Aside From The Obvious

Winter Night

2016-07-16T19:20:00.002-04:00

Another Poem, like the previous one first written eleven years ago. After a decade of being left in a drawer it needed dusting first:

As evening becomes night, the cobalt edge gives way to black.
The sky turns its back to me and I to it.
Fatigue yawns as I sit in the yellow false light.

No good reason to feel so; the day went well.

My coat hung open walking home,
walking without gloves on for the first time in two weeks.
The sun, reluctant to shine, was downright sociable today.
Charcoal mood, though. I wonder why?

The soul has its seasons, and even as winter sun cannot warm
A January day, some days the heart will be muddy and glum despite the light:
Leaving not green but filthy snow and muck puddles,
like spittle marked pillows after sleep.

Spring will come and fluff it up with crocuses and daffodils,
But in winter the place my head has lain
Leaves creases my cheek, and the gray and crumbly eyes
Of someone whose sleep is not done but nonetheless awake;

But in the morning dark of winter also glad to be there
When the cobalt edge seeps into the sky again.

Cleaning

2016-07-09T20:49:00.000-04:00

In a narrow place,
a slice of time not space,
I wrap an apron around my
aging manly waist,
abstractly, of course.
Guys do not wear aprons
unless they are waiters at
bistros and tuck menus and towels
into the back of their beltless pants.

On the prosaic street
where lawns exist and have weeds,
where I live, I have an hour or so
to wash my clothes and dishes.
Patting my head while rubbing my belly,
I load the pants into the Maytag
while running hot water into the sink.
The washer door slams down
as I leap back to stop the spigot.

Alone in the house, it is loud
with churning and splashing.
The radio plays a melody
to the percussion of waters,
and I smile at my domestic powers.

Then, plunging my hand into the sink,
the heat attacks my hand, a swarm of bees
from which I quickly withdraw.
And I wonder how, among the scalding suds,
to find the dish or fork
before my hand is cooked into tandoori fingers.
Yes, the rubber gloves will insulate,
I think, but even then the heat
can find its way within. Not before
I've plucked the spoon, the cup,
the dish, the bowl, and scrubbed their surfaces
and set them in the rack to dry.

The spin cycle has completed,
and I drag the denim, khaki,
fleece and terry from the drum.
They cling to it by weight, and I
I must wrestle them, my Laocoon,
but prevailing.
Now the dryer has them,
flaying their serpent skins
and whirling them back into clothes.

The dishes gleam in the stainless satin sink,
and I sweep the counter free of crumbs and papers
as I sweep out of the house to my paying job.
But nothing will feel so complete and right
as this small and transient victory.

Law and Sausages

2015-12-17T13:19:00.000-05:00

ASK PASTOR KNOW-IT-ALL

"What has happened to altruism on the political spectrum? When I was growing up, it seemed that it was 'One for all and all for one!' It seems to be much more visceral and mean-spirited, today. " - HK

"There is not new under the sun," said the author of Ecclesiastes. She or he could also have said, "The more things change, the more they stay the same." Sadly, the abject condition of national politics is more typical for our history than not. Way back in 1866 the lawyer Gideon Tucker said, "No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session." "Imagine I am an idiot," said Twain. "Now imagine I am in Congress. But wait, I repeat myself." My title is usually attributed to Bismarck, but The Daily Cleveland Herald, March 29, 1869, quoted lawyer-poet John Godfrey Saxe that “Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made.” In our own era, Milton Berle said, "You can lead a man to Congress but you can't make him think." In other words, the venal and petty and nature of politics is well commented and documented.

That does not excuse or absolve it, friend, but it does mean we should not be surprised it has come to such a lowly pass as we see now. Rather we should look to those times of high resolve and comity and ask how they happened at all. What brings out the spirit of magnanimity in people such that they overcome the lesser angels of their nature?

Again, history is a help, though not an encouragement. Our eras of greatest nobility seem to follow times of greatest strife. Only when it is evident that pursuing your own agenda slavishly leads to greater misery not greater good. The lesson of motes and planks still needs learning 20 centuries later.

But let me set Ecclesiastes aside and try to be practical for a moment. The current 'free market' orthodoxy in politics confuses and conflates the market with the forum. We need to dismantle the market of politics. That means limiting the ability of individuals and groups to have more influence than the people themselves. This comes down to at least three things.

1. Partisan Redistricting to limit party influence over the power of the electorate.

2. Public financing of campaigns

3. Restoration of the Fairness doctrine in Broadcasting.

These will not happen, though, until both parties grasp that trying to get and keep the upper hand is not possible and ultimately self destructive (Witness the ever greater cultivation of the right wing and its culmination in Trump/Cruzism). It is this competition for power that corrupts, as Lord Acton so wisely noted. Pray that it does not require some great struggle and sorrow to become evident again.

Grief is the Winter of the Soul

2015-12-04T22:00:00.002-05:00

How best to cope with the loss of yet two more DEAR friends...I remember them with gratitude..and our long friendship...but the sting is still there...MJE

As the Tin Man so famously said, "Now I know I have a heart, because it's breaking." Much longer ago the great Seneca (I think!) said, "next to the death of one's self is the death of a friend."

Like winter there is no shortcut through loss and grief, but unlike winter it cannot be evaded by going elsewhere. Continuing with the metaphor, surviving emotional winters takes work.

Stay warm. Grief makes us more solitary, feekling sad and not wanting to impose on them or to answer questions over and over. You need human warmth more, not less. Stay in touch with friends, both the friends you and your late friends shared, and friends that they did not.

Do Not Stay Outside Too Long. Grieve too long and you get emotional frostbite. Get inside by taking time off from grief. See a silly movie, fix a favorite meal, do things that feel good. And tell yourself that grief can wait for a day. It can.

Don't get stuck in the snow. Grief can tempt us to stop exercising, sleep late, drink more. Some slippage is inevitable but going slow is better than stopping as any driver in the snow will tell you.

Make spring come. Rather than measure how bad you feel from day to day, measure other things that matter, like people who plan their vegetable garden while the snow flies.

Tap your maples. Sugar season is in late winter, when it is still cold. But the cold now is a good thing. At some point you might want to create a scrapbook of your friendship, perhas inviting other mutual friends to join you. Hold a party when a friendship anniversary comes around. Plan a visit to a place you remember and cherish. Give money to a cause that she or he cared about.

None of these things will make your sadness go away, and as you know there will be days during your winter of grief that are overwhelming. That's when these tactics will serve to get you through them better, and when you are feeling overwhelmed help you get 'whelmed' sooner.

The same Seneca (I hope!) also asked rhetorically, "shall a man bury his friendship with his friend?" The friend is gone, but the friendship remains. At first the absence of the friend is so strong that it is all you can feel. But as the season of grief edges along the friendship becomes more evident.

Finally, make new friends. The gifts you received from your friends deserve to be passed along. Be the friend she was for you to someone else. Pay it forward, as they say.

"Ask Pastor Know It All"

2015-12-01T09:32:00.002-05:00

First, I should say why this blog has been dormant for a year.

The answer is that whatever I had to say was being said elsewhere and better. My career as a public intellectual came to an end, outnumbered by lesser louder voices and out-thought by greater brighter minds.

Then, someone asked me why I had stopped and, having said these things, she still expressed hope that I would resume. That set me to thinking, a dangerous sport in these thoughtless times. While I have no urge to opine on what seem to me obvious things to a small and already convinced cadre (that would be you dear readers) I have a desire to help those who ask for it. Not once in all my days have I persuaded anyone who did not already wish to change. At best I have helped people make up their minds when asked.

I am a pastoral theologian, not an apologetic one. Those are technical terms in theological schools. Pastoral theology is about the 'cure of souls,' and its tool is the spiritual talking cure for those whose acedia has grown burdensome. It is in response to a need expressed by someone. Apologetic theology is addressed 'to whom it may concern,' an audience undefined and unknown. It seeks to persuade without being asked, to convert.

This became evident as I lost interest in the blog as a platform and became more invested in a newspaper panel I share on matters of ethics and religion. You can sample that here, though I am not in every issue. Similarly, I enjoy my radio program Faith & Reason more when I am talking to someone not just talking into the air.

As one ages, it is best to focus on one's strengths rather than labor over one's weaknesses. Therefore, this blog will now be entirely devoted to answering your questions - matters of religious fact and fancy, questions of doctrine and dogma, riddles ethical and moral, struggles spiritual and personal. Your questions will be my subjects.

To send a question you may add a comment here, or tweet me @fred_wooden or via Facebook. Please tell me if you wish to remain anonymous, or any other restrictions. I may wish to contact you beforehand to make sure I am clear.

There is already one question, which I will address in a day or so. But it seemed fair to let you know what was up ahead of time. Feel free to comment and tell me your thoughts. Thanks for reading!

In the Heat of the Night

2014-11-25T09:46:00.000-05:00

Less than 12 hours after it came down, many have already responded to the Grand Jury decision about officer Wilson's killing of Michael Brown. I have not, and there is a reason.

Long ago, before I was thirty but after I was married, there was a moment when I was so filled with anger that words were useless. In my fury, and my haste to quit the room, I toppled a coat rack which broke when it hit the ground. Handmade by my father-in-law, and thus very precious to my wife, the sight of it lying in fragments broke me into pieces as well. I collapsed in tears of regret and shame.

Like Billy Budd, to express deep anger - the profound anger of powerless injustice - often does more harm. It is not revenge at all but a volcanic response to being done wrong and being unable to right it.

This may be the heart of why racial justice has always been part of my life and work. It started when I was 12 and promoted including Tony, one of the black kids being bused in to school, to be on the safety patrol. None were and that was wrong, even to a kid like me. I succeeded. A week or two after he got his white belt and badge my messy desk caused my teacher to have me cut from the safety patrol.

The irony and proximity has never left me. Those who work for racial justice will not be welcome because true racial justice means everything will change.

In our dogmatically capitalist times, where politics and morality are treated as markets and success is measured by how much more you have than someone else, the reality that racial justice means everything will change means for many that the winners become losers and vice-versa. Justice is thus a 'zero-sum game,' as we now say, meaning that some have more and some have less and that's just the way things are.

And that's what makes me angry beyond words. If we think this is the way it has to be - some having more justice than others - then America is a lie because America exists 'to establish justice.' We must believe that everything should change, not only because the way things are now are unjust but because we will be better off as people and a nation if we do this.

Liberty and Justice are not zero-sum games, limited resources, commodities to be bought and sold and traded. Yet we treat them like they are, and so some get more and some get less. In America, people of color notably get less, as they have for over 400 years.

It may be that in this case, there was no crime according to law. I am prepared to see that, but only if others are prepared to say that law is no guarantee of justice. Injustice is very legal when it comes to marriage for lesbians and gays in Michigan. Injustice is quite legal when it comes to children getting educated fully. Injustice is legal where money is speech and poverty is silenced.

We need a better America, the one we pledged allegiance to in school.

“The people who have walked in darkness have seen a great light” – Isaiah 9

2014-11-07T15:32:00.003-05:00

A rather long post, following many post election thoughts, and to console my political son who was the second in command for someone who lost her re-election bid by 58 votes.

Although we are less and less Christian as a people, many of us even now recognize and enjoy the tradition that speaks of light after the dark, something we all understand in the northern hemisphere and also a metaphor for hope after despair which is what Isaiah meant after all.

American elections always come within sight of Christmas season, so to my fellow liberals and progressives and Democrats let us recall the words of Isaiah. Yes, there is reason for weeping and gnashing of teeth, and lamentation is understandable but, and let me repeat that word with emphasis – BUT – dismay serves the victor a second victory. Here, then, are some reasons for hope and courage, which are essential especially now.

1. America is a conservative nation, even among liberals. (“I thought you said reasons for hope?”) Yes, this is a reason for hope. By conservative I mean skeptical about government. One hundred fifty years ago Gideon Tucker wrote, “No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session," sometimes attributed to Mark Twain as well, who may have appropriated it somewhere along the line. Suspicion of government is very old among us, well entrenched and even liberals share this notion in some areas. Who of us is not outraged about mass incarceration, police misconduct, civil forfeiture, the Patriot Act? A healthy distrust of power is part of the liberal view as well. In other words, we are not as divided as we may feel.

