Eureka, California and Resources for the 21st Century Pilgrim

August 6, 2011
by Julian Collette 

http://emerging-communities.com

On the road again! I left Eugene five days ago on a Greyhound bus, traveling a mere 120 miles to Medford/Ashland in order to make up some miles and because, as good and necessary as it was for me to stay in Eugene, it had also become a kind of vortex of inertia: I wanted to propel myself far enough from its pull to ensure that I really was on the move at last.

Incidentally, travelling by Greyhound on bicycle tour is not recommended where other options are available. In this case, the ticket cost me a little over $30, which wasn’t entirely unreasonable. But the bike had to be broken down, boxed, put back together at the other end in the bus station parking lot, all for an additional $30! I am still kicking myself for having spent so much money to cover a relatively small distance. While train tickets are generally more expensive, the cost for taking a bicycle on Amtrak is minimal, and often the bike can simply be rolled up and onto the train without being boxed. Fortunately, since then, my friend Mandy from WithinReach turned me on to Craiglist rideshare listings: dozens of people potentially headed your way, willing to take you along for the ride in exchange for splitting the gas cost. I easily found a ride in this way from Ashland, Oregon to Crescent City, California, covering another 120 miles for a fraction of the cost of the bus. In addition to Craiglist ridesharing, I’ve also benefited from the generosity of good folks I’ve met through warmshowers.org, an online network of bicycle tourers offering hospitality to their fellows on the road, and couchsurfing.org, a similar but larger, less specific network of travelers and adventurers. Be sure to check into these resources the next time you’re planning a road trip: informal, off-the-grid, cooperative hospitality and transportation.

I arrived in Crescent City three evenings ago. Knowing that there’s a LONG climb immediately upon leaving town, I offered my driver another $5 to get me to the summit (well worth the cost if you ask me, especially considering it was already 7pm!). Near the top, we came upon a state park with camping. We turned down the drive, and drove down and down and down another 2 1/2 miles, almost enough to negate the climb out of town! At the least, I had a place to lay my head without having to wear myself out to get there. I shared the hiker-biker site with two other tourers and was grateful to be sleeping outdoors again, cradled by the redwood forest. Pedaling/walking the bike back up to the highway the next morning, I was greeted by my first pair of bright, bulbous banana slugs gleaming from a utility box, as if to say, “Welcome to California!” The very good news is that I biked 45 miles that day without a hint of pain, beyond ordinary soreness and fatigue. And though I miss the sun already, it’s a sheer blessing to see and hear and touch the Pacific Ocean again. In fact, I intended to spend 2 days pedaling to Eureka but was stopped on the way by two men in a pick-up who had pulled into a turnout and were attempting to lure me with a banana and two granola bars. Easy prey, I took the bait. One of them was curious about my recumbent bicycle and wanted to ask me questions. A delightful conversation ensued, until finally they asked me if I needed a ride. “Where are you headed?,” I asked. “Eureka.” Ah, serendipity.

First Sight of the Pacific Ocean

Unfortunately, hiker-biker campsites in the California State Parks are now $5 a night, up from a mere $1 less than 10 years ago. This puts me in something of a quandary. $1 is mere pocket change, but $5 is significant when my average daily living expenses while biking are in the range of $7-15. My philosophy is that often the less money I have on tour—short of destitution!—the better. I say this because in my experience, when money is short I am forced to use ingenuity and creativity, which generally makes for a more satisfying, if less secure, journey. Furthermore, an extended bicycle tour has a way of weaning me from the sense of needing what I often take for granted when I am settled. The most obvious example is shelter. When I landed in Big Sur on my last bicycle tour, even though I had a room of my own, I still preferred to sleep in my tent, even on cold nights. There’s a tremendous satisfaction in being woken up by wild turkeys making their morning rounds, stepping out of a tent at 3,000 feet above the Pacific, and peering over a vast sea of clouds below.

In other words, on bicycle tour I tend to have fewer options in many respects than ordinarily. I live simply, eat simply, sleep simply, am exposed to the elements in an often inescapable way. And the longer I stay with that simplicity, the more my values and attitudes are analogously simplified: I come to value this simplicity more than I value conventional securities and comforts (within reason, mind you). To me, this transformation of mind and heart is what makes bicycle touring so worthwhile. Not only do I come to a deeper appreciation of the ordinary and simple in life, but when I do have the opportunity to enjoy something beyond this threshold, I am all the more grateful for it. In fact, the more I undergo this transformative process, the more I realize that many of the values I leave behind were not truly “mine” in the first place but an inherited distortion of heart (“original sin”?) received from family, culture, religion, and so forth. This in turn gives me the opportunity to discern more clearly the values and aspirations that truly matter. What can short-circuit this process, however (or at least mitigate it), is having the resources on hand to choose the restaurant, the fancy foods, or the hotel, not as an occasional treat but as a habit. Of course, now I am in the ambiguous position of having a fair amount of money, but it’s been given to me by others with the understanding that I’ll put it to good use toward a particular purpose, and it’s meant to last a very long time.

My heartfelt gratitude to the Harrison and Wheeler families for their unfathomable generosity and patience, and for making me feel right at home. Special thanks as well to Gregg in Ashland, Larry the Driver, Bert and/or Ernie and Phil, Amy and so many other good people in Eureka.

Community Is Not For Me

July 19, 2011
by Julian Collette 

http://emerging-communities.com/

“Community is not a good goal in itself but is a beautiful byproduct of seeking God’s kingdom together.”

