David Whyte Winter Offerings

DAVID WHYTE & MANY RIVERS

Winter 2020 - 2021

Letter from the House

Events with David Whyte

New from Many Rivers

David Recommends

Friends and Family

Walking Tours

Cover photo: Tree, Borrowdale. ©David Whyte

Letter from the House

Outside the kitchen window veils of rain and wind are bringing in the au-

tumn weather from far across the Pacific. On the animated satellite map

glowing from my laptop, the earth looks gorgeous, hues of blue and green

and corrugated brown appearing and disappearing under spiraling patterns

of rain and cloud. Those same great spirals of rain and wind have made their

way from the subtropics of the Philippines or the Northern islands of Japan,

finally turning to a white that signifies snow as they cross the Cascade moun-

tains and sweep inland across the American continent.

Beneath all this magnificence, it is sobering to think humankind has decid-

ed it might allow itself to be bullied into tiny, dead-end conversations where

we are made to turn into one another’s adversaries. Indeed, we have been

bullied into bullying one another by our own technologies and by unbridled

political money; not only into forgetting the miraculous nature of life that

sustains us all, but into hating one another over nothings spun into some-

things that turn us into mutual enemies.

I don’t often say this out loud, but even though I consider myself a deeply

religious person in an unnameable, elemental sense, I often find a person’s

Living Without Enemies:

Refusing to Name as the Essence of Kindness

I know the truth — give up all other truths!

No need for people anywhere on earth to struggle.

Look — it is evening, look, it is nearly night:

what do you speak of, poets, lovers, generals?

The wind is level now, the earth is wet with dew,

the storm of stars in the sky will turn to quiet.

And soon all of us will sleep beneath the earth, we

who never let each other sleep above it.

- Marina Tsvetaeva

trans. Elaine Feinstein

declaration of specific religious or political beliefs the most tedious, unin-

teresting thing I could ever know about them. Uncompromising religious

or political beliefs are almost always a declaration of where we have stopped

paying attention, where we refuse to have a conversation and where we want

to manipulate others into our way of thinking.

It is impossible for a human being to simultaneously have all the answers and

pay real attention to anything other than their own manufactured thoughts;

it is almost impossible to be kind when carrying fixed beliefs. It is especially

impossible to be vulnerable, and because all conversation ends when vulnera-

bility ends, it can be almost impossible to hold a real conversation.

And that is probably as much true for me in regard to the activist left as the

conservative right, no matter how righteous the cause. Most specifically,

when the person lacks that timeless, abiding diagnostic of true ‘religious’ or

‘political’ experience: a deep and abiding kindness for others. We actually

live in a time characterized by a deep and abiding distrust of strangers, and

an unmerciful unkindness to those who do not fit our ideas, on the left and

the right. Evangelical Christians may be deeply unkind to those who do not

share their beliefs, but politically correct University campuses can be just as

unmerciful in a very Old Testament way, casting out demons into the intel-

lectual wilderness.

Strangely enough, this distrust and unkindness toward others creates a sym-

metry of distrust inside the distruster themselves, who must always meet the

next version of themselves in the form of someone they probably would not

agree with, therefore distrusting any new thoughts dawning even inside them-

selves, distrusting most tellingly the part of them courageous enough, gener-

ous enough and I might say in today’s world, kind enough, to live without

easy answers.

From a scientific point of view, all of our surrounding reality is ‘conversa-

tional’, that is, nothing can exist without meeting or cooperating or exchang-

ing elemental nourishment with something else. Our present times and

ever-present technologies have made worse a very ancient human failing, the

Letter from the House - 2

willingness to make up stories when we do not understand things fully, and

most tellingly, to become afraid of where that understanding might lead.

Whether we lived hundreds of years ago in a tissue of contradictory religious

beliefs, or thousands of years ago under broad unknowing skies from which

the gods seemed to descend to punish us; whether we live now in Silicon

Valley or struggle to get by in a corrugated shanty on the far edge of Cape

Town, individual human beings have always had to, and still must, find their

way through a fog of stories that other people want us to believe. These sto-

ries have always taken semi-ridiculous forms, which everyone is then made

to believe, and made normal by the powerful, the rich and the influential:

strange religious superstitions, fraudulent religious leaders, power-mad politi-

cians, and most sadly of all, all of those once original and precious authentic

religious revelations now turned into manipulative mis-information, by those

who wish to profit by our confusion.

Confusion may be one of the great hallmarks of human history, but so is

misinformation. We have always, collectively and individually since the dawn

of conscious time, been seriously misinformed, either scientifically or psycho-

logically or religiously; most especially misinformed as to what really contrib-

utes to our happiness and where the limits of our knowledge lie.

