Meeting my digital heroes: Meeting Christopher Foster
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| Puppy . . . oh, and Joanne and Christopher Foster. |
While on art road trips I’ve decided to hook up with people I admire digitally whenever the opportunity presents itself. In Colorado this summer I was able to meet 82-year-old blogger Christopher Foster.
(Though his website still claims he’s 81, don’t believe it for a minute!)
When I first heard Christopher Foster’s voice on my voicemail it seemed to encompass the English speaking diaspora.
Raised in England, with over four decades in Canada and now residing lo these many years in Colorado, it’s understandable that Christopher Foster’s accent would fall somewhere in the Atlantic, neither old world nor new. In his inflection you can hear the blended global reality we’re all living these days.
Check out his site The Happy Seeker. Read somewhere between 3 and 13 posts . . . . Tell me that’s not a drink from a profoundly deep spring. One that flows unceasingly wise and good humored.
Don’t you want to drink from those waters as often as you can?! I know I do.
Christopher Foster is a beacon to me. His light — so much farther along the road of knowing than mine — calls me in his direction. His work illumines the path I’m plodding.
In so many ways Christopher Foster embodies — ensouls! — who I wish to be in this life. Attentive, perceptive, generous, understanding, forgiving, lighthearted.
And this . . . though I mentioned it only paragraphs above, it begs a double emphasis . . . he’s 82-years old! He’s blogging!
It’s a bit like finding a retired unicyclist taking up motocross. There’s no pining for the ways of yesteryear with him; Christopher is too busy striding into the Internet expression era.
So what is Christopher Foster like in person?
As humble and thoughtful and emanating pure huggable goodness as you’d expect. Every bit as special is his wife Joanne.
(My god that woman’s eyes sparkle! She’s got some kind of secret back-door connection to the divine, you just know it.)
Surprisingly given his age, Christopher is a robust walker. He hikes local trails with gusto, through fields and woods, in a land just shy of our craggiest mountains. Once he set out I nearly had to tailgate to keep in his wake.
There’s a creek running through it, this land he walks. Which makes metaphorical sense.
When I read Christopher Foster’s work I feel as though I’ve physically emerged from that deep cool spring you pictured above, one likely fed by mountain streams such as the one he visits often in his walks.
Water is the most kinetic of materials we humans encounter daily. The way it transforms itself, the way it disappears from the surface of our rivers and lakes only to reincarnate as rain, washing us clean . . .
That’s what I get from Christopher Foster and his work. A feeling of fluidity. A feeling of purification.
He demonstrates again and again that the raw stuff of our life can be transformed by our attentive reflection upon it. Our experiences return to us, rain down on us . . . in generous, cleansing gusts of renewal . . . if we slow way down and listen.
This is what I hear in Christopher Foster’s words:
That stillness heals.
Contemplation enriches.
Connections matter.
You are the eternal.
Your unvanquishable spirit soars.
Always.
You feel this in his presence. I don’t need to meet Emerson, I’ve met Christopher Foster. I hope you do too. Go to his site. Start anywhere. It will lead you back home.
(To your highest best soul self.)
For you —
Evan Griffith
Meeting my digital heroes
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