Needles and stuff to get through

I feel slightly in awe of the amount of stuff I have to do today.

I stand respectfully at the bottom of the mountain gazing up at its peak disappearing majestically into the clouds.

It makes Mount Fuji look like a pimple.

Therefore despite your inevitably bitter disappointment all I shall be doing today is telling you about needles.

See below.

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365 366 Day 60 February 29^th
 (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, see here)

I don’t know how this came about but I have acquired quite a quantity of needles over the passing years.

I think a surge in needle uptake occurred when I married Bernard.  His house at that time was like a shrine to his deceased wife Anne.  All her stuff was still there just as it always had been.  He spent a considerable proportion of the short while he and I were together before his death coming to terms with the end of the era of Anne and the beginning of the era of me, and sorting through her things.  This was good news for me because at first all I had was two drawers and half a cupboard, as Anne’s possessions occupied the rest of the space Bernard’s stuff left over.

As well as being a prolific artist, Annie made all her own clothes and had a work basket full of handy implements – a leather punch, a darning mushroom, a skein of sock yarn, a huge curved needle for stitching leather, a metal thing for determining the size of unmarked knitting needles; all kind of useful items.  And she had a lot of cottons and needles.

It was hard for Bernard to just get rid of anything that had belonged to his Annie, and easier to entrust it to me.  Nobody who knows my living habits would bother entrusting me with any heirloom, but occasionally people use me as a kind of alternative recycling bin – the soft version of throwing something away.

I think these needles are the last of Annie’s.  And I think the ones in the red card may have been given to me on one of the occasions when I officiated at a Chinese funeral. That was interesting.

A few years ago I came across a Japanese prayer to/for needles no longer wanted/useable and now to be laid to rest.  I found the prayer online but the person who put it there found it at a Shinto shrine.  It originates from a special Shinto festival that includes a memorial service for old needles (someone has blogged about this here).  I suppose this is disrespectful of me, so if you are into Shinto please forgive me, but it made me laugh a lot (despite its obviously considerable insight), because to my English mind it is so alien and unexpected.  It went like this:

Japanese Song of Gratitude to Needles

Hari kuy­õ, hari kuyõ

Thanks to you, O needles

We can lead a happy life

Thank you needles.

Let us all pray to the needles forever

Needles, needles, needles

You have to admit, there is something in it!  Where would we be without them?  So in parting from these needles that served both me and Annie well, I bow in reverence.  I wave to Annie on her Further Shore reunited with Bernard, and I send these needles on down the river of life as if they were a votive candle on the Ganges.  Cheerio!

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Regarding the image of Mount Fuji at the top of this page:
The copyright holder of this file, Adam Cuerden, allows anyone to use it for any purpose provided that the copyright holder is properly attributed.  Redistribution, derivative work, commercial use and all other use is permitted.  Attribution: Adam Cuerden.

    

A deeper layer

I thought that the whole simplicity thing for me began with discovering St Francis when I was fifteen years old.

But I’ve uncovered a deeper layer I had forgotten.

When the fretting and fretting to live in a shed finally got to the point of explaining to Tony the Badger that, though I love him with all my heart and certainly want to share his company and sleep in his bed, I just have to live in a shed, and plans were made to get a second shed for the garden I knew at once that my shed was to be called The Palace Flophouse.

Now I haven’t read Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday since I was about 12 years old, so in all those years The Palace Flophouse has lain (as I thought) dormant in my imagination – but it’s obviously that that’s what's broken through to the surface. Until a week or so ago, I could have told you who wrote those books, but not a single character or happening or anything else about then. All forgotten.

When I thought of the shed as The Palace Flophouse, I felt two reservations. 1) I really dislike plagiarism and living on borrowed ideas. I would have preferred to make up a name of my own. 2) I like to call a place by a holy name – the Big House at Aylesbury is Hagia Sophia, the flat in Hastings was Gezellig, the tribe house in Hastings is Godsblessing House.

But I knew it had to be the Palace Flophouse so, intrigued, I re-read Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday, and how startled I was. Because with the top layer of my mind I had totally and utterly forgotten the content of those books, I hadn’t appreciated how formative they had been, or remembered what a resonance they had found with my soul.

