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CrossRoads: Musings on a Father-Son Pilgrimage by Alex and Jonathan Bryan 115 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #03-0662; ISBN 1-4120-0293-1; US$15.00, C$17.50, EUR12.50, £9.00 Aging father and middle-aged son write paired musings on how their week in Ireland paradoxically celebrated both their interesting lifelong differences in life-design and their deepening friendship.
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About the Book
About the Authors
Sample Excerpts
Catalogue Info
About the Book
When the son grows into an adult quite different from the father in life-design, you might expect some stress and, eventually, some yearning to find common ground.
By the time Alex was approaching adulthood at 40 and Jonathan was approaching dotage at 67, they had had many father-son challenges. Although they always enjoyed their conversations, they had divergent
mind-sets.
Then Jonathan had a whimsical thought: Maybe this son is a primitive
Celt, a throwback to pre-christian celticism, at odds with his father's
christianized celticism. Maybe they could confirm this during a trip to Ireland,
a week in the Dingle, a peninsula loaded with Celtic leftovers.
In this father-son pilgrimage they enjoyed sights and insights, talking
non-stop to a new CrossRoads of understanding and companionship,
if not full agreement.
Upon return, each wrote an essay on ten topics, here presented in
pairs, such as "Speaking of Gaelic" and "Gaelic? No Thanks"..."On Guinness"
and "One-My-Guinness, Two-My-Guinness"..."Talking Stones" and "Stonework, Soulwork."
Each essay examines something about their trip, then develops
something about their relationship. Thus Jonathan and Alex celebrate their
wonderful journey - through both the Dingle and life - and their deepening
friendship.
The book reflects, then, on fatherhood and sonship - and the paradoxical
harmony that two quite different tunes can make.
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About the Authors
Alex is a sailor, traveler, dog-lover, and writer with an insatiable appetite
for learning, who has (he says) been wandering in the existential wilderness
for forty years.
Jonathan is a teacher, minister, and writer with an insatiable appetite for
learning, who has (he says) been working in suburbia for all his years.
They are donating the royalties from this book to the Children's Friendship
Project for Northern Ireland, which pairs a Catholic teenager and
a Protestant teenager (two boys or two girls) to stay with a family in the
U.S. each summer - thus promoting paradoxical harmony.
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Sample Excerpts
Alex: "Down a Stream without a Paddle"
There was one thing in Ireland that wasn't any different at all from being
at home: whether driving around the peninsula on the left-hand side, nursing
pints in a smoke-filled pub, or trudging up a gorse-covered and sheep-strewn
hillside, we always had plenty to talk about. There was our plan of action
for the next few hours, there was general historical speculation and trivia,
there was running commentary on the passing scenery interspersed with
catching up on each others' lives, and of course there was our ongoing
philosophical debate. We sat on barstools next to a retired local fisherman
and heard his views on the nature of Nature and the existence of a personal
god. (He assured us that, while he remains a good Catholic, he's also quite
certain due to personal experience that Nature "has the upper hand"). Of
course there was endless rumination over who the Celts were, the
encroachment and absorption of Christianity into Ireland, the essentially
unknowable nature of the past, and how so many of our problems seem rooted
in our interminable struggle to name and know the unnameable and the
unknowable. We talked on the flights over and back, we talked over meals, we
tried to talk Gaelic, we talked overtime.
But one of the most interesting things we discovered was our completely
opposite reactions to a fairly simple metaphor for life. We were talking
about the expression "to go with the flow", and we used a twig floating down
a stream as the image. I told him how I have allowed myself to be carried
along by circumstances, have tried to let my life be shaped by the events
and opportunities that present themselves rather than pursue a particular
course of action toward a set goal. I explained how the swirling journey
that the Stream has taken this particular twig on so far has been so much
more interesting than anything I could have dreamed up myself that I have no
plans for changing my approach. My dad, on the other hand, when presented
with this model, decided that he would immediately equip himself with oars,
sails, anchors, navigation radar and an outboard motor - in other words, the
means and ways to totally control where he goes in the stream and when, even
upstream if he wants! (Of course this begs the question of the metaphor: Are
we the stick in the stream, or are we ON the stick in the stream?!) And he
too admitted that his method had worked so well for him that he wouldn't
change anything either! Two totally different approaches, two totally
satisfied customers.
