A Longing To Return To Joy

AT THE SENIOR CENTER where I wash dishes and pack Meals On Wheels as a retired teacher, by boss, Amy, a woman young enough to be my daughter, told me that when she began working at the center, she rejoiced in coming to work each day, to a place where she could escape the turmoil of her home life, to a place where she could create value and render service. Then something changed. The joy faded, and she began to dread going to work. Communication turned into constant drama, engendered in the center's kitchen by petty rivalries and disputes. Her joy was gone. She said that she longs for a return to the good old days, to the joy of creativity and service. Her remarks triggered something in me, some vague, undefined sense of empathy. A reminder of something ambient, something in my own life, in my environment. Could it be the country? Have I lived long enough to see a beloved united country torn asunder by internal divisions magnified and widening? Am I longing for a return to my happy childhood? My childhood was the nineteen sixties. The president was murdered when I was in third grade. In the seventh grade America was torn apart by the Viet Nam war protests, by race riots, and by the fight for women's rights. No, that couldn't be it. Has this country ever been truly united, and my soul free from turmoil? Is the nineteen sixties what I want back? How could it be? A line by the poet Theodore Roethke comes to mind: "That place among the rocks; is it a cave, or winding path? The edge is what I have..." I can only reckon that my dear Amy in the kitchen, who could have been my beloved daughter, will keep seeking her peace, that she will rediscover her pathway to value and service. And I can only reckon that, at length, she will once again find her peace and joy. As my for me and my troubled, confused country, we'll keep searching too, keep plugging away, swinging the bat, sorting it all out. And there will come a time, sometime, when all of this turmoil, all of this fear, all of this darkness dividing us, will finally firm up, and coalesce into something beautiful and valuable. Amy will again find her joy, as will our beloved America. As T.S. Eliot said: "I will show you fear in a handful of dust." Or, in the words of Theodore Roethke: "Dark, dark, my light, and darker my desire. My soul, like some heat maddened summer fly, keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I? A fallen man, I climb out of my fear. The mind enters itself, and God the mind, and One is One, free, in the tearing wind."