Book Review: Powers "Twelve-By-Twelve"

Over the Christmas / New Year's break I had the opportunity to read a couple of books. Here is a book review of one of them.

By the way, Dr. Jackie Benton has created cards with little sayings upon them, that she rotates through everyday. One might say, "Be spontaneous" another mights say "Trust in Love" or "Be the change you want to see." If you hare having trouble sticking to New Year's goals, could a similar practice be helpful?

Blessed Be,

Joel

Powers, William. Twelve-By-Twelve: A One-Room Cabin Off the Grid & Beyond the American Dream.  New World Library, 2010.

Review:

Dr. Jackie Benton (not her real name) lives in a 12x12 foot house on 2 acres of land. She “farms” about 5-10% of her land in permaculture, while leaving the rest of it wooded forest. Her home has no electricity, running water (No Name Creek runs near by), nor any plumping. As a Doctor she could be earning $300,000 + a year, but chooses to be paid $11,000 for her work. As a long time civil-rights and peace activist, she has found a way to live that contributes no, to very little, in war taxes. A 12x12 structure is not taxed in North Carolina, and by being paid only $11,000 she further avoids war taxes. She strives to have the carbon footprint of an average Bangadeshi.  “[H]ere’s what remains on her permaculature ship: a tiny car that she runs on biodiesel; delicious local and organic food, 90 percent of it produced by herself or her neighbors; fresh drinking water she collects herself at a local spring; solar flashlights (she doesn’t use disposable batteries for anything); a slight house, with building materials so minimal that the forests can live; and not a cent into federal war coffers” (204). Bill Powers has the opportunity to meet Jackie, who then invites him to stay at her home while she attends a peace walk out West. As a World Aid Worker in the Global South, Bill  struggles with what his work means. In particular, Bill struggles with how the world seems to be flattening out under global economic/corporate powers. Bill accepts Jackies offer, and starts a transformative journey of his own.

I found the book moving, at times inspiring and profound. A delight to read about another’s interior quest. While Powers is able to keep things real, there is not a “navel gazing-ness” about how he relates his journey. Rather, by sharing is own journey and struggles with large, big picture issues (i.e. how to live a life that fits with his beliefs) he invites us into opening up about our own struggles. I found this the delight and the challenge of the book.

Here are a few quotes to give a flavor to Powers’ writing:

Quotes:

Wildcrafters:

As the days at Jackie’s passed, and the cold earth softened, buds and tendrils began finding their shape, and I increasingly thought about heroes. My heroes are mostly people you never hear about. They quietly go about creating a durable vision of what it means to be American and a global citizen. These are people whose spirits nourish me as I hoed the rows of Jackie’s place, people like Stan Crawford, Bradley, and Jackie herself. As the world flattens, they give hope. They are what I call wildcrafters, people shaping their inner and outer worlds to the flow of nature, rather than trying to mold the natural world into a shape that is usable in the industrial world. Wildcrafters leave a small ecological footprint. They don’t conform to any outward program, manifesto, or organized group, but conform only to what Gandhi called the “still, small voice” [see also Elijah’s experience of God] within. I consider much of the dispersed “anti-globalization,” pro-sustainability movement to be connected to wildcrafting. Wildcrafters inhabit the rebel territory beyond the Flat.” (93)

Can the World Be Improved? Tao Te Ching

Down by No Name Creek one day, I read aloud to Leah from Jackie’s copy of the Tao Te Ching, Lao-tzu’s famous book of Chinese wisdom: “Do you think you can improve the world?”

            Without hesitating, Leah said: “Yes.”

            I paused, and then read on: “I don’t think it can be done.”

            In unison we broke into smiles, and I continued: “The world is sacred, it can’t be improved.”

            “Hearing that,” Leah said, “I feel a pressure lift.”

            “It’s our training,” I replied. “’You can save the world!’ It goes on to say, ‘The master sees things as they are without trying to control them. She lets them go their own way, and resides at the center of the circle.’”

            I turned by head to look at Leah’s profile. Neither of us said anything.

            Then she slid the book from my hand and continued reading from it: “Know the male, yet keep to the female. Receive the world in your arms. … Know the white, yet keep to the black. Be a pattern for the world.”

            I felt lighter, in a deep well of time, the forest around us growing more roomy. “I like that,” I said, “about becoming a pattern for the world.” The opposites were bouncing around in my mind: male-female, white-black.

            “’Pattern’ is so much better than ‘model.’”

            “Who said anything about model?”