At one point we were driving around in search of some artifact or ruin
somewhere, munching on bread and cheese and trying to navigate the funny
little roads of the Dingle Peninsula using only a map printed in Gaelic and
the haphazard road signage that we agreed is their attempt to disorient and
frustrate invaders, or tourists, or both. We had clearly missed our turn,
but instead of going back we decided to just venture down this little
one-laner that headed in the same general direction. As I was trying to
locate us on the map Dad was speed-shifting between the hedge rows and
exclaiming, "Now I like this road - this is more like it!" I looked over at
him in astonishment as the sheep and stone walls whizzed by outside his open
window. Who was this strange man? I buckled my seatbelt (had he ever before
not reminded me?) and we bumped along like this for a few miles, slowing
down once so we could ogle a fine Irish lass who was strolling along this
picturesque country lane, talking on her cell phone. And privately I
wondered whose driveway we were racing up...
He said he wanted to hear the Jerry Garcia disc again as we rolled on down
the road, through a barnyard or two, with chickens and a few sheep
scattering before us, but the road just kept going. This mud track was
becoming so small I was sure it couldn't be an actual road. But finally,
because of some extreme hairpin turns that were easily identifiable on the
map, I figured out where we were, and lo and behold we had been happily
driving along none other than "the Pilgrim's Route"! This is the ancient way
up and over Mount Brandon, the sacred mountain from which Saint Brendan had
his vision of crossing the Atlantic, and it is well marked on the map. It
crosses hill and dale, sometimes a footpath, sometimes a country lane, but
we were on it! Of course I found great irony and satisfaction in the fact
that it wasn't until we had given up navigating towards our planned
destination that we had inadvertently found ourselves on the Pilgrim's
Route, as well as that I had been the one trying to get us into some kind of
context on the map the whole time while my dad had been whooping it up and
getting his Euro's worth out of the rental car! The role reversal was
amusing and was not lost on us at the time...
Recently a wise friend pointed out that the Buddha's "middle way" might
apply here, a way that balances the two extremes, like a kayaker who
controls her place in the flow of the river. For while some of our best
moments on this trip did seem to happen of their own accord, it also took a
great deal of planning and research to get us to that point where those
spontaneous moments could unfold. Like life itself, there must be a balance
of some sort, and if we will admit it we can see that every life is a
balance of these two influences, the one being our own efforts to get what
we think we want, the other being those random (?) occurrences that we have
no control over whatsoever, like traffic, or the weather, or an illness, or
what the insurance companies like to call "acts of God." "Life is what
happens while you're making other plans"! And of course I make plans and
decisions, too, take action toward intended outcomes, and I like some degree
of control and comfort, too. But I also know that I have found a lot of
magic in having faith, in trusting that the flow of life will take me to
places I hadn't even dreamed of! And the lightened burden when relinquishing
control and life-decision making to the Cosmos is a delectable form of
freedom not attainable through any other means. Still, sometimes I stare at
the menu of life, trying to decide what to order...
Jonathan: "Know-go and Flow-go"
Toss two chips into a flowing creek and you know one thing: they're not
going to go upstream. They're going to go with the flow, down, down toward
the primordial ocean whence came we all.
Toss two chaps into a flowing week and you know one thing . . . . You do?
What? They might go with the flow, they might not. They might go against the
flow, they might go to the pub, they might go nuts.
Especially if the younger wants to do "whatever, whatever," whose motto
could be "Serendipity-do-da," who reminds me of my childhood cat that I
dropped off the porch roof upside down to see if it really could land on its
feet (it did, just as Alex always does).
Especially if the elder wants to fix a schedule, know where tonight's bed
is, know where the best Celtic sites and sights are, know the most efficient
path from each to each. Also rents a cell phone to call for medical help.