2. Because we are conservative – skeptical – by nature, people will preserve the status quo long after it has been harmful to them. It is a form of preferring the devil you know, as the saying puts it. I think Ambrose Bierce’s famous definition of conservatives and liberals expresses the heart of the sentiment, “Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others.”

3. This fact is as old as the country itself. “And accordingly, as all experience hath shown,” writes the Declaration of Independence, “mankind (sic) are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to change the forms to which they are accustomed.” We liberals may decry the folly of those who vote ‘against their own interests,’ but it is an old and well-established fact of social behavior. We should not be surprised when it happens, and rather expect it. As Winston Churchill wryly observed, “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else.” And he was a conservative!

4. Therefore, liberal ideas will only be adopted when all else has failed. As a consequence, we should expect to be the minority most of the time. Which clearly means WE SHALL LOSE MORE ELECTIONS THAN WE WIN.

5. But we must not wait until disaster calls us – like firefighters – to the flaming house of democracy. That would be derelict. Though we may not be called upon until the last moment, we may not be absent in the meantime. But what should we do in that meantime, how shall we be ready when the nation needs us?

6. Even the conservative hopes for what the liberal hopes. What is that? “Liberty and Justice for All.” Where liberals have failed is in speaking to that hope in everyone. We have fallen prey to the same devil conservatism serves, fear. Conservatism thrives on fear as this is its basis. Some fears are appropriate, unchecked government power being one. But liberalism is premised on hope, and all people need hope, the light in the darkness, even conservatives; but liberals have lost that voice insofar as it speaks to the nation and not just themselves.

7. That is why dismay is conservatism’s second victory, for by feeling defeated we give up our soul, which is hope. The emotion is legitimate for the moment, as all defeats are hard. It is equally hard not to analyze why we were defeated, forgetting that victory for us is always exceptional and never the norm.

8. Our task is to ask not what went wrong with our strategy and organization, but how we can better speak to the hope. Technique helps win some elections, but ‘without a vision the people perish,’ and it is the liberal vision that people need. Thus the next step is not asking how to get people to vote but making people hungry to vote. We have two years. Here is how.

9. Reclaim our gift as those who believe the future of America is before us (hope) not behind us (fear). We cannot win elections or hearts by trying to compete over whose fears are more dire, or by using its cousin, anger. Fear and anger are the emotional basis of conservatism, after all.

10. Express liberal hope in words every American knows and reveres, ‘liberty and justice for all,’ ‘we the people,’ ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people,’ ‘I have a dream,’ and so on. Our greatest moments as a nation have been moments when liberals were in power.

11. Let go of specific policies and platforms, the techniques of government, and talk only of the people and the nation. Liberalism is larger than government, but right now it has been cornered as mere belief in big government. Let’s then lose the language of government with its programs (which sound like money spent) and laws (which sound like regulations and limits) and speak instead of democracy and liberty, of justice and fairness, of community and responsibility, of all the things everyone values. These are liberal hopes, but not enough people know they are.

12. Finally, rejoice in the victory of our fellow conservative Americans. They are our neighbors and friends and as wrong as we think they may be, we are as likely to wrong as well. And cheer them on because liberal hope extends to all Americans, not just those who think like us. Let’s disappoint those who think us defeated and outcast by drawing the circle of our hope around them as well.

Different Topic... But No Less Provocative For Some At Least

2014-10-12T16:46:00.003-04:00

Ok, so I felt sick last night, a cold that made a last ditch effort after I over exerted myself digging out dead shrubs in the yard. (yes it was foolish). And lying in bed with a fever of 102 I scanned the tube for something to watch. Behold, the 2012 movie version of Les Miz, something I had not seen. Nor had I seen the theatrical version , but many of the songs were familiar to me. People said it was a good movie, and though I had not seen the show I had read the book. Good choice.

Bad choice. For those who don’t know “Les Miserables” is one of the longest books in the world -1500 pages in English and 1900 in French (those French!). Upton Sinclair called it "one of the half-dozen greatest novels of the world." It is similar in size as well as date to “War and Peace.” Having read both, and eager to recommend them both, I can now conclude that the stage and screen version of “Les Miserables” is a failure. Here is why.

Victor Hugo wrote it to describe in detail and consequence, “the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of women by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night,” displayed not simply by individual characters but by fictional case studies. He demonstrates how they interact and interlock – one creating the other, and all sustained by an imperious government bent on preserving order at all costs. Valjean’s story cuts across them all, but Fantine and Thenardier and Marius and all the rest have their own stories as well, complete stories that describe in immense detail how society drives them to choices between bad and worse. It is an immense novel because he is trying to take it all in. Very much as Tolstoy was trying to render all of Russia in “War and Peace.”

The show and movie tell one story, though. Because of that we meet Fantine but do not learn her full story. We deal with Thenardier but never see his complex connection to Marius. Gavroche is a major character in the second half of the book, long before the uprising. While the cat-and-mouse of Valjean and Javert propel the plot, the plot is not the point. And that is all the show can do.

Mind. I do not mean that the show is bad in itself; it simply fails as a presentation OF the book. By reducing it, of necessity of course, to a single plot, the philosophical basis for the book, its raison d’etre, is lost. For those who never read the book it comes down to a relentlessly miserable and maudlin tale that makes the whole thing into a melodrama, which is precisely not what the book presents. Those elements are there in the book, but the purpose of the book always comes through because of its complexity and length, and thus redeems the sentimentalism from mawkishness. The show and movie cannot because those media are not ‘big’ enough to contain a book.

There are some theatrical versions of books that do work. Bernstein Hellman’s Candide is excellent, but that book is simpler and obviously shorter. And it was never a big hit. Few theatrical musicals come from books actually. Of the most popular, the “Phantom of the Opera,” “The Wiz” and “Tobacco Road” have their direct origins in books. So maybe I should not be surprised.

The huge success of “Les Miz” is actually unusual for a musical based on a novel. Perhaps if I had not read the book first I would have like it more. That said, I do hope some who enjoyed the show went on the read the book and discovered there was an even richer experience there than in the theater.

Mawwage...

2014-09-29T20:04:00.003-04:00

Pew Research says support for same sex marriage has dipped a little. No surprise, I think. Everything human has ups and downs. Perhaps it indicates a little ‘cause fatigue’ or something else. Of course we shall hear some prophets on the right say it is a bellwether or some such thing. As there are still some who believe the Civil War is not over (Tea Party anyone?) there will be die-hards for traditional marriage for generations to come. Same –sex marriage, though, is inevitable despite them, and this tiny dip which is a sociological tip of the hat to an era that has come to an end. All we who protest now are doing is making sure the foot dragging doesn’t take too long.

That being said, I wish to start another odd conversation about the way our society works, and because same-sex marriage has been so prominent it made me look at a curiosity of our culture that I believe deserves to change. To wit, the legal authority of clergy to solemnize legal marriage.

Those training for clergy life are always eager for the moment when they can ‘sign licenses,’ which is the one official thing we do that make us clergy different from civilians. Virtually everything else we do can be done by lay folk, legally I mean. But signing those licenses is the proof of our station and status. What I did not know back then was that this authority to sign marriage licenses is not global.

It seems that modern clergy authority to legitimate marriage is mostly an British custom. In other parts of Europe and the New World religious and civil marriage have been divorced (excuse the pun) for some years.

If our American (and Canadian) practices are cultural legacies not universal law, and we clergy who boast of our radical reformation roots have stood strongly against the commingling of church and state, then why do we allow ourselves to do this? Some of us have refused to sign licenses until gay and lesbian couples can also enjoy legal marriage, which is noble but my question is why we ever sign them all?

The more I think about it, the more it seems that this convention violates the intent of separating church and state. By making clergy magistrates of marriage, then then wield civil authority not according to the law but according to their religion. There is no reason for clergy to have this civil power, though. No religion requires it, as every religion in the USA and Canada exists in places where clergy do not have this authority. The convenience factor is minor, again as billions elsewhere do not seem aggrieved. Its original purpose, which was to make it easier for those far removed from cities to have access to legal marriage, is now moot.

I believe it is time for clergy – from my UU tradition and others – to demand that the states remove this unhealthy and unwise practice. Losing it will not impede religious practice, does not impose impractical burdens on couples or society, and tempts religious leaders to mix theology with law and church with state.

What do you think?

Now that I have Finished my Journey

2014-08-29T11:04:00.002-04:00

Here I go again, stepping on a wasp's nest this time, perhaps.

In a recent Facebook post I questioned democracy as a way of creating justice. It is a good thing, I said, not because of what it does because of what it prevents, to wit, tyranny. By slowing, complicating, and otherwise impeding actions that would be faster and clearer, it makes tyranny harder to accomplish. But democracy does this by impeding all decisions not just bad ones. So when we decry the gridlock and the compromise and the watering down by Congress we should not see this as anti-democratic but utterly democratic. This may be what Churchill meant by calling democracy the worst of all political systems, except compared to others. As bad a democracy is for getting things done, it does a fairly good job of preventing great tyranny by being so cumbersome, messy and venal.

This time - and this is very different - I am pondering a pattern of reasoning that assumes the innocence of the oppressed from deserving their oppression indicates an overall innocence. (A corollary would be that those guilty of oppressing others are guilty in some overall way as well.)

I see this in a variety of locations in time and place, but perhaps most notably in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. Here's how:

The Israeli government is doing oppressive things to the Palestinian people around them - in Gaza and the West Bank and in their own midst. Our natural sympathies for those who are suffering has, for some, made the Palestinian people and their cause noble. Because the one is wrong, the other must be right. And for some the wrong of the one means they are wrong in general and the innocence of the other renders them innocent in every respect. Therefor any defensive action by Israel will be seen as wrong by some, and any provocative action by Palestinians will seen as just.

Logically, this is a form of the error called 'post hoc ergo propter hoc,' that because this is wrong that is right. It may in fact be true, but not logically. But most people are not analyzing the situation logically. We see disproportionate violence and other acts which strike us as excessive. But that does not mean those who are harmed by those acts are innocent of anything except not deserving that.

The problem as I see it is reducing the dynamic of oppression to a binary moral zero sum game. One one side is bad, the other side is good. When that happens, categorical thinking tends to rise - one side is ALL bad and the other side is ALL good. In this instance, Israel's policies are bad, so Israel is bad, and Jews who believe in Israel are bad. (Those who read my post linking to the NYTimes article about anti-semitism should take time to read the comments which is where I began to think about this matter. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/02/world/europe/anger-in-europe-over-the-israeli-gaza-conflict-reverberates-as-anti-semitism.html?

It is hard to believe both in the necessity of Israel - which I do - and in justice for Palestinians - which I also do. But as one poet once told a younger one "everything serious is difficult" and it would be hard to find something more serious than this.

Last Day and Last Words

2014-08-28T14:03:00.000-04:00

May 5

In the morning we gather for breakfast which has become rather predictable over the days but never boring. Knowing that today rain was likely, and that this last portion had the steepest ascent, I leave barely after seven.

The trail leads near to the grocery and, remembering how I appreciated a little caffeine the day before, I stop to buy a can of coffee from the machine. That itself is a novelty, a can of coffee from a vending machine. What comes out is not only in a can but hot. I am used to cold drink machines but not hot drinks in cans. I drink it standing by the trail head, which is a stone staircase of course. And with the empty can in my backpack I start my day.

My last day was rated difficult because of the amount of climbing and descending. Over 5 km I would climb 830m, and over 500m of that came in the last half. Thank goodness it was cloudy, but it was prelude to rain coming from Southeast Asia.

At the top of the first short climb, up from the village of Koguchi, I encounter the famous wardo-ishirock, a watermelon slice about ten feet tall covered in moss and lichen and decorated with the names of the three gods who are said to meet here once a year, the spirits of the shrines and temples we are visiting.After days of nature doing improbable things this notion does not seem at all far-fetched.

Not long after this, along a flatter portion, I come to a place of ruined teahouses, now just a clearing that is slowly returning to forest. Already I am in a sweat from the climb and seeing no one on the trail on the way up, I pause to remove both knapsack and shirt and enjoy the cool breezes beneath the trees. It turns out the trail is not as empty as I thought. First, a young woman going north passes, and then a young man going south. I feel over exposed, not the least because of my aging torso, and reclaim shirt and knapsack.

