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In this issue: Kris Fleming, now a member of our editorial team along with recently arrived Tom Cox, offers this issue’s biographical sketch of his and Marie’s journey into relationship and subsequently to the establishment of a home in Monteverde.
The authors of articles on this issue’s theme of “inspiration” discuss inspiration in the creative process and for making changes in their lives. All see the need for openness to being inspired as the sine qua non. We hope you find inspiration in what they have to say.
The next issue’s deadline is March 1 and will be on the theme of “rebirth, regeneration”. Please send submissions to the Seeds gmail address: seedsmfm@gmail.com. They can be short pieces or longer feature articles. They can take the form of essays, poetry, interviews, multi-author discussions, etc. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences with the community of readers.
Table of Contents
- Our Journey to Monteverde: Introducing Kris Flemming and Marie-Caroline Vallée
- Inspiration through Brokenness by Tom Cox
- Creativity and Inspiration by Judy Witt
- The Space Within: An Interview with John Badminton by Tom Cox
- Gems of Inspiration by Lucky and Helena Guindon
Our Journey to Monteverde
By Kris Flemming, with Marie-Caroline Vallée
Since the first time I spoke to Marie, I had a thought: This could be something special.
It had been seven years since I had left my hometown of Toronto, Canada, on a quest for greater meaning and life purpose. Traveling and working my way through foreign lands provided me with the life lessons and tools I had set out to find and I felt the time had come to return home to reconnect with my family. One day before my flight home, a number of synchronized events allowed Marie and me to meet over apple pie in a café in Boudhannath, Nepal. A common friend had suggested that we should meet, and so, as we had both finished our respective retreats and found ourselves in the same neighborhood of Kathmandu, the stars aligned for our encounter. Twenty-four hours was all it took for both of us to realize that there was something deeper to discover between us. The following day, we said goodbye; I boarded a plane back to Canada and Marie began a ten-day, silent Vipassana retreat in the mountains.
After those ten days, when we spoke by telephone, it was clear that another meeting was in the works. Before long, Marie flew to meet me in Canada, and we have been on this journey together in search of community ever since. That was four years ago, when we made our first efforts to settle in Canada, choosing Montreal as a home in which to grow into being a couple. Taking our time, we explored the wildernesses of Quebec and northern Ontario, while also reaching into ourselves to discover what we sought for our future. As the cold winter subsided and our spring garden began to grow, it became clear that self-reliance in the production of pure, organic food was an important value to us both. We imagined a future in which we could grow our sustenance year-round, so we began investigating potential regions in the world where we would be able to do so in a free and supportive society.
Unsurprisingly, Costa Rica was mentioned to us on a few occasions and our investigations into the country led us to believe that it could be a good fit. The emphasis on conservation and reforestation inspired us, the idea of a country without a military gave the impression of an underlying peacefulness, and the ability to become a landowner with the same rights as a citizen encouraged us to visit. We made our decision wholeheartedly to seek something better for our future, and without haste, we began to sell most of our possessions and envision an exit strategy from city life.
After a year of working in Montreal, we felt it was the right time to further develop in our practice of yoga and meditation in the sacred lands of Hindustan (India). Six months of travel throughout the country, visiting sacred temples and deepening our spiritual practice, allowed us to rule out India as a potential place to call home. Although enticing at times, the chaotic nature of the country left us wanting, so we made our way to Costa Rica in the early days of June 2019.
Our one and only contact before arriving was established during our time in India. After participating in a Vipassana course, a teacher there provided us with the contact information of the designated Costa Rican Vipassana teachers. It wasn’t much to go on but it was enough to lead us to our new home. Upon arriving, we reached out to them and were put in touch with a family in the Zona Sur, where we stayed to help on their farm. For the first four months, we lived in the valley of San Gerardo de Rivas, near Pérez Zeledón. As much as we enjoyed the Zona Sur, there was something that didn’t quite fit. It was there we realized that what we sought was not just a place to grow our own food. We also longed for a supportive community that shared our spiritual values. Often, we felt alone and without a true direction in our search, and patience wasn’t always easy to find. We began to enlarge our search toward other parts of the country: the Pacific coast, Central Valley, and Caribbean coast, while doing our best to assist within the Vipassana community of Costa Rica. We had little to show for five months of searching and began to lose motivation.
