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Biography
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"A Careful Subtraction" Since I have to live here and this is a small town, I'll be the first to declare that all the politicians in our town are true statesmen, free of corruption and wise beyond their years. We have two water towers. The old water tower was built in 1892 and sits behind Harry Christie's house. The new water tower, erected in 1960, is located next to the elementary school. The nicest house in town is owned by the Blantons, who ran the grain mill. Their home crowns a hill north of town and though I've lived here a good many years, I never tire of walking past it and seeing it there, nestled amongst the trees. The Blantons built the house during the Great Depression. They bought the land from a man named Carter, who was mean to his wife and an embarrassment to the town. We were glad to see him leave, and since the Blantons expedited his departure, we've had a high opinion of them ever since. Mr. Blanton is deceased. Mrs. Blanton still lives in the house on the hill, soldiering on. When she turned ninety-three, her daughter hired a nurse to stay with her. To pass the time, Mrs. Blanton and her nurse work outside, tending the acreage and pulling weeds. When her daughter drives up the lane, Mrs. Blanton and her nurse hurry inside through the back door. Mrs. Blanton lays on the fainting couch and looks feeble. The nurse bends over her, presses a stethoscope to her bosom and frowns. When the daughter leaves, Mrs. Blanton and her nurse go back to pulling weeds and tending the acreage. The original Blanton estate is just shy of a hundred acres, most of it rolling woods and meadows. In our growing-up years, Bill Eddy, Don Dodson and I spent countless nights camping in those woods. We slapped mosquitoes in July and burrowed deep in our sleeping bags in January. We never asked permission to camp there and took a strong delight in trespassing, excited at the prospect of getting away with something. I feel a similar thrill whenever I drive through a yellow light. The woods are a place of firsts for me. I smoked my first, and only, cigar in those woods. Kissed my first girl alongside the creek on a Saturday afternoon in autumn. And six months later, when the girl no longer welcomed my kisses, was healed of heartbreak while hiking its trails. I learned to shoot a .22 rifle there. And in those woods discovered the quiet peace of a campfire on a snapping autumn evening. I am now walking those same trails with my two little boys—Spencer on my right, Sam on my left. They hold my pant legs with one hand and grasp their toy rifles with the other, cocked and ready for grizzly bears. I make a growling sound and their eyes open wide, their rifles swing up and their hands quiver with such excitement I can feel it through my pant legs. When our sons were two and five, a house beside the woods came on the market. I was driving by and saw the for-sale sign, drove to the realtor's office, paid fifty dollars earnest money, then drove back to the city to tell my wife, who understood perfectly the lure of first kisses, healed hearts and lurking grizzlies. Five months later, a moving van carried our earthly belongings across two counties and here we are, just down the road from Mrs. Blanton and her nurse. I've not been the only one attracted to Mrs. Blanton's woods. Developers have been after her to sell it. They want to knock down the trees, scrape the earth raw, pipe up the creeks, build row after row of plastic houses and name it "Wooded Glen" or some other hint of what it was before the carnage. They spoke to her of big money, which wasn't her language. Then, to their eternal dismay, she donated the land to the town for a nature preserve, with the understanding that it remain forever off-limits to real estate predators. Little boys toting toy rifles are quite welcome. The town hired a woman to manage the preserve. Her name is Kim. Her college degree is in geology. She is not a naturalist and made that clear right up front. "I know rocks and geologic formations. I'm learning about plants, but there's still a lot I don't know. I'm not a naturalist," she told the park director, who hired her anyway. The Blanton Woods Nature Preserve opens every morning at precisely eight o'clock and closes around 5:00 PM, give or take an hour. Kim unlocks the gate every morning and since my boys and I live next to the preserve, we close the gate at five o'clock. Kim is punctual. We are not. Sometimes the preserve stays open way past supper when we finally remember to close the gate. One morning I awoke and remembered that we hadn't closed the gate the night before. I had to sneak over and close it before Kim got there. Our town encompasses exactly 5.7 square miles. I suspect the preserve is the only section that remains relatively unchanged in the past seventy years. The deep ravines and the four creeks coursing through the preserve discourage settlement. It is not an easy woods to tame. Still, there is a movement afoot to restore the meadows to their 1824 state, when our ancestors first built along the creek. When they arrived in May of 1824, the meadows along the big creek waved with prairie grass and wildflowers—little bluestem, butterfly weed, switchgrass, prairie cinquefoil and wild rye. Now those native beauties are choked out by ironweed, black medic, pokeweed, horse nettle and joe pye weed. Squatters all. The plan is to kill off the interlopers and replant the meadow in native grasses and wildflowers. Kim is in charge of taking it back to the way it was, though killing off the plants, even joe pye weeds, is repugnant to her. Still, for the sake of the schoolchildren who tour this place every spring, she is proceeding. She told me, "I want the kids to see how Indiana was before the strip malls and interstates." But there is another principle at work here, the principle of "giving way." Our 1824 ancestors knew this principle. They observed that death must happen for life to follow. The plant is born, but first the seed must die. Joe pye weed has had its day. Now is the time for prairie cinquefoil. We are not much different from these meadows. If certain things take root in us, it will be to our demise. I consider how certain of my faults cripple my nobler qualities and thus require killing - my lusts which choke out love, my self-concern which crowds out empathy. My