Blueberries and granite, photo by John R. Boettiger
Reckonings is a journal focused on human and cultural change, and justice in its range of interactive dimension - personal, social, economic, environmental.
Attention to such themes is typically expository and analytic. But true reckonings include imagery and story, drama, dance, poetry and song, the world of our dreams, shadow as well as light. Wall off or ignore any of these and our exploration of lives and their character risks desiccation and superficiality.
Justice, hope and history: so inevitably issues of
- meaning and value,
- good and evil,
- sacred and profane,
- body, mind, heart and soul as one integrated, systemic whole,
- the evolution of human consciousness through a lifetime and from one generation to another, to the seventh generation,
- the character and health of our relationships with each other, our roots in family, community and place,
- our membership in the natural world of which we are an interactive part, and for which we bear unique responsibility.
The word reckoning is rich in implication, suggesting the most careful regard, seeking true direction, and (as in "day of reckoning") the consequences of our lives and the mysteries of forgiveness. Our tools and the ways of our work are those common to writer and artist: attention, contemplation, patience, persistence, imagination, conversation, crafting one's learning with as much clarity, truth and grace as may be found or given.
The subtitle and theme of Reckonings are drawn from Seamus Heaney's The Cure at Troy, a version of Sophocles' play Philoctetes. It has become an obscure play, but Heaney's version, while little performed, has rescued it for continued reflection, and I've written about it here. (See the post "Wounding and Cure.")
The pages of Reckonings change frequently, more in keeping with kairos than chronos. They are linear only in the sense that one follows another from day to day, but it may just as well be said they are circular. Subjects appear, metamorphose, fade, reappear in response to discovery, learning and revision; and in response to that which most needs attention -- the love and wisdom, the neglect and cruelty of those who bear responsibility for the lives of others -- ways the first can be nourished, the second transformed and redeemed.
Comments, conversation, sharing, subscription: I welcome communication with anyone who feels a kinship with one or more of the themes of Reckonings. Offer comments on individual posts, or write me directly,
john@reckonings.net
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