Howard Brinton - Wikipedia
Japan and later years[edit]
In 1949, Anna Brinton left Pendle Hill to work with AFSC. Howard continued until 1952, when he retired and the couple moved to Japan, in AFSC service. They returned to Pendle Hill in 1954. Howard's Japanese secretary, Yuki Takahashi, a widow, returned with them to help her employer write his memoirs, which have never been published. In May 1972, the nearly blind and aged Brinton, having obtained consent from his adult children, surprised everyone by marrying Takahashi.
Howard Brinton died on 9 April 1973.[7] He is buried with his wife at the Oakland Friends Cemetery, West Chester, Chester County, Pennsylvania.[8]
Publications[edit]incomplete list
A Religious Solution to the Social Problem (1934)
Quaker Education in Theory and Practice (1940)
Guide to Quaker Practice (1943)
The Society of Friends (1948)
Friends for 300 years (1952)
Pendle Hill pamphlets by Howard Brinton[edit]
A Religious Solution To The Social Problem by Howard Brinton, Pendle Hill pamphlet #2, available as a free download as .pdf file
The Quaker Doctrine of Inward Peace by Howard Brinton, Pendle Hill pamphlet #44, available as a free download as .pdf file
The Nature of Quakerism by Howard Brinton, Pendle Hill pamphlet #47, available as a free download as .pdf file
The Society of Friends by Howard Brinton, Pendle Hill pamphlet #48,available as a free download as .pdf file
Prophetic Ministry by Howard Brinton, Pendle Hill pamphlet #54,available as a free download as .pdf file
Reaching Decisions by Howard Brinton, Pendle Hill pamphlet #65,available as a free download as .pdf file
How They Became Friends by Howard Brinton, Pendle Hill pamphlet #144, available as a free download as .pdf file
Spirituality, Mind-Body, Gender, Ecology, Ageing, Peace, Scrapbook (in English and Korean)
2016/10/24
Quaker Theology #22 - Cover & Contents
Quaker Theology #22 - Cover & Contents
An Excerpt from Howard and Anna Brinton: Re-inventors of Quakerism In the Twentieth Century, An Interpretive Biography, forthcoming from FGC Quakerbridge, by Anthony Manousos
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Growing Up in “Brinton Country”
To tell the story of the Brintons or of the Beans and the Coxes, Anna’s family, is to tell the story of Quakerism as it developed in America. Anna and Howard both took pride in the fact that they could trace their ancestry to the early days of Quakerism. Quakers are not ancestor worshipers, but old Quaker families like the Brintons and the Coxes reverence, and draw inspiration from, their ancestors to a greater degree than do members of most other religious groups. To understand Howard and Anna, and many other Quakers of their generation, one must appreciate the role that ancestry played in their moral and spiritual development.
In 1935, Howard gave a talk about the importance of Quaker “ancestor worship” at a family reunion. As often was the case when discussing a serious topic, Howard began with a joke: “An old saying is that a man who has nothing to boast about but his ancestors is like a potato vine– the only good belonging to him is underground.” Howard went on to argue that giving reverent attention to one’s ancestors is not “to be despised” since ancestors can be extremely important in influencing how we develop as individuals:
“A common modern American way of thinking which holds that every tub stands on its own bottom, that every man is an isolated individual and responsible for his own ability and character is not true biologically, psychologically, nor spiritually. Those who have preceded us are bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, and we can no more separate ourselves from them than a plant can separate itself from its roots.”
For Quakers like Howard and Anna, ancestry was significant because it linked them to a “pattern of life,” a religious culture, that could not be reduced to a theological system. This Quaker culture was, paradoxically, conservative and radical at the same time. Quakers were active in the great reform movements while at the same time preserving a way of life rooted in tradition modes of dress, speech, and outlook that could not be taught in school, but which were transmitted through the family. . . .
Howard saw himself as part of a tradition, rooted in an inward spiritual experience, that went back to the beginning of the Quaker movement, and which linked him with other Quaker families. Old Quaker families did not have ancestral busts, like the Romans, or ancestral altars, like the Chinese, but they did have genealogical records that functioned in a similar fashion to link the present and the past. Howard reflected:
“As I take down from my library shelves the Smedley Book, the Sharpless Book, the Brinton Book, the Kirk Book, the Darlington Book, and the Cox Book and look at these solid, serene, strong faces expressing a simple but carefully worked out mode of life, I feel that I can understand them, but my children never will.”
One of the reasons that Howard dictated his Autobiography during the last year of his life was in hopes of conveying something about this Quaker way of life not only to his descendants, but to posterity.
To tell the story of Howard and Anna one must also tell the story of their ancestors, and of Quakers in America – a story that Anna and Howard spent a lifetime exploring, explaining and “reinventing” . . . .
Howard traced his family’s lineage back eight generations to the founders of the American line, William Brinton, Sr. (1635-1699):
“William and Ann Brinton, our first American ancestors, came early into the Society of Friends. They were married in 1659 by Friends’ ceremony seven years after the Quaker movement began. William, in his testimony regarding his deceased wife, says she “received the Truth from the first publishers of it” in 1656 and that her mother was a Friend. We do not know when William joined the Society of Friends, but, as his later life indicated, he was the kind of independent person who would join [an] outlawed radical movement. He did not hesitate to be a non-conformist even towards his fellow Quakers.”
Like most of the Quakers who settled in Pennsylvania, William came to America to escape persecution. According to “records of suffering” that Quakers scrupulously kept, “William was twice fined for attendance at a Quaker meeting and since, like other Quakers, he refused to pay, his goods were sold for five times the value of the fine.” Deprived of his property and hopes of any livelihood, he left England with his wife and son William, Jr, and arrived in America in the spring of 1684.
Upon his arrival in Philadelphia, he found a temporary residence for his wife and son and went into the wilderness to scout out the best land. “Crossing a small creek, after a journey of about 30 miles, he found just what he wanted,” wrote Howard, “fertile soil watered by small streams and abounding in springs of clear, cold water.” William returned to Philadelphia and purchased 1,000 acres of land for 10 cents per acre so that there would be enough land for his extended family.
During the first winter he lived in a cave and was kept from starving by friendly Indians. The Brintons soon moved from a cave to a log cabin. They cleared the forest, farmed the land, and held meeting for worship in their home until Concord Meetinghouse was built in 1697. Nearby, in 1704, William Brinton, Jr. (1670-1751), who is referred to by the family as “William the Younger” or “William the Builder,” built a two-story brick house in a medieval English style. This home was restored and became a National Historic Landmark in 1968. Today the Brinton family has not only a Book, but also a Website.
The Brinton family flourished in America and so did the Religious Society of Friends until the American Revolution polarized the Colonies and left Quakers marginalized. Because Friends generally did not take sides during the Revolutionary War, they lost a great deal of political and social influence. In the decades after the Revolution, Friends began to drift apart theologically and socially. Those in urban areas became increasingly influenced by evangelical Protestantism while those in the country tended to keep to the traditions and doctrines of what they called “primitive Quakerism.”
In the 1820s, these difference came to a head and American Quakers split into two camps, the Orthodox and the Hicksites. “Orthodox” refers to Quakers who emphasized the outward historical events in Scripture while Hicksites (named after Elias Hicks) referred to those who emphasized inward mystical experience. In the 1840s Orthodox Quakerism also split between those who emphasizing the inward and those emphasizing the outward aspects of religion. The Orthodox- Hicksite separation was the beginning of a series of schisms that eventually divided American Quakerism into four main branches and numerous twigs. As a result of this separation, many Orthodox Friends did not consider Hicksites to be “true Quakers” and vice versa.
Howard was a product of this separation. Born 24 July 1884, Howard grew up in a “peaceful, happy home” in a community consisting of both Orthodox and Hicksite Quakers. His hometown was West Chester, which is located 35 miles west of Philadelphia. The historian Henry Seidel Canby called Chester county “Brinton country” since this area along the Brandywine contains “two Brinton mills, Brinton’s island, Brinton’s dam, Brinton’s bridge, Brinton’s run, Brinton’s road, and Brinton’s quarry.” Howard noted that “others besides Brintons settled here of course, but most of these others sooner or later married Brintons; so we claim them all.”
Howard’s father, Edward G. Brinton, was a prominent Orthodox Friend whose Quaker genealogy was meticulously documented by his son. As Howard explained, “My ancestors for eight or nine generations were nearly all Friends. I know this because I have looked up the names and religion of some 400 of them, all settlers in early Pennsylvania. But I myself was not technically a birthright Friend, for my father was Orthodox and my mother Hicksite.”
Up until this time, being a “birthright” Friend conferred status since it meant that both one’s parents were bona fide Quakers.. . . Nowadays no distinction is usually made between birthright and “convinced” (converted) Friends.
Howard’s mother Ruthanna Brown was a Hicksite Friend whose family suffered a fall in fortune when her father, a prosperous businessman named Jeremiah Brown, made a poor investment and lost all his property. When Edward Brinton met Ruthanna at one of the gatherings of Hicksite and Orthodox Friends that took place at this time, she was an “impecunious teacher at the Hicksite Friends School in West Chester.”
Even though Howard’s mother was Hicksite and his father Orthodox, the tensions that had once characterized these two Quaker factions had largely subsided. As Howard points out, “The Hicksite and Orthodox meetings had little to do with each other religiously, but they were united through the Home Cluster” a kind of club or “social society which met monthly with a literary program.” Howard noted that “some marriages of Hicksite and Orthodox took place as a result of these gatherings, including that of my parents.”
Although Howard’s parents were married in the manner of Friends in the presence of the Mayor of Philadelphia, and their marriage certificate was worded like any other Quaker marriage certificate, some Orthodox Friends considered young Howard to be a Hicksite (and hence not a “true” Quaker). Others argued that the somewhat isolated Hicksite group to which his mother belonged was never actually “disowned” by the Orthodox Yearly Meeting, so that Howard could still be considered a birthright Friend. Eventually both Howard and his mother were received into the Orthodox meeting.
These arcane distinctions did not prevent Howard’s father from going into the farm equipment business with a prominent Hicksite named Herbert Worth. “Together they arranged many joint undertakings of the two meetings,” wrote Howard, “including such occasions as picnics on the Brandywine and boat trips on the Delaware.”
Quakers of different theological persuasions were not only able to work together, they were also able to laugh about their differences. As Howard recalled, “On one occasion my father went to a wealthy Hicksite, Philip Sharpless, to beg money for the new Y.M.C.A., which was to be open only to members of evangelical churches. They became so bogged down in a theological argument that the interview ended in a laugh and a contribution.”
Given this “mixed” background, it is not surprising that Howard eventually felt drawn to help heal the divisions that had separated Hicksite and Orthodox Friends since 1827. As he recalled later, “At the turn of this century Friends had neither sufficient religious insight nor enough humility to create a genuine synthesis. The Hicksites claimed that the separation was caused by a difference of opinion on church government. The Orthodox held that the difference was caused by a lack of agreement in theology. We young people in the Orthodox meeting in West Chester in the eighteen nineties had a vague idea that the Orthodox believed in the divinity of Christ while the Hicksite did not, but we were not at all clear what the word ‘divinity’ might mean.” It was not until 1955 that the Hicksites and Orthodox branches of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting united.
The Brintons had four children three boys (Howard, George, Edward) and a girl (Marguerite) who arrived when Howard was twelve (he says that his cousin Nan “served as a sister until then”). The Brinton household was “well supplied with pets, including rabbits and crows as well as cats, dog, and chickens.” Edward Brinton’s business ventures thrived – he started a successful creamery and later opened a farm equipment warehouse and the family was well off enough to have a servant, an attractive Irish girl whom the children called “Aunt Annie.”
A family crisis occurred when Edward Brinton showed symptoms of tuberculosis. Edward’s brother Ralph (Nan’s father) had died of TB, so the matter was considered quite serious. The doctor recommended that Edward go to New Mexico for a cure. It was at this time that Herbert Worth became Edward’s business partner. He took care of the warehouse while Edward took time off to regain his health. Edward left his three sons to the care of his wife and ended up spending a year in New Mexico. There he enjoyed the high desert landscape, rode on horseback and had some interesting adventures that he reported in letters to his family. One of his most memorable experiences was visiting the Indians call Penitentes who tortured themselves and caused one of their members to hang on the cross in the imitation of Christ. By hiding his camera under his coat, Edward photographed this ritual, even though taking pictures was forbidden.
The firm of Brinton and Worth sold carriages and agricultural equipment from a large warehouse. Howard and his brothers often played there, and it made such an impression that at age ten he wrote one of his first poems, called “Pop’s Warehouse.” Howard learned how to ride a horse and also how to harness a horse to a carriage, a “very complicated operation.”
Howard prided himself on the practical skills that he learned from his father. “When I reflected on the whole course of my education from its beginning to my doctoral dissertation,” wrote Howard, “I consider the most important part of it to be the time when I received a complete set of carpenter’s tools from my father. I had a shop in our attic where I spent several hours each day. I made and repaired almost everything that was make-able or repairable.”
Howard’s skills as a handyman and carpenter proved extremely useful when he eventually became the director of Pendle Hill. There he not only taught courses, wrote books, advised students, planned curriculum, and did administrative work, he also did plumbing and repairs. Howard proved similarly adept at constructing lab equipment when he taught physics at Earlham College.
According to Howard, his first religion was “nature worship.” He experienced “a kind of religious ecstasy” in exploring the meandering tributaries and streams of West Chester. “Of all the streams, the Brandywine received the most reverence.” At Haverford College, he wrote a rather flowery essay celebrating the river that had been to him “a friend and companion.” In the spirit of Wordsworth and Coleridge, he bemoaned the “cold hand of science” that caused him to “wander, wonderless, amid the great mysteries of nature.”
Howard is probably referring to his decision to major in mathematics and physics, but he never really lost his love for the natural world. When he eventually married and started a family of his own, they were known for their numerous pet animals, including rabbits that Howard loved to have nearby, especially when writing. One of his Howard’s deeply felt concerns in his final years at Pendle Hill was that Highway 476 (known locally as the “Blue Route”) would pave over nearby Crum Creek.
Howard compares this early stage of his life to that of the romantic child described in Wordsworth’s “Ode: Intimations of Immortality” (which Howard had memorized along with numerous other poems). Howard wrote: “I was Nature’s priest’ and attended by the vision splendid,’ but it was many years before it faded into the light of common day.’ I remembered clearly the vivid colors in nature pervaded by a kind of supernatural glow.”
Howard apparently inherited his love of poetry from his grandmother, Deborah Garrett Brinton. She was a “very strict Quaker, who wore a plain bonnet and shawl” and sometimes took Howard to Meeting in West Chester. She also read him verses out of a book called Original Poems. As a child, Howard once asked: “Why does Grandmother read such sad poetry?” Later, however, Howard himself would write “sad poetry” as an outlet for feelings that he could not otherwise express.
Howard’s father was an outgoing and friendly man who loved to arrange picnics and other social events for both Hicksite and Orthodox Friends. One of these monthly events, called the Home Cluster, included a literary program with something called “spice,” which entailed making fun of various members. “Father was a very successful ‘spice’ writer,” recalled Howard, who carried on this tradition with Log Nights at Pendle Hill.
Howard also showed an early interest in science. When he visited his Grandmother, he “spent most of the time reading and illustrating a book about astronomy.” Howard also recalled that Charles Chester, “a weighty [i.e. influential and well- respected] Quaker farmer who was clerk of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting,” would discuss scientific topics with the boys “the constellations in the sky and the minerals in the earth” and once he showed them “an Indian arrowhead he found in his field.”
Another important aspect of Howard’s development was his religious upbringing. He declares the Quaker faith “the most mature in existence” and it clearly made a profound impression on his mind, but many of his childhood memories of Quaker meeting for worship are tinged with humor. He describes several melodious Quaker preachers on the facing bench who would chant in the old Quaker style, a “medley of Scripture texts set to the Gregorian chant.” (As liberalism took hold in the first decades of the 20th century, this style of singsong preaching would largely disappear among Friends.)
