When Micha’el and Tslil first formulated their plan to live off the grid, they realized that it would be far better to build a community of like-minded people, for a number of reasons. Anyone who lives alone depends on a vast network of people outside supplying everything they can’t make themselves. In addition, it certainly makes practical sense to spread your risk: if you are a couple in isolation, and one of you is injured and unable to work for a period, survival becomes almost impossible, but if you are part of a community, the impact of the injury is obviously far less. It also enables members of the community to make a contribution in their various areas of expertise, so that the community is able to achieve excellence in many areas. An added benefit can be economies of scale: not just in terms of expenses, but also in terms of time, which may mean that community members have some free time to devote to interests that do not directly serve the community, and to practice skills that are not immediately productive. Finally, a community provides a richer social mix, for both children and adults. In the case of Micha’el and Tslil, their final goal is a community of 50 families, around 250 people.
As I wrote that last sentence, I was aware that some of you might find it ridiculous, seeing how far removed from their current reality it is. Sadly, the pandemic has slowed this side of their plans to almost a standstill (but not quite: there are some people expressing an interest). They clearly have a very, very long path ahead of them, but they are determined to travel that path, learning every step of the way.
Personally, I find their vision inspiring; it seems to me an act of faith in what they can achieve. Their project is, of course, in its infancy, but they possess what seems to me an essential ingredient to carry them through that infancy to maturity. I do not know whether they will ultimately succeed. However, I do know they have the one thing that above all increases their chance of succeeding: a vision.
President Kennedy, visiting NASA headquarters, is said to have approached a janitor mopping a floor and asked him what his job was. Now, you might have thought that a man intelligent enough to serve as President of the United States, faced with a man wearing dungarees and using a mop and bucket to clean a floor, might be able to work out what the man’s job was – at least, you might have thought so until 2016. But I don’t plan to spoil a really good story. When Kennedy asked him what his job was, the man’s (surely apocryphal) reply was: “I’m helping put a man on the moon”.
If that doesn’t bring a lump to your throat then you don’t get a seat on my sofa for the next screening of Forrest Gump.
One of our greatest gifts, it seems to me, is the ability to see and celebrate value and purpose in our life. Whether this means seeing your job as a calling, or dedicating your life to a higher ideal, this way of seeing is a vital part of our humanity.
I can’t really get my head around medieval cathedrals (metaphorically, you understood…or, indeed, literally, now I come to think of it). As I approach, say, Canterbury Cathedral, its sheer size generates in me a sense of awe. I can only imagine the impact that standing inside the nave and looking up to the ceiling 80 feet above must have had on 15th Century pilgrims who might never before have seen a building above two storeys high.
The sheer scale of the project of building a cathedral in the Middle Ages is hard to imagine. The construction of York Minster, for example, began in 1220, and was completed over 250 years later. That represents 10 generations of armies of labourers. I like to think that very few of them thought they were chipping at stone, or even carving a gargoyle. I really hope they all felt that they were building a cathedral.
John Ormond, a mid-20th Century Welsh poet, was the son of a village shoemaker; much of his poetry celebrates the value of skilled labour and artistic workmanship. His most famous poem, Cathedral Builders, explores the apparent contradiction between the soaring work of the artisans who built medieval cathedrals, and the coarseness of their domestic lives. His imagined builders may not have taken 250 years, but they were still part of something much, much greater than themselves.
They climbed on sketchy ladders towards God,
with winch and pulley hoisted hewn rock into heaven,
inhabited the sky with hammers,
defied gravity,
deified stone,
took up God’s house to meet him,
and came down to their suppers
and small beer,
every night slept, lay with their smelly wives,
quarrelled and cuffed the children,
lied, spat, sang, were happy, or unhappy,
and every day took to the ladders again,
impeded the rights of way of another summer’s swallows,
grew greyer, shakier,
became less inclined to fix a neighbour’s roof of a fine evening,
saw naves sprout arches, clerestories soar,
cursed the loud fancy glaziers for their luck,
somehow escaped the plague,
got rheumatism,
decided it was time to give it up,
to leave the spire to others,
stood in the crowd, well back from the vestments at the consecration,
envied the fat bishop his warm boots,
cocked a squint eye aloft,
and said, ‘I bloody did that.’
I have always loved that last line, for its earthiness, and for the way the poet recognizes the honest pride with which each builder appropriates to himself (quite appropriately, it seems to me), the glory of the work, while still sounding surprised by his achievement. Of course, it was ‘We’ who actually ‘bloody did that’, but that ‘We’ is made up of an army of ‘I’s, each of whom is entitled to claim credit. Without all of those ‘I’s, there is no ‘We’.
I fervently hope to witness the day when Micha’el and Tslil can step back and say: ‘We bloody did that’.
Until that day, I hope they – and you, gentle reader – can take inspiration from the wonders of purposeful teamwork – and, it has to be admitted, time-lapse photography – as demonstrated by the Amish. (It turns out that it takes a village to raise, not just a child, but even a barn.)
And finally, from a few months ago, this is what can happen if you try to undertake a major construction project alone.