The two books taken together are about the best treatise on simplicity, living simply, I ever read. I’m not sure why they don’t usually get a mention. Where Thoreau’s Walden seems to be a kind of set text (I haven’t read it all but enough to get the gist of where he’s coming from), I don’t recall ever seeing Steinbeck referenced as a simplicity guru which, in the best sense, he surely is.

Reading those books again has made something immense fall into place for me. I came to St Francis after I read those, when a certain view and understanding had already formed. The one place I part company with St Francis is over his extreme asceticism – mortification of the flesh, despising of the self. Steinbeck talks of liking yourself in the same easy way you might like anyone else, and he looks steadily at human weakness and idiosyncrasy with humour and compassion and understanding – which is surely less neurotic.

It’s not often I come across a book that makes a difference, that doesn’t leave me thinking ‘Yes, but...’ and wandering off after page 23. It’s not often either that I come across a book that can effect a healing in me, or that can create a tangible wise peace. Reading these two books forty years after I last read them has done just that.

Cannery Row. Sweet Thursday. If you know yourself called to live simply; I recommend them.

Stepping Off 5

Recently at a meeting about climate change, a website was recommended to me for stimulating and encouraging changing our lifestyle to earthfriendly ways.

The approach taken - Calculate (your carbon footprint), Compare (yourself with other people), Compete (to improve your performance) - is not my style, but it did get me thinking about the whole question of Carbon Footprint.

I visualise Carbon Footprint a bit like Buddhapada or those paintings of the Footprints of Christ after the Ascension; the reminder, legacy, consequence, of how we have lived our lives.

But, I don't see how it can realistically be calculated in industrialised society.

Our family members in the Hastings tribe house run no car, work locally, shop from small local businesses, choose fair trade and organic options, take no foreign holidays, use the heating frugally, have no tumble drier or dishwasher, have insulated the roof - you would think their carbon footprint was minute.

Until you start to think about it.

Last night in the Hastings tribe house we had a (delicious) Indian meal delivered from the amazing Bay Spice kitchen, and then we watched a film that we'd borrowed on DVD from the library.
What was the carbon footprint of that? How could we possibly calculate it?

The food came in a van loaded up with many orders - what proportion of the vehicle fuel and the manufacture of the van belonged to us? What percentage of the fuel in the kitchen and the manufacture of the equipment there? The meal came in aluminium foil containers with foil-backed cardboard lids. The vegetables (it was a vegetarian meal) may have been grown in our country: but what about the spices, and the grains? How were they transported from where they were grown? And the ghee - was it packed in metal drums? And the cows it came from? The grain they ate, the fertiliser to grow the grain, the milking machine components and the electricity to run it, the electric lights in the milking parlour for the morning milking before dawn?

And the film we watched - not just the electricity to run our television and DVD player: what about the manufacture of the TV and the DVD player (probably overseas), transporting them here, the manufacture of the freight carrier and the lorry, the manufacture and fuel of the car the lorry driver went to work in to start his working day? And the shop where we bought the TV and DVD player - the lights, the till, the shop fittings: their manufacture and the electricity to run them. How did the shop assistants get to work? Each in his or her own car? On the bus?

And then - the making of the film! The lights, cameras, studio equipment, all the people involved, their accommodation... it goes on and on!
It seems to me that the carbon footprint of eating the Indian meal and watching the film is incalculable.

So how could we possibly make a meaningful calculation of the carbon footprint of our whole lives? Even making the attempt is an exercise in learning how to ignore things!

This we know: to live simply, all the time, every day, in every aspect of our lives, to simplify - this is the earth-friendly strategy. Calculating, comparing and competing becomes unnecessary when we choose simplicity.

Stepping Off 2

So those were the readings and thinkings that directed me to where I am now. There have been other influences too – principally the big life and family traumas that raged around like bad weather for a decade and are starting to die away now. The thunder of those storms has died away to a distant rumble now, and the rains are relatively half-hearted; but I live with the after-math: a weariness and wariness that need solitude and space.