As our minds wandered toward the future, we began considering other countries, maybe Ecuador or perhaps Southern Europe. It was the end of October and the rainy season was making things complicated for us. As we dwelt on our next move, a meditator who lives in Monteverde invited us to visit. We arrived in Monteverde in the wettest month of the year and with little enthusiasm, but we made it.
Little by little, we felt the doors begin to open for us. Upon visiting the Meeting, we felt at home, warmly welcomed by the likes of Paul Smith, among others. Our friendship with Paul grew instantaneously over those initial months, and his willingness to share with us in any way possible was a true inspiration. Attending the weekly Sunday meeting showed us that at the core of the community lay a set of strong and honest values formed by a lifetime of community building. The Quaker values, we learned, were in harmony with our own, and so, we considered the possibility that we had found a potential place to call home.
We still had doubts, as the weather wasn’t ideal! But, overall, we had a good sense that we could be happy here. The simple yet dynamic nature of Monteverde surprised us with each step we took, from Rio Chante to the potlucks, from music nights at Guarumo to movie nights at Caburé, as well as the many other community-sharing events, Monteverde had a lot going for it. (It’ll all be back soon, let’s hope!) We naturally decided to let go of further searching and began integrating ourselves into this special town.
After a visit to Canada for Christmas, we returned knowing that Monteverde was for us. Soon afterward, we were offered a small but beautiful plot of land in the heart of the community. We were ready to make a commitment and so, in February 2020, one month before the pandemic struck, we purchased that land. The challenges have been ample in settling here over the past two years, but the strength of the Monteverde community and our sense of belonging has not allowed doubt to enter our minds as to our decision to settle here. Even throughout the difficult year that has been, a sense of inclusion continues to grow within us, and we are happy to have been invited to participate in this special place. Thank you to all who have made the Monteverde community a gem among gems. We are forevermore grateful!
Inspiration through Brokenness
By Tom Cox
“Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.”
Neil Gaiman
One of the longest running television commercials in U.S. history was created to herald the benefits of hard work and dedication to one’s craft, but I believe it lasted so long because it struck a chord with America’s zombie-like addiction to a grueling routine that saps the soul and rarely delivers on the promises of reward and satisfaction that are supposed to accompany the American Dream.
In the ad, Fred the Baker’s alarm clock rings in the early morning darkness. Immediately, Fred, played by sleepy-eyed character actor Michael Vale, opens his eyes and begins his droning mantra: “Time to make the donuts.” He continually repeats this monotone catch phrase as he gets ready for work in a trance-like state. As he leaves the house, he mumbles, “I bet the guys who make the supermarket donuts are still in bed.”
The ad ran from 1981 until Dunkin’ Donuts rebranded themselves in 1997. It highlighted why their product was so popular. But for many American viewers, I think it also captured the reality of their lives. For them, “time to make the donuts” was symptomatic of a life spent on a repetitive, mind-numbing hamster wheel of meaningless productivity for someone else’s profit. They felt seen.
Often over the past decade, my wife, Jean, and I have often talked, dreamed, and schemed of living abroad. Jean had been a Spanish teacher for fifteen years in the Chicago area before we relocated to Pittsburgh for my job as managing editor at a Christian publishing company. Our international travels, as well as our participation in a collaborative project with indigenous communities in Chiapas, Mexico, through the Presbyterian Church, stirred those desires even more. Then there was our dismay at America’s political strife as well as its love affair with gun culture. Our spirits felt stifled in our home country as it seemed we constantly settled for productivity instead of peace, materialistic gains instead of meaningful lives, insanity instead of inspiration. Still, for all our talk and dissatisfaction, I’m not sure we ever would have awakened from the safety of our “time to make the donuts” slumber had it not been for COVID.
