The Red Paperclip… and My Dream
In case you haven’t heard one of the stories creating a real buzz online this week: A year ago today a young Canadian blogger, Kyle MacDonald, met with two women he had contacted online, and swapped a red paperclip with them for a pen. It was the beginning of a quest, to use barter as a way to achieve a dream: to own his own house. The theory was beautiful in its simplicity: although bartering is based on the idea of trading items of roughly equal value, in practice it is possible to swap your item for something that, on the open market, is slightly more valuable. MacDonald saw that if with each trade he could get something slightly more worthwhile which he could then in turn swap for something still more desirable, eventually he would have something valuable enough that he could barter it for a house. Today, a mere 14 trades after starting with a paperclip, MacDonald is doing just that; trading his most recent acquisition — a contract for a paid speaking role in a major motion picture — for his own mortgage-free home.
You can read about it at his blog, One Red Paperclip.
What an inspiration! Trusting in the natural flow of abundance, this guy leverages a paperclip into his own piece of real estate. All it took was persistence, a willingness to tell his story, trust in the marketing power of the internet, and – perhaps most important of all – enough faith to believe in his dream.
So what about the rest of us mere mortals? Well, I’ll leave it up to you to consider what your “red paperclip” is, and how you are going to trade it up and up and up, until your dream comes true. Meanwhile, here are some thoughts from where I sit.
My “red paperclips” (i.e., what I have that I am willing to offer up in a trade) include my talent for writing, my enthusiasm for the mystical tradition, and my abilities as a teacher and speaker. Meanwhile, my dream is to take all of these skills and create a sustainable vocation, in which I am able to share my love for mysticism with others, and in turn receive enough material support to allow me to keep doing what I love – i.e., reading the mystics, praying in the light of their teachings, and sharing it with others through writing, speaking, teaching, blogging.
Now, traditionally those who write about or teach in the mystical tradition have done so either as religious professionals (clergy or monks) or, in recent years, as academics. Part of my dream is to immerse myself in mysticism, and share it with the world, without becoming either a priest or a monastic or a professor.
Obviously, I’m disqualified for the first two options, since I’m both Catholic and married. But even if I weren’t married, I think in today’s world it takes more than a love for mystical writing and contemplative prayer in order to be a religious professional. I simply don’t believe my desire to celebrate mysticism is enough evidence of a priestly vocation.
As for the academic path – well, as a guy in my mid-40s I suppose it isn’t too late to run off and get my Ph.D. Except for one problem: I don’t want to. I’m not interested in postmodern deconstructive textual analysis and other such ivory-towerish approaches to mysticism. I’m interested in the mystics because I believe in their power to transform ordinary lives. Not just the lives of ministers and monks. Not just the lives of scholars and academics. But the lives of the rest of us, the retail managers and computer programmers and public school teachers and mortgage officers and all sorts of other folks for whom spirituality is not so much a profession as simply the glue that holds the rest of life together.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I think that putting on a white collar or adding a string of letters after my name are ways to alienate me (and by association, the mysticism I advocate) from “the real world.” And I don’t want to do that. The old paradigm of religion held that you had to retreat from the world in order to “do” mysticism. But I believe that a new and emerging paradigm of mysticism will be a spirituality of transformation that reaches each and every one of us right where we are – in the world.
Note that I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with being a priest or monk or college professor… and if I’ve learned anything in my 45 years, it’s never say never. So while I don’t know what my vocational future may hold, I do know that, for now, I believe my call is to write about, speak about, and teach Christian meditation, contemplative prayer, Celtic spirituality, and other aspects of mysticism – period. It’s not a call to “get a degree” or “get ordained” or “get tenure” in order to do what I feel called to do. It’s just a call, to go do it. Now.
The problem, as I see it (and maybe it’s a problem of my own making), is that there aren’t a lot of job openings for freelance mystics. Becoming a religious professional or an academic is like getting a job with the big corporation. But my path is more that of a spiritual entrepreneur, seeking to be true to the joy I find in mysticism and the desire I have to share it with others, meanwhile having to make up the rules as I go along because there are no rules about how I can put food on the table while I pursue the thing I love.
Marsha Sinetar said “Do what you love and the money will follow.” My dream, to do what I love – on that I’m clear. But I’m way fuzzy on how the money is going to follow. After publishing ten books, I know that writing won’t pay the bills (at least, not all of them). And as of yet I haven’t achieved my goals at parlaying my writing credentials into a decent income stream through speaking and teaching. Yes, I make a little bit here and a little bit there. But I continue to need the financial support of a day job (even a part-time one), which is a continual frustration because a day job, well, gets in the way of doing my work. So my dream is to “do” mysticism (study it, read it, live it, write it, speak and teach it) full-time, while trusting that this work will support my family. I have no need to get rich (and thankfully, neither does my wife). I just want to live modestly without having to rely on credit cards.
So this is where the red paperclip comes in. I want to trade my love for mysticism and my knowledge about western spirituality and my skill as a writer for a profession where that love for contemplation and mysticism and writing is self-sustaining. Like the young man with a paperclip and a dream of owning a house, I have no idea how to get from where I am to where I want to go. But I’m putting it out there.
Anyone wanna trade?
