|
Friends United Meeting |
 |
June 1998
Simplicity of Focus
By Mary Clark
Franklin and I are growing old together. "The best is yet to be," according to the English poet Robert Browning, "the last of life for which the first was made."
Franklin had long sought an affordable place of accessible seclusion. We have found such a haven in Gilead, our home in the country north of Iowa City.
He named places he lived, or liked. He called the home place in Boone, Iowa, where he grew up, "Wildhaven." He named a piece of woodland which he had discovered outside Boone, "Tableland," from the gospel song "Higher Ground." It was secluded, not easily accessible, and not for sale. The owner did allow him to visit it.
After Franklin and I were married in August 1949, and had started a family at Wildhaven, we would visit Tableland together. The first time, Franklin had a homemade papoose carrier on his back for Danny.
We moved to western New York state in 1964. I had been invited to return as a cataloger to Houghton College, where I was head librarian before our marriage. After years of teaching and preaching in Iowa, Franklin was ready for a change. We thought the rural Wesleyan Methodist community around Houghton would be a good place for our children to grow up.
We moved our family and our household goods in two VW cars. Franklin drove the bus, with mattresses on top. I drove the Bug with bicycles on top. We were a spectacle when we stopped in a town for refilling the tanks, with bicycle wheels continuing to rotate overhead. At night, the children slept in the cars, Franklin and I on the mattresses atop the bus. On successive trips, Franklin, with one of the children, hauled our pony Timmy, our kitchen sink and other durable goods from Boone. (This was not exactly simple.)
We bought 17 acres of woodland from an accommodating owner who had given up the dream of building there himself. We liked the abundance of trees, especially two large white oaks and many white pines. We named it "Greenhaven" (pictured at left). Franklin selected trees and cut logs from our woods. He and the children, with help from Timmy and the Bug, hauled them to the clearing we had chosen for building our log cabin. Dan, Ben, Hannah, and Sam, separated by curtained walls, slept in lofts on one side and the back of our open living area; Franklin and I slept in a nook under the side loft.
In mid-1966, we moved back to Iowa, carrying with us, in addition to the kitchen sink, etc., some white pines. We are still mid-Westerners. A friend hauled Timmy, and Hannah's horse Sandy, whom she had acquired while we were at Houghton.
Our interest in the Iowa City area had begun when Franklin spent a summer term at the University of Iowa Writers Workshop in 1962, and I worked in the University library. We successively rented country houses while looking for five to ten acres to buy. Interest in Quakers attracted us to West Branch, east of Iowa City. Friends at a meeting there told us about a 39-acre woodland tract north of Iowa City that was advertised for sale.
Forty acres was more than we had in mind and more than we could afford. The land was in an estate, and the heirs allowed us to visit it freely. We called it "Gilead," from the African-American spiritual, "There is a balm in Gilead," which responds to the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah's query, "Is there no balm in Gilead?" (Jer 8:22)
On one of our visits, we met a man who also had an eye on the property. He said something to the effect that it wouldn't have any value until the trees were bulldozed off. Knowing that woodland was fast becoming extinct, and imbued with the conviction that trees are an environmental necessity, we made it a crusade to purchase the land.
As at Greenhaven, we began to build, but this time not totally with logs. The nature and extent of our acreage have made it possible, not only for our family but also for other individuals and families on occasion, to experience what we had found-sustenance for soul and body. One young friend said admiringly to Franklin, "You're the oldest hippie I know."
Friends at various times camped in our woods. Along with Dan, Ben, Hannah, and Sam, they raised gardens and helped us erect our house.
In a period when we all had to forego some of the amenities of life, we knew there were those who looked with skepticism on our venture. A colleague at the library expressed concern that we were paying too much for unproductive land. Another friend exclaimed, "Oh, Mary, how can you stand it?"
In December 1975, our unfinished house burned to the ground. We have been rebuilding ever since.
While others have called our lifestyle simple, I haven't seen it quite that way. From childhood, I have wanted my life to be godly. "Godliness with contentment is great gain" (I Timothy 6:6). Lin Yutang said: "The secret of contentment is knowing how to enjoy what you have, and to be able to lose all desire for the things you don't have." I certainly have not arrived.
We have been influenced by Socrates, Gandhi, Thoreau, Peace Pilgrim, and others, with statements like: "I count myself rich in the abundance of things I can do without"; "I will not accept more than I need, until all have all they need"; and "Walk gently on the earth."
For example, in the West, we live much higher on the food chain than the masses of people. Living lower is better use of the world's resources, and is also more healthful, according to many nutritionists. Raising our own food organically and preparing a near-vegetarian diet seems in keeping with standards of simple living. It, also, is time-consuming and far from simple.
Since animal meat is much higher on the food chain than many other forms of protein, and because we believe it is less healthful, we, at first, were absolute about trying to eliminate it from our diet. Then, because many of our friends and extended family consider meat a necessity in their diet, and because I was concerned that our children might be deprived without it, we became more flexible in our position.
Later, some of our children began to take vegetarian stances of their own, not only for better health and eating lower on the food chain, but also because of not wanting animals killed to feed them.
Franklin had long asserted that people who eat meat should do the killing, which I could never do!
I've tried to stop holding others to my choices. We kept coffee on hand, until my sister Helen told me gently that coffee's shelf life was limited, and she would bring her own when they came to visit. She came to help after each of our children's births. She and her husband visited us everywhere we lived, as long as they were able. They took pictures, which are the main record we now have of our pre-fire family life.
