The Little White Boat: My Search for the Joy Beyond Time

by Howard Martin

The Little White Boat is a memoir by Howard Martin, written as a record of his search for an honest, freshly imagined spirituality. Filled with personal anecdotes, contemplative reflections, and excerpts from poems, The Little White Boat reveals how moments like a quiet ride in a small white boat on the still waters of a New Zealand lake—or a walk with a Trappist monk in a forest in the Missouri Ozarks—became the compass for a lifetime of exhilarating search and discovery.

304 pages, Paperback

Published July 19, 2021

Reviews

[Clif Hostetler · Rating 5 out of 5]

This memoir tells of the author's growing up in New Zealand, moving to the United States for college, and remaining in the USA for marriage and raising a family. Beyond the timeline of life's activities, friends, and family, the author also attempts to describe a search for transcendence beyond everyday life that the subtitle of the book refers to as the "joy beyond time."

There was a point in the book where the author describes the feelings of perceived insight that came from studying and learning about fictional characters in theatrical dramas and novels. I was impressed with the clarity with which this experience was expressed because I have been trying to communicate similar ideas in my own book reviews. Then later in the book I learned he had advanced academic degrees in Theater, and he had been a lecturer at the University of Missouri at Kansas City many years for an introductory class titled, "How Theater Can Change Your Life." No wonder he is able to articulate so clearly the merits of theater and fiction.

I was impressed that the author was willing to let his wife advance in the world of academia while he settled for being adjunct professor. This role reversal from the stereotypical norm allowed him to pursue other creative ventures and spend summer vacations with his two sons. The author is my approximate contemporary age wise, so in a hopeful sense this book could be an example for me to aspire to achieve if I were to write my own memoir. But I despair at the comparison because I'll not be able to match his writing skill.

The following are two excerpts from the book that I've decided to provide here to represent nature of the writing found in this book.

In the following excerpt the author describes his maturing beyond the conservative Christian faith of his younger years.

And so it was that I began to shift my focus from an anxious search in the forest of religion to a more restful surrender in the glade of simple trust. It was a shift of focus, not an attainment. I began to know a little of what it mean to rest in the grace of the world and breathe free. I was taken back to the whispers of the divine in the beauties of the natural world, the lives of kind and humble human beings, and to the miraculous stories of homeward return—like that of the prodigal son—I had heard in my earliest days. (p.214)

The author ends the book with the following paragraph in which he ties his boyhood memories of time spent in a small white boat with his continuing experience of life today.

In memory, I can still see my self as a kid floating in the safety of the little white boat. I see a time when I drifted in stillness on the glassy surface of the lake, the beauty around me mirrored in a Beauty within. I see a time when the waters seemed to rise up against me and, even with my brave little brother alongside, I felt vulnerable and afraid. I see a time when a great launch, regal in its trim of polished wood and brass, slowed down its heavy engines and smoothed the angry waves before me. And, as I follow in the wake of this Majestic Apparition, I see—even now—the sun-drenched shores of Home glowing on the farther shore.

In the following link I have copied the quotations from this book and discussion questions that David Nelson shared with the Vital Conversations group when we met by Zoom with the author, Howard Martin.
1. “They were both born—like their older sister—with Hurler Syndrome. Their stories are so intertwined in my memory that I cannot adequately disentangle them.” P. 12. What is Hurler Syndrome and how is it treated? Why is this important in your life Howard?

2. “With her gentle whispers and kind caresses, Rene Martin nurtured a loving family into being and traveled a short while with it toward the sun…Because of her, I found it possible, ultimately, to believe in the existence of an eternal Beloved, whose presence is manifest in all of creation, always and everywhere, the loving center of gravity of all that exists…It was my first intuition of paradise.” P. 38. What is an “intuition of paradise” and how has it evolved throughout your life?

3. “There are beloved people who come into our lives as companions for a season, and then there are those who have been there from the beginning.” P. 97 Who have been some of your companions for a season?

4. “In a sense, my brother Bryn was—and remains—the other side of my very self…” p. 104-105. Please read out loud as we listen. Did any of you have such a companion in your life, sibling, friend, or other? “As I write this, my brother is ill, and I ponder the real possibility that he will leave this life before me. Yet I choose to believe that there will be a time beyond Time when we will laugh together, my brother and I – and indeed all of us – in an unimaginable symphony of Joy.” P. 106. Update us about your brother.

5. “It became my hope, in my later years as a professor and arts educator, to offer in the classroom moments where my students could feel the goodness and rightness – and safety – of that “somewhere” else. In that sense, I would come to think of my teaching as a means of nurturing spiritual life, an introduction to the care of the soul.” P. 108. How did you get away with that in public education? Can real life be explored without some discussion of the spiritual?

6. “To this day, Sairey Gamp (character in Dickens) lightens my spirit and makes me laugh…What does it matter that there is no such person as Sairey Gamp in the real world? She arises from somewhere in the human spirit. The genius of Charles Dicken found her somewhere. So much the better for me and, I think, for all of us…All I had to so was let a film or a book take me there.” P.111-112. How can we nurture intimacy with a character in a novel or film? Can any of you share other examples of fictional characters that have made a difference in your life?

7. “I was fast becoming aware that suffering and loss were not just themes in my own story, but were unavoidable strands in the tapestry of other lives as well, universal realities in the human condition that would require all my efforts to understand. I would need a story of some kind – a really good story – to help me get there.” P 121 Do you have a story “big enough” to encompass the complex quandaries of your life?

8. “As a child and as a fledging adult in my teens and early twenties, I more often than not felt overwhelmed, rather than gently nurtured, by religion. A great flood of religious dogma and practice overwhelmed the tiny channels of my interior life…Like a member of a secret society, I was initiated into this culture by repeating words…” born in sin,” or “justified by faith,” and “saved by the blood.” P 124-125. What is the role of religion in your life?

9. “Poems—and novels and plays—were about my own inner life, my own life of felt imagination. They were also, but extension, about the inner life of every person I knew and indeed every person on the planet.” P 139 “It seemed that whereas in religion there was a tendency to turn flesh into words, in the theatre there was an instinct to the opposite—to embody ideas in the multi-dimensional actualities of character and story.” P 139. Say more about the difference you have discovered between the church and the theater.

10. “We bear our sorrows bravely for the most part and even in the midst of them look for the return of joy. It may well be that the experience of joy returning after times of great sadness can—if we so choose—prepare our hearts for the coming of the Great Joy beyond time. Our sorrow and our joy are both ways in which we are, as Abraham Heschel so beautifully put it, ‘in travail with God’s dream.’” P 187. We all experience sorrow. Why do some seem to never choose the joy that can follow?