The forces in our lives are constantly colliding—sometimes in ways that work out well and sometimes in ways that don’t. This interview series is an exploration of what it can look like to work with the collisions, rather than against them. By digging into how humans and nature interact– from our relationships with other humans, to those with our non-human neighbors, to our relationship with ourselves to our relationship with the land base–we can uncover how to best step fully into our role in the story of the world.
After a few months hiatus, the Ordinary Collisions Interview Series is back! Today’s guest is Stephen Drew, a fellow author at our shared publisher, Homebound Publications. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed getting to know him through his two books, the memoir Into the Thin, A Pilgrimage Walk Across Northern Spain, and his lyrical essay, Around the Forever Bend, Remembrances of Wondering What Lies Beyond Death which just came out in May. He also contributed to the anthology that I had the privilege of editing, In Search of Simple. Currently he’s working on a novel, which I look forward to very much.
Stephen lives in a bucolic, lakeside community in northwestern Connecticut where he practices a minimalist, intentional lifestyle. This includes daily walking, mostly on the roads and paths near his home.1 Hiking there and elsewhere serves as a centerpiece of contemplative living.
Heidi: Thanks for being here with us today, Stephen! To start, I always ask the same question: What are two forces that are colliding in your life right now (or that have in the not too distant past)?
Stephen: After 67 years on the planet, this is an interesting and potentially complicated question. There’s been a lot of colliding! It seems to me, though, that the one worth sharing has been continuing to evolve over the past 13 years or so. Thus far it’s led to my formation as a very different person than I was before, and by this, I mean from the level of essential being through to the more apparent, human layer. What I find difficult is giving a single name to each side, each force of the equation of collision. Perhaps the best way to this is to tell the story as concisely as I can.
The year was 2010, and it presented for my consideration a relentless course of change and loss that included, but was not limited to, the suicide death of my 28-year-old son and the end of my second marriage of 14 years. The final episode of this darkness was the obvious need to move out of my home and begin a new way of life just as I was turning 55. Until then, I’d been living a pretty conventional suburban family life, my free time mostly spent maintaining property and possessions. I was, in retrospect, living a life I thought I should be living. Although I felt my interior life was spiritually directed through a long-standing daily practice of contemplative prayer, I was moving through life with a sense of restlessness and lack of authenticity, a sense I shared with no one. I recall having wondered about the sustainability of it. But as the shift to this new way encroached, I began to get the feeling that life itself was moving me toward something I could not yet envision, and that a hefty measure of faith and surrender would be required of me to cooperate with this movement. Interestingly, I had an absence of any substantial fear during this shift, for after surviving what had occurred, what was really left to fear? At this point, I suppose the primary collision was occurring at the intersection of loss and grief, the apparent forces consisting of either accepting or resisting the inevitable change. Thankfully, acceptance seemed to have the upper hand.
In the aftermath of this upheaval, I knew without question that what I needed most was a simpler life in which to sort things out, so to speak. Dealing with possessions and their maintenance had surreptitiously consumed my free time and had only served to distract me from what truly mattered. And as is common for those who grieve, I also needed quiet. In response to this call to quiet and simplicity, I moved to a small town and secured a humble living space that focused less on wants than needs. In essence, I became a minimalist, though at the time I didn’t have a name for it. So, I began this very different way of living out of which grew the practice of daily walks through the pristine natural settings our town is known for. I found that I was noticing much more than I had before, more about the world around me, and the world within. In fact, I came to gradually realize these two as one.
About a year or so after moving here, while out walking, I had the experience of being called to pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago in Spain. I’d first heard of it many years before from reading the book Iberia, by James Michener. As disconcerting as this rather sudden, profound calling was, I began to see it as an expression of a flow, an omniscient logic coming into my awareness and delivering me to something as yet unknown but intrinsically wonderful, even beyond going to Spain. I also had the sense it had always been with me, and that the quieter, more austere circumstances of this new life had presented this gift of noticing.
A little over three years after the calling, I walked the Camino from the Pyrenees of southern France to Santiago de Compostela, and beyond to the cliffside moors of Spain’s Atlantic coast. It was while walking this pilgrimage, and significantly, while walking near the ocean, that the pieces of all of this began to fit, maybe even make a little sense.
Returning home and still very much on pilgrimage, an interesting set of interactions suggested the possibility of writing a book, so I began. Though I’d written for a while in the 1980s, I’d since put the pen down...distracted by life, parenting, two marriages, and career. I guess I had a few thousand words on the page when I realized I actually had something, but more importantly, I’d rediscovered my writing voice. For the next year and a half, I continued writing Into the Thin, my first published book. As I wrote in that book, it seems I had a thing to say.