            “Exactly. But we always talk about role models. And model citizens. Sounds as plastic as a model airplane, when we’re talking about an interwoven whole.” (125-6)

Growth & Rumi:

Growth in nature happens not in a linear manner but rather through a series of pulsations. Growth is gentle; it reaches out tentatively into new terrain. This quote from Rumi captivates me: “Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds’ wings.” (144)

Affluenza:

The Pauls (Sr. and Jr.) are some of Jackie’s neighbors who are just starting out.

            “Eradicate” and “cannibalize” didn’t figure into the Pauls’ vocabulary, as they attempted to sculpt lives that, like the Maya’s, blended with Gaia. But it is hard to escape our internal colonization, I thought, as I noticed the increasingly anxious looks on the Pauls’ faces. They weren’t unaware of their frost-bitten disaster. [The Pauls have just lost most of their garden (food supply) to frost.] But more than that there was a vast, raw land around them. They wanted to do things! Build things! Cut trails, dam part of the river for a bigger swimming area, and as Paul Sr. said, “put a hundred sheep out here.” A slightly horrific vision formed in my mind of their farm in five years hence: not this perfectly raw, deer-filled, wild space, but a domesticated pastoral idyll with a summer camp feel. The Pauls would show people around and describe the present moment as those terrible days “when there was absolutely nothing here.”

            I recognized this as a symptom of that contagious, middle-class virus that causes addiction, anxiety, depression, and ennui: affluenza. The richer we get, the poorer we feel. To fill the void, we do. I know that feeling. Like the Pauls, I’m American, not indigenous Guatemalan. I am conditioned to equate my self-worth with being active, productive, useful. (145)

Idle Majority

On January 21, 1949, some two billion people woke up and got out of bed, still unaware of the terrible things that had taken place in their lives. Sip some tea, chat with a spouse or a neighbor, the sun tracing an arc into the sky; take winding paths to a farm field for a few hours of work. Lunch. Siesta. Maybe a little nooky. The day seemed the same as the one before for half the planet’s people, but it wasn’t. Whereas before they had been, well, regular people living regular lives, now they were something else, something ghastly: underdeveloped.

            The day before, President Harry S. Truman, in his inauguration speech, declared that the era of “development” had begun, thereby minting a new terminology to conceive the world:

We must embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas. The old imperialism – exploitation for foreign profit – has no place in our plans. What we envision is a program of development.

Suddenly two billion people who had been doing all right – like my ambling Mayan friends in Guatemala – were no longer doing all right. They were underdeveloped. And in one of the most spectacular missionary efforts in history, the rich nations henceforth strove to lead the underdeveloped of the world to a paradise of development, where they too would be domesticated and tethered to a logic of Total Work.

            Truman might have more accurately called these “underdeveloped” people the planet’s Idle Majority, the billions who reject the Puritan work ethic and extol leisure. This “leisure ethic,” as I’ve come to dub it, isn’t laziness; it is an intelligent, holistic balance between doing and being. It is embodied by the Aymaran philosophy of “living well,” which includes enough (and not more) food, shelter, fresh air, and friendship.

            In international aid work, the philosophical chasm between living well and living better can lead to culture clash – as well as to serious marital problems. I know a French aid worker who married a woman from Burkina Faso. Their most difficult problem isn’t money or in-laws but idleness. His wife, he confided to me one day, “has to have five or six hours a day of doing absolutely nothing in order to be happy.” My friend is inclined to fill every available moment with work, hobbies, and travel, but his wife prefers to simply sit on the stoop watching the breeze in the trees, idly chatting and joking. If she doesn’t get this idle time, she becomes grouchy.

            On another occasion in the Gambia, a West African country, I found myself explaining to a local guy in a town called Gunjur, down the coast from Banjul, how workers in the United States and Europe waged decades of union battles to win an eight-hour workday.

            He looked at me with complete amazement, as if I had just said that Papa Smurf lived on the moon and was waving down to us. “They fought,” he finally said, grasping to comprehend, “to work eight hours a day?”

            “Exactly!” I exclaimed a little proud to have shared a bit of Western labor history that might help him in his struggles.

            To my shock, the man burst out laughing. Amid guffaws he managed to get across that he and others in Gunjur worked three to four hours a day. It was absurd, he said, to fight all those decades to work more, especially in a rich country! It became a running joke with us. “Hey, Bill,” he’d say whenever he saw me, “I think I’ll work eight hours today,” then collapse into a belly laugh. (149-51)

            Bill goes on to talk about how Columbia, of all places, is ranked as one of the most happiest places on the earth. Is it because their culture has better adjusted cultures for happiness? Though it ranks below forty other countries in GDP, Columbians continue to rank themselves as happy: 96% defined themselves as content with life in the Biswas-Diener survey (151).

