that music. The music in the throat is being able to give words to praise. I feel that is about God that there is a voice that is a gift of the muse. Poetry is in this instance the poetry of praise.

As I grow older there is more of this kind, poetry of thanksgiving–a praise.

The muse comes as a gift, as a surprise, when a poem begins and we don’t know where it is going to go…we are accompanied by the muse to go some unaccompanied, beautiful place. …The muse can take the reader to an unexpected place. The muse was one of the Greek Gods and in the Christian tradition and the Song of Solomon and the Biblical literature has acted as a muse to much of my writing.  These two lines from the poem are moved to be written by the muse: “… and around you such elegant music/you never in this world could have chosen…”

Those two lines speak to me; because those two lines speak to me, but we aren’t always ready to hear.

You wrote in part in Home Ground:

So in love we are
With the robust joy of our lives
even our cries and curses
a raging torrent of praise

but try not to think of the words
you are weeping and shouting

attend if you will, if you can,
to silence where voice begins
and returns, a mystery
you hardly remember,
prayer first and last resort

try not to think of the trumpet
but of gold in the throat

then the bones of your feet
will move toward dance,
your partner the Lady Death
you’ve spent your whole life looking for,
and around you such elegant music
you never in this world could have chosen


4.         Let’s go on with the Quaker in you, what some people call the simple life. This poem in your new book Home Ground caught me with its wise statement on preaching and especially a comment on a sermon. Will you tell us where you were and how this sermon of the bird spoke to you? How it was a sweet song? Here is the poem titled, “Theology Seminar.”

While educated voices drone on
talking of many gods, the various

parts of belief, rational ideas
of self and the soul,

outside my window
lark song pierces the sky,

and during last night’s sermon,
laughter in the dark.

Not to disparage preachers and their
libraries of most important books,

but to wrap the grand themes
in some human garment,

a sweater from the hall closet,
a raincoat, perhaps,

the comforting
simple story.

I don’t know that I was in any particular place. I was at a Friends Meeting. A disturbed woman was talking about how cold she was. A young woman stood up and put her coat around her. And it was such a simple, wordless gesture that spoke to me that I remembered how sermons I’d heard contrasted with this gesture that spoke to me…the image of a lark song spoke to me as a Wordsworth as a song that a sermon speaks to us in so many different guises. It’s not in so many books, that’s for sure.

This was at the Friends Meeting in Olympia Washington. I’ve been going there about ten years. The longest I’ve gone to a Meeting is San Francisco.
Wherever we’ve lived, we’ve gone to a Quaker Meeting.
I grew up in the Methodist Church, which I loved. Preachers there were a great influence in my life. They were men I admired a great deal in my life. I loved the hymns and the Christmas candlelight services and carols—coming into the candlelit services, a healing time for me that I loved. My mother was a seeker who was interested in trying to find a time for her spirit and a community of faith for her spirit. I admired her questing spirit.  My father was brought up Irish Catholic and they went to Church together, and they went to the Unitarian Church.

5.         It seems this Religion Writer has come quickly to the end of the questions. Thank you for allowing us to make your acquaintance this way. Now is the time for you to talk to us about something we may have missed, or something you’d like to say. Please do so.

One of the things I’ve been thinking about is the Quaker in me. I’ve been thinking about several poems that relate to this: “Meeting for Worship.” One is the lives of Quakers which inspire me.

“Meeting for Worship”

Beyond compassions reach,
Our guilt or pride,
Is hurt so huge our human mercies numb.
Such grief must go where only God is guide.


END NOTE
  • When I go into the space of worship and need to put aside all this things I cannot put aside. It is a common thing of the worshipping community. We bring our griefs and joys to the worshipping place. “Now, for this space, I put them all aside all the awesome things for which no words will come.”
  • The poem is on page 17 in the book, “Silence and Answer”.

  • The Addendum poem, “Soaring,” grew from a Friend’s experience of hang gliding. “Rites of Departure” came from my travel to the Soviet Union in 1987 on a Quaker Peace Tour.  “Discernment” is a poem prompted by Young Friends asking me to serve on a panel with the theme of “Discerning God’s Will in Our Lives.” I was sitting on our second story back porch in San Francisco looking out the window into a tall evergreen, and “The smallest branch began to move before I saw a bird climb up that bough,” which became a metaphor announcing holy Presence.  (See p. 28, SHAKING THE TREE.)

  • “Discernment” was a poem that came out of discerning God’s will out of our lives when on a panel in a Quaker group. I was sitting on the porch looking at a tree when it came to me: “The smallest branch began to move before I saw a bird climb up that bow…” That became a metaphor for me telling (of) news of Gods announcing Presence. This is on P28 in “Shaking the Tree”.
  • I am sure that the conclusion of Quaker worship has shaped the world–I write, my family, and the way I see.
    • We were married in a Quaker marriage in Chicago: We say ourselves in the vow, In the presence of God and with these friends, I Jeanne take thee Henry to be my Husband, promising with Divine assistance to be unto thee a loving and faithful wife so long as we both shall live. Our loving community signed the marriage certificate which included this promise.



