October

I’ve been working on getting “The Essay Exhibits” ready to hang at the Orwell Free Library and I think all the pieces will finally be up later today. On Wednesday, October 16th at 7PM I will be reading from Made Holy, answering questions about the book, and signing and selling books! I hope you can join me. Bring cash or checks to buy a book.

Thursday night, I met three amazing writers while reading for the New England Review Vermont Reading series at the Vermont Book Shop in Middlebury. Check out Sarah Wolfson’s beautiful book of poetry A Common Name For Everything published by the Green Writers Press and Sara London’s book Upkeep. You can also hear the work of NER Summer Intern, Middlebury College student, and writer, Rahat Huda by listening to episode 7 of the NER Out loud podcast which she worked on. It was a privilege to read with them.

Promoting Made Holy has at times felt overwhelming. But when I read the essays that speak to the current social issues we are facing right here in Vermont and across the nation I feel empowered and carried by something bigger than me. I am grateful to be of service in this way and to have a voice and a platform to talk about addiction issues.

As the season changes, I feel the familiar pull of the inner world, the longing to retreat, to hunker down and hole up. It’s a good feeling mostly. But this season is rife with fears of melancholy and depression for me. And while I have a number of ways to cope, I feel the beast of it in every corner. Of disease I make myth because in my culture we are barren of stories, guides, healers who move beyond the medical models instilled by psychiatry and western medicine–both entrenched in the masculine model (patriarchy and capitalism) of the industrial complex. And so, this black dog or angry beast or shadow self grows.

In my groups, many people offer up suggestions on how to cope with depression: Light box, eating less (for real), exercise and fresh air, meditation, and one man whom I admire said it was soul work. Depression arrives to call us back to ourselves and to remind us that we have healing and a healer within. I am skeptical but also the places that bear light for me are often spiritual and internal as well as of genuine connection with others.

Mostly I believe that depression is a social disease that comes from the despair of trying to live in a society that stifles human creativity and devalues human life. This morning, over breakfast at a friends, she discussed the ways dividing ourselves into liberal and conservative create a divide that can often shut down communication between members of a community such as those in Orwell. Our response to people we don’t agree with lays out the way we will treat them–the standard for treatment. This is hard when we feel under threat, attacked, and like our human rights are at stake. It doesn’t feel like there is room for this level of compassion. But there is.

The deepest wound of capitalism is our loneliness and our lack of connection to each other. We too often do not see ourselves in our neighbors. This beautiful essay “A Letter to my Children: Historical Memory and the Silences of Childhood,” written by Timothy J. Stanley, discusses this loneliness along with the “drearily mundane reality of ordinary people doing evil things”.

Stanley quotes the great philosopher Hannah Arendt and her understanding of loneliness, which she discusses in relation to Nazism: She argues that loneliness violates human beings’ contact with others, and undermines common sense “which regulates and controls all other senses and without which each of us would become enclosed in his (sic) own particularity of sense data which in themselves are unreliable and treacherous..”

He goes on to discuss how mass culture fosters loneliness and encourages us to replace others with whom we engage with Others we fear. “[Mass culture] replaces others with whom we are connected with Others whom we fear. It encourages the folly of abandoning the public sphere for the dubious safety of private fortresses”. We become consumers rather than producers of a shared culture.

How do we rebel? Here in Orwell I have met quite a few rebels and they are mostly farmers (hill people) and folks who want to create a different way of life. They understand that as long as we participate in the system of exploitation commonly known as the forty hour work week, we cannot heal, connect, or deeply engage in our world. As long as we maintain our to do lists above all else, we will never find time to lay and the grass and watch a chubby caterpillar or the clouds, bring food to a neighbor or spend a day in deep connection with loved ones because we are saddled to our lists, our work, our finances, our debt and not to each other.

It’s not black and white. It’s always gray. But I want more breathing room. Less drudgery. More connection. Less isolation. More spiritual journey. Less careering.

Above all else I want to be in service to this world and the people here. What can I offer today? A cup of tea, a conversation, these words, a hand? I know there are layers of privilege here. People can’t walk away from their jobs, they have mouths to feed and a mortgage to pay and so on. But most of us can argue for a different world simply by choosing different priorities. Taking time to consider what we value and how we serve each other. Yes, serve.

Ask yourself, How can I be of service today? See what happens.

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The Essay Exhibits is up! Here’s a peek.