The Writings of Robert Daniel Smith
and Home of the Iona House Catholic Worker
Inspired by Celtic and Creation Spirituality
With the Primordial Tao, the Findhorn Community, Gandhi, and the Writings of Matthew Fox Highlighted
Robert Daniel Smith is a writer, poet, community organizer, sacred activist, and a founding member of the Salinas Catholic Worker. For thirty years he was friend to the homeless, as well as cook, dishwasher, spiritual guide, street-sweeper, fundraiser and, of least importance, "Director".
The Iona House Catholic Worker -- inspired by Celtic and Creation Spirituality -- is a new "Catholic Worker" with a current focus on spiritual practice and formation; the cultivation of mindful-loving as partners, parents, and family; gardening, creative arts, and publishing.
Peter Maurin, co-founder with Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker Movement, often spoke of his radical program of being a synthesis of "cult, culture, and cultivation". "Cult", of course, was both Maurin's and Day's commitment to a Catholic spirituality and world view. "Cultivation" was a reference to their commitment to the idea of a "return to the land" as an answer to unemployment and other grave social problems. What might we think of as "culture"?
To be sure, both Maurin and Day thought of a "Catholic" culture that somehow existed to nurture the possibility of the ordinary becoming "sanctified": an ideal of St. Benedict. But what of us? As "Catholic", in terms of modern culture, is now virtually synonymous with both pedophilia and misogyny, is it not well past time to evaluate "culture" in radical personalist terms? Can you envision a culture of both reverence and of listening, with opened hearts and opened hands?
If we are to engage in a conscious cultivation of a new culture of reverence and of listening, with opened hearts and opened hands, what would that entail? What would that mean? I believe that there are crucial hallmarks, already designed by the heroes and saints who have traveled this pathway before us: we need to give attention to what they are... We might begin with the need to establish right relationship with others, with life and the living, and with the Earth: could there be a better or higher ideal than that of cause no harm? And recognizing the impossibility of such an ideal, might we then modify it with cause as little harm as possible?
Attuning ourselves to cause as little harm as possible begins the opening of our hearts to the mystic desire to listen to the beating heart of the Divine Beloved, everywhere present, without exceptions... Compassion flows from reverence and listening... Interconnectivity with Creation increasingly becomes obvious and deep... Reverence allows for heart-openings into justice and equality for all... how could loving do otherwise? Listening for the Heartbeats of God in the everyday moments of our lives will steadily become a prayer without ceasing...
As farmers, students, doctors, teachers, workers, artists, nurses, cooks, wait-staff, clerks, believers, unbelievers: as everyone and anyone, we can live in such a way that we begin to make evident the beautiful, the good, and the kind (the Divine) in and with each other... such is the dream of Iona House...
The Iona House Catholic Worker -- inspired by Celtic and Creation Spirituality -- is a new "Catholic Worker" with a current focus on spiritual practice and formation; the cultivation of mindful-loving as partners, parents, and family; gardening, creative arts, and publishing.
Peter Maurin, co-founder with Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker Movement, often spoke of his radical program of being a synthesis of "cult, culture, and cultivation". "Cult", of course, was both Maurin's and Day's commitment to a Catholic spirituality and world view. "Cultivation" was a reference to their commitment to the idea of a "return to the land" as an answer to unemployment and other grave social problems. What might we think of as "culture"?
To be sure, both Maurin and Day thought of a "Catholic" culture that somehow existed to nurture the possibility of the ordinary becoming "sanctified": an ideal of St. Benedict. But what of us? As "Catholic", in terms of modern culture, is now virtually synonymous with both pedophilia and misogyny, is it not well past time to evaluate "culture" in radical personalist terms? Can you envision a culture of both reverence and of listening, with opened hearts and opened hands?
If we are to engage in a conscious cultivation of a new culture of reverence and of listening, with opened hearts and opened hands, what would that entail? What would that mean? I believe that there are crucial hallmarks, already designed by the heroes and saints who have traveled this pathway before us: we need to give attention to what they are... We might begin with the need to establish right relationship with others, with life and the living, and with the Earth: could there be a better or higher ideal than that of cause no harm? And recognizing the impossibility of such an ideal, might we then modify it with cause as little harm as possible?
Attuning ourselves to cause as little harm as possible begins the opening of our hearts to the mystic desire to listen to the beating heart of the Divine Beloved, everywhere present, without exceptions... Compassion flows from reverence and listening... Interconnectivity with Creation increasingly becomes obvious and deep... Reverence allows for heart-openings into justice and equality for all... how could loving do otherwise? Listening for the Heartbeats of God in the everyday moments of our lives will steadily become a prayer without ceasing...
As farmers, students, doctors, teachers, workers, artists, nurses, cooks, wait-staff, clerks, believers, unbelievers: as everyone and anyone, we can live in such a way that we begin to make evident the beautiful, the good, and the kind (the Divine) in and with each other... such is the dream of Iona House...