The Wayfarer: 10th Anniversary Edition

By Wayfarer Books

The Wayfarer Magazine Celebrates 10 Years

Dedicated in Loving Memory of Fellow Wayfarer David K. Leff

With Features by L.M. Browning, Heidi Barr, Theodore Richards, Frank Inzan Owen, Amy Nawrocki, Eric D. Lehman, Gail Collins-Ranadive, Aimée Medina Carr, Heather Durham,

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wayfarer Books
• Release date: Nov 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781956368345

Book preview

Life is a journey, not a destination.

—RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Since 2012, The Wayfarer has been offering literature, interviews, and art with the intention to inspire our readers and highlight the power for agency and change-making that each individual holds.

By our definition, a wayfarer is one whose inner compass is ever-oriented to truth, wisdom, healing, and beauty in their own wandering.

The Wayfarer’s mission as a publication is to foster a community of contemplative voices and provide readers with resources and perspectives that support them in their own journey.

As we mark our 10th year, in the face of these uncertain times, we renew our commitment to our readers to be a space of solace and our pledge to advocate for marginalized communities, the arts, and environmental conservation.

A LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The offices of The Wayfarer Magazine and Homebound Publications—the publishing company under which it falls—are situated in the small fishing village of stonington, Connecticut on lands once occupied by the Pequot and the Mohegan people (known in present-day as the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation and the Mohegan Nation respectively) whose lands were taken from them by force and duplicity. We honor this history and hold it within our minds and hearts as we midwife our creative endeavors from this space on the Connecticut shoreline.

The names of the land as quoted within this essay collection have gone by many names in the languages of both the native peoples for whom they were home and eventually the European settlers. But let us also remember that the land exists as a sentient being beyond labels, borders, and quantification.

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Every effort is made to avoid errors, misspellings and omissions. If, however, an error comes to your attention, please accept our sincere apologies and notify us. Thank you. The Wayfarer™ is published biannually by Wayfarer Books and Homebound Publications. No part of this publications may be used without written permission of the publisher. All rights to all original artwork, photography and written works belongs to the respective owners as stated in the attributions.

THIS ISSUE IS DEDICATED IN LOVING MEMORY TO OUR FRIEND AND FELLOW WAYFARER, DAVID K. LEFF

WALDEN POND,

CONCORD, MASS

Contents

WAYFARERS WAYFARING

A RECIPE FOR COMMUNITY

Death and the Arts

DOING HOPE

GIVING UP THE CHAOKEHOLD

GROUNDED!

THE CRISIS OF EDUCATION

FROM COLLISION TO LIBERATION

GIANTS

GRANDMOTHER

A RUCKSACK RUMINATION

BEARS EARS

NEVER ARRIVING YET ALAWAYS RETURNING

POETRY

WAYFARERS WAYFARING

A FLOWING ETYMOLOGIC AL TRIBUTE

BY EDITOR-AT-LARGE, FRANK INZAN OWEN

One who overcomes all barriers with a firm heart-mind is called a wayfarer.

—SUZUKI SHŌSAN (1579-1655), SAMURAI-TURNED-ZEN/PURE LAND MONK

MENTION THE TERM WAYFARER TO SOME PEOPLE and they will assume you are referring to the popular style of sunglasses by Tom Ford Henry ® and Ray-Ban ® , preferred shades of Bob Dylan, the Blues Brothers, the Duchess of Cambridge, and even ol’ 007. Mention wayfarer to someone else and they may have a sudden nostalgic association to the early 19th-century American gospel-folk song, The Wayfaring Stranger, made popular by Johnny and June Carter Cash ¹. From a song by Bruce Springsteen ² and a novel by Natsume Sōseki ³, to a type of rigged sailing dinghy ⁴ and a well-known vineyard in Sonoma ⁵, wayfarer is a term that has a compelling grip on the human imagination, ancient and modern.

To celebrate the thoroughgoing spirit of this decade-old magazine, I would like to embark upon a bit of a rambling trip to explore the word wayfarer as a linguistic archetype from a few different angles—moving from the known English definition (and its primal roots), to how we use it at Homebound Publications, to other associations I absorbed along the way, both from my late teacher and other sources rooted in the spirituality of the Far East. My hope is that this flowing word-study offers an added sense of richness to your own understanding of the term: wayfarer.

WAYFARER: AN ENGLISH ETYMOLOGY

A quick glance at any version of the modern English dictionary will reveal a similar definition for the term wayfarer:

| Wayfarer (n. / wā fer r/): a person who travels, usually on foot

Looking deeper at the word’s origins, we learn that the word way hails from the Old English weg (road, path), the Proto-Germanic wega (course of travel), and over time came to have added dimensions of meaning such as way (manner in which something occurs). Farer, on the other hand, derives from the Old English fare (to journey, set forth, travel). A wayfarer, then, is one who journeys on a road or sets out on a path.

Yet, the term has come to mean so much more in its cultural essence, as expressed by its various synonyms: drifter, gypsy, kick-around, knockabout, vagabond, rover, wanderer, and the rarely used term maunderer, as in maunder, as in: to meander, to wander slowly, idly, aimlessly⁶.

WAYFARER: ANOTHER DEFINITION CLOSER TO HOME

In contemplating the term wayfarer, naturally, we must also include the mission statement of Wayfarer Magazine. The guiding mission defines a wayfarer in a very precise way:

A wayfarer is a wanderer

whose ability to re-imagine the possible

provides the compass bearings

for those on their way.

The Wayfarer’s mission

is to chart the way for change

by building and empowering

a community of contemplative voices.

THE WAY IN EASTERN SPIRITUAL WAYFARING

If you know the way broadly you will see it in everything.

—MIYAMOTO MUSASHI (1584-1645), A.K.A. NITEN DŌRAKU, SWORDSMAN, ARTIST

Though it is something of a fool’s errand, to make at least some sense of the term wayfarer in the Eastern context we must first make an attempt to understand what is meant by Way. Even with this initial step, however, we stumble, for the first line of the Tao Te Ching warns us: The Way that can be named is not the Eternal Way.

The term Way in Eastern spirituality and the arts is rooted in the Chinese word: Dao (Tao). Like the English word, way, the word dao (tao) simply means road or path. In its spiritual context, however, Dao refers to the Way —a mysterious, intuitive term that can simultaneously be artistic, cosmological, martial, metaphysical, mystical, ontological, philosophical, or religious. As such, Dao (and its Japanese derivative: Dō) is acknowledged in one manner or another by numerous traditions in the Far East including Confucianism, Daoism, Shinto, Shugendō, Zen, and numerous creative and martial arts such as Chadō (The Way of Tea), Kadō (The Way of Flowers), Kendō (The Way of the Sword), and Aikidō (The Way of Unifying Energy, or Harmonizing Spirit).

But, what is this mysterious Dao/Dō/Way?

As with all Chinese and Japanese words, we learn a lot by decoding the characters or kanji (a.k.a. letters) of the languages themselves. In this case, Dao/Dō comes from the character/kanji:

Woven into this one pictograph are multiple associations based upon what are called radicals (different strokes that comprise the whole character). The upper radical denotes both a head (intelligence, consciousness) and an eye (observation, perception) over a lower radical which denotes a footpath, or road. Implied here is a sense of motion or movement (the path, the foot), taking steps (such as on a journey, or in learning a new art or practice), and a sense of practiced attention, or noticing.

According to translator/scholar William Scott Wilson, "In a narrower sense, the word Tao has come