For the next 4.5 kms I climb too Echizen-toge pass, the highest point on the trail. Though not as steep as some of the early portions, this is the longest continual climb of the whole pilgrimage. I am grateful for the generally even path, meaning wide and straight enough not to require studied attention every step and only a few stones to be avoided. But at every turn the path continues up, beyond my view, no end in sight, a Sisyphian task. Those three miles take ninety minutes, each minute had 30 steps, or 2700 steps.

At the top of the Echizen-toge pass are four people pausing. Their presence tells me I am at the top. That and the assortment of little signs on posts - none more than a foot high or wide - hammered into the ground to prove they made it. At just that moment, the literal high point of my journey, the promised rain arrived.

forty or fifty feet
in the sky, raindrops
in the willow (Basho)

A noise like fireworks
crackling, radio static
created by rain on trees,

It began slowly but quickly grew to a din. I get out my raincoat and wait under the trees, hoping it would be a brief cloudburst. It wasn’t. And so begins my descent on stone steps now slippery with rain. Though even more diligent now, I do slip and fall, sliding along a wet stone and getting mud on my pants. Now, instead of perspiration wetting me from the inside out, the rain gets inside my slicker and wets me from the outside in. What about the contents of my knapsack, I think? I have wrapped things in plastic bags, but not everything.

A cold rain starting
And no hat -- So? (Basho)

But you are now old
fellow traveler, and rain
may be your ruin

Looking for better footing I work my way down the stairs even more carefully. I have no room to injure myself, even a twisted ankle. Looking for good purchase, I test the stones with my staff, and I slip again when the staff slides on the wet stone. It slips into a crack and I begin to fall again. Breaking my fall by leaning on the staff, I bend it. There are a lot of steps ahead. Doing without it is scary. Slowly, using the crack in which it bent, I reverse the damage. Victory sometimes comes in small packages, but it still feels like a triumph.

If you think that was memorable, the poet puts me in my place from years before, "... the mountains were so thickly covered with foliage and the air underneath so hushed that I felt as if I was groping my way in the dead of night... the wind seemed to breathe out black soot through every rift in the hanging clouds. I pushed my way through thick undergrowth of bamboo, crossing many streams and stumbling over hidden rocks, till at last I arrived at the village of Mogami after much shedding of cold sweat.”

Methinks my few words
are nothing compared to yours
but we sweat the same.

Great ocean views promised by the guide books do not exist as mist follows the rain, billows visibly filling in between the trees and blurring the landscape. But in a sense this was even more Japanese.Confirming the photographer's rule that the best shots come during the worst moments, my eyes are rewarded with scenes that sunlight cannot produce: mossy Jizos more touching in the gray light, the edges of the world softened; bamboo groves turned into brush paintings; a tangle of moss covered tree trunks and a green boulder that are a snapshot of giants bowling in the forest.

As has happened several days, when I hear the distant rustle of river water I know the end is approaching.After a long quiet stretch on a ridge, steps return to descend. I change tactics. Instead of looking for the least wet stones and gingerly testing each as I go, I step onto the largest one in each step whatever its condition and discover I can stride confidently down. Oh, that I had discovered this before! What time I could have saved. Then again, spending time is why I am here. But walking down is now far more pleasant than climbing down.

From the peak when the rain started, down to the river, I have seen fewer fellow pilgrims. But not none at all. My new walking strategy allows me to pass a couple easily, very different from those who watched me stumble an hour before. Closer to the river the others are going up the hill as I go down. Do they know, or care, how long and steep and slippery it is? Photos of these stairways are breathtaking to the eye, ones I have seen before and those I am taking now, and reveal nothing of their difficulty or peril.

After many steps the steep slope begins to flatten out, a cemetery appears to my left enclosed in low walls, the sound of water grows; and then, at the bottom of another set of steps I am quite suddenly in a park outside the town where the shrines were. No transition at all save for a carved stone. Another pavilion stands nearby where I pause along with a group of young adults arriving to climb up. The trail,now more tidy but not less stony, takes me through a manicured lawn like a golf course and then to a long stone stairway that goes down to the shrines of Naki-san, named for the 400 foot waterfall that has been sacred for centuries. Again, the stairs end suddenly in the complex, coming in the back door as I did atHongu, making me feel out of place among the day trippers strolling casually on the sidewalk that connects the shrines and shops.

As often happens, the Shinto shrine and Buddhist temple stand cheek by jowl, a remnant of the time when Buddhist monks also cared for Shinto sites. But the buildings are always distinct in design and color. The Buddhist temple has a great bell inside, and a promising statue, but only for those willing to pay. Havingseen many others already I decide it is not worth the price. I can see a bit inside along the side porch. And I can hear the bell quite well indeed. The Shinto shrine is beautiful but typical. What makes then stand out is how they fit the place where they are built. Clinging to a hillside, hallway up from the valley, the gain their sanctity from the waterfall a half a km away. Between them is a Buddhist pagoda, among the tallest in Japan, that serves as a viewing tower. That I am willing to pay to see. Its inside walls are filled with Buddhist paintings but you have to climb up to see. I do.

Thinking of a temple he visited in the far north, Basho noted

Even the long rain of May
Had left it untouched -
This gold chapel
Aglow in the sombre shade.

That’s the zen in him, finding clouds with every silver lining. But ultimately he is right. All is vanity.

Beautiful paintings -
Rains can wash them all away
while cleansing the world

To come this far and not approach the falls themselves would be foolish, so even though the rain has resumed, I trudge down more steps to the bottom of the gorge where buses gather to disgorge visitors who then join me in the last 150 meters through tall cedars to the foot of the falls. Itself a shrine, there is anenormous incense burner at the bottom attended by a priest, and many sticks of incense stuck in the brazier, the smoke mixing with the mist and rain into a looming aromatic cloud.

Though no Niagara, Naki-san is impressively tall mesmerizing us all. What is there in flames and waters that attract us? Each perfectly balance order and chaos. They move but do not choose how they move. They are not alive but are essential to life. They are liminal things that bridge the apparent boundary between animate and inanimate. These things do not occur to me then, of course, as I take in the narrow ribbon of water that falls 400 feet to the rocks below. I simply look, as others do, many with translucent umbrellas against the increasing rain.

Each spot at Naki-san has a sense of finality as this is the end of the trail. I look for a token to buy, to signify my end. There are several souvenir shops near the falls with a wide choice. I buy a t shirt, as I did in England and Spain. If there is a place to turn the official booklet with stamps I cannot find it, but I do not have the book either. The sense of accomplishment is murky, like the weather. Have I ended?

Mid growing rain again, I take a final long stairway of 600 steps – the Daimonzaka - which brings me to the official exit from the sacred region, a bookend to Takijiri-oji five days ago. Like that place, this one is not quite apparent until one looks hard. Two Massive cedars guard the path - called husband and wife - and one last Torii gate signal leaving the sacred area, and outside there is one more large stone carved boasting of UNESCO. My official passage is complete.

As if to tell me more clearly, the rain grows heavier as I walk away, down the automobile road toward the bus stop. There is a final 5 km of trail, down to the sea. I considered walking it when there was nothing but mist, but the rain is now heavy and so I take my agent’s advice and hail a bus to Kii-Katsuura, dripping on the floor of the bus as it lumbers along; the wipers thumping back and forth on the foggy windshield make the loudest sound. At the very end, which is also the train station, I walk to the wharf to find the boat that takes me to yet another hot spring spa built in the Catskill style. That is, the place is enormous. The check-in desk has six clerks in matching blazers. People in yukatas go back and forth to the famed onsens which are set in grottos and on cliffs. My room looks out onto the harbor, incongruously lavish compared to where I was hours before, muddy and wet in the forest. And there is a private shower. The bathroom is designed to be an Ofuro, a formal bath with a drain for rinsing and a tall sided tub, but being able to take simple shower alone is the real luxury I crave.

Unlike Yunomine, meals here served as a buffet in a giant hall. Long tables surround enormous tableaus of food. Around the edges are more food stations. My incompetent slippers lead me to walk in socks, which causes some amusement. A woman behind the entry desk hands me a pair of slippers with a big smile. Beyond her a very tall man in a tuxedo (and shoes!) points people to their seats at the long tables,with numbers at each seat. Whole families in Yukatas walk back and forth between the sashimi and croissants. Not what I expected, but little has been.

By morning the sky cleared. From the boat and train I see small islands in the harbor and along the coast.After an hour we pass Kii-tanabe where I started. From Wakayama on the scenery is mostly greater Osaka, the second largest metro area in Japan. I change again at Shin-Osaka, and the trip to Kyoto takesonly 20 minutes.

In Kyoto, my luggage is waiting for me, but Kyoto – yes that great city - was a little less thrilling when one arrives from sacred mountains and waterfalls. I feel a certain incompleteness in fact, that there ought to be some ritual moment that closes my pilgrim passage. Fortunately, fate gives me a fitting end to my pilgrimage that evening.

By the time I have arrive and settle in it is 4 pm and the major sites will close soon. Except one.

The Fushima Inari Taisha, is a low mountain south of the city and dotted with shrines to Inari. All arelinked by pathways that are nearly encased by torii gates erected side by side to gain favor from the kami of prosperity. There are even signs telling you how much a gate costs. It all makes for tunnels ofvermillion toriis, thousands of them, interrupted by shrines of various sizes. In the clusters of shrines miniature torii gates stack up on the altars. It is a pilgrimage itself, and indeed I see someone jogging along the path from shrine to shrine paying respects at each with an offering, a bell ring, a prayerful bow and a solemn 'clap-clap.'

Walking to the top and back was a good 2-3 km in itself - snaking in and out of clearings, up and down slopes, and all well prowled by cats. The path was getting dark as I circled back to the hilltop when the sun set. People lingered on the ledge to watch the light turn from gold to red to purple. My descent to the town was almost solitary, until I find the gate where I entered. Ahead of me is a young couple, sitting on a step, relishing their solitude in the twilight.

“I visited the Gongen shrine,” Basho recalls. “There are hundreds of houses where priests practice religious rites with absolute severity. Indeed the whole mountain is filled with miraculous inspiration and sacred awe.” I will settle for this lesser hill south of Kyoto on the Nara line.

Five days later, after seeing Kyoto and Nara and Ise, I am walking through downtown Kyoto on my last evening there and at the busiest corner I collide with the two American women I met at Takajiri. “We were supposed to meet at Naki-san,” I begin, “but we got a late start and the rain slowed us down,” one said. “So I went to my hotel,” I continue. “Want that drink now?” “We are leaving tonight,” the other says. How could it be otherwise, as Buddhism is all about the illusion of certainty and control?

Five days after that I am packing up to go to Narita and home. Along the way I have relinquished underwear and shirts and socks, by design I should add. I have accumulated papers and booklets and a gift for my wife and a stone or two – remember Fuji? - to remind me of where I was. And in my hands I hold Basho, the book I have owned since 1971. It is in pieces. From Echizen-toge down to the bus stop it rained, and the rain got into the knapsack as I went.

Shed of everything else
I still have some lice
I picked up on the road
Crawling on my summer robes.

How sad it seems and then how right. He traveled to lose himself – to unloose himself from the world. The book has now done the same, unloosed itself as we traveled. In the Ueno part of Tokyo, not far fromwhere he lived before leaving on his journeys, a section of town with same name as the village in which he was born, I leave the fractured book on the desk of my small room. Why keep it? We are both going home.

Day Four on the Kumano Kodo

2014-08-17T21:34:00.001-04:00

May 4

Before continuing the journey, a further word about slippers. Leaving one's shoes at the door is the easy to understand. The point is to avoid bringing dirt inside and not to damage the tatami mats. Then comes the dance of removing the shoes but not standing where the shoes are. That only begins to cover the custom, though. Both the spa in Yunomine and the minchuku in Chikatsuyuhad toilet slippers - used only in the toilet area - which requires leaving the inside slippers outside the toilet, stepping into the toilet slippers just inside the toilet room, and reversing the process. Since none of these sandals or slippers actually fit, I spend most of my time in my room.

Breakfast at Yunomine was in a common room as it was as it was a Takahara and Chikatsuyu, but two floors down. I shuffle along, slippers constantly trying to fly off the front of my paddle shaped feet. This is supposed to be relaxing, but for me it is hardly that.