The only thing we can be sure of, and this truth is now being crystalized by

the crazily self-magnifying power of the internet, is that human beings have

a foundational difficulty in having any real conversation with the unknown.

With or without an internet they are always supplying easy answers too early

in the process before they ever have the experience, the understanding or

even the right to know what is actually happening. From a collective point of

view this dynamic grants an evolutionary advantage of course, as a portion

of any given population will at least have got the possibilities right ahead of

time by mere chance, thus ensuring survival of the species as a whole, but it

is has disastrous consequences from the point of view of individual human

happiness.

Our foundational difficulty is that we human beings find it difficult to live

with what cannot be yet understood, with what we are powerless to under-

Letter from the House - 3

stand or name. Therefore, we will believe in all kinds of wild notions and

nonsense so long as we can proclaim that we believe in something or any-

thing at all; especially if we can form a tribe around that fictitious something;

most especially if we can advertise through those beliefs, turn the advertising

into dogma and then coerce and defraud the other members of that newly

gathered tribe out of their money or their integrity.

Thankfully, deep in the inherited understanding of all of our great contem-

plative and artistic traditions, deep in the original religious revelations that

always seem to morph so strangely into religious or political priests in black

gowns walking about the place, there lies an understanding of where true

happiness lies, both individually and collectively.

Happiness and the kindness that arises from happiness lies in paying pro-

found attention to people and things other than ourselves. This attention

leads to rest and most particularly to resting into the breath, which is the

essential and tidal give and take of our physical essence. This living, breath-

ing sense of rest allows everything else to rest into itself - the mist wreathing

at the forest’s edge, the way a spade lifts black soil, the way bread rises or a

daughter’s face breaks into a smile; even the comforting noise a laptop might

make when it glows into the wan morning light.

With regard to other people, happiness lies not in forcing others to believe

what we believe, but in attempting to believe the unbelievable essence of

another human being’s spirit, and equally the spirit of the natural world with

which they co-inhabit. To see the essence of another is to see the way they are

made to shape the world and the way they are made for the world to shape

them, even if they cannot see it themselves, without naming without label

but through a kind of attention which by itself is a kind of encouragement.

It is the gift of being able to have that other person, or that created world,

speak back to us in their own voices, unmediated by our agreement or wheth-

er we think they are right or wrong.

Happiness comes from an unmediated, unmanipulated and many times

unnameable appreciation that is born and flowers from profound attention.

It is difficult to understand because it is so foundational to our hearing and

Letter from the House - 4

seeing, and thankfully unprocessed by our strategic minds. As T.S Eliot said, it

is ‘a condition of complete simplicity costing not less than everything.’

What it costs is the giving up our illusory control over others by naming and

labeling - in a marriage, in a community, in the secret conversations we have

with our own mysterious self in the mirror. To stop seeing ourselves and others

as this or that, ‘Right Wing’ or ‘Liberals’ or Christians or Atheists, as strugglers

or as winners in a way that makes us fearful and distant.

What we gain is at first a puzzlement at not having easy answers, a puzzlement

which turns slowly into beautiful questions that begin to transform us from

the inside out. We navigate a temporary sense of disturbance at not being able

to relate to people through judgment, followed by a sense of silence and space

in which other people can move without our monitoring their every move; we

allow ourselves to breathe, and as we rest into the miracle of breathing easily, we

can let others breathe too.

This is not political naivety; we can still make our choices at the ballot box out

of this silence and spaciousness; there is still a place for a temporary righteous

anger at injustices and a wish to work toward their end. We simply mediate our

identity through a deep, a priori state of attention rather than temporary judg-

ments; we allow change through paying attention - an attention that stays with

the heart of the matter, and the heart of those whom we are addressing, that

looks to drink from a deeper well and understand what lies underneath what is

being said.

This world has always been a very fierce place in which to live for individual

human beings. The stakes have always been very high, both from a psychological

and a physical point of view: you can mistake someone else’s life as your own,

you can mistake someone else’s religion as your own, particularly if you have

grown with it. Most seriously, you can mistake someone else’s anger and hatred

as your own. You can be hoodwinked by those who would gain from your anger,

your money and your time, into feeling you are surrounded by enemies.

It is time for each of us to claim our life back through a deeper, more wordless

attention to this world we have been gifted to inhabit, and to cultivate a deep

Letter from the House - 5

form of attention to those who inhabit it with us, an appreciation which

might be the essence of kindness itself.

We are always larger, grander, more deserving than the names we have given

ourselves or that we have allowed others to put upon us. We all of us always

deserve a daily experience of the nameless and the timeless, because in that

timeless domain we find both rest and true animation, and a possibility of a

true name emerging to catch us off guard with its sudden truth. In its boun-

tiful sense of presence, that place where we do not name things too early,

when carried inside us out into the world, can be relied upon, like a good

friend, to come back and name us every day in ever kinder and more merci-

ful ways.

