The Walden Pond Isolation Maneuver

Last August 28 I had the opportunity to attend a conference at the University of Saint Thomas, "Religion, Mental Health, and the Search for Meaning: Bridging the Gaps" (previously described here and here). There was one sentence in the conference which has stuck with me for over five months. The speaker was a Catholic priest and he was describing a typical metaphysics problem for one of his church members. This typical church member is exhausted by the never-ending hypocrisy of the faithful and withdraws. The priest encounters the exhaustion when he calls upon people who have been missing and wants to call them back, just like the shepherd fetching his lost sheep in the parable in the bible. The priest maintains that everybody in the church, without exception, is also exhausted by the never-ending hypocrisy; they resolve to endure it, as the least unacceptable alternative. I remember this part verbatim:

"Withdrawing yourself to Walden Pond is not an option."

I almost agree with him. Since I am currently quite withdrawn to my equivalent of Walden Pond I cannot totally agree with him. Perhaps I would insert the word sustainable in between an and option.

The first time I read Walden was in school for a class and I did not enjoy it at all. I did the boy scouts camping and wilderness thing intermittently, but going to the woods to sit was not really one of my ambitions. Perhaps climbing to the top of Mount Everest or surfing the Banzai Pipeline would be worth doing, but the idea of enjoying a transcendent moment listening to the rain falling on the roof of my cabin in the woods was not something I could yet understand.

Thoreu's book is now one of my all-time favorites, and it is an inspiration to one of my major current projects. Here is an excerpt from his book which I am in the process of reproducing for my own situation at this very moment:

    
    Boards..........................           $ 8.03+, mostly shanty boards.
    Refuse shingles for roof sides...            4.00
    Laths............................            1.25
    Two second-hand windows
       with glass....................            2.43
    One thousand old brick...........            4.00
    Two casks of lime................            2.40  That was high.
    Hair.............................            0.31  More than I needed.
    Mantle-tree iron.................            0.15
    Nails............................            3.90
    Hinges and screws................            0.14
    Latch............................            0.10
    Chalk............................            0.01
    Transportation...................            1.40  I carried a good part
                                                       on my back.
        In all...............                  $28.12+

(modified only so very very very slightly.)

This is Thoreau's expense record for construction of his cabin in the woods. I am living in an urban apartment and everything I require for shelter is accounted for in my monthly rent check, but with this small modification I am going through the exact same thing, restricting my expenses mostly to necessities and accounting for every single penny.

The benefit (as Thoreau so eloquently described) is the creation of a clearing in time and space to observe and think about the universe. Here is one small example. Last November when the first cold front blew in from the north the oak trees by my apartment started dropping acorns. This had a strong effect on the neighborhood squirrels. These rare precious tidbits were there for them in a windfall. Their behavior was energized as if they had sprouted wings and they began to fly around like cartoon squirrels, as if they had never once seen an acorn before in their life. The thing which really struck me though, is that surely this happens every November. And even though this surely happens every November, I had not seen it the three previous Novembers (when I was off to my office job every morning) that I lived here. It was only in my new reclusive mode that my mind had the time and space for me to see it and appreciate it.

Now I understand where the priest was coming from. Since he is evaluated by his superiors by how many people are in his pews and how much cash comes into his collection plates, he could hardly advise anything different. If you look in his textbook though, you see that Jesus went out to the desert and you find that Moses went up on the mountain and Elijah went out to the desert. Escaping from the routine of life's cares is an essential part of the tradition, which includes that those men all eventually returned. If the universe zaps me like that I will definitely return. I just might return anyway.