Breakfast was smaller, thank goodness, and though in a common room, each table is laid out for each person with their room number beside. This time people would see me eat, egad! Dried fish over a burning brazier, which I must turn over from time to time with my hachi. Another burner with tofu and onions, a soft boiled egg in a cup into which I broke it and added a shoyu sauce that made it wonderful. Rice porridge which is a soupy rice mixture I saw back in Tokyo, and better than it sounds. Salad and the other Japanese breakfast food - miso soup. Like dinner, no course is large by American standards, and the assortment of vegetables is excellent. But always very salty!

I am uncertain about how to eat dissolving tofu and how to pick flesh from broiled fish. Using a finger now and then to steady something, I became rather decent at plucking things. Sidelong glances confirm that Japanese do this too.

As we leave Basho speaks up, "I had a bath before I took shelter at an in," the poet remembers from his long journey. "It was a filthy place with rough straw mats spread out on an earth floor. They had to prepare my bed by the dim light of the first, for there was even a lamp in the whole house.” My stumbles are comic by comparison.

Today's trip starts with a bus ride from Yunomine to Ukegawa, there being no path between them for some reason which I do not know. I dislike skipping parts of the trail as I did last night but there is not a connection between these two places. My booklet says this would be an easy day, which it is by comparison only. Not as long as yesterday, to be sure, only four hours, and yet plenty of climbing and descending.

Driving me to the bus stop, I am delivered to the actual town of Yunomine, which is gathered around a narrow gorge through which a river runs and hot springs break forth into the river itself. The whole town smells of sulphur. People come here to take the waters as they do in Hot Springs AR, but this town is just a town not a city.

My host urged me to look around, which I did, first noticing several people carrying net bags of eggs which they will boil in the hot springs for their breakfast. Finding the trail that led here from the Hongu Taisha, the one that went over the ‘steep’ hill, I decide backtrack along it for about 200 meters to the ojihere, to pay my respects reverence and of course get the stamp. Coming back, I see the little old wooden onsen house for town bathing. It is perched over the river, its roof held on by stones. It is women’s time as two are waiting on the porch.

leaving the hot springs,
looking back how many times —
beneath the mist (Basho)

Too plangent for me, companion. I’ll try something a little playful for the morning.

The stones keep the wood
down. The wood holds the water.
Sulfur mists just laugh.

Waiting for the bus, the two American women with whom I started turned up. Remember them? I was relieved to see them, as carrying so much had to be awful for that first climb. Today they have much less stuff. They truly had no idea how tough the climbs would be and repacked the first night and sent the stuff ahead, something I said I did and they did not know they could do. As footloose folks, they are going to go to the end of today's section and walk backward to Yunomine for another night. We promised to share intelligence when we met up, which we will. But not when or where.

The trail from the shrine of Kumano HonguTaisha to its sister temple Nachi-Taisha, developed later than the first. In older times, imperial pilgrims would come to the Hongu Taisha and then travel down the river to see the Nachi-Taisha. There are, therefore, fewer monuments than on earlier sections. But there are excellent views, decent trails for the most part, and because it is a Sunday on a holiday weekend, more hikers. The landscape is now pretty steadily the same - beautiful mountainsides through which one sees neighboring mountains; gorgeous, ho hum. At the top of one, a little jizo pillar marks the highest point along this segment, with a view called hyakken-gura, or 3600 cliffs or peaks. Not quite accurate, there are nonetheless dozens of mountain tops and peaks visible from here.

No much farther along there is a branch trail to an even higher point famous for its sunset views. I start climbing and then see a sign indicating it is most of a kilometer away, and mostly up. Not being sunset I decide to pass it up.

More than previous days, the trail hugs the hillside rather than following ridges, and as there are no railings and the trail can become rather narrow, my companion recalls when he was on his way to Sarashina, “Above my head, mountains rose over mountains and on my left a huge precipice dropped a thousand feet into a boiling river…” My response,

Like the many tree roots
my toes struggle to hold on
to the mountainside

Today, aside from the usual climbing and descending, I meet new birdsongs, bothersome insects that loved buzzing around my head but did not bite (there seem to be no mosquitos in Japan!). Basho remembers a night spent in more belligerent company.

“Bitten by fleas and lice
I slept in a bed,
A horse urinating all the time
Close to my pillow”

Thankfully nothing of that sort beset me. Today, in fact, I have a better maintained trail most of the time but also two trees that fell over the trail and require some negotiating.

The spiritual highlight is a Jizoabout halfway along that had a great heap of stones at its base, Sai-no-kawara. Close to the pillar is a sign that explains how children's souls have not enough karmic credit to get into Buddhist heaven if they die, but Jizowill help them if they made piles of stones for him. But a demon, Oni, knocks them over. The souls need help from living people, it seems, so people pile stones on or around Jizo. In this place there is a great heap. Touching, but why here?

On the last descent, a really long one, I pause when I see an old tree with a great vine - a firehose of a plant - dangling from it. Or is it a vegetal boa constrictor, choking the tree over a period of years? Turning around to snap a better picture I spy another Jizoembedded into the hill that I had passed, shrouded by the hill and the tree as I went by. My goal is to take a photo of every Jizo I see.

My companion remembers,

Over the ruins of a shrine
a chestnut tree
still lifts its candles (Basho)

But having no shrines to remember,

Hiding from my view
Jizo naps in mossy bed
will pebbles awake him?

I emerge from the woods onto a road and the village of Koguchi, a handful of houses along a little river between the hills. How odd this feeling of relief and reluctance. The body is always ready to return to society but the mind pauses. It is not the desire to be alone as much as a change in company. Among people the mind must think ahead and plan and act, whereas in the trees there is simply being amid other beings. The temples devoted to the Buddha are farther from him, I think, than the bare road.

Once in society again, even this slight village, I feel hungry. A small grocery offers iced tea in a cooler and a snack. The owner almost grudgingly appears to take my money. In a bus stop I can sit in the shade and drink until my lodging is open for guests.

She speaks little English, but has a streak of pink in her gray hair. My room is more modest than last night with a small laundry line. She will wash things for me, I finally understand. In my room tea and small snacks are on the low table. By 430 I have bathed in a simple tub which in Japan has very tall sides to allow for extended soaking. I put on denim guest pajamas which are very comfortable, and write in my diary while awaiting the evening meal. I have an 8 tatami room, with glassed shouji that opens onto a vegetable garden out back. There are only three guest rooms. One more arrives - a couple I think. The male proprietor has more English than his wife but not much. The other guests are Japanese. This will be interesting.

Dinner last night was lovely, both because of the food and the company. Called by my host, I came out to the front room where I entered to find my fellow guests, a couple as I expected, already sitting. To my delight they both had fair amount of English. He, it turns out, is a professor of rice science near Kyoto and had spent a year in Florida not long ago. They were very engaging. We shared stories of adult children, travels, and the quality of rice in America which he confessed was equal to anything in Japan. His wife asked me if I heard the news, which of course I had not, that there was a notable tremor in Tokyo the day before. Checking the TV in my room later there was video of shaking shelves. But it could have been as far away as California to me.

Worth noticing was how homely the experience was, with folding chairs around a simple large table. Now and then I glimpsed into the kitchen from where I sat. A radio or TV played quietly in the background. But the food again was abundant and varied and always slightly different even when the materials were the same. What remains with me now, though, was the honesty that this was someone's house.

"The master of the house brought out some cups," the poet remembered from his trip to Sarashinashrine. They were "too big to be called refined, and were decorated with somewhat uncouth gold-lacquer work, so that over-refined city-dwellers might have hesitated to touch them. Finding them in a remote country as I did, however, I was pleased to see them and thought they were even more precious.” My folding chair and denim pajamas meant more than my blue yukata and hand served meal the day before.

Back in my room, my futon now unpacked for me, I checked my laundry for dryness, having hung it on plastic hangers on the clothes line in my room. To serve my evening sweet tooth I had bought a bag of candies in the store earlier, fruit gels dusted in sugar. I eat and read and write until bed time.

Day Three on the Kumano Kodo

2014-08-10T13:07:00.000-04:00

May 3

Arising early, I eat breakfast a little before 7. Ma and Pa innkeeper, very amiable, had my place laid out with smoked fish, scrambled egg, rice of course, pickles, and miso soup. Pickles are as vital to a meal as rice. And in such variety of color and shape and taste. None are as potent and Japanese as the pickled plum; which a tiny mauve colored fruit, shriveled like a newborn baby. In the mouth it is an explosion of salt and sour without even a hint of sweet, which to the western tongue is a shock. Even after eating them for days, my tongue still expects something fruity; as in winter each day I expect warmth.

slowly spring
is taking shape:
moon and plum (Basho)

The poet tells me. To which I reply.

Too slowly the tongue
realizes that winter
will never be sweet.

I was on my way by 7:15, retracing the steps I made yesterday. Today I make haste as the distance is 25 km and I must catch a bus at the end to complete the journey.

From the outset the trail was busier. A young man with strong legs is just ahead until Tsugizakura, where he pauses. Past the teahouse with the laundry line, I meet up again with the two Japanese women. “Did you see a gray hat, perhaps?”

“Yes, in the road yesterday a half a kilometer to Chikatsuyu from the shrine.” But we are now some distance beyond the shrine. They had stayed by the teahouse, in turns out. I am sad and a little sorry for not picking up the hat. (I think about the Americans who I have not seen since leaving the bus on Thursday.)

This is an easier day than expected because, though it is longer, the portion of paved and level trail is higher.

That said, the length and the three large hills to climb and descend make it strenuous enough. According to my information book, the road climbs 1200 meters during the day and descends 1400. With every mountain pitched at a reliable 25-30 degrees that means lots of very tall steps when there were steps. Going up gets the heart pounding, and that makes for stops along the way – places for seeing on purpose and taking pictures. Going down is even harder as the trail is stony and full of twisting tree roots which requires watching and planning every step down as well as up. My eyes must look down to assure a solid landing.

There are other animals today out today. Along the automobile road I see a macaque, wild monkey, loping across the asphalt about 50 meters ahead of me. It picks up speed when it sees me, darting into the bushes. If monkeys are supposed to be amusing, I am far from amused. Monkeys belong in zoos, movies, Africa – they exist in the wild which means this place here must be, well, wild. That this happens close to a car tunnel is an added incongruence. I think of the black bear that casually jogged across a road in Vermont one afternoon. Before I could say the word ‘bear’ it was gone. This morning I hear the leaves rustle as it climbs up the hillside.

Birds are very vocal in these woods, and I hear more frogs as well. Somewhere in the early afternoon I finally spy one - quite small for the loud sound it makes. Later on the trail I spy a blue beetle, yes blue. Not a dark purple or black with a bluish tinge, but a shiny royal blue carapace. Later in the day I see the empty shell of a tiny river crab. When you have to look down often because of the unpredictable terrain, you still see unexpected things.

Monkeys, beetles, crabs,
and birds. This is your home. I
should remove my shoes.

Less poet, more poem, Basho reminds me.

Sparrow, spare
The horsefly
Dallying in flowers. (Basho)

Sometimes even rocks and trees and moss assert themselves. An old stone water bowl from a ruined teahouse, large and heavy like a toilet, is all that the eye can see of the teahouse, and is itself rimmed with thick moss around the lip. Somewhat later a half meter wide boulder that fell onto the path some time ago stopped there because vines captured it in a ragged net as if snared by a hunter. The road dwindles to barely a meter wide along hillsides, littered with small stones that elude the vines. “Imperial caravans came this way?” I ask myself again, incredulous. Chronicles tell of bearers and nobles, pausing at every oji to make ablutions and prayers and climb a little higher in purity. Surely the climb itself with its self-basted ablutions is as purifying as the shrines.

There are plenty of little ojis, without the trappings and formalities, eroded statues and lichen encrusted stone slabs like gravestones. Some are in name only, a spot on the map, a few have decent trappings. Between them is an assortment of Jizos, mostly sad little statues covered in moss visible only because a faded bib sticks out from the lumpy green of the stone figure. One or two have plastic cups with dried sticks rather than flowers, and several had baby cups or toys telling me something of the provenance of the giver. These have come to mean more than the grander shrines. They need a little more attention, I think, so I take their pictures. “Smile!” (They always do.)