But the family troubles are not the essential motivating factor; they just increase the pressure of an imperative already present: the yearning for simplicity.

I am aware that there are people who uproot from family ties, leaving behind their spouse and going into the wilderness. I feel such a strong imperative to move further up the mountain; and along with that, a sense of things slipping through my fingers – that I no longer have a grip on the comings and goings and doings of human society. I have lost the will to please and compete, to cope with confrontation and negotiation. My desire is to live and let live, and to build a vision of peace: peace in oneself, peace in the world. To sow the seeds of peace and kindness and wisdom that will nourish and protect the earth and the creatures of earth. But I still have responsibilities: I am a wife, a daughter, a mother, a grandmother, a sister – and those silver threads join to my soul and are not meant to be cut.

In the Hindu system of religious philosophy, there are 4 stages of life:
1) Brahmacharya ashrama: the years when a child is at school, developing, learning and preparing to take responsibility and make a contribution (approximately). A time for study and preparation of the soul/self.
2) Grhastha ashrama: the householder. A time for consolidating material security and prosperity. A time of familial and community responsibility. This period of life is associated traditionally with marriage and raising a family.
3) Vanaprastha ashrama: the forest-dweller or hermit, living in semi-retirement at the edge of the family estate; separate from the family, but available to support and advise as the younger generation, now adult, take on the responsibilities of the Householder. The days are spent thinking, learning, reading, meditating, praying. This period of life is characterised by simplicity and withdrawal from worldliness.
4) Sannyasa ashrama: when life in the world and family ties are renounced for the purpose of attaining enlightenment. Sannyasis take vows of renunciation, and leave everything behind them.


I think I have come to the third stage. I am not ready to forsake my family; but I am no longer of use as a Householder – literally, the person who holds the house; holds it together, has a hand on all the business, notices, plans, remembers, keeps the peace, offers the solutions. I hope I gave my best to doing that, in its time: but it has left me now.

As long as I live I would like my presence in the world to be a source of encouragement, healing, hope and peace to the ones God gave me to care for in this world. But I am no longer capable of managing anything.

So I have made my nest in a potting shed under a plum tree in the garden of the house Badger and I bought in Aylesbury. I am happy to come into the house and clean, and to sleep at night with my dear Badger; but for myself the house is too solid and central now. My potting shed is called the Palace Flophouse (after John Steinbeck and Cannery Row). It is where I write and think and read and pray and spend my days, when I am not with the tribe down by the edge of the sea, in Hastings.

Namaste to my sister, my nephews, my aged mother and father, my daughters, my husband, my grandchild. Namaste; peace be with them, joy be their portion, contentment to their souls. There is a kind of regret that I could not keep the Householder thing going a little longer – to make a practical and financial contribution, to be a real support to them. But the forest time, the third age, has come.

There is also a Hindu word vyragya, that is about becoming dispassionate - drying up, really - and I feel that relates to this disturbing sense I have of not loving. As though the self, the connectedness and involvement of the self is atrophying. It occurs the me that this may be an opportunity to become a quiet, dry channel along which the compassionate love of God may flow; loving-kindness. I hope that may be so.

In general terms, because life (even my life!) is not simply about me, there is an ecological dimension to this. The house in Aylesbury where Badger and I are based, is home not only to us but to our two lodgers. The four of us therefore live individual but interwoven lives.

I was interested to read on the Resources for Life website, about the Mobile Hermitage (a version of Tumbleweed I think), this paragraph:
Despite its name, the Mobile Hermitage is designed to be part of a community of tiny houses. Interdependent freestanding small houses are very economical to build and maintain. By sharing common resources such as laundry, lavatory facilities, bath house, large kitchen, and activity center, a greater sense of community is established, and significant savings can be achieved.
Aside of my own navel-gazing, such a concept is central in my own my vision of simplicity: to share more, annex less, and decrease the demands one makes of the earth's resources; spend less money, increase freedom and flexibility - creating an opportunity for Stepping Off.

Stepping Off. 1

This is to be the first in a short series of posts. I feel that I am at a kind of crossroads on a hill, able to look back along the road I have travelled, and also see down across the valley where the road I could take is visible in the distance. There are options.

