When I look out my living room window this morning, I saw mist, obscuring the mountains in the distance, mountains typically visible in the winter. The world is close, circumscribed. The garden is bare, with the exception of a few grasses whose seedpods hold a promise. The hollies are lovelier than they have ever been, baring a bounty for the birds.
Michael asked that I share my thoughts about how I came to live in a solar house, to be concerned for the environment and about my endeavors to live a life congruent with my concerns. After our conversation. I went into a hand-wringing dither. I thrashed around a bit unclear about how I would put Michael’s request into my words until I found the writings of Fred Buechner (BEEK ner). In one of his writings, Buechner indicated that the way to know who you are and what you are about is to “Listen to your life; see it for the fathomless mystery that it is. Pay attention. Pay attention to what happens to you… Touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it.”
Here is my attempt to listen to my life.
When I was 16 years old, I got pregnant, married and at 17 had a beautiful baby girl. My parents’ embarrassment, anger and grief were inconsolable.
And I was transformed precipitously from a high school student, with friends, activities and sisters to a relatively isolated but very determined mother, determined not to be the failure represented by statistics on kids like me.
I continued my education, taking courses wherever we lived until I graduated in 1973, the year that my husband and I separated.
It seems to me that those 12 years, years when most people are finding out who they really are, were years when my identity was determined by the parameters within which I lived. Though I wanted most of all to be a good mother, I sometimes felt lost in motherhood and in being a banker’s wife. Going to school and learning, piecemeal though it was, brought me back to myself. With a year at The Carolina, courses at UNC-C and
Being here in the 70’s opened my life to experiences I would never have had as a banker’s wife. Cullowhee was alive with drop-outs, returning
Exploring myself, exploring life, I took on the mission of an adolescent in the body, mind and soul of an adult.
Throwing off the trappings of social decorum and respectability grounded in materialism, I sought new ideas.
I was searching for what is core in the disparate ways of being. I was interested in how to nurture and educate children with love and respect and how other cultures cared for children. My searching in terms of religion and spirituality, led me to take Transcendental meditation, attend Zen retreats, engage in gestalt therapy training and become a Sufi. Sufism represented for me the essence of world’s religions and a distillation of the mystical traditions of all religions.
And I found myself living simply, knowing that was the right path for me. I needed to be close to nature to feel one with it, to feel connected.
I read feminism, anthropology and architecture. I subscribed to the Co-evolution Quarterly. I joined an alternative Christian church, St. David’s J, with a female priest, lots of controversy and an openness to oddballs like me. Here I was re-confirmed, my son was confirmed and my daughter was married.
During this time I read voraciously. Among many books that influenced my growth, was Gregory Bateson’s Steps to an Ecology of Mind and Mind and Nature. Bateson, of the Esalen Institute, was a biologist, anthropologist and philosopher and wrote of The Pattern That Connects.
“What pattern connects the crab to the lobster and the orchid to the primrose and all four of them to me? And me to you? “
One afternoon while sitting under a maple whose leaves were fluttering in the breeze, I was struck by the patterns of the delicate veins in the leaves At that moment I felt the depth of the idea of patterns. I got it. To me it was an invitation to think about patterns not only in nature but patterns in human relationships and patterns in our relationship with nature. Because we are part of the pattern, we have a responsibility to integrate our knowledge of “ the pattern that connects” into how we live. As Bateson suggested, any way we live, any habitation, inserts a new factor in the ecological balance. We are part of nature not separate from it. Bateson’s contribution to deep ecological thinking and the spiritual consciousness of humans as simply part of the earth, helped me understand that even the idea of humans as caretakers of the earth is wrong-headed. Those within the deep ecology belief system remind us that our task is to be aware of who we really are, one cog among many in the wheel, a part of the whole. We are not separate from or above or in control of nature.
During this time, I was also influenced by the book, The Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander. In this book Alexander challenged existing ideas of shelter. He posed problems of design created when placing shelter in its context in nature and in community. He wrote about how to design simply with light, warmth and community in mind. He considered the problems inherent in the design of a single room, in connecting people within communities, in the connection of communities to each other, and in developing a sense of place.
In the meantime I bought a small farm with an old farmhouse. I heated with wood, grew a garden, milked goats, and tried to curtail chaos while at the same time creating it. None of this was at all in my background. My children grew to adolescents, were embarrassed by Sufi meetings in the living room, enjoyed and hated chicken poop in the yard, learned to drive by running off Ashe Loop road into a cow pasture and learned to milk goats.
In 1984, I moved to
After graduating, I joined a co-housing community dedicated to creating a physical structure compatible with community and dedicated to creating the smallest ecological footprint we could for 33 households. We built homes that had passive solar access and solar hot water; a few had solar electricity. This experience made old ideas from my 70’s readings come to life and made the abstract ideas, concrete. I went through the design and construction process with friends who had similar values and was guided by a talented solar architect. As a community we made decisions by consensus, decisions from roof color to pet and firearm control.
At the same time, I found myself drawn to the simplicity of the Friend’s Meeting and I became a Quaker. From Quakers I learned to appreciate that of god in everyone. It was a good thing, too, because in the co-housing community we had 4 hour community meetings every Sunday and I needed all the reminders I could find that each longwinded, sidetracking, interrupting neighbor represented that of god as well.
Coming back to
As I have tried to describe how I came to where I am in my life, I want to return to the words of Fred Buechner, In these thoughts I have tried to listen to my life; See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. Pay attention. Pay attention to what happens to me.
Through these thoughts about how my beliefs and have deepened over the years, I have become aware that I was not waiting for this day. I was becoming who I am. I am deeply grateful to be here now. ( a little Ram Dass) and I have a sense of joy in finding my core values, beliefs and work. I appreciate being able to live a sustainable life and I appreciate friends who support me. I have come to this place slowly, evolving. The path has never been linear or clear. Like the landscape this morning covered in mist, only that which is close is seen at first. What I know is circumscribed by my own nature and by the nature of my context. But, as Michael has mentioned before, Buechner emphasizes the following:
The vocation for you is the one in which your deep gladness and the world's deep need meet -- something that not only makes you happy but that the world needs to have done.
What makes me happy and what needs to be done?
I know that living this life brings me deep joy.