Howard also recalled those who gave rather odd, quaint messages, such as that of a farmer who stood up and intoned: “Dear Friends, I would advise you to keep sheep. Their wool is wearable, the flesh is eatable, and even their horns are good for making buttons.’ This was sung in the usual chant.”
Another memorable visiting Friend turned to a member of meeting and said, “Thou art a speckled bird” (an allusion to Jeremiah 12: 9).
“As he went on, his sermon became more peculiar and a Friend stood up beside him and asked him to discontinue his remarks immediately,” recalled Howard. “The speaker left the room, went downstairs, and preached up through the hot air register so he could still be heard.”
Howard observed that most meetings were “without any unusual happenings.” He attended meeting for worship twice a week (once on First Day and once in midweek at school) and found them generally “inspiring.”
“It might seem that the silent worship is too mature for a young boy,” observed Howard, “but I did not find it to be the case. The sermons were very simple. There was no theology or social problems; only a simple appeal to follow the inward light wherever it might lead. It was accordingly an appeal to feeling and not to the intellect.”
Another important influence on Howard’s upbringing was the West Chester Friends School, which, he later recalled, “influenced [him] more than any other school of the many that [he] attended.”
All his life Howard was able to quote from memory a poem about the school written when he was a little boy a poem he was exceedingly proud of when he first wrote it:
In West Chester down on Church Street Is the school to
which I go.
It isn’t much for beauty And it isn’t much for show.
But I tell you it’s a dandy. It’s the place to learn the rule.
And generally people call it Church Street Friends
School.
In a letter he wrote at Mills College in 1932, Howard reminisced about the importance of this school and expressed the wish that his own children could have the benefit of such an education:
“My most important habits, both good and bad, were formed within its walls. There are four young and tender Brintons in this house, all eager to learn, and their education in this un-Quakerly land presents a real problem. I would, if I could, conjure up out of the past that red brick building, even though it is not an architectural marvel, and those boys and girls of all kinds who were in it, and more important than anything else I would have Teacher Abbie, Teacher Julia, and Teacher Elizabeth teach it, and then I would send my children to this school rather than to any other that I know.”
Much of Howard’s childhood was spent not in the school or meetinghouse, but in the outdoors. He reminisces at length about the times that he and his “gang” of friends spent trekking about the “Barren Woods” and following various streams. They made tree-houses, built dams, cooked dinners outdoors, caught frogs and fish and butterflies. Howard confesses that he later went out to shoot rabbits and concludes, “I always have been very glad that I did not hit any.”
One of his most memorable activities was helping to form a society of boys called the Boys’ Sporting League.
“We made for it a very elaborate constitution which was never followed,” he recalled. The League required an oath of membership, which all the boys were eager to take except for one who presumably adhered to the Quaker testimony against oath taking. The League meant so much to Howard that he kept the minutes of this quaint, quasi-Quaker society.
“The society met at the home of Joseph Cope. There being no business on hand, the society adjourned to play with the turtles and give them a bath. Signed: George Comfort, Secretary.”
Howard includes several more pages of minutes, which seem like a Lilliputian version of those kept by adult Quaker Meetings. . . .
Camping and hiking on the banks of the Brandywine was “one of the most important undertakings” of Howard’s childhood. Howard and a group of friends once went on a weeklong walking tour about 100 miles to the Susquehanna River and back. Another time Howard and his friends walked from Harper’s Ferry down the Shenandoah Valley to the Luray Caverns a trip of around 100 miles. These excursions meant so much to Howard and company that they took detailed notes, which Howard preserved and included in his Autobiography.
Reading Howard’s recollections of his childhood, it is easy to see why he placed so much emphasis on “organic community” in his later life. Howard grew up in a close-knit Quaker community with ties of friendship and family that were interwoven with a love of nature and a sense of God’s presence in everyday affairs. From this community he learned to be both practical and mystical. He acquired a love of science as well as of poetry. He also learned to appreciate those of different religious background – an important trait since he ended up working for nearly every branch of Quakerism, including the Orthodox, Hicksite, Gurneyite, Wilburite/Conservative, “pastoral” (i.e. meetings led by paid pastors, as in conventional Christian churches) and “unprogrammed” (worship without prearranged liturgy, as were the early Friends’ meetings).
Dreamy, introspective, and highly intelligent, Howard was still quite immature when he left “Brinton Country” at age sixteen and entered the turbulent world of Haverford College. Here his faith would be deepened by new discoveries in science and philosophy, and he would find a mentor in one of modern Quakerism’s greatest thinkers and writers, Rufus Jones.
Meanwhile, three thousand miles away, Anna Shipley Cox, the grand daughter of one of Quakerism’s most controversial figures, was growing up in a very different Quaker environment the world of independent Western Friends.
Growing Up a Western Quaker: Anna Shipley Cox
Like Howard, Anna’s life was profoundly influenced by her forebears, particularly her grandparents, Joel Bean (1825-1914) and his wife Hannah Elliot Shipley Bean (1830-1909). When Anna and Howard retired to Matsudo (their cottage at Pendle Hill, whose name means “Pine Door” in Japanese), Anna placed a painting of Grandmother Bean, in her Quaker cap and kerchief, in a prominent place.
Howard deeply admired the Beans. In recounting the life of this important Quaker couple, he noted that both were equally “gifted and consecrated” ministers:
“[Joel Bean] was born of Quaker parents in 1825 in New Hampshire and died in Hawaii in 1914. In 1859 he married, in Philadelphia, Hannah E. Shipley, sister of Samuel R. Shipley, who founded the Provident Life and Trust Company, and daughter of Thomas Shipley, a well known abolitionist. She was as gifted and consecrated as he and, like him, a highly acceptable minister. Under a sense of Divine Guidance they went to Hawaii in 1861, where they traveled for nine months in the ministry. Ten years later, they traveled extensively with a similar concern in England, Scotland, and Ireland, and in 1882 Joel Bean accompanied Isaac Sharp in his visits to American meetings.”
Joel and Hannah were what Quakers called “weighty” or “public” Friends, highly respected both in the United States and in England. During their stay in England they became friends with the leading lights of British Quakerism, such as Bevan Braithwaite, Isaac Sharp, and others, who visited them in Iowa and kept up a lifelong correspondence. Though the Beans were conservative in their outward behavior and lived like the “Quaker of the Olden Time,” according to Augustus Murray, they were open to the intellectual currents of their era – evolution, “Higher Criticism” of the Bible, and the latest scientific discoveries.
Like the Brintons, the Beans were a two-career couple. Hannah was a school teacher. Joel taught school and later became vice president of a bank. Both served as clerks of Iowa Yearly Meeting.
Their lives changed dramatically when they returned from England in 1877. The revival movement which was spreading like wildfire throughout the West reached Iowa and radically transformed Iowa Yearly Meeting. “The Revival spread,” wrote Bean. “As it gained power it became intolerant of dissent. Opposition was suppressed and resistance silenced. It was thus that unity was claimed. West Branch was the main point of attack and Revival aggression.They regarded themselves advanced to an experience and knowledge of truth to which no others had attained. Elders of sound judgment and discernment, were powerless to stem the stem the tide. Few could know what we passed through in that, and a few subsequent years, of desertion of friends, of charges of unsoundness, and of heresy.”
The Beans did their best to reconcile the differences among Friends, but their efforts were in vain. Iowa Yearly Meeting split into evangelical and Conservative branches.
“The strain wore me down,” wrote Joel, “and preyed upon my health.” The Beans decided to “remove in 1883 to California and to retire if possible from the conflict.” In San Jose, the Beans formed a worship group which met without a pastor. Because California Yearly Meeting hadn’t yet been formed, the Beans asked for recognition as a monthly meeting from Honey Creek Quarterly Meeting in Iowa, but were refused, even though the Friends Church in San Jose was faltering and the Beans’ meeting was flourishing with an attendance of over forty, including many well-known and respected Friends.
In 1885 the Beans built a meetinghouse and in 1889 formed a non-profit organization called the College Park Association of Friends, independent of any quarterly or yearly meeting. Finally, in 1893, Iowa Yearly Meeting withdrew its recognition of Joel as a recorded minister after he failed to answer doctrinal questions “soundly.” In 1898, the entire Bean family (including Anna), along with other San Jose Friends, was removed from membership by New Providence Monthly Meeting in Iowa. This removal stirred international controversy among Friends.
In 1884, a year after the Beans moved to San Jose, Charles Cox, a mathematics instructor who graduated from Haverford College, moved to California to marry their daughter Lydia. He had met her while he was principal of the Friends Academy at Le Grande, Iowa. (Lydia taught there after graduating from Penn College.) Charles was a professor of mathematics at the College of the Pacific from 1886-1891, and then was a member of the mathematics department at Stanford University from 1891-1900. Charles then left academia and turned to selling insurance through the Provident Life and Trust Company of Philadelphia. He was a deeply committed Quaker. For fourteen years he served as president of the College Park Association, which was founded by his father-in-law.
Anna was born in 1887 in San Jose, California, to the Beans’ daughter Lydia and her husband Charles Cox. Anna grew up next door to her famous grandparents and visited them often. Traveling Friends frequently came to her grandparent’s home and shared stories of their travels to exotic places. An English Friend named Isaac Sharp was one of Anna’s favorites: he told her about going to Japan to a house where the walls were paper-thin and noticing little holes in the wall where “black eyes” peered through to see what the Englishman had underneath his clothes when he went to bed. He also told Anna about a Norwegian Friend who trained his parrot to say: “Dear Isaac Sharp’s again in Norway.”
During the summer the Beans went on vacation to their cottage in Pacific Grove, not far from Monterey. There the Chautauqua Assembly pitched its tents and speakers held forth on a variety of inspiring and stimulating topics. (Chautaquas were an educational movement popular in the late 19th and early 20th century, with speakers, preachers, teachers, musicians and various forms of entertainment for the whole family.) Children played in the grove and on the seashore. The Beans held meetings for worship at the beach, in which little Anna no doubt took part. One participant recalled what it was like: “Imagine the outward setting of the meeting, the semicircular beach, the protecting blue cliffs, the glorious blue sky, the softly breaking waves, the peaceful silence. Presently the sweet voice of Hannah Bean broke the silence with the words of prayer: ‘Beside thy sea, O God, we turn to the light of Thy presence like that of the Master on the shores of Galilee.’”
The Beans’ cottage at Pacific Grove became a place for family holidays where “grand children learned the possibilities of sand and rocks and sea.” Birthdays, honeymoons and other celebrations took place there. (Howard and Anna spent time in Pacific Grove on their honeymoon.) There were family picnics in the grove and poetry readings at “Organ Rock.” This scenic place was where little Anna spent many of the happiest times in her childhood.
She also enjoyed attending meeting for worship at San Jose Meeting, which she later called her favorite meeting, no doubt because it was thriving and lively. As a British Friend observed, “The Friends’ Meeting in San Jose, attended by Joel Bean, contains many Friends known even in this country – the family of Samuel Brun and Anna Valley, from Nimes; Augustine Taber and his family (he is a brother to Susan T. Thomas recently in England; Elizabeth Shelley, and some of the Professors of the neighbouring Stanford University. They have an ordinary attendance of about forty, and are growing.”
The Beans were conservative in their dress and behavior, but open to new ideas. They didn’t drink, smoke, dance or go to plays, but Joel published dozens of poems in Quaker publications and was very fond of the Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier. Hannah did not wear any jewelry, not even a wedding ring, but she wore a lovely white silk bonnet when she was being courted by Joel. (Anna wore a wedding ring, but Howard never would – it seemed un-Quakerly to him.) Despite the Quaker testimony against play acting, Joel took Anna to see her first play, Antigone, in the original Greek, when she was only ten years old.
“The main figure was a revered minister in the Society of Friends,” recalled Anna, “so grandfather thought he’d take a chance on it, and he got me interested in Greek for the rest of my life. I’d never seen a play before, and it was a great experience.”
Anna also learned about “traveling in the ministry” through her grandparents. Having met Hawaiian kings as well as the British Quaker aristocracy, the Beans had many tales to tell of their far-flung and sometimes perilous travels.
“Grandfather went out to the Hawaiian islands because he wanted to see what the New England missionary enterprise there meant for Friends,” recalled Anna.
“After staying there a year he decided that it wasn’t our way and he came back. The king tried to persuade him to stay and offered him a school, and [even] offered him a strip of land from the mountain top to the sea. It came right down through what is now the business district of Honolulu. If Grandfather stayed, we might have been in the fix of those missionary children it tells about in [James Michener’s novel] Hawaii – where you see how the big plantations and the monetary interests are in the same names as grandfather’s friends, the first generation of missionaries. . .”
Voyaging across the Pacific could be very risky in those days, particularly for parents with infants. Recalled Anna: “When Grandfather and Grandmother went to Hawaii in 1862, they took my mother who was a little baby. Someone had the idea of giving Grandmother a tin box it was the size of a breadbox, and we used it as a cake box. The label said it could be used for a bathtub for the baby on the boat, and if she died at sea to bury her. That was a relic of my grandmother’s early explorations.”
Like Howard, Anna spent her early years in a secure, close-knit, semi-rural Quaker community that adhered to traditional ways: “[Anna’s parents] Charles and Lydia Bean Cox lived in College Park, a suburb of San Jose, California, and here their two daughters grew up in a redwood shingled house on a large corner lot. The streets, unpaved and without sidewalks, were lined with beautiful poplar trees. Yellow leaves raked into heaps in the autumn made lovely bonfires. There were few homes near them. But the little Friends’ meeting house was less than two blocks down the street. Here Anna and her younger sister, Catharine, learned to sit quietly, which they felt deeply and pondered.”
Anna described her birthplace as a “transplanted village of mostly New Englanders who lived like [their] forebears in a Quaker community where everybody did everything together, and looked out for each other.”
Since both their parents were school teachers, the Cox girls received their elementary education at home. They attended a local intermediate school.
In her declining years Anna observed that her early training helped her in her work at Pendle Hill.
“I had a good experience in my childhood,” she recalled. “[I was] initiated into things I was going to have to do afterwards in my life, and one was begging money from people. I learned to write not by the copy book but by writing letters to the older Friends to help in the autumn with the California Indians, and in the spring in helping on the Friends School in Ramallah in Palestine.”
An eager and able student, Anna was sent to Westtown, a co-ed prep school located in West Chester, Howard’s hometown. To enter Westtown at that time, students were required to be members of an officially recognized meeting. Since the San Jose meeting her grandfather started was unaffiliated and therefore unrecognized, Anna applied at age twelve for membership in Twelfth Street meeting in Philadelphia. (She remained a member of that meeting for the rest of her life.) At Westtown she encountered excellent teachers and memorized her Latin grammar, thanks to Hannah Pennell, a woman whose toughness Anna remembered with fondness: “She was the best drill master I ever had.”
Discipline and hard work were key to Anna’s academic success as well as a mark of her character. And her diligence paid off. In 1906, she was admitted to Stanford University. During the spring of her freshman year the great San Francisco earthquake shook San Jose and Northern California. According to her sister, Anna was unfazed: “It was characteristic that Anna went off on her bicycle about two hours after the quake to catch her usual train to Palo Alto. Riding with her friends to the University, she and they were shocked by the devastation: deep cracks in the stone walls, and many of the recently constructed buildings reduced to rock heaps. The front walls of the church and the tall entrance tower lay shattered on the ground.”
Classes at Stanford were cancelled for the rest of that semester, but resumed in the fall.
Anna majored in Classics and had the opportunity to study with the famous Quaker Classicist Augustus Taber Murray who would in 1928 take a leave of absence to become the religious advisor of America’s first Quaker president, Herbert Hoover.
Anna completed her four years at Stanford with honors and went on to complete her doctorate in Classics in 1917 at age thirty – no mean achievement, especially for a woman. (Howard did not complete his doctorate until he was over forty.)
Anna’s grandmother did not live to see her beloved granddaughter graduate. Hannah Bean died in San Jose on January 31, 1909, at age 78, after a “slight indisposition” and “without a moment’s suffering.” According to her daughter Catharine, “the sad news went like a flame over San Jose and every one had a word of love; the wires carried it east and west and kindred and friends arose to call her blessed.’”