Aside of the metaphor of possibilities and history seen as roads, there are also matters that I don’t understand, and blocks I come up against repeatedly. How to find the way round the blocks like water; no fight, no blame?

Today, I want to look back at some of the milestones along the road have travelled, and come up to this present crossroads place. Tomorrow to look at where I am now. The next day to consider what may lie ahead.

Writing a blog post on the world wide web is different of course from talking to a trusted friend or thinking things through alone. Sometimes people do post indiscreetly about their private relationships and histories: I shan’t do that, but it means that what I write here will be seriously incomplete, since private and personal experiences have contributed to heavily in forming the person I now am. But, hey.

It began in earnest when I was fifteen. Already I loved deeply the Earth, the creatures and the green and growing things, the soul of tree and hill and stone and sky and water and fire. Then, after giving my heart to the Lord Jesus, I encountered St Francis of Assisi, and his vision of holy poverty, complete simplicity and humility.

Then and now his asceticism does not resonate with my soul, but his humility and simplicity do, and his love for the earth and acknowledgement of the ensoulment of creation.

After St Francis and the Fioretti, the book about his life and early followers, a year or two later I read Herman Hesse’s book Siddhartha, and saw the film that was made from the book. This expanded and deepened my vision and understanding of how simplicity could be lived. At the same time I read Sister Felicity's book Barefoot Journey. When I was eighteen, I discovered the Tao, and also a book called Unsui, about the life of Zen monks.

I have been challenged and taught by other lives and stories – Juliette de Bairacli Levy’s Wanderers in the New Forest, Julia Butterfly Hill and The Legacy of Luna, Catherine de Hueck Doherty’s Poustinia; and some community expressions of simplicity – monastic communities, Stephen and Ina May Gaskin’s Caravan, and the Anabaptist world – Amish, Hutterite, Mennonite; and the primitive Quakers.

What came together in me was a definite and quite fierce small flame of longing burning for a barefoot life: simplicity, humility, quietness, frugality.

It crystallised in my imagination into a sense of living in a hut two-thirds of the way up a mountain. I think this image drew on my memory of an afternoon spent with a woman hermit in the woods above Ampleforth, and also was fed by the goat woman in the film of Cold Mountain.

I had been thinking that what I wanted was a life that would fit easy into a twelve-foot caravan, the space defining the limits of my possessions.

But I’ve also had a sense of wanting to step off – ‘step off’ what?

I want to step off the ground: to live in a dwelling that has no roots or foundations. A hut just placed on the ground, or a houseboat or a shepherd’s hut. And right up close to a mature tree. With no electrical cables or mains drainage or gas pipes or any other veins and arteries opening connections.

There I want to be able to think and contemplate: to feel along the silver threads that join things and people until I feel my way to truth.

I want my hut to be in nature: so that the birds and frogs, the insects and hedgehogs, the foxes and grass and clouds and rain and sun are my living room.

I want to walk lightly on the earth: not to wound or deplete or poison the earth. I want to be the earth’s faithful child; nurturing the earth as the earth has nurtured me. I want to be the earth’s friend.

I want to live less and less in the world of money, and sever the links with consumerism completely. To work with my hands and to work with my skills and use my wits to earn a living feel right.

Self-sufficiency is not my aim. I feel that things go better when we work together and we share: links of craft and trade are honourable – but I would prefer the links to be small and immediate: honey from the bee-man, bread from the baker, fruit from the garden and the hedgerow, candles from Peter Neumann, cutlery from Tod, socks that Alice has knitted. This is growing. It isn’t there yet. But the longing is present and intensifying.

Like a hunger and thirst, I want simplicity – to live with very few possessions; to walk humbly; to live unobtrusively, a hidden hedgerow life. Also in my relationships: honesty, integrity, freedom, respect, peace and kindness; no contention, no possessiveness, no domination.

I think I should also strive to want to love: because love is the mark of Christ’s disciple, and is the best way of all. But in my life now, after the many personal traumas of the last decade, love does not come easily. I try to ask nothing of others, and to meet them with the Namaste of my soul: reverencing and respecting the truth and light of their living being. I am hoping that may be a step on the way to love.