            Bill continues by writing: “When discussing relatively “poorer” countries, we need to make a clear, explicitly distinction between people living in a state of material destitution and people living health subsistence lifestyles. Terms like poverty and Third World mask this distinction and give license for modern professionals – of whom I’ve long been one – to undervalue, denigrate, and interfere with sustainable ways to life.

            “There’s a point where one’s material life is in balance: one has neither too much nor too little. Per my own analysis of GDP and global happiness, roughly one-fifth of humanity has too much and is overdeveloped; another fifth has too little and is underdeveloped. Neither of these groups experiences general well-being. The former, with materialism caked on like a million barnacles, an rarely experience the simple joy of being. The latter are so destitute that they can’t sustain their bodies physically. Fortunately, the third group – those with enough – is by far the largest. It is what I call “developed,” ranging from subsistence livelihoods like that of the Maya of Guatemala to the level of the average European circa 1990.

            “By this calculation, 60 percent of the world lives sustainably, in a global sense. In other words, if everyone lived as they did, one planet – the one we’re on right now – would suffice to feed, clothe, shelter, and absorb the waste of everyone. (In contrast, if everyone lived at the level of the average American, we’d require the resources of four additional earth-sized planets.) (152-3).

Soft Economy

Jackie mined these issues deeper still. She used her household economy as a radical rebellion. I have spent years exploring ways to weave a softer economy into my life, and her example pushed me further.

            Declare independence from the corporate global economy, Jackie seemed to say. Doing so has two synergetic positive effects. First, by simplifying her life and working less, she creates less garbage on the planet. Second, the time and space she liberates nourish her. We exchange something very precious for money: our life energy. Do we want to spend our time and energy earning money and contributing to the market economy, or fostering creative pursuits, our relationships, and community, and contributing love? (208)

Humility: Rule #6 : Gratefulness

Rule Number 6 is “something a manger-friend would use in his humanitarian aid projects. Whenever ego wars, slights, and offenses would surface, someone on the team would say, “Rule Number Six,” and amazingly, harmony would return to the situation.

            I asked what Rule Number Six was, and he told me: “Don’t take yourself so damn seriously.”     

            We both laughed, and I asked him, “What are the other five rules?”

            “They are all the same,” he said. “See Rule Number Six.”

            I consider humility as closely tied to gratefulness. Thus, if someone praises me, I’m grateful; if they don’t, I’m also grateful. Even when I’m criticized, it’s an opportunity to be grateful for the breath I draw at the moment, for the sunshine and breeze, and for whatever lesson there is to learn. By being grateful, appreciating all we have instead of focusing on what is lacking, we allow more of the same to flow toward us. When I focus on missing Amaya, for example, I crate a drama out of lack, of not-enough, and that becomes my reality. Instead I can focus on how much I love her, how grateful I am that she’s my daughter.” (217)

A Book for 9/11: David Carlson's "Peace Be With You"

Do you remember what you were doing on September 11, 2001? When did you hear the news that shook the world? What do you remember from the days following? How did your faith shape your view of the events? And if asked for any wisdom, do you think you might have some insights to share?
With an uneasy feeling that the United States may have reacted instead of responded and consequently headed down the wrong path of retaliation, these are the types of questions that David Carlson asked the monastic community and relates to us in Peace Be With You: Monastic Wisdom for a Terror-Filled World.
Last November I was searching for a book in the public library, to see if they had a copy. They didn't have the book I was looking for, but they did have Carlson's Peace Be With You. You might, then, be wondering why I'm reviewing it now, 9 months after I've finished it. Because it speaks profoundly to the events of 9/11. Peace Be With You is Carlson's search for a "word of life" from the monastic communities in the United States. He relates his experiences with over thirty interviews of monks and nuns (plus a potter) and how their wisdom and their insight into the human experience challenges and shapes his life. In the meantime, he finds that these words of life might also provide a way in which Islam and Christianity can dialogue, and continue our relationship with one another on a compassionate level.

When 9/11 hit I was serving three churches in central Idaho. While other pastors were speaking about the end times and divine punishment, I struggled to express how God calls us to be means of grace, using justice tempered with compassion with the goal of reconciliation. Consequently, I found this book to be an intriguing read that validated some of my own insights, longing and struggles while encouraging my faith.
As September rolls around once more, I would encourage you to read this book, and open yourself for transformation.

Blessed Be
Rev. Joel

Below are few quotes to prompt your reading.