Not long after Hannah’s death, Joel moved to Hawaii to be with Catharine and her family. There he spent his final years enjoying a much deserved rest. In 1914 he passed away peacefully at age 89 in a tropical paradise that most New Englanders only dream about.
Like her grandparents, Anna loved traveling to exotic places.
“It runs in families, this taste for travel,” Anna once observed. “Friends have a great propensity for going about doing good, especially when doing good involves going about.”
During her summer vacations, Anna often traveled abroad with her legendary Aunt Catharine Shipley, also known as Aunt Kate. The colorful and eccentric Quaker matriarch came from a wealthy Philadelphia family and did pretty much as she pleased.
“It was Aunt Kate who got me over being excessively timid,” Anna confided to Eleanor Price Mather, who could not imagine Anna ever being fearful. “At Westtown, I was so timid I could hardly brace up to anything,” Anna insisted. “It was Aunt Kate and her trips that cured me. I carried luggage and bought tickets, and waited on Aunt Kate and Cousin Sue Shipley. Once in Switzerland a hotel manager said to them, ‘These are your rooms. The maid can go downstairs.’ ‘There is no maid,’ said Aunt Kate frostily.”
Copyright © by Anthony Manousos.
Reprinted by permission.
<< Contents
Howard and Anna Brinton: Anthony Manousos: 9781937768102: Amazon.com: Books
Howard and Anna Brinton: Anthony Manousos: 9781937768102: Amazon.com: Books
A Beautiful Portrait of a Powerful Quaker Couple
ByJim F. Wilsonon August 19, 2015
Format: Paperback
This is a beautifully written biography of a Quaker couple whose powerful presence pervasively influenced the Quaker community for much of the 20th century. Their lasting influence can be found in organizations and essays and through their life example as well. They were the catalysts for the founding of the Pacific Yearly Meeting on the West Coast, and for the flourishing of Pendle Hill (a Quaker community devoted to study and practice) on the East Coast.
Writing a biography of a couple is not easy. The biographer has two foci and if not handled well it can become somewhat confusing. Manousos strikes just the right balance. It helps that Manousos is writing about a married couple so that their lives overlap. I was impressed that Manousos was able to balance their lives so that the reader gets a good portrait of Howard and Anna as individuals, and Howard and Anna as a couple. Manousos does this by devoting some chapters to Howard, some chapters to Anna, and other chapters, or sections of chapters, about their life as a married couple. Taken together the reader gets a multi-faceted portrait of these two powerful personalities and their interactions.
Reading this book also gives us insight into the struggles and schisms that pervaded the Quaker community during the period covered. The Brinton’s knew, and worked with, Quakers of different persuasions, while retaining a strong commitment to their own understanding. The Brinton’s were a significant force in the emerging Liberal Quaker perspective and their legacy is strongest among those who align themselves with that tradition (that would be the ‘Independent’ Yearly Meetings, such as the Pacific Yearly Meeting, and more broadly those affiliated with Friends General Conference).
If there is a weakness in the book, I would say it is in the way that Evangelical Quakers are characterized. The book frequently uses the term ‘fundamentalist’ to describe the Evangelical Quaker tradition. The term is being used loosely and, I think, somewhat inaccurately. Most Evangelicals are not fundamentalists. Fundamentalism is a particular tradition or perspective in Conservative Christianity with specific doctrines and formulations that do not necessarily map onto the Evangelical tradition. To be fair to the author, it appears that the Brintons used the term in this loose, and I would argue misleading, way; so Manousos is reflecting that usage. Still, I think it would have been helpful to point out that distinction. This, however, is a minor point and does not undermine the efficacy of the biography.
For those who, like me, are Liberal Quakers, this book will open a significant chapter of that history. For those who are Quakers of other persuasions, this book has many thoughtful insights regarding the Quaker tradition and its overall place in Christianity and World Religions. And if you want to be inspired by a couple that embodied the Quaker Spirit in their lives, their marriage, and their work, this book is highly recommended.
LA Quaker: Yuki Brinton and the Autobiography of Howard Brinton
LA Quaker: Yuki Brinton and the Autobiography of Howard Brinton
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Yuki Brinton and the Autobiography of Howard Brinton
Today, as I do my final revision of my biography of Howard and Anna Brinton, I feel a deep sense of gratitude to Yuki Takahashi Brinton for transcribing Howard's autobiography during the final year of his life. Without her help, and cooperation, I would not have been able to write my biography of the Brintons, as I explain in this epilogue.
Origins of the Autobiography of Howard Brinton
For over thirty years, the Autobiography of Howard Brinton, one of the foremost exponents of 20th century Quakerism, lay in a cardboard box, unread and virtually unknown. I learned of it when I gave a series of talks to promote a book I had written about Western unprogrammed Quakers. During my presentations I invariably discussed Howard and Anna Brinton because they startedFriends Bulletin (the Western Quaker magazine that I used to edit) and played an essential role in the founding of Pacific Yearly Meeting, whose history I chronicled in AWestern Quaker Reader. I bemoaned the fact that little had been written about the Brintons, who were key figures in the development of American Quakerism both in the Eastern as well as in the Western USA. I concluded that someone should write a book-length study of these important figures, as was the case with other leading Quakers of this period, such as Henry Cadbury, Rufus Jones, Clarence Pickett, Thomas Kelly, and Douglas Steere.
After I gave this talk in Philadelphia, a lively, white-haired woman stepped forward and introduced herself as Catharine Cary, the daughter of Anna and Howard Brinton. She asked if I knew about an Autobiography that her father had dictated to Yuki Brinton just prior to his death. I confessed that I had not heard of it, but was very interested in seeing such a document. I also wondered if any historian was working on this project. I was surprised to discover that this unpublished memoir had been languishing in the Haverford College Quaker collection for 30 years and no one had written anything about it.
I was given a photocopy of this work, which turned out to be over 130 pages long and was full of personal information not found anywhere else. Unlike his teacher Rufus Jones, Howard was reticent about his personal life and revealed little about it in print. His one attempt at personal history, a talk for the Historical Society entitled“Friends for 75 Years,” provided more theological than autobiographical data.
One reason that this Autobiography may have been dormant for so many years is that it was the “offspring” of an unusual marriage, which I describe in my biography of the Brintons. In May 1972, three years after the death of his first wife Anna, with whom he had been married for over fifty years and produced four children, Howard married Yuki Takahashi, a Japanese teacher, translator, and student of Quakerism. Howard was 88 years old, nearly blind, and in failing health. Yuki was 60 years old, though she looked much younger. Howard decided to re-marry because he was in failing health and needed a caretaker, but his relationship with Yuki was much deeper than that and was based on a friendship going back two decades. The marriage lasted less than a year, but it produced a remarkable memoir that Howard dictated to Yuki during his final days. This collaborative effort, written under the shadow of mortality and lovingly if not always accurately transcribed, enhances our understanding not only of Howard’s life but also of 20th century Quakerism.
While it is uncertain whether Howard intended for his memoir to be published, he did devote his usual care to writing it and probably had some thought of its being published or at least read by future historians. After Howard’s death, Yuki sent Anna Brinton Wilson (“Cousin Nan”) a copy of the Autobiography. She sent back comments and wrote, “I shall want to buy a copy of the book as soon as it is out.”[1] It is clear that at least one member of the Brinton family felt that the manuscript was publishable. Most felt it needed editing and fact-checking, and did not want it to be published.
Because of her Japanese upbringing, Yuki was also reluctant to share this work, or any details about her life. It took considerable coaxing for me to find out as much as I did about her life and her relationship to Howard. In a letter date August 22, 2004, she wrote: “I enjoyed talking with you. I enjoyed because you listened! That’s why I talked too much. That is dangerous.”
Where Yuki saw danger, I saw opportunity. Besides, I very much enjoyed listening to this remarkable woman tell her story. She had a lot of wisdom to share, as well as great humility—qualities that are usually connected. Here are some facts I was able to glean about her remarkable life.
Born on Dec. 20, 1912, Yuki Takahashi was one of five children born in Dairen, Manchuria, to Motokichi Takahashi (1873-1920) and Naoko Takahashi (1881-1971). Yuki’s father was a high-ranking Japanese government official who had majored in political science at Princeton University. There he met Woodrow Wilson, whom he greatly admired, and became a Presbyterian. Yuki’s father was sent as a Japanese envoy to the United States after WWI, where he died of a heart attack in Seattle, Washington, at age 47.
Yuki’s family had moved from Manchuria to Tokyo, Japan, in 1914. There Yuki was educated at a private school run by Sophia Anabelle Irwin and Robert Irwin. She was trained as a kindergarten teacher. In the 1930s she worked as a kindergarten teacher in Dairen, Manchuria.
Yuki’s sister Taneko went to Pendle Hill in 1939 and stayed until war broke out between Japan and the United States in 1942. At that time, her sister returned to Japan. Hearing her sister’s glowing reports about Pendle Hill sparked Yuki’s interest in Quakerism. She eventually went to work at the Quaker Center in Tokyo around 1950.
A prominent Quaker named Passmore Elkinton introduced Howard to Yuki, who became his interpreter and assistant. Impressed by her passion for Quakerism, he encouraged Yuki to come to Pendle Hill, even though she felt her English was not good enough.
There she translated Friends for Three Hundred Years into Japanese, a daunting task she was able to accomplish with the help of Howard and Elizabeth Vining.
In transcribing Howard's autobiography, Yuki was painfully conscious that she lacked the editorial skill that Anna possessed, but did her best. Howard also did his best to recall what happened in his life, but with his failing health and eyesight, he had to rely on his memory and could not verify dates and other details. How much of what Yuki wrote were Howard’s exact words, and how accurate some of Howard’s memories were, we will never know for certain. I have done my best to verify names and dates, and was surprised to find that most of the names and dates that Howard remembered could be verified. I became convinced that, despites its many deficiencies, Howard’s Autobiography is an invaluable resource and an excellent starting point for a biographer.
Many of the errors are trivial. Because of her difficulties in pronouncing English, Yuki sometimes mixed up“L’s” and “R’s” (as in the sentence, “we attended a concert in London where the English loyalty showed up”). Some of the errors involved recalling events out of order, like recounting his trip to Scotland after his first trip to Britain Yearly Meeting rather than after his second.
Howard was also unable to polish the style and to make his narrative flow as he would if he had been able to read and edit what he had written. According to Yuki, Howard’s daughter Lydia helped in editing the Autobiography and it would not have been readable without her assistance.
“I am undertaking this with much hesitation and some embarrassment,” Howard wrote. “My principal handicap is that I cannot read or write (because of my poor eye sight) so I am dictating these memoirs to my secretary and general helper Yuki Takahashi….In dictating this I cannot go back and make revisions. I must always go forward recklessly, not always knowing just where sentences or paragraphs may end.”
Because Howard had a disciplined mind, he was able to write coherently in spite of these handicaps. His lifelong exposure to Quaker autobiography and journals no doubt helped prepare him for this work. He liked to reminisce about his past and had also been thinking of writing a memoir since he was in his forties.[2]
Although the memoirs contain inaccuracies, as one would expect from such a “raw” work, they also have the freshness of a tape-recorded oral history. In some cases, Howard reveals feelings and opinions that he would have expressed guardedly or not at all in a work less “reckless.” For instance, when he describes going to Friends World Committee Conference in Oxford in 1952, soon after the publication of Friends for 300 Years, Howard says, “I sent a copy… to every American delegate. Many of the American delegates were from Pastoral meetings. I wanted to be sure that they knew what real Quakerism was.”[3]This unusually frank comment reveals quite clearly that Friends for 300 Years was not written as objective history, but to promote an unprogrammed Friends’ perspective of Quakerism. He also talks about mystical experiences that he had at Glastonbury and frankly discloses his personal feelings while working on numerous Quaker projects.
The memoir that Howard and Yuki had worked on for a year extended as far as Howard’s trip to Japan in 1952. This being time when he and Yuki met, it is a fitting conclusion to their collaborative effort. As Howard tells us as well as his grateful amanuensis and spouse, “the most important event [that happened to me] in Tokyo was to secure Yuki Takahashi as my secretary and guide and interpreter.”
After Howard’s death, Henry Cadbury asked Yuki if she’d like to stay on at Pendle Hill to assist in the library. She accepted the offer and stayed until 1993 when she moved, somewhat reluctantly, to Kendal, a Quaker retirement center near Pendle Hill. There she died on July 3, 2006, after a brief illness. Her memorial minutes noted :
At Pendle Hill she helped and befriended many foreign students and was a gracious presence representing Japanese culture. She also served faithfully for many years on the Pendle Hill publications committee.
Yuki had a keen eye for small things: for English expressions like “Thank you very much” and all cats for they spoke Japanese, and modest gifts like oranges or cookies, or an introduction to her friend who might become your friend, too. Sometimes the gift was a sharp question but often an invitation to tea or Scrabble. With children she became a child, and with adults a keen watcher as her hearing grew less serviceable.
One of her gifts was her devotion to Howard Brinton. Had it not been for Yuki, we would have no way of knowing the personal side of Howard’s life. For this reason, I feel a profound debt to Yuki for encouraging Howard to persevere with his memoirs. Without her labor of love, I probably would not have undertaken this biography, my own labor of love.
----------
[1] See “from Anna Brinton Wilson’s letter 1973 or ’74,” Box 1189.
[2] See letter to Mary James, Mills College, June 18th 1930. “As I sit here looking out my study window on San Francisco Bay I am attempting to conjure up on the dim background of the hills beyond it the faint images of the time when I first set my feet on the long road to learning. They came with great difficulty at first and then faster and fast like ghosts pouring out of a deserted building…” He wrote about the importance of West Chester Friends School and the “Boys Sporting League” and other childhood memories, including poems that later appear in his Autobiography.
[3] Autobiography, p. 96.
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Yuki Brinton and the Autobiography of Howard Brinton
Today, as I do my final revision of my biography of Howard and Anna Brinton, I feel a deep sense of gratitude to Yuki Takahashi Brinton for transcribing Howard's autobiography during the final year of his life. Without her help, and cooperation, I would not have been able to write my biography of the Brintons, as I explain in this epilogue.
Origins of the Autobiography of Howard Brinton
For over thirty years, the Autobiography of Howard Brinton, one of the foremost exponents of 20th century Quakerism, lay in a cardboard box, unread and virtually unknown. I learned of it when I gave a series of talks to promote a book I had written about Western unprogrammed Quakers. During my presentations I invariably discussed Howard and Anna Brinton because they startedFriends Bulletin (the Western Quaker magazine that I used to edit) and played an essential role in the founding of Pacific Yearly Meeting, whose history I chronicled in AWestern Quaker Reader. I bemoaned the fact that little had been written about the Brintons, who were key figures in the development of American Quakerism both in the Eastern as well as in the Western USA. I concluded that someone should write a book-length study of these important figures, as was the case with other leading Quakers of this period, such as Henry Cadbury, Rufus Jones, Clarence Pickett, Thomas Kelly, and Douglas Steere.
After I gave this talk in Philadelphia, a lively, white-haired woman stepped forward and introduced herself as Catharine Cary, the daughter of Anna and Howard Brinton. She asked if I knew about an Autobiography that her father had dictated to Yuki Brinton just prior to his death. I confessed that I had not heard of it, but was very interested in seeing such a document. I also wondered if any historian was working on this project. I was surprised to discover that this unpublished memoir had been languishing in the Haverford College Quaker collection for 30 years and no one had written anything about it.
I was given a photocopy of this work, which turned out to be over 130 pages long and was full of personal information not found anywhere else. Unlike his teacher Rufus Jones, Howard was reticent about his personal life and revealed little about it in print. His one attempt at personal history, a talk for the Historical Society entitled“Friends for 75 Years,” provided more theological than autobiographical data.