Four disciplines of writing

I have found that if, instead of vaguely thinking of a book I’d like to write, or toying with an idea, I am actually to get the books completed and submitted to the publisher, then it is imperative that I follow four disciplines.

THE DISCIPLINE OF SOLITUDE
My family and my husband are very, very important to me – more important than writing books. To be available to them when they need me, to spend time in their company, to contribute whatever I can to their wellbeing – this is what makes life, to me, worth living. My friends are also very dear to me; I purposely avoid making many new friends, because I do not give the time a relationship deserves to the friends I already have. That’s because I live in the wrong place. When way opens for us to live where we should be living, there will be time again for me to spend with my friends – and that will bring me joy.

I learned early on with writing though, that what I must at all costs discourage is the formation of a large acquaintanceship – a raft of people with time on their hands who like to drop in for coffee, or who call to solicit help in a project they can perfectly well manage themselves, or are looking for a pair of idle hands to be rechanneled into making chocolate cake and pasta bakes for church functions.

Church functions are great. Doing things together is great. Having a chat over a cup of coffee is great. But these are not the occupations that get books written – or, not the kind of books I write, at any rate.

I spend months and months just thinking, watching, thinking, drifting, thinking – and then the ideas have come together, and it’s time to write. Without the solitude for thinking, the ideas do not rise to the surface – the pool is too much troubled. Without the solitude for the writing, focus is lost and everything disperses, and what seemed so vivid loses its magic (which is a pity, because if I do get it down, the energy is captured).

The solitude is as gathered as meditation. It has to be complete. If there are people around the house, I can’t write. We have two lodgers living with us. What works best for me is if whoever lives here goes out to work the same hours as Badger; or at least they must be quiet people who have no desire to initiate conversation with me. They do soon learn!!! I can screen out a certain amount of background noise that doesn’t relate to me – long loud conversations on Skype in Spanish come into that category for me at the moment!

Since my soul strongly approves of house-sharing on ecological, theological and sociological grounds, I am motivated to get past the compromise of my solitude that the lodgers present. But construction and maintenance of intense, focussed, sustained, profound solitude is necessary for writing.

It is a discipline. I do get lonely. I do get exhausted by output, with that fractious, discontent, uncomfortable state of mind that belongs to convalescence and over-tiredness. But the discipline of solitude is imperative for the achievement of output.

THE DISCIPLINE OF SIMPLICITY
I like to live in a clean, tidy house. I quite enjoy a little light housework, but quickly find any more than that onerous and oppressive. I get very cross and frustrated if I have to spend much time looking for things or tidying things. I like to be able to get a cloth or a brush, and do a quick whizz round – ta da! – all done!

The odd course of events in my life has also impressed upon me more than on most people the advantages of the flexibility that is attained by owning very little.

I don’t like to occupy my thoughts with things and events – what I am going to eat, wear, buy; maintenance chores that need to be attended to; hospitality, entertaining and social engagements that need preparation.

If I live simply: owning hardly anything, with a clear diary and an unambitious schedule; then I have hardly anything to clean, sort, tidy or plan. My life costs very little, so it doesn’t matter if my books sell in high numbers, so I can write from my soul not for the markets.

In the mornings I spend time in prayer, I exercise, I eat breakfast, I do my correspondence, catch up with online networks, check out ebay if I need anything, and do household chores. After that, if we need groceries, I go to the shops.

Then I have lunch, listen to the news if I’ve got the timing right, and do some kind of handwork. All this while, I am thinking, preparing, getting my soul psyched up for writing.

Then I sit down with a cup of tea, and I write until it’s time to cook supper. After supper, I chill out with a book, chat to Badger, maybe watch a film.

These simple routines are sufficient to service a simple life that just keeps rolling. The credit crunch doesn’t much affect me – having no debts and no significant outgoings means I can just roll on regardless. I am not distracted from my purposes by the changes and chances of society and the economy.

