Tribes

 I've been working on a longer post that seems to be taking more time to come together. In the meantime, I'm going to write a short piece about what's happened to me today. I was sitting quietly in Friends Meeting this morning. It was an unusually small group, all of us in the last half of our lives. And by this time, we have acquired pretty dependable personalities and attitudes. We have discovered our various tribes, the groups we feel comfortable with. And sometimes we can get stuck in our own opinions. It can be hard to be open-minded. I've been trying lately to be more understanding and compassionate toward people who irritate me or who believe very differently than I do. We never know what experiences have made them the way they are. And though there wasn't anyone in this category in Friends Meeting this morning, I found myself imagining us all as babies. It made me smile. We get so into our adult stance that it is really enlightening to remember that we all started as tiny babies, every one of us! What a thought! That person over there who seems to know everything was once a baby who started at zero, just like me. And gradually life experiences made us all what we are today.

When I came home from Meeting, I made myself some delicious corn fritters and sat down in front of the TV. I am a baseball fan, and my team (the Cubs) was playing the Blue Jays in Toronto. And not for the first time, I noticed how the Cubs team members always look better to me than the other team. They are handsomer, better players, more sensitive, more cooperative. Of course my critical mind knows that isn't true. But I have aligned myself with this particular team, and consequently I see the good in them, more than the good in other players on other teams. It's important for me to see this tendency in myself. For I have been totally bamboozled by how intelligent people can be followers of Trump. It seems so crazy. And yet I think I understand a little better how we have a human tendency to join sides. And the reasons may not be particularly relevant. Someone might say something that triggers an echoing sentiment in us, and we join in. Like me and the Cubs. The truth is that I am a Cubs fan only because it is almost the only team that I can watch on my particular TV plan. My choice has nothing to do with anything but availability. 

I am discouraged by the divisions in our culture and country right now. It's hard not to be. And it feels too big a problem for one person to have any effect. But then I remember how awhile back, there was a movement to set a time for everyone to meditate toward peace in a particular part of the world. I joined in on that effort, imagining thousands of people sitting quietly, bending their minds and their intent toward peace. I remember reading about some investigations that seemed to show that this kind of thing was actually statistically effective. And that would seem to point to the fact that one person's intent and mindset, small as it is, can have a positive effect. I like that. It makes me feel more connected to the whole. And I can imagine many many people like me who would like to heal the world, and in their small ways do just that.