rabbit, rabbit

Weekly newsletter 12.1.2020

Updates

2021 is (thankfully) right around the corner, and I’m planning to expand Symposium offerings and find the right time and medium for guided meditations. Whether or not you’ve participated in a pilot symposium or a guided meditation, I’d love your feedback to help me plan - what topics should symposia cover? When should meditations happen? If you’ve got 2 minutes to answer 5 questions, click here: looking ahead to 2021 survey. Thanks for your feedback!

If you’re puzzled by the title of this week’s newsletter: my mother instilled in me the practice of first saying “Rabbit, rabbit” to people on the first day of the month. Much earlier in quarantime, I posted a reflection on ritual (in particular, how to rethink it amidst current conditions) rooted in this practice, “Rabbit rabbit: Ritual in the time of physical distancing”. This piece was posted on April 1, anticipating the slate of spring holidays that needed adaptation and before news of the death of George Floyd sparked a national confrontation with the history and reality of systemic injustice. Now, with winter holiday observances underway, we continue to process a fundamental shift in our relationships, and most of the questions that I had in the spring persist: “So what do we do when, for the first time in our lives, we can’t follow in the footsteps of our ancestors? When we can’t gather at the table and tell the story? When we can’t join the drum circle or join hands with our neighbors in prayer?” I think my unsolicited advice still stands, too (but that’s the nature of unsolicited advice, isn’t it? Radical confidence in its relevance?), but you’ll have to read the essay to judge for yourself. 

I post longer reflections on Medium - not regularly, but as they’re ready. If you’re interested in exploring my take on the world, visit https://billhulseman.medium.com/. If anything strikes a chord (or a nerve!), leave a comment on Medium, or reach out to me directly to get a dialogue going!

Guided meditations via Zoom continue! Mondays at 4:00pm PST. The aim is to practice being present - to ourselves, to others, and to the world. If you or someone you know could use a 20-30 minute dose of peace and quiet on Mondays, visit the meditation page on my site to sign up. 

Good Stuff

Listen
The Christian liturgical year began on Sunday with the start of Advent. When I served as a campus minister, one of the tasks of the job that I most enjoyed was caring for and decorating the school’s Chapel. You know. Candles, flowers, ribbons, fabric, images. Shocker, right? The Chapel was already beautiful - a 1920s French Gothic revival with gorgeous stained glass windows of female saints (the only Catholic sanctuary with that distinction, I believe) - but my job was to educate about the space and various practices. My boss was very particular about not celebrating Christmas early, and I relished the chance to enhance the space with Advent colors and images. At the heart of it was an oversized wreath in front of the altar - I’d usually assemble it out of evergreen branches or garlands, with four giant candles in the center. We’d keep the Chapel dimly lit, and lighting the candles (one candle the first week, two the second…) would mark the beginning of our weekly service. When I left that role, I felt a void that I didn’t anticipate - it took a bit of discernment to figure out that preparing the Chapel (and engaging various other tasks of the role) for students and our ritual life was my practice, the process I used to help me prepare for the season, the holidays, the new year.
 Belle & Sebastian’s rendition of “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” brings me back to that space. There’s no magical association here (I played it a lot in the background while setting the Chapel up), but the band’s rendition always made me think differently about the song itself (and about Advent and winter holidays more generally). They follow the chant-mode melody with precise and forward-moving rhythm, a change from the draggy, monastic phrasing I grew up with, and each verse is a different set of voices, of layers, of textures. The song itself is rooted in the “O antiphons,” themselves an expression of longing, of desire, of hope, of uncertainty (feelings familiar during seasonal and metaphorical winters of our lives) by invoking wisdom, redemption, justice, liberation, righteousness, and unity. That sounds pretty good right about now, eh? 

Pod (that’s a verb now, right?)
If you want to extend last week’s focus on gratitude, listen to the the most recent episode of Hidden Brain, “Where Gratitude Gets You”. Shankar Vedantam explores the psychology of self-control (with an appearance from Cookie Monster!), which leads him to a deeper dive into gratitude - not just as an emotion, but as an embodied experience, as a skill to develop. 

If you stream music on Spotify, I’ve started a playlist called “Bill’s Good Stuff,” including music I’ve loved for a long time as well as things I’ve come across more recently. Feel free to add the playlist to your favorites! Bill’s Good Stuff Spotify Playlist

Read
In my guided meditation this week, I used a poem by Chicago-based poet cin salach, whom I met through a virtual poetry group early in the quarantine. I’ve been coming back to this poem a lot recently - it resonates with my experience of the darkness of the PNW this time of year, impending winter, and navigating a very different holiday season. 

“Change Loud, Breathe Between”
cin salach

The bareness of the branches, 
The holy of the bones, 

The brilliance of the standing,
The bareness of alone. 

The holy of the mandate
The brilliance of our home. 

The holy of the branches
The brilliance of the bones

The bareness of the standing
The holy of alone. 

The brilliance of the mandate
The bareness of our home. 

The brilliance of the branches
The bareness of the bones, 

The holy of the standing
The brilliance of alone. 

The bareness of the mandate
The holy of our home. 

My gratitude for loudness, 
in the silence where I roam.

Reflect
Tuesday, December 1 is the 32nd commemoration of World AIDS Day. Each year, major global organizations develop themes for responses to the HIV/AIDS epidemic and provide resources for folks to learn and disseminate information. Ever wonder where all those snazzy graphics that appear on people’s social media come from? Mine the resources that the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, the UK National Trust, the World Health Organization, and the United Nations provide.