Commune, Community, Commute, Communion

Let's gather over a discussion of how people gather and its role in its importance to our joint survivor.  

Over the past 9 months I have been looking more at how groups of people care for and interact with one another.  In their homes, over a meal, in a religious ritual.  With family, with friends, with strangers, with enemies.  All of these have things in common:

• Its purpose is positive - bringing people together and bringing them to a different point in their connections to each other
• It is nutritive - all of these are opportunities to be "fed", even if some times the "food" is bitter or poisonous.
• It is global.  


• In the depths of the Sahara desert, offering (and accepting) a meal from your host is a social necessity to further engagement or business
  
• In China, the greeting we know is how are you can be translated as "have you had rice"?
  
• In a Mediterranean culture based family home a meal is always offered
• In other parts of Europe or Latin America, a meal is something to be lingered over
• In Africa, a meal can be a bowl of meat and vegetables and break
  
• In Christian churches all over the world, the sharing of bread and wine in Communion is universal (even when grape juice replaces wine) as a joining of a community around a common symbol of grace, caring, and bonding together.
  
• In Jewish families all over the world Passover and other occasions are celebration of appreciation and remembrance of God's grace provided to the Jewish peoples. 
  
• In can be done by sharing your resources, even when they are sparse as seen in people bringing meals to those in need or facing challenges of health, money, death of some one close to them, or, even, in bringing a part of a meal to the house of a host who has invited you to their house for a meal.
• It can be seen in first responders, medical personnel and ordinary citizens who run toward danger, like a bomb blast during a marathon or a building attacked by a jet airplane.  
• Its visible in caring work done for others with out regard for reciprocation.  It can be seen in gardens being planted or weeded, lawns being cut, snow being shoveled, rides to doctors or church, and many other ways for people or families in need of support during old age, overwhelming grief, chronic illness or acute family challenges including a home burnt to the ground.

Taking this to the context of violence and war, maybe the answer to conflicts between states, tribes, religious sects, races and other separations that cause violence, physical or other wise, maybe we should be bringing meals and a welcoming table with out context other than communing and building a community.

Bombs, guns, poisonous gases, genocide  and missiles are often used, to rare positive effect, and often only worsen our world in any number of ways.  Maybe we should be using more bread, wine (or juice or water) and many other types of shared cultural food to underline our commonalities and not our differences.  And like many families table rules, no politics,  religious or sex talk is to be allowed at the table. 

Break out the table, chairs and subsistence. and let the world commune on small and large scales.  Maybe we can make our world a much better place.

Turning Pages in the Garden

Each point in life is a page turning.  

I'm sure its visible in every neighborhood, but in our neighborhood here in the bosom of suburbia, its visible to me like a bright glaring beam of the moon on clear night.  Late May and June is the season of lots of pages turning.  

Graduations are the most visible things we see at this time of year.  We had two - a college and a high school.  Each of our sons have different journeys as do may in your own life.  Turn the page.

Caps and gowns and tassels turned to the other side.  And now what?  Each of those wonderful sons and daughters are heading toward roads of joy and sorry, love and disappointment, success and failure.  A whole lot more pages turning.  

June brides and smiling grooms by their sides.  Summer solstice and last days of school for the kids who aren't graduating.  People planning summer days at the beach or mountains, all writing new pages in the books of their lives.  

How does one interpret this in a wider lens?  We can't stop the pages from turning. They will turn, even if we aren't reading them.  So, maybe we have to learn to follow them.  

I am a gardener.  I plant both perennials and annuals.  Veggies and herbs.  The perennials come forth every spring.  The annuals need time and attention, and love as well, to get them going, to prepare the earth for them, and planting them.  And some times the page that turns is the gift of a friends caring support for you.  Like the loving friends who came and planted my veggies and flowers when I was busy turning the continuing pages on a story of an extended illness in our home, a page in a story not fully written but with numerous plot twists and turns, and, in a few more pages, a good chance at a happy ending.

So, some page turning is perennial, and others are gifts and surprises, sometimes bad, but often good.  And even the bad ones some times lead to many unexpected good ones.  Plot twists that we think are total disasters, are all that, but sometimes that disaster takes us to another page, another good, but different happy ending.   

Here is suburbia, we don't always care, or even know one another.  When the pages turn and things get rough, you realize you aren't turning pages alone.  You aren't alone in turning the pages and that makes the book of life so much more interesting.    Share your book with others and keep turning the pages.  It will be worth your time.

Out here in the burbs (and maybe in other areas - urban, rural, etc.), Prom season is a big deal.  For many schools, the day of prom is Friday and the school is either closed or people don't show or it is closed early.  The prom is usually on Friday night, some times Saturday.  Either way, its an occasion that has gone from a fancy dance, where some times (as it was for mine) where the boy friend/date buys the girl dinner, or a sit down dinner looking more like a wedding banquet than a party for 17-18 year olds.  

The big thing is to have a large group of people go to some one's house and pose for a large group picture in that houses' all too perfect back yard, deck, gazebo, etc.  The boys are often in a new suit that costs $100- 200 or more bucks.  Or a tux that cost most of $100 to rent.  The girls have special hair do's and make up, either done with a lot of effort at home or a lot of money at a salon.  They look gorgeous.  Some dresses are scarily revealing and others look more poofy than any of us had in the late 1970's.   But, I figure it is the effort that counts and not the spend.  

Except, the reason I am writing this blog entry is the money.  Lots of it.  And lots of families decide they want their kids/young adults to ride in style and rent some level of monster limousine.  

And then there is the pre-prom snacks, crudite or even something more fancy or expensive.   And then there is the flowers.  A corsage, mostly a wristlet and for the boys, a very nice lapel flower (not a carnation please).

And in our community, as occurs in lots of others is the extravent post prom party at (usually) the high school.  The Prom isn't at the gym at the school, but at a coutnry club or hotel.  Post prom in our community is a wonderful effort by a large number of wonderfully committed adults who would rather invest in an amazing night of fun at the school, then to see their kids out drinking, having unprotected sex, or driving exhausted to the (still cold) Jersey shore.  

So, why write about all this.  I'm not sure I think any of it is bad or good.  I do think that if you are into your kids prom for more than $500 bucks or so, that you are making an investment in one very fleeting moment in their life.  Will they remember it for ever?  I don't know.  The pictures we all take are going to look much the same no matter what is spent.  So, how did this get so big?  I have no idea, but I do think it is something we should take a moment to consider.  

Let's start with figuring out the relationship between what is spent and how much we remember so many years after.  The correlation is probably terrible.  What we remember is who we went with, how nice it was to be with friends or, at least dressed up super nice for a night.  Go stag?  You remember those guys or gals the same.  You were there.  You and the gang versus the world.  

Happy prom all.  Stay safe and staff well. And congrats on your graduation.  Life has taken you here and that is super cool and worth noting big time.  And now - we all need to move forward further into the adventure that is life.