Greetings Friends and Neighbors, They say the first nip of real cold will be coming into town tomorrow, riding on a gusty North Wind. Winter’s Tooth I call him. The guest for whose arrival I have been readying the Farm for weeks now. Installing stovepipe chimneys and building roofs in weather so warm that would have been shocking if it weren’t so darn comfortable. You may have heard the expression, “Make hay while the sun shines.” There is surely a roofing equivalent, and over the past weeks I have mostly been obedient to the old adage despite the unseasonable temptation to ignore what is surely coming. To work less urgently. In my early farming days, on this very date, arrived a week-long cold snap during which the temperature never rose above twenty degrees. I hadn’t finished winterizing the water system for the Cows and the milk room, and the intensity with which I pushed and pulled to keep water flowing that week landed me in the emergency room with searing abdominal pain. I carry that story with me as a memory-aid. It is not only poor form to be running the vacuum cleaner when your dinner guests arrive—it can be very stressful.
Well, Adam, it's good to lean in and listen to a little of your conversation with Sam through these lively, troubled words. One thing that caught me here is the connection between this phrase, "the work of regrowing a living culture", which you've heard me use of our work at a school called HOME, and the language of animism. A friend once queried our talk of a living culture, saying surely all culture is living by its very nature. But perhaps the link to animism makes it clearer: a living culture is one whose participants experience themselves as inhabiting a living cosmos. Then there's something else that's sitting at the edge of your reflection on hospitality, which is the sense of a threshold, a doorway, a line across which I invite you to step, where custom recognises that things work a little differently on one side of the line than the other. I seem to remember Illich saying in Shadow Work that it is the loss of the threshold that creates the cultural poverty of modernity, the phenomenon described by the young Mexican visiting Germany as being surrounded by "destitute people with lots of money".
I'm reading here now, intending to read the rest -- all of it. Already, Adam had provided a worded and conceptual container for the questions which I live with every breath. And then you helped flesh out the dialogue, the conversation, and it's like drinking spring water at the source, with a tiny tin cup.
I can see why Adam so often speaks of almost unbearable gratitude in relation to fully unbearable heartbrokenness. I love you both as brothers.
Such a profound feast! "I seem to remember Illich saying in Shadow Work that it is the loss of the threshold that creates the cultural poverty of modernity." Fascinating! So there is some sense of journey and of liminality -- of passage.... A crossing. A movement between... which enables us to honor the other? Is this what you mean here, Dougald? I think it is. It's like saying that cosmic wholeness (unity) -- in our world -- requires a full honoring of alterity, the otherness the other! And, of course it does! Yes, of course it does! How can we be so blind?
Thanks for bringing me back to this, James, and I'm glad you've found your way to Adam's work.
The thought I was chasing was about the significance of the literal threshold, the doorway that marks the boundary between "outside the house" and "inside the house", and brings into being the sense that different rules or ways of being apply on either side of that boundary. Is this separation part of how we find ourselves in trouble, because it places limits on our hospitality and our willingness to inhabit the world as a living cosmos? Might such limits (sometimes) be the condition of possibility for hospitality, the failure of which has much to do with the trouble in which we find ourselves?
It's this second line of thought that took me back to Illich. I'm not sure if he actually speaks about the threshold in Shadow Work, but he does write that "people who live on wages have no subsistent household, are deprived of the means to provide for their subsistence and feel impotent to offer any subsistence to others". The significance of the threshold is greatly altered and the capacity for hospitality withers. Despite our material affluence, this way of organising a society produces a kind of cultural poverty which manifests, not least, in lack of the capacity observed by Illich's Mexican friend visiting Germany: "No one can help another. No one can take people in – into his household." It was the memory of this passage in Illich that was stirred for me by Adam's post.
"people who live on wages have no subsistent household, are deprived of the means to provide for their subsistence and feel impotent to offer any subsistence to others"
I want to read it in context, so a page number would prove useful.
I just read some of the passages in Shadow Work which put that passage in context, but I haven't read the whole essay -- yet. (I was able to find a PDF for free online.)
I wrote a careful response, at a bit of length, here this morning, but my finger did something on the keyboard and it was all lost -- and I grumbled a lot about its loss. But it may be just as well that it was lost, as my frustration's source was found -- in the wound I spoke of in "A Portable Hospitality". It's hard to lose one's hard work, over and over again. Communal living's work is often lost, I know. It usually has no shelf (of shared meanings) to sit upon ... and so it is fragile, at best.
I had written a little about why the future world's economy must necessarily include a great deal more "community self-provisioning" -- which is to say self- provisioning at the scale and in the mode of villages and neighborhoods. I say "must" because a low energy and materials flow economy must be brought about in the rich nations, or "global north," which means we will basically have to reverse a good deal of that which happened which Karl Polanyi wrote about in The Great Transformation. I've yet to read the book, but I've read about it, and it seems this and the Illich are probably best read in companionship with one another.