One of the monks responds to the question of freedom:

"[People] think you lose your freedom when you come into a monastery. Now you're under obedience, you can't do what you want anymore, can't go out when you want, can't spend money like you want, all these other things we lose, you know ... But [this life] gives us a great freedom, the freedom to live our life in God."
I thought of the last stanza of T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland, where Eliot compares human life to a sailboat under masterful control. The boat achieves its end, reaches its destination, when the rudder and lines to the sails are controlled. Chaos and confusion, not freedom, are achieved in letting go the lines and leaving the boat to the mercy of the wind. Monastic life is all about taking hold of the ropes - these ropes of discipline that lead to freedom (30).

When interviewing Mother Julianne, she relates how the events of 9/11 brought back terrible memories of fellow sisters who experienced firsthand the terrors of Guatemala, Rwanda, and Bosnia. Carlson reflects:

I was unexpectedly moved by Mother Julianne's connecting 9/11 with the suffering in Guatemala and Rwanda (and later in the interview, Bosnia). She was articulating something that had saddened me about our nation's reaction to 9/11. Our grief could have become a bridge of understanding and empathy to others in the world who have known (and continue to experience) horrendous suffering. But that had not happened. I had yet to hear anyone ask, "Was 9/11 something like what the Japanese experienced in Hiroshima and Nagasaki?"
Instead, 9/11 only seemed to isolate us further from the world. To most Americans, the tragedy of 9/11 was experienced as a bubble to suffering so unique that only we could possibly feel the severity of the pain. Our grief seemed to become our private possession (42-3).

And, yet, here is a nun with the world/faith view to say "'I think that's why 9/11 took on a whole international [meaning] - it's not just an American problem. It's a problem of our present [global] society'" (43).

Carlson spends a chapter reflecting upon Thomas Merton, especially Merton's epiphany in Louisville at the corner of Fourth and Walnut where he suddenly sees all these people walking around him as each one must appear to the eyes of God, and he loves them.

Several years later, in New Seeds of Contemplation (1961), Merton would express this insight as seeing the mystical Christ in the people around him. "For in becoming man, God became not only Jesus Christ, but also potentially every man and woman that ever existed. In Christ, God became not only 'this' man, but also, in a broader and more mystical sense, yet no less truly, 'every man'" (99 - from Merton's Seeds 294-5)

In Merton's view, the Incarnation, the belief that God became human in Christ, was not an abstract theological doctrine, not simply a creedal statement, but an actual transformation of the entire human race. As a drop of holy water is said to have power to sanctify an entire ocean, as a spore of leaven affects the entire loaf, God becoming human has changed us all. The decisive moment of human history had come in Christ, the God-man, and, for Merton, this was the answer to the Cold War of his own lifetime. I swallowed hard ... I had come to believe that Merton's insight was becoming for me an answer to 9/11 (134-5).

Here was the truth about contemplation, that contemplation is a protest, a refusal to concede the victory to hatred, vengeance, materialism, tribalism, or individualism. Contemplation can be the collective experience of a minority (a "whispered peace"), but that minority insists that a depth of living exists, even within those who are ignorant of that depth, where healing, wholeness, and unity can never be destroyed. Contemplation is radical in that it anticipates not the destruction of our adversaries but our reconciliation with them (164).

His interview with Richard Bresnahan (see previous posting about his pottery here) is incredible. Bresnahan has deep insights into what it means an artist is to be doing, and how the life of an artist shapes everything. One's vocation is not just lived out at work, but in all of one's life. And humans are here to balance out the ecosystem.

The cornerstone of this new understanding of the mystical Christ as present within humanity. The Incarnation is much more radical an event than is reflected in our brief Christmas festivities. The Incarnation means that Jesus has entered this world and lurks, albeit often in a hidden way, within the entire human race. I began to realize that I did not need to bring Jesus to bear on our crisis. What I needed to do was find Jesus moving in the midst of it (228).

And the Incarnation leads to love.

And our failure to trust in this unfathomable love had been our lost chance after 9/11. "We had an opportunity to not only heal ourselves ... to receive healing, but also to help the world," [Brother Christopher] said. "That didn't necessarily preclude trying to bring to justice the perpetrators of the act, but we, in my judgment, have squandered that. And that's almost as big a tragedy as the act of 9/11 itself." ... "It was a kairos moment [a time of great significance] ... and is this an opportunity where can be seen? And make no mistake about it; we're not looking for a deus ex machina swinging down. At least I'm not. I'm not expecting all of a sudden Jesus coming down or the Rapture taking place ... No, rather, we become the means of grace. We become God's hands, God's feet. We become the instruments of the gospel. Or not!" he emphasized (243).

