Pulled into the Ring of the Dance
Written by Donna Davis Sunday, 12 July 2009 00:00
I work at a 9 year old computer software company called AgencyPort. There are 127 of us, spread across the country. Every Wednesday at 1:00 Eastern Daylight Savings Time, we gather for our Wednesday meeting. Those of us in the Boston office all crowd into our largest conference room. The meeting leaders bring their laptops, and plug one of them into a projector so they can display whatever it is they’re talking about for everyone in the room to see. They’ve set up a WebEx or a Net Meeting, so the folks in Portsmouth or San Francisco can see as well. Some people have simply phoned in to a conference call number and the microphones for the polycom phone are stretched out across the table. One person has gtalk running on their laptop in case someone on the road wants to lob out a question via instant message.
Now, some of you are thinking I just fell off the edge of the map into a swamp of techno-babble. There’s probably another group wondering why there’s no Skyping. Either way, you can tell a lot of conscious effort has been expended, a lot of cords and wires and technology are working in concert to bring a group of people together. And all this effort isn’t for something on the critical path such as pooling our collective brainpower to solve some outstanding problem for our largest client. We’ve gathered to hear how it’s going - on some of our projects, with a hot sales prospect, or to get a peek at the quarterly balance sheet. All this communication flow is certainly a good thing strategically - it keeps everybody on the same page, and we’re each reminded of how our part fits in with the larger whole. It’s all good stuff and worth the lost billable hours. But I think the bigger gain comes at a much deeper level and satisfies a much deeper human need - the need for social connection.
John Cacioppo at the University of Chicago would probably back me up on this. He heads up the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience and published a book last year called Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection. Cacioppo cites compelling research from a variety of fields and he suggests that we each come into this world with our own personal thermostat for connection - some of us are genetically encoded to need more and some of us encoded to need less. My connection thermostat may be set so that catching up with a close friend once a week for a cup of coffee and conversation keeps me feeling totally connected; my neighbor may need a houseful of people and a series of phone calls on a daily basis to feel comfortably plugged in.
The research indicates that when our lives bubble along so the amount of connection is at about the same level as our individual thermostat setting, we tend to be happier, and also physically healthier. So it makes a lot sense that over and over again, in all areas of our lives, we naturally create opportunities for connection. We gather friends and family around, put one more leaf in the table, share food and stories. We have a Wednesday meeting and if we can’t add leaves to the table board by board, we add them device by device. We gather on playing fields and at the school bus stop. We gather here - as a congregation on Sunday mornings, combining and re-combining in smaller groups throughout the week. We reach out our hands, pull each other in, stay connected.
But of course, people don’t go through life in perfect balance - with connection flowing at the exact same level as their thermostat setting. When our connection thermostat is set higher than the amount of connection currently available, then we experience loneliness. Everybody’s lonely sometimes. The shy among us might find that hard to believe when we’re watching other people “working” a coffee hour, but it’s a very real experience for all of us. In the poem I read earlier, Denise Levertov describes one of those moments: “All others talked as if talk were a dance. Clodhopper I, with clumsy feet would break the gliding ring.” Each of us could call to mind a similar moment - think of standing on the edge of a playground watching, but not really joining in the swirling activity. Or - yet again - unlocking the door of an empty house. Dinner alone. There are other moments of loneliness less obvious to an observer - feeling lonely in a marriage, feeling lonely in one of these pews.
The good news is that loneliness is usually transient. Just like hunger is a signal for us to go in search of food, loneliness is a signal for us to go in search of connection. Perhaps Mary Oliver is speaking from a place of loneliness when she writes: “Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.” The search for connection doesn’t always spring from joy. Sometimes the connection made from a broken heart is an even deeper one.
The poets tell us that connection reaches beyond the realm measured by researchers, beyond the MRIs that show which limbic regions of the brain light up in response to stimulation. Mary Oliver tells of a layer of connection that is out of our hands, that is ours without asking, that we cannot escape. She writes: “Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - over and over announcing your place in the family of things.” Whoever we are, no matter how lonely, we are part of Creation. Our place in the family of things is all just a given in this embodied existence we lead. Free. Came with the packaging.
It’s so easy to lose sight of our place in the family of things - whether our vision gets clouded by loneliness or busyness or some other aspect of the human condition in today’s world. And we know we’re going to forget and that we’ll need to be reminded - over and over. So, we covenant to help each other. That’s what we do here each week. That’s what we do as Unitarian Universalists.
Our 7th principle reminds us to respect the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. We try to remember that it’s not ‘all about me’, not about us as a congregation, not about us a denomination, as a nation, as a species, as a type of living organism. Whether you call it a faith or a movement or something else, Unitarian Universalism affirms that we’re all in it together right this very minute, right here, right now.
Bill Schulz, a former president of the UUA, describes that affirmation this way:
“That the blessings of life are available to everyone, not just the Chosen or the Saved;
That Creation itself is Holy - the earth and all its creatures, the stars in all their glory;
That the Sacred or Divine, the Precious and Profound, are made evident not in the miraculous or supernatural but in the simple and the everyday...
That every one of us is held in Creation’s hand - a part of the interdependent cosmic web...
That the paradox of life is to love it all the more, even though we ultimately lose it.”
Here we are. Reminding each other of our place in the cosmic web. In a crazy New England summer that moves from thunderstorms to hail to sunny skies over the course of 45 minutes. In simple, precious, everyday life. The world offers itself to our imagination. We are pulled into the gliding ring of the dance.
Readings:
“Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver
“Caedmon” by Denise Levertov