One reason that this Autobiography may have been dormant for so many years is that it was the “offspring” of an unusual marriage, which I describe in my biography of the Brintons. In May 1972, three years after the death of his first wife Anna, with whom he had been married for over fifty years and produced four children, Howard married Yuki Takahashi, a Japanese teacher, translator, and student of Quakerism. Howard was 88 years old, nearly blind, and in failing health. Yuki was 60 years old, though she looked much younger. Howard decided to re-marry because he was in failing health and needed a caretaker, but his relationship with Yuki was much deeper than that and was based on a friendship going back two decades. The marriage lasted less than a year, but it produced a remarkable memoir that Howard dictated to Yuki during his final days. This collaborative effort, written under the shadow of mortality and lovingly if not always accurately transcribed, enhances our understanding not only of Howard’s life but also of 20th century Quakerism.
While it is uncertain whether Howard intended for his memoir to be published, he did devote his usual care to writing it and probably had some thought of its being published or at least read by future historians. After Howard’s death, Yuki sent Anna Brinton Wilson (“Cousin Nan”) a copy of the Autobiography. She sent back comments and wrote, “I shall want to buy a copy of the book as soon as it is out.”[1] It is clear that at least one member of the Brinton family felt that the manuscript was publishable. Most felt it needed editing and fact-checking, and did not want it to be published.
Because of her Japanese upbringing, Yuki was also reluctant to share this work, or any details about her life. It took considerable coaxing for me to find out as much as I did about her life and her relationship to Howard. In a letter date August 22, 2004, she wrote: “I enjoyed talking with you. I enjoyed because you listened! That’s why I talked too much. That is dangerous.”
Where Yuki saw danger, I saw opportunity. Besides, I very much enjoyed listening to this remarkable woman tell her story. She had a lot of wisdom to share, as well as great humility—qualities that are usually connected. Here are some facts I was able to glean about her remarkable life.
Born on Dec. 20, 1912, Yuki Takahashi was one of five children born in Dairen, Manchuria, to Motokichi Takahashi (1873-1920) and Naoko Takahashi (1881-1971). Yuki’s father was a high-ranking Japanese government official who had majored in political science at Princeton University. There he met Woodrow Wilson, whom he greatly admired, and became a Presbyterian. Yuki’s father was sent as a Japanese envoy to the United States after WWI, where he died of a heart attack in Seattle, Washington, at age 47.
Yuki’s family had moved from Manchuria to Tokyo, Japan, in 1914. There Yuki was educated at a private school run by Sophia Anabelle Irwin and Robert Irwin. She was trained as a kindergarten teacher. In the 1930s she worked as a kindergarten teacher in Dairen, Manchuria.
Yuki’s sister Taneko went to Pendle Hill in 1939 and stayed until war broke out between Japan and the United States in 1942. At that time, her sister returned to Japan. Hearing her sister’s glowing reports about Pendle Hill sparked Yuki’s interest in Quakerism. She eventually went to work at the Quaker Center in Tokyo around 1950.
A prominent Quaker named Passmore Elkinton introduced Howard to Yuki, who became his interpreter and assistant. Impressed by her passion for Quakerism, he encouraged Yuki to come to Pendle Hill, even though she felt her English was not good enough.
There she translated Friends for Three Hundred Years into Japanese, a daunting task she was able to accomplish with the help of Howard and Elizabeth Vining.
In transcribing Howard's autobiography, Yuki was painfully conscious that she lacked the editorial skill that Anna possessed, but did her best. Howard also did his best to recall what happened in his life, but with his failing health and eyesight, he had to rely on his memory and could not verify dates and other details. How much of what Yuki wrote were Howard’s exact words, and how accurate some of Howard’s memories were, we will never know for certain. I have done my best to verify names and dates, and was surprised to find that most of the names and dates that Howard remembered could be verified. I became convinced that, despites its many deficiencies, Howard’s Autobiography is an invaluable resource and an excellent starting point for a biographer.
Many of the errors are trivial. Because of her difficulties in pronouncing English, Yuki sometimes mixed up“L’s” and “R’s” (as in the sentence, “we attended a concert in London where the English loyalty showed up”). Some of the errors involved recalling events out of order, like recounting his trip to Scotland after his first trip to Britain Yearly Meeting rather than after his second.
Howard was also unable to polish the style and to make his narrative flow as he would if he had been able to read and edit what he had written. According to Yuki, Howard’s daughter Lydia helped in editing the Autobiography and it would not have been readable without her assistance.
“I am undertaking this with much hesitation and some embarrassment,” Howard wrote. “My principal handicap is that I cannot read or write (because of my poor eye sight) so I am dictating these memoirs to my secretary and general helper Yuki Takahashi….In dictating this I cannot go back and make revisions. I must always go forward recklessly, not always knowing just where sentences or paragraphs may end.”
Because Howard had a disciplined mind, he was able to write coherently in spite of these handicaps. His lifelong exposure to Quaker autobiography and journals no doubt helped prepare him for this work. He liked to reminisce about his past and had also been thinking of writing a memoir since he was in his forties.[2]
Although the memoirs contain inaccuracies, as one would expect from such a “raw” work, they also have the freshness of a tape-recorded oral history. In some cases, Howard reveals feelings and opinions that he would have expressed guardedly or not at all in a work less “reckless.” For instance, when he describes going to Friends World Committee Conference in Oxford in 1952, soon after the publication of Friends for 300 Years, Howard says, “I sent a copy… to every American delegate. Many of the American delegates were from Pastoral meetings. I wanted to be sure that they knew what real Quakerism was.”[3]This unusually frank comment reveals quite clearly that Friends for 300 Years was not written as objective history, but to promote an unprogrammed Friends’ perspective of Quakerism. He also talks about mystical experiences that he had at Glastonbury and frankly discloses his personal feelings while working on numerous Quaker projects.
The memoir that Howard and Yuki had worked on for a year extended as far as Howard’s trip to Japan in 1952. This being time when he and Yuki met, it is a fitting conclusion to their collaborative effort. As Howard tells us as well as his grateful amanuensis and spouse, “the most important event [that happened to me] in Tokyo was to secure Yuki Takahashi as my secretary and guide and interpreter.”
After Howard’s death, Henry Cadbury asked Yuki if she’d like to stay on at Pendle Hill to assist in the library. She accepted the offer and stayed until 1993 when she moved, somewhat reluctantly, to Kendal, a Quaker retirement center near Pendle Hill. There she died on July 3, 2006, after a brief illness. Her memorial minutes noted :
At Pendle Hill she helped and befriended many foreign students and was a gracious presence representing Japanese culture. She also served faithfully for many years on the Pendle Hill publications committee.
Yuki had a keen eye for small things: for English expressions like “Thank you very much” and all cats for they spoke Japanese, and modest gifts like oranges or cookies, or an introduction to her friend who might become your friend, too. Sometimes the gift was a sharp question but often an invitation to tea or Scrabble. With children she became a child, and with adults a keen watcher as her hearing grew less serviceable.
One of her gifts was her devotion to Howard Brinton. Had it not been for Yuki, we would have no way of knowing the personal side of Howard’s life. For this reason, I feel a profound debt to Yuki for encouraging Howard to persevere with his memoirs. Without her labor of love, I probably would not have undertaken this biography, my own labor of love.
----------
[1] See “from Anna Brinton Wilson’s letter 1973 or ’74,” Box 1189.
[2] See letter to Mary James, Mills College, June 18th 1930. “As I sit here looking out my study window on San Francisco Bay I am attempting to conjure up on the dim background of the hills beyond it the faint images of the time when I first set my feet on the long road to learning. They came with great difficulty at first and then faster and fast like ghosts pouring out of a deserted building…” He wrote about the importance of West Chester Friends School and the “Boys Sporting League” and other childhood memories, including poems that later appear in his Autobiography.
[3] Autobiography, p. 96.
アズワンコミュニティ鈴鹿を訪問して｜里山成功哲学コラム
アズワンコミュニティ鈴鹿を訪問して｜里山成功哲学コラム
どしゃぶりの中、鈴鹿山脈の山道を走る。土山から亀山に抜ける国道１号線はカーブが多い。といっても道幅が十分あるので、熊野から土山に抜ける道に比べたら全然走りやすい。
日野町は三重県との県境に位置し、鈴鹿山脈を越えると反対側は三重県だ。綿向山や僕が竹を切っている水無山も鈴鹿山脈に属し、鈴鹿山脈というのは僕にとって庭のような存在になりつつある。
そう、そして、今日は鈴鹿に向かっている。鈴鹿サーキットに行くためではない。アズワンコミュニティ鈴鹿を訪問するためだ。
アズワンコミュニティについてはEDEの鎌田さんからチラッと聞いたぐらいで、詳しいことはほとんど知らなかった。
今回、ジュレー・ラダックがアズワンコミュニティ訪問ツアーを組み、スカルマ・ギュルメットさんも来るということで、思い切って参加してみることにした。スカルマさんとは２００６年からの知り合いで、地球祭に出演してもらって以来、年に一回ぐらいは必ずどこかで出会っていた。最近では『幸せの経済学』の試写会でインタビューさせてもらった。
『幸せの経済学』試写会動画レポート
http://sozonowa.net/index.php?%E3%80%8C%E5%B9%B8%E3%81%9B%E3%81%AE%E7%B5%8C%E6%B8%88%E5%AD%A6%E3%80%8D%E8%A9%A6%E5%86%99%E4%BC%9A
僕らはまず鈴鹿カルチャーステーションという場所に集合した。ここはカフェにもなっていて、講演会やコンサートなどのイベントも定期的に開催され、アズワンコミュニティのメンバーや地域の人たちが集える場所となっている。
鈴鹿カルチャーステーション
ツアーの参加者は東京、名古屋、島根、そして滋賀から集まり、まずみなで自己紹介をした。アズワンのメンバーも何人か同席した。
鈴鹿カルチャーステーションの代表理事を務める坂井和貴さんがコミュニティの説明をした。アズワンカンパニー、アズワンコミュニティ、鈴鹿カルチャーステーション、サイエンズスクール鈴鹿、サイエンズ研究所といろいろ出てきて、正直のところどういう場所なのかよくわからなかった。会社なのか、コミュニティなのか、学校なのか。
部分、部分はわかるのだが、全体像が掴めない。で、結局のところ、ここは何なのだ。
アズワンカンパニーというのは会社であり、いくつかの事業を展開させている。お弁当屋さん、農場、工務店、不動産屋、人材派遣業など。
その後、カルチャーステーションを後にして、街のはたけ公園という所に行った。
この日は雨で地面が濡れていたので長靴にはき替える。ここは地元のショッピングセンターの協力で１．５ヘクタールの畑を借りた場所。市民農園、学校の体験学習、シニアの活動の場などに利用されているそうだ。
こことは別に出荷用のアズワンファームという農場がある。
続いてアズワンカンパニーの事業のひとつである「おふくろさん弁当」を訪問する。アズワンファームでとれた野菜を使った弁当屋で、地域の人に手作り弁当を販売している。学校から注文が来ることもあるという。
こうした職場にはコミュニティのメンバーも勤務していれば、そうでない人もいるという。従ってアズワンカンパニー・イコール・アズワンコミュニティではないようだ。実際、コミュニティのメンバーといっても、誰がメンバーで誰がメンバーでないかもはっきりしていないようで、自分がメンバーかどうかわからない人もいる。それだけ境界線がはっきりしていないということで、いろいろな人が出入りしている。
職場にはルールのようなものがないという。遅れてきても誰も咎められない。みなが仲良く、心地よい雰囲気で働けることを目指しているようで、上下関係も存在しないという。何でも話し合える空間にしている。給料も各自異なり、会社と話し合って決めるのだそうだ。休日もそう。週休３日の人もいれば２日の人もいれば１日の人もいる。それぞれの希望や必要に応じて決めるそうだ。もちろん会社の必要もあるので、双方の希望や条件を出し合い、話し合ってお互いにとってベストな状況を選ぶのだという。