In our response to the tragedy of 9/11, we had replaced the God of the paschal mystery with the God of vengeance. The God whom Jesus embodied had made a far different choice. God had chosen forgiveness. God did not condemn the world for crucifying His Son, but raised Jesus for the sake of the world - for the sake of us who continue to crucify Christ in our actions toward others. ... We had failed to understand 9/11 in light of the death and resurrection of Christ. We had left Christ on the cross.
For Christians to view 9/11 and the world of terrorism through the paschal mystery of Christ's death and resurrection will be difficult and complex. Such a stance does not mean condoning or ignoring what al-Qaeda did on September 11, any more than God, in Christian belief, ignored or condoned the sinfulness of humanity in crucifying His Son. No, forgiveness must mean, as the South African activist Malusi Mpumlwana suggests, helping our adversaries recover their humanity (246-7).

****
Carlson, David. Peace Be With You: Monastic Wisdom for a Terror-Filled World. Thomas Nelson, 2011. 276 pages

Book Review: Frank Mulville's Single-handed Sailing

With the weather warming up and the days getting longer in the northern hemisphere, many are starting to think about the sailing season. I sure am. So, it's time for another book review and pondering some other projects for the list.

Single-handed Sailing is not just a book for the single-hander, although written for single-handers. What do I mean by that? Most sailing is done by small crews - usually a couple. This means that most watches are taken with one person on watch. Why not set the boat up to single-hand? That way, the watch keeper doesn't need to wake the off watch person (who might be sleeping) to take care of a sail change, change course, or what have you.

Frank Mulville and Iskra (his 28' gaff-cutter) have appeared in Cruising World, Yatching Monthly, Practical Boat Owner and other sailing magazines. In addition, Mulville has written Terschelling Sands, In Granma's Wake; Girl Stella's Voyage to Cuba, Rustler on the Beach, Schooner Integrity, and Dear Dolphin. Single-handed Sailing was first published in 1981 (2nd edition in 1990), and republished in 1994. He and Iskra have completed six (or more) solo Atlantic crossings, a voyage to Norway and around Iceland.

Single-handed Sailing is of the old school (pre-GPS for instance) but full of sensible advice none-the-less. Mulville comes from the K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Sailor) line of thought. His advice runs from the importance of staying aboard the boat (and how to do so), wind-vane self-steering, supplies to carry, storm tactics, maneuvering and anchoring, trade-wind sailing and even which rig to choose.

As an example: he insists that the single-handed sailor who falls overboard is done for, so make sure one doesn't fall overboard by wearing your harness when ever on deck, and making sure you are clipped aboard. He shows how to choose a harness and tether (he prefers a single tether with two hooks at 3' and 8') and rig jack-lines. For jack-lines, he prefers stainless steel running at shoulder height above the lifelines. That way the sailor who falls overboard, will be swung along behind the boat, where he can reach the lanyard rigged to the wind-vane. After pulling the wind-vane lanyard the boat heads up into the wind, and he can climb back aboard on the wind-vane mounting tubing. Try this out before departing, he warns, with another crew member aboard to help if needed. He even mentions that the single-hander will soon learn to use the harness and tether as another "pair of hands" to balance while working on deck.

 In addition, he has wonderful poetry-prose like the following.

After many days alone the single-hander may feel himself so much a part of the environment he finds himself in, so attuned to the changing moods and humours of the ocean, that he may not wish to interfere with its inhabitants. He himself is tolerated, even treated as a friend by the creatures with whom he shares his life. They all in their way contribute to his well-being - the flashing beauty of the flying fish, the grace and elegance of the dolphin, the deadly power of the shark, the ponderous and dignified bulk of the whale, the hurried, busy flight of the storm petrel or the deft, competent mastery of the gull as it endlessly plays the currents and eddies around the yacht - all serve to draw the single-hander closer to his surroundings. It is his ability to identify with the ocean and to become a part of its life which makes it possible for him, unlike any other creature, to survive and flourish in the ocean by himself. The substance of his existence is dependent as much on his state of mind as on his bodily health - the one is a much a part of his well-being as the other. He is a wise and generous man who passes across the ocean in peace, respecting the lives of his fellow wayfarers (160).

I know that some do not like the twin-headsail rig for sailing down the trade winds. But if one wants to give this rig a try, Mulville provides the means to do so.

He is also an advocate about two things with your mainsail that might be worth talking to your sail maker about. 1. Use a miter cut in the main, with a loose foot, to allow a significant roach at both leech and foot without the need for battens. 2. If using a bermudian/marconi rig, a down-haul on the main might make it capable to reefing while running downwind in a heavy wind. Mulville, himself, advocates the gaff rig.