Letter from the House - 6

Our life like a breath, then, a give

and a take, a bridge, a central movement,

between singing a separate self

and learning to be seless.

- David Whyte

from A Seeming Stillness, in ESSENTIALS

Letter from the House - 6

events with DAVID WHYTE

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 13th

10am PT

A GIFT IN ITS SEASON

THE SEVEN VULNERABILITIES OF GIVING

This 75 minute session will look - appropriately enough for the holiday season - at the

art and practice of gift giving, and the art of getting the gift right, both for ourselves

and for the recipient. I will look at giving as a kind of art form and something that

must be practiced, where we must risk giving too much or too little or, as we have all

experienced, the wrong thing altogether. This understanding applies not only to tan-

gible gifts to others, but also the way we give our creative gifts to the world.

NEW SUNDAY

SERIES

JANUARY 10th, 17th

& 24th

START CLOSE IN: RESOLUTIONS FOR A NEW YEAR’S JOURNEY

Join David Whyte for Three Sundays in January to look at the phenomenon of giving

up in order to go on; of finding new promises by letting go of old ones, and remem-

bering those vows that seemed to have been made on our behalf at our birth.

New from MANY RIVERS

ART PRINT FROM THE

PERPETUA PRESS, created

by David’s friend and acclaimed

book designer, Edward Wates.

Printed in the traditional meth-

od from the original wood en-

graving and raised metal type.

HILARY PAYNTER is one of

the United Kingdom’s leading

wood engravers and past pres-

ident of the Royal Society of

Painter-Printmakers.

15” x 20.5”. Each print is

signed by the artists, Hilary

Paynter and David Whyte. $95

THE PERPETUA PRESS was established

by Vivian Ridler and David Bland in 1931.

In 2020, it was taken over by David’s close

friend, Edward Wates, a book designer and

lettering artist whose work has been widely

exhibited and is included in a number of

international collections.

PURCHASE

REVISED EDITION of CONSOLATIONS

Includes an introduction by Maria Popova and

one new essay.

Consolations arose out of an almost instinctual

need to write while traveling; it seemed to appear

organically out of fleeting thoughts made real

through writing - in trains, on boats and planes,

in hotel lobbies, on mountainsides and in cafes

all over this wide world. The book made its own

mark in the world, and somehow has sold over a

hundred thousand copies.

After a good few years of revising the essays,

through posting and commenting on many of

them online, this second edition is, I feel, a

AUDIOBOOK available on Audible.

Listen to these beautiful essays as they

were meant to be heard, read by David

Whyte.

PURCHASE

sharper version. It has one new essay added, which has become one of my favourites,

called Close:

To consciously become close is a courageous form of unilateral disarmament, a chancing of our

arm and our love, a willingness to hazard our affections and an unconscious declaration that

we might be equal to the inevitable loss that the vulnerability of being close will bring.

Available exclusively from davidwhyte.com

SPECIAL EDITIONS

These handcrafted limited editions of The House of Belonging and The Bell and the

Blackbird are a joy to hold, to read and most especially for me, to sign. The fine covers

are embossed with lettering designed by my stone carver friend John Nielsen at his

hillside cottage just over the Welsh Border from England; there is a colour illustration

of the orginal cover design inside and a ribbon page marker. Made to endure, to ad-

mire and above all to read.

Come with me now,

along the beckoning path,

silvered in mist

toward the glimmering lake,

bring every grief

you have not said

and every tear

you have not shed

PURCHASE PURCHASE

Featured

This is the bright home

in which I live,

this is where I ask

my friends to come,

this is where I want

to love all the things

it has taken me so long

to learn to love

Featured

David Recommends

I am in the midst of reading, or have read, five very different books recently.

The Prelude: William Wordsworth

Newly Edited from the Manuscripts and fully Illustrated in Colour.

A magnificent labour of love on the part of the editors of Wordsworth’s mag-

num opus and perhaps my desert island choice for a large, inexhaustible read

through the timeless voice of poetry.

Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know:

The Fathers of Wilde, Yeats and Joyce

by Colm Tobin

Tobin had me from the very first paragraphs of his introduction as he walks

around literary Dublin, invoking the ghostly residences and ports of call of the

authors’ fathers. A foundation for beginning to understand, how each seeming-

ly independent writer’s talents were inextricably linked to their fathers’ inheri-

tance, for good and bad.

