Mind you, this was not all that clear to me, at least not until Be Well Bakery/Cafe's exhibit this past summer of my photos of Bryn Athyn Bounty 2012. Time & again, the most unexpected people would approach me, clearly moved, sharing some form of the comment, "I was touched by the sense of community."
Looking around at the photos, I could see what others saw - there were lots of kids with cupcakes, which was ostensibly the reason for taking the photos in the first place; like a squirrel laying up nuts against the winter, I was laying in a supply of snapshots to get me through the 6.5 months I'd have to live through without my weekly kid fix at Bryn Athyn Bounty.
What I shot, what called out to me, turned out to be far more. It was Amy wheeling Miss Morna around the byways, Charis Cole with her ever faithful West Highland Terriers, LOTS of dogs, children clutching vegetables, adults with bouquets of flowers, friends greeting friends, and so many wonderful musicians.
I saw a community. I saw a whole, not just separate parts.
Mind you, I've appreciated for a while that I come at eldering support through an ideal path, one I did not control ~ both my Mom & M-I-L modeled wholesome old ages. In the eight years I knew her, Mom Murphy wasn't sick a day in her life, excluding the massive heart attack that took her from us. My own Mom had her health & emotional issues, but in some ways she was healthier - more whole - in the final few years of her life than she had been since Dad's death over 25 years earlier.
I come to elder support with an image in my mind of wholeness, even if only striving for wholeness, rather than of lack or even despair, as so many others experience.
Tonight, a new light switched on. John Silvanus Wilson, Jr, president of Morehouse College, was on Fresh Air, talking about a profound moment he shared as a youth with Nelson Mandela, whose 95th birthday is today. He mentioned that the great man's defining gift was his innate ability to seek & see wholeness.
How that description seized my heart & imagination! It may very well sound arrogant, but that is my own great gift - the attraction to & ability to see wholeness. At Be Well is evidence that I sought & saw & captured the sense of community, of wholeness, that happens every Saturday at Bryn Athyn Bounty.
How bitterly ironic that I was born into a family where the principle members embraced disconnection, distrusted wholeness. How deeply grateful I am that some small part of me always realized that desperate attitude, although it affected me, did not define me. That while it seemed like I was experienced as a jarring aberration within my birth family - a sister-in-law labeled me the most psychotic personality she knew (true, within the context of my family) - my natural inclinations toward caring communication, service, and being my genuine self remained important to me, if only on some almost self-dismissed level.
I stand for wholeness, recognizing that it is different for each person, recognizing that I can help nurture it but can never make it so. True wholeness is a wild thing, unable to be contained or controlled within some laboratory norm.
Yes, it might sound arrogant to lay claim to seeing wholeness where so many see deficiencies, but I say it with a searing - and seering - sense of celebration!
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