The pandemic still had that new crisis smell when I was unceremoniously laid off in March 2020 after fifteen years on the job. I never saw it coming. This set off a quarterly wave of loss over the next year. Three months later, my 83-year-old father passed away from COVID. I helplessly watched from two thousand miles away as he went to the hospital with an infection, tested negative upon discharge, but then contracted the virus at a physical rehabilitation facility. In his weakened state, he faded quickly and was gone in a week. No funeral or family gathering was ever possible. It was like he just disappeared. Three months later, Jean’s mother passed, not from the virus but from the isolation of her Alzheimer’s facility. Three months after that, our beloved seventeen-year-old dog, Belle, passed away from…well…from being a seventeen-year-old dog.
I write this not to incite your pity. We were among the fortunate ones. So many had it so much worse. Our house was paid off, so we never forfeited on a mortgage. Jean still had a job with healthcare and was able to work from home. I was able to collect unemployment and scrounge some freelance editing work. We paid our bills. We never had to wait in food pantry lines. We didn’t have children who missed out on school, activities, and friends. And neither of us ever became sick—not even the sniffles.
If anything, the pandemic, and all the loss we suffered as a result, triggered a reboot of our human operating systems. We were now free. We were not going back to “making the donuts.” We were awakened, inspired to find a better way of living.
During the quarantine, we looked at many other countries in which to retire—Spain, Portugal, France, Panama, Mexico, Ecuador—but we centered on Costa Rica because the people there seemed to better embody the values of peace, health, sustainability, and egalitarianism we were pursuing. We settled on Monteverde for the biodiversity, the cooler temperatures, and the inspiring story of its Quaker founders. We were not Quakers but we had been practicing various forms of contemplative spirituality. After years of church programs and sermons, many of which I planned and worked to provide, we both discovered that we now find God much more in silence and in nature than in noise and the words of men. Plus, my aunt is a long-time Quaker and one of our favorite people on the planet.
We have been in Monteverde for four months now. I won’t say that life here hasn’t required some adjustment to a new normal. Of course it has. But each day we are discovering continuous sources of inspiration in the now—the incarnate moment. A butterfly on a flower. The peculiar sound of a bird. A conversation with a new acquaintance. We are endlessly inspired by those who have endured here for decades as well as by fellow newbies who have been drawn here by their examples and who strive to live out their values. But I must say, I’m not confident we ever would have followed through on the inspiration to quit our lives and seek a better way of living had the pandemic and all that loss not occurred.
I am no longer one to animate God into human form as someone who plans life events for the purpose of getting us to do something. I believe you will find God no matter where you go or what you do. And, obviously, one is not required to move halfway around the world to awaken to new inspiration. But I also know that waking up often requires a good shaking. The mystics refer to it as “order, disorder, reorder.” Religion calls it “life, death, resurrection.” I believe the pandemic provided the push that propelled us out of our ordered nest, launched us into chaos, and inspired us to discover flight. For us, that meant Monteverde.
Inspiration is found in many forms. It often comes from people we look up to or from a skill we desire to master because it fuels our passions. For us, inspiration happened to come from sorrow and brokenness. I highly recommend the former rather than the latter, but if you find yourself walking that painful, lonely road, I urge you not to look for quick fixes or shortcuts leading to a less painful path. Walk it out. Allow it the time to teach and to lead you. Allow it even to inspire you to awaken to a new way of living. It is too early for me to speculate about what this move will mean for our lives, but I feel confident that we have listened to God in our grieving and have positioned ourselves in the right place at the right time for inspiration to do its healing and restorative work in our new, day-to-day lives. We are so grateful you have welcomed us into your community, and we wait with eager anticipation to see how it all plays out. Pura vida.
