"Withdraw to your cell," the Desert Fathers used to say, "and your cell will teach you everything" - at least all you need to know for the fullness of life. So said Thomas Merton in his "Notes for a Philosophy of Solitude."
"Get out and about," say the editors of Outside magazine - away from the mind- and soul-destroying homogenization of urban living.
In these 40 stories - 2 by women - we have diversity in unity, enhancing the value of the anthology. The integrating principle is not so much a style of writing - a certain outdoors "Outside" style - as an attitude of gifted adventurers who report not only from interesting places and events "out there" but especially from the deeper depths of their own reflective beings.
"Get out of the noosphere," said author David Quammen. His comment provided the title for the collection. But he misinterpreted what Jesuit evolutionist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin had in mind when he invented the "Noosphere" as a word and a concept in 1922.
For Teilhard was undoubtedly an outdoors "Outside" person and rejoiced in the creative convergence of human beings in all their diversity. "Union differentiates" was his constant theme, so well exemplified in these reports from writers likewise familiar with "the wild country of the soul" (p.12).
With its foundations anchored to the genetic core of each participating member,Teilhard's noosphere enables us to communicate around the world and beyond at the speed of light - mind-to-mind, heart-to-heart and even soul-to-soul - providing a lifeline of care, concern and mutual respect to all who live not by bread alone, but dare to explore the farthest reaches of reality.
