Living the Good Life

I remember seeing a trailer for an indie film earlier this summer called Existence where the director, Roger Nygard, interviews hundreds of people, physicists, doctors, wrestlers, spiritual leaders from across the world with one question: why do we exist?   Among those interviewed was Irvin Kershner, a fellow director, who answered the question, "Nobody can really be happy,"  he said, "You can have moments of happiness, moments of joy.  But life is very difficult.  Unless you're a total idiot - then you can be happy."  The odd thing about the comment was that he said it with a grin on his face suggesting at that moment he was happy.  I'm learning more and more that cynical, nihilistic people can find happiness, really happiness in the irony of life.  But why are all the other people sad, depressed and in need of someone to listen and love them so badly?  It's on my mind lately.  I have seen the fronts of people for so long that for the most part I bought into the image that everybody gives, of confidence and peace and happiness, and ignored the cries that were only subtly made.  I want to turn everybody inside out and let the darkest parts of ourselves fall in front of us, in the eyes of everyone to see and redeem.

It is in other people that we must put our faith and our happiness.  Quite likely Roger Nygard was happy in the moment of his comment because he was in the presence of another human being, an interested human being who cared about what he thought.  We are all so self-involved (even me in these ramblings) that we cannot see into someone else.  Husbands and wives live side-by-side among each other and with family, yet they don't know what's going on in the others' minds.  Let go for too long and people become packed in with so much pain and sadness they no longer are able to let it go enough to be free.  We have nobody to keep us in check when we get older.  Our parents peer into our souls to understand our intentions and we become honest and clean because of that attention and love.  But nobody checks us anymore.  Our personal lives are our own and it becomes taboo to pry into them.  There is too much sadness and evil to focus on everything at once.  Even to focus on one ray of hope is to delve your whole life into that cause with perhaps nothing to show for it.  It's just too fucking sad but if we are lucky and we have good friends who see inside of us then maybe, for a few moments, we can have happiness.

Life is good here in that the moments of happiness skip through with regularity.  Often, sadness or discontent is in direct relation to the outside world, not just when we drive off the property, but when we remember our pasts and act accordingly.  The silence, patience and grace of everyone here overcomes and regulates our moods enough to keep moving.  But perhaps I don't see into everyone as I should - and I think I have seen that in some way this weekend.  Presuming things will remain the same through the winter is foolish.  I was warned and understood that we are in a honeymoon stage of our internships and that after our work cooled off there would be difficulty.  Maybe I added that last part in my head.  I am reminded just now that I am not big enough to handle it all - I never was.  But god knows I wish I was.  I should take my own pill and be social now...

It's Been Awhile

I must say when several days pass by without writing down the events therein what's left behind tends to be scattered and unreflective of what has actually happened.  Such is the movement of things here.  Tasks must be started immediately or else they get caught in the undertow of 'the now' that is constantly passing us by.  Here and there I find notes in my pocket with names, phone numbers and directions - information that I was suppose to take care of days before and sincerely meant to accomplish if only there was time.  But the method of this community is to throw a handful of darts at the target and if most hit the board it doesn't matter that a few fall to the way-side.  Not much has missed the mark here.  I have made my share of mistakes, forgotten to switch the grease to diesel in the vegetable car, missing an important call or using cheese at the wrong meal.  On the whole things hit here and go well.  Recently things have even been hitting the target.  Ellen, Nathan and I took off for Westfield State University (though not a university in any kind of structure) last week to spark discussions in four classes of ethics and gender studies.  Though only freshman courses we had a good time and received a strong and unexpected response from the students.  It reminded me that personal touch can make a world of difference.  While a word by letter or email may spark some interest some of the time, a real, physical discussion between two or three human can embrace a topic so powerful and necessary as non-violence and community.  But we yearn to become more personal still.  Ellen and I this morning were driving to Mass expressing our desire for more human interaction beyond the classroom.  A desire we plan on turning to action before we grow complacent in the tradition of Agape.  More has hit the target than just the student voices.  The voices of woman around the earth have been heard in our community by hundreds of eager ears.

Yesterday was the St. Francis Day we had been promoting for a full month and planned by those before us for a year by founders who sparked the idea twenty-eight years ago. I think if given the opportunity we could spend another month just reviewing what happened, and certainly many years of remembering moments and people, too many to bear in one human mind.  For weeks I have been speaking the names of Martha Hennessey, Ban Al-Mahfodh, Amanda Daloisio, Robyn Murray and others who were just names and causes on a flier.  Now they are people and voices that I hope to never forget.  Women talking about how war has effected them.  Robyn, an American combatant, speaking next to Ban, an Iraqi destroyed by the American army.  A crowd with two boys and a husband who have lost their mother and wife on our vote, our money and our bullets.  It sounds good when read in the paper and it sounds good as a story to get behind but it means nothing until you see the tears in the eyes of the women burdened for life by the whims of an arrogant country.  The angst of the stories was summed in every question during the day, "What do we do?"  Beneath the question was the heart of the matter - Give me something to do.  Suzanne may be more right in her answer than I wish to agree upon.  She told us what was most needed is to resist what is wrong, to have no part in something that is killing tens of thousands of people, all of whom are innocent of such catastrophe.  I am afraid to think of what it takes to resist something so stubborn and strong as hate.  People have died for much less than being a pacifist, for being resistant to a blood-thirsty government.  If it is to be done, it is to be done in community, and god help us one larger than the minority of peaceful people today.

