Filed under: After OTNR, Books, Posts by John | Tags: Books, Dave, Hearts & Minds Bookstores, Jayber Crow, Joplin Missouri, Kristialyn, Mark Twain, Wendell Berry
Penn Valley, CA :: Kate just told me that I stress her out more than any person she knows. I wanted to point out a few obvious exceptions – Hitler, Pol Pot, swine flu – but I didn’t go there. So I stress her out more than any person she knows; it’s not hard to see why: this afternoon I came to her with another idea.
Amidst the never-ending stream of my bright ideas, there is one dream Kate and I keep coming back to. We’ve talked for a couple years now about buying a little acreage with Dave and Kristialyn, producing as much of our own food as possible, putting down roots, and living life within a specific geographical, cultural, and community context. But we get discouraged because it feels like we’ve been priced out of the market. Property is expensive. We don’t feel like we should work office jobs we hate in order to enjoy our homestead for a couple hours a night before bed, with occasional weekend visits. (I don’t mean jobs that are hard. I mean jobs that are inharmonious with our values and priorities.) Nor do we want to wait for retirement. Why work for forty years at jobs we “hate” in the vague hope that once we retire we can finally live a life that is consistent with our principles, as well as our deep desires? This amounts to a hatred of the present tense, with no guarantee that we’ll make it to retirement anyway, and it requires us to compartmentalize our lives in a way that can’t but damage our spirits.
Going back even further to when we were just married, Kate and I had a different vision for our lives. We talked about opening up a little bookstore in some little town. I’d be in charge of the bookselling, Kate would make pastries and coffee. Between customers I would write my own books. Our little shop would sell both new and used volumes, and I would be able to promote books and authors I like. I’m not sure what happened to this particular dream. We held on to it for a while, but it got buried by the demands of daily living.
Driving around Grass Valley today, I was again discouraged by how out of reach our little piece of land seems. Then I remembered that other dream, the bookstore.
It just so happens that I’m getting ready to re-read Wendell Berry’s novel, “Jayber Crow,” for an essay I have to write. And driving around I remembered that, unlike most of the characters in Berry’s fiction, which centers around the community of Port William, Kentucky, Jayber Crow was not a farmer. Jayber’s skill was barbering. When Jayber made his way to Port William, the town happened to need a barber, and so Jayber took over the chair.
Jayber Crow performed several services essential for community life. Besides cutting hair, Jayber’s barber shop became a meeting place. Whether they needed a cut or not, men were always stopping by to share the latest news, catch up, or just watch life happen on the street outside the shop window.
No kidding, I believe access to a good local bookstore is essential to the health of a community. Bookshops are businesses, and local bookshops are local businesses. They are storehouses of knowledge and wisdom and renewal. (The word “store” comes from the Latin word meaning “to renew,” though I write this post on Black Friday, when few retailers seem especially concerned about renewal.) They can be gathering places, houses of hospitality. I also believe bookselling can be a vocation, in the sense of using one’s gifts – time, abilities, and resources – for the common good. (As one example, it seems like the folks at Hearts & Minds Bookstore in Pennsylvania approach bookselling as a vocation.)
So today I approached Kate with an idea – really a melding of two ideas: moving to a little town somewhere that needs and can support a bookstore, a town in proximity to trees, water, and room to walk; introducing ourselves to the community; renting until we can afford to buy, and then buying from a neighbor. Besides its vocational aspects, there is another, more selfish reason I like this idea. There is no work I enjoy more (or feel more called to) than my own writing, but I can’t support the family that way right now. If I had to pick an alternate way to make a living, running a bookstore would be it. So much so that when my writing career does take off, I believe I will want to hang on to the bookstore. These seem like all-important consideration.
I’m not sure how this fits in with On the Narrow Road. I don’t see how it conflicts, since it must take longer than a year to set something like this up. For starters, I don’t know how to find a town that fits the above criteria. I suppose we have to stumble upon it. Like when I drove through Joplin, Missouri earlier this fall. Joplin, Missouri – a Mississippi River town (though at 50,000 people, a little big for my taste), plenty of trees, the birthplace of Mark Twain, and, as far as I can tell, not a single stand-alone bookstore in the whole damn town.
I’m nearly 32 years old and I’m still trying to find, in the raspy words of Michael W. Smith, “my place in this world.”
What are your thoughts? Does anybody out there know a little town in need of a young family and a bookstore?
Filed under: About OTNR, Posts by John | Tags: Basho, Dave, Given:Poems, On the Narrow Road to the Interior, Origins of the Project, Relevant, Wendell Berry, Writing
Portland, OR :: This project was originally conceived three years ago under the title “The Way We Worship.” My plan was to write twelve essays on twelve churches. The essays would collectively document the diverse ways in which American Christians gather for prayer, praise, teaching, and fellowship. I wanted to explore everything from megachurches to house churches; churches that are dying to churches that are thriving; congregations that meet in white clapboard buildings on a country road, and churches that meet in brewpubs and coffee houses in the middle of the city; postmodern churches on the “cutting-edge” and churches that are profoundly, proudly modern.
