Walking the mystical path with practical feet...
During this month of Thanksgiving, give thanks for the spirit of Democracy, for all those occasions, circumstances, friendships and people that have created a place where we could bring forth who we truly are, and who we might be, as true citizens in every aspect of our lives.
“When a democratic society is working as it should–calling people to individual freedom and collective responsibility––it helps shape the kind of self that perpetuates democracy, a self that is simultaneously independent and interdependent.
…Everyone needs a “place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be”, Joseph Campbell highlights the importance of a “portable monastic cell” if we are to hold democracy’s questions honestly and well. The writer and literary critic William Deresiewicz puts Campbell’s point in historical context when he says, “Without solitude–the solitude of Adams and Jefferson and Hamilton and Madison and Thomas Paine–there would be no America.”
It is worth noting that Deresiewicz’s comment came from a 2009 address, not to academics or monks but to West Point Cadets. He argued that the frenetic multi-tasking that helped get these young men and women into West Point will not serve them or their troops well when they become military officers in life and death situations. Leadership of that sort requires a person to become a reflective practitioner, which means developing the capacity to be alone in dialogue with one’s own soul.
The same is true of being good citizens in a frenzied world. Once a day, we must lock the door to our own home or office, turn off the digital devices, put down our work, quiet ourselves inwardly as well as outwardly, and reflect for awhile on what is moving within us. As this practice deepens, we learn that becoming a monk every now and then does not mean detaching from the world, but entering more deeply into it. The news of the world– all of it, hellish and heavenly–begins in the heart. The better we know our own hearts, the better we know our world.”
––excerpts from Parker Palmer's new book, Healing the Heart of Democracy: The Courage to Create a Politics Worthy of the Human Spirit. Pg. 66, 155, & 156.
Practices