in group, we brighten

 

the vitality of relationship

relationship is at the heart of who we are,

at the heart of how we can know ourselves,

we are a “one” that knows it can be more,

is a light in the sky a star or a satellite?

I can know it a bit by whether it moves

relative to the other lights in the sky,

I feel the downside of such relative reckoning

when I measure myself as better or worse than the other,

what a zero-sum game I can then fall into!

how much better it is to enlarge myself,

adding without subtracting,

connecting without diminishing,

I watch our middle school students

feel the pull of the friend, of the group,

and almost desperately find how to respond,

the other calling them,

the wholeness of the group calling them:

a circle spontaneously appears,

recently on a climbing structure on our playground,

and on the field with a ball kicked back and forth,

Covid 19 has forced us into isolation,

into the fear of contact:

touch, closeness, sharing a room together,

our physical self safer,

yet that safety comes at a price,

for who we are is not just individual physical existence,

but a social self who needs the other

like the body needs oxygen,

I feel it in my own introverted self

as extroversion grabs me and pulls me out

into connection, into visiting,

into giving food and word to friends, to colleagues,

to see the other, to know them,

to change who I think I am

by knowing them as me, too,

distance learning can be the best we an pull off now,

but we should not let it be a distancing

from who we are at our best,

each of us has the light of God within us,

that light needs to join with the light of others,

the world can then be as bright as it needs to be.

by Henry H. Walker

February 8, ‘21