Negatives from all over, but all at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa.  Makes me wish I’d taken better notes when I started this project.  The dates are all guesswork.  If you know better, let me know.  The campus photos (b), wrestling photos, and those pictures of David Hamilton praying with his sister and another man are from February 1977.  I put the photos of the musician performing at Cornell’s The Rat in February 1977 but I have no memory of who or when it was.  The photos of Cornell president Phil Secor speaking are from Baccalaureate, probably August 1976.  I  put the wrestling photos in February 1977 but have no idea when it happened.  The photos of Congressman Bella Abzug are from March 1975. ~

I remember one thing from Congressman Abzug’s speech at King Chapel.  Some members of the Owls fraternity had heard that there was going to be a feminist speaking in the chapel so they gathered outside to try to shout her out, or at least to raise a ruckus.  Congressman Abzug told us that as college students we had not yet had the opportunity to be a parent to a teenager, as she had.  She said that as a parent she understood that the behavior of the young men outside was not much different from the tantrum of a three-year-old.  She said that as big and scary as they may seem, they are just little kids squalling.

I like the photo of Prof. Robert Triplett at the organ.  At another occasion he presented some of his compositions in a concert.  Later we got into a conversation at an Altoona wine and cheese and I was honored that he actually respected what I had to say about his music. 

I’ve liked the set of photos of of Beth and David Hamilton and someone else I don’t remember, praying outside Allee Chapel.  I felt distant from prayer then and distant from that sort of prayer now.  Back when I was a teenager I felt that if God is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent, then God is there at the birth of my thought, before I can put it into words, before I can enunciate those words.  And if God is also all-loving, isn’t it impertinent of me to ask for anything other than that love?  So, I’m not good at leading a prayer.

Years later I honed my understanding by trying to make sense of Zen riddles, called koans.  Chance provided a book on sale, The Transmission of Light.  Each chapter told how each patriarch told a koan to a student.  The student finally understood the koan becoming the new patriarch and the subject of the next chapter.  For about 50 chapters.  I read a chapter at night.  The first few times were in the chronological order of the book.  Then I started choosing at random.  Then I tried to distill the koans.  What if anything was common to them all?

I reduced (like a consommé) the koans to a single question: what do you experience that is neither sensation nor thought?

~

Or in other words, how would it be to pray such that you aren’t talking, but listening?

What would you hear?

You can see the photographs referenced in this essay by going to the Photos by Number wing of my website and clicking open # 00018.