No Man Is an Island

Pragmatics

• -John Donne said it first and best. I just learned that “ask not for whom the bell tolls” was in the same meditation as “no man is an island”. He packed those insights in, in one paragraph in this case!


• -Here are one woman’s thoughts on reinhabiting her own community as part of her efforts toward simplicity.

-Thomas Merton, a new favorite of mine, had a lot to say on this topic (he wrote a whole book with the same title as this blog). A man who experienced (and perhaps preferred) much solitude, he did not fail to recognize how vital community was: “Only when we see ourselves in our true human context, as members of a race which is intended to be one organism and ‘one body,’ will we begin to understand the positive importance not only of the successes but of the failures and accidents in our lives.” Here are some other quotes of his.

Prose

I write fairly regularly about alone time and down time, both being necessities I have discovered along the way. Both contribute, for me, to a meaningful and balanced lifestyle.

But this week, it’s the flip side I’ve been thinking about: community. One essay I read recently (wish I could remember where) wrote about a different kind of lifestyle than most of us have now. Before TV, before even radio, neighbors were known to visit. They would pass time and share stories. Especially in less populated areas, like the frontier, fellowship was vital for both sanity and survival. I do think there’s something to the in person community, versus all of these online forums we have today. But both come from a good impulse.

Two weeks ago, I experienced community at Burgundy Books in East Haddam. Linda and Chuck were warm and gracious hosts, every writer’s dream. Just a small handful of friends turned out for my Get Satisfied reading, but it filled my heart to feel their encouragement and interest.

My two readings in these last 2 months have called for courage. It was not the courage to stand up and read what I wrote. I needed courage to reach out, to let people know that I wrote something, to ask them to come to my event. I’m also gathering the courage to connect with other writers, exchanging information on agents and workshops. This includes contacting writers much more advanced than I—to get to their wisdom and their encouragement, I am willing to risk rejection.

In keeping with my simplicity focus, I’ve also found likeminded people online, via Freecycle. I’ve decided the types of people who frequent Freecycle want the value of their possessions to be meaningfully maximized, something I can relate to in my efforts to discard with discretion. Rather than dump hauls they are thinking about who might use what they can no longer fit into their home or lifestyle. They are taking reduce, reuse, recycle to a new level of productive community exchange.

Then there’s a more serious kind of community: my first NarAnon meeting last Tuesday, a much needed tool for dealing with an addict family member. To be greeted with warmth and understanding about such a painful dilemma was a long overdue step for me.

It seems all 12-step groups have a lot of catch phrases. These phrases provide important, easy-to-recall reminders of truths that should not be ignored. At NarAnon, I heard, “Keeping coming back. It works if you work it.” The same can be said of community. It’s a well that should be dipped into more often, a tool that can be applied to solve so many problems.

I like this quote by Black Elk, a Sioux holy man. It speaks to our connectedness, to the need for each other that cannot be overlooked:

Hear me, four quarters of the world - a relative I am! Give me the strength to walk the soft earth, a relative to all that is! Give me the eyes to see and the strength to understand, that I may be like you. With your power only can I face the winds.

Organic Psychology

I have a new person to envy: the author Sue Hubbell. Particularly the Sue Hubbell who documents her beekeeping in A Book of Bees: And How to Keep Them. Part of her routine is to fill a thermos with coffee and go down to watch the bees. I picture her leaning against the warm bark of a tree trunk in the sun, watching carefully and then taking thoughtful notes.

It’s not the bees that I envy, although I do treasure an occasional glimpse into their productive world (note: Hubbell writes that an entomologist who tagged bees [I picture him applying microscopic security bracelets to their hair-thin legs] found that they spent a lot of time idle. A lesson here?). It is the regular contact with nature that I envy.

Yesterday I walked the three miles to work. I’ve had walks with more sights to report, more deer and herons and swans. But yesterday I simply cherished the smell of the day and the marsh warming up and the sun on my face. I smiled at the squirrels, who rattled about the trees bordering the water. In my pocket I carried two elegant and perfect leaves, species unknown. A three-year-old girl waiting for the bus with her sisters chased me to bestow this gift, squeaking “Happy Birthday” as she bestowed them. They were my talisman, my memento of the peaceful start to my day. That walk was the ideal mix of exercise, contact with nature, and contact with people at their best. Older children alone and younger children with their parents waited outside for the school bus, and they, too, seemed to be relishing the quiet and sunny morning. If only I could start every day this way.

I’ve had the pleasure of meeting a like-minded soul this week. Michael J. Cohen, a Director of the Institute of Global Education, heads up Project NatureConnect, an initiative that recognizes a link between many of our problems and the extreme disconnection with nature that is epidemic in the modern world, aka Natural System Dysfunction. The remedy? Organic Psychology, an approach that helps reconnect psyches with natural systems. I am intrigued by this mindset, which sounds simple and radical all at once. I am learning more about it. Cohen has been identified as a maverick genius, and there are many layers to his work. My own initial take, looking back on my week, is that children may be good guides for this approach, little organic psychologists or facilitators in their own right. Twice this week Gavin and I let furry caterpillars traverse our arms, and on Wednesday we followed a warty toad as it leapt across our lawn. These moments were graced by a quiet pleasure, a sense of connection, and temporary amnesia from time and tasks at hand.

I love to catch myself at typos and read into their Freudian slips. I often type right instead of write, a very revealing slip for me as writing is what rights me. I chuckled reading back this entry, for at first I typed warty today instead of toad. It is a task-laden day before me, a long list of postponed chores and responsibilities. But later I will relish a walk in the woods, maybe another caterpillar or toad moment. It’s something to look forward to.