I’ve just finished a book of almost porcelain quality, one as fragile and beautiful as a poem. Let Your Life Speak, by Parker Palmer, is an autobiography of an extremely sensitive and moral man in a quest to do what is best for the world. Being of such a sensitive nature, he of course upbraids himself for hidden motives in his career path – for no one can call himself perfect – but has found that even this dark side has its reasons, or seasons, as he put it in his concluding essay. The book itself deserves at least one essay on it alone, for it speaks of True Self and how it fights to escape social confines, even at the expense of health and superficial sanity. This is not quite what I wish to talk about here, though. Rather, it is to what he implies about the need for community.
At one point, Palmer takes a leave of absence from a good position at a university because of a feeling of incompleteness. He takes a one year appointment at a Quaker community center, where he unexpectedly finds himself for the next ten years. While there, he learns of the importance of silent listening to the inner self, and also of invested community. In fact, whether he knows it or not, that is what his book is primarily about – not so much the quest for the inner self by itself, but for the inner self as a member of a community of inner selves. I stress here the “inner self,” for the community he strives for and sometimes reaches is a community of people grounded in soul, not in the need for mutual approval based on some social indicators. That is, a community striving to become a god-touched people who do not live from the law, as did the people of Moses, but rather of the law within the depth of the heart, as did, or should, the people of Jesus (as Jesus said, he came not to dismiss the law, but to fulfill it, something only accomplished from the heart). Learning the heart, we find, is good, but being able to live this together is so much better.
And so we come to Facebook and electronic social media. I have read and enjoyed some of the satirical essays on youth and their surprising lack of social interaction due precisely to too much interaction over The Device. On the face of it, it is hilarious: 4 or 6 Millennials sitting around a diner table in absolute silence as they text to others who are miles away. Scratch beneath the surface, though, and most of us oldsters have found deeper problems associated with this. As one grandmother of many (who is younger than I, by the way) told me of her recent Christmas visit to family in Iowa, “I was with my nieces almost the whole day as we traveled to shop and eat in my car. I hardly heard two sentences from either one the whole time. They were on their Devices instead. And when I did talk to them, they were barely able to communicate. They had such low self-esteem. They each thought they were fat and needed to diet (they are both teens and as skinny as rails).
They had low self-esteem; felt they needed to diet; had trouble talking to real people: these are signs of people who live by the values of others. They look for approval from without, but hide from direct contact because they feel of little value, for what are they but skin-covered bags of inadequacies? Worse, we all know what lack of face-to-face communication has brought: comments of extreme hostility, even of hatred. Without the leavening effect of another’s presence, the self-doubt explodes into offensive attacks meant, if they understood, as desperate defensive measures. Yet they do not, cannot stop, because what they are looking for is approval, and ultimately, community. What they instead find is the hardness of external social pressure and ostracism. So they go back for more, with hope that is always broken, and then more in a vicious circle. What a mess.
And how familiar. I have caught myself at night checking the email an extra time, or maybe even an extra-extra time before going to bed to get - what? I stopped last night to think about it, and it was obvious; I was looking for something to bring me somehow from the depths of impending night. I was looking for a saving word of community to make the coming darkness not what it often is – one of odd dreams and quiet desperation. I was, and probably will continue to be, just like our youthful hyper-social - social misfits, desperate for something I could not really name.
With the reading of Palmer’s book, though, at least I do know that name: genuine community. The Mormons call themselves the Community of Saints, which I can sneer at because they are probably no more saintly than the rest of us, but that would be more than worthless, for that is what they strive to be. At least they know what they want, as difficult as that might be, and that is half the battle, knowing what we want – need - for fulfillment. And like St Paul’s “Love”, this community is not possessive or judgmental or unkind. It allows one to be oneself – in fact, gently requires one be oneself – and joins us together in mutual respect and support. For in the end, in the depth of the soul, all are made of God, and all, or at least most, bear hidden within them the wings of angels. Angels do not need to tell each other what to be or how to behave, or what size dress they should wear. Instead, they form a chorus in witness to God in their, in your, and in all being. They do not wish to stop your song, but to sing along, in harmony. If Facebook could do this, it would take over the world, but it can’t. Only this community of saints, this chorus of our angels, can, and it is always there for us to find, right there, free of charge.
