I sense is that people are expected to live out their lives with something resembling civility and grace.
In St. Cecilia there is an earnestness, an idealism,an authentic sense of concern expressed in the public discourse that is largely missing in the country in which I was born.
Some of the civility here may simply be akin to the kind of civility found in small-town life in our country long ago and may still be found there for all I know. I have been a city boy all my life. Sara says the whole island reminds her of the small town in which she grew up. I have seen her hometown, and it has only about six hundred souls in it. The island has almost ten thousand, not counting those of us who come to visit.
Of course, it seems to me that it is far easier to be civil when the pace is slow and the air is clean and there are no freeways to be stuck on and no malls to work around. And on this island, even with all the people who have moved here over the years, a healthy percentage of the population is either related or grew up with each other. Which does not necessarily lead to civility, but folks here know that they are going to run into everybody again sometime, maybe even a half-dozen times a day.
But it seems to me that something else must be at work here, though I cannot say for certain what it is. It is a place that is filled with small kindnesses and gestures and signs that seem to give evidence of some larger conspiracy, a conspiracy to commit civil society perhaps. Whatever one calls it, I am jealous of it, and I wonder what it would be like to live in the middle of it.
Sometimes I feel as though the people of this island either know something that the rest of us do not or we have forgotten something that they always have remembered. Sometimes, just to remind myself of what they may know and what I am looking for, I take up my corner at the Heptagon and read the newspapers and watch this new world go by.
Eight
Home … carry it in your heart,
safe among your own.
—J AMES T AYLOR
A ll marriages have ritual sentences, I think. Ours certainly does. They are the sentences that are somewhere between private jokes and gestures of affection.
On the mornings I have to leave home to go on the road to be with a group for a spiritual retreat or a writers’ workshop or some such thing—something I love to do, though I wish all those groups would choose to meet somewhere close enough for me to be able to sleep in my own bed each night—I will say to Sara, “Did they call yet?”
“Not yet,” she will say, “but they will.”
“Oh, good, then I won’t have to go.”
In a minute while I am packing my suitcase, I will say, “Will you listen for the telephone while I am in the shower?”
“Oh, yes,” she will say. “They will call soon.”
We are both pretending we are expecting thetelephone call that says the retreat has been canceled for one reason or another. My experience is that Episcopalians will cancel a retreat on short notice if it turns out they cannot get separate rooms from each other and Methodists will call it off if they cannot get coffee before the dining room is open in the morning. I expect some evangelical group to call some morning and say they do not need the retreat after all because the Rapture has come and they are all going on to glory without the rest of us. I do hope they call before I get to the airport. I do not know what happens here after the Rapture, but I am certain I want to be in line next to Sara rather than standing alone in the line at security.
One of the other ritual conversations we now have goes like this: “We have to leave St. Cecilia on Saturday,” Sara will say.
She is only allowed to say this sentence during the last week we are there. Before that, we both have to pretend we will be able to stay forever.
“No, no, no,” I will say. “I called Margaret, and she said no one else is booked into Seastone until at least2010, and that is a tentative booking, and
In St. Cecilia there is an earnestness, an idealism,an authentic sense of concern expressed in the public discourse that is largely missing in the country in which I was born.
Some of the civility here may simply be akin to the kind of civility found in small-town life in our country long ago and may still be found there for all I know. I have been a city boy all my life. Sara says the whole island reminds her of the small town in which she grew up. I have seen her hometown, and it has only about six hundred souls in it. The island has almost ten thousand, not counting those of us who come to visit.
Of course, it seems to me that it is far easier to be civil when the pace is slow and the air is clean and there are no freeways to be stuck on and no malls to work around. And on this island, even with all the people who have moved here over the years, a healthy percentage of the population is either related or grew up with each other. Which does not necessarily lead to civility, but folks here know that they are going to run into everybody again sometime, maybe even a half-dozen times a day.
But it seems to me that something else must be at work here, though I cannot say for certain what it is. It is a place that is filled with small kindnesses and gestures and signs that seem to give evidence of some larger conspiracy, a conspiracy to commit civil society perhaps. Whatever one calls it, I am jealous of it, and I wonder what it would be like to live in the middle of it.
Sometimes I feel as though the people of this island either know something that the rest of us do not or we have forgotten something that they always have remembered. Sometimes, just to remind myself of what they may know and what I am looking for, I take up my corner at the Heptagon and read the newspapers and watch this new world go by.
Eight
Home … carry it in your heart,
safe among your own.
—J AMES T AYLOR
A ll marriages have ritual sentences, I think. Ours certainly does. They are the sentences that are somewhere between private jokes and gestures of affection.
On the mornings I have to leave home to go on the road to be with a group for a spiritual retreat or a writers’ workshop or some such thing—something I love to do, though I wish all those groups would choose to meet somewhere close enough for me to be able to sleep in my own bed each night—I will say to Sara, “Did they call yet?”
“Not yet,” she will say, “but they will.”
“Oh, good, then I won’t have to go.”
In a minute while I am packing my suitcase, I will say, “Will you listen for the telephone while I am in the shower?”
“Oh, yes,” she will say. “They will call soon.”
We are both pretending we are expecting thetelephone call that says the retreat has been canceled for one reason or another. My experience is that Episcopalians will cancel a retreat on short notice if it turns out they cannot get separate rooms from each other and Methodists will call it off if they cannot get coffee before the dining room is open in the morning. I expect some evangelical group to call some morning and say they do not need the retreat after all because the Rapture has come and they are all going on to glory without the rest of us. I do hope they call before I get to the airport. I do not know what happens here after the Rapture, but I am certain I want to be in line next to Sara rather than standing alone in the line at security.
One of the other ritual conversations we now have goes like this: “We have to leave St. Cecilia on Saturday,” Sara will say.
She is only allowed to say this sentence during the last week we are there. Before that, we both have to pretend we will be able to stay forever.
“No, no, no,” I will say. “I called Margaret, and she said no one else is booked into Seastone until at least2010, and that is a tentative booking, and
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