INTERVIEW WITH EDITOR JOHN DANIEL BY RELIGION WRITER PETER MENKIN
  1. 1.     Let’s talk poetry publishing a little bit. I note your Fithian Press publishes poetry, and is this your main group that does your poetry publishing in your small house? But more, let’s turn to a broader question of the world of poetry: What would you say is the state of poetry publishing in general and what is the place of your house in it? Yes, a hard question and somewhat both general and specific.
Editor John Daniel and wife Susan, publishing house manager, on the deck of their house
Editor John Daniel and wife Susan, publishing house manager, on the deck of their house
Yes, we (Daniel & Daniel, Publishers, which includes Fithian Press), do publish poetry. We also publish memoir and fiction, and our most successful line of books consists of mystery novels, which we publish under our Perseverance Press imprint. As for the state of poetry publishing, I observe that it’s becoming more and more a cottage industry. Judging from the number of submissions we receive, compared with the number of books we sell, I get the feeling more people write poetry than read poetry. But we soldier on, publishing books we like, by poets we like. We’re proud of what we do and want to stay that way, which is why we’re so choosy. We reject most of the manuscripts we receive.
  1. 2.     In a few words speak to us of the characteristics of the kind of book of poetry your house likes to publish? I understand you prefer not to publish religious poetry. Talk to us about what you mean by religious poetry, and the why you don’t publish it. Of course, this interests me as a religion writer.
My taste in poetry is finicky. I’m the editor who decides what poetry manuscripts we will publish, and I’m hard to please. I need to respect the poet’s intelligence, and be convinced of his or her sense of wonder. I need to admire the poet’s keen eye for details and keen ear for language. It isn’t strictly true that we don’t publish religious poetry, but if I feel the work is evangelistic or ecstatic or doctrinal I’m not interested. I suppose I am a humanist, and that’s that.
  1. 3.     Will you tell us where your house is located physically, and something of where it is located on the literary map, too?
Our “house,” which for the past ten years has been a literal as well as a literary term, since my wife Susan and I run the business from our home, is located in McKinleyville, California. That’s in Humboldt County, on the rocky North Coast, where the redwood trees grow. (Humboldt County is also known for another crop, but we steer clear of that.) I don’t know what a literary map is, but when we started publishing in 1985, a lot of our authors and customers were in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I had lived for 20 years and had

Editor of Daniel & Daniel at his desk
Editor of Daniel & Daniel at his desk


been associated with the Stanford University writing community. Gradually, as we published in Santa Barbara, California, we were part of the vibrant writing and publishing scene there. Since 2003, we’ve lived in Humboldt County, but our authors and their audiences are spread out around the U.S.
  1. 4.     What of your personal interest in poetry? What is your own taste, that is what have you liked most, especially as a student or young person?
It may surprise you to hear that I don’t write poetry and I don’t even read much poetry. I have a fondness for strict formal verse (following rules of meter and rhyme), and I like doggerel provided it’s intelligent, witty, and not sloppy with form. My favorite poets are the lyricists who wrote the Great American Songbook, writers like Lorenz Hart, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Oscar Hammerstein II, E. Y. Harburg, Alan Jay Lerner, Johnny Mercer, Frank Loesser, Dorothy Fields, and many more. (I have no use for rap, I hasten to add.)

There are a couple of other points I’d like to make. First, my position in Daniel & Daniel is editor, which means I acquire manuscripts and edit them as needed. But heavy lifting in our company is done by my wife and partner, Susan Daniel, who is the business manager, the production manager, and the manager of sales and marketing. It’s thanks to her that we’ve survived the perilous path of small-press publishing for more than 25 years.

Second, I feel it’s important to say we already have a stable of poets whom we publish successfully, and given our financial situation, we’re not eager to expand. Although I will review and respond (by email) to any submission I receive, I must stress that the chances of being published by Daniel & Daniel are slim.


ADDENDUM I

December Morning

The weather changes, and the world
becomes more than it is, as if
that were not enough. Luminous
and ringing, the cold day
begins, and I go to the windows
to see if this is really the light
of day, and it is

winter light I had forgotten
could come over the houses
before the sun comes. To be able
to get out of bed and see
this particular color
and then to watch it fade
is for a moment
to be given a glimpse
of the unimaginable world.

Being here in these changes
is to wear the sky like a wedding ring,
a promise of common daylight after all,
one more chance to praise
by breathing everything in.