I long to go into more depth about all of this than can properly be done here, though. I want to tell you why I think the portal / passage / doorway / threshold we are speaking of here is so important to me! It's because it is both literal and figurative, in how I would put it to use. A return to more communal ways is urgently necessary now, I think -- for all of us, and for many reasons. But the literal door to a man's, a woman's, a couple's, a family's casita isn't the only door we need to talk about. But the other door is highly resonant with the first.
The other door is to not attached to a house but to a lodge -- a much, much larger communal lodge. (This is not a literal but a figurative lodge.) But there are *many* doors on this communal lodge! The communal lodge is the land we all dwell within -- and the land Herself makes the meaning of the door on houses! She enables us to have such doors. She provides the deep contextual setting and meaning for our personal and familial doorways.
If I were to begin this story of mine in the form of a letter, might you be willing to respond in letter form, resulting in a published (in The R-Word) conversation similar to that of Adam and Sam's letter conversation?
Sam and Adam are welcome to participate in this letter exchange, too, as far as I am concerned. Whether we do this by opening it up at the beginning or later is something we can talk about.
Adam your analysis of your and Sam’s efforts and dedication towards radical hospitality is gratefully appreciated. As is Dougald Hine’s response above.
For a little more than 8 years I was employed at a “hospitality management” company responsible for all operations at fifteen or so high end or historic inns or hotels in California. Your observation and impression of the interaction you had with the housekeeper at the motel speaks to an ongoing discomfort, criticism, and exploitative practice of our housekeeping staff, the very foundation of the human support necessary to practice “hospitality”. As payroll and HR was a primary responsibility, I was all too aware of the uneven exchange that carried the business forward day to day. Often housekeeping staff was rushed through their allotted rooms to minimize even further their minimum wage. A shift of 5 hours would yield $40 dollars, probably $37 net. Correlate that to one bag of groceries for schlepping dirty laundry, scrubbing toilets, tubs, etc., and on the other side charging $200 - $300 a night to the guest. There is the reason for minimal eye contact. It’s only recently, after 7 years leaving this company, that the occasional dreams I have about working for my bosses there, have not involved feelings of entrapment.
Kudos to you and Sam for true hospitality and your exploration and sharing of what its meanings might embody. I’m with you in including the animistic community as part of the endeavors. Yes, soil is alive, I participate in enriching it through active composting for years now and it gives me no bad dreams. We community garden and it is beautifully and truly a living sanctuary feeding our members so vitally. And especially through the Covid times we have benefited and been consoled through otherwise isolating times. Nothing can be left out of relationship.
Well, Adam, it's good to lean in and listen to a little of your conversation with Sam through these lively, troubled words. One thing that caught me here is the connection between this phrase, "the work of regrowing a living culture", which you've heard me use of our work at a school called HOME, and the language of animism. A friend once queried our talk of a living culture, saying surely all culture is living by its very nature. But perhaps the link to animism makes it clearer: a living culture is one whose participants experience themselves as inhabiting a living cosmos. Then there's something else that's sitting at the edge of your reflection on hospitality, which is the sense of a threshold, a doorway, a line across which I invite you to step, where custom recognises that things work a little differently on one side of the line than the other. I seem to remember Illich saying in Shadow Work that it is the loss of the threshold that creates the cultural poverty of modernity, the phenomenon described by the young Mexican visiting Germany as being surrounded by "destitute people with lots of money".
Dougald -
I'm reading here now, intending to read the rest -- all of it. Already, Adam had provided a worded and conceptual container for the questions which I live with every breath. And then you helped flesh out the dialogue, the conversation, and it's like drinking spring water at the source, with a tiny tin cup.
I can see why Adam so often speaks of almost unbearable gratitude in relation to fully unbearable heartbrokenness. I love you both as brothers.
PS -
Such a profound feast! "I seem to remember Illich saying in Shadow Work that it is the loss of the threshold that creates the cultural poverty of modernity." Fascinating! So there is some sense of journey and of liminality -- of passage.... A crossing. A movement between... which enables us to honor the other? Is this what you mean here, Dougald? I think it is. It's like saying that cosmic wholeness (unity) -- in our world -- requires a full honoring of alterity, the otherness the other! And, of course it does! Yes, of course it does! How can we be so blind?
Thanks for bringing me back to this, James, and I'm glad you've found your way to Adam's work.
The thought I was chasing was about the significance of the literal threshold, the doorway that marks the boundary between "outside the house" and "inside the house", and brings into being the sense that different rules or ways of being apply on either side of that boundary. Is this separation part of how we find ourselves in trouble, because it places limits on our hospitality and our willingness to inhabit the world as a living cosmos? Might such limits (sometimes) be the condition of possibility for hospitality, the failure of which has much to do with the trouble in which we find ourselves?
