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Fenton Johnson (on solitude, and reclaiming reverence)

[3-minute read]

SPECIAL BONUS QUOTATION BEFORE WE EVEN GET TO THE “HE SAID” AT HAND!

The main article appealed to my loner tendencies, but there was eco-writing, a call to end high schools, and a basketball feature. A must-have.

The main article appealed to my loner tendencies, but there was eco-writing, a call to end high schools, AND a basketball feature. A must-have, absolutely killer issue.

“All man’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.”

 — Blaise Pascal

I have never subscribed to Harper’s Magazine, but it’s a wonderful read. I buy it as a gift and a comfort to myself, approximately whenever a cover story leans out from a random magazine rack and says, Buy me now. My love for this smart American publication isn’t timely or disciplined or even remotely organized; for one pathetic example, I’m just now finishing the August 2013 issue, and returning to its cover piece, a writers forum on the lumpily uncomfortable topic “Are You Sleeping?”. This was a Must-Buy because  my nights have been harder work than they should be for a long time. (I’m trying to try easier.)

A year ago last spring, I was forced to kidnap (and to pay the $7.99 ransom for) the April 2015 issue of Harper’s, whose cover story was the long and deeply thoughtful article “Going It Alone: The Dignity and Challenge of Solitude”, by Fenton Johnson. (You can read the whole article here on the magazine’s archives for free.) The piece begins with the quote from Pascal, the 17th-century French polymath/genius, which Johnson follows with a more homely conundrum. He invites us to consider the average bookstore, or daytime TV lineup, or any number of therapists, clergy or Internet advisors, all counseling us on how to figure out our relationships. He compares that to the scarcity of public comment about being by ourselves:

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M.P. Freeman (on service and self-deprecation)

I’ve known MPF for a good while now, but in the way of introverts, the distance-loving perspective of nerdy writers, we’re getting to know each other more deeply via blog posts and nearly never-ending email threads. (G’mornin’, sir. How goes it?) One of his occasional comments here on JH.com recently blew up into this guest post on Aboriginal — and just plain human — identity and homing instincts.

We got ourselves into a brief exchange on feeling at home spiritually, or existentially, or even (Dawkins forbid!) religiously. Mr. Freeman, apart from his thoroughly Canadian love for hockey, curling and Tim Horton’s, is an unconventional guy, but quietly goes about serving others — as teacher, activist, fellow traveller and friend — in a way that most conventionally spiritual or religious types would do well to emulate. For my part, I come from a youthful ethical perspective that says work of any kind, performed in the spirit of service, is the truest kind of worship. I accused him of, therefore, being strongly implicated in this practical kind of faith, and I liked his brief, sardonic and wisely jocular reply:

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Albert Schweitzer (on human purpose)

“The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve…The purpose of human life is to serve and to show compassion and the will to help others.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875 – 1965) was a Christian theologian and medical missionary in Africa (in what is now known as Gabon). He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952 because of the above, off-the-beaten-path but eminently Christian philosophy. This may the heart of all true and useful religion. Was he his “brother’s keeper”, a la Jesus Christ, practising the Buddha’s “right action”, and applying Baha’u’llah’s injunction to “carry forward an ever-advancing civilization”? He tried.

June Callwood, Too

I don’t have nearly so much to say about June Callwood as I did about Kurt Vonnegut, but thanks to the Globe and Mail‘s Sandra Martin, I don’t have to. You can find a splendid memorial to the remarkable Ms. Callwood here. This fiery, compassionate woman probably wrote more books than Vonnegut, but she was a different sort of writer altogether. She’ll be remembered more for the causes she espoused and the amazing number of organizations she founded for the public good. (A propos of her crusading innovation, Martin makes a comment that reminds me of the old joke about Liberal MP Ken Dryden when he was a hockey player: that he’d written more books than his teammates had read.) She was a brilliant and angry woman who put both those powers to superb use.

I long thought that Trent Frayne was a fine writer on hockey and other sports, and he was. But I have come to admire him hugely in recent years as June Callwood’s husband. I learned what a fine and loving man, father and husband he was. It’s not easy to be married to smart, strong women, especially back in the 1950s when he and Callwood began. By all accounts, especially hers, he was a prince. And what a loss now for him, I don’t forget, as Canada mourns one of its outstanding women, his June.