その後、お肉とやおやさんという店に行った。
ここでは鈴鹿山麓産の豚肉や野菜などが売られている。街のはたけ公園でシニアのメンバーがつくっている野菜も売られている。
そして、ここではリンカという地域通貨を使用することも可能だ。
これがリンカのカード。全額リンカで買えるものもある。街のはたけ公園でシニアがつくっている野菜はすべて全額リンカでも買えるようだ。
その後、鈴鹿カルチャーステーションに戻り、サイエンズスクール鈴鹿とサイエンズ研究所の説明を聞いた。
サイエンズスクールというのは人としての成長をサポートする教育機関で、様々なセミナーを開講している。マイライフセミナー、内観コース、自分を知るためのコース、自分を見るためのコース、人生を知るためのコース、社会を知るためのコースなど。
コミュニティのメンバーの多くがこれらのセミナーを受けていて、ここで共有される価値観、考え方、姿勢がコミュニティをつなぎとめるグルー（接着剤）の役割を果たしているのだろう。
サイエンズ研究所というのは、そうした事柄を研究する場所のようだ。スクールで開講するセミナーも、それ自体が完成版ということではなく、参加者のフィードバックを基に研究し、改善すべきところは改善していくという。コミュニティの生活から見えてくること、アズワンカンパニーという職場で見えてくることも研究材料になり、そこでも改善が行われていくそうだ。つまり研究所というのは、コミュニティを停滞させることなく、常に進化し続ける場にするために重要な役割を果たしているようだ。
宿泊先はセミナーハウスだった。サイエンズスクールが提供するセミナーの多くが泊りこみの合宿形式で、ここで開催されるらしい。宿泊施設にもなっている。
夕食の風景
夜はツアー参加者とコミュニティのメンバーで集まり、懇親会を開いた。
懇親会ではアズワンコミュニティについてやラダックについての情報交換が行われた。参加したコミュニティのメンバーに女性が何人かいたことも印象的だった。
コミュニティのメンバーはだいたい１００人ぐらいいるそうだが、メンバーと非メンバーの境界線がはっきりしておらず、正確な人数は誰もわからないという。共同生活をしているわけではなく、世帯はそれぞれ別々だ。ただ、みな近所に住んでいる。ここは鈴鹿市の中心だが、ほとんどが歩いて行き来できるぐらいの界隈に住んでいるという。従って同じ屋根の下でこそ生活をしていないものの、行き来は頻繁にあり、みな家族のような付き合いだという。大多数の人たちがアズワンカンパニーに所属し、共に仕事をしているので昼間接する時間も長い。カンパニーが複数の会社に分かれているので、接するといっても全員が顔を合わせているわけではないが。
ミーティングも、個々のミーティングはあっても、全体ミーティングのようなものはないそうだ。
そして、メンバーと自覚していない人たちの中にも、アズワンカンパニーのパート社員や、サイエンズスクールの受講生、鈴鹿カルチャーステーションが提供する講演会やコンサート等の常連客、街のはたけ公園の利用者等、何らかの形でコミュニティに関わっている人たちもたくさんいて、そうした周辺の人たちも含めると数はさらに多くなる。
ここがこのコミュニティの全体像をわかりにくくしている要因かもしれない。境界線がはっきりしていないので、どこからどこまでが何でどこからどこまでが何なのかが見えにくいのだ。
結局、僕は訪問中は最後までその辺がよくわからなかったのだが、後になってわかってきて、また、わかりにくいこと自体がコミュニティの良さであることもわかった。
翌日の午前中は植樹体験をした。里山を再生するプロジェクトで、広葉樹が増えるようにコナラやクヌギなどを植林しているのだ。炭焼きも復活させようとしている。これは僕がまさに今熊野でやりたいと思っていることだ。
ここにはこうした様々なプロジェクトがある。これは一種のサークル活動のように、やりたい人が手を挙げて始めていることだという。街のはたけ公園での活動もそうだが、参加者はコミュニティのメンバーに限定されていない。
その後はお茶会を体験した。
そしてコミュニティ食堂にて昼食。
コミュニティのメンバーやそれ以外の人たちも入れる家庭レストランだ。
これで、「普段着で探訪DAY」のツアーは終了。
午後は、鈴鹿カルチャーステーションのイベントとして「ラダックmeetsスズカ」という写真トークショー＆ワールドカフェが行われた。プレゼンをしたのがスカルマさんとジュレー・ラダックのメンバー。
ラダックでのコミュニティのあり方とここ鈴鹿で行われている取り組みを見ながら「未来へと続いていくコミュニティの姿」について話し合う。
ラダックとはヘレナ・ホーバーグ・ホッジさんの『ラダック―懐かしい未来』にも登場する北インドにある地域のことで、持続可能で相互扶助的な地域社会が存在していた。
詳しくはジュレー・ラダックのサイトをhttp://julayladakh.org/
ここまでがツアーだ。
アズワンコミュニティというのは僕の目にどう映ったのだろうか。
ひとつは今までにない形のコミュニティであるということ。木の花ファミリーのようなコミュニティとも違うし、僕が移住者ネットワークと呼んでいる鴨川や小川町のような場所とも違う。トランジション・タウンとも違う。ひとつの枠組みに収められない不思議な場所だ。
強いて定義付けするなら、エコビレッジか、共通の目的を持った生活集団という意味のインテンショナル・コミュニティと言えるのだろうか。
ここでも多くのことが自然発生的に起きてきたが、共通の目的を持って何人かが集まり、意図的にコミュニティづくりをしたという点では、やはりインテンショナル・コミュニティだと思う。鴨川や小川町の場合、意図する人が誰もいなかったのだから。
では共通の目的とは何なのか。「誰もが家族のように親しく安心して暮らせる社会を作ろう」ということのようだ。
そして、その方法論をサイエンズ研究所で研究し、できあがったノウハウをサイエンズスクールで共有しているのだろう。
だから、やはり核になっているのがサイエンズというもので、そのあり方を実社会において実践する場がアズワンコミュニティであったり、アズワンカンパニーだったりするのだろう。
となると、気になるのが、サイエンズの中身なのだが、僕もそれについてはまだよくわからない。スピリチュアルなものではなさそうだ。誰かが神がかって得たビジョンに基づいて生まれたわけではない。彼らは科学という言葉を使っている。生き方、社会のあり方、人との関わり方を科学するということなのだろうか。
僕の感覚では、心理学的な要素（サイコセラピー、自己啓発セミナー等で扱われる手法）が大きく影響しているように見える。ただ、それも何か固定された体系に基づくというより、白紙の状態で人間や社会を観察し研究する、オリジナルのもののようだ。
ここの素晴らしい点は、自由意志というものを尊重し、特定の思想体系を上から押し付けるということがない点だ。科学と呼んでいるのも、常に観察、実験を繰り返しながら研究し、改善の余地を残そうとしているからだろう。
そして、その姿勢があらゆる所で表れている。ひとつはサイエンズのセミナーを受けることがコミュニティに入る条件になっていないことだ。フィンドホーンでさえも（さえもというのはフィンドホーンは自由意志が大きく尊重されている場所だから）体験週間プログラムを受けることが条件になっているのに、ここではそうでない。
自由に意見を言い合える空間をつくりあげていて、どんな意見でも尊重されるという。それが咎められたり、反対されたりすることはないという。
そのために上下関係を取り払い、誰もが対等な立場で意見を言い合える雰囲気ができている。
また、ここにはリーダーがいない。アズワンカンパニーには代表取締役がいるが、その人がリーダーというわけでもないという。ツアーの指揮を取った坂井さんがリーダーというわけでもないらしい。（実際、坂井さんが指揮を取っていたのかもどうかわからないほど入れ替わり立ち替わり別の人がガイドを務めた）
もうひとつは職場というものが提供され、コミュニティのメンバーが外に仕事に出て現金収入を得る必要がないこと。そしてその職場が心地よい労働環境を提供していること。利益を上げることや会社を維持することよりも何よりも、働く人が心地よい状態で働けるということを優先している。ほとんどの職場が（エコ的な商品やサービスを提供しているような所でも）、理想はそうであっても、二つを天秤にかけなければならなくなった時、前者を優先せざるを得ないというのが現状だと思う。しかし、ここでは、後者が優先できないのなら事業をやめることまで覚悟しているのだ。
また、アズワンコミュニティ、アズワンカンパニー、サイエンス研究所、サイエンズスクール鈴鹿、鈴鹿カルチャーステーションなどが相互につながっていることが、ホリスティックな展開を可能にしていること。例えば、サイエンズスクールのセミナーで学んだことを実践する場があり、そして実践の場で気づいたことがさらにセミナー作りにも反映させられている。
では、ここには問題点はないのだろうか。強いて挙げるのなら循環型のライフスタイルが徹底されているわけではないということだろうか。都市型のコミュニティであることや、自給自足や小さな農ということには大きく意識が向けられていないように見えた。（もっとも、多様なニーズに応えるためには都市型も必要なので、まして鈴鹿のような小都市での試みなら、十分ありだとも思っている）
同時にそれがここの良さでもある。循環型のライフスタイルが徹底されるということは、そうしたことが上から押し付けられやすくなってしまうことにもなる。自由意志を尊重するということにコミットした場合、メンバーが望むのであれば、そうでないライフスタイルを選択する自由も認めることになる。
これは非常に重要なポイントで、自由意志の抑圧は多くの理想郷づくりが陥りやすいことだ。特に僕のような純粋な理想主義者は要注意。（笑）
そして、今の形はあくまでも２０１１年の時点における途中経過であり、今後このコミュニティがどう進化していくかには、様々な可能性が残されているのだろう。
また、これはすべて僕が２日間の訪問で感じたことであり、実像の１０分の１も掴めていないと思う。訪問者は歓迎しているようなので、直接訪れ、自分の目で確認してみるのが一番いい。
アズワンコミュニティ鈴鹿
http://as-one.main.jp/
アズワンカンパニー
http://asonecompany.com/
サイエンズ研究所
http://www.scien-z.org/
サイエンズスクール鈴鹿
http://www.scienz-school.jp/
鈴鹿カルチャーステーション
http://www.scs-3.org/
日野町は三重県との県境に位置し、鈴鹿山脈を越えると反対側は三重県だ。綿向山や僕が竹を切っている水無山も鈴鹿山脈に属し、鈴鹿山脈というのは僕にとって庭のような存在になりつつある。
そう、そして、今日は鈴鹿に向かっている。鈴鹿サーキットに行くためではない。アズワンコミュニティ鈴鹿を訪問するためだ。
アズワンコミュニティについてはEDEの鎌田さんからチラッと聞いたぐらいで、詳しいことはほとんど知らなかった。
今回、ジュレー・ラダックがアズワンコミュニティ訪問ツアーを組み、スカルマ・ギュルメットさんも来るということで、思い切って参加してみることにした。スカルマさんとは２００６年からの知り合いで、地球祭に出演してもらって以来、年に一回ぐらいは必ずどこかで出会っていた。最近では『幸せの経済学』の試写会でインタビューさせてもらった。
『幸せの経済学』試写会動画レポート
http://sozonowa.net/index.php?%E3%80%8C%E5%B9%B8%E3%81%9B%E3%81%AE%E7%B5%8C%E6%B8%88%E5%AD%A6%E3%80%8D%E8%A9%A6%E5%86%99%E4%BC%9A
僕らはまず鈴鹿カルチャーステーションという場所に集合した。ここはカフェにもなっていて、講演会やコンサートなどのイベントも定期的に開催され、アズワンコミュニティのメンバーや地域の人たちが集える場所となっている。
鈴鹿カルチャーステーション
ツアーの参加者は東京、名古屋、島根、そして滋賀から集まり、まずみなで自己紹介をした。アズワンのメンバーも何人か同席した。
鈴鹿カルチャーステーションの代表理事を務める坂井和貴さんがコミュニティの説明をした。アズワンカンパニー、アズワンコミュニティ、鈴鹿カルチャーステーション、サイエンズスクール鈴鹿、サイエンズ研究所といろいろ出てきて、正直のところどういう場所なのかよくわからなかった。会社なのか、コミュニティなのか、学校なのか。
部分、部分はわかるのだが、全体像が掴めない。で、結局のところ、ここは何なのだ。
アズワンカンパニーというのは会社であり、いくつかの事業を展開させている。お弁当屋さん、農場、工務店、不動産屋、人材派遣業など。
その後、カルチャーステーションを後にして、街のはたけ公園という所に行った。
この日は雨で地面が濡れていたので長靴にはき替える。ここは地元のショッピングセンターの協力で１．５ヘクタールの畑を借りた場所。市民農園、学校の体験学習、シニアの活動の場などに利用されているそうだ。
こことは別に出荷用のアズワンファームという農場がある。
続いてアズワンカンパニーの事業のひとつである「おふくろさん弁当」を訪問する。アズワンファームでとれた野菜を使った弁当屋で、地域の人に手作り弁当を販売している。学校から注文が来ることもあるという。
こうした職場にはコミュニティのメンバーも勤務していれば、そうでない人もいるという。従ってアズワンカンパニー・イコール・アズワンコミュニティではないようだ。実際、コミュニティのメンバーといっても、誰がメンバーで誰がメンバーでないかもはっきりしていないようで、自分がメンバーかどうかわからない人もいる。それだけ境界線がはっきりしていないということで、いろいろな人が出入りしている。
職場にはルールのようなものがないという。遅れてきても誰も咎められない。みなが仲良く、心地よい雰囲気で働けることを目指しているようで、上下関係も存在しないという。何でも話し合える空間にしている。給料も各自異なり、会社と話し合って決めるのだそうだ。休日もそう。週休３日の人もいれば２日の人もいれば１日の人もいる。それぞれの希望や必要に応じて決めるそうだ。もちろん会社の必要もあるので、双方の希望や条件を出し合い、話し合ってお互いにとってベストな状況を選ぶのだという。
その後、お肉とやおやさんという店に行った。
ここでは鈴鹿山麓産の豚肉や野菜などが売られている。街のはたけ公園でシニアのメンバーがつくっている野菜も売られている。
そして、ここではリンカという地域通貨を使用することも可能だ。
これがリンカのカード。全額リンカで買えるものもある。街のはたけ公園でシニアがつくっている野菜はすべて全額リンカでも買えるようだ。
その後、鈴鹿カルチャーステーションに戻り、サイエンズスクール鈴鹿とサイエンズ研究所の説明を聞いた。
サイエンズスクールというのは人としての成長をサポートする教育機関で、様々なセミナーを開講している。マイライフセミナー、内観コース、自分を知るためのコース、自分を見るためのコース、人生を知るためのコース、社会を知るためのコースなど。
コミュニティのメンバーの多くがこれらのセミナーを受けていて、ここで共有される価値観、考え方、姿勢がコミュニティをつなぎとめるグルー（接着剤）の役割を果たしているのだろう。
サイエンズ研究所というのは、そうした事柄を研究する場所のようだ。スクールで開講するセミナーも、それ自体が完成版ということではなく、参加者のフィードバックを基に研究し、改善すべきところは改善していくという。コミュニティの生活から見えてくること、アズワンカンパニーという職場で見えてくることも研究材料になり、そこでも改善が行われていくそうだ。つまり研究所というのは、コミュニティを停滞させることなく、常に進化し続ける場にするために重要な役割を果たしているようだ。
宿泊先はセミナーハウスだった。サイエンズスクールが提供するセミナーの多くが泊りこみの合宿形式で、ここで開催されるらしい。宿泊施設にもなっている。
夕食の風景
夜はツアー参加者とコミュニティのメンバーで集まり、懇親会を開いた。
懇親会ではアズワンコミュニティについてやラダックについての情報交換が行われた。参加したコミュニティのメンバーに女性が何人かいたことも印象的だった。
コミュニティのメンバーはだいたい１００人ぐらいいるそうだが、メンバーと非メンバーの境界線がはっきりしておらず、正確な人数は誰もわからないという。共同生活をしているわけではなく、世帯はそれぞれ別々だ。ただ、みな近所に住んでいる。ここは鈴鹿市の中心だが、ほとんどが歩いて行き来できるぐらいの界隈に住んでいるという。従って同じ屋根の下でこそ生活をしていないものの、行き来は頻繁にあり、みな家族のような付き合いだという。大多数の人たちがアズワンカンパニーに所属し、共に仕事をしているので昼間接する時間も長い。カンパニーが複数の会社に分かれているので、接するといっても全員が顔を合わせているわけではないが。
ミーティングも、個々のミーティングはあっても、全体ミーティングのようなものはないそうだ。
そして、メンバーと自覚していない人たちの中にも、アズワンカンパニーのパート社員や、サイエンズスクールの受講生、鈴鹿カルチャーステーションが提供する講演会やコンサート等の常連客、街のはたけ公園の利用者等、何らかの形でコミュニティに関わっている人たちもたくさんいて、そうした周辺の人たちも含めると数はさらに多くなる。
ここがこのコミュニティの全体像をわかりにくくしている要因かもしれない。境界線がはっきりしていないので、どこからどこまでが何でどこからどこまでが何なのかが見えにくいのだ。
結局、僕は訪問中は最後までその辺がよくわからなかったのだが、後になってわかってきて、また、わかりにくいこと自体がコミュニティの良さであることもわかった。
翌日の午前中は植樹体験をした。里山を再生するプロジェクトで、広葉樹が増えるようにコナラやクヌギなどを植林しているのだ。炭焼きも復活させようとしている。これは僕がまさに今熊野でやりたいと思っていることだ。
ここにはこうした様々なプロジェクトがある。これは一種のサークル活動のように、やりたい人が手を挙げて始めていることだという。街のはたけ公園での活動もそうだが、参加者はコミュニティのメンバーに限定されていない。
その後はお茶会を体験した。
そしてコミュニティ食堂にて昼食。
コミュニティのメンバーやそれ以外の人たちも入れる家庭レストランだ。
これで、「普段着で探訪DAY」のツアーは終了。
午後は、鈴鹿カルチャーステーションのイベントとして「ラダックmeetsスズカ」という写真トークショー＆ワールドカフェが行われた。プレゼンをしたのがスカルマさんとジュレー・ラダックのメンバー。
ラダックでのコミュニティのあり方とここ鈴鹿で行われている取り組みを見ながら「未来へと続いていくコミュニティの姿」について話し合う。
ラダックとはヘレナ・ホーバーグ・ホッジさんの『ラダック―懐かしい未来』にも登場する北インドにある地域のことで、持続可能で相互扶助的な地域社会が存在していた。
詳しくはジュレー・ラダックのサイトをhttp://julayladakh.org/
ここまでがツアーだ。
アズワンコミュニティというのは僕の目にどう映ったのだろうか。
ひとつは今までにない形のコミュニティであるということ。木の花ファミリーのようなコミュニティとも違うし、僕が移住者ネットワークと呼んでいる鴨川や小川町のような場所とも違う。トランジション・タウンとも違う。ひとつの枠組みに収められない不思議な場所だ。
強いて定義付けするなら、エコビレッジか、共通の目的を持った生活集団という意味のインテンショナル・コミュニティと言えるのだろうか。
ここでも多くのことが自然発生的に起きてきたが、共通の目的を持って何人かが集まり、意図的にコミュニティづくりをしたという点では、やはりインテンショナル・コミュニティだと思う。鴨川や小川町の場合、意図する人が誰もいなかったのだから。
では共通の目的とは何なのか。「誰もが家族のように親しく安心して暮らせる社会を作ろう」ということのようだ。
そして、その方法論をサイエンズ研究所で研究し、できあがったノウハウをサイエンズスクールで共有しているのだろう。
だから、やはり核になっているのがサイエンズというもので、そのあり方を実社会において実践する場がアズワンコミュニティであったり、アズワンカンパニーだったりするのだろう。
となると、気になるのが、サイエンズの中身なのだが、僕もそれについてはまだよくわからない。スピリチュアルなものではなさそうだ。誰かが神がかって得たビジョンに基づいて生まれたわけではない。彼らは科学という言葉を使っている。生き方、社会のあり方、人との関わり方を科学するということなのだろうか。
僕の感覚では、心理学的な要素（サイコセラピー、自己啓発セミナー等で扱われる手法）が大きく影響しているように見える。ただ、それも何か固定された体系に基づくというより、白紙の状態で人間や社会を観察し研究する、オリジナルのもののようだ。
ここの素晴らしい点は、自由意志というものを尊重し、特定の思想体系を上から押し付けるということがない点だ。科学と呼んでいるのも、常に観察、実験を繰り返しながら研究し、改善の余地を残そうとしているからだろう。
そして、その姿勢があらゆる所で表れている。ひとつはサイエンズのセミナーを受けることがコミュニティに入る条件になっていないことだ。フィンドホーンでさえも（さえもというのはフィンドホーンは自由意志が大きく尊重されている場所だから）体験週間プログラムを受けることが条件になっているのに、ここではそうでない。
自由に意見を言い合える空間をつくりあげていて、どんな意見でも尊重されるという。それが咎められたり、反対されたりすることはないという。
そのために上下関係を取り払い、誰もが対等な立場で意見を言い合える雰囲気ができている。
また、ここにはリーダーがいない。アズワンカンパニーには代表取締役がいるが、その人がリーダーというわけでもないという。ツアーの指揮を取った坂井さんがリーダーというわけでもないらしい。（実際、坂井さんが指揮を取っていたのかもどうかわからないほど入れ替わり立ち替わり別の人がガイドを務めた）
もうひとつは職場というものが提供され、コミュニティのメンバーが外に仕事に出て現金収入を得る必要がないこと。そしてその職場が心地よい労働環境を提供していること。利益を上げることや会社を維持することよりも何よりも、働く人が心地よい状態で働けるということを優先している。ほとんどの職場が（エコ的な商品やサービスを提供しているような所でも）、理想はそうであっても、二つを天秤にかけなければならなくなった時、前者を優先せざるを得ないというのが現状だと思う。しかし、ここでは、後者が優先できないのなら事業をやめることまで覚悟しているのだ。
また、アズワンコミュニティ、アズワンカンパニー、サイエンス研究所、サイエンズスクール鈴鹿、鈴鹿カルチャーステーションなどが相互につながっていることが、ホリスティックな展開を可能にしていること。例えば、サイエンズスクールのセミナーで学んだことを実践する場があり、そして実践の場で気づいたことがさらにセミナー作りにも反映させられている。
では、ここには問題点はないのだろうか。強いて挙げるのなら循環型のライフスタイルが徹底されているわけではないということだろうか。都市型のコミュニティであることや、自給自足や小さな農ということには大きく意識が向けられていないように見えた。（もっとも、多様なニーズに応えるためには都市型も必要なので、まして鈴鹿のような小都市での試みなら、十分ありだとも思っている）
同時にそれがここの良さでもある。循環型のライフスタイルが徹底されるということは、そうしたことが上から押し付けられやすくなってしまうことにもなる。自由意志を尊重するということにコミットした場合、メンバーが望むのであれば、そうでないライフスタイルを選択する自由も認めることになる。
これは非常に重要なポイントで、自由意志の抑圧は多くの理想郷づくりが陥りやすいことだ。特に僕のような純粋な理想主義者は要注意。（笑）
そして、今の形はあくまでも２０１１年の時点における途中経過であり、今後このコミュニティがどう進化していくかには、様々な可能性が残されているのだろう。
また、これはすべて僕が２日間の訪問で感じたことであり、実像の１０分の１も掴めていないと思う。訪問者は歓迎しているようなので、直接訪れ、自分の目で確認してみるのが一番いい。
アズワンコミュニティ鈴鹿
http://as-one.main.jp/
アズワンカンパニー
http://asonecompany.com/
サイエンズ研究所
http://www.scien-z.org/
サイエンズスクール鈴鹿
http://www.scienz-school.jp/
鈴鹿カルチャーステーション
http://www.scs-3.org/
2016/10/23
as one community 방문기 1, 2 - Daum 카페
연찬문화연구소 | as one community 방문기 1
as one community 방문기 1 |에즈원커뮤니티 교류
차차(임경환)|조회 288|추천 0|2013.01.29. 01:06http://cafe.daum.net/nshumanschool/W2ve/12
일본 스즈카시에 있는 as one community에 다녀온 지 일 주일이 지났다. 갔다 와서 바로 정리를 해야겠다는 마음이 있었지만, 게으른 탓에 이제야 정리를 하기 시작한다. 기억에서 지워지기 전에, 조금이라도 일찍, 그때의 느낌을 기록해 놓아야겠다.
