The Barn at the End of the World.

The Barn at the End of the World: The Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd 

by Mary Rose O'Reilley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I came across this book when I was working on a readers' advisory project at work several years ago and added it to my list of books I wanted to read to expand my familiarity with various kinds of books. 

This book felt very similar to a number of other books I have read in recent years and really liked: All Fishermen are Liars, Uncommon Carriers, the novel Search, and pretty much all the essays of Anne Lamott. 

Mary Rose O'Reilley was raised as a Catholic, started down the path of becoming a nun, and by the time she is writing this memoir she is in her 50s and is a Quaker practicing Buddhism and learning how to farm sheep. She is a complex woman. She is also very down-to-earth and imperfect which made her story something I could identify with and was happy to follow along with her as she tried to figure stuff out about how best to live her life. The book was full of thoughts and observations that I want to remember. These jumped out in particular:

"One of the dicey things about teaching English or lamb haltering is that, in order to focus a student's attention, you have to hammer away at a few central principles which, to the conscientious learner, begin to have the force of law. But they are merely transitional truths, and when you see them start to harden in the learner's mind, you have to gently nudge him or her out of security and inculcate what is always the final lesson: there are, in fact, many ways to reach a goal--several of which are logically opposed to each other. Much of what we call 'knowledge' is merely a temporary frame around chaos." [p. 279] 

"We all see the world so clearly and crisply through our own glasses that it's a difficult imaginative leap to believe another person sees a different scene, logically incompatible with yours." [p.104]

O'Reilly also quotes numerous other people in the course of her explorations:

"'Well, if it's a symbol, to hell with it,' Flannery O'Connor said, speaking of the Eucharist, but perhaps she was joking."

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about." -- the Sufi mystic Jelalludin Rumi

And this, which made me think about my father's approach to childrearing:

"As far as the education of children is concerned I think they should be taught not the little virtues but the great ones. Not thrift, but generosity and indifference to money; not caution but courage and contempt for danger; not shrewdness but frankness and a love of truth; not tact but love for one's neighbor and self-denial; not a desire for success but a desire to be and to know." -- Natalia Ginsberg, in her essay "The Little Virtues"

I now know WAY more than I ever wanted to about sheep, but I am very glad I read this book.