At one point, Palmer takes a leave of absence from a good position at a university because of a feeling of incompleteness. He takes a one year appointment at a Quaker community center, where he unexpectedly finds himself for the next ten years. While there, he learns of the importance of silent listening to the inner self, and also of invested community. In fact, whether he knows it or not, that is what his book is primarily about – not so much the quest for the inner self by itself, but for the inner self as a member of a community of inner selves. I stress here the “inner self,” for the community he strives for and sometimes reaches is a community of people grounded in soul, not in the need for mutual approval based on some social indicators. That is, a community striving to become a god-touched people who do not live from the law, as did the people of Moses, but rather of the law within the depth of the heart, as did, or should, the people of Jesus (as Jesus said, he came not to dismiss the law, but to fulfill it, something only accomplished from the heart). Learning the heart, we find, is good, but being able to live this together is so much better.
And so we come to Facebook and electronic social media. I have read and enjoyed some of the satirical essays on youth and their surprising lack of social interaction due precisely to too much interaction over The Device. On the face of it, it is hilarious: 4 or 6 Millennials sitting around a diner table in absolute silence as they text to others who are miles away. Scratch beneath the surface, though, and most of us oldsters have found deeper problems associated with this. As one grandmother of many (who is younger than I, by the way) told me of her recent Christmas visit to family in Iowa, “I was with my nieces almost the whole day as we traveled to shop and eat in my car. I hardly heard two sentences from either one the whole time. They were on their Devices instead. And when I did talk to them, they were barely able to communicate. They had such low self-esteem. They each thought they were fat and needed to diet (they are both teens and as skinny as rails).
They had low self-esteem; felt they needed to diet; had trouble talking to real people: these are signs of people who live by the values of others. They look for approval from without, but hide from direct contact because they feel of little value, for what are they but skin-covered bags of inadequacies? Worse, we all know what lack of face-to-face communication has brought: comments of extreme hostility, even of hatred. Without the leavening effect of another’s presence, the self-doubt explodes into offensive attacks meant, if they understood, as desperate defensive measures. Yet they do not, cannot stop, because what they are looking for is approval, and ultimately, community. What they instead find is the hardness of external social pressure and ostracism. So they go back for more, with hope that is always broken, and then more in a vicious circle. What a mess.
And how familiar. I have caught myself at night checking the email an extra time, or maybe even an extra-extra time before going to bed to get - what? I stopped last night to think about it, and it was obvious; I was looking for something to bring me somehow from the depths of impending night. I was looking for a saving word of community to make the coming darkness not what it often is – one of odd dreams and quiet desperation. I was, and probably will continue to be, just like our youthful hyper-social - social misfits, desperate for something I could not really name.
With the reading of Palmer’s book, though, at least I do know that name: genuine community. The Mormons call themselves the Community of Saints, which I can sneer at because they are probably no more saintly than the rest of us, but that would be more than worthless, for that is what they strive to be. At least they know what they want, as difficult as that might be, and that is half the battle, knowing what we want – need - for fulfillment. And like St Paul’s “Love”, this community is not possessive or judgmental or unkind. It allows one to be oneself – in fact, gently requires one be oneself – and joins us together in mutual respect and support. For in the end, in the depth of the soul, all are made of God, and all, or at least most, bear hidden within them the wings of angels. Angels do not need to tell each other what to be or how to behave, or what size dress they should wear. Instead, they form a chorus in witness to God in their, in your, and in all being. They do not wish to stop your song, but to sing along, in harmony. If Facebook could do this, it would take over the world, but it can’t. Only this community of saints, this chorus of our angels, can, and it is always there for us to find, right there, free of charge.
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