다녀 온 뒤로 as one community의 실험을 많은 이들에게 알리고 싶었다. 그러나 서두르고 싶지 않았다. 예전 같았으면 사명감에 불타서 일을 무겁게, 그리고 단번에 해 치우려고 했을 것이다. 하지만 이제는 조금 가볍게, 즐기면서, 장기적으로 이 작업을 하고 싶었다.
다녀온 느낌을 어떻게 정리할지 고민이 되었다. 우선 글을 재구성하기 전에 일단 수첩에 적어 놓은 원자료들을 정리해 놓아야겠다는 생각을 했다. 물론 다녀온 분들에게는 반복되는 측면도 없지는 않지만, 그 분들에게는 회상할 수 있는 기회가 되었으면 하고, 다녀오지 못한 논실마을학교 카페 회원 분들에게는 as one community를 간접적으로나마 맛볼 수 있는 기회가 되었으면 한다.
앞으로 언제 끝날지 모르는 이 탐방기를 쓰고 싶을 때, 쓰고 싶은 만큼만, 써서 올릴까 한다.
나는 논실마을학교에서 생활하기 전까지 야마기시 공동체나 as one community에 대해서 알지 못했다. 논실마을학교에 와서도 야마기시 공동체나 as one community에 대해서 체계적으로 공부하거나 연구한 것이 아니라 띄엄띄엄 부분적으로 그 내용을 전해 듣거나 체험하는 수준이었다. 2012년 4월쯤(?)인가 Masashi ono 씨가 논실마을학교에 오셔서 as one community를 소개해 주셨던 것을 들었고, 2012년 2월에 이남곡 선생님 외 몇몇 선생님들과 함께 연찬회 경험을 해 보고, 학교너머에서 생활하는 길잡이들과 논실마을학교 선생님들과 야마기시 공동체 공부를 2번 정도 했을라나? 이상한 번역체의 문건을 조금 읽다가 중도에 포기한 경험 밖에 없었다. 하지만 as one community에 대한 관심은 조금도 줄어들지 않았다. 귀동냥으로 듣는 이야기들 속에서 얼핏 얼핏 비춰지는 모습들, 논실마을학교 사람들의 생활에서 느껴지는 모습들은 as one community에 대한 호기심을 더욱 불러일으켰다.
그러던 차에 2012년 여름 방문에 이어서 2013년 겨울 방문이 있을 것이라는 소식을 듣게 되었다. 지난 여름에 학교너머 일정 때문에 가지 못해서 아쉬웠는데, 참 잘 되었다 싶었다. 참가비에 대한 부담이 약간은 있었지만 새로운 것을 보고 배울 수 있다는 설레임에 동참하기로 결정했다. 드디어 2013년 1월 17일 출발~
김포에서 나고야까지 비행기로 이동하고, 나고야 중부 국제공항에서 배로 40분 정도 가니 츠나기사마치에 도착했다. 그 곳에 도착하니 3명의 community 멤버(야구치 상과 루시오, 한 명의 성함은 모르겠네요)와 맛있는 엄마손 도시락이 마중 나와 있었다. 우리는 항구 터미널 한 켠에서 엄마손 도시락으로 점심을 해결했다. 도시락은 두 종류였다. 메인 요리가 닭고기인 도시락과 연어 구이인 도시락. 한 종류의 도시락으로 통일해서 가지고 온 것이 아니라 두 종류의 도시락을 가지고 왔다는 것에서 세심함과 배려가 느껴졌다. 그 덕에 다행히도 채식(생선은 먹음)을 하는 탐방원들이 있었는데, 그 분들도 문제없이 맛있는 점심 식사를 할 수 있었다. 점심 식사를 하고 나서 커뮤니티 연수원으로 이동했다. 나는 야구치 상이 운전하는 차를 타고 이동을 하였는데, 운전이 너무 얌전했다. 야구치 상 차량뿐만 아니라 다른 차들도 끼어들기나 과속을 하지 않았다. 나중에 마지막 간담회 자리에서 야구치 상이 이번 탐방 일정을 회상하면서 첫째날 운전 상황을 설명해 주었는데, 참으로 감동적이었다. 야구치 상은 그날 츠나기사마치에서 커뮤니티 연수원으로 이동하는 차량의 운전을 담당하였는데, 그때 목표가 같이 타고 가는 사람들이 편안함을 느끼게 하는 것이었다는 말을 들었을 때 마음 속에 느껴지는 것이 있었다. 보통 탐방객들에게 가장 보여주고 싶어 하는 것은 그 공동체의 성과다. 보통은 말로 그들이 그동안 이루어 왔던 성과들을 자랑한다. 그런데 야구치 상은 그렇지 않았다. 일상에서 사람을 대하는 방식을 말이 아닌 몸으로 보여 주었다.
커뮤니티 연수원에 짐을 풀고 모두가 큰 방에 모였다. 그 방에 들어오자마자 뭔가 써야 할 것이 있었다. 이름, 나이, 주소, 하는 일 등등이 항목으로 되어 있는 조그만한 종이였다. 만남을 가지기 이전에 이런 것들을 쓴다는 상황이 조금은 낯설었다. 나중에 안 사실이지만 이때 쓴 내용은 컴퓨터로 입력이 되어서 community 구성원들에게 모두 전달이 되었다. 만나는 사람들마다 종이 한 장 씩을 들고 있었는데, 그 종이에는 우리가 첫날 연수원에 도착할 때 썼던 내용들이 들어 있었다. 구성원들은 우리들이 이야기를 할 때, 그 종이를 보면서 누구인지 확인을 했고, 그 사람에 대해 더 자세히 알 수 있는 내용이 나오면 그 종이에 계속 메모를 하였다.
as one community 방문기 1 |에즈원커뮤니티 교류
차차(임경환)|조회 288|추천 0|2013.01.29. 01:06http://cafe.daum.net/nshumanschool/W2ve/12
일본 스즈카시에 있는 as one community에 다녀온 지 일 주일이 지났다. 갔다 와서 바로 정리를 해야겠다는 마음이 있었지만, 게으른 탓에 이제야 정리를 하기 시작한다. 기억에서 지워지기 전에, 조금이라도 일찍, 그때의 느낌을 기록해 놓아야겠다.
다녀 온 뒤로 as one community의 실험을 많은 이들에게 알리고 싶었다. 그러나 서두르고 싶지 않았다. 예전 같았으면 사명감에 불타서 일을 무겁게, 그리고 단번에 해 치우려고 했을 것이다. 하지만 이제는 조금 가볍게, 즐기면서, 장기적으로 이 작업을 하고 싶었다.
다녀온 느낌을 어떻게 정리할지 고민이 되었다. 우선 글을 재구성하기 전에 일단 수첩에 적어 놓은 원자료들을 정리해 놓아야겠다는 생각을 했다. 물론 다녀온 분들에게는 반복되는 측면도 없지는 않지만, 그 분들에게는 회상할 수 있는 기회가 되었으면 하고, 다녀오지 못한 논실마을학교 카페 회원 분들에게는 as one community를 간접적으로나마 맛볼 수 있는 기회가 되었으면 한다.
앞으로 언제 끝날지 모르는 이 탐방기를 쓰고 싶을 때, 쓰고 싶은 만큼만, 써서 올릴까 한다.
나는 논실마을학교에서 생활하기 전까지 야마기시 공동체나 as one community에 대해서 알지 못했다. 논실마을학교에 와서도 야마기시 공동체나 as one community에 대해서 체계적으로 공부하거나 연구한 것이 아니라 띄엄띄엄 부분적으로 그 내용을 전해 듣거나 체험하는 수준이었다. 2012년 4월쯤(?)인가 Masashi ono 씨가 논실마을학교에 오셔서 as one community를 소개해 주셨던 것을 들었고, 2012년 2월에 이남곡 선생님 외 몇몇 선생님들과 함께 연찬회 경험을 해 보고, 학교너머에서 생활하는 길잡이들과 논실마을학교 선생님들과 야마기시 공동체 공부를 2번 정도 했을라나? 이상한 번역체의 문건을 조금 읽다가 중도에 포기한 경험 밖에 없었다. 하지만 as one community에 대한 관심은 조금도 줄어들지 않았다. 귀동냥으로 듣는 이야기들 속에서 얼핏 얼핏 비춰지는 모습들, 논실마을학교 사람들의 생활에서 느껴지는 모습들은 as one community에 대한 호기심을 더욱 불러일으켰다.
그러던 차에 2012년 여름 방문에 이어서 2013년 겨울 방문이 있을 것이라는 소식을 듣게 되었다. 지난 여름에 학교너머 일정 때문에 가지 못해서 아쉬웠는데, 참 잘 되었다 싶었다. 참가비에 대한 부담이 약간은 있었지만 새로운 것을 보고 배울 수 있다는 설레임에 동참하기로 결정했다. 드디어 2013년 1월 17일 출발~
김포에서 나고야까지 비행기로 이동하고, 나고야 중부 국제공항에서 배로 40분 정도 가니 츠나기사마치에 도착했다. 그 곳에 도착하니 3명의 community 멤버(야구치 상과 루시오, 한 명의 성함은 모르겠네요)와 맛있는 엄마손 도시락이 마중 나와 있었다. 우리는 항구 터미널 한 켠에서 엄마손 도시락으로 점심을 해결했다. 도시락은 두 종류였다. 메인 요리가 닭고기인 도시락과 연어 구이인 도시락. 한 종류의 도시락으로 통일해서 가지고 온 것이 아니라 두 종류의 도시락을 가지고 왔다는 것에서 세심함과 배려가 느껴졌다. 그 덕에 다행히도 채식(생선은 먹음)을 하는 탐방원들이 있었는데, 그 분들도 문제없이 맛있는 점심 식사를 할 수 있었다. 점심 식사를 하고 나서 커뮤니티 연수원으로 이동했다. 나는 야구치 상이 운전하는 차를 타고 이동을 하였는데, 운전이 너무 얌전했다. 야구치 상 차량뿐만 아니라 다른 차들도 끼어들기나 과속을 하지 않았다. 나중에 마지막 간담회 자리에서 야구치 상이 이번 탐방 일정을 회상하면서 첫째날 운전 상황을 설명해 주었는데, 참으로 감동적이었다. 야구치 상은 그날 츠나기사마치에서 커뮤니티 연수원으로 이동하는 차량의 운전을 담당하였는데, 그때 목표가 같이 타고 가는 사람들이 편안함을 느끼게 하는 것이었다는 말을 들었을 때 마음 속에 느껴지는 것이 있었다. 보통 탐방객들에게 가장 보여주고 싶어 하는 것은 그 공동체의 성과다. 보통은 말로 그들이 그동안 이루어 왔던 성과들을 자랑한다. 그런데 야구치 상은 그렇지 않았다. 일상에서 사람을 대하는 방식을 말이 아닌 몸으로 보여 주었다.
커뮤니티 연수원에 짐을 풀고 모두가 큰 방에 모였다. 그 방에 들어오자마자 뭔가 써야 할 것이 있었다. 이름, 나이, 주소, 하는 일 등등이 항목으로 되어 있는 조그만한 종이였다. 만남을 가지기 이전에 이런 것들을 쓴다는 상황이 조금은 낯설었다. 나중에 안 사실이지만 이때 쓴 내용은 컴퓨터로 입력이 되어서 community 구성원들에게 모두 전달이 되었다. 만나는 사람들마다 종이 한 장 씩을 들고 있었는데, 그 종이에는 우리가 첫날 연수원에 도착할 때 썼던 내용들이 들어 있었다. 구성원들은 우리들이 이야기를 할 때, 그 종이를 보면서 누구인지 확인을 했고, 그 사람에 대해 더 자세히 알 수 있는 내용이 나오면 그 종이에 계속 메모를 하였다.
