Episode 7

With special guest Paula Huston

Paula is a National Endowment of the Arts Fellow, author of two novels and eight nonfiction titles including her newest book—‘The Hermits of Big Sur’

I want our listeners today to read your new book—The Hermits of Big Sur—I know it is a lot to ask a writer to give the elevator speech about the book—so tell me in a minute or two why you wrote this book—and why someone should pick one up?

If you are Christian we are obviously in the Lenten season—40 days in the wilderness—if you do not have a Christian background if you are human (an earthling as one has called us) then you too are probably in the wilderness in one way or another right about now. As Paula says, “time spent in the wilderness can be a catalyst for transformative spiritual experience, and the Big Sur Coast is one of America’s last true wildernesses.  For the monks, “the very hardness of the wilderness was reassuring to them.  Worldly people would not follow them there.  They would be free to seek God with  all that was in them.”  Paula, would you talk to us a little more about how you see this transformation playing out in general and through the Big Sur—the New Camaldoli Hermitage?

One of the things I am trying to do with the Soul Cafe Podcast is to get conversations of the soul beyond just the church—to make God more accessible so to speak—of course God has no trouble with that—-so sometimes I find myself playing the Devil’s Advocate—which ironically may be a term that goes back to 1587—when a role that was created for when someone was nominated in the Catholic Church for either beatification and canonization—-the Devil’s Advocate (of course there was a more religious sounding title) was to draw up a list of arguments against the nominee becoming blessed or canonized.  I say all that to point out that we play the devils advocate we are on some long and good ground.

So…..do you need to go to an hermitage to experience a transformative wilderness experience?  Do we need places like Big Sur to find the answer to the longing for fuga Mundi, or flight from the world?  Along with Hermits of Big Sur I have been reading books by Scott Stillman—one in particular entitlled WILDERNESS—The Gateway to the Soul.  Stillman makes a pretty compelling case that we need to get out into any wilderness we can find—“through all the noise and the madness, how could we have possibly heard what the Earth is so patiently trying to tell us?  Now something as natural as silence has become increasingly rare.  Wilderness is our only hope.  The one place we can always come back to.”

So…do we need the Big Sur—-or do we need just to get out into any wilderness and be still—-or do we need both?

And all that kind of leads to your comment in the book—“transformation is no small thing and also fairly rare—-at the hermitage, miraculous transformation sometimes occurs in individual monks after decades of contemplative practice and the communal bonds formed through the practice of the ‘privilege of love’.  You do not become a contemplative overnight.  In fact to become holy and full of wisdom in this way requires years of slow, painful un-selfing.”

Can you talk a little about this process at the Big Sur?

That should about do it for questions.

Get outside and experience the wilderness as Della Mae sings ‘For the Sake of My Heart’

The Soul Cafe…where life is served-up freshly brewed.