A New House
On building places for the future (+ some housekeeping)
About Legacies and Promises
One of Megan’s Maxims is as follows:
If you’re focused on leaving a legacy, you’ve forgotten about doing the work. One of those things is not your responsibility.
I’ve watched more leaders than I can count make decisions based on what they wanted to be known for, how they wanted to be remembered. Decisions that utterly failed their communities; decisions for which the leaders themselves failed to show up in any substantial way.
They failed, and absolved themselves of responsibility for that failure. They made projections toward the future, bound only by “selfish interests,” as Wendell Berry describes, rather than promises. But promises, Berry goes on to say, “bind us to someone else’s future.”1 I’ve been thinking about this idea of legacy lately. I’m skeptical of the idea, clearly. But it prompted me to see that I’ve fallen into the same trap of only considering what’s immediately relevant to me in my lifetime: what effects my work will have, what I want to see happen, and so on. I’ve come to recognize that this is incredibly shortsighted, motivated by, if not selfish, then certainly self-interested reasons.
This promise-making posture is also found in “seven generations thinking,” a First Nations principle that decisions must be made with consideration for the well-being of those who come after us, one hundred and fifty years from now. When I can’t even decide or commit to what I want to do tomorrow, thinking generationally feels almost impossible. But. If I truly believe that lives of invisible faithfulness matter, that my daily choices matter and reverberate beyond my own life, then I need to ask, to have as a structural commitment: Where does the future actually come from? What promises am I making to it? What am I building that coming generations can grasp and use?
I have little expectation2 that my work will travel very far, but it is necessary to ask these questions, I think. What we experience now across communities and institutions are the consequences of our collective refusal to consider them. If we took this question of promises to future generations seriously, what would we imagine and build now?
Alan Jacobs, building on Wendell Berry’s insight about promises to the future, observes that, “we begin to make promises to others by having a secure, a substantial, a dense place of our own in the world.” Jacobs suggests that we increase our personal density by widening our temporal bandwidth, our sense of Now, by dwelling in both the long past and the long future. That means doing the work: of curiosity, of listening, of welcome and hospitality. Of reading the past honestly and generously, of pointing toward longer horizons and different futures. Of recognizing that before we can create new paths, we must first recognize and grapple with where we stand right now.
As in every age and generation, we contend with forces known and unknown, great and small, that shape us collectively and individually. We find ourselves being systematically formed away from a capacity to perceive with clarity and care the God who is present to us in our journeys. To recognize where we are means first recognizing that we are all a “part of the main,” connected to one another through genetics, culture, dreams, and life itself, even while we also try, on occasion, to stand outside that connection.3
Entering the House
I’ve come to name my work as a “formation house,” taking as my model The Last Homely House—Rivendell, the house of Elrond: a place for rest, renewal, creation, counsel, and committed action. Houses are buildings that can be made welcoming or hostile, warm or sterile, generative or dangerous. They are, or can be, places of respite and refuge. They can become homes, and they can also simply be temporary shelters in the midst of a journey. A house has many rooms, and creates many environments, and holds many peoples.
Our intersection here serves as a rest stop or way station: a moment to step aside from the path we’ve been on and reorient ourselves. To ask the questions and have the conversations that remove blinders, expand imagination, and change behavior. No small thing. The goal of my work, my hope for us all, is to live a located life: to know the place in which we stand at any moment, to find a “secure, substantial, dense” place of our own from which to observe, imagine, and act. To be able to say: ”I know what has made me, I know who I’m becoming, and I know what today asks of me.”
That is the work in which we are all invited to participate. That is the work we model for others. That is the work that we learn to do by imitating each other. The house becomes a place of encounter. Within a formation house, we begin the slow recovery of our capacity to perceive: desire rightly ordered, sight restored, imitation consciously chosen. The work that I am invited to do, have been invited to over a lifetime, is to change how we see, understand, and imagine our lives. It’s not about you entering my world; it’s about you re-turning toward yours and building with what you find there.
And well-built houses can stand for generations, serving as home, as beacon, and as encounter.
That’s why you’ll be noticing some redecorating within the house, mainly the building of two separate rooms.
Be(com)ing x MjR
I remain committed to keeping Be(com)ing x MjR as a free newsletter for everyone. Your returning presence here means the world to me. If you’re curious about additional ways to support this work, you can: share with family, friends, and socials; leave a “tip” for the ideas you underlined in your mind; or, consider a Wayfinding Session for yourself or someone who could benefit.
The Wayfinding Session
The Wayfinding Session is now open, and Purpose-Focused Productivity Sessions have been packed away. Rather than emphasizing productivity, the Wayfinding Session is a single formation session for those who sense a disconnect between between the life they’re living and the one they want to travel toward. Before discerning where to go, I help you discern where you are, and what being in that place asks of you. You can learn more by clicking the button at the end of this issue.
The publishing schedule for Be(com)ing x MjR will shift from the sprint-based to “when it’s ready.” I think I’ve proven4 that I can write and publish regularly. But truthfully, the schedule and format became a chain, rather than a generative constraint. The questions I keep returning to, the ideas that invite me to conversation: these all require a much slower, deeper rhythm that the previous format actively hindered me from entering. My goal is to publish one “deep dive” essay per month, with “As It Turns Out” entries when they come up (because those practical, personal learnings are fun for me, and I hope, helpful for you).
People Watching
People Watching will have its own room entirely. Some of you have been kind enough to review previous iterations of my book proposal exploring what it looks like to become someone worth imitating. You’ve provided valuable and generous feedback over the last couple of years. If you’ve been wondering about that project, here’s where I’ve landed.
The work of People Watching—of naming how imitation and influence shape what we want and who we become—needs to be in the world doing things more than it needs to go through the traditional publishing process right now. I’m still treating it as A Book, but published serially! And randomly!5 I have an outline, but do not expect it to be published in any kind of order, no siree. There will be a TOC page for that sort of thing. The goal is to also publish at least one essay per month there.
People Watching podcast newsletter entries are relocated to the new room. YouTube and Apple Podcast links remain the same. If you were a guest on the show and would like updated Substack links, please let me know and I will send them to you.
The work of People Watching will also be free, but it will run on a patronage model. If you want to help make this work possible: the research, the conversations, the space to write it well and know it matters—you can support People Watching financially. Patrons who give monthly are invited into a quarterly gathering: not a bonus, just a chance to be in the room together. Monthly patronage is $5.
I hope you’ll explore the new rooms in the House of R21.5 x MjR, and that you’ll find items of interest and inspiration. Please do check out People Watching and support that work, if it resonates with you. Thank you again for being here.
Let’s be hopeful, creative, and wise—together.
Shalom,
If you’d like to take a few moments to think out loud about who you’re becoming, I offer a free 15-minute Curiosity Call as a place to start.
If you’re ready to explore where you are right now, and what your life is inviting you into, I offer a Wayfinding Session to help you reorient to your life and begin from where you are.
If you’d like to stay in the reading, subscribe.
This essay is in conversation with:
Alan Jacobs, Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader’s Guide to a More Tranquil Mind
The Indigenous Foundation, The Seven Generations Principle
Liz Bucar,
Emphasis mine.
Great hope! But little expectation.
I have always defined myself as being “outside”—even in the midst of real synergy with friends or teammates. I continue to understand myself as being outside and separate from, while also wanting to meet and connect with you (hello! I’m so glad you’re here!) in a real, true way.
To myself, if no one else.