개개인에 대한 관심, 그것은 이곳의 하나의 문화였다. 반대로 나는 수첩 속에 수많은 내용이 쓰여져 있지만, 그들 개개인의 이름은 적혀 있지 않았다.
잠시 후 오노 상, 미야지 상, 야구치 상, 노리코 상과 함께 간단한 자기 소개를 나누었다. 자기 소개는 아마 탐방 중에 가장 많이 한 프로그램(?)이었을 것이다. 새로운 멤버들이 추가될 때마다 간단하게나마 자기 소개를 하고 넘어 갔다. 이 곳의 독특한 문화였던 것 같다. 계속 반복된 자기 소개에 적응하지 못한 우리들은 매번 소개를 할 때마다 곤혹스러워했다. 초기에는 매번 다르게 소개해야 한다는 이상한 강박도 생겼다.
자기 소개를 한 뒤에 오노 상이 as one community에 대한 전반적인 소개를 해 주었다. 오노 상은 야마기시 공동체 초기 멤버로 그 곳에서 16년 동안 살았다. 그곳에서 살면서 야마기시 공동체의 한계를 느끼고 새로운 community를 만들기 위해서 그 곳을 나와 2001년부터 12년 째 as one community를 만들어 가고 있는 as one community 초기 멤버다. 아래의 내용은 오노 상이 설명하는 as one community다.
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오노 상은 “(어느 일정한 공간에서 멤버들이 함께 사는 형식의 공동체가 아니라) 일반 시민들과 함께, 지역에 흩어져서, 정말 사회는 어떨까? 인간이란 어떤 것인가, 사회란 어떤 것일까에 대해서 얘기 나누고 연구하고, 그것을 베이스로 삼아 정말로 그런지 하나 하나 검토해보자.”는 취지로 as one community를 만들게 되었다고 말했다.
오노 상은 “사회는 규칙이 필요하다는데 정말로 그런지에 대해 연구만이 아니라 실제로 확인해 보고 싶다”고 했다. 그래서 실제로 ‘~하지 않으면 안 된다’는 규칙도 없고, 상하 관계가 없는 회사인 어머니 도시락 가게를 만들어서 그것을 실현하고 있다. 그렇게 했을 때 경영이 성립이 되는지 확인해 보고 싶다고 했다.
처음에 20-30여명이 모여서 시작한 이 곳에는 “하고 싶은 사람은 하고, 하고 싶지 않은 사람은 하지 않는다”는 생각이 깔려 있다. 실제로 보통 조직에서는 “하고 싶지 않아도 한다”는 생각이 지배적이지만, 이곳은 그렇지 않다. 그래서 일하는 사람들이 편안하게 일하고 있다고 한다.
as one community는 누가 공동체 구성원인지 명확하지 않다. 대략 100가구 정도가 관계를 맺고 있는 정도라고 추측할 뿐이다.
이들은 “연구한 것을 시도해 보고, 시도해 본 걸 가지고 연구한다”고 한다. “인간은 이런 거다, 사회는 이런 거다”는 고정관념 없이.
이런 것들을 행하면서 살다보니, 이 곳의 공기는 일반 사회 공기(공기라는 표현은 이번 탐방 기간을 통해서 참 자주 듣는 단어였다)와 다른 것 같다고 한다.
as one community는 야마기시 공동체를 극복하기 위해서 나왔다. 오노 씨의 표현에 따르면 야마기시 공동체가 “사람이 조직에 맞춰가는, 조직의 질서가 우선되는, 조직을 위해 사람이 굴복되는” 조직이었다고 이야기한다. 그것을 극복해야 한다고 생각하고 있는 것 같았다. 그는 조직이 우선 되는 공동체가 아니라 “한 사람, 한 사람을 위한 조직”을 꿈꾸고 있었다. 개인이 해방되고 고정관념이 흩어지는 사회를 꿈꾸고 있었다. ‘야마기시 공동체는 이런 곳이다’라고 상정하고 그것에 따라서 사는 삶이 아니라...
오노 상은 말하는 중에 “연구”라는 단어를 많이 사용했다. 주어진 대로 사는 것이 아니라 내가 살고 있는 삶에 의문을 던지는 것을 멈추지 않고 계속 질문하는 것. 그것을 중요하게 생각하는 것 같았다.
as one community에 대한 오노 상의 소개가 끝나고 35년 동안 야마기시 공동체에 산 미야지 상이 그 뒤를 이어 계속 이야기를 했다......
댓글 7
맑은공기 13.01.29. 10:37
와~ 재밌네~ 방문기 연재!!
장자이후 13.01.29. 12:05
2편이 기대되네요. 좋은 방문기 올려주셔서 감사합니다.
난다 13.01.29. 15:42
우와~ 잘 읽었습니다! 저도 어서 정리해봐야겠어요 ㅋㅋ
소풍 13.01.30. 11:10
와~ 임샘, 외모와 달리 섬세함이 "살아있네(하정우버전)" ^^
빛살 13.02.05. 15:24
고맙습니다. 좋은 글이었습니다. 그림이 그려지는 듯합니다.
자작나무 여경 13.02.06. 10:46
좋은 글 감사드립니다. 제가 사는 공동체 카페에 공유해서 함께 읽겠습니다.
비올 13.02.06. 13:29
오호~ ^^
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as one community 방문기 2|에즈원커뮤니티 교류
차차(임경환)|조회 213|추천 1|2013.02.13. 01:14http://cafe.daum.net/nshumanschool/W2ve/14
as one community 방문기 2
“35년 동안 야마기시 공동체에서 살았어요. 3년 전부터 as one community에 들어왔고, 2년 전에 이 지역으로 이사를 왔어요. 오노 씨와 몇몇 젊은이들이 야마기시를 나간다고 했을 때 화를 냈던 사람이에요. 틀린 부분이 있으면 그 사회에서 바꿔야지라는 생각을 가지고 있었죠. 규칙 없이도 (공동체가) 유지될 수 있을까 하는 의심과 불만이 있었는데, 이제는 할 수 있겠다는 생각이 들어요.”
미야지 씨 또한 오노 씨와 마찬가지고 ‘연구소’와 ‘사이엔즈 스쿨’을 중요하게 생각하고 있는 것 같았다.
“공동체에 관계된 사람들이 사이엔즈 스쿨 코스를 들어요. 자신을 살펴보고 싶다는 마음이 들면 프로그램에 참가하지요. 자기 문제를 과학적으로 검토하고 자기의 내면 뿐만 아니라 회사의 경영의 문제도 SCIENZ(Scientific Investigation of Essential Nature + Zero)를 베이스로 사이엔즈 스쿨에서 검토합니다. (이런 과정을 통해) 이런 태도들이 몸에 붙게 되면 자기, 주변, 사회를 검토하는 것이 일상화 되는 것이죠.”
그들의 일상은 끊임없이 ‘검토’되고 있었다. 그들의 검토 대상은 관념이 아니라 일상이었다. 끊임없이 ‘검토’한다는 것은 어떤 것도 고정하지 않겠다는 그들의 태도였다. 그리고 그들의 ‘교육’은 외부로 향해 있지 않았다. 교육의 주대상도 내부 공동체원들이었고, 교육의 내용도 자신의 내부, community 내부 일상이었다.
오노 상과 미야지 상이 간략하게 as one community 대해서 이야기를 한 뒤, 탐방객들의 질문이 이어졌다. 대략적으로 추구하는 바에 대해서는 알겠지만 실상이 궁금해졌다. 과연 어떤 모습으로 삶이 이루어지고 있을 지에 대해.
난 이들의 의사결정 과정이 궁금했다. 예를 들어, 오늘 우리를 마중 나온 운전 기사는 어떤 과정을 통해서 결정되었는지, 오늘 첫 미팅에 4명의 사람이 나오는 것은 누구의 결정인지에 대해서 궁금했다. ‘하고 싶은 일은 하고, 하고 싶지 않은 일은 하지 않는다’는 생각이 실제로는 어떻게 구현되는지 궁금했다. 최소한 중앙집권적으로 누군가에 의해서 결정되어 사람들에게 전달되는 구조는 아니라는 것은 알겠는데, 그러면 어떤 방식으로 의사결정이 이루어지는 지에 대해서는 그림이 잘 그려지지 않았다. 이러한 궁금증 뒤에는 커뮤니티의 핵심 멤버들이 역할을 지정해 주는 것이 아닌지에 대해 약간은 의구심이 있었다. 이 의구심은 그동안 한국 사회에서 보아왔던 모습에서 기인한 것 같다. 나는 이 의구심을 떨쳐 버리기 위해, 그리고 이러한 궁금증을 해결하기 위해 질문했다. 이 질문에 오노 씨가 대답했다.
“구성원 모두가 모여서 상의하지 않는다. 의사는 한 사람 한 사람이 결정한다.”
도착한 첫날 들은 이 대답이 나의 궁금증을 해결해 주지는 못했다. 하지만 3박 4일 동안 있으면서 이러한 의사결정이 가능할 수도 있겠다는 생각이 들었다. 공동체 구성원 각자의 역할이 있는 것 같았고 그 역할을 본인이 하고 싶을 때 하는 것 같았다.
나의 이 궁금증에 미야지 씨는 자신이 이곳에서 일하게 된 과정으로 설명해 주었다.
“원래 이 일을 하고 있던 분이 나에게 이 일을 요청해 왔다. 앉아 있기만 해도 된다고 해서 하게 되었다.ㅎㅎㅎ 반 년 간은 다른 할 일이 많아서 사무실에 나가지 않았다. 작년(2011년) 말 건강이 안 좋아서 활동적인 일 못하게 되어서 앉아있는 있는 일이니까 하게 되었다.”
이 곳에서는 어떤 일을 하게 되는 과정이 참 신선하다. 조직이 어떤 일이 필요해서 개인에게 부탁하는 구조가 아니다. 내가 이 일을 하고 싶어하는가, 내가 그 일을 할 만한 상황이 되는가가 중요하다. 미야지 씨의 경험을 얘기로 들으니 “의사는 한 사람 한 사람이 결정한다.”는 오노 씨의 말이 조금은 이해가 된다. 이에 대해 오노 씨가 몇 마디 덧붙인다.
“일이 존재하고, 그것에 관심 있는 사람들이 있다면 그 사람들이 진행한다. 지역에 아이들의 교육에 관심 있는 사람들 5명이 있다. 그 사람들이 as one community를 방문했다. 이 사람들이 스즈카컬쳐스테이션을 중심으로 매달 1박 2일 애들 캠프, 방과후 공부방, 회화 교실을 진행한다.”
하고 싶은 일이 있으면 모이고, 모여서 일을 진행하고, 주변에서는 이들에게 박수쳐 주는 구조. 그것이 이들이 일하는 방식이었다. 참으로 부러웠고 아름다워 보였다.
간담회를 마치고 잠깐의 휴식 시간을 가진 뒤, 저녁 식사를 하였다. 탐방 기간 동안 식사를 외부에서 사 먹은 적이 없었다. 아침과 저녁식사는 연수원 식당에서 손수 만들어 주셨고, 점심에는 커뮤니티 하우스와 커뮤니티 식당에서 대접해 주셨다. 매 식사 때마다 ‘환대’ 받는다는 느낌이었다. 저녁 식사를 한 뒤 환영회가 이어졌다.
환영회 때에는 이요다 세스코, 사카이 카스키 씨 등이 새로 오셨다. 이렇게 모임 때 오는 이들이 정해져 있지 않았다. 그때 일정에 자기 사정이 맞으면 찾아오는 것이었다. 참으로 자유로운 분위기였다. 나의 생각에는, 외부에서 손님이 오면 구성원들이 많이 왔으면 좋겠고, 와야 한다고 생각하는데 꼭 그런 것 같지 않았다. 모임에 참가하지 않았다고 질책하거나 비난하는 분위기는 전혀 없었다.
새로운 손님이 오면 어김없이 자기소개. 우리는 ‘또~’라는 반응을 서로의 눈빛 속에서 확인할 수 있었다.ㅋㅋ 머리 속에는 ‘이번에는 어떻게 다른 소개를 해야지’라는 생각이 끊이지 않았다. 새로 온 사람들에게는 처음이지만, 이미 들었던 사람들이 함께하기에 새로워야 한다는 은근한 ‘압박’이 존재했다.
이번 자리에서 나는 이렇게 소개했다.
“저는 예전에 제가 아이들에게 참 좋은 선생님이라고 생각했습니다. 그리고 아주 잘하고 있다고 생각하고 살았습니다. 최근에 곰곰이 생각해 보니, 좋지 않는 선생님일 수도 있겠다는 생각이 들었습니다. 어쩌면 제가 아이들에게 보이지 않는 폭력을 휘둘렀던 것은 아닌가 싶습니다. ~해야 한다는 것/하지 말아야 한다는 것(약속은 지켜야 한다...)이 참 많았고, 그것이 아이들을 위한 것이라고 하지만, 실제로 아이들을 위한 것이 아니었을 수도 있겠다는 생각이 들었습니다. 나를 위한 것이었을 수도 있다는 생각이 들었습니다.”
어쩌다 보니 자기 고백이 되어 버렸다. 이야기를 하고 나니 조금 부끄러워졌다. 처음 만난 사람들에게 자신의 속내를 드러내 버렸다. 그것이 가능한 것은 이곳의 분위기였다. 내가 나의 속내를 드러내어도 안전하다는 그런 분위기...
돌아가면서 자신의 이야기를 풀어 놓았다. 환영회 자리에서 인상 깊었던 것은 그들의 말보다는 그들의 태도였다. 그들은 방문 온 한국인들의 이야기를 경청하여 듣는 것은 물론이고, 같이 지내고 있는 공동체 사람들의 이야기도 아주 재미있게, 주의깊게 듣는 것이었다. 같은 공동체에 있는 사람들의 얘기는 이미 익숙한 사람들의 이야기이고, 어쩌면 한 번쯤은 들어보았을 법한 내용들일텐데, 처음 듣는 이야기인 것처럼 아주 정성스럽게 듣는 것이었다. 참으로 감동적인 부분이었다. 이것은 일부러 보여 주려고 하는 모습 같지 않았다. 거짓이라면 시종일관 그러한 모습을 유지할 수가 없었을 것이다. 말은 어느 정도 꾸며서 할 수 있지만, 순간 순간 드러나는 표정과 몸짓은 꾸밀 수 없을 것이다. 이 모습이 크게 다가온 것은 그동안의 나의 태도와 상반된 모습이기 때문에 그러지 않았을까 싶다. 나는 보통 손님이나 외부 사람들이 와서 같이 대화를 나누면 그 사람의 말에 집중하고 주의깊게 듣지만 같이 사는 사람들의 얘기, 한번 들은 얘기에는 시큰둥한 경우가 많았던 것 같다.
그리고 그들은 남의 이야기를 들으면서 끊임없이 ‘반응’해 주었다. 고개를 끄덕여 주고, 적절한 타이밍에 웃어주고, 엄지도 치켜 세워주고... 이것이 일본의 문화인지, 그들 공동체의 문화인지는 잘 모르겠으나 참으로 감명 깊었다. 탐방 기간 동안에 내게 변화가 생겼다면, 그것은 다른 사람들의 말에 끊임없이 반응해 주는 버릇이 생겼다는 것이다.
이렇게 하루가 흘러갔다. 얼마 안 되는 시간이었지만 많은 ‘충격’을 받았다. 머리 속으로 정리하기에는 너무나 많은, 새로운 장면들이 입력되었다. 일본에서의 첫날 밤, 바닥 난방이 아닌 히터로 공기를 데우는 방식으로 난방을 하는 다다미방에서 잠이 들었다. 내일은 실제로 그들이 사는 현장에 가서 그들의 삶을 눈으로 보고, 귀로 듣는 날이다.
