Fall. Connect.
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““The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able to truly care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty little unsexy ways every day””
My head and my heart are here
Fresh from a fortifying and calming silent meeting at the Friends Meeting House in Brooklyn this morning — I'm happy to be writing to you again, community. I think that the part of my brain and heart that can stretch out has been crouched in a corner kind of waiting for things to settle down in the world. Clearly, they haven't. So I'm reaching out to you all from where I am as we enter autumn together. It wouldn't be accurate to say that I'm hopeful, but it wouldn't be inaccurate to say that I have hope. Every day I feel some glimmer, and it generates, almost without exception, from connection and community. Despite everything I see around me, I find hope there. (Sarah Schulman speaks about connection beautifully in her new book “The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity” which I highly recommend in these agonizing days).
Virtually everywhere I go — in person — in my actual physical self to actual physical places, I see and feel how little micro communities insist on themselves. Example: I'm at a hospital on the Upper East Side waiting for a steroid shot in my hip (more on that never) and with others awaiting treatment. We, the patients, as well as the nurses, docs, orderlies, all of us are pretty chatty. Everyone is involved in connecting, pretty meaningfully (!), somehow to someone else in the steroid-giving vicinity. We all had our stupid phones I assume, but no one was looking at them. I'm definitely noticing connection in a different way. I need it more. And I'm guessing you do too. And I'm guessing you know that very well, in your bones and in your heart. It's a pretty urgent need these days.
Drop in with other folks when you can! The theater heals. The yoga studios heal. The chatty waiting rooms, the delis, the elevators, heal. Weddings heal! The park benches, the playgrounds, the friend's living rooms, and lines for coffee heal. The donation sites and community centers, temples, and even the train occasionally heals (look up from your phone New Yorkers!). All of these little brief micro communities helping us to heal and to stand up for and hear and see each other. Connecting and engaging in a 'myriad petty little unsexy ways every day'