More than forty years ago, when my oldest daughter was in elementary school, we’d lived in Wethersfield, Connecticut’s historic district, its Main Street lined with carefully-restored eighteen-century homes interspersed with newer yet still elegant dutch-colonials and Victorians. (We’d lived in one of the more modest houses squeezed between some real beauties!)
One evening a neighbor, who’d recently moved in across the street, called to demand I come over. Like now. I don’t remember how she’d put it; whatever she’d said must have been compelling because I went. To learn that her daughter, let’s call her Janice, three or four years younger than my daughter, had been in tears because my daughter and the other girls my daughter hung out with had refused to play with her.
Pre-Quaker, pre-learning how to be a loving, compassionate member of a community, I did not handle this accusation well. At all. Defensive and pissed, I’d lectured about Erickson’s “Ages and Stages,” about the developmental differences between our daughters. This lecture was not well-received. So I’d said something like, “Look, just because we bought houses on the same street doesn’t automatically mean we’ll all be best buddies.” Yup. I said that. I did not say—and was proud of myself for not blurting out, “My daughter and her friends think Janice is a whiny, spoiled brat so even though you have a swimming pool in your back yard they’d rather not spend time with her.”
Ironically, of all the ill-thought-through and nasty things I said that night, the one thing that most offended my neighbor I’d actually intended to be conciliatory: “Can’t we just be civil?”
Looking back, I can see that for Janice’s mom, that word must have been a pejorative. Like, “Keep a civil tongue in your head!” Or something. And that for me, it meant civil/civility, both of us signing a social contract, agreeing to some bottom-line, fundamental guidelines as to how to be members of the same community. Or something.
As this coronavirus looms, spreads, I remember this testy conversation. And about what form of civility is asked for, now, what the bottom-line social contract everyone should agree to should specify: When we sneeze or cough we’ll cover our mouths. We’ll wash our hands. A lot. if we don’t feel well, we’ll stay home. Etc.
Ironically, now a member of a loving and compassionate faith community, I have less confidence that we’re all going to agree to these simple, vitally important guidelines than I probably would have when I’d argued with Janice’s mother. Yes, I love the people in my Meeting. Yes, I have been brought to tears, welled up many times when, over time, we have struggled together to find unity among us. And did. But because I have been gifted to be so deeply and intimately connected with so many people, I know, first-hand, how distracted and clueless and thoughtless we humans can be. (Me, too, of course.)
Yes, I believe there is that of God/Light/the Holy/the Divine in each of us. And, yes, I believe I am dependent upon others’ ability to do unto others . . . And that sometimes that’s shaky!