It strikes me in telling you of these experiences, that there were always opportunities to attempt avoiding or resisting the darker elements of that long, difficult year, but somehow, I felt I’d been delivered to this finer thing I’ve come to know: a simple, minimalist, intentional life, and days which have included dedicated periods of reading, contemplation, walking, and writing. I suppose it could be said that one side of the equation of collision was loss and grief and unwelcome change, or what I referred to in that first book as an emotional crucifixion. On the other side was found grace, and a measure of resurrection. But the funny thing is, lately, the point between these two sides, the point of impact if you will, has been disappearing.
Heidi: Oh, that IS interesting. Grief and grace colliding, and your acceptance of each side has made the impact point start to dissolve. Soften? Hmm. I’m going to sit with that for awhile.
How are you navigating the conditions this collision (and what’s come about as a result!) is creating? How does the dissonance created impact your choices?
Stephen: The conditions of this ever-evolving collision have actually been relatively simple to navigate because it’s put a different filter on the sending and receiving apparatus of the ego. There is more equanimity, and overall, more peace, more compassion. I can offer this as an example: The area in which I live is about 100 miles or so northwest of New York City. A lot of city folks have second homes around here, so the population swells a bit during the summer and on weekends. When the pandemic happened, one of the early hotspots in America for Covid 19 was in the city. Naturally, those part-timers suddenly became full-time residents, and other New Yorkers with the financial means showed up in droves to purchase virtually all of the available real estate, so housing prices went through the roof. You cannot imagine the fearful attitudes these transplants were met with by the locals. At best they were considered intruders, and potentially diseased ones at that. Yet my reflex went toward welcoming them. All I could see was a frightened mass of people who were trying to save themselves, save their families. What would any of us locals have done had the circumstances been different? This is not to say I’m a saint, only that I’m living under a different paradigm and one to which I’d been hand carried. This was not the result of my own finest thinking. To be fair, I should say my dear neighbors had the major stressors of career and family that I did not. In fact, I must admit life changed very little for me during the pandemic, though at least some of that was owed to simple living and a spiritual practice which minimized any substantial fear.
Heidi: So true…at the end of the day, we’re all just trying to make the best decisions we can with the tools/perspective that we have. And there’s something to be said for having fewer details to manage and a healthy way to process fear—I think that helped me through that time as well.
What has this collision taught you about yourself? The world?
Stephen: In the simplest terms, the changes that have occurred within and around me over the course of the last 13 years have been the result of a kind of grace that can happen when a heart is broken open. This grace resolves all collisions because it reveals all things as one seamless thing. It all belongs and is all quite perfect. Not always pleasant, but perfect.
Heidi: Reminds me of how Joanna Macy put it when she wrote, “The heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe.”
Tell us about a collision you explore in your latest book.
Stephen: With Around the Forever Bend, the answer rests in the subtitle, Remembrances of Wondering What Lies Beyond Death. Though it’s discreetly stated in the narrative, there is an implied tension in wondering about something when no definitive answer can possibly be found. I’ve never written to a market, but in retrospect I couldn’t have selected a more universal, evergreen topic about which to write. My approach was to recollect and wonder in the hope of generating a shared wondering within my reader. Wondering is such an open door, though. It makes way for at least a deeper understanding if we can be meticulous in our effort. We can never know what we may find.
Heidi: Here’s to continually wandering toward that open door.
What else would you like to share about your current projects?
Stephen: I’m currently working on a much-delayed novel, the conceit of which has completely changed since I first considered writing fiction. What I have so far is an unnamed protagonist who may resemble me, coupled with a central character who is a mystical Catholic priest. It's an early first draft and is therefore a happy mess at this point. All is as it should be. The thing that has me quite excited is that a pretty cool first sentence showed up, and I so love a great first sentence. Still waiting on a title, though.
I also just took on the role of writing the public facing content of a rebranding project for a local non-profit. I know next to nothing about branding, so it’s proving to be an opportunity to expand my horizon a bit, yet under the cover of anonymity. It’s a collaborative effort, so there is an inherent sense of community, and that’s a wonderful thing indeed.
Have a collision you’d like to explore in this space? Send me an email at heidi@heidibarr.com.
I also meander daily around my home in Minnesota. Wherever you’re located, I recommend giving the practice a go.