This weekends events were powerful and motivating but cannot overshadow the simple conversations I have had with the fellow interns, bishops, catholic workers, professors, militants and peacemakers around the table at the Francis house.  One on my mind more than any other is on the Post-modernist few of gender association - a conversation from the hearts of the four interns here and responded by one of the founders the next morning.  While on my mind as a painful reminder of gay brutality and murder, of suicide and depression, the question remains what to do.  The Christian answer is simple but too slow moving for my comfort.  love the right, repress the evil.  It's not enough and will not be for quite some time.  But the ideas float around and await a home in some movement or person sometime in the future. Ugh, and already too much is going on around me to write any more... I haven't even gotten started.  You simple have to see it to believe it.

A Time to Rest

I feel the obligation to write a few words down despite the lack of time to do so.  Our founders, Suzanne and Brayton, came to their thirty-sixth wedding anniversary several days ago and only today did we have time to celebrate.  This seems to be the norm around here, to get something done today means it will get done three days from now.  We are busy and we work hard.  All of us new and experienced are balancing many ideas, events, people and tasks so much so that when we have a few moments peace we don't know what to do with it.  To catch my breath always means shirking some other responsibility.  I have barely checked my email or Americorps in days - something I had been doing hourly before.  In general the days are so busy that we cannot help but get along with one another and find reason to smile and laugh through it all. We all realize that this will be over in just a few weeks and then we will have the graces of time and solitude.

The task of relating the essence of our time here can only be summed up with our general response to the colleges we have been visiting, which is, you have to be here to understand.  This is not a place where the poor come or the hungry.  Only on occasion do the troubled stop by and in general it is professors, bishops, writers and the elite who find their way down the dark and narrow road.  Yes, people in their darkest or most pressured moments have had their spirit eased by the Shanleys and their community but this is not what overwhelms the idea behind this homestead.  This is a place for me - for us.  We are weak and weary not from the work alone but from the changes being made to our hearts.  Non-violence and anarchy are topics and beliefs held by all of us but in general these are not the reasons we have come.  We come from backgrounds of education and elitism, rich lifestyles and solitude - what we are seeking is not to be the better man or woman, but to be humbled by the undereducated and lowly, impoverished and lonely.  Solidarity is on our minds.  We laugh at the people who don't understand why we have come and what this place is.  But the joke is always on us.  So we go out into the world and remember what it is like to smell the public transportation and greasy food.  It does not turn us off but it does make us miss our home in the woods.

More Photos

Brayton, Suzanne and Nathan

Click these pictures to see the whole panorama!

Five towns lie underneath this Reservoir, America's largest.

Ellen and Me

Our picnic celebrating the Shanley's 36th anniversary.

rarely a picture of the complete Ellen.

Someone just left this on the beach!

Brayton being generally the man.

Yoga poses.

The Egyptian is not a pose.

An old car part from one of the old towns drown under the reservoir.

Pictures

Teresa Lewis

Please take a moment of silence for Teresa Lewis who is being executed as I write this line - it is senseless.

Coffee and Tea and Satisfaction

I'll tell it straight up - being here is fabulous, not because every moment is filled with ice cream and tickles, but because laughing and crying, work and play, community and solitude are all done with perfect measure.  For every extreme that might drain my spirit there is an equal resistance that brings everything into harmony.  It is not so much the things that we do but the things we become privy to in small moments - even the abstract to some degree. Even today when I was about to get exhausted from work Suzanne stopped me and said, "Do you want to hear a good poem?'  And it was a good poem indeed - it was about the inward worth and potential of a person. Who can be worn from work with a spirit like that?  I do not look forward to the weekend or a time of rest rather I look forward to tomorrow and I look forward to the next task.  For every hour we work over there is another hour of required silence and meditation.  The work we do is often hard or high caliber but we do it and ask for more like it was a bag of sweet treats coming dangerously near the end.  Though always one of us is assigned to a particular meal the rest of us chip in to help with the preparations and cleanup.  (It's often easier to cook than to not cook on account of this.)  

Tony, our month long volunteer, bravely going into BC territory.

I experience so much throughout the day that wish to relate to you all but so copious are the good things that I forget by evening when I write things down.  I'm slowly forgetting the tastes of the other side too.  I do not miss my cigarettes, I do not miss my carnivorous diet and I do not long for money.  Only when I come to small breaks of silence and realize nobody is in the room do I begin to hurt for things.  I then miss my friends and the cities and all the possessions that come along with it.  These times are few and demons of necessity rather than plague.  Being here is a reminder that perhaps I can be who I wish to be.  Here I can be good.  I am here to believe in people again. As of yet I can't - I only go through the motions of what it means to trust and believe in the good of the whole.  It is inconceivable, however, that in a reasonable time I won't have to fake it - I will, as my friend says, turn forced joy into real joy.  It is good to be of some worth again.  Just in this days activities I have been a musician and singer, in media relations, a filmographer, farmer, cook, advertiser and newly learned driver of manual transmission. (Brayton and Suzanne finally approved of my skill to drive stick alone!) I am proud to be of use but also to know that I need to community I am apart of.  No one of us, co-founder, intern or volunteer goes unnoticed or unneeded.  We are sparrows and much more.  Harass a wren's plot.  This no longer applies.  

Dana, best cook ever, and, Nathan, laughing at his own jokes.

Ellen, not wanting to be photographed mistakenly though I wouldn't trick her into being shot.