We are ready to begin a story of great import. There was a man in our area who kept cattle a long many years. He was a good man and paid his workers well.

One day a fire did damage to his hay crop and killed some of his animals. The village felt regret for his loss and offered to replace his loss by a collection for a new purchase.

The landsman’s animals were of a very special breed and could not be acquired in the area, so a group of villagers went afar to buy several of these cattle.

Upon reaching the Isle of Man, they set off to find a cattleman from which to buy the stock. On their way

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they were struck down by highwayman and received many blows. So severely disabled were they that they were unable to return home and took menial jobs to support themselves.

Soon the families of the villagers became alarmed over their not returning and sent a group to discover their whereabouts, including the son of one of the men.

The new party reached the Isle of Man and themselves were set upon by brigands and forced to remain due to their crippling injuries and to seek work to support themselves.

Time went by and the remaining families sought to discover the whereabouts of all their fellows who had not returned.

The remaining villagers closed their doors and went abroad seeking their lost members.

Upon reaching the Isle of Man, the same fate met these last and all were united in common misery. They did not have the means to return, were not in fit health to pursue their callings whence they came, and had lost interest in pursuing their former lives.

“Beget,” said their spokesman, “a life for yourselves here and forget that life you have lived before.” “This is where ye are and this is where we stay – make the most fitting use of it.” And thus men became residents of

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the Island of Man.

Think on this lesson – one day it will serve you.

*

The fields are running with water. We have had devastating rains that have run off the frozen ground, carrying with them the soil and flooding the lowlands. There are drowned animals everywhere that were caught unprepared in the storm.

We had a few days of sunshine and the animals had gone to the fields freely to graze. We were clearly unprepared for this occurrence.

It is plain that the watercourses need to be cleared and maintained. In the old days there were dirtworks around the ridges that trapped and redirected runoff such as this. The streams are in such ill repair that they do not carry even a normal flow, let alone one such as this.

When first warm weather comes, we must survey this project in addition to planting. We need more available labor than we have in the valley to restore the normal workings. Perhaps we can interest some of the other valleys near us in joining forces for these larger projects. It is dismal to live in a setting once maintained by a larger work force. It is well for man to ponder the endward results of his alteration of nature.

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Diseases are many in our time. There are many bone diseases. You think this unpleasant? It may be useful for you to know in a future time. When diet is poor and conditions are stressful, the bones take the toll and crippling bone diseases run rampant, from child to old age.

No doubt it is a calcium imbalance brought about by stress using the body’s stress nutrients. Also, the system of immunity is involved. You will solve the riddle of arthritis when you understand the immune process.

If enough acid and fresh food is consumed, the damage can be kept to a minimum. We could have mixed chalk-earth with food, but this would have been distasteful. We did not foresee the effect of this lack, as the former diet and style of life did not encourage this problem.

The usefulness of our citizens was cut many years short by crippling diseases. Mark ye this well; your bones are your means of freedom to act.

*

We are into a nice spring. The wheat has sprouted well and the early garden crops are doing very nicely. We will have more meat this year as the pigs are doing well and the lamb crop is unusually large. We have a few cattle in excess to butcher for a special treat for next fall and winter. Their hides will be much

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prized for the leather.

Our people are much healthier this year than for the past few years. Their bones grow strong and their skin looks fine. They are much rosier and sturdier and few lost many pounds through the winter. We wintered in the castle keep this year and accomplished much weaving and copying books for other monastic groups. We have set some of the children to this task; they enjoy it very much.

This spring the people sing in their gardens as they work. There is much improvement in spirits. Some who lost their wits still sit in silence but have ceased to waste away. We have hope that they will eventually come to us again and live in the sunshine instead of the dark.

Privation is a great mystery in its effect on humans. Some draw into themselves and conserve, others become more lively and fight to live as they did before. There does not seem to be a middle ground.

We have had no difficulty in motivating people to work. They are eager to restore their lives to a comfortable level and the break in their old ways has made them eager to try new methods and styles of conduct.

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Great success has been met with the spiritual growth of the people. Even those who disdain the things of the spirit are eager to hear the stories, prayers, and songs. They drink them in while espousing a dearth in their value. We are pleased with their smiles of appreciation and look behind the face of apparent rejection. There is a sweetness of the spirit arising in our people and it is a joy to see the sunshine in their faces.

Cleanliness is beginning to be a normal standard again. It is not up to your standard in your time, but it is excellent for ours. We do not have the means you do but we manage quite well even so. The babies and small children suffer the most from lack of care, so they show much happiness at their comfort. It seems that uncleanness can become a habit and is very difficult to change in adult human beings. They cease to see their state after many years.

Only shame and rejection of their fellows will cause them to adhere to more normal manners. It is not a change in habit when they follow these pressings, only a desire to be accepted. We are learning many interesting things about how humans behave and think.

* (* (*)

There is harsh criticism of our efforts from those

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who feel themselves to be our superiors.

Others in the mission field have experienced similar criticism, but those in the ordinary monastic orders look down upon our project. They feel our duty should be to prayer and not toward working with the common man, side by side in labor.

We have taken seriously these objections and Basil and I have taken it upon ourselves to write a book of explanation of our aims and designs for these aims to be accomplished. We did this in order to forestall criticism and to instruct others who might wish to follow in our footsteps.

The writing is in the form of a small booklet of history of our members and what we have accomplished so far. It is hand-copied and bound with leather, so it can be of long service to the reader. We begin by writing and assembling fifteen copies and eventually have distributed about fifty copies. We hear tell in later years that portions of our little book were incorporated in larger treatises on this sort of pioneering effort.

There is some success with this outreach. We hear that the information is used and that our effort

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inspires others to try to assist their fellowmen to recover from similar trials. We are grateful that this outcome arises from our small efforts.

* (*

There was some rebelliousness at times about adopting new ways of living and farming. There were those among us who nearly worshipped their ways of old and were loath to give them up. They were very vocal at times in trying to persuade the community to change back to former ways. We let them speak, uninterrupted and their words fell on deaf ears, for the most part.

It was an interesting phenomenon to observe – that those without hope, those without natural or acquired faith, were disinclined to change. I suppose that goes without saying, is a natural behavior, but still surprising to us that so few of our group did resist change.

We expected that those who were fully adults would be generally resistant. Such was not the case. All ages, from children to the few elderly, were even eager to try new things, after the initial shock of the first few years. Nearly everyone had difficulty in shifting to new skills and changes in level of comfort and there was much grumbling and lamenting for the past at first, but this was over in two or three years, except for those few, who kept this up for the rest of their lives.

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We expected that the children would be the easiest to teach new skills and crafts. Such was not the case, I think we are so unused to learning new skills that we are unaware of the adult ability to adapt and acquire new behavior.

It was truly astonishing how well people did at new tasks, once they had gone one round with it. It seemed they learned more easily as time went by, instead of our old habit of thinking that older people could not or would not learn. As we increased the complexity of the tasks, their quickness and skill in learning increased. It seemed a shame to us that this had not been discovered and used before. Our lives could have been much larger for it.

Our experience with the people in our valley showed us that we could make much more rapid and frequent change in living and skills than humans have perhaps ever made. We were thrown into this experiment by necessity and felt this was perhaps the greatest thing we learned by it – the unexpected capacity for change and new learning in all ages of people.

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