Creativity and Inspiration
By Judy Witt
“Where do you get your ideas?” is a question I often heard at art fairs where I sold my pottery. The easy answer was, “They just come to me!” Truth be told, that is often the case. But the bigger questions are: “What is inspiration?” and “How do
we find it, or does it find us?”
It’s hard to examine this because when you are inspired to create, you just want to get on with it and, in my case, make something, not reflect on it. Ideas come to me, but often not easily. So, what do I do when I’m looking for an idea? Play. Play with materials. Play with color. Play with words. Play is really at the center of creativity. In order to play, one must let go of preconceived ideas, prejudices, and perceived results. One must be ready to fail, and then try again. Another path, who knows where it will lead?
Many times, an idea I’ve had starts out one way and ends up totally different because I drift along with it, without trying to push it into being. Sometimes I let my hands do the thinking, which always gets better results than overthinking an idea in my head.
How does this sort of inspiration apply to the rest of life, the life of the Spirit? In many ways, the creative life is Spirit-led. By crafting an object carefully, lovingly, and skillfully, the object—whether it is a porcelain cup, a pie, or a painting—is imbued with the spirit of its creator.
The same can be said for a care-filled, loving, and skillfully rendered conversation with friends. In the same way that play can invite more inspiration, heartfelt discussion can arouse more inspiration, especially when it is combined with deep
listening and seeing. Sometimes inspiration comes from other’s work, stimulating new thoughts and ways to approach a dilemma, be it a design problem or an interpersonal issue.
Finding what inspires is extremely personal and may take a lifetime of exploration. A dear friend exclaimed that after spending a lifetime in a city, “Who knew I was a country girl?” How fortunate are those who, early in life, discovered the forest, the sea, and open spaces as their cleansing ground for inspiration.
The Space Within: An Interview with John Badminton
By Tom Cox
If necessity is the mother of invention, then perhaps inspiration can be considered its eclectic uncle. For John Badminton, building certainly began as necessity, a practical enterprise for producing income.
“It was never really a career move or anything like that. I never really wanted to be a builder, as such. It was practical. A lot of artists back in the States often worked in building or painting. It was always a way to make money. That was part of what got me into it. I needed to make money at that point. I learned a lot from other people. It was a practical skill, a useable skill.”
These days, most people in Monteverde know John as the founder and part-owner of Whole Foods. They might be surprised to learn that he has built six homes in Costa Rica, three almost entirely by himself.
“My main sort of professional career for many years was as a photographer. I had learned building when I was young. It always seemed to me as something that was very logical. It seemed like something anyone could learn to do. When I first went to the United States from Britain, I worked with friends there who were into modern architecture. I worked with them for a few years there—three or four.”
John and his then-wife Kim came to Costa Rica in 1991.
“We had been living on a sailboat before. We started in San Francisco and went to San Diego and Mexico and all over. That was good, but it was a bit purposeless. We weren’t good enough or brave enough to really go for it and sail around the world. We worked in the States for a couple of years just to make money. But we didn’t want to stay in the States, so we started looking for somewhere else to go. We came here first because people were saying good things about Costa Rica in the 1980s. The plan was to come here and then move on, maybe Thailand or wherever. But we ended up staying, which was a good choice.”
They first settled in Arenal, where the first house John built was a shack in which to live and then an art gallery as their business. Building seemed to be the necessary way to get started in Costa Rica at that time.
“There wasn’t much here then. It wasn’t like you could buy your way in; you had to create whatever you were going to do—a cabina at the beach or a shop or a house or whatever. So, I found myself back in building. I pretty much knew how to do it, but I had never built entire structures before. I had built most parts of structures, most systems in a structure, but I hadn’t done the whole thing by myself.”
Nine years later, in 2000, they sold their Arenal home and business and moved to Monteverde for a better community in which to raise their newborn daughter, Elan.