All in all, I think the book is worth reading for the single-hander of a couple getting ready to set sail. I know that I gleaned pieces of information and "food for thought" by reading Single-handed Sailing. I enjoyed some of Mulville's other works, and this one, too. At this point in time, however, when shelf-space aboard is limited, I think this is one I'd get from the Inter-Library Loan system.

Book Review: Robert Wicks' Crossing the Desert

Believe it or not, but this Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent for the Western church. I'll have some more resources to reflect upon on Wednesday, but for now wanted to review Robert Wicks' book, Crossing the Desert: Learning to let go, see clearly, and live simply. As the first Sunday in lent is a reading of Jesus' heading into the desert for forty days, I thought this an appropriate time for this review.


Blessed Be
Joel

Robert J. Wicks. Crossing the Desert: Learning to let go see clearly and live simply. Norte Dame: Sorin Books, 2007. 186 pages.

Quotes on the dedication page:

Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors ~ African Proverb

Where are the great and wise [persons] who do not merely talk about the meaning of life and the world but really possess it? ~ Carl Jung

“Only after the desert has done its work in us can an angel come to strengthen us. Crossing the Desert tells us why we need the desert in our lives and what kid of angels only the desert can bring. This is Robert Wicks at his best: wonderfully sane, balanced, accessible, witty, and challenging. Mysticism for those who are frightened of that term.” says Ronald Rolheiser (the author of The Holy Longing) on the back cover. For those of you familiar with The Holy Longing that should be a review enough. But I’ll continue.

Wicks has divided his book into three sections: an introductory chapter on the desert; a subsection (Part One) on embracing the freedom of humility; and a subsection (Part Two) on letting go. He remains personal and anticdotical throughout the book referring to his own experiences on his own spiritual journey, as well as his years as a therapist. I wished he would have included more stories from the desert fathers (abbas) and mothers (ammas), but one can find these in other sources. Wick’s purpose, it seems to me, it rather to encourage others to embark upon their own journeys of faith.

During the fourth century CE there were a group of folks who left the trappings of the Roman Empire and its civilization for the desert, in order to more fully seek God and become themselves. I appreciate how Wicks points out that the abbas and ammas were after ordinariness – the ordinary – rather than trying to become or chase after extraordinariness or becoming someone special. There is a sense in which these individuals found the “trappings of civilization” to be just that, trappings. Money, fame, success, possessions, etc. do not define who an individual is. These people of the desert stove to strip away their false selves and become more their ordinary selves. Wicks stresses that these people have something to teach us about becoming more ourselves, and letting go of our own falsehoods. It is of note that the stories coming out of the desert are highly practical in nature, rather than treatises on how to pray. At the same time, the stories are very often full of humility and compassion, as the following illustrates:

A few of the brothers came to see Abba Poemen.

They said to him, “Tell us what to do when we see brothers dozing during prayer. Should we pinch them to help them stay awake?”

            The elder said to them, “Actually what I would do if I saw a brother sleeping is to put his head on my knees and let him rest” (27).

At the same time, I appreciate how Wicks stresses that we do not need to leave our lives and head into the desert ourselves, even though the this “is about the journey that all of us are called to take – especially when we feel lost, under great stress, or during times of desolation” (15).

Part One: To Embrace the Freedom that Humility Offers (Chapters 2 – 5)

In this section Wicks reflects upon seeking those things that are essential, how humility and entitlement are opposites of one another, how our friends can give us insights into ourselves (especially prophets, cheerleaders, teaser/harassers, and wise companions/soul friends), and the importance of becoming grateful. The following is a sampling:

“The difference between true passionate intent that leads to action and mere fantasy that results in inaction is a distinction that all major religions make when addressing the topics of letting go or the freedom and peace that true spiritual practice can bring” (40).

In speaking of the three psycho-spiritual gates: passion, knowledge and humility, Wicks has this to say about passion. “It [passion] is not dimmed by failure because passion is not based on success. Instead it is fired by a spiritual sense of awe for what life can be when it is touched by courage, openness, and gratitude for all we have been given” (43-44). And when speaking about knowledge: “To keep a healthy perspective in life we need to have both the psychological and spiritual wisdom that the different world religions offer us. Such wisdom helps one to differentiate between unnecessary suffering on the one hand, and the kind of pain that must be faced rather than defended against or avoided on the other. Good knowledge, like healthy food, is necessary for living. Consequently living by the principles of self-care and maintaining a healthy perspective are two things we can naturally seek each day. We need this knowledge” (45). And about humility: Humility “is the ability to fully appreciate our innate gifts and our current ‘growing edges’ in ways that enable us to learn, act, and flow with our lives as never before” (45). “With humility, knowledge is transformed into wisdom” (46). “Humility is an essential ingredient in life because it provides a kenosis, an emptying of the self – the very desert spirit of letting go about which this book is written” (47-8).

