👯♂️ TREE 642: Lawrence X Jeff
Welcome to the beginning of TREE Year 4!
I’m starting with a series where I’m trying figure out if the chill vibe of Brother Lawrence can be made available to all of us, no matter what we believe.
L A W R E N C E × J E F F
i n t r o d u c t i o n
The obvious question is why choose a 330 year-old book by French Christian who lived with a bunch of monks?
This book was super inspiring to me when I was a Christian and it’s still inspiring now that I’m not.
The text is in the public domain, so I can do what I want with it.
Lawrence wasn’t big deal leader or a properly professional Christian. He was a ‘lay brother’, i.e. he never went full monk. Instead of spending his days in contemplative prayer and study like other Carmelites, he worked in the kitchen. When he got old he became the sandal repairer (which is weird because this order of monks had barefoot in their name). His ideas are more likely to work in our everyday lives because they worked in his everyday life without him making a living from selling the ideas in self-help courses.
All truth is ours. If something is good and true, it doesn’t matter if it comes from someone who believes differently than me. If I get my ideas for how to live only from people who think/believe/act/look like me, I’ll trap myself in a small, barren existence.
Here’s how it’s going to work. I’ll post a link to a chapter. (There are 19 super short chapters. Most are well under 1000 words.) You can read it or not. I’ll write posts, with relevant quotes, about how I think we can apply Lawrence’s ideas to life. You’ll read and think and reply and share. It’ll be fun.
Here’s chapter one. We’ll get started tomorrow.
I’ve been in a kind of country mood lately. This has surprised me.
Grow slowly
Jeff