reluctance to put these faults to death serves only to enslave me. Pat Morley writes of the "half-surrendered" life. This is when we add God to our lives without subtracting those things which choke out God's joyous, holy presence, our twisted priorities, our greed, our slavish devotion to comfort. It is not enough to subtract some of these encumbrances, they all must go. When Mrs. Blanton and her nurse tend the flower beds, they do not uproot some weeds while allowing others to flourish. With some things we ought make no peace. On my way to lock the gate, I walk past and see them stooping and pulling. It is a methodical killing. So, too, does life in God's Reign require the careful subtraction of all which keeps joy at bay. Interview with Philip Gulley Lydia Talbot: Thank you, Philip Gulley. An imaginative message—an imaginative metaphor of a meadow—that conveys the revelation that with life in God's reign, we need to carefully subtract all things that put joy at bay. How did you learn that? Philip Gulley: Well, I stumbled across this phrase by Pat Morley in one of his books. He talks about the half-surrendered life and how we have all of these things in our life. Then we add God to an already full life—an already determined life—in some instances without carefully considering those things which get in our life and have been present in our life that stand and continue to stand between a full relationship to the Divine. I began to think about that and then the next day I was out hiking in those woods and I met Kim and she said, "We're going to have to kill all the weeds off," and I thought, "Oh, yeah!" Getting rid of that which God did not intend in order to allow that which God did intend to blossom and flourish. Talbot: Now your story telling, Philip, is reminiscent of the well-known story teller, Garrison Keillor and his A Prairie Home Companion. He has the capacity to perceive the human condition with a deep religious sensibility and that's what you do. When did you first realize you are a story teller? Gulley: When I was a Quaker pastor, I noticed that people were nodding off in my sermons and I began to explore different ways that I could liven things up—when you are a Quaker, you have to be careful how you liven up services. You know, we like it kind of quiet, and then I began to explore the use of story and humor to convey eternal truths. Talbot: Now talk about your Quaker conversion, because your mother was a Roman Catholic, your father was a Baptist. How did you become a Quaker? Gulley: I became a Quaker at the age of 16 when it occurred to me that the girls in the Quaker church were prettier than the girls in the Catholic church. Talbot: It did not have to do with the historic peace church at that age? Gulley: It wasn't a divine revelation from the Lord, but since that time, I've grown to find that the things that I knew were the very things the Quakers were talking about: issues of peace and equality, simplicity, integrity, which certainly the Catholics embrace, too, but by then I was already a Quaker and had established relationships and really enjoyed it. Talbot: Toward a life of greater simplicity, commitment and joy then is how you might describe your life with your wife, Joan, and your two boys, Sam and Spencer, who by the way, you say do have toy rifles. Now let me press you on that. As a Quaker, an historic peace church, isn't there a degree of inconsistency there, even though they are intended for imaginary affairs? Gulley: We struggled with that and determined from the outset that we would not buy them guns and then when we saw them making guns out of any little stick in the yard, we determined that buying them a plastic gun would have less of a tendency to poke their eye out would, in fact, be the safer thing to do. Talbot: How do you begin to instill peace-making principles in your own children at that very tender age of three and six? Gulley: Many Quakers do it by not buying their children war toys and I think that is kind of lost on children. I think the best way parents can do that is model it themselves, particularly in their home life and how they communicate and relate with each other, and when children are raised in a home where parents peaceably work out their dilemmas as opposed to resorting to anger and violence, children learn that this is how humans should relate and having a toy rifle is probably not a detriment to that, I hope! Talbot: The well-known radio broadcaster, Paul Harvey, took a special interest in your writing which started out as church bulletin material. Tell about that connection and why Paul Harvey is important in your career. Gulley: His son was an occasional visitor at our congregation when he would be in Indianapolis visiting family. He began attending our Quaker meeting, signed our guest register and began receiving our newsletter. He then passed the stories on to his father who read excerpts from the stories on his show. They were heard by a publisher who contacted me to see if I had enough of these newsletter stories to be contained in a book and I did, and so I sent them off and half a year later out came Front Porch Tales, which was my first book. Talbot: We should note that you did have a degree of influence from your mother, who is an English teacher. What does she think about your books and your present career as an author? Gulley: She is very intrigued with it because we live in a small town. And because she lives in that same town, she gets a little anxious whenever I write about any one that she knows, because she has to see the people in the grocery store and she doesn't want anybody saying, "Why did your son write that?" After I write it, I get mom's approval and she edits out those things that might come back and embarrass people and we have reached a peace that way. Talbot: Philip, in our final moment, what message would you have for those who are caught up in the busyness of urban life—large sprawling cities—from the perspective of home in Danville, Indiana? Gulley: Well, I guess first I would say don't move to Danville because we don't want it to become a large sprawling city. I would say focus on relationship because the beauty and charm of the small town is found in the secret of intimate relationships with people you love. Talbot: That's a compelling message to conclude with. Thank you so much Philip Gulley. Gulley: Thank you, Lydia.
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