Invisible Countries: Journeys to the Edge of Nationhood

 

Invisible Countries: Journeys to the Edge of Nationhood by Joshua Keating is a fascinating exploration of the places around the globe which could be nations, and under some definitions are, but still are located at the margins of the nation-states.  Keating’s point is that we are currently in a period of time where the international community seeks to maintain the status quo, even if the boundaries of many countries fail to make ethnic or religious sense.  The author explores the reasons for this, in this well researched, entertaining and fascinating book.

Contemporary Israel: New Insights and Scholarship

 

Contemporary Israel: New Insights and Scholarship (Jewish Studies in the Twenty-First Century Book 3) is an interesting series of books edited by Frederick E. Greenspahn.  Like all the works in this series, a variety of voices are heard between two covers.  If you want to get a taste of the work very recent scholars are doing on the scene in Israel (and Palestine) I can think of no better book.

Fascist Romanticism

 

Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun is a strange, somewhat off kilter story about Norwegian peasants settling the far north of the country, creating homesteads from wilderness.  The main character is Isak, and it is obvious that Hamsun considers him a kind of peasant/messianic character.  Halfway through this book I felt some fascist vibes here.  I knew nothing about Hamsun, and then found out he was an enthusiastic supporter of Hitler and Nazism.  That took the steam out of the book for me.  It also explained a great deal about the philosophy exposed in the novel.

That aside, it seems Hamsun should have stuck with Isak’s family in the next generation for the second part of the book.  He veers away from them, impeding the flow of the novel.

An Obtuse President

 

1858: Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant and the War They Failed to See, by Bruce Chadwick, is a decent work of history / entertainment.  Ultimately the book revolves around the disastrous presidency of James Buchanan.  While it is unlikely that Buchanan could have stopped the Civil War, as many men of greater talent and ability failed as well, he certainly sped it along with his obtuseness and obstinacy.   

Just Coming & Going

 

A little before the halfway point of Ram Dass’ Journey of Awakening: A Meditator's Guidebook, he makes an astonishing statement.  As we continue to meditate we find that each...

...moment starts to have a richness or thickness of its own. Fewer moments are special as more of them become richer. This lessens the rushes, the highs and lows. As they disappear we sometimes feel a sadness and depression, a sense of having lost the richness and the romance of life. Indeed, an awakened being is not romantic, for nothing is special any more. Every moment is all of it. No romance. Just the coming and the going. Coming and going.

Most of us have a view of meditation where we strive for a core experience, we heighten our sense of joy, we feel less pain.  We calm down.  But Ram Dass, who passed away in late 2020, believes otherwise.  For him, meditation enables us to see our thoughts as just thoughts, not an expression of any kind of reality, neither outside in the world or in our heads.

People, for the most part, do not live this way.  The “romance of life” is what keeps us going, and we are willing to put up with the lows to gain (what we hope) is the coming highs.  We don't want to chuck the whole deal down the chute because we know lows are coming.   I think a part of Ram Dass lived this way.  In his later years he lived in a house in Maui.  If “nothing is special anymore” than why not pick the cheaper double wide trailer outside of Horseheads New York, for instance, and not  pricey Hawaii?  We do so, if we can, because we know it is better to live in Maui than Horseheads.  There are more peak experiences in Maui than upstate New York.  

Although Ram Dass’ message speaks strongly to me, and it is most useful – I struggle with  what he sees as human aspiration.  Most of us are romantics of some sort and can never eradicate that impulse, especially artists.  Just coming and going is not inspirational.  Being 'even' kills our creative impulses.

Kabbalah: Secrecy, Scandal and the Soul by Harry Freedman

 

Kabbalah: Secrecy, Scandal and the Soul by Harry Freedman has a salacious title that only half fits the book, but overall Freedman  takes us on a fine journey of Jewish mysticism through the ages.  The book is a standout as it explores both Jewish manifestations of the Kabbalah, and the Christian, Reformation and metaphysical counter-parts, usually spelled with a “C”.  This gives us a rare treat:  an incisive overview of the topic from the earliest times to the New Age.

Death of a Naturalist: Poems

Death of a Naturalist: Poems by Seamus Heaney, are a robust collection, featuring the natural and agricultural world, as experienced through the nuanced observations of the narrator.  This world felt very much like the one I inhabit: a mix of woods and farms, small homes and extremes of weather.  These poems are a gift.