One route I sometimes take on my morning walk takes me by the city water works. Another route takes me by the city sewage treatment plant. I do not know any of the people who work at either of these facilities. But I am immensely grateful for them. They are not generally celebrated but should be. There are no television dramas or movies about the exploits of people who work in such places as there are for police, fire fighters, and doctors,. They are not as celebrated as the military. But they are arguably every bit as essential to our well-being. Maybe more so. I remember hearing in a history