Tag Archives: athens and jerusalem

The Harbour Mind

The rush from Thanksgiving to Christmas has been its usual series of frenetic weeks, twice to Chicago and once to DC and twice consumed by hockey. It is only Christmas weekend that I finally have time to pause, a reversion to a few days of quiet family time and remote work, a peaceful time only once I look past this embarrassing excuse for a Duluth winter and shrug off the unwelcome reminder of Covid pandemic solitude in the work week that follows. Most people are off but I plug away, either in an empty office or an empty house, no ski trails to escape to, just driving rain outside, achieving in bursts before lapsing into boredom. This inaction suits me less and less as I age.

I manage to finish the one book I set out to read over this month, Adam Nicholson’s How to Be: Life Lessons from the Early Greeks. It traces the emergence of philosophy with the emergence of the trading city-states of ancient Greece, from the god-determined fates of the heroes of the Iliad through Odysseus’ radical agency, from the first interrogations of existence in Miletus to the sense of self emerging in Sappho and her contemporaries in the Aegean basin. Symposiums take place; leisure and thought intertwine. Life emerges as a fire in Heraclitus, an eternal soul in Pythagoras and the Orphic cult, a single reality in Parmenides before Empedocles unites it all, these final thinkers acting as forerunners to Plato and Aristotle, the foundations for basically all Western thought since.

How to Be is more than just pop philosophy, though: it weaves in a journey to the cities that formed these early thinkers. Nicholson wanders these acropolises atop harbors, the temples built to gods who match the questions of their particular age: Athena as city-states form, Demeter as they grow to flourish, Aphrodite as questions of love grow more profound, Persephone as thinkers dig deeper into the meaning of eternity. He parses the relics they have left behind to show how these communities were interconnected with their neighbors, how ideas born on the Aegean coast of Turkey interacted with Ionian Ithaca or colonial Sicily and beyond. All of this flourishing thought, he contends, is the result of a “harbour mind,” a life of commerce and exploration and incipient leisure that was fundamental to making the Greeks the thinkers they were.

These past two years have been a time of deep harbour mind, with many mundane days at sea broken by arrivals in thrilling ports. In 2023 I found literal harbors on a trip up the California coast and an unforgettable family venture to the Mediterranean, and metaphorical ones in treks near and far and as I pushed my body further and relished the results. I also found harbors in times of grief, this sense never more immediate than this past February, and though that scar is still raw it is also a reminder of just what kind of a harbor I can build, both for myself and for other people. It is a strange feeling, to be supremely self-assured in grief; one that requires delicate words to avoid sounding callous. But as I sat through my cousin’s funeral I found myself not burdened by agony but instead consumed by a fire I’d known was there but only rarely let out. It was a fire I tended numerous times in the following months, through late-night euchre vigils and over beers at hockey games, on a wind-blasted deck on a rocking cruise ship and on the slopes of Cloud Peak, on the dance floor at weddings until the last song played and all my muscles ached, only then believing my work was done. These are the moments I feel most myself.

In between the surges I do not lead a bad existence, and I have no trouble listing off the ways in which life has improved in the span since I started this burst outward with a venture to the Virgin Islands deep in the pandemic. But the mundane everydayness gnaws at me, and while it has its small triumphs and defeats, it never brings major change. When I do have events worthy of words they are among the best I’ve ever written, but the act itself does not come often enough, and too often I go to bed without even consulting my writing, plagued by a nagging annoyance that I am not using my greatest gift to its fullest extent. For too long I have been too frozen in routines to unleash it, too frozen by convention or belief in how I had to be, lip service alone to the pursuit I preach.

I will always owe a deep debt to the Greeks. They have framed my life over the past decade-plus now, a necessary port on a stormy sea, and I will never forget that debt, will someday go to pay homage at the sites Nicholson visits, when the time is right. (The time is not yet right. I will know when it is.) The Greeks’ basic insights still form the channel in which I sail. But this holiday season, I find myself drawn to the burning paradoxes of Heraclitus and the love inherent in Empedocles, fueled by that radical turn, and reach once again for Hannah Arendt’s verdict on Greek thought at the end of her chapter on Action in The Human Condition, something I saw in a snippet atop Zion last spring but did not fully process:

The miracle that saves the world, the realm of human affairs, from its normal, “natural” ruin is ultimately the fact of natality, in which the faculty of action is ontologically rooted. It is, in other words, the birth of new men and the new beginning, the action they are capable of by virtue of being born. Only the full experience of this capacity can bestow upon human affairs faith and hope, those two essential characteristics of human existence which Greek antiquity ignored all together, discounting the keeping of faith as a very uncommon and not too important virtue and counting hope among the evils of illusion in Pandora’s box. It is this faith in and hope for the world that found perhaps its most glorious and most succinct expression in the few words with which the Gospels announced their “glad tidings”: “A child has been born unto us.”

