Heart & Hearth
Poetic Explorations of Authentic Human Dwelling in Earth & Spirit
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About the Book
This is the story of the loss and reclamation of a house, the story of how one family scattered by a tragic fire reunites 30 years later to once again dwell together in a deep and poetic way. Visitants to the burned-out husk of the house that was once a home—the old Whittier House on Deer Hill—journey through recollections of times before the fire, inspired to build a new home and to re-establish a community around it as the extended family begins to return to the hill.
This book is about Life-Together-in-Earth-and-Spirit: how it is found, how it can be lost, and how it may be reclaimed amidst and despite all of the things that can and do happen to us in the course of life. Ultimately, it is a text filled with ruminations on and explorations of the ways in which we dwell together humanely in the Earth.
The stories, poetry, and essays herein, set in the imagined landscape of Ross County, Pennsylvania, form a conceptual, spiral labyrinth around the central concepts of “Heart” and “Hearth.” As Heart stands for the spiritual and existential “center” of the person, so “Hearth” symbolizes the “center” of the awakened community. These two concepts form the core of the unique life-philosophy illustrated in these pages.
Readers of Montague Whitsel’s novel Ham-Farir: The Faring of Matthew Thorin Dier (2008) will recognize characters such as Daniel Westforth Whittier, Geoffrey C. Whittier, and Edward Whittier, portrayed here in other contexts. Characters quoted in The Fires of Yule (2001) and Wellsprings of the Deer (2002) may also be found here, living out the distinctive life-philosophy of Deer Hill.
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About the Author
Montague Whitsel, an earthen poet and narrative philosopher rooted and sourced in the woods of western Pennsylvania, holds degrees in anthropology, sociology, history, philosophy and religion. In addition to teaching at the college and university levels, Mr. Whitsel has taught spirituality on a private basis for 20 years, aiding students in learning and practicing a variety of spiritualities, especially those rooted in the Celtic traditions. He has been writing poetry and stories since he was 11 years old. As a poet and philosopher, he seeks to express and explore the mystery of life in Earth & Spirit. He is striving to reclaim the best poetics from ancient religious traditions, and is deeply interested in the relationship between science and the art of living, exploring ways of grounding our spiritualities today in the revelations of science.
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