Let's Look at One Another Sun, 29th September, 2013
Yesterday I had a lot of time to think as I applied butter cream paint to the west side of our house. And, as I often do, thoughts played out in my head in the form of a dialogue with an unknown interlocutor. The question was put to me, "What is the meaning of life?" And to my astonishment, I had an answer. "The meaning of life is mutual caring."
Wow. Could it really be that simple? I tried to test my theory to see if it held, thinking about what's really important, what is healthy, what is whole, what is beautiful. And for me, yes, when I thought about relationships, families, work, the environment, religion, politics…it all boils down to mutual caring, giving and receiving and being present to diverse truths that are alive in each of us and in every plant, animal and rock. Most evils of this world result from a breakdown in mutual caring: violence, greed, loneliness, bigotry, and desecration of the natural environment.
Then as if by (or perhaps because of) divine providence, Betsy recalled that the InSight Theatre Company here in Webster Groves was offering its final performance of Our Town. I had never seen it, and we agreed to spend our date night taking in this 75-year-old Thornton Wilder classic.
For those who may not know, the tableau of people and events in this small turn-of-the-20th-Century New Hampshire town seems utterly ordinary. Everyone's lives are going along, following the script that the gods of social convention hand out to us at birth. Until Act 3. Young Emily Gibbs dies in childbirth, and because of Wilder's rejection of realism, he is able to let her character and dialogue continue from the grave.
The deceased Emily is allowed one visit back to her former life, though the other deceased spirits of the town warn against it. She chooses to go back anyway and visit her family on the day of her own 12th birthday. Of course she can see and hear the events in the kitchen as her mother prepares breakfast and offers Emily's birthday gifts, but her mother is trapped in the past and unable to detect the presence of the adult Emily.
The tragedy, obviously, is that no one in the scene can fully appreciate how fragile and fleeting our lives and relationships are. Emily exclaims, "Oh Mama, just look at me one minute as though you really saw me. Mama, 14 years have gone by. I'm dead….Just for a moment now we're all together. Mama, just for a moment we're happy. Let's look at one another."
Upon Emily's return to the realm of the deceased, the former town drunk sums up the meaning of the play: "Now you know! That's what it was to be alive. To move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those…of those about you. To spend and waste time as though you had a million years. To be always at the mercy of one self-centered passion, or another. Now you know—that's the happy existence you wanted to go back to. Ignorance and blindness."
The experience of Our Town naturally leads me to thoughts of my own mother, mostly because she was in that play in high school back in the early 60s. And also, of course, because I feel there are many years we have wasted, each focused on our own self-centered passions, or other distractions. I'm sharing here a few photos from my recent visit to her secret garden—a hidden plot at the top of the hill near her apartment building, where she tends an oasis of flowers and shrubs as her way of communing with the divine, and of caring for her own soul.
Today I think I will go visit her, and hope we can take a few moments to just look at one another. I hope you'll be able to do that, too, with someone you care about.
Yesterday I had a lot of time to think as I applied butter cream paint to the west side of our house. And, as I often do, thoughts played out in my head in the form of a dialogue with an unknown interlocutor. The question was put to me, "What is the meaning of life?" And to my astonishment, I had an answer. "The meaning of life is mutual caring."
Wow. Could it really be that simple? I tried to test my theory to see if it held, thinking about what's really important, what is healthy, what is whole, what is beautiful. And for me, yes, when I thought about relationships, families, work, the environment, religion, politics…it all boils down to mutual caring, giving and receiving and being present to diverse truths that are alive in each of us and in every plant, animal and rock. Most evils of this world result from a breakdown in mutual caring: violence, greed, loneliness, bigotry, and desecration of the natural environment.
Then as if by (or perhaps because of) divine providence, Betsy recalled that the InSight Theatre Company here in Webster Groves was offering its final performance of Our Town. I had never seen it, and we agreed to spend our date night taking in this 75-year-old Thornton Wilder classic.
For those who may not know, the tableau of people and events in this small turn-of-the-20th-Century New Hampshire town seems utterly ordinary. Everyone's lives are going along, following the script that the gods of social convention hand out to us at birth. Until Act 3. Young Emily Gibbs dies in childbirth, and because of Wilder's rejection of realism, he is able to let her character and dialogue continue from the grave.
The deceased Emily is allowed one visit back to her former life, though the other deceased spirits of the town warn against it. She chooses to go back anyway and visit her family on the day of her own 12th birthday. Of course she can see and hear the events in the kitchen as her mother prepares breakfast and offers Emily's birthday gifts, but her mother is trapped in the past and unable to detect the presence of the adult Emily.
The tragedy, obviously, is that no one in the scene can fully appreciate how fragile and fleeting our lives and relationships are. Emily exclaims, "Oh Mama, just look at me one minute as though you really saw me. Mama, 14 years have gone by. I'm dead….Just for a moment now we're all together. Mama, just for a moment we're happy. Let's look at one another."
Upon Emily's return to the realm of the deceased, the former town drunk sums up the meaning of the play: "Now you know! That's what it was to be alive. To move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those…of those about you. To spend and waste time as though you had a million years. To be always at the mercy of one self-centered passion, or another. Now you know—that's the happy existence you wanted to go back to. Ignorance and blindness."
The experience of Our Town naturally leads me to thoughts of my own mother, mostly because she was in that play in high school back in the early 60s. And also, of course, because I feel there are many years we have wasted, each focused on our own self-centered passions, or other distractions. I'm sharing here a few photos from my recent visit to her secret garden—a hidden plot at the top of the hill near her apartment building, where she tends an oasis of flowers and shrubs as her way of communing with the divine, and of caring for her own soul.
Today I think I will go visit her, and hope we can take a few moments to just look at one another. I hope you'll be able to do that, too, with someone you care about.
