The smoke from the California, Oregon and Washington fires has lifted now in the Pacific Northwest, and the season is changing abruptly from summer to autumn.  I am grateful for the clearer air, which seems to have been cleansed by our collective tears as we grieve the loss of our beloved Ruth Bader Ginsberg.  I paddle out across the water to breathe.

Before I can give my full attention to the moment, to the challenges and chores facing us in the days, weeks and months ahead, I must pause to reflect on the phenomenon of healing that some of us have experienced recently in sharing our common and uncommon stories.  This thought comes floating toward me like a message in a bottle.

The loss of social connection has been one of the most persistent challenges we have had to navigate our way through during these times of Covid.  I know that the isolation is nothing compared to the illness itself, which has now taken the lives of 200,000 Americans.  But the smoke from the fires along the west coast exacerbated our sense of isolation.  It wasn’t just that we couldn’t go out for coffee with our friends, we were used to that, but suddenly we couldn’t even go outside to enjoy the waning days of summer.  We couldn’t see the stars.  We couldn’t navigate.

Others have written about the effects this pandemic has had on our global economy, the environment, our freedom to travel, and the inequity in our socioeconomic, political, healthcare, and justice systems.  Others have written about how the police violence against black men and women was brought into sharper focus due to the fact that more people were stuck at home front of their televisions.  There are many heroes and villains these days: people risking their lives for the sake of others and people expressing levels of selfishness, hatred and stupidity that are truly astonishing and incomprehensible.  Many of those important stories are still to be told.

What I want to notice here, out on the water, is our ability to connect with each other through writing together and sharing our stories.  I pull up the paddle and drift quietly on the open harbor to think, and the waves slosh gently along the side of the canoe, rocking me forward.

I have witnessed, as many others have noted, a disappointing shortfall in connecting with friends.  We have grown weary, we have fallen apart, and we have been deliberately divided up through a disinformation campaign based in fear, blame, greed, and the lust for power.  We are not only socially distanced to keep the virus from spreading, we are socially isolated from friends and family who seem to drift away from us, not on barges but on disparate icebergs built out of lies: icebergs which are rapidly shrinking in the overheated waters of the Bering sea, even as the people standing on them shout “Hoax!  Fake news!”

But there is something more here.  We are not alone on these waters. I have also experienced the deep and surprising connection of writing with strangers.  Strangers who are now dear to me.  We are navigating new waters with our old bones and sinews, and telling our stories with an urgent fresh perspective. The act of writing and sharing of ourselves, and the act of listening respectfully to each other brings our hearts and minds together in a safe unknown harbor.

I question this even as I lean into it, pulling the canoe forward again, gliding on the silver water as the day grows old.  How can I feel this connected already?  Is it the same way we engage with characters in a story? Or in a dream?  Are these conversations the first buds in a blooming orchard of new friends, or are they more like a false and fragile spring, whose blossoms wither and blow away like smoke on the salty Chinook wind?  Or are we creating a new moorage together, fueled by our mutual need and strengthened by our mutual respect, the depth of our sharing, and our commitment to show up week after week to write, share, and listen?   I wonder about these things.  Another rower across the water from me heads for the boathouse in the fading light.

After we write, we read and we listen, respectfully, without comment.  And when we finish up I don’t want to chat too much, for fear of breaking those gossamer threads of connection, for fear of disappointing others by the plain everyday self of me, and for the fear of being disappointed by a sudden slip of their judgement, revealing a subtle condemnation which might escape through their words.  I might misinterpret a look or a gesture, like the person who wiped their face with a middle finger after I spoke a few weeks ago.  Did they flip me off?  Really?  Or were they just rubbing their face?  It seemed to be the latter.  I am cautious, but optimistic.  Paddling back to shore.

What I don’t understand is how strangers can be so deeply present for each other when our long cherished friends and family members cannot or simply will not.  Our capacity to share our hearts has not been diminished.  Our mutual need for this kind of connectedness has also not diminished.  But time, that’s the thing, isn’t it?  Time stops them.  So these hours of writing together with strangers has cast my other relationships into sharp relief, most noticeably by their absence, by their standoffishness.  We’re all so busy these days.  I don’t blame them, they are massively overwhelmed.  But something is lost by this frantic pace we are all trying to keep, and the constant pressure to adjust and adapt to change.  What’s lost is our willingness to take the time to slow down, to listen, to breathe.  And with that we have also lost our authenticity: the willingness to be fully present, and fully human.  As though time isn’t the most precious thing we have.

And wow, what a gift.

The canoe crunches along the gravel shore in the twilight, and I climb out and hoist it up onto the bank.
As I do so a refrain from the old Quaker hymn comes to me. It’s the third verse from Simple Gifts:

Tis a gift to be loving
Tis a gift to be kind
Tis a gift to wait to hear
someone else’s mind
That when we use this gift
we might come to believe
It is better to give
than it is to receive.

When true, simplicity is gained
To bow and to bend
we shall not be ashamed
to turn, turn, will be our delight
til by turning, turning
we come ‘round right.

The stars are coming out now.
Listen, can you hear them?