Chaos and Community
In the refuges from life’s chaos, there are many, but few that offer true refuge. Adding chaos to chaos has been a specialty of mine through the years and one that I am trying to see for what it is: a futile attempt to cover over, control, or keep away the chaos. And so, I am returning to the true refuges, because I sense how easy it would be to choose distractions that would lead me away from anything life affirming, something that will birth only death.
I remember the story—Chaos reigns sovereign and the first offsprings that arise are death and a vacant space akin to what the Christian story might call hell. A torturous place of darkness. This sounds about right.
In the past few years, I can recall enough chaos to fill my own book of myth. Can you also friend? World and personal news has churned and churned in my own book. I’ve had to examine: what is it that makes the chaos feel closer to darkness and death? What instead allows the chaos to be a wave of existence? How is life reaffirmed while chaos continues to reign?
For me, one of the answers to the first question is the time I spend in social media or other means I find for disconnection. It’s such a funny thing to me, but I notice that “social” media actually is what I turn to when I’m feeling most separate and disconnected from others, and typically the emotional residue I’m left with feels heavy and irritable.
The second question is answered often in the time I spend cultivating an awareness of the vast and ever present existence of an eternal presence—call this God, or perhaps luminous presence, or the inner silence and stillness that is the awake and listening awareness. This refuge is one that I’ll talk more about and offer practices toward next week.
For now, I’ll focus on that last question and the component that creates a true refuge here. How is life reaffirmed while chaos continues to reign? This is the true refuge of community; lvoing refuge found through bringing increasing consciousness to our relationships. This is the way that relationship or community can awaken us and allow us to reflect the experience of love with the world, to reflect our own and others’ goodness.
On our trip to Greece I remembered this. The community that supported one another in the landscape of healing was one in which love, joy, friendship, wan unity was being expressed. I remember this in other ways: the partners I’ve found or have been given to navigate with, the fellow mothers who support my teens and me in our homeschooling journey, my church community. Each one presses upon me to do better, to know myself and my habitual patterns, to reveal my heart a bit more.
This weekend I attended a Halloween party hosted by a beloved friend who’s been journeying with cancer for over 2 years. Her lifetime may well be limited to a short period of time. And so, friends gathered, children played, food and laughter were abundant, and hard truths were spoken. I looked around the fire to the faces of people who’ve now held each other steady through deaths, pandemics, disagreements, toddler to teenager life.
There are sanghas—loving communities—that come together to investigate truth, love, God, and life, and sanghas that come together in an act of defiance against life’s harshness. Love upholds, and community reminds us how to allow vulnerability amidst the uncertainty we navigate. Afterall, we are all navigating uncertainty, anticipating mortality, fragile beings who are created to connect.
William James wrote, “We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected underneath.” There are surface life experiences and opinions that separate me from these humans with whom I find community. The deeper we go, however, the more connected we really are. In the deep, we are quite one—reminding ourselves of our true natures and reflecting that to the world.
A dear friend gifted me a special book called How To Be, compiled of the letters between author and monk at the Abbey of Gethsemani, Br. Paul Quenon, and journalist / author Judith Valente. Its gentle wisdom has touched me and so I share this final thought from Br. Paul on friendship, or for our considerations, I might say on relationship: “…[relationship] is more than my love for others. It is love loving in me. To modify St. Paul’s words: ‘I love, now not I, but Love loves in me.’ I often feel deficient in love, and sometimes pray that I may become loving. But that is already love prodding me on to be more of what it is in me—more of what I am meant to be in the fullest sense. For this I have not lost hope.”
The ability to be vulnerable and intimate with others is an essential refuge. Consider your own habits that fill your life with more chaos and the ways of true refuge. Do you find your ways of expressing love through community offer life-affirming practices in building your heart’s awareness? Reflect on this through the week, friends, and perhaps reply to me with your own practices. I welcome you to the conversation always.