experiments in everyday chaplaincy 1

a different way to connect

humans are, despite our modern narratives around rugged individualism, fundamentally wired for connection. we thrive and grow in community, and without enough touch, dialog, and co-authored meaning-making, we languish. as a midwife (my other vocation), i often think about this need for connection as i'm privileged to watch parent-baby dyads interact in ways that suggest just how fundamental and deeply-rooted those drives can be.

in the beginning of our lives, we don't even have an inkling of our own separateness--we're seemingly just a soupy, unbounded ecosystem. as we gain awareness of "self" and of "other", of "this is where I end and parent or environment begins" though, we lose something, and that sweetly-sad loss in part shapes our needs for the rest of our lives. in the beginning, we had no concept of being anything but unity with everything. in our realization of separateness, of a you and a me, of a body distinct from its surroundings, we develop a longing need for re-connection and togetherness, primarily because its as close as we can ever come again (depending on your school of thought, i suppose) to being really truly unified or at one with all that is. in our connection with others, and in our relationship to our environment, we act out our drive to return to soupy boundlessness.