It's this second line of thought that took me back to Illich. I'm not sure if he actually speaks about the threshold in Shadow Work, but he does write that "people who live on wages have no subsistent household, are deprived of the means to provide for their subsistence and feel impotent to offer any subsistence to others". The significance of the threshold is greatly altered and the capacity for hospitality withers. Despite our material affluence, this way of organising a society produces a kind of cultural poverty which manifests, not least, in lack of the capacity observed by Illich's Mexican friend visiting Germany: "No one can help another. No one can take people in – into his household." It was the memory of this passage in Illich that was stirred for me by Adam's post.
Is this a direct quote or a paraphrase?:
"people who live on wages have no subsistent household, are deprived of the means to provide for their subsistence and feel impotent to offer any subsistence to others"
I want to read it in context, so a page number would prove useful.
It's a direct quote from the essay 'Shadow Work' in Illich's book of the same name (Marion Boyars, 1981), p.104.
Dougald,
I just read some of the passages in Shadow Work which put that passage in context, but I haven't read the whole essay -- yet. (I was able to find a PDF for free online.)
I wrote a careful response, at a bit of length, here this morning, but my finger did something on the keyboard and it was all lost -- and I grumbled a lot about its loss. But it may be just as well that it was lost, as my frustration's source was found -- in the wound I spoke of in "A Portable Hospitality". It's hard to lose one's hard work, over and over again. Communal living's work is often lost, I know. It usually has no shelf (of shared meanings) to sit upon ... and so it is fragile, at best.
I had written a little about why the future world's economy must necessarily include a great deal more "community self-provisioning" -- which is to say self- provisioning at the scale and in the mode of villages and neighborhoods. I say "must" because a low energy and materials flow economy must be brought about in the rich nations, or "global north," which means we will basically have to reverse a good deal of that which happened which Karl Polanyi wrote about in The Great Transformation. I've yet to read the book, but I've read about it, and it seems this and the Illich are probably best read in companionship with one another.
I long to go into more depth about all of this than can properly be done here, though. I want to tell you why I think the portal / passage / doorway / threshold we are speaking of here is so important to me! It's because it is both literal and figurative, in how I would put it to use. A return to more communal ways is urgently necessary now, I think -- for all of us, and for many reasons. But the literal door to a man's, a woman's, a couple's, a family's casita isn't the only door we need to talk about. But the other door is highly resonant with the first.
The other door is to not attached to a house but to a lodge -- a much, much larger communal lodge. (This is not a literal but a figurative lodge.) But there are *many* doors on this communal lodge! The communal lodge is the land we all dwell within -- and the land Herself makes the meaning of the door on houses! She enables us to have such doors. She provides the deep contextual setting and meaning for our personal and familial doorways.
If I were to begin this story of mine in the form of a letter, might you be willing to respond in letter form, resulting in a published (in The R-Word) conversation similar to that of Adam and Sam's letter conversation?
Sam and Adam are welcome to participate in this letter exchange, too, as far as I am concerned. Whether we do this by opening it up at the beginning or later is something we can talk about.
A Portable Hospitality
Hospitality isn’t charity. It is belonging.
https://rword.substack.com/p/a-portable-hospitality
Adam your analysis of your and Sam’s efforts and dedication towards radical hospitality is gratefully appreciated. As is Dougald Hine’s response above.
For a little more than 8 years I was employed at a “hospitality management” company responsible for all operations at fifteen or so high end or historic inns or hotels in California. Your observation and impression of the interaction you had with the housekeeper at the motel speaks to an ongoing discomfort, criticism, and exploitative practice of our housekeeping staff, the very foundation of the human support necessary to practice “hospitality”. As payroll and HR was a primary responsibility, I was all too aware of the uneven exchange that carried the business forward day to day. Often housekeeping staff was rushed through their allotted rooms to minimize even further their minimum wage. A shift of 5 hours would yield $40 dollars, probably $37 net. Correlate that to one bag of groceries for schlepping dirty laundry, scrubbing toilets, tubs, etc., and on the other side charging $200 - $300 a night to the guest. There is the reason for minimal eye contact. It’s only recently, after 7 years leaving this company, that the occasional dreams I have about working for my bosses there, have not involved feelings of entrapment.
Kudos to you and Sam for true hospitality and your exploration and sharing of what its meanings might embody. I’m with you in including the animistic community as part of the endeavors. Yes, soil is alive, I participate in enriching it through active composting for years now and it gives me no bad dreams. We community garden and it is beautifully and truly a living sanctuary feeding our members so vitally. And especially through the Covid times we have benefited and been consoled through otherwise isolating times. Nothing can be left out of relationship.