Already Home: A Topography of Spirit and Place [Hardcover]

Barbara Gates (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 24, 2003

This powerfully moving memoir explores the connections between local history, the environment, the body, and the spirit. Intertwining themes of love and family, home and homelessness, neighborhood and lost wilderness, Barbara Gates takes the reader on a journey of personal discovery that artfully bridges the inner and outer worlds of experience. Prompted by a diagnosis of breast cancer and the accompanying recognition of mortality, Gates follows an intuition that her own life is simply an expression of the changing terrain. She researches far-ranging elements of her Berkeley, California, surroundings: the geological history of the Bay and hills, the history of her house and neighborhood, and the shellmound home of Native Americans who inhabited her area five thousand years ago. Encounters with a homeless woman who sleeps in her car, a rat in her refrigerator, and other adventures alternate with explorations of the area and its history. Gates seeks out original shorelines long since changed by landfill, original creeks that have been run into sewers, and diverse local wildlife now at risk from the pollution of industry and traffic. Looking through the lens of Buddhist mindfulness practice, Gates inspires readers to take a big view of where we live—one that includes the past and future. She helps us to appreciate the heartache and grace of daily life and to find for ourselves that at any moment we might realize that we are already home.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

San Francisco Bay Area Buddhist writer Gates unites geology, ecology and reflections on life as a mother, neighbor and cancer survivor in a memoir-meditation on the meaning of home. Gates takes readers along on walks through her gentrifying Berkeley neighborhood as she pursues the questions of who she is and where she belongs. She has left the East Coast and is slowly taking root, like her garden, in the community where she ended up for no particularly compelling reason in her early adulthood. So transplanted, her life and awareness blossom slowly, through marriage, motherhood and neighborhood. The path is not smooth: breast cancer threatens her when her daughter is only five years old, but the cancer also serves to awaken a sense of the preciousness and precariousness of everyday life. Gates is a lyrical and ambitious writer, notwithstanding the ostensibly quotidian subject of domestic life. Her book is nicely structured to develop subtly toward resolution, though sometimes the chronology of events she cites is a little confusing. Some of the widely varied threads she weaves together are especially engaging and ask for more detail: her alcoholic neighbor with family troubles and a love of dogs; her encounter, through breast cancer, with mortality, a traditional Buddhist topic. On the whole, however, this nicely written book shows the world in the grains of sand and archaic shells left on Berkeley's shore.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Gates is a lyrical and ambitious writer."—Publishers Weekly



"The cofounder and coeditor of the Inquiring Mind provides a thoughtful, elegantly written exploration of the boundary between self and place."—Yoga Journal



"What would it mean to locate ourselves precisely in the great unfolding web of the universe? Barbara Gates took up the challenge, becoming a cartographer of the spirit who set about creating a many-dimensional map of 'home.' Gracefully written, precisely observed, deeply felt, Already Home may send you in to listen to your body, heart and mind."—Turning Wheel



"Spanning geologic time and the vast reaches of the human heart, here is an honest look at how we might more fully inhabit our lives."—Sharon Salzberg, author of Faith and Lovingkindness



"Gates is a modern American transcontinental settler, with a strangely settling and disturbingly unsettling tale to tell. This is a work of great courage both in the living and in the writing. Her generosity of heart shines through on every page."—Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of Wherever You Go, There You Are



"This book shows us the way to find a deeper connection to our family, our neighborhood, and ultimately, all that lives. It inspires us to stop, to look, to see our unique place in a world that is constantly changing, to discover the true meaning of home."—Howard Cutler, M.D., coauthor with the Dalai Lama of The Art of Happiness



"Gates walks her talk—literally. Thanks to her wild curiosity and total lack of sentimentality, her courage is infectious. She inspires me to seize the moment and live more fully."—Joanna Macy, author of World As Lover, World As Self



"As if Thoreau moved his cabin to your neighborhood street corner, Already Home is a beautiful and tender reminder to honor the life around you."—Jack Kornfield, author of A Path with Heart and After the Ecstasy, the Laundry



"The daily particularities of living in Berkeley, the exploration of its history and geology, and the venturing forth into the great mysteries and uncertainties of life, love, and time is done with equal honesty, ease, and wisdom."—Malcolm Margolin, author of The Ohlone Way



"So many of us have been uprooted, scattered across continents, disconnected from our geographic, cultural, and family origins—Barbara Gates's book is a profound and lyrical exploration of our common homelessness."—Wes Nisker, author of Essential Crazy Wisdom and Buddha's Nature



"Self and home, garden and neighborhood, are continually reborn, with each shift of attention, into the vibrant particular-ness that is never apart from the sacred ground of all place and all time."—Sylvia Boorstein, author of Pay Attention for Goodness' Sake



"This is the sort of book one is homesick for after finishing it. Honest, searching, and as engrossing as a mystery, it pulled me onward. It's a marvelous meditation on how the fear of change and mortality has led us to destroy in the name of preserving."—Annie Gottlieb, author of Do You Believe in Magic? and The Cube



"I felt the vastness of what Gates took on. She is a detective, honest and committed in her search for meaning, uncovering the many layers of home."—Sue Bender, author of Plain and Simple

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Shambhala; 1st edition (June 24, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1570624909
• ISBN-13: 978-1570624902
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,711,059 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Home" has many meanings, August 8, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Already Home: A Topography of Spirit and Place (Hardcover)

This is a lovely book - part memoir, part reflection on what it is to live in a place where others have been before us. On one level, it is Barbara's own story and that of her neighborhood in Berkeley - diagnosed with breast cancer she fears, not so much her own death, but leaving her 5-year-old motherless. Barbara begins investigating her own house and neighborhood, her neighbors, the people who lived in her house before her, the succession of businesses since Gold Rush times, and even the Native Americans. She sees herself as part of the succession of people who have lived - and died - in this one place. On another level, it is the story of how one connects with a larger sense of belonging, membership in the human race, by looking at the concrete details of where we live and the ordinary people whose lives make up the present and the history of one's own house, block, neighborhood. Barbara brings a Buddhist sensibility to all this, but as a source of insight added to her own reflections - readers with Buddhist sympathies will appreciate the dharmic resonances, but those without will not, I think, read this as a Buddhist tract, but as a personal reflection. It's also beautifully written, so that we get a concrete feel for the streets she walks, the dog who walks with her, the homeless neighbor...I'll never see my neighborhood, and my 1920s-era house, with its traces of the people who have lived in it, painted it, and remodeled it over the years in quite the same way.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Opening my eyes and heart, August 5, 2003

By 

Tara Brach (Bethesda, Md. United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Already Home: A Topography of Spirit and Place (Hardcover)

All too easily the spiritual path is perceived as an inner experience that unfolds under certain conditions- by an alter, on the top of a mountain, with a teacher. This book was a passionate wake-up call- one that had me walk outside and take my neighborhood and world in with fresh eyes. In-so-doing, my spirit felt enlivened and enlarged.

Barbara Gates writes with a revealing power of observation and an innate appreciation of the mystery, pain and beauty within and around us. Through her eyes, we learn how to deepen our attention, and discover the way our being, our very reality, is shaped by our biological context, our culture, our web of relationships. For anyone who seeks to live and love more fully, this book is a gift to the soul.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Already Home Awakens the Spirit, August 4, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Already Home: A Topography of Spirit and Place (Hardcover)

I have never read a book before that so eloquently intertwines the concept of spirit and place. Ms. Gates' book has caused me to reexamine my own sense of place in my body, my spirit, my home, and my neighborhood. At times I found myself journeying inward and outward almost at the same time. I encourage readers to challenge themselves by joining Ms. Gates on a path which leads toward home.