Part II – Work and Roles; Taking Issues to Essence –
This collection of personal reflections is shared with the hope that through “seeing” the working of a living philosophy in many and various arenas, each reader will begin to build an image from which to create a living community philosophy of potential… a philosophy from which all in the community might come together to develop the planetary ethics that we and the world so urgently need at this time.
Beginning Thoughts on Repotentializing the Gulf Coast
The last time I was in to see my dental hygienist, she told me a childhood story of walking for miles along the Gulf Coast, while taking in the ever-active nourishing and replenishing processes of nature. It was pristine and it was beautiful.
Such a story has the power to evoke reactive action when a portion of what is left of these beautiful beaches – a portion of the Gulf State Park – is offered for lease to a private developer for operating a hotel and convention center. Knowing full well that any problem of significance will not be solved reactively, I turned to reflection. My reflections took me back to the story of the grassroots work in Kennett Square, PA. The Kennett Square community began their process when a community home health nurse was concerned that they were not solving the teen pregnancy problem. Perhaps every true change in culture or civilization – every true elevation in ethics – is begun when someone feels strongly in their heart that we have a significant problem not being solved in the way we are currently going about things. To begin, problems are never solved elementally – as one well knows through reflection on hygienist work. Filling a cavity never solves the whole problem – one’s whole life style is involved in stopping cavities permanently and creating a healthy mouth. So to deal with teen pregnancy, this community leader found the need and way to work on and from the smallest whole that could truly solve it – the community. Through reflection, she saw teen pregnancy cannot be solved one-by-one; the community must change to become a place for healthy teen development and growth; only then will teen pregnancy (and for that matter, teen crime, drug use, etc.) decline, and teen development flourish.
We can look at the current Gulf State Park dilemma in much the same way. What is the smallest whole that we need to hold in mind if we are ever going to do the good and right as far as the beaches are concerned? That smallest whole at least encompasses the ecosystem of these shores and inland waters. As long as we the people remain human centered rather than life of the whole centered in our thinking, there will be no wholistic solutions to the problems caused by our development of this area. Not unlike the work of Kennett Square, which began with reflection on the purpose of teening in relation to community, it seems we would need to begin with reflection on the purpose of beaches as they relate to the estuarial watershed as a whole. And just as they reflected on the virtue of the land of Kennett so that they could take on and harmonize with that virtue as their practical living philosophy, we would have the necessary work of reflecting on the virtue of this land… so that we could harmonize with its virtue in our every act (that is, take our land’s virtue as our practical living philosophy).
My own beginnings at this reflective work have led me to see its virtue as being peaceful, vitalizing and replenishing of our life and all life. When we go to the beach and truly let its ebb and flow enter us and reorganize our energies, we find our lives become revitalized and replenished… and a sense of peacefulness washes over us. Interestingly, the virtue of a land – when we get it right – is true for all of life, not just human life. Are not the lives of herons, pelicans, osprey, hummingbirds, finches, butterflies, buntings, trout, redfish, dolphins, etc., also vitalized and replenished by the energy field of this area? We could go on and on with examples of the beautiful integrated working of the whole. Yet, we call the Gulf Shores area “Pleasure Island.” We drive our processes beginning from economics and pleasure rather than peace, vitality and replenishment for each and all.
Change of the sort being imaged requires an entirely different nature of process than “fighting city hall” or “fighting developers.” Change of this sort requires a grassroots shift in ethics. We need to become ethical as far as this land we the people are a part of and have responsibility for… and becoming ethical requires we consciously and conscientiously take on and live from a new philosophy – a living philosophy that will rightly guide our ways of living and working. To build a new philosophy requires a new perspective – a perspective whole enough and encompassing enough to promise the nature of ethics we now need to “solve our problems permanently” in a way that is right for each and good for all… to build a new philosophy requires reflecting on the working of the land until we see its essential virtue, its intended way of working, embedded within.
Reflecting on the story of Kennett Square, one can readily see this is not overwhelming, but truly doable. It can become a work of the heart since our paths are created through reflection and dialogue, the work is inspiriting and the outcomes are vitalizing… and, at the end of the day, we can say, our lives have had purpose and meaning… we made a difference that matters.
