We Belong to One Another

We all come into the world alone, kicking and screaming. In the end, we pack our bags and hit the road alone even if we’re blessed with holy witness. No one can share our first or last breaths. They are all ours. Still between these two solos, life is best lived in ensemble, in a loving embrace. Family rushes in to catch a first glimpse of new life wiggling its toes and gathers together to mourn its losses. When those rhythms are disrupted as they were during the pandemic, it strains the human capacity to tolerate the shock of the new. I lost an old friend in Vermont last week, a person I hadn’t seen in four years. He was ravaged by a terrible and rapidly progressing illness, so he was gone in less than two months and I missed the whole thing. It brought me back once again to the deep meaning of being together, caring for one another, and remembering one another. It begins with family if you are fortunate and moves out from there to the larger community if you live in a place that promotes the somewhat fusty-sounding idea of civic engagement, to which I would add the Jewish concept of shalom bayit, peace in the home. Peace between us and among us. I understand loss better when I see it in this larger context. This man had a wife and a son, a sister, colleagues, and students. There is more than enough grief to go around if we share it generously.

Photo by Vonecia Carswell on Unsplash

Even in the ‘50s when I attended grade school in high socks and pleated skirts, civics as a subject had already taken on a moldy odor like something my mother and father studied during the First World War. We children of the Eisenhower era had social studies, a strange amalgam of principal exports, tidbits of Teddy Roosevelt-style jingoism, and Hollywood images of tribes in war paint massing on hilltops in preparation for raiding white people’s settlements. I vaguely remember a unit entitled “how a bill becomes a law,” but I’m certain we did not learn about voter suppression or the filibuster. It’s against the dark backdrop of this illiteracy that I’m experiencing the lightbulb of living in a place like St. Louis Park, Minnesota where civic engagement is taken seriously and community is more than a buzzword.

I moved to Minnesota eight months ago and spent the winter in California so my time here is brief and my understanding limited. I’m sure I am missing the nuances. I know there is poverty with its attendant inequities in health, education, and housing. Still, there’s something invigorating about beginner’s mind. I’m looking at life in St. Louis Park, population 50,000, without cynicism or rancor, with fresh eyes like the newborn wiggling its toes. I’m embracing my naivete and my new home. The city government states its intention to build racial equity, environmental stewardship, a broad range of housing and neighborhood-oriented development, safe and reliable means for getting around and opportunities to build social capital through community engagement and I believe it.

The statement of intention lowers my blood pressure and invites me to participate. It recognizes inadequacies and conveys the need to address them without pointing fingers, without establishing hostile camps. It uses words like options and opportunities, inviting people into the process, conveying an optimism that doesn’t feel like a fairytale. When you call the city, someone answers the phone. My friend in Vermont would have applauded that.

The openhearted intentionality here fosters shalom bayit, a radiant peace which expands in concentric circles from the home, to the larger family, the greater community and beyond. The word shalom carries the meaning of wholeness, so if one part of the house is in ill health, the entire house is in need of repair. And when a member of the community dies, the ripples extend to everyone who was touched by his life, his passion for fighting injustice and his mordant sense of humor, in the case of my friend. The stories rise like incense out of the soil of the dim past when we were young and not so impacted by separation. Suddenly, as if someone had blown the shofar, people are remembering him and remembering one another and that crazy time we shared. The heart of community is responsiveness. Answering the phone is a good place to start.

*************************************************************************************************************

Our new feature, Many Voices, will appear on the last Sunday of each month and will feature contributions from the community of paid subscribers. In May, Many Voices will welcome Toronto-based spiritual director, psychotherapist and poet, Jinks Hoffmann, in conversation with Susie Kaufman. Please honor us by sending your thoughts and your writing.

PLEASE CONSIDER UPGRADING to a paid subscription to support seventysomething and become a contributor to and a reader of Many Voices.

*************************************************************************************************************

Copies of my 2019 essay collection, Twilight Time: Aging in Amazement, are available directly from me (signed) or from Amazon or your local bookseller.

*************************************************************************************************************