If something mega happens among the people God gave me to care for, then naturally I will stop writing and focus my time and love upon their wellbeing. Living simply makes life spacious, and releases choice.

Living simply reduces distraction, maximises time available, and creates freedom and flexibility.
Simplicity is a discipline. In an age addicted to anxiety, worry, targets, acquisition, achievement, status, image and busy-ness, staying free and focussed requires sustained purpose and clarity of intent.

I would not exchange or give up the way of simplicity for anyone or anything.

THE DISCIPLINE OF SOUND NUTRITION
If I eat well and exercise, my thoughts are incisive and runny. My thinking is lucid and agile when I am well nourished and active. My mind is sharp and mobile when I am eating properly and my body has moved vigorously.

I said that same thing in three different ways because it’s extremely important.

If I eat badly and do not exercise, I become, tired, sluggish and I can’t be bothered – I become non-productive, and what I do produce has a negative, toxic quality.

I start the day with a big mug of water and two spirulina tablets.

For breakfast, I eat a bowl of high-fibre cereal with unsweetened soya milk and a cup of Earl Grey Tea. For lunch I have a big plate of steamed vegetable with cold meat or fish or a scrambled egg, followed by a low-fat yoghourt or rice pudding. For supper I have the same as at lunch time. I have drinks with lunch and supper – usually a glass of water, then afterwards a cup of Earl Grey tea.

I have snacks as well in the day – maybe a handful of dried fruit and nuts, or fresh fruit, or a slice of cake or a couple of biscuits. I like to have a snack at about four in the afternoon – and again this includes a cup of Earl Grey tea.

If I go to visit my mother and sister, we indulge in a carbohydrate fest that throws me off balance for weeks. As long as I stick to my routine of nutrition and exercise, all is well: I have enough to eat, I’, not hungry, I don’t feel full or bloated, and I am full of energy and calm. Once I get into this refined carbohydrate thing, everything goes pear-shaped: I set up a cravings cycle, I start to feel tired and uncomfortable, I don’t want to exercise, then my mind slows down and loses focus.

This routine of diet and exercise is a discipline. I have a very sweet tooth, and such foods as bread and jam, cake, cheese on toast, and pizza have highly nostalgic connotations for me: I am drawn to them for comfort – and they are lethal. I also have as much inclination to move as a sloth on bromide.

But I prefer the contentment and the mental equilibrium that is won by eating properly and taking exercise (30 mins a day minimum)

THE DISCIPLINE OF A THOUSAND WORDS A DAY
I used to focus on my goal – a finished book. So every time I sat down to work, I had a whole book to write. This was very discouraging, so I tended to put off beginning, because it seemed too huge to tackle.

I used to approach the writing of a book like plunging into a pool. I’d get everything done that needed to be done, wait till I had a good stretch of time clear, get my thoughts all psyched up to a good place, then get too it and write the whole thing in two–four weeks.

This worked, except that it kept being deferred. New things requiring my attention kept emerging to be dealt with before I could begin. People, with their moods and attitudes and psychic weather kept intruding upon my thoughts as they were gathering, and shattered the focus, dissipating and scattering my energy.

Then I took a leaf out of Fineline’s book, and began writing a thousand words a day. I can write a thousand words a day easily. So far there are one thousand, five hundred and eighty-two in this blog.

So I usually surpass my target by a long way, which makes me feel good – what Buzzfloyd calls a SMART target.

Even if I have nothing much to say, and feel that my output will not be great today, I still write a thousand words. Most times I surprise myself writing better than I expected; and often it takes off and I end up with two-and-a-half or three thousand.

I sometimes take a day off – or a longer stretch if time, maybe a week. But I find that time off consciously awarded has a much, much nicer feel to it than when I was always meaning to get some writing done, feeling guilty because I hadn’t, and always putting it off until tomorrow.

Writing a thousand words a day is a discipline. It takes time and organisation; it relies substantially on the other disciplines of solitude, simplicity, right diet and exercise. But it makes me feel good – and it is a discipline which has just enabled me to pay some hefty bills, take our family on holiday, and is about to pay for two large gifts for members of my family.

:0) A thousand words a day – because you’re worth it!