And checks in with Judy daily.
So went my anxieties as the departure day approached. After all, I have
lived a life of domestic order, suburban schedules, juggled projects, goals,
objectives, planning calendars, and self-discipline. Reckless for me is
answering "whatever, whatever" when asked "red wine or white?"
Alex and I got to talking about the two chips, metaphors for his go-flow
lifestyle contrasted with my know-go lifestyle.
I allowed as how I want my chip to have an outboard motor, a kick-up rudder,
life jackets, flares, oars, fenders, a ballasted keel, grappling hooks,
anchors, tow-lines, charts, ship-to-shore radio, depth-finder, and a good
GPS device. Not okay for me to drift downstream, crashing over waterfalls,
tumbling through hydraulics, spinning in eddies, surrounded by frothy
drainage from cow barns.
But that's just me talking. How can I argue with the wonderful person called
Alex who goes with his flow in such an interesting way?
Soon enough we encountered the difference that distinguishes us. The
airport, for instance, offered little opportunity for choice: you go through
this gate, that counter, this checkpoint, that security check. The system is
the flow. I had no choice to go against that stream.
But when we got through all that and were in our rent-a-car, tooling along
on the wrong side of strange roads with strange signage, we had plenty of
choices. First, was I going to assert my authority as father, senior
citizen, driver, and veteran tourist? Or was he going to assert his
authority as one who could see clearly, hear acutely, lift mammoth weights,
navigate flawlessly, and beat the tar out of me if he wanted? We had never
traveled together since he became a strapping adult man.
Fortunately, the first choice I wanted to make was to stop in a pub for a
Guinness. After all, it was nearly 11:00 in the morning, and you can't go
but just so long without the strength the signs promised from Guinness. I
proposed that, and he acceded. Whence his motivation to go along with the
gag? Altruism? Self-interest? Diplomacy? Thirst? We never discussed it, so I
still don't know. But it was a pleasant interlude in what turned out to be a
pretty shabby inner-city establishment, with some pretty pathetic drunks for
any hour, especially pre-noon.
I think we set a little pattern in place right then. We took care to offer
proposals for the next move in a gentle way, never demanding, always as only
one of several feasible options. And we set about to insure that the other
wasn't getting railroaded. Consensus became our method. Each knew that the
other was capable of stating strong positions, non-negotiable, and neither
of us wanted to go there. So the two chips in the stream lashed themselves
together, one with a predilection for shaping our future, one with a
predilection for letting the future shape us. And we honored both, from time
to time, as circumstances - the flow - provided.
I still regret the one time I got rigid. After three days, we had heard no
traditional Irish music. We found out that a band would perform in a certain
pub on this particular night, but not even starting till 10 p.m. You have to
be a sedentary 67-year-old suburbanite, retired, to know why I didn't cotton
to that. And you have to be a nocturnal devotee of live music to know why
that sounded really good to Alex. Then you have to know that this was the
one night when hordes of people had flooded the peninsula for the auto races
the next day, and that the pubs would be jammed. And then you have to know
that I had the wheel of the car, that Alex was not licensed to drive this
car, and that I drove right past that pub and headed for the bed and
breakfast bed. I actually kidded myself that Alex had acceded to this
choice, but of course he had not. It was just the appearance of consensus,
not the reality.
Fortunately, we were having such a good time in general, and Alex is so
flexible, that he evidently took that as just one more playing out of
"that's the way the flow flows." He could have - for good reason - gotten
cross and grumpy. Not a hint.
He really does believe in the flow. And if you want to parse this little
episode, you can notice that because we got a decent night's sleep, we did
get up at a decent hour, and we did therefore get into a most interesting
conversation at breakfast with a couple who knew all about these auto races.
But on the other hand, we'll never know what great conversation we missed in
that bar with all that traditional Irish music whanging away in the late
night.
I guess I really do enjoy a life that combines some Know-go with some
Flow-go.
Catalogue Information
