How best to ringing the new year? By contemplating the year past? By setting resolutions for the future? Either way, Lao-tzu’s Tao Te Ching is a useful guide and Norman Clayton’s 2019 edition from his Providence Press in Ojai, California is a beautiful way to read and reflect on the Tao and its spiritual wisdom.

Clayton chose Stephen Mitchell’s 1988 version for his edition, and the translation offers lovely balance and a clear understanding of Lao-tzu’s timeless principles. An excerpt from Chapter 8 reads:

In dwelling, live close to the ground,

In thinking, keep to the simple,

In conflict, be fair and generous,

In governing, don’t try to control,

In work, do what you enjoy,

In family, be completely present.

Lao-tzu

It seems that Clayton himself follows the Tao, because one who starts a private press to print works like this certainly seeks to “in work, do what [he] enjoy[s].”

The edition is a small and unassuming one. It is printed from polymer plates in Davanti type, a calligraphic face with enough variation to mostly escape the polymer curse of too-uniform sterility, into Crane Letter paper, and hand-sewn into boards, the front adorned with a photograph of fractured rock by Burneta Clayton. The 125 copies of the book are signed by both Stephen Mitchell and Norman Clayton.

This is an excellent edition that holds a special place in my library as a book that is enjoyable to both read and to admire.