In Our Right Mind
Our final Philosophy Group discussion was held at Beans & Leaves. It was a full house. Food and drink were consumed to celebrate the work and friendships cultivated around the tables for the past several years. Our final meeting, was a beginning, the fold point for a renewed, vibrant, youthful iteration. For many reasons the time had come for a space made sacred by the good-will of Ethel, her friendship, and food service expertise, and made sacred by the meeting of minds and hearts of us all around the tables—to come to an end. A ending is precursor to a new beginning.
What an exchange of intense, thoughtful, heart-felt words! The topic was change within a historical milieu when the established verities are in question. There is a sense of vertigo. What is happening to our souls? Some things are lost and some things are found. Of traditional values how do we hold to, and transmit values that are indispensable to us: kindness, neighborliness, consideration? Do we not rightfully celebrate the late progress of equality of rights and social mobility for women?
At the end of our session I was struck by the contrast between the our time spent at Beans & Leaves with the reports of the day’s bitch-slapping conflict in Washington. The Republican ACA replacement bill cannot move forward because it has nothing at all to do with health care, and every thing to do with ideological war between factions.
Here, tonight, our disagreements were productive. We learned from other points of view. We departed friends. We departed with a better understanding of our humanity.
Here is a Wendell Berry poem.
22.
When the ground is safely kept,
when the scale is right, and when
the resident human mind
is righted by memory, affection,
neighborly kindness and care,
the giving of hands to work,
all lives of woodland and pasture
live by the economy of gifts,
the only economy that will last.
To be in one’s right mind
is to know the right use of gifts.
To ask for more than is given,
to take more than is given back,
is to have less, and finally
nothing. This is not because
of any human wish. It follows
the law of Nature, mother
of all the creatures, maker
and giver of the native patterns
by which our world in changing
lasts, in dying lives.
*
Imposter, do not charge most innocent Nature,
As if she would her children should be riotious
With her abundance; she, good cateress,
Means her provision only to the good,
That live according to her sober laws
And holy dictate of spare Temperance.*
*John Milton, Comus, lines 762-67