Obstacles to humility:

“And, certainly among the obstacles to living humbly and simply that they [our wise companions] guide us through, there is no greater one than a conscious sense of entitlement or the unconscious parallel danger of ‘repressed gratefulness’” (63).

“Humility and a sense of entitlement are bad bedfellows. If it is true that the meek shall inherit the earth, the entitled shall certainly contest their inheritance!

            “How did life become this way for so many of us? What happened to gratefulness, appreciation of the simple things in life, and a clear recognition that in the end all is gift? When did artificial needs become so powerfully consuming? Suggest to someone today that they can be happy with less and they think you are being absurd. …

            “Ever sense the so called self-actualization movement of the 1960’s, people have been taught that what they really must do to be truly happy is to step forward and get what is rightfully theirs. They must be willing to take the necessary risks to get what they deserve out of life. I think this is the wrong risk for most people to take much of the time. To do so means that we spend most of our waking time constantly chasing and claiming rather than enjoying the life set before us. I believe that a more appropriate and powerful question that we should ask ourselves today is, ‘Am I taking enough risks to fully enjoy what I already have?’

            “Of course, the question is countercultural. It is tied more to a spirit of humility than a sense of entitlement. The consumer society we live in tries to keep us off balance. It urges us to be continuously in search of those things and people that are rightfully ours, and to believe that they will in the end, make us whole” (65ff).

           

What a question! “Am I taking enough risks to fully enjoy what I already have?”

And of course I can’t help but wonder that this spirit of entitlement is why the USA and the world are in the economic recession/depression that we are in.

Part Two: Letting Go (Chapters 6 – 9)

These section is about learning to become a desert apprentice by asking four desert questions (1. What am I filled with now? 2. What prevents me from letting go? 3. How do I empty myself? 4. What will satisfy me, but leave me open for more? Or to put it another way, What do I do once the room is swept clean? or In essence, what paradoxically will satisfy me but still leave me spiritually open, empty and free?);* learning to feed your soul, what to look for in a mentor, and taking the steps to inner freedom.  Again, I’ll leave you with a sampling of what caught my fancy:

As Wicks explores his topics, he also quotes from others.

When asking the question of “What am I filled with now?”, Wicks relates the following story as told by Alan Jones. Soul Making: The Desert Way of Spirituality. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1985. 146:

It is said that during an uprising in India late in the last century when British service families had to be evacuated, the road was strewn with such things as stuffed owls and Victorian bric-a-brac. I have no idea what the late twentieth century equivalent of a stuffed owl is, but no doubt our path will be just as littered with “necessities.” We will have to learn to travel light (84).

When speaking about the tradition of the desert ammas and abbas, but also about the spiritual practice of seeing clearly – and the need for mentors and others on the way – Wicks quotes from Columba Stewart:

It is obvious that the sayings of the desert fathers touch modern people in ways that other ancient Christian writings do not. This is not because they are pithy, humorous, or bizarre, although they are sometimes all of these things. What sets the apophthegmata apart from so much of patristic literature is that they speak from and to experience rather than text or theory; they are practical rather than intellectual. The sayings and the stories on which they are set do not try to pursue a topic as far as may be done, to run a concept to ground and examine it, or to construct an argument. The sayings open up rather than exhaust, suggest rather than describe. Like parables, they are explosive, and where the bits land after the explosion is different each time the stories are told or read. The significance of this quality runs deeper than matters of literary genre: it was not a studied preference for gnomic statements rather than treatises which gave rise to these sayings. The very form of the apophthegmata arose from and leads back into the heart of the desert quest. These monks staked everything on the effort to destroy illusion and deception. Their various disciplines were intended to help them cut through the noise of lives hooked on the deceptions, materialism, and games that have characterized human beings since the Fall. The desert itself gave them a landscape which mirrored what they sought for their own hearts: an uncluttered view through clean air” (125-126).**

And one last quote from a reference he uses of  Parker Palmer. Let Your Life Speak. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000, 2, 3.

When it is clear – if I have eyes to see – that the life I am living is not the same as the life that wants to live in me … I [start] to understand that it is indeed possible to live a life other than one’s own. … I had simply found a “noble” way to live a life that was not my own, a life spent imitating heroes instead of listening to my heart.

“In the desert, this point was made more simply: If you want to find rest here and hereafter say on every occasion, “Who am I?” and don’t judge anyone else. In this complex world with so many demands and insecurities, only those who have a sense of simplicity, single-heartedness, and knowledge of who they are will have a spontaneous, transparent heart which will allow them to flow with life rather than drift with it” (163–4).

