Slaves to the timeline

This fascinating community project called "Embassy" in California is eager to examine what community can mean in a new society where people are, first of all, mobile. How can we establish enclaves of authentic community where we have no nostalgic community? In Brunswick I have community by default because "I'm from here." I'm a Mainer. I frequent the same grocery store and post office as my neighbors. More and more people my age choose new communities or have lives in which they jump around and never develop traditional ties to a place. We are not as "settled" physically. Does it necessarily follow that we are not as "settled" spiritually? 

After that introduction, I'm actually going to postpone that discussion to another day, and write today about how, if we are no longer held in space by our circumstances (we are more mobile than ever), we are still held in our temporal position. We are still defined by our times. 

Carlo Bergonzi, 1924-2014

I love reading obituaries because they give examples of non-linear lives. And because they tell human stories. This morning I read about a great opera tenor, Carlo Bergonzi, who lived for three years in a concentration camp during WWII because of anti-Nazi things he said. Three years. He was a product of his time and political climate in a way that we will never experience and I have a hard time even imagining. 

Jehan Alain 1911-1940

At a midday organ concert today, the performer played a piece by composer Jehan Alain, a Frenchman who lived only to 29 because, in addition to composing, he served as a dispatch rider in the French army in WWII and was shot on the job. 

It was during and immediately after WWII that Thomas Kelly travelled to Europe and witnessed the horror which inspired some of his more passionate passages in "A Testament of Devotion." Toward the end of the book he says we all have certain tasks that are given to us in our time, and it is our divine duty to pursue them. 

"the Loving Presence... considerately puts upon each of us just a few central tasks, as emphatic responsibilities."

Perhaps for Bergonzi, that task was singing Verdi. For Alain, composing organ music. Their position in time profoundly impacted their lives, but not the inner fire that motivated them to give of themselves in the way God intended them to. 

Kelly believes that we need not be discouraged if the environment, the era in which we do our work is hostile to it. He assures us that "the Now contains all that is needed for the absolute satisfaction of our deepest cravings." (95) That's what I love about Quakerism! Eternity? Please. We can live in God's glory today. I like the way Kelly describes living into our tasks, regardless of the times:

"Not with the rattle and clatter of hammers, not with trained eyebrows and tense muscles but in peace and power and confidence we work upon such apparently hopeless tasks as the elimination of war from society, and set out toward world-brotherhood and interracial fraternity in a world where all the calculated changes of success are very meagre." (103)

Perhaps our goals, based on our times or the current political climate, are "unreasonable." But the Now, as Kelly argues, is all we have. And if we are as prolific in accomplishing our God-given tasks as Alain was, as John Keats or John Lennon or Princess Diana or Steve Jobs were, we won't have done too poorly!