Retreat can begin with discovering a book that strips the mind of the world

Evidence

In Athanasius’s biography of St. Anthony, a hermit who lived in the Egyptian desert, there is a story of two managerial employees of the Roman emperor going for a walk while the emperor is transfixed by a circus. Wandering in the gardens outside the palace walls, the men come across the cottage of some poor hermits and discover a book on St. Anthony’s self-exile in the desert. Reading this, one of the emperor’s employees, “his mind stripped of the world,” turns to the other and says: … Tell me, prithee, with all these labours of ours, wither are we trying to get? What are we seeking? For what are we soldiering? Can we have a higher hope in the palace, than to become friends of the emperor? And when there, what is not frail and full of danger?…And how long will that last? — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 215

Categorization

• SEED: The structure—two employees stumble on a book that detaches them—is a usable opening allegory for how reading itself can stage a first retreat.
• XREF: connects to: Brief attentive retreats change how one perceives ordinary life afterward — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 66; A writer can find her own worldview echoed in another’s words; Retreat to a monastery can be chosen as a stanching of inner wound — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 219 (+4 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Brief attentive retreats change how one perceives ordinary life afterward — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 66; A writer can find her own worldview echoed in another’s words; Retreat to a monastery can be chosen as a stanching of inner wound — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 219 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Flight into contemplation masks a refusal to face worldly ambiguity #complicates (0.76)
• Barbarism is what lets mind master itself and stay open to nature #complicates (0.72) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 329