If human action is founded on reason and faith, on Athens and Jerusalem, it is time to grapple with Jerusalem again. This is hardly some announcement of bold conversion or spiritual quest; it is merely an acknowledgment of another journey that awaits. In my year-end post last year I said I craved a Renaissance, and while a Renaissance means a rebirth of the Classical it is still rooted profoundly in a faith. In its most obvious form this will come as a pilgrimage, a concept I will grapple with as I head for Santiago de Compostela this April, to say nothing of a subsequent adventure to southern latitudes. The opportunity to rethink things is before me.

I look ahead to the deeper truth-seeking afforded by this sabbatical of sorts in spring, but the true process must begin now, the harbour mind unleashed. It is time to set sail, whether on steely Superior or on the South Atlantic, and find faith in daily routines yet again. Maybe this will lead me to change my life in more significant ways than I have in recent years; maybe it will instead be a stripping away of false desires and a focus on a simpler core that is already right in front of me. But I am ready for a journey once again.

Wilderness

“To those devoid of imagination a blank space on the map is a useless waste; to others, the most valuable part.”

—Aldo Leopold

As a native of the North, the wilderness has always enticed me with its immediacy. Some of my most distinct early memories are of Wisconsin State Parks during those pre-Duluth years, and once my family settled in that last great outpost between Minneapolis and the Canadian Border, it was never far away. I have fond memories of canoe trips and hikes with my dad, even if my skills as a woodsman have never come close to his, and as I grew older the woods within walking distance of my childhood home became a retreat, both to share with friends and to have my own little Walden moments from time to time. Without ever really realizing it, I grew up intimately tied to those parts of the map that didn’t have much in the way of detail.

At Georgetown, I began took on a new appreciation for those escapes, even as I dove into Washington. The late Jesuit Fr. Thomas King said it best, counseling us students consumed by fast-paced climbs up the ladder of ambition to seek out escapes into the wilderness from the restless noise of university life. Whether literal or metaphorical, we needed these moments to orient ourselves. I set out to find such spaces for myself, and while D.C. could never quite accommodate the sensibilities of a Northern Minnesotan, I certainly found a few gems during my wanderings there. My thoughts meandered with my steps, and I vacillated between intense commitment and lonely wandering, a duality that now seems extreme.

Other Catholics at Georgetown spoke of a different sort of wilderness; a spiritual and moral wilderness in which they found themselves in a postmodern world, unable to speak the language of the culture around them. I didn’t always agree with the particulars, but they had a point. We’ve lost much in our rush to embrace the newest shiny ideas, too often rushing ahead, unthinking, as we proclaim some lofty ideal that aspires to justice and human greatness. I embraced the greatest teaching of the Judeo-Christian tradition, one of those twin pillars supporting Western thought: we are all in exile, doomed to wander with no hope of permanent peace on earth. Perhaps all we could do was carve out a little spot for ourselves and live in accordance with our conscience, making peace with what we could.

After college I spent two years back in Duluth, still wandering as Athens and Jerusalem waged a silent war in keystrokes on this computer. I was never really a threat to truly go all Into the Wild; I enjoy my creature comforts a bit too much, and take my obligations to family and community a bit too seriously. My cynicism was a bit too meta to take the leap into a “finding myself” journey through the woods or some other country. But a cloistered life of letters had its allure, too, and it wasn’t hard to imagine that sort of future.