 _________

* Chapter Six: pp. 84, 90, 101, and105.

** Wicks quotes Columba Stewart. “Radical Honesty about the Self: The Practice of the Desert Fathers,” Sobermost 12 (1990): 25.

A Book Review: Harlan Hubbard's Shantyboat

In 1944, Harlan (an artist and viola/violin player), and his new wife Anne (a librarian and cello player),  build a shantyboat on the shore of the Ohio River (at Brent, just downstream from Cincinnati) and drift down to the Gulf of Mexico.

I had no theories to prove. I merely wanted to try living by my own hands, independent as far as possible from a system of division of labor in which the participant loses most of the pleasure of making and growing things for himself. I wanted to bring in my own fuel and smell its sweet smoke as it burned on the hearth I mad made. I wanted to grow my own food, catch in the river, or forage after it. In short, I wanted to do as much as I could for myself, because I had already realized from partial experience the inexpressible joy of so doing (Hubbard, 38).

They spend two years after the construction learning their "apprenticeship" to river life, and growing a garden along the shore to stock up their provisions. Down the Ohio they go, stopping at Payne Hallow after a winter of drifting. Here they set about growing a large garden, fishing and bartering for eggs and milk during the spring, summer and fall before setting off down the river again. Little do they know at the time, that they will return to Payne Hallow and homestead there. The next spring, they stop at Brizzle's Bluff on the Cumberland River. Again a season is spent growing garden crops before setting out for another winter drifting, this time moving quickly to the Mississippi. Their next layover is at Natchez. Then the following winter they are off again, getting to New Orleans in March, 1950. The total distance is 1385 miles.
One of the interesting things about this voyage, and the book, is that Harlan never mentions the United States is fighting World War II, nor that the war ends, while they are drifting down the river. This story is told with delight, humor and an overriding sense of passion about living life. Lest you think they are a young couple, Harlan is 44 and Anne 41 when they marry. And, as Wendell Berry points out, this experience shapes their relationship to one another and the world around them. In some ways, their homesteading is a continuation of this way of life.
Many people have an idea that cruising, or shantyboating, costs lots of money. But it needn't. I'm not saying the life that the Hubbards lived on their shantyboat is for everyone, but I will say that their life provides a different way to live, one that is full of time for leisure as well as work. (For those familiar with the Nearing's books on the Good Life, you may find some similarities here).
By traveling every winter, the Hubbards were able to use the strength of the rivers' currents to move their boat/home. Their only other power was of a human kind (sweeps on the shantyboat, oars on the john boat) plus a few times in which they are towed a short distance. This allows them to grow/catch their own food, and by canning, keep it until they are able to grow more. For eggs and milk (and the like) they barter what they have for what they don't (i.e. catfish for milk and eggs). For heat, and other supplies, they use drift wood.
Harlan lived, as Berry points out, a life of faith: "What we need is at hand" (Berry, 93). Is this not truly seeing the world as a place of abundance?

How are we living? Are we living in ways that give us growth: in spirit, in character, in creativity, in accomplishment, in pleasure, in joy?
Here's to a New Year filled with this kind of growth!
Blessed Be
Rev. Joel

***
See Harlan Hubbard's Shantyboat: A River Way of Life. (University of Kentucky Press, 1953) and Wendell Berry's Harlan Hubbard: Life and Work. (University of Kentucky Press, 1990).
Or visit the website devoted to the Hubbards: Harlan Hubbard.com

The Art of Pilgrimage

Ok, time for another book review. Phil Cousineau's Art of Pilgrimage: the Seekers Guide to Making Travel Sacred (Conari Press, 1998) is a wonderful book looking into ways in which any of us can turn our traveling into pilgrimages, journeys of the heart and/or soul. These journeys need not be made to overtly religious sights, he points out. Traveling to the place our ancestors migrated from, or a famous bookstore in which an author, who has impacted us, was first published or hung-out, maybe even the baseball hall-of-fame. The destination is not so important as the journey itself. Cousineau provides questions to ponder, insights into journeying, and resources to turn our travels into opportunities for soulful delight, insight, and work/growth.
What struck me about this book, was the sense that many of my conversations with you have centered around ' holy travel' or  'this is where I have experienced the Holy'.
When traveling by boat I find myself becoming more reflective, and from conversations, it appears many of you do too. As such, I found the topics Cousineau writing about insightful, and a reminder to appreciate the soulfulness of travel.
As you may have noticed, I have been referencing his book. I will continue using some of his insights for the next few blogs. Hope you enjoy.