“Our own life is the instrument with
which we experiment with truth.”
Thich Nhat Hanh

In preparation for a Pilgrimage to India I am reading Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiography, or as Gandhi liked to call his life story, “experiments with truth.” He said in the introduction “my life consists of nothing but those experiments.” Some were grand adventures like leading the people of India with nonviolence to independence. Many were small failures, like his trials with eating meat or smoking when he was young.

This points out the real appeal of Gandhi for me. He considered his life a whole. There was no separation of life into parts or categories. He wrote about manure and about love with the same voice and intensity. “My life is an indivisible whole, and all my activities run into one another; and they all have their rise in my insatiable love of mankind.” (Gandhi)

When his experiments in life failed it did not stop him and his desire for the truth. Like Thomas Merton, St. Ignatius of Loyola, and Dorothy Day, my mentors, he believed it was in the desire and action to do the right thing, not the results, that mattered.


My experiments with G.R.A.F. and A.I.R. have had their success and failures. A recent failure is my experiment with a greenhouse heated by A.I.R. during the winter months. I have found out so far that without the glass barrier of my other AIR systems, infra-red heat escapes and the A.I.R. insulation does not keep the heat in. I am going to try putting a barrier of bubble-wrap inside the greenhouse and cover it with duct tape. Maybe the gray duct tape, like glass, will keep the heat from the sun in at night. We will let you know. Whether this experiment works or not, it already has given me new knowledge, the value of everyday bubble-wrap for insulation. I plan to soon put some around the edges of my five-pane inserts in the sunroom. The inserts with four layers of clear glazing and one layer of glass work, but cold air sneaks in and hot air escapes over the 10% of area around the windows not covered by the inserts. Also bubble wrap will work in areas that do not need to be transparent.

After forty years the experiment to bring the truth of hosting military training on a Catholic campus, Marquette has not worked to stop it. Yet, in the spirit of Growing Power and Gandhi we continue. St. Ignatius of Loyola, who lived a long time before Gandhi, Day, Martin Luther King, or other proponents of nonviolence, said it best. He said that “moved by God’s grace… deeply desire to be with you in accepting all wrongs and all rejections and all poverty, both actual and spiritual — and I deliberately choose this, if it is for your greater service and praise.”

Note that desire to give all to do God’s will is a bit heavy, but certainly it is one way to integrate all experiments, successful ones and failures. The experiments with truth not the results are what count.

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