Shaking the Tree: New and Selected Poems by Jeanne Lohmann
Fithian Press, 2010


In the Dark, Repreating Names
            Remember me, but let me go…
            –Jim Harrison, Returning to Earth

No matter how often I tell these stories,
the faces blur, the lovely details
of bodies and voices disappear.

Past age and change, having watched
my yurzheit candle burn off into smoke,
having done what they came here to do,
the dead slide into a litany of names—
Shirley, Elizabeth, Henry, Eleanor, John.
So many and so fast I almost forget
who they were, and can no longer
count on them to comfort me
to the restless dark before deep.

One after another they leave,
and there’s not time enough
to learn what it means when I say
I am letting them go.

As if they were mine to keep or give.
they are not mine, and if I say
that they were—my mother, my friend,
my lover, my child—my claims can only
affirm how clearly we belong to each other,
how difficult to shape the heart into syllables,
translate the meaning of adieu and adios,
the dark and hopeful language of goodbye.

Shaking the Tree: New and Selected Poems by Jeanne Lohmann
Fithian Press, 2010



Soaring
For the sake of a single verse . . .
            One must feel how the birds fly
Rainer Maria Rilke

No invitation’s strong enough. I will not
Take to air or glide down currents of wind.
I will not climb and fall in those dangerous
directions. Yet I knew a man once who flew
soaring eye to eye with a red-tailed hawk
high riding streams of air up and over
valleys between bare hills and the trees.
the eye of the flying bird, he said,
met his eye flying beside.

O as he told what it meant to him
then to be man, solitary, out of element, steadily
looked at level with the creature in space, I was
lifted and carried there where the red-tailed bird
flashed by. Wind was a rush in my hair and captive,
I was hooded  by light. The hawk’s eye held me
holy and dark, mild and strange in the morning air.

Four: how I love this world, how it opens
Between Silence and Answer, Jeanne Lohmann, 1994, Pendle Hill Publications (out of print)

Sidewalk Café

Late August in the evening light
Zurich found a mildness now
it was closing time.  Theaters
were out, the traffic gone.
The waiters knew their work
was nearly done, and greeted us
with less than grace,
though expert charm stayed easy,
almost warm.  This final night
we had no need of wine,
but weary and at ease
were quite content, and watched
how light reflected from the stone.
Tomorrow’s flight would take us home.
We’d walked these foreign cobbled streets
the length of summer long, and here
our talk was full of all the day
had been, presents we had found,
and suitcase room for packing them,
our children we would see.  Your hand
was on my own.  Familiar quiet settled down.
Two women near us rose to leave,
and stopping by our table, asked
if they might interrupt to tell
how seeing us, they paused.
They came, they said, to praise
the ways we looked our love, some joy
we might not know shone through.
For this our language had no words.
We thanked these strangers for their gift,
and smiled.  All that we knew
we could not ever say.
Jeanne Lohmann, As If Words, Fithian Press, 2012

Rites of Departure

In Takshken I learn an old belief: after death
carrion eat the sins of our flesh, and we proceed

without this burden. Already the buzzards and vultures
circle. Coyotes howl at the edges of my life, the rats

come closer. I notice small white grubs at work in a tree
on the forest gloor, its trunk huge as my carnal sings.

There may be food enough if I live long enough, even
my pride in saying this an obvious failure. But my most

grievous faults have nothing to do with flesh. My uneasy
spirit anticipates good appetite from scavengers, wants them

hungry also for my heart, that they make it light enough
to leave without envy or malice, without meanness.

One: The language of our tribe
Between Silence and Answer, Jeanne Lohmann, 1994, Pendle Hill Publications (out of print)


Man on the Corner
The Bal Shem teaches us that no encounter with a being or a thing, in the course of our life lacks a hidden significance.
            –Martin Buber, The Way of Man
If the homeless man on my corner
with his sign and downcast gaze
is significant for my life as I
for his, may we together live
in such rightness
as the world requires.

If we are meant to help each being
to perfection, and I have need of him,
as he of me, O may I not
avert my eyes or hurry past
the stranger on the sidewalk
for whom my coins
can never be enough.

Home Ground: new and selected poems, Jeanne Lohmann; 2013. Fithian Press


Chant to the Night Sky

Teach me to sing, teach me ancient songs.
let there be music in me past words,
past words let there be music. Roughen
my language, clear me of falsehood.
teach me the quiet of stars
and of duff under redwoods.
let me hear the many voices of the sea,
let the sea be loud in my ears.
teach me songs I don’t know.
bring memory back in music of the drums,
the pounding feet in circles of dance.
call he druids home.
call the wise women home from the sea.

Home Ground: new and selected poems, Jeanne Lohmann; 2013. Fithian Press


This work appeared originally Church of England Newspaper, London.