While the simplicity of this idea still appeals to me, I’ve come to feel constrained by the original title and structure. There is an obligation to look for archetypal churches, which lacks spontaneity – and besides, I want to meet people, not archetypes. In addition, the title “The Way We Worship” implies an almost exclusive focus on Saturday night or Sunday morning services, which isn’t enough. Far from it (cf. the well-written but ill-conceived recent article by Jason Boyett on the Relevant website, “6 Denominations in 6 Weeks”, about which I will have more to say in a future post). Finally, the rigid framework – twelve essays on twelve churches – doesn’t leave much room to write about my family’s physical, spiritual, and relational journey.
Last week I was reading a collection of Wendell Berry’s poetry, and I came across a Sabbath poem that beautifully summarizes my present goals for this project – and for myself apart from this project. The “rarest wildflowers” are the people Kate and I will meet on our trip.
I dream of a quiet man
who explains nothing and defends
nothing, but only knows
where the rarest wildflowers
are blooming, and who goes,
and finds that he is smiling
not by his own will.
It was Dave who suggested the title “On the Narrow Road,” a play on Jack Kerouac’s 1957 classic novel “On the Road.” A quick internet search revealed something interesting: the only other use of the title I could find was a 1989 book by Lesley Downer called “On the Narrow Road: A Journey into Lost Japan.” Downer’s book retraces the steps of the 17th century Japanese haiku poet, Basho, who wrote about his own pilgrimage in a travelogue sometimes translated as “The Narrow Road to the Interior.” The word “interior” in Basho’s title refers not just to mountainous interior of northern Japan but to the poet’s own inner journey. I picked up a copy of Basho’s travel narratives at Powell’s and, reading late into the night, I realized I had found a kindred spirit. Basho did just what I wanted to do: he headed north, visited temples (churches), and talked with people along the way.
Basho, a Zen Buddhist, wrote with a level of detachment I admire. He doesn’t defend or criticize or even celebrate. His poetry and prose are not didactic. His writing just is. My sociologist friend Matt will probably say that detachment is all but impossible when dealing with a subject – my spiritual heritage, American evangelicalism – so intimate and charged with meaning. But I feel like the pursuit of detachment, if not it’s attainment, is critical to this project’s success.
There is plenty to celebrate in American evangelicalism; God knows there is plenty to criticize. But I am not a good enough writer to do those things well. I’ll stick with the basics: this is who I am, this is where I come from, this is where we are going.
Filed under: Family | Tags: Garrison Keillor, Holidays, Kate, Molly, Mother's Day, Poetry, The Writer's Almanac, Wendell Berry
If Mother’s Day is a holiday created by the unholy trinity of the greeting card companies, florists, and multinational confectionary conglomerates, good for them. They have unwittingly used their powers for good. It is right for a man to set aside time (ideally more than once a year) to reflect on and respond to the great acts of love shown to him by his mother and by the mother of his child, and also to give his child some extra special attention, because she kind of made this day possible.
Later today, I hope to post something about Kate specifically. In the meantime, here is a poem by Wendell Berry entitled “To My Mother.” The poem was featured on yesterday’s episode of The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor.
To My Mother
I was your rebellious son,
do you remember? Sometimes
I wonder if you do remember,
so complete has your forgiveness been.So complete has your forgiveness been
I wonder sometimes if it did not
precede my wrong, and I erred,
safe found, within your love,prepared ahead of me, the way home,
or my bed at night, so that almost
I should forgive you, who perhaps
foresaw the worst that I might do,and forgave before I could act,
causing me to smile now, looking back,
to see how paltry was my worst,
compared to your forgiveness of italready given. And this, then,
is the vision of that Heaven of which
we have heard, where those who love
each other have forgiven each other,where, for that, the leaves are green,
the light a music in the air,
and all is unentangled,
and all is undismayed.
Filed under: Books, Writing | Tags: Book Reviews, Books, Relevant Magazine, Sarah Vowell, Wendell Berry, Writing
I have unexpectedly started to do some writing for Relevant, which describes itself as a magazine about God, life, and progressive culture for a readership comprised largely of Christian twenty-somethings.
Two short reviews of “The Wordy Shipmates,” by Sarah Vowell, and “Wendell Berry and the Cultivation of Life: A Reader’s Guide,” by J. Matthew Bonzo and Michael R. Stevens, appeared in the March/April issue. (Can you spot the glaring typo in the Wendell Barry review?)
My Summer Reading Guide will appear in Relevant’s May/June issue, which should hit newsstands any day now.