Twice today, going through villages between mountains, a house has a roadside stand with ‘primitive’ carved wooden statues. The first had a man peeing, his member being the spigot for the water tank below. I think of the rude little boy in Brussels doing the same thing. Not as charming when it is a full-grown image rather than a little boy.

And water, I see a dozen waterfalls, mostly small but one makes a real splash, forgive me. Something of a surprise in this remote place, though. Even on the most narrow trail along the highest ridge, there are rubber pipes running along or close underground to carry water, I suppose, both to prevent erosion and capture the water and maybe the energy thereof. This remote and ancient way is being preserved by modern hoses and pipes that try very badly to hide themselves from view.

Rain begins to fall as I reach a rest house in a valley between hills - an open pavilion with tables and attached WC - which makes it worth a stop to take off my raincoat and let it drip a little before resuming. Thankfully, I need only empty my bladder as the toilet is the traditional squat sort, a small metal trough in the concrete floor and no cleaner than most rustic facilities.

The rain grows heavier and the wind blows the water under the eaves. Basho remembers a poem from his friend and Zen teacher Buccho, appropriate to the moment.

This grassy hermitage
Hardly any more
than five feet square
I would gladly quit but for the rain. (Basho)

I must of course quote him in return.

Weather worn satchel,
hardly more than five feet tall,
we cannot quit yet.

I still like the more obvious puns and turns of phrase, as you can tell.

Detoured because a typhoon a few years ago washed part of the actual pilgrim road out, I walk a modern road for a while, a relief but also a regret. I want honest blisters.

Clouds clear off a bit and the sun begins to steam the air. Back into the woods I go, a relief in the warm sun, but there is soon a large clearing at the edge of the forest. Not a clearing, no it is a collapsed hillside from that same typhoon I guess. And the trail has been remade over top of the debris.

All along the way there have been small repairs where rocks or mud have come down. Some have masonry walls and some just stacked logs. Nothing as enormous as this, though, a steep hundred foot slope of dirt and rock where a forest was. Below the temporary trail fifty foot tree trunks are heaped like toothpicks.

Spring rain
conveyed under the trees
in drops. (Basho)

His wisdom is paying off.

Waterfalls everywhere
gentling the air and the ear
swallowing the trees.

Then, in a short while, I am beside a river, walking along its bank and then almost without warning comes a little red bridge where there is another pavilion and a dead end road and a cookout and cars parked snug against the bright red bridge where the river and the ancient road meet, where I fill my water bottle and eat a little, standing apart from the gathering. But a few meters further on a gathering of some organization, which I surmise because there are bright vertical banners posted near a shrine. Men in traditional clothes stand about in conversation. Children play in a little circle, and women handle food - offerings to the kami at the shrine here, while talking and eating themselves. I decide not to pause here, or to collect the stamp.

The road is not mine, now. All this time it was Kumano and me and a few fellow pilgrims: our place. Now, I am the visitor again, trespassing with my dirty clothes and European features, outsider. As the road rises and the trail branches off into the woods I am glad. So much has solitude become my partner that company makes me feel alone without it.

Following the modern road (and my two women friends from the rest stop yesterday) I choose not to take the trail when it goes down to the river and back to the road. I imagine the steep steps down and back and think the three mountains already today are plenty. I know from the map that the old road will rejoin the new in about 500 meters, and the thrill of steep steps has long passed.

A few hundred meters further now the path leaves to road to climb a steeper path of course, and with each step I hear the sound of people and in a few hundred meters find myself at Hosshinmon-oji which marks the far edge of the Hongu sacred district. Hosshin means “spiritual awakening” or “aspiration to enlightenment” and mon means “gateway.” While each oji along the way is a ritual passage toward the goal, this one signals a transition into the most sacred area. Nothing about its appearance makes that evident, except probably the carved stone markers in Japanese. The spigot that feeds the chozuya is across the automobile road from the oji itself. A sign clearly says it is not for drinking, presuming passers- by would do that. A local walker fills his canteen without a thought.

He shakes the sacred
water from his hands, like flies.
Too pure I surmise.

Yes, my poet companion, you are right. It is about the moment, not the meaning, which is why yours is still superior.

Just as I scoop it,
it rings in my teeth:
spring water (Basho)

Speaking of water, somewhere in here, feeling hot and tired, I remember that I have had no caffeine today. In one of the villages along the way ahead I prowl the ubiquitous drink machines and succeed in finding some koku zero. It gives me a little kick, enough to power to the end, past the leisure hikers who amble along the path.

The road descends mostly now. I come to Fushiogami-oji, ‘falling on the knees shrine,’ where one can glimpse the main shrine down in the valley. Not today, of course. Mist and haze cloud the view far below. More day hikers here, and across the road in the rest pavilion. They are showing their stamp booklets. This is the first time I see one or know of them. My little pad of stamps looks rather silly I think, as I tug on the chain that keeps the stamp attached to the kiosk. Children eat ice cream cones with spoons. Where did they find them?

The stamp kiosk, which looks like a birdhouse, has become part of the ritual for me. Some have them and some do not. The ‘birdhouse’ contains an ink pad and stamp, usually chained in some way. They are like woodcuts, but some pads are nearly dry and barely make an impression while some are very fresh and the impression bleeds on the page.

Down, into another village with another carving shop, and beyond it my first look at tea farms. They are shrubs in long rows, like a hedge. Old men and women in wide hats pluck the leaves. A thousand years would not change this scene. Prints and paintings from China and Japan that seemed fanciful in museums – with their farmers in paddies and steep mountains nearby – now seem like photographs.

Coolness
portrayed in painting:
bamboos of Saga (Basho)

Says my companion. The image, just that and nothing more. Perfect.

Hats yellow in sun
roll slowly through the tea leaves
above old fingers.

Not bad. I am making progress.

Down gently now, the sound of the river Kumano grows slowly. More steps and I reach the outskirts of town. Now, the sound of people adds to the babble of the river. I am on a road with houses, and like a servant I enter the Kumano Hongu Taisha from the back door, between outbuildings, passing trash bins and trucks parked in back. Not a grand entrance for a pilgrim destination.

This is not where the shrine should be. An enormous storm in the 1880s flooded the river where the first complex was for centuries. The emperor then ordered it moved uphill. Of course, all major shrines are rebuilt regularly, so no place is actually very old, although there are some ancient Shinto buildings in places like Takahara-oji. It is the place and the kami that make it reverent, not the buildings. Nature is timeless, you see, creating and destroying as it will without regard to what we humans prize.

I do not reverence the kami here, mostly because the lines are long, and I ‘gave at the Jizo office’ earlier in the day. But mostly because those here are truly part of this land and I am not. This ritual is a family affair and a good guest does not inconvenience one’s host.

There are three shrines behind one common fence, along a wide fence with people lined up at each. I linger around the edges, taking in the quiet that prevails despite the many people, listening as they ring the bell and clap. In the outer court people mill about like tourists and shoppers. There is always a place to buy amulets and charms, and young men and women in priestly dress to sell them.

After all that hustling to make the bus it turned out I had two hours to spare, so after a long rest on a stone bench, smelling my own stench, I go down the front steps, many and steep, flanked with white banners. Very impressive.

A village surrounds the shrine complex, serving visitors like any other tourist spot. Having time, I walk a short way on to the original shrine site – and part of the pilgrim road – which was demolished in 1889 and now marked by the largest tori in the world. It is an Otoriiactually – an honorific form of torii- and is still a sacred precinct because only some kami who lived there moved up the hill. Two resident spirits remain on the riverside.

“There was the ruined site of the temple built by the high priest Shunjo at the village of Awa in the province of Iga.” Basho always remembers other places wherever we go. This place, though, is not a ruin. There is a raised area, where the original honden was, I surmise. “The main hall had been completely destroyed, leaving only foundations,” the poet remembers. Rice paddies cover the area just outside the enormous torii gate, seedlings poking up from the water. Very pretty I think. “The priest’s living quarters had been reduced to paddies and fields,” he continues. Pretty paddies are the luxury of the tourist.

The pilgrim road continues on from here to Yunomine Onsen where I will sleep tonight. But my guidebook advises taking a bus after all that walking because the last 3 km are very steep. Considering that the guidebook never mentioned the trail being steep before, I shudder to imagine what it will be when it is worth mentioning. The sun has come out in earnest; it is almost hot waiting for the bus under the translucent canopy by the museum and a can of beer bought from a vending machine feels very satisfying.

I met the river here,
chasing it down the mountain,
and toast the victor.

Cast your eyes a little wider, my companion says. Like this,

This hot day swept away
into the sea by the
Mogami River (Basho)

A little crowd boards the bus when it arrives, precisely on time of course. It is a short tide and I know exactly when to get off, but my bus stop is odd – there is nothing nearby. Have I made a mistake? A sign in Japanese that I cannot read lists a phone number. It matches the one I have, so I follow the arrow uphill - yet again - but only briefly.

My hotel is a spa featuring extensive onsens. They greet me at the large hotel front doors threshold with a smile and directions to leave my shoes right there. A numbered tag will protect them like others lined up on the floor. My slippers are even smaller than the last. Japanese women walk faster in kimonos than I do to my room.

After situating myself in a very lovely room with a view over the nearby valley, I head toward the onsen both for spiritual and physical purposes. This one truly is under the sky. It is more of a pool made to look like a pond edged with stone. The women in the next pool, separated by a wooden wall, are just audible. My senses take in the sounds of voices and waters, the sights of rock and tree and sky and waves, the sensations of hot water and cool air.

And, after a returning to my room, another elaborate dinner, this one served to me in my room. When people say Japanese food is boring or unsatisfying, they must not have eaten like this. To be served alone in one’s room is fun but also a little unsettling. A young lady with some English lays it out - explaining it all - kneeling very demurely before me as I sit at the low table. She leaves from time to time, but not without bowing first, closing the shouji behind her. Soon she is back with more food, several times over the hour. Like other meals, no course is very large, starting with a hot pot to cook scallop and prawn (big enough to be menacing if seen on a street corner) along with cabbage and onion and tiny mushrooms I should know the name of. There is rice of course, and a demitasse of split pea soup, sashimi, sushi, seaweed soup (which was really good) and a starter of raw snail (was it alive?), a little mushroom custard served en croute no less, pickles of course, and then a tiny almond pudding.

Like my bath, every sense is strung along like a Brahms melody that refuses to end when you think it will. Afterwards an older man lays out my futon. What a sensible bed this is, but what a meager pillow.

From bath to dinner
moments pass like pearls on thread
adjacent alone

As ever, yours is better, sensei,

hold for a moment
the sound of slicing soybeans:
bowl beating (Basho)

Day Two on the Kumano Kodo

2014-08-05T09:43:00.000-04:00

May 2

A good fortune somewhat unexpected is good sleep. Fatigue overcame novelty. Awake just before dawn, the valley below is covered in fog, cotton nestled between the ridges like batting. Clear sky above, mountains around, clouds below.

Firmament above 
amethyst sky, firmament
 below, cloud blanket

We both like the sky, it seems:
Resting higher
 than a lark in the sky
 a mountain pass (Basho)

Dressed for the trail, I breakfast at the same table with the same waiter. “Breakfast here, coffee after outside?” Cured fish, rice, miso soup, pickled plum, baked egg - more than enough for the road ahead. On the terrace a small cup of coffee, a Japanese couple who speak some English - enough to be noticed but not deeply engaged: perfect. The fog has lifted and the river is visible now as well as the highway as it twines around the river before entering a tunnel.

Paying for the sake, I leave and promptly turn the wrong way. Two old women in straw hats and large smiles point me in the right direction. I smile and bow, ‘arigatou!’ The trail goes up, always up.
This hike resembles other walks in Spain and England in some ways - hours alone in the woods (ah!), shade dappled trails (oh!), the sound of leaves and birds and water (ooh!). But it is also distinct. Japan is two-thirds mountain, and this path is as well: one third climbing, one third descending, and one third strolling. Whether climbing or descending, steep is hard.

Today the mendicant poet tramping through Japan is strong with me. Up more than down, on paths more than roads, through woods more than towns, accompanied by cedars, bird song, and the aroma of camphor and dead leaves. Perhaps he is present today because of the croaking frogs. More a low peep or creak than a croak, their cries dapple my ears – here and there – as the sun and shade dapple my view. A frog is central to Basho's most famous poem, the first and last lines in Japanese I have never forgotten. Here are all three, from the book on my back that I bought back then:
Furuike ya,
 kawazu tobikomu 
mizu no oto.