In the end, Athens won out. It’s not an unqualified victory, but it is a clear one, and the somewhat more infrequent blog posts here are a sure sign of an increasingly busy life beyond the world of letters. (Very little of my writing happens without some time to think about it beforehand.) I embrace this newfound life in the world, though I will still seek occasional escapes. They’ll come in different degrees, from runs around Minneapolis lakes to returns to the well-trodden parks of my youth to the occasional adventure into genuine backcountry. I need those moments to examine my conscience, to remind myself of my own smallness in the grand scheme of things.  They are reminders of mysteries beyond our grasp, and the falleness of human nature. But mystery gives rise to wonder, and we can still aspire to something in the face of impossibility. This is the great human project in a world beyond the old philosophical absolutes, none of which can reign supreme in this new Rome.

It’s hard to find wilderness anymore in the true sense of the word. Longing for that sort of wilderness can turn into wishes for purity and paradise lost, for a black-and-white worldview that won’t ever quite do its nuance justice. Even pre-Columbian America, we are now learning, was no pristine and untouched paradise, with the natives living in perfect harmony with nature. They certainly respected it more, recognizing the broader connectedness and often believing in a spiritual unity. But they were still very conscious managers, acting as stewards of the world around them, altering landscapes to their will as they saw fit. We have much to learn from them.

Just as we are stewards of the land, we are stewards of our minds. We’ll never have complete control over them; we can’t write off the past or give rise to a new future out of nothing. But we can tend them carefully with moments of retreat from the relentless noise, and with respect for the corners of the world beyond human reason that we will never tame. This takes patience and time, and I won’t begrudge anyone who commits themselves to living in this wilderness fully. For me, though, it is a place to reflect upon everything we do in the public realm, and to make sure that we truly believe whatever it is we’re doing. We must preserve that space with our lives.

A Sense of Place in the Modern World

So many trends in this day in age cut against loyalty to a place. Being committed to one spot on the map seems to be either a luxury or a harsh necessity.

Just think about it. Finding a well-paying job (or simply a job) often requires travel and frequent movement as one climbs the ladder in search of the best opportunity. Well-educated people often uproot themselves and cluster together in a handful of economic centers that have a lot of interesting high culture. People who come from less-than-ideal backgrounds can escape them, and for many, that is no small victory. Economists speak glowingly about “creative destruction”—that is, the need to tear down old stuff and replace it with new stuff to keep the engines of economic growth firing at full steam. The two political parties’ platforms only rarely give nods to local interests; Democrats emphasize universal rights above local loyalties and often use a distant federal government as their instrument of choice to promote it, while Republicans tend to venerate the frictionless free market above all else. Throw in the technological advances of the past few decades, and people have never been so free to move about without setting down deep roots where they are.

The march of modernity is all bad for a sense of place. Mobility has actually declined somewhat in recent years, though I’d guess that has more to do with economic forces than some newfound commitment to certain locations. The internet makes it easier to connect to interesting people without ever leaving places that might otherwise not be the most stimulating places. It is also becoming increasingly easier to do some jobs from home, and some communities that are just flat-out nice places to live will prove resilient because of that. The mayor of my hometown of Duluth, Don Ness, made that argument in this recent Atlantic piece—he’s admitted that he is the anonymous mayor there. It’s a sensible point, but while this is nice for a city like Duluth, it’s not of much use to many other places. Building communities and growing cultures takes time and commitment, and it’s hard to find the people and capital to build them.

All of this movement is often viewed as a positive thing (the American Way, even), and as the media and other big institutions that drive culture tend to be full of people who have made plenty of career leaps, voices that question it don’t get much coverage. When they do, it’s often negative—and not always without reason, as the excesses and eccentricities of opposition groups merit a fair amount of the mockery they incur. This isn’t to say that all the national media hates or ignores small towns or Middle America—they continue to be a fantastic source for stories of virtue and laments for middle-class Paradise Lost—but most of them seem to view it as a different land to be mused about from afar, its decay inevitable. The people who really argue for something different are on the margins: environmentalists and lefty localists, certain conservatives who are actually interested in conserving things (usually communities, churches, and stable social orders), and a handful of literary figures who transcend those categories, like Wallace Stegner and Wendell Berry.

People from very diverse backgrounds agree with bits of their argument, even if they might not ever cohere into a political movement. These people generally respect things like political rights and an open economy, but they don’t think that loyalty to such ideals should come at the expense of personal ties. They are skeptical of abstraction and a life consumed by endless thinking. Instead, they focus on the relationships with people immediately around them, and because interpersonal relationships are at the center of everything, constant movement doesn’t much appeal to them. Family and friends are important, so they keep everyone close and recognize their debts to both their ancestors and their children. As a result, they’re comparatively thrifty and careful about their economic choices. They aren’t necessarily Luddites, but technology isn’t their favorite thing on earth, and if possible, they’d often rather repair things with their own hands than haul in an expensive expert to do the work. A number ground their localism in shopping locally and caring for their neighborhoods, and a number rely on houses of worship to provide community. There’s nothing glorious about this way of life, but it is one of steadiness and deep contentment, and it provides the strongest cushions possible when tragedy strikes.

Of course, it can all go wrong, as it has many times over the years. The most egregious examples are racial, religious, or other such barriers imposed by small communities with strong tribal instincts. Communities can be stultifying, or just stale. It is very difficult for one individual to stand up to an entire community, and when everyone knows one another, grudges can be even more toxic than when the enemy is a bit more abstract. These troubles can always be overcome, but they also require careful attention, and mean people have to think beyond the most convenient aspects of community as well.

A more benign trend among localists is a tendency to tip toward escapism. This is what religious conservatives will call the “Benedict Option,” though it’s not hard to find secular or left-leaning equivalents: people with a shared sense of morality retreating into their communities to hide from or wait out the collapse of the fallen modern world around them. If you want to be one of those people, be my guest; as long as you’re not shooting at those who don’t join you, you have that freedom, and the global economy isn’t going to take a hit because fifty people retreat into a self-sustaining commune or a homeschooling cooperative. I respect that, and I think the rest of society stands to learn from methods used in alternative schools or from Zapatista “good government” practices or the Amish freedom from being eternally plugged in.

I’m just not going to join them.

Why not? With a few obvious exceptions, those idealized communities never really last; the best we can do is pick and choose a few things from them that are worth adopting. Humans will always dream, and unless one has been within the culture for generations, people will grow restless and head out to explore the world on their own terms. It’s no secret that I’m a loyalist to community, but I didn’t come to appreciate that without spending an awful lot of my childhood dreaming about being somewhere else. I still do. I still love to travel, and I keep up with international news and pop culture and major sports. That makes it an awful lot easier to find common ground with people who aren’t from one’s little tribe, and so long as one has faith in one’s lifestyle, it isn’t going to corrupt anyone in some terrible way. I have less fear of moral decay than many religious conservatives, or even a healthy number of bourgeois liberals; somehow, it seems like you can always find people saying we’re all going to hell, and yet somehow, human nature seems to survive intact. The cloisters are a lovely place for a weekend of reflection, but there’s a bit too much Athens in my Jerusalem for me to stay there, and the same is probably true for most people out there. I can’t run away from the world. Yes, there’s an awful lot wrong with it, but it’s the only one I have.

Staying in touch with the world beyond my little fishbowl also keeps me from falling too far into blind obsession. I’ve shared some very pointed words about school board levies and local politicians on this blog, and I’m glad I have; Duluth is small enough that I’ve actually been able to dialogue with some people about these things and now have a modest readership. I’m proud of that, and I want to keep building on it. But I also don’t want to sit here preaching to a choir that nods and smiles, and I need constant reminders that there are other things out there that make all of this seem trivial. This blog’s wanderings into hockey or Greek philosophy or global affairs may seem like random whims, but there’s a design here: I’m trying to keep myself from ever being too caught up in these delightfully petty political circles I’m floating around in. And if need be, if Duluth doesn’t work out in the long run, I’m ready to pull up and move somewhere else. Roots aren’t easy to grow, but as long as the soil is halfway decent, they have a chance in most places.

There is wisdom in seeing life as an ongoing pilgrimage or journey from one place to the next, but too often that strikes me as a defense mechanism; a regrettably necessary means of making peace with roots that have rotted away. Sure, there are some people who just have a lot of wanderlust, or their own roots are among perpetual wanderers. Like the old line says, not all who wander are lost. But plenty of them are, or may be fully aware that their wanderings stem from old burdens or an inability to properly go home. The Jews did an admirable job of surviving, even thriving, when they were wandering the desert or scattered across Europe, but they always yearned for Israel. And while that home may seem a fleeting one when held up against the sweep of history, for our equally fleeting time on earth, it can make all the difference in the world. If life is a journey, it’s a much happier one when we have a warm bed to come home to at the end of the day’s adventures.