From a talk entitled “The Five Myths of Community“ by Mark Scandrette, a man I hope to meet when I hit the San Francisco Bay.

The “myth” that I resonate with the most in Mark’s talk is what he calls the myth of belonging—the insidious expectation that, if only I find the right community, my needs for companionship, direction, and growth will be met. This reminds me of a talk I attended years ago by Dorothy Maclean, co-founder of the Findhorn Community in Scotland. A young man stood up at the end of the talk to ask her a question: “My friends and I are interested in starting a community. What advice do you have for us?” Her response: if you’re interested in creating community for community’s sake, don’t bother. This is a recipe for disaster. A community bent on self-fulfillment will implode under the weight of accumulated disappointment, because this is not what community is for. Rather, a community must first be comprised of people with a shared intention that carries each out of themselves in some form of service. With so much talk of longing for community and meaningful connection in our day, I believe this understanding is crucial. And it would seem to present an odd paradox: in a sense, community as a goal must be aimed at indirectly, arising from the aspiration to serve rather than for the fulfillment of the legitimate personal need for community.

As anyone who has lived in community for any significant amount of time knows, this is not as simple as it may sound. Even with the best of conscious intentions, the unfulfilled needs and wounds of the past will insinuate themselves in the form of subtle or not-so-subtle demands on our community-mates. How we respond when this happens makes all the difference, especially in a dominant culture that may seem to exuberantly affirm us in our perception that our needs will be better met elsewhere, providing us with all manner of seductive images of greener pastures. And of course, sometimes it’s true—sometimes we simply need to move on. But when we do, we will as likely find ourselves haunted by the same unfulfillment in a different guise. The script remains essentially the same, only the actors and stage props change. What then?

In his Rule, Saint Benedict provides a startling contrast to the rootless search for fulfillment that has so many of us in its grasp. Everywhere we are confronted by a radical de-centering, from ourselves to the other who is Christ, especially as encountered in the person of the abbot or abbess, to whom is given willing obedience; in the stranger or guest, whose needs press upon the comfortable rhythms of the daily round; in the sick, who require our care and attention; in all our sisters and brothers, with their unavoidable foibles and weaknesses. At the heart of this Rule lies the 12-rung ladder of humility, outlining the descent of the self in terms that even many contemporary monks and nuns find jarring.

Difficulties with language aside, this is actually my favorite part of the Rule. Why? Because if in my obedience to Christ whom I meet in others I can quietly embrace suffering in my heart, without weakening or seeking escape, in times of difficulty, dissatisfaction, or even injustice (fourth degree of humility), then I am no longer ruled by suffering, disappointment, insult, or injury. Pain no longer compels hand or heart. If I can be content with what is deemed the lowest occupations and pursuits (sixth degree of humility), and believe in my heart that I am nothing, a nobody (seventh degree of humility),* then I am liberated from the feverish pursuit of trying to be a “somebody”; liberated from the rivalrous game of comparison. Then, I am liberated from the allure of the whole array of symbols our culture (and subcultures) dangles before us as bearers of the rewards of prestige, security, power, love, fulfillment. Only then can I be free of the burdens of anger, lust, the urge to retaliate; free to forgive, to be an agent of peace and reconciliation, to love Christ above all else.

Of course, contemplating this “lofty” downward trajectory of the path of monastic transformation makes me painfully aware of my own radical insufficiency and failings. After all, I am attracted to this topic of cutting through the illusion of community as a source of self-fulfillment because I have been guilty of it time and time again. This is why I value such wisdom from the monastic tradition, not as a measuring stick to compare myself to an impossible ideal (which would be to create yet another symbol of self-fulfillment), but as the North Star pointing away from self-concern to the face of Christ who meets me in every person, every encounter, in the sacrament of this very moment. This, as I see it, is the way of Christian community, or any mature form of intentional community: a way that is not for “me.” And for those of us who are followers of Christ, we tread this way not because we choose it but because we first experience ourselves as chosen for it; not because we love but because we first experience ourselves as loved, with a love that increases in our hearts the more that we give it away.

*For those of you who may be cringing at this point or have cringed while reading this part of the Rule, what made the ladder of humility come alive for me as a vivid description of the path of spiritual liberation was a simple insight a teacher once shared with me. The humility being asked of us—for instance, believing in our hearts that we are the lowest among human beings—is not first a psychological reality but theological: we are made humble because of the growing appropriation of the insight of our “nothingness” before God. This living, transforming insight in turn radically reconfigures our relationships with other people, along the lines that Benedict and his sources such as John Cassian outline. It is intimacy with God, and the dethronement of self-centeredness that this entails, that underlies and permeates the ladder of humility, not self-loathing. Obviously, a pathological conviction that one is literally the lowest among all humanity is a gross inflation of self-preoccupation. Rather, to my mind, to believe in your heart that you are the lowest kind of human being is to see in yourself the potential to be what you most despise in others—that at heart you are no better than the rapist, the murderer, etc. And furthermore, God does not love you or anyone else the less for it. To see oneself as “good” leads to arrogance, hard-heartedness, and self-delusion. To see and accept oneself as in solidarity with the lowest of the low not only liberates from comparison but yields compassion, forgiveness, and creative action; or as Benedict assures us, yields the spontaneous love of God that is its own reward, uncompelled by fear or self-concern.