The last line is utterly plain - sound of water. The middle line is a little more complex but comes down to - frog jumps. The first line eludes me. I remember asking my professor, now my friend Tom, about the 'ya,' and he said something about it being not a word strictly, but that it had meaning. Meaning without words was weird to my 18 year old mind. Less now.

No frogs plop today, but they continue peppering the air with their conversation. And yes, there is a pond halfway up the first mountainside today. It is large, a hectare, feeding the stream that created the way the path used to climb upward. Over the pond hang branches of trees with new yellow-green leaves or purple left-over blossoms. Pollen dusts the water surface inviting insects to land, which in turn cause small ripples in the water. In the morning light, the ripples reflect back the branches above, which move them without moving them.

Pollen coats water
 green like tea. Dragonflies stir
 it, and flowers wave.

The master improves on this:

Drinking morning tea
 the monk is peaceful 
the chrysanthemum blooms (Basho)

Mountains often beget streams, and they are everywhere today. I cross half a dozen wooden bridges and see even more little water falls. Rarely was there a flat place, but where there was, it was lovely to my feet.

Today is a short walk that ends four hours after starting, at 1230, and that includes a long break at a roadside rest area. Two women who were at the hotel last night (not the ones I saw at the beginning) are on the road as well. We meet up later as the day goes on. Like shipboard strangers, we are friendly because we are about the same business. "Can two walk together, unless they be agreed?" asks Amos. Sometimes all we have to agree on is that we are walking together. Both speak English, one quite well because she attended college in Escanaba Michigan, which is "Up dah You Pee" as it is often said in the Upper Peninsula. She did say You-Pee, but not 'Up dah.'

Who knows where the vine
 begins, or our lives? But my
 Feet know where they end.

Basho knows how to do without verbs. I envy him.

it is spring!
 a hill without a name
 in thin haze

After a cold drink and a rest without shoes on, a tourist bus parks and it is time to leave. Across the road, back up the arbitrary steps and into the shade and quiet of the trail, not much distance remains because I left early. From a clearing on the path the town of Chikatsuyu appears below, where I will sleep tonight; but it is not yet 1 and check in is no earlier than 3.

Of all choices more walking is best, so I explore tomorrow's path a bit, deciding to walk an hour down the road and back. Of course the way leads up now down, along a genuine asphalt road which feels hard and hot through my shoes. Ball field, barn, vegetable patch, laundry hung on front porch, all pass until the trees come back alongside, fellow marchers day in and out.

Grateful for flat road and the sound of water running downhill, time moves pleasantly and my inner clock soon tells me it is time to turn back. I see a hat in the road, floppy and gray. Like Whitman’s letters from God I leave it where it is, figuring whoever seeks it will be combing their steps. Standing halfway up a hill I decide to go to the top before turning around.

In the shade beyond the crest, shadowed by trees, a shrine hides at the top of a steep course of steps. Tomorrow is a long walk, 29 kilometers. Though tired, it is best to stop now because I might not tomorrow with so many kilometers to cover. Good choice.

It is called Tsugizakura because there was once a cherry (sakura) that was grafted to another tree, which struck someone as remarkable. The term for grafted is 'tsugi,' hence the name. Thinking of the friend who united my wife and me in marriage, he is a Konko minister (a Shinto sect) of which a central practice is Toritsugi, mediation, which combines the word for bird - 'tori' - with 'tsugi.'

Something more than mediation in this, I realize; something that has elevation and communion. At the top of the steps I notice cedars enormous as a redwood in size and character. They are called ipposugi, one direction cedars as their branches cluster on the south.

Many steep stone steps
 help the little red shrine look
 cedars in the eye.

Always Basho does more with less.

Three months since cherry
 blossoms together,
we see  Twin trunks of the pine. (Basho)

Below, on the road, an empty teahouse open to the elements could be a shrine but for the laundry hanging within. Heading back, the gray hat is still in the road, a hidden waterfall passes beneath the road. Shamrocks, or so they seem, cover the massive black stone retaining wall alongside the road that is cut into the hill.

My first completely Japanese guest room – tatami, low table, futon rolled and waiting – my host kneels perfectly while I cannot. He brings a chair which pleases me as it also embarrasses.

Anticipating the onsen, hot spring bath, I don the yukata, but this time must walk outside to a blocky building. On the right is the men’s bath. A blue curtain hangs from the lintel with writing that must say “men” as another in red hangs from the other entry which is for the women. The curtain hangs but halfway over the door, very like restaurants I have found out. There is some anthropology waiting to be done about this practice.

This time I am alone in the bath, lounging in the sulfurous waters that roll off my skin like oil. A huge window that forms the fourth wall, edged with fog, looks out onto the river nearby. On the way back, my heels sticking out of my slippers by inches, but they bear me to onsen, to dinner, and back to my room.

Chikatsuyu means 'dew or blood' - based on a legend about a visiting emperor or nobleman. This is rural Japan; the village is small, just a hamlet. Lovely meal, again, and very different, but in the ways prepared not the ingredients. Always fish and rice and vegetables arranged as much for the eye as the mouth, like flowers in cups. Hachi, chopsticks, get easier every day. It helps that the food presumes them.

Something New

2014-07-30T10:48:00.000-04:00

You may not know, but I made a long desired and delayed trip to Japan in May. It centered on walking a 5 day Buddhist pilgrim path through the rural Kii Peninsula. As I have done before, I made a journal of the pilgrimage and then expanded it afterward on the advice of friends who enjoyed reading it. Now I am expanding that list to you. Below is the first - and each is rather long - day's record of my walk. Do let me know what you think. A couple of folks say 'publish' but I have my doubts.

Basho and I Take a Long Walk

May Day – I am in Tokyo, that great city, in the thrumming heart of Shinjuku where skyscrapers and underground trains meet and the river of humanity that fills the towers flows up from the ground. Leaving my hotel, I jump into the human river and follow its current to Japan Rail, flashing my Rail Pass nonchalantly on my way to the ChuoLine, which will take me to Tokyo Station and the Shinkansen Train to Osaka.

My suitcase has been sent ahead, to wait for me in Yunomine three days away. On my back are a few clothes, a raincoat, toiletries, bits of food, a camera, a computer tablet, my folding walking stick, and Basho.

We met through a mutual friend in 1971. In my first semester of college my advisor tells me to take courses in things beyond my interest in music theory. “Here,” he says, opening the thick catalog of courses, “right here on the first page is Introduction to Asian Studies. You should do that.”

In the old classroom, Midwestern heat and humidity making the study chairs sticky, and still unnerved by a brand new place and a brand new life, two professors describe the course. The younger one is a specialist in Japanese literature. On the syllabus (what is a syllabus I think, but everyone else seems to know already so I do not raise my hand to ask) are Sansom’s History of Japan, Soseki’s Kokoroand Basho’s Narrow Road to the Deep North. At the bookstore Basho was the smallest of the books I buy, the least intimidating.

That volume - among the first books I ever purchased in college - is in my knapsack as I leave Shinjuku. My walk will not be along his paths, but along a road very like those he walked, the Kumano Kodo, a pilgrim path first trod by emperors in the 11^thcentury in a rural southeast corner of Honshu. Even now it is a sparsely populated area. Though I did not know of it until 2012, when I did the memory of that book and that time told me I had to go.

Forty three years after meeting Basho on the Narrow Road to the Deep North, I am on board a bullet train bound for Osaka. From there I will take a slower train to Kii-Tanabe on the coast, and then a bus, and only then will I start my walk along the pilgrim road, ending in a hilltop village called Takahara.

“From time immemorial,” Basho writes, “the art of keeping diaries while on the road was popular among the people, and such great writers as Lord Ki, Chomei, and the nun Abutsu, brought it to perfection. Later works are little more than imitations of those great masters, and my pen, being weak in wisdom and unfavoured by divine gift strives to equal them, but in vain.”

Chastened at the outset by his humility, we set out. An hour outside Tokyo, approaching Odawara, from my window I can see Mt. Fuji, famously shy – so shy in fact, that it hid itself completely in clouds and fog despite being so large and singular. I bemoan the weather, but my companion turns out to be good company with his experience to comfort me,

“misty rain,
a day with Mt. Fuji unseen:
so enchanting” (Basho)

To which I cannot help but reply,

Perhaps enchanting
but only if one has seen
the face without mist.

That day (was it just two days before?) I arrived on a jitney – two subway style cars – just as the clouds closed in. There were only slashes of blue left in the sky as the train rattled up the valley. At the station in Fugiyoshida, which refers to the pilgrims who came then and still do, I stepped into the street in time to catch the first drops of rain. Momentarily turned around without the mountain to show me the way, I finally found and passed through the torii on the main road in the town. As I walked up the road I saw shide, folded paper streamers, strung from rope that went from light pole to light pole all the way up the hill. Historic markers described inns that once existed here in abundance, some of which remain as private homes.

As the village receded and the trees gathered around the path I heard rain falling on the trees, a scattering sound as if birds were moving among the branches. The damp and quiet was calming despite the constant incline that made it an effort to walk.

A fast road nearby, and cars regularly hum up and down, and for a brief time I must walk along it without a shoulder. I could hear a group of voices in the distance which I discovered later to be from an athletic field, but on the path my footfalls were louder. There may have been a bit of distant thunder - is the mountain kami unhappy? - but aside from wanting to go further and not having enough time to do so, it was very satisfying to be on this famous mountain for a while. Though I could not see it, I felt it, stood on it, sensed it with my feet if not my eyes.

At 1 pm I had to turn around to make the return train. By then I was more wet from sweat than from the rain. Pausing before returning, trying to capture the place in memory, I looked around at the trees, up through the leaves, and down to see that the stones over which I walked were volcanic. I plucked one the size of grape – pocked and rough – to hold the memory of my presence here.

On the train to Osaka two days later I see Fuji as Hokusai did. Would he paint a view through a shinkansenwindow? Then the mountain is gone as quickly as I see it, behind buildings and passing trains and then hills and railway tunnels.

The Tokaidoroad is the oldest in the land, following the coast and valleys to Nagoya and Kyoto and Osaka. My train follows it, though today it is the equivalent of the I-95 corridor on the American east coast. By 11 am I am in Shin Osaka Eki, New Osaka Station, which like the stations in Tokyo is multilayered and crowded and there are no windows and no sense of direction. Thank goodness I have an hour between trains. This is nothing like Basho's travels, when the Tokaido road was footpath.

My next two steps, though, slow my pace. The second train to Kii-tanabe takes as long as going to Osaka but only a third as far. Fewer tunnels but more seaside. I think "from here across the Pacific in a straight line is Los Angeles. I remember standing on the beach at Venice and wondering what was on the other side. Now I know."

“It was when I wandered out onto the beach of Suma,” Basho says, “The sky was slightly overcast and the moon on a short night of early summer had a special beauty.” But today it is afternoon along these beaches, and the sun is bearing down brightly so I will just have to take him at his word. “The mountains were dark with foliage,” he adds, which is true as I can see from the window. How steep they are, if not tall. My memory thinks of West Virginia which has hills shaped like these though no beaches.

At Kii-Tanabe, a good sized town, I have almost two hours before catching the bus. I stroll, prowling the sleepy mid-afternoon main street with its omiyage shops and fish mongers, down a narrow alley that is not the back door to anything but the front door to bars and eateries. Main streets resemble American cities with wide straight roads and shop window building fronts, while the little streets are narrow and bent, built for humans not cars; two worlds in America that are one world here.

Back at the station, which is also where the bus stops, I purchase a cold drink and a rice ball. Have not yet divined the code for which have tuna and which have chicken and which have pork. I look for a place in the shade to eat, and see two other Americans – sisters it turns out – in backpacks. We realize we are about the same business. I will worry about them but without reason.

Mercifully, the bus has English announcements as well as Japanese, a courtesy that was present almost everywhere I went. No place in America has Japanese helps, either written or spoken. The bus climbs up the valley. As mountains come closer the town shrinks to a trickle of houses perched between hillside and the road. We cross a bridge that spans a little river. There is a clot of three buildings. Our stop.