The Neapolitan Novels

by Elena Ferrante

Beginning with the first book in this quartet, ‘My Brilliant Friend’ I have just

begun this odyssey of fierce friendship and heartbreak and I can tell already that

I am in for a very wild and at times very harrowing ride into the future of two

girls, growing into the post war world of Naples.

Provence, 1970: M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard,

and the Reinvention of American Taste

Something a little different, to feed my love of cooking, food and all the inher-

ited cuisines of the world. The book circles around a pivotal dinner held in

Provence and the lives of the influential cooks and food writers who gathered at

the table. Most especially it follows the life of MFK Fisher: a fascinating figure

who influenced many of the approaches we now take for granted in food writ-

ing. A very evocative read and very well done.

Early Music

by Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin

I am so proud of becoming a publisher, and giving a young poet a chance to show

his work to the world, particularly with Mícheál who I have known and nurtured

for many years as he has grown into his artistry. I delve into the book at least once

a week to see how he is getting on, and I would say, in my humble opinion, he

is doing very well indeed, at the beginning of his poetic life, with his eye and his

voice and his inviatations to a very fine quality of insight.

If you’ve joined us on David’s walking tour

in Italy, you’ve experienced the grace and

culinary expertise of Lori De Mori and Laura

Jackson, proprietors of the Towpath Café, a

place of extraordinary hospitality on Regent’s

Canal in London.

Filled with stories, recipes and inviting pho-

tographs, TOWPATH reflects the hearts and

talents of two remarkable people committed

to feeding body and spirit.

- Friends and Family -

LEARN MORE

Instrumental compositions by Troy Chapman,

inspired by CONSOLATIONS

“When David asked me to compose music to accompa-

ny the audiobook version of his best-selling book “Conso-

lations”, I knew it had to be personal and evocative, yet

also conversational. I set out to create a score, of sorts,

for the insights and imagery that resonate throughout

the essays.”

Instruments featured include lute, baroque guitar,

Uzbek rabab, resonator guitars and ukuleles - a

soulful odyssey of stringed instruments.

LISTEN

EARLY MUSIC illuminates deep themes of hu-

man experience with a profound, unwavering eye.

With chapters titled Admonition, Love, Belief,

Water and Myth, the poems display a true virtu-

oso’s ear for rhythm and language, leading the

reader through joyful, mythical and surprising

landscapes.

PURCHASE

Often times

the step backward,

lets the soul catch up.

So that all our happy

hindsights harmonise

and wisdom builds…

- from Turas d’Anam

Walking Tours

WEST OF IRELAND - JUNE 12th - 19th, 2021

David’s tour to the west of Ireland is a celebration of Ireland’s Celtic culture, both tra-

ditional and emerging, set on Galway Bay in County Clare. The tour offers an intimate

experience of Ireland from the inside out, with morning poetry sessions setting the stage

for afternoon walking pilgrimages. You will have the opportunity to hear world-class mu-

sicians and experience why County Clare is renowned for carrying the soul of traditional

Irish music.

ALL TOUR DETAILS

In a fit of optimism, I have decided to act as if it might be possible to roam out into

the world again in the latter half of next year and run a few tours. It is hard to con-

template another year without the fresh Atlantic breeze in my hair, or hear the pipes

wending their unstoppable way through the sea air of County Clare; I thirst most

thirstily for a pint of Guinness in Margaret’s Bar in Ballyvaughan, I long to return to

forest temples of Japan, and I pine for the back roads of Tuscany calling me to their

pilgrim ways.

But most of all I am interested to see what this person who has enjoyed staying at

home so much, makes of the wide world once he is let loose again! And I look for-

ward most heartily, to whoever joins me. All the refund policies are very generous,

taking into account the possibilities for an extended bout of Covid.

Walking Tours

NAKASENDO TRAIL, JAPAN - NOVEMBER 4th - 11th, 2021

Join David Whyte and Gayle Karen Whyte for this mountain and forest trail through the

landscapes and villages of central Japan, walking in the footsteps of Japan’s most famous

poet: Basho. Our tour begins in Kyoto, followed by train into the mountains. Once on the

trail we will stay at traditional Ryokan Inns, bathing in their hot-springs by night and by

day walking past temples and shrines, along forest paths and through tiny hamlets. David

will work with themes of the moment, with Gayle adding to the content and facilitation.

THE HILLS OF TUSCANY - SEPTEMBER 7th - 14th, 2021

From the first evening standing on the threshold of an ancient Etruscan tomb with the

light slanting across the stone, imagining centuries of mothers, fathers and children mak-

ing their lives amongst the olive groves, to the closing night’s celebration under the stars,

the week in Italy is a moveable feast both literally and imaginatively; a true celebration of

the senses; a shaping of the mind and the body through walking, seeing, listening and tast-

ing.