I am very pleased to announce that Jim Campbell's new memoir,
A Journey of Beginnings: The Making of a Life
has just been published on Amazon.com.
And that Jim has generously offered his friends and colleagues in the ICA, the Ecumenical Institute, the Order:Ecumenical, and the IAF a time-limited introductory price of just $7.50 for his 300-page book.
Frankly, at this price Jim is making a profit of just a nickel per copy.
Or, if you prefer, you can download the book on Kindle here for just $3.99. Or for free after your $5 Kindle credit! Or when you buy the paperback, get your Kindle edition for just $.99 and share it with others.
Buy multiple copies now to share with family members as Christmas gifts! Or pay full price ($14.98) after the introductory discount disappears.
This is Jim's intimate story of his personal Journey to the East. It's a story that many of us shared in our common Life Together. Woven throughout with the poetry of Kazantzakis, Tillich, Hesse, Bonhoeffer, Niebuhr, Joe Mathews, Joseph Campbell, D.H. Lawrence, Robert Frost, and St. Teresa of Avila.
And it's the story of Jim's profound gratitude and appreciation for his life in the Order:Ecumenical and all that led him up to that fateful moment when he first showed up in Chicago. He frankly shares his profound distress and grief over the dissolution of the Order, as well as the new life he forged in its aftermath.
Whether we trekked with Jim through snowstorms in 5th City, or slogged with him through the mud of Kawangware, or slashed our way through the jungle around Bananeiras with him, or enjoyed his hospitality at ICA:Brussels' wayside inn, Jim's story is in so many ways our story as a people with a common vocation. And this story is compelling--particularly for those who were actually there!
Not to mention hilarious at times! Jim tells of
"trying to help my colleague over a very high snow drift in the middle of 5th Avenue.... I managed to flip her over the top, and she rolled down the other side. Since she was a very formable lady, I was more than a little intimidated by her, but aside from some slightly damaged dignity and snow in the wrong places, no harm was done."
You'll just have to guess who she was, since Jim's not telling!
One of my favorite stories is about the nuns on the bus to The Other World in Avila. (Yes, that Avila, the home of St. Teresa.)
Jim's book is about the Magic of New Beginnings. To quote Herman Hesse,
A magic dwells in each beginning and
protecting us it tells us how to live.
Or, to quote Chief Dan George in Little Big Man,
Sometimes the magic works, and sometimes it doesn't.
(Or, as Sigmund Freud would suggest, "Sometimes a lighthouse is just a lighthouse.")
Jim's memoir is more about being transformed by the people he worked with across four continents than it is about transforming those communities. There is evidence of that in his chapter on "My Communion of Saints" where he reflects on what he learned about profound humanness from his Meditative Council.
You may READ Jim's Introduction in the .pdf attachment below! And then order the book here on Amazon.com.
To find out more, you'll just have to get the book!
And then write your own memoir of your life's journey of new beginnings.
In gratitude for our life together,
Wayne Marshall Jones, editor
*****
Beginning with his childhood in the hills of rural western Pennsylvania, master process facilitator and author James M. Campbell shares his life experiences to discover how his personal history has shaped his relationships with others and his care for the world.
Nothing about Jim’s life has been ordinary, from his birth in 1940 to his retirement in 2013 in Colombia. Over and over again he found himself setting out into a new chapter with new demands and new challenges. Jim shares what he has learned about the world and himself through this journey of beginning again and again.
In his introduction to A Journey of Beginnings, Jim writes:
“I believe that everyone has a vocation.”
And so Jim takes us on the journey of his life fulfilling his vocational vision: caring for the innocent human suffering of this world. As Jim shares the making of his life, four great themes emerge that reveal the depth and power of what Jim was able to create.
The first is simply that making a life requires profound trust in life. Jim writes,
“If we don’t trust, what is the basis of our relation to our life—suspicion and distrust?How can you affirm your life if you relate to it with distrust?”
The second is that making a life requires moving beyond the familiar and deeply trusting in new beginnings. It is only as we dare to leave our familiar ground behind us that life opens before us and new vistas emerge; and in these new vistas we find new power and possibility.
The third is that making a life happens when we engage with others who share our vision. The power of our passion is released when it is harnessed with that of others in a community that dares to act out their lives in service to the disinherited of this earth.
And finally, making a life means trusting that all life is open to transformation and that, in surrendering ourselves and risking all, we can truly bring about a new day.
Making a life of service means creating hope where it did not exist before.
Jim discovered his vocation on a train in Southern Chile in 1962. All human beings have a vocation; Jim considers himself fortunate to have found his as a young adult and to have found the community that gave him the knowledge and skills to truly BE his vocation.
In the conclusion, Jim reminds us of William Ernest Henley’s words:
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
This book tells us of one man’s living of those words.