I see the shrine but not the official Kumano Kodo Welcome Center across the road from the shrine where the trail begins. The shrine is between a picnic enclosure and a convenience store – almost hidden by the trees. Unsure at first where to go to find the path, I start for the shrine then wonder about the Welcome Center. I go across the road to the Center which has maps and toilets and then back across the road to the shrine. My instant American friends do the same only in reverse. (In my confusion I did not see the stamp collecting books available at the Welcome Center, probably from not knowing there were ink stamps along the way like the Camino de Santiago. I lacked that booklet as well. A very small thing that robbed me of nothing but obviously not insignificant or I would not mention it. )

At last I understand where I am and where the path begins. Takijiri-ojiis an ancient shrine, dating to the 11^th century, but the current structures are not that old. It looks like a sacred campsite with a haidenand honden that are the size of a summer cabin, and a chozuya that could be a watering trough for a horse. A stone torii, though, adds gravitas and marks the entry into the shrine and the sacred precincts that are the Kumano Kodo. An official stone marker by the road tells me it is a UNESCO World Heritage site, something I see and hear many times, an evident point of pride in Japan. Between the chozuya and the haiden there is the usual stone walk, with stone markers carved in Japanese and thus unintelligible to me.

The shrine is here because ancient pilgrims came up the river as far as they could, which is here, and then went overland from here to the Kumano Hongu Taisha, a major shrine that is one of three in the region.

Long ago, those arriving signified the beginning of their journey by purifying themselves in the river Iwata itself. I follow current practice – with a ladle I rinse the left hand then my right, next I pour water into my left to rinse my mouth (but not drink!) and then tip the ladle so waters runs down the handle before setting it back on the chozuya. I walk up the stone path, drop a coin into the offering box, ring the bell – very like a cowbell - clap twice, bow and hold my hands in prayer for a few moments.

In the utter silence
Of a Temple
A cicada’s voice alone
Penetrates the rocks (Basho)

No cicada here. Silence is different outside.

Leaves and water sound
like silk sheets upon the ear
Surrounding silence.

In college I set Basho’s Visit to Sarashina Shrine to music. It never got heard or played, which is a blessing to all. Much shorter than The Narrow Road to the Deep North,Sarashina shares the same form and style, which observes the world more than the observer, and Basho wrote poems as he went that captured a moment or a sight or a sound - haiku as phenomenology. Often, Basho traveled with company, and included their poems along with his. We are traveling together, think I, and so, standing where the river and the mountain meet, beginning my walk with Basho I think:

Four of us met here -
earth and water, fire and air
Which of us is which?

To which he might reply, as a renga:

Long conversations
beside blooming irises –
joys of life on the road (Basho)

Being after 3 pm, and expected at the hotel by 530, I do not linger. The trail starts behind the haiden and honden. Turning from the shrine there is a little gabled kiosk that has the ink stamp, my first inkling of their existence, forgive the pun. Not knowing that there is a booklet for them across the street, I use a notebook of blank pages that becomes my record. With this visa, I begin.

Scarcely 10 meters behind the shrine stone steps lead up the hillside. A sign confirms the climb. For a half hour I climb up stone steps, unofficial steps formed of tree roots, steps over rocks that are not steps and am very glad for my walking stick and my small back pack. At my first pause to catch my breath I remember the sisters were carrying very heavy packs had no staff. I ponder while panting, then think, “They are young.”

Twenty more minutes upward, often using tree trunks as a second walking stick. The trail twists and turns, as though finding its way up the hill. Nothing about it resembles a road. “Emperors climbed this hill?” I think with doubt. Though I walk 10 kilometers every day at home in less than two hours, this 4.5k took me two hours. There are excellent views with each gap on the climb, and the higher go the quieter it gets. The river fades away in sound and sight.

Along the first climb I happen upon what would become routine – small stone jizos – statues of a beloved boddhisatva who protects travelers and children, especially children who die before their parents. These first are tucked under the edge of a great rock that seems either to shelter or threaten whatever is underneath. Legend says a babe was left here and the gods made milk drip from the rock to feed him. Like most jizos, they wear red knit caps and red bibs, to resemble a child. Old corroded coins lie in their laps.

Why do you wear bibs?
To help you eat rusted yen?
No one else wants them.

Not Basho of course; too obvious, but not bad. Yet not as good as this one from an unknown writer found somewhere else in my travels.

Stone Jizo
kissed on the mouth
by a slug (Anonymous)

The road, which was only rarely more than a trail, reaches a ridge and for a while I walk more than climb. Lest I think I have reached the top, the climbing resumes and my back feels wet from sweat caught between the shirt and the pack. Every day will have climbs that are so long and steep that I must pause to let my heart slow down.

Suddenly, I am going down, which turns out to be as hard as going up, and so it goes for some times until quite suddenly there is a road and houses. Takaharawhich sits on a ridge, with a shrine wedged into a corner where the trail meets a modern road. It is the oldest shrine structure along the road, from 1403. Vivid red like so many I have seen in cities, it does not look its age until you see the moss growing on the roof. A great camphor tree looms beside it like the rock over the jizo, large enough to make the shrine look like a gnome house. I wash my hands, rinse my mouth, ring the bell, bow my head and clap.

Early evening sun hits my shadow suited eyes as I enter the village from the trees. They squint into the valley from an empty parking lot. An older man, older than me at least, sits smiling through gapped teeth. “Kumano?”

“Hai.”

He points down the road, where my guide book tells me to go. “Domou,” “very!” meaning ‘thanks very much,’ I say waving my walking stick.

There is only this lodging in town, a small new hotel built to give every room a view into the valley. The river below, the one I crossed hours ago, is now a silver thread. My room is a hybrid with beds but also tatamis and shoujis. The ritual of shoes and slippers begins, with one pair for the room, another for the toilet, and another for the common areas and bath. Socks or bare feet work best for me as my enormous feet do not fit these slippers. Should I wear my yukata – robe - to dinner or not?

Speaking of baths, this is a big deal in vacation hotels, which this is. I have been to a Turkish bath so the ritual was not completely new - shower and soap and rinse first, then loll in hot water. But details such as using and placing towels are still obscure. Yes, this matters. A young father and toddler son come in. We share the very large, very hot bath water, so hot that when I leave I am perspiring again. Another rinse with a hand held shower to cool off and then back to my room to rinse out my shirt and socks for tomorrow. They hang on the balcony as the sun sets over the mountains outside.

Following written advice, I wear my yukata(over skivvies) to the dining room for a dinner. There are about ten courses, some 'amuse buche'sort of things including mushroom custard in an egg cup and seaweed soup that did not taste like anybody's weed. Despite the number of courses, it was not too much. My waiter seems to be the owner as well, and inveigles me gently to have some sake, which costs only $6. Though alone at my table, his attention and the swirl of tastes and textures leave no time to feel lonely.

Six Months Doesn't Seem That Long Now

2014-07-25T20:26:00.000-04:00

When I was very young I noticed that time went slower when I was bored and faster when I was engaged. This makes a dilemma, though. Being aware of my mortality at a very early age I realized life would seem much shorter if I had a good time, but much harder if I did not. Hell of a choice.

What I did not know then was that boredom was a luxury of youth. Adulthood never lacks for things to do, that must be done, that are so numerous they cannot all be done. The result is that time seems to move faster as one gets older (That and the ever smaller difference one day or month or year makes compared to the days and months and years already lived.)

All of which is to say I was shocked when I saw how long ago my last posting was. Six months! My birthday was the last occasion and now half a year had gone by without even noticing.

Of course, now that Facebook and Twitter are so popular that not only occupies more of my time but channels some of the urge to communicate. It seemed for a little while that blogs were passe as well.

But it now seems evident that all three forms are forming a little menage a trois (gee two French terms in two sentences. Ain't I literary!) where one blogs - then tweets about the blog, which then appears on your Facebook page. Very entrepreneurial I have not doubt, and way too much for me to do.

Aside from the shock of a half year passing, though, what prompted me today was an essay in ye New York Times Book Review of July 20, on poetry, in which David Lehman says,

What Twitter offers is ultimate immediacy expressed with ultimate concision. "Whatever else Twitter is, it is a literary form," the critic Kathryn Schulz has written.

Perhaps, 140 characters will become the new haiku. That day is a long way off, as the art of the haiku is not creating seventeen syllables in three lives (5/7/5) but in using them to express what Matsuo Basho called sabi, shiori and hosomi.

One power of the haiku (properly hokku) of 17th century Japan that is present in the modern tweet is immediacy. It may turn out that Tweets will be the zen poetry of the coming age.

Bringing Out the Dead

2014-02-02T20:25:00.001-05:00

Pete Seeger's passing recalls to me the one time I met him. The occasion was a funeral. I was officiating at a small private service for Norman Rosten, a well regarded Brooklyn poet, less than a year after arriving at the First Unitarian Church there. Those outside the city may know Rosten because of his book on Marilyn Monroe whom he knew through Arthur Miller, later adapted into an opera performed in 1993.

The service was held on the barge that held Bargemusic, right at the Fulton Ferry beside the Brooklyn Bridge. I do not remember why but in New York City people have many overlapping connections that often are not evident. Remind me to tell you about praying over George Plimpton sometime. Anyway, after planning the service, I assumed the music would be of the sort you would get at Bargemusic. Wrong.

Pete Seeger was the one and only musician. I was not sure why at that moment. Maybe there were 25 of us there, hardly a crowd. Even for the barge which is scarcely larger than a garage. I shook his hand and we compared notes about who does what first and second and so forth. This being less than a year into my church, I was fairly star struck and humbled by the occasion.

Then he sang "The Ballad of Norma Jean," a song he composed on the words of one of Norman's poems. It was sung at, and recorded for, at Carnegie Hall in June of 1963. There was the connection.

Whenever he sang or spoke the famous smile was there. But after the service, during the reception, he was very quiet. Not knowing him I was loathe to chat him up. He did not linger long. I was tempted to think him aloof, but realized it was just as likely, probably more so, that he was as shy in private as he was ebullient in public. There was something tender in him, almost vulnerable.

So I like to think, at least. But I remember with clarity him standing there in barge, instrument over his shoulder, singing to this small band of mourners, for a man whom I had known but a little in my few months there. But at the end of that day my thread had been added to the knot tied by Pete Seeger and Norman Rosten and Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe. It was a strange and precious day.

I Know Nothing...

2014-01-01T16:55:00.002-05:00

On the First Day of the Year (as we record them) I encountered this column from the "Huffpost" by Ben Michaelis, Ph. D. author and clinical psychologist. He is listing the "Nine Best Books for Meaningful Change." I haven't read a single one. And do note, these are not the Nine Best Books of 2013," but the "Nine Best Books" period.

Great way to start the year, feeling Nine kinds of ignorant.

Yes, I knew about some of them, and sometimes I knew the author's names if not the title. All of them are hypercompetent folk compared to me, as they have written books and gotten them published. I, on the other hand, find it tough to get the weekly sermon thing done. My tweets are less than one a day. This blog has languished.

Great way to start the year, feeling Nine kinds of incompetent.

In fact it has been a pretty lame year when it comes to reading as well as writing. Not many books digested overall. Maybe six in all of 2013. My stack of unread NYTimes magazines and Journals of Religion and Smithsonians and National Geographics keeps growing. Not that I am not reading, but serious stuff seems always to be what I start at 9 pm and then my eyelids droop.

Great way to start the year, feeling Nine kinds of lazy.

Maybe being older is involved. I am on the verge of 61. Nothing on my mind has not been said already by people I have known or read before, and people way smarter and more eloquent than me. That's not ignorance, that's being sensible.

I see older friends writing books between sermons, but before wishing for their work ethic let me consider what I would have to give up in trade? Perhaps I am not incompetent so much as wise.

And while I do think I spend too much time doing unproductive things, this past month reminded me that clergy cannot fill every hour because sometimes your people will need you right then and not when you can schedule them. My Facebook friends know on December 21 I created one funeral, on December 22 preached at two Sunday services, on December 23 led another funeral, on December 24 was part of two Christmas Eve services, on December 27 led yet a third funeral, and on December 29 was leading worship again. That's nobody's idea of lazy, even my own.

So I am going to let myself off the hook for at least today - Watch the Rose Bow, "Go Green," do some ironing, and maybe finish last Sunday's New York Times.

