Comment on Friends Meeting, poems, trees:
I’ve always been restless. I was raised in an atheist household and when I showed up at Joan and Niilo’s door I didn’t envision anything more in life than whatever I saw at the moment. A self-contained world I carried around with me. Everything I did, everything that came my way I interpreted as of my own making or discovery.
I did have sense of wonder with the natural world that bordered on the supernatural. Sometimes when I was walking on a high lonely place, watched the light fade, felt the wind switch at sunset, I sensed the possibility of another world.
On Sundays I occasionally attended the Friends Meeting in Niilo’s front room. I was fascinated with people who spilled out their thoughts at evening sauna being so still at morning meeting. I liked it. And I attributed it to the same sense I felt when sitting on a rock at wind shift. These were simply older people sitting on their rock.
I read constantly. Woody Guthrie had plenty to say about social causes and the importance of working together, Quaker sort of ideals, an introduction to the idea of community. John Muir spoke of God in those high places. I liked the way he wrote, but I figured he was just a product of his times, seeing the same wondrous world I saw, but constricted by society to an explanation that paid due to the confines of organized religion.
My father was a heavily shell shocked war vet and prisoner of war that knew it was a godless world. I had spent too many lonely hours with him to believe it was any different. So I brushed off the Friends meeting along with all the other religious contrivances of man.
As an outgrowth of some of those meetings I occasionally took part in poetry readings. Something that bridged the gap between the free for all conversation of sauna and the silence of meeting. Most of the poetry I had heard up to that point seemed dull and academic. Niilo changed that for me. I remember him reading a poem he had written about chopping wood in cold weather, “WHACK! Birch splits well at -30.”
Bob Betts sensed my fascination with plain speech and gave me a little book of Robert Service Poems – I Continued walking, looking, writing down my thoughts:

It wasn’t a comfortable night ( from Roadrunner 2007)

I kept waking
Building up the fire
Wondering where my dreams went
Running out of wood
Wandering around looking for more

And despite all that
Never moving some little rocks and twigs
That stuck me in the side
No matter how I turned

But I lay there
Sometimes thinking, mostly cold
Till first dawn
When I drifted off
And had a little sleep

Then woke
With the sunlight coming on my face
Tired enough
I lay there
Free from the soreness of rocks and twigs

And mindful
Of nothing more than the sun
It’s light fractured by the grove of trees above
Giving only
An indication of motion and time

At some point I started asking Niilo about Quaker philosophy. Trying to bridge the gap between nature, community, moral obligation and the inner self. Niilo sent me enough literature to sink a battleship. Mixed in with references to trains, riverboats and Finland were many good thoughts. Solid ideas. I developed a belief in the Quaker Social Testimonies.
By then, decades down the line I’d managed to hit bottom a few times. And it seemed to me that there must be something more than just community and the wonder of nature, something that helped me out when I was down there on the floor. This was highly refuted by some friends. Well meaning and concerned with my sanity they corrected me when I said I had religious feelings, reminding me that it was spirituality, my wonder for it all. I wasn’t so sure. Sometimes I just needed help.

Prayer (from Roadrunner 2007)
Contemplation
A long walk alone in mind

Early morning
Cup of coffee
Feeding the fire
Before sun rise

Sat silent
Talked silent
Looked out the door for the light of dawn

Did someone hear me?
A thought that
Carried past the days work, and

Returned over
Months
Years
Decades

And settled somewhere
Between silence and memory
As
Belief in something

Anything

No, not anything

But that
Which is more
Than alone in mind

I remain restless, choose to walk rather than sit, slowing down only for the turn of wind at sunset or a shared cup of coffee with a friend. But I am convinced that the silent meeting I first saw at Niilo’s house has had an effect on me, as have his many thoughts on the matter. Even if I can only sit alone in the physical sense, it seems that I am not alone in faith.

Wind (from Roadrunner 2007)
Sun
Stars at night

Hot
Cold
Snow

Ridgeline
Pinion Pine
Holds back
My urge to go

Hours pass
Shadows track
Move from shade to sun

Gather wood
Set up Camp
Watch the day be done

Deep sleep
Wake at dawn
And a prayer
Unfolds

Listening
With
Expectation
And
No need to know

–John Culbertson 2008/05/07 at 9:43 AM