“Interesting things were going on here. The people in Monteverde seemed engaged in business and activity and schools and everything. In Arenal, it was all a bit adrift. It was a displaced village because when they expanded the lake, they flooded the original village. They shattered the core culture of the elders. I found Monteverde much more eclectic. The Ticos and expats seemed to get along very well. I didn’t see a lot of conflict. They had good schools, and because of that, there were other people with kids here, whereas Arenal was developing much more into a retirement crowd.”
Although John works with local architects in order to get the necessary approvals and building permits, he designs them all himself.
“I’m not an architect but I do design the whole house. I draw them for me, and I work on them a lot until I have a very clear threedimensional feel of the whole thing in my head. It’s all there, how the electric works and everything. It must get to that point. Then I have the architect draw up the plans based on my vision. It’s an aesthetic. My process of building is not pre-fixed by someone else’s plan. It’s
not like I’m a contractor fulfilling an architect’s dream. It’s me working out the image as I go along. I’m looking to see if I feel good about it, about the dimensions or the resonance or the solidity—whatever it is about the space.”
Many builders are attracted to the look of a place—the lines and angles and style. For John, the inspiration to build is found more in the feel of the place. You almost get a spiritual vibe from John when he talks about building, although he stops short of calling it a spiritual process.
“I think it is more emotional than spiritual. I see things and then I get an emotional response to it—I like it or I don’t like it. Different things affect different people. Light can be very important to some. I like light too, but resonance is my thing. If you go into a cathedral or into a prefabricated aluminum house, the resonance between the two structures, how they feel, is different. I don’t like metal structures much. They have a high frequency resonance in their vibe. I work very much on that feeling of resonance, that solidity in certain areas. That’s what interests me a lot when I walk into a building, just the feeling of the space—the shape, the size, whatever it is.”
The legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright once said, “The space within becomes the reality of the building.” Although Wright did not speak much of those who influenced him, it is believed he may have taken this from the ancient Chinese writer and philosopher Lao Tzu, who wrote, “Mold clay into a vessel; it is the emptiness within that creates the usefulness of the vessel. …What we have may be
something useful, but its usefulness lies in the unoccupied space.”
John couldn’t agree more:
“The satisfaction I get out of building, besides completing a task, is thinking about the other people who are going to live in the house. I’m creating what is going to be somebody else’s home, lots of other people will be living in it over the next fifty or sixty years. I really like to think about that when I’m building it. Most of the buildings are not for me. They end up being sold in the end, one way or another. So, I think about who is going to be living in it and hoping that I make it a nice place and that they feel good there. It’s tremendously satisfying to think, long after I’m gone, that some anonymous stranger may really love that house in Monteverde.”
John believes the home he is building for Elan may be his last.
“I think, physically, it has to be. I hope so. It’s getting harder and harder, It’s quite a heavy, physical job. It’s a big job; a long job. It’s like a huge Lego. First, you imagine it, and then you have to go block by block, detail by detail. I do other things too. I like gardening. I’m happy to garden. I still play with imagery, like photography. I still have some of the old equipment. My eyes aren’t so good anymore though and doing the whole thing with glasses is different.”
John may not believe that his passion for building is necessarily a spiritual endeavor, but it is hard to not to hear those vibes as he reflects on the path he continues to walk:
“I’ve gotten to the point where I try to get past the point of finishing and just enjoy the journey. That sounds like a classic cliché but it’s true in many ways. I think I should be enjoying it. It’s like Whole Foods, where our mission statement is ‘Have fun.’ Enjoy doing this. You shouldn’t just do it for some end-goal. You should enjoy the process. It’s the same way in my building. I should be enjoying this. You shouldn’t just do it for ending a task. I think many of us were brought up only thinking about that end goal—‘Keep going. Almost there. I’m almost there.’ It’s like suffering misery. Then, hopefully, you somehow get there, wherever there is. But the thing is, you should be enjoying yourself all the time if you possibly can.”
