Conversations For Transformation: Essays Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

Conversations For Transformation

Essays By Laurence Platt

Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

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Birth Of A Monastery:

The Background On The Franklin House

Cowboy Cottage, East Napa, California, USA

January 23, 2023

"I do live in a monastery. My monastery is the whole world."


...

answering the question "Have you ever lived in a monastery?"

"Your heart and my heart are very, very old friends."

... Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī aka Rūmī

This essay, Birth Of A Monastery: The Background On The Franklin House, is the companion piece to

It is also the prequel to A House On Franklin Street although it was written after it.

I am indebted to Jack Rafferty and to Laurel Scheaf who inspired this conversation, and to Jack Rafferty who contributed material.

It was a house which from the outside, was just another house on Franklin Street in San Francisco's Pacific Heights neighborhood, just another Victorian house on Franklin Street, perhaps just another ordinary gothic Victorian house on Franklin Street painted a rich, dark forest green (today repainted a cream color). It was Werner's home and his workspace. It had no name, just a number: 1945 Franklin Street. Werner called it appropriately "the Franklin House".

No pedestrian walking by, no commuter driving past would have been unimpressed with its elegance, with its perfect neatness and sharp tidiness, with its consciousness. Extraordinarily, the public sidewalks outside the Franklin House on both Franklin Street and Washington Street where they intersected, were swept and scrubbed clean by Werner's friends, the Franklin House staff and assistants. It was a routine item of maintenance, yet was both a statement and a gift to the community. That was the way Werner intended it. Let that sink in for a moment. The injunction wasn't merely "Don't litter the neighborhood.". It was "Sweep up the trash, and hose down the sidewalk.". People coming home to see their sidewalk cleaned by Werner's friends just stood and stared ...

Werner, when asked in a Be With "Have you ever lived in a monastery?", responded saying "I do live in a monastery. My monastery is the whole world.". In Werner's whole world which is a monastery, the Franklin House was a totally extraordinary monastery within a monastery. When meals were prepared in the Franklin House kitchen at a breakthrough, impeccable, immaculate pace, the likes of which weren't seen anywhere else even by royalty, the adage "If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen!" was fitting, apt, appropriate. Dare stay in the kitchen, and your ante was no less than who you are really.

I got my Zen at the Franklin House, cleaning the fireplace and the bathrooms, preparing, supervising, and hosting dinners for Werner's guests. Wide awake at 2:00am one morning sitting on a bar stool in the kitchen with Werner, just the two of us over a midnight snack of celery spears and cream cheese, we quietly, spontaneously started a conversation which inexorably began the transformation of South Africa. Over the course of a year in 1979, I led the first ten guest seminars around the country in the major cities, causing the first one thousand enrollments in South Africa which started Werner's work there.

And yet ... even after all that, I did not know the origin of the Franklin House. I never knew the background on the Franklin House. I did not know how it came into being. For me, it had always just been there. Like the Great Pyramid of Cheops, it had always just ... been ... there ... (but of course, not really).

Jack Rafferty and Laurel Scheaf and others, are bastions of Werner's work who have been with and around Werner since before the beginning of time, long before the Franklin House came into existence. In a very real sense I owe them my life. One day Jack unasked, offered me this gem sharing the background on the Franklin House with me, with which I was so delighted that I couldn't wait to share it with y'all, for which Jack generously granted me his permission.

This is Jack Rafferty:

<quote>

I DON'T KNOW IF YOU KNOW THE BACKGROUND ON THE FRANKLIN HOUSE.

LAUREL SCHEAF AND I AND OTHERS WERE LOOKING FOR A PLACE TO SHARE, AND I DID THE LEGWORK. I SAW IT IN AN AD IN THE NEWSPAPER FOR $500 A MONTH.

I WENT THERE, RANG THE BELL AND THIS YOUNG MAN ANSWERED THE DOOR. HE SHOWED ME AROUND THE HOUSE. THE TOP FLOOR (3RD FLOOR) WAS A LOFT THAT WAS RENTED, AS WAS THE BACK BEHIND THE KITCHEN.

IT WAS FULLY FURNISHED AND BEAUTIFULLY APPOINTED.

THREE BEDROOMS ON THE SECOND FLOOR.

BEYOND MY EXPECTATIONS!

I THOUGHT FOR SURE AFTER LOOKING AT HALF A DOZEN PLACES THAT THERE MUST HAVE BEEN A MISTAKE IN THE AD, AND IT WAS $1,500.

WHEN WE WALKED BACK TO THE DOOR, I STEPPED OUTSIDE AND TURNED AROUND AND ASKED HOW MUCH THE RENT WAS (EXPECTING $1,500 OR MORE) AND HE SAID "$500.". I PULLED OUT MY CHECKBOOK AND SAID "I'LL TAKE IT.".

AFTER SEVERAL MONTHS OF WERNER COMING OVER EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE TO WORK AFTER HOURS WITH US UNTIL EARLY IN THE MORNING ON PUTTING TOGETHER A CALENDAR FOR THE NEXT YEAR AND OTHER PROJECTS AND SLEEPING ON THE COUCH, WE SAID "WHY DON'T YOU TAKE OVER THE HOUSE?".

<unquote>

And he did, later purchasing it outright.

So here's my question: did Jack find the Franklin House? or did the Franklin House call out to Jack "Come to me, I'm the future you want to live into."? Did Werner "take over the house" per Jack and Laurel's invitation? or were they merely giving a voice to the expanding space they saw he was already living in?

In all likelihood, it was all of it. The good fit that goeswith such moments of Zen (as Alan Watts may have said) calls out to us to dance with them. That the house at 1945 Franklin Street which would became Werner's monastery within a monastery would have such a synchronous background, is perfectly fitting.

Jack being there, as if randomly, and picking up on it, is simply hard evidence of its extraordinary fit, and the petri dish it would become for Werner's work.

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