The Quaker testimony on simplicity has helped me understand that simple living is part of basic Christian faith. Faith begins with a single choice of direction and leader. Joshua: "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." Jesus: "Come, follow me." Paul: "This one thing I do," and "I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." In my view, these expressions emphasize the simplicity of focus that can carry one through various trials.
Warnings against wrong choices and doublemindedness abound in scripture. Rewards from singleness of mind and simplicity of life are mentioned often by biblical writers. Isaiah and Jesus both warned against accumulation of wealth for selfish satisfaction. Stewardship, sharing, burden-bearing, and serving-all are extolled in the New Testament as evidence of Christian faith.
Franklin had became a conscientious objector, without an organized support group, before he finished college in the thirties. He was attracted to the Quaker testimony on peace. During World War II, he tried unsuccessfully to go to Europe as a stretcher bearer under the American Friends Service Committee. Transport was available only to the military. Before our marriage, he had visited Friends churches and had suggested that we might find more common ground with them than we did in either of our mainline denominations. I had not become "convinced."
During the Vietnam War, and after our family had found and joined the Friends Church in West Branch, our children all became active nonviolent conscientious objectors. Only Dan and Ben were eligible for the draft-Hannah was the wrong gender; Sam was too young. Cautiously, I joined a group of Conservative Quakers and others in their weekly public silent vigils on a sidewalk bordering the University of Iowa campus and across from the business section of Iowa City. We offered leaflets to passersby, stating that we would continue our vigil "until Americans stopped killing and being killed in Vietnam."
I came to see war as the great waster of human and material resources, and a cause of making life on the planet complex-not simple. Peace more than simplicity became my driving motivation. Living in peace is akin to Franklin's idea of accessible seclusion. Meantime, experience among Friends today has disillusioned the earlier perception which had drawn him to their practice of testimonies and of creedlessness. We unite with the Quaker poet John G. Whittier in his eloquent lines: "Let our ordered lives confess the beauty of thy peace."
Our children do not always march to "the same drummers" that Franklin and I hear. (Not that he and I totally agree!) Each of them has developed self-reliance and resourcefulness, with some credit to their parents. Their philosophies come from within and are individual. Here, Hannah, now a pediatrician, has encapsulated some details of our family saga; and Ben, who produces microneurographic electrodes used in medical research, shares his philosophy.
Hannah: "Simple living may have been as much a necessity as a choice. The first major family vacation I recall was in 1961. We traveled (all six) in a VW Bug, our first new car. We slept in a tent Mom sewed, or stayed with relatives. We never ate in restaurants, but carried homemade trip meals. The only time I remember staying in a motel was on a 2000-mile job and house-hunting roundtrip Dad and I made when I was in fourth grade.
"[Following our purchase of Gilead] we lived in a tent [not homemade] for a few months, then in an 8x16-foot [A-frame] plywood house while continuing to build. We dug our own septic system; we dug a basement hole by hand, and did lots more physical labor. My healthiest winter growing up was the year my bedroom was unheated, upstairs in the plywood house.
"My 'simple living'-or 'hard living'-experiences provided resources for Brad's and my experience early in our marriage: being a 1900 farm couple at Living History Farms near Des Moines; living in rural southern Iowa without phone, running water, or graveled road; gardening everywhere we lived.
"Dad had taught my brothers and me to build-tree houses, chicken house and pens, a log cabin, and a house. Building was simply a necessary activity of life. These skills assisted Brad and me in building four houses/additions, and in remodeling a restaurant into a clinic.
"Exposure to Mom and Dad's home and values is good. Our children grew up enjoying being there. They appreciate the abundant wildlife (birds at the feeder just outside the window, deer at the saltlick near the house, raccoons in the mulberry trees). They accept the occasional water system problems when our visits sometimes overtax the drain system. Our twins remember learning how to wash dishes there at age four (before our own dishwasher broke).
"Now, my own family of six has recently experienced our greatest money shortage-while we started a new clinic. During a recent Baha'i' holiday season, we made gifts and sent away for 'freebies.' My husband and I discuss finances openly with our children, as did Mom and Dad. Our children have voluntarily foregone allowances and clothes, toys, trips, etc., to which they had become accustomed. The older two have earned hundreds of dollars for major personal wants.
"As a physician now searching (at age 44) how best to promote health and prevent illness, my reading and experience points repeatedly to Mom and Dad's lifestyle. Specifically: near-vegetarian diet; no alcohol, tobacco, caffeine; gardening and eating as much as possible from their organic garden; a spiritual life; service to others; 'living simply so others may simply live'; diversity of experience and friendships; working on their marriage for continuous improvement (after 48 years). Their lives demonstrate the fruits of this life-style: unusually good health at 86 (health that apparently is improving); intellectual vigor & continuing contributions.
Ben: "Simplicity: A Conundrum"
"Often simplicity is the result of a great deal of experimentation, of trial-and-error. Babies stumble many times before learning balance. Being tugged by society as we are, in so many different directions, if we appear to have mastered simplicity, it is fair to assume we've made many mistakes on the road to such mastery. Maintaining equanimity in the midst of a whirlwind requires constant vigilance. We are at our simplest, yet our greatest complexity, when we are able clearly to discern the difference between who we are and who we are not. Each new occasion presents us with opportunities to practice and perfect the simplicity of our discernment."
Mary and Franklin Clark live in rural North Liberty, and are active in the West Branch Friends Church family. Mary writes a monthly column for the Iowa City Press-Citizen. Franklin, a former Methodist preacher, is a retired teacher.
Copyright (c) 1998 Friends United Meeting
Return to June 1998 Contents page