댓글 2
맑은공기 13.02.13. 09:39
다녀온지 꽤지났는데 글이 구체적이고 생생해서 어제일 처럼 느껴집니다^^
최명학 14.01.06. 22:16
애즈원 커뮤니티...몇번 설명을 듣고 탐방기도 일어봤지만, 뭐랄까...딱 이거다 하는 감을 아직은 못 갖겠습니다. 아마도 가서 좀 살아봐야 감이 잡힐듯^^
잠시 후 오노 상, 미야지 상, 야구치 상, 노리코 상과 함께 간단한 자기 소개를 나누었다. 자기 소개는 아마 탐방 중에 가장 많이 한 프로그램(?)이었을 것이다. 새로운 멤버들이 추가될 때마다 간단하게나마 자기 소개를 하고 넘어 갔다. 이 곳의 독특한 문화였던 것 같다. 계속 반복된 자기 소개에 적응하지 못한 우리들은 매번 소개를 할 때마다 곤혹스러워했다. 초기에는 매번 다르게 소개해야 한다는 이상한 강박도 생겼다.
자기 소개를 한 뒤에 오노 상이 as one community에 대한 전반적인 소개를 해 주었다. 오노 상은 야마기시 공동체 초기 멤버로 그 곳에서 16년 동안 살았다. 그곳에서 살면서 야마기시 공동체의 한계를 느끼고 새로운 community를 만들기 위해서 그 곳을 나와 2001년부터 12년 째 as one community를 만들어 가고 있는 as one community 초기 멤버다. 아래의 내용은 오노 상이 설명하는 as one community다.
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오노 상은 “(어느 일정한 공간에서 멤버들이 함께 사는 형식의 공동체가 아니라) 일반 시민들과 함께, 지역에 흩어져서, 정말 사회는 어떨까? 인간이란 어떤 것인가, 사회란 어떤 것일까에 대해서 얘기 나누고 연구하고, 그것을 베이스로 삼아 정말로 그런지 하나 하나 검토해보자.”는 취지로 as one community를 만들게 되었다고 말했다.
오노 상은 “사회는 규칙이 필요하다는데 정말로 그런지에 대해 연구만이 아니라 실제로 확인해 보고 싶다”고 했다. 그래서 실제로 ‘~하지 않으면 안 된다’는 규칙도 없고, 상하 관계가 없는 회사인 어머니 도시락 가게를 만들어서 그것을 실현하고 있다. 그렇게 했을 때 경영이 성립이 되는지 확인해 보고 싶다고 했다.
처음에 20-30여명이 모여서 시작한 이 곳에는 “하고 싶은 사람은 하고, 하고 싶지 않은 사람은 하지 않는다”는 생각이 깔려 있다. 실제로 보통 조직에서는 “하고 싶지 않아도 한다”는 생각이 지배적이지만, 이곳은 그렇지 않다. 그래서 일하는 사람들이 편안하게 일하고 있다고 한다.
as one community는 누가 공동체 구성원인지 명확하지 않다. 대략 100가구 정도가 관계를 맺고 있는 정도라고 추측할 뿐이다.
이들은 “연구한 것을 시도해 보고, 시도해 본 걸 가지고 연구한다”고 한다. “인간은 이런 거다, 사회는 이런 거다”는 고정관념 없이.
이런 것들을 행하면서 살다보니, 이 곳의 공기는 일반 사회 공기(공기라는 표현은 이번 탐방 기간을 통해서 참 자주 듣는 단어였다)와 다른 것 같다고 한다.
as one community는 야마기시 공동체를 극복하기 위해서 나왔다. 오노 씨의 표현에 따르면 야마기시 공동체가 “사람이 조직에 맞춰가는, 조직의 질서가 우선되는, 조직을 위해 사람이 굴복되는” 조직이었다고 이야기한다. 그것을 극복해야 한다고 생각하고 있는 것 같았다. 그는 조직이 우선 되는 공동체가 아니라 “한 사람, 한 사람을 위한 조직”을 꿈꾸고 있었다. 개인이 해방되고 고정관념이 흩어지는 사회를 꿈꾸고 있었다. ‘야마기시 공동체는 이런 곳이다’라고 상정하고 그것에 따라서 사는 삶이 아니라...
오노 상은 말하는 중에 “연구”라는 단어를 많이 사용했다. 주어진 대로 사는 것이 아니라 내가 살고 있는 삶에 의문을 던지는 것을 멈추지 않고 계속 질문하는 것. 그것을 중요하게 생각하는 것 같았다.
as one community에 대한 오노 상의 소개가 끝나고 35년 동안 야마기시 공동체에 산 미야지 상이 그 뒤를 이어 계속 이야기를 했다......
댓글 7
맑은공기 13.01.29. 10:37와~ 재밌네~ 방문기 연재!!
장자이후 13.01.29. 12:052편이 기대되네요. 좋은 방문기 올려주셔서 감사합니다.
난다 13.01.29. 15:42우와~ 잘 읽었습니다! 저도 어서 정리해봐야겠어요 ㅋㅋ
소풍 13.01.30. 11:10와~ 임샘, 외모와 달리 섬세함이 "살아있네(하정우버전)" ^^
빛살 13.02.05. 15:24고맙습니다. 좋은 글이었습니다. 그림이 그려지는 듯합니다.
자작나무 여경 13.02.06. 10:46좋은 글 감사드립니다. 제가 사는 공동체 카페에 공유해서 함께 읽겠습니다.
비올 13.02.06. 13:29오호~ ^^
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as one community 방문기 2|에즈원커뮤니티 교류
차차(임경환)|조회 213|추천 1|2013.02.13. 01:14http://cafe.daum.net/nshumanschool/W2ve/14
as one community 방문기 2
“35년 동안 야마기시 공동체에서 살았어요. 3년 전부터 as one community에 들어왔고, 2년 전에 이 지역으로 이사를 왔어요. 오노 씨와 몇몇 젊은이들이 야마기시를 나간다고 했을 때 화를 냈던 사람이에요. 틀린 부분이 있으면 그 사회에서 바꿔야지라는 생각을 가지고 있었죠. 규칙 없이도 (공동체가) 유지될 수 있을까 하는 의심과 불만이 있었는데, 이제는 할 수 있겠다는 생각이 들어요.”
미야지 씨 또한 오노 씨와 마찬가지고 ‘연구소’와 ‘사이엔즈 스쿨’을 중요하게 생각하고 있는 것 같았다.
“공동체에 관계된 사람들이 사이엔즈 스쿨 코스를 들어요. 자신을 살펴보고 싶다는 마음이 들면 프로그램에 참가하지요. 자기 문제를 과학적으로 검토하고 자기의 내면 뿐만 아니라 회사의 경영의 문제도 SCIENZ(Scientific Investigation of Essential Nature + Zero)를 베이스로 사이엔즈 스쿨에서 검토합니다. (이런 과정을 통해) 이런 태도들이 몸에 붙게 되면 자기, 주변, 사회를 검토하는 것이 일상화 되는 것이죠.”
그들의 일상은 끊임없이 ‘검토’되고 있었다. 그들의 검토 대상은 관념이 아니라 일상이었다. 끊임없이 ‘검토’한다는 것은 어떤 것도 고정하지 않겠다는 그들의 태도였다. 그리고 그들의 ‘교육’은 외부로 향해 있지 않았다. 교육의 주대상도 내부 공동체원들이었고, 교육의 내용도 자신의 내부, community 내부 일상이었다.
오노 상과 미야지 상이 간략하게 as one community 대해서 이야기를 한 뒤, 탐방객들의 질문이 이어졌다. 대략적으로 추구하는 바에 대해서는 알겠지만 실상이 궁금해졌다. 과연 어떤 모습으로 삶이 이루어지고 있을 지에 대해.
난 이들의 의사결정 과정이 궁금했다. 예를 들어, 오늘 우리를 마중 나온 운전 기사는 어떤 과정을 통해서 결정되었는지, 오늘 첫 미팅에 4명의 사람이 나오는 것은 누구의 결정인지에 대해서 궁금했다. ‘하고 싶은 일은 하고, 하고 싶지 않은 일은 하지 않는다’는 생각이 실제로는 어떻게 구현되는지 궁금했다. 최소한 중앙집권적으로 누군가에 의해서 결정되어 사람들에게 전달되는 구조는 아니라는 것은 알겠는데, 그러면 어떤 방식으로 의사결정이 이루어지는 지에 대해서는 그림이 잘 그려지지 않았다. 이러한 궁금증 뒤에는 커뮤니티의 핵심 멤버들이 역할을 지정해 주는 것이 아닌지에 대해 약간은 의구심이 있었다. 이 의구심은 그동안 한국 사회에서 보아왔던 모습에서 기인한 것 같다. 나는 이 의구심을 떨쳐 버리기 위해, 그리고 이러한 궁금증을 해결하기 위해 질문했다. 이 질문에 오노 씨가 대답했다.
“구성원 모두가 모여서 상의하지 않는다. 의사는 한 사람 한 사람이 결정한다.”
도착한 첫날 들은 이 대답이 나의 궁금증을 해결해 주지는 못했다. 하지만 3박 4일 동안 있으면서 이러한 의사결정이 가능할 수도 있겠다는 생각이 들었다. 공동체 구성원 각자의 역할이 있는 것 같았고 그 역할을 본인이 하고 싶을 때 하는 것 같았다.
나의 이 궁금증에 미야지 씨는 자신이 이곳에서 일하게 된 과정으로 설명해 주었다.
“원래 이 일을 하고 있던 분이 나에게 이 일을 요청해 왔다. 앉아 있기만 해도 된다고 해서 하게 되었다.ㅎㅎㅎ 반 년 간은 다른 할 일이 많아서 사무실에 나가지 않았다. 작년(2011년) 말 건강이 안 좋아서 활동적인 일 못하게 되어서 앉아있는 있는 일이니까 하게 되었다.”
이 곳에서는 어떤 일을 하게 되는 과정이 참 신선하다. 조직이 어떤 일이 필요해서 개인에게 부탁하는 구조가 아니다. 내가 이 일을 하고 싶어하는가, 내가 그 일을 할 만한 상황이 되는가가 중요하다. 미야지 씨의 경험을 얘기로 들으니 “의사는 한 사람 한 사람이 결정한다.”는 오노 씨의 말이 조금은 이해가 된다. 이에 대해 오노 씨가 몇 마디 덧붙인다.
“일이 존재하고, 그것에 관심 있는 사람들이 있다면 그 사람들이 진행한다. 지역에 아이들의 교육에 관심 있는 사람들 5명이 있다. 그 사람들이 as one community를 방문했다. 이 사람들이 스즈카컬쳐스테이션을 중심으로 매달 1박 2일 애들 캠프, 방과후 공부방, 회화 교실을 진행한다.”
하고 싶은 일이 있으면 모이고, 모여서 일을 진행하고, 주변에서는 이들에게 박수쳐 주는 구조. 그것이 이들이 일하는 방식이었다. 참으로 부러웠고 아름다워 보였다.
간담회를 마치고 잠깐의 휴식 시간을 가진 뒤, 저녁 식사를 하였다. 탐방 기간 동안 식사를 외부에서 사 먹은 적이 없었다. 아침과 저녁식사는 연수원 식당에서 손수 만들어 주셨고, 점심에는 커뮤니티 하우스와 커뮤니티 식당에서 대접해 주셨다. 매 식사 때마다 ‘환대’ 받는다는 느낌이었다. 저녁 식사를 한 뒤 환영회가 이어졌다.
환영회 때에는 이요다 세스코, 사카이 카스키 씨 등이 새로 오셨다. 이렇게 모임 때 오는 이들이 정해져 있지 않았다. 그때 일정에 자기 사정이 맞으면 찾아오는 것이었다. 참으로 자유로운 분위기였다. 나의 생각에는, 외부에서 손님이 오면 구성원들이 많이 왔으면 좋겠고, 와야 한다고 생각하는데 꼭 그런 것 같지 않았다. 모임에 참가하지 않았다고 질책하거나 비난하는 분위기는 전혀 없었다.
새로운 손님이 오면 어김없이 자기소개. 우리는 ‘또~’라는 반응을 서로의 눈빛 속에서 확인할 수 있었다.ㅋㅋ 머리 속에는 ‘이번에는 어떻게 다른 소개를 해야지’라는 생각이 끊이지 않았다. 새로 온 사람들에게는 처음이지만, 이미 들었던 사람들이 함께하기에 새로워야 한다는 은근한 ‘압박’이 존재했다.
이번 자리에서 나는 이렇게 소개했다.
“저는 예전에 제가 아이들에게 참 좋은 선생님이라고 생각했습니다. 그리고 아주 잘하고 있다고 생각하고 살았습니다. 최근에 곰곰이 생각해 보니, 좋지 않는 선생님일 수도 있겠다는 생각이 들었습니다. 어쩌면 제가 아이들에게 보이지 않는 폭력을 휘둘렀던 것은 아닌가 싶습니다. ~해야 한다는 것/하지 말아야 한다는 것(약속은 지켜야 한다...)이 참 많았고, 그것이 아이들을 위한 것이라고 하지만, 실제로 아이들을 위한 것이 아니었을 수도 있겠다는 생각이 들었습니다. 나를 위한 것이었을 수도 있다는 생각이 들었습니다.”
어쩌다 보니 자기 고백이 되어 버렸다. 이야기를 하고 나니 조금 부끄러워졌다. 처음 만난 사람들에게 자신의 속내를 드러내 버렸다. 그것이 가능한 것은 이곳의 분위기였다. 내가 나의 속내를 드러내어도 안전하다는 그런 분위기...
돌아가면서 자신의 이야기를 풀어 놓았다. 환영회 자리에서 인상 깊었던 것은 그들의 말보다는 그들의 태도였다. 그들은 방문 온 한국인들의 이야기를 경청하여 듣는 것은 물론이고, 같이 지내고 있는 공동체 사람들의 이야기도 아주 재미있게, 주의깊게 듣는 것이었다. 같은 공동체에 있는 사람들의 얘기는 이미 익숙한 사람들의 이야기이고, 어쩌면 한 번쯤은 들어보았을 법한 내용들일텐데, 처음 듣는 이야기인 것처럼 아주 정성스럽게 듣는 것이었다. 참으로 감동적인 부분이었다. 이것은 일부러 보여 주려고 하는 모습 같지 않았다. 거짓이라면 시종일관 그러한 모습을 유지할 수가 없었을 것이다. 말은 어느 정도 꾸며서 할 수 있지만, 순간 순간 드러나는 표정과 몸짓은 꾸밀 수 없을 것이다. 이 모습이 크게 다가온 것은 그동안의 나의 태도와 상반된 모습이기 때문에 그러지 않았을까 싶다. 나는 보통 손님이나 외부 사람들이 와서 같이 대화를 나누면 그 사람의 말에 집중하고 주의깊게 듣지만 같이 사는 사람들의 얘기, 한번 들은 얘기에는 시큰둥한 경우가 많았던 것 같다.
그리고 그들은 남의 이야기를 들으면서 끊임없이 ‘반응’해 주었다. 고개를 끄덕여 주고, 적절한 타이밍에 웃어주고, 엄지도 치켜 세워주고... 이것이 일본의 문화인지, 그들 공동체의 문화인지는 잘 모르겠으나 참으로 감명 깊었다. 탐방 기간 동안에 내게 변화가 생겼다면, 그것은 다른 사람들의 말에 끊임없이 반응해 주는 버릇이 생겼다는 것이다.
이렇게 하루가 흘러갔다. 얼마 안 되는 시간이었지만 많은 ‘충격’을 받았다. 머리 속으로 정리하기에는 너무나 많은, 새로운 장면들이 입력되었다. 일본에서의 첫날 밤, 바닥 난방이 아닌 히터로 공기를 데우는 방식으로 난방을 하는 다다미방에서 잠이 들었다. 내일은 실제로 그들이 사는 현장에 가서 그들의 삶을 눈으로 보고, 귀로 듣는 날이다.
댓글 2
맑은공기 13.02.13. 09:39다녀온지 꽤지났는데 글이 구체적이고 생생해서 어제일 처럼 느껴집니다^^
최명학 14.01.06. 22:16애즈원 커뮤니티...몇번 설명을 듣고 탐방기도 일어봤지만, 뭐랄까...딱 이거다 하는 감을 아직은 못 갖겠습니다. 아마도 가서 좀 살아봐야 감이 잡힐듯^^
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