Around the World by Mistake
By Jane Winslow Eliot

In the summer of 1963 Jane and Alexander Eliot put the last of their money onto a trip around the world: a Yugoslav freighter that was scheduled to deliver all sorts of exotic goods from Rijecka to Osaka and then back again. They trusted to fate that they could pick up the pieces of their freelance writing lives again when they returned.

The trip was scheduled to take seven months, and the boat carried a total of just sixteen passengers.

The family had been living in Greece the past four years because they loved it there. Before moving, they had lived New York City. Jane had worked at CBS with Edward R. Morrow and later at Time Magazine, where she met Alexander Eliot, who was the art editor there. Now freelance journalists, they wrote books and articles about travel, art, mythology, and education.

As their young children matured toward school age, neither Jane nor Alex wanted to corral them into school. As Jane writes in the book: “They wanted their children to experience life as fish in water, or as part of the air they breathed. They wanted them to escape the narrows of nationality, religion, or class, in order to take part in a whole universe as whole people. They wanted to inspire them to regard the whole world as their home.”

And so they bought tickets for the freighter voyage.

Around the World by Mistake describes a real adventure about which most people only dream. It’s also the true story of my family: I was seven years old when my parents decided to take this extraordinary journey. My mother was in constant communication with renowned Waldorf educator Virginia Paulson who guided the education of my brother and me on the trip. Part inner discovery, part educational adventure, and part thrilling adventure, this is the story of a lifetime.

Right from the beginning the mood was strange on board ship. While the freighter sailed through the Bay of Bengal, the president of the United States, John F. Kennedy, was assassinated. Civil war escalated in Malaysia and the Vietnam War intensified.

The little freighter sailed on, with a mysterious, invisible captain at the helm, stopping at exotic ports, as the passengers underwent weird and wonderful encounters, experienced tense moments, and explored mysterious questions. And all during the voyage, Stefan, the ship’s steward, epitomized strength and kindness as steadily as the north star.

The journey was not what any of the passengers expected. Not at first. But as the boat sailed down the Dalmation coast through the Suez Canal, to the sacred caves of Ellora and Ajanta, and then to the intoxicating temples in Penang and Singapore, the family navigated their way through daily lessons, spiritual growth, and lively encounters with their fellow passengers.

Writer, traveler, educator, Jane Winslow Eliot’s articles and essays have appeared in The Atlantic, Smithsonian, Horticulture, Travel & Leisure, Newsday, The Los Angeles Reader, and Chicken Soup for the Traveler’s Soul.

Her books range from seminal essays for parents and teachers such as Let’s Talk, Let’s Play (AWSNA Publications 1997) and The Soul of Color (Spiral Press 1984) to The History of the Western Railroads (Exeter 1985), and Fisher’s Annotated Guide to Greece 1984 -1988. She is also a contributor to the Almanac of American History. A film she made with her husband, Alexander Eliot, called The Secret of Michelangelo – Every Man’s Dream appeared on ABC primetime television in 1967-68.

“In Japan, individuals of extraordinary talent and vision are recognized as living national treasures as they live out their later years. The American intellectual couple Alexander and Jane Eliot should be given honorary Japanese citizenship and awarded that honor.”
Gregg Chadwick, American Treasures

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The Meaning of Love
by Vladimir Solovyov, introduction by Owen Barfield
Lindisfarne Books

If you want to read one of the most logical, persuasive, and unusual treatises on this eternally fascinating topic, pick up this book! Following a brilliant introduction by Owen Barfield, Solovyov proceeds to dissolve most of our preconceptions about the meaning of love. He then proceeds to build up a case for what he believes is the real purpose of falling in love.

Why do we fall in love? Solovyov points out that it is not for the purpose of procreation, since less-evolved species are much more concerned with procreation than are humans. The more intelligent, the less procreation seems to be important. Romantic relationships, he posits, are actually not conducive to having lots of children.  Just look at Romeo and Juliet.

We can regard falling in love either as a fact of nature or as a divine gift, but in either case it’s a natural process that arises independently of us, and if left to itself, it vanishes. Solovyev proposes that it is up to us to direct this natural process to higher ends. It’s like the gift of speech: we’d still be muttering and grunting if we had not developed our faculty for language, and used that faculty to write beautifully and to speak artistically.  The importance of language is not in speaking or even in communicating, but in what is being said and how: the revealing of experience through words. The development of language mirrors the development of human consciousness.

Following this thought, Solovyov proposes that the true significance of love is not in the experience of romantic emotion, but in what is accomplished by means of that feeling, in the act of love.

We all agree that romantic love exists as a fact of life, but Solovyov believes also that the feeling of romantic love imposes an important duty upon us. That duty is to love and to be loved in as beautiful, loyal, and artistic a way as possible. It is as essential to future human development as the use and development of language was in the past. Our duty with regards to romantic love is the physical possession of the beloved and living together in union. The task of love is in justifying in deed the feeling we experience of being ‘in love.’

Solovyev proposes that Love is the next stage of human evolution, and romantic love is the actualization of that evolution.

And so, as Owen Barfield points out in his – as always – succinct and inspiring introduction, every adolescent who thinks that it’s okay for romantic and sexual relationships to be casual or purposeless, should read this book. Without moralizing or preaching, it places the importance of romantic relationships in a completely new light.

And all of us who love to read and write romantic fiction will receive courage and validation from this wise book. Its philosophy is ours.

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The Seeker Academy by L. D. Gussin

If you’ve been on a retreat of this type, you’ll find this story in The Seeker Academy familiar, riveting, intriguing.

If you haven’t been on one, but wondered what it’s like, and what the people who go there are like, Gussin’s novel is the next best thing.

The `hero’ as she is referred to in the beginning, is Grace Hudson, who probably would not refer to herself as such. She is a middle-aged, warm-hearted wife, mother, and teacher, who takes the illness of her niece very hard and seeks solace in a New Age spiritual retreat center. She neither saves someone nor is saved; she simply experiences the many classes and conversations offered at Seeker, and mulls over those experiences.

At the start we’re taken into an emotionally-charged and vividly described children’s hospital, seen through Aunt Grace’s eyes. Shifting gears, we are transported to summertime at a holistic retreat center, where we are enveloped in an entirely different arena. Here we persevere with Grace as she explores her sadness, her relationships, and her self, without knowing what she’s really looking for.

She is not the only seeker who does not know for what they seek. Her most challenging task is to try not to think, but to simply experience. The effort to not think, to just breathe, for example, leads Grace and her friends to contemplate and discuss what they’re not thinking about. But what they’re more interested in is connection with each other. Grace is definitely not a loner, and likes to talk and share as much as she likes to experience.

Appreciators of fine writing will enjoy the exceptionally crafted sentences and overall structure of this novel. The writing is fastidious, elegant, the descriptions lyrical, the dialogue superb in the opening chapters, and intellectually stimulating later on.

Those who appreciate a history of the New Age movement and its forerunners are also in for a treat: Gussin includes a great deal of detail and background information.

And appreciators of holistic healing and new age communities will also enjoy Gussin’s penetrating observations and insights. Anyone who has been to one will recognize him or herself or someone they know in these pages. He is not sarcastic, nor is he affectionate: he offers us his clear, dispassionate gaze as he unfolds his tale. No one is a caricature, nor is anyone a hero. Ultimately each one seeks what we all do: to become themselves – kindhearted, helpful, healthy human beings.