December!

2013-12-10T10:22:00.001-05:00

Clergyfolk hate December. I mean, of course, those clergy who are in the gravitational field created Christmas. We hate it not in a theological sense but in a personal sense, because the pleasure the season brings are often denied us.

Come to think, lots of people work extra hard at this season, and some of that effort goes to working at being merry. We are told this is the season we should savor and appreciate things, but that itself takes effort and planning. Frankly, I have already given up trying.

Which may be the best path, actually. "Trying" creates work. My spiritual project this Yuletide is not to try and simply accept what comes my way and not resent what does not meet my expectations.

This too is a sort of work, but instead of looking to Yuletide to meet my spiritual desires, I ponder my desires themselves.

I want faith - some fragment of the childhood belief that the world was enchanted. Einstein supposedly said that either nothing is miraculous or everything is. Faith is being open to the second possibility.

I want hope - some confidence that the life I have and that of others has some value that transcends this moment and even this life. Hope is faith in tomorrow as well as today.

I want love - which is not the Hallmark Channel Christmas movie love. It is some sense that our life is cherished by others. Love is hope incarnate.

I want joy - which like love is not a sensation so much as a pervasive gratitude that can be felt physically as well as known mentally. Joy is love incarnate.

These can show up anywhere, not just in elves or trees or carols. I think the purpose of Christmas is not to tell us how enchanted and hopeful and lovable and joyful Christmas is, but how enchanted, how hopeful, now lovable, how joyful, life itself is or can be. If we notice.

I'm getting all verklempt. Discuss.

So... how the heck are ya!

2013-11-03T20:00:00.001-05:00

Another long lapse, friend. Sorry about that. Partly it was a pilgrim journey to Spain, yes to Santiago. If you want, I will post photos and make insightful comments. What I want to do this time, though, is tell you if I have not already that my twitter feed is now dedicated to nagging people about gun violence.

Unless unable, as I often was overseas, I try to post a link to a gun death every day. This is as much for me as for you. When I found out that the number of domestic gun deaths in America since RFK died exceeded all the war dead from all the wars it made me ask, "is this necessary?" But rather than propose an answer, I took the advice of the gospel (the parable of the unjust judge comes to mind) and decided the way to get action was not to promote my answer but to demand that the question be heard. Only by nagging, repeating constantly, refusing to shut up about it, will those who are supposed to have answers be motivated to find one.

Up until now the single-mindedness of the gun industry has been the only consistent and constant voice. Perhaps there needs to be another voice that points at our level of gun violence (virtually unequalled in the 'developed world') and says, "We can do better!"

Finding the answers is not our job as the public, but deciding which questions need to be answered is. I invite you to follow me at @fred_wooden. You will get a sad reminder most every day. Read it. And if you also retweet it or repost it, who knows that eventually a few thousand nagging citizens might give some backbone to those who need it.

No wisdom or insight, not even a comforting word. Just a nagging knock on your moral door. Step by step, drop by drop, knock by knock.

So Sorry...

2013-09-21T08:56:00.000-04:00

Wow, it has been a long time. I apologize, but my job description changed this summer, turning me from the contemplative senior preacher into the managerial senior minister. Lots more time in the office working with people and projects. Lots less time writing and pondering. This is not my comfort zone, but you may have noticed as I have that most insight and growth come from being outside that zone.

When we had a staff crisis this past spring, the best path for the church was this one even though it was not the one I preferred. But leadership means doing the right thing for the organization even if it is not to your personal advantage. At least so it seems to me. One cost has been having the time to do this along with the sermon preparation that is still part of my job.

This explains why I have had so little time to write this blog. Well, it is at least part of the explanation. I should also note my other experiment. I have a second radio program in development, an hour long interview show, "In Depth," at the same station where I do call-in every Friday on "Faith and Reason" - WPRR here in Grand Rapids. You can find it at www.publicrealityradio.org Sometime soon it will be available, after I get a few more shows recorded. Also a venture out of my comfort zone, but in a different way.

But I have something more than an apology for you. The House kidnapping of the ACA infuriated me. So I am writing my Rep in Congress. My intent was to send the same note to all the Michigan Reps but the House website system only allows those in district to send email. I am now doubly infuriated. Reps are now able to filter out all but their own constituents - and lobbyists of course.

I may now call some, as my members live in more than one district, and I sit on the board of the West Michigan Urban League. But I urge you to send something to your Reps. Here is what I sent, which you may freely borrow if it helps. If you don't then Speaker Boehner will have no reason to doubt that he and his colleagues speak for the American people. As someone else said, 'silence + assent.'

"Dear Representative,

I write to express my profound disappointment in the decision to yoke the debt ceiling to defunding the ACA. I know my words will not change your mind, which is all the more dismaying, as you were elected to represent all the people in your district not just those who share your views.

But you need to know that there are many, I among them, who believe the ACA, imperfect as it may be, is better than the current health care insurance system. Defunding it will only produce more uncertainty and the likelihood that we will pay more and more for less and less.

Using the debt ceiling to accomplish an ideological goal amounts to a political kidnapping, threatening to ‘kill’ the economy to get your way. People have lost most of their respect for Congress precisely because of such myopic and dogmatic actions.

Speaker Boehner may say the American People support you, but I am not one of them. You need to know this because it is our lives that will pay the price for your decision.

Rev. Dr. W. Frederick Wooden,Fountain Street Church, Grand Rapids MI
Chair of the Board, Grand Rapids Urban League

Good Things Come in Bad Packages

2013-08-01T12:47:00.001-04:00

Edward Snowdon is free from Shermetyevo Airport, a virtual prison and Sartrian hell if ever there was one. Surely he, Snowdon, thought more than once about, "The Terminal."

But I make mention because the web is abuzz with people calling him everything from hero to traitor, and it seems to me obvious that a single act by a person does not define that person. He may well be selfless and noble, but equally he may not be. Why he did what he did is only pertinent at a trial. The facts revealed by his actions, though, have changed our conversation about the National Security State that has been evolving since 1945.

Technology may finally have reached a point where the impractical is practical - global surveillance of everyone. Which amusingly makes Anthony Romero and Paul Rand the most unlikely couple since Reagan and O'Neill. When left and right find common cause for alarm, it is worth being alarmed. Exactly what is still unfolding, but it is serious stuff.

And that's what makes Snowdon a hero, some say. I say not, though. A louse can do a good deed, just as a paragon can be a jerk. And as I look back on those who defied authority, the ones I admire are those who broke laws and consciously paid the price. Snowdon broke the law, just or otherwise it is the law, and he fled the consequences. Mandela did not flee, nor King, nor Berrigan, nor my late colleague Nick Cardell.

That's heroism, friends. So no matter how much good comes of Snowdon's choice, he is no hero.

Full Moon Last Night...

2013-07-23T10:00:00.000-04:00

... So bright it flooded the bedroom. And I remembered the last one - the 'super moon' as the news called it - which did not seem as bright perhaps because of the clouds that night.

I was in Louisville during that full moon, then home and then in New Mexico and Colorado. Am at home now. Lying in bed, the full moon bookended those weeks in ways that calendars can't. I felt time differently, for a moment, as a tide or a pendulum or something I could sense physically.

My IPhone and Ipad divide my day into even hours, like those hash marks on a football field. And so I measure my life that way - in discrete abstract bits which do not actually exist the way sunrise arrives on the face, or spring comes with a smell.

This morning, walking home from the Y (a self imposed rhythm that is as sure as the cardinal song at first light) while crossing the river I looked to the left. Under the arch of the next bridge a heron stood in the water. Its neck extended up, then curved in that typical way.

I remembered a summer morning eight years ago, when crossing that same bridge going to the same Y, I saw a heron - this one? - flying low over the river, its long neck and spindle legs undulating with its wings. It flew under the bridge where I walked, appeared on other side and landed in fluid fluff of feathers on a rock in the river. Wings settled into poised folds and the head turned around. In the midst of the city, the bird and rock were oblivious to it, in the world as they had been before humans arrived.

A young woman slightly ahead of me walked resolutely forward, pink backpack and sunglasses and black bangs and a 'Betty Boop' tattoo on her left calf. I wanted to tell her about the bird. But her pace said no.

I turned to right, to see the rock, and then back to the left, to see the heron. It was gone. I stopped a moment. Looked around, hoping to see it again. But no.

There is a word in Japanese that does not exist elsewhere - shibui. Herons and moons are shibui. Cardinals at sunrise, the smell of dirt in winter, are shibui. Why can't this be the clock we follow?

At Last, Old Enough

2013-06-25T11:25:00.002-04:00

Just got back from attending the 52nd annual General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association. Though I only began attending in 1978, with three exceptions, I have attended every one since. A total of 32 so far.

I do not currently serve a UU church so sometimes people ask why I go, but I still identify as UU, going back four generations. I have my clergy 'license' with the UUA, am also a member of their church without walls called The Church of the Larger Fellowship (CLF) and am an elected official of the UUA on their Board of Review. I describe myself as a UU minister on detached service to Fountain Street Church, much as members of the military may be assigned to other branches from time to time.

My point is not to explain why I go, though. It is to explain why, even though I do go, there is one thing that always always annoys me.

At least once a day during the major sessions (plenaries) we are asked (told) to hold hands and sing. This is the home page image for the UUA, taken at a previous GA.

I hate holding hands with someone I have not met. I hate even more when someone I do not know with a sweaty palm grabs mine and begins swaying like some unreconstructed Woodstock veteran. I hate most of all being to told to hold hands. Conscripted intimacy is presumptuous and insulting.

Thankfully, I am now of an age (60) when being cranky looks acceptable, though I have felt this way since my twenties. Not that I disapprove of intimacy. Far from it. When I see old friends there, the only time I see most now, to embrace is marvelous.

I believe intimacy must be earned not assumed, though. Just because I belong to a religious community does not mean anyone has a right to touch, hold or grab me. Much as I still call someone by their last name until we are acquainted, I think we need to respect each other's solitariness, as Whitehead referred to it. Rilke spoke of love as two solitudes that protect and border and greet each other. Those great minds knew something. For a faith that honors the individual mind, you would think that it would extend the same to individual bodies.

We all know the term Namaste, a Hindu greeting that means, roughly, the divine in me greets the divine in you. Lovely thought, and Hindus say it with hands held palm together like praying, against ones one chest, with a bow.

Great lesson. We should practice some 'veneration' before moving on to 'penetration.' At least so it seems to me.

Rant over.

Why I Was Almost A Musician

2013-06-15T18:37:00.000-04:00

Long ago, in the far away galaxy called youth, I was going to be a musician. On some days, when my fingers know where keys are, it seems possible for a few measures. But the reason I wanted to be a musician was because music literally enthralled me. Certain works and passages convinced me life was worth it. Music imparted hope, even faith.

Today, HBO is re-running their new series "The Newsroom" in preparation for the next season. It is a fine show, but what sold me was the theme music. If you don't know it, you should listen to it before reading on. The rest of this post is about it, so stop and listen. OK?

Here it is.

No, it is not Bach or Beethoven, but there is something hopeful in it that takes me back in time, before my hope of a musical life. Back to being a boy in Washington DC.

Maybe it was the 1960 election, or the inauguration in 1961, or being at the tomb of the Unknowns for Memorial Day in 1959, or something else that has vanished from accurate memory, but for a time I truly believed something wonderful was going on there. The city quivered with significance and hope, and I was there.

Then we moved away to Baltimore. Then I graduated high school and went to college in St. Louis, and seminary in Chicago. I married a high school friend, we moved to Massachusetts for ten years, Texas for four, New York City for eleven, Michigan for 8, had four children and buried two.

Now I am sixty and hearing this music and remembering what it felt like to hope without doubt. There is the parade coming down Pennsylvania Avenue; the new president's smile is visible on the tenth floor where we are watching. Flags snap smartly around the Washington Monument. The air is significant, smelling of the secular temples with their columns and pediments. Just a few feet away, behind those windows, earnest men (mostly men then) looking like Efram Zimbalist Jr. or Jimmy Stewart are shaping the world, and I am there, too.

I want that again, to feel that sort of hope in my country, and in myself. Most days it is vain, but then I hear that music and it seems possible. And what is hope if not possibility?