Gems of Inspiration
By Lucky and Helena Guindon
[EDITOR: The following is taken from a conversation between Helena and Lucky Guindon. They both feel that denoting who said what is not as important as the ideas that were shared. Thus, we get the privilege of being a fly on the wall to listen in on their wisdom.]
Inspiration is what I often feel when I wake up to a beautiful new day. Here it is—a gift! Songs speak of this fresh beginning: “This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.”
“God has created a new day, silver and green and gold. Grant that the sunset may find us, worthy His gifts to hold.”
I’ve heard the saying “Inspiration strikes!” The idea that inspiration comes first and then one takes action doesn’t happen to me. I make the move and get started in a rather ordinary, mundane way. No drama. Only then will inspiration visit me. Then it seems sudden.
Inspiration is an idea that doesn’t knock but pops in to surprise me. It brings extra energy that gets me going. Inspiration seems to be a positive energy. This unexpected visitor can come as a picture, showing me what it looks like, or it can come as words, ones I hear in my mind or something others have said. Sometimes it is simply action. Inspiration can come as a bump that changes my routine, like an unexpected trip or even an accident. Any mistake can open me to change and inspiration.
No matter how it comes, by the time I’ve laid eyes on it, the idea is in the door and demands action. Things must shift. This new idea says, “Hey, make way for me!” I start hearing beeps. By now, I’m chiding, “Wait! Where did you come from? How did you get into my room?” Did a recent event startle me? Did something someone else showed me send the spark? Maybe my inner ear was listening more carefully just now. It’s likely I was rested, not too busy nor upset and distracted by negative thoughts. For certain, my mind was yawning open, ready to take in new information. Whatever. Now, the idea is in and now I’ve got to do something. I’ve got to do the best I can, remaining as close as possible to what I know as right, taking just one step toward that vision. I never know what will happen, but I have to trust and I have to try
There is one guarantee: once I start, other ideas will come into play. Whether mine or those of other people, these ideas help it to take shape.
I think there’s a saying: “the more you give, the more you are given.” But it doesn’t specify what! At least by doing something concrete I’m inviting the next step. Careful plans prove useful up to a point. I try to balance calculating materials and gathering tools with staying open to new opportunities and making needed changes. Both the left and right sides of the brain must cooperate here.
Inspiration being a positive force, if I want to feel inspired, I can purposely look for things I like around me. I can even put them there—a vase of flowers or a favorite photograph. A good thought or saying can be written and placed where it is often seen.
There are a lot of possible ways to encourage an upswing in attitude. Do something you love, like playing a game, running or dancing, or even physical work that leaves one happy. Being out in nature, even if I get wet, can help me become more aware in all my senses. I like listening to happy music, rain on the roof, wind in the trees, or crickets at night. Watching or interacting with children can encourage me. Children are inspiration! They see things as new, without the blinders of habit.
Whatever helps me to let go of irritation, to see the humor in a situation, to remain light enough to smile and enjoy a good joke—all make fertile soil for inspiration.
Another ingredient is sharing. I guess because we are social it frees something inside of us when we give. Whether it is an object, food, a good book, or simply words, the act of sharing perks the soul. Corrie Ten Boom [the Dutch writer who was arrested by the Nazis for hiding Jewish people in her home during World War II] tells of being in prison and finding solace by sharing crumbs from her meager rations with an ant. Sharing can be as simple as recounting a memory, a funny story, or an odd-ball dream; or as serious as giving a message in Meeting for worship. It’s scary how far our words can carry. I remember messages others gave in Meeting ages ago. People have told me how something I said impacted them, even though I have completely forgotten what it was I said.
When listening for inspiration, I can’t be picky. I must be ready to receive anything anyone shares, keeping the part of it that speaks to me.
Curiosity leads me into an exploring mode that often uncovers surprises. Whether I like what I discover or not, it can loosen my doors, and before I know it—Boo!—inspiration is looking me in the face.
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