Composing a Further Life

recognized in her use of the phrase “abyss of unknowing” a reference, perhaps unconscious, to
The Cloud of Unknowing,
9 a work on contemplation written by a nameless fourteenth-century Christian mystic that has been seen as a bridge between Western mysticism and the Buddhist and Hindu traditions, especially Zen, to which Joan Erikson had introduced me several years before. In creating nonprofits that served the needs of individuals in transition, Glady was taking old and new concepts that were “in the air” and embodying them in organizations and ways of addressing problems, and she was increasingly aware that, in making decisions and moving from stage to stage, we are recognizing ancient traditions and also creating new ones, making new meaning. 10
    So often, creativity involves a marriage between the old and the new, but it takes a special talent to recognize a new synthesis taking shape, a pattern whose time has come, whether for an individual or for society. I associate this process of connecting meaning across time and its transitions, adapting and integrating new ideas, with the Lindisfarne Association, founded by William Irwin Thompson in 1972. I met Jane Fonda at a Lindisfarne meeting in Santa Fe, which she was attending for the first time as a result of her engagement with the Zen community there. Knowing I had been involved with Lindisfarne for over twenty years, she asked for some background. “I was trying to take notes,” she said, “but I couldn’t—something about a monastery on an island?”
    Lindisfarne is the name of an island off the coast of Northumbria where a famous Celtic Christian monastery flourished in the late Middle Ages. William Irwin Thompson, a historian and poet, took it as the name of the organization that he created. The medieval monastery was destroyed but there is a Benedictine monastery there today. “Bill’s background is Irish Catholic,” I told Jane. “His concept was to create a residential community, initially at Fish Cove, on Long Island, a commune in which everyone was doing basically three things. They were doing productive intellectual work—writing, research, art; each one would have a spiritual practice; and each one would also be participating in the necessary upkeep and housekeeping of the community. This is a sort of echo of the Benedictine rule of monastic life,
ora et labora
, pray and work. But Bill also had in mind the role played by monasteries such as Lindisfarne in the Dark Ages, when they preserved knowledge, including the knowledge of Classical Greek, through a period of loss of literacy and documentation. Much of Greek philosophy was preserved by the Arabs also. And the monasteries also played a role when that knowledge began to be recovered and reevaluated, so that the wisdom of the past could serve the future. The great creativity of the Renaissance came partly from the rediscovery of that lost knowledge.
    “Bill’s view of the mission of Lindisfarne,” I went on, “was that it would be a countercultural institution, exploring an alternative way of living. Part of its mission would be innovative thinking and creativity, but another part would be the rediscovery or reinterpretation of ancient traditions that have been lost or neglected in modern society, and for that purpose in 1972 he brought to Fish Cove a series of spiritual teachers, some of whom became Lindisfarne fellows. That’s the group you’re meeting here. There was a residential community at Fish Cove, and then there was a network of fellows that joined them once a year. The residential community doesn’t exist anymore. They hadn’t quite worked out how to pay the mortgage. But actually many of the people that were in the residential community are still fellows and are now part of the network. For instance, Richard Baker, at that time he was the roshi, the abbot, of the San Francisco Zen Center, and now he has a place in Santa Fe; he was one of the spiritual teachers that came and also became a member of the fellowship, so that’s where I know him from. And Pir Vilayat Khan came, and a couple of people in the community decided that their practice would be a Sufi practice, while others said their practice would be a Zen practice. Brother David Steindl-Rast is a Benedictine monk who came and talked about Christian meditative practice. The fellows also included physicists and biologists and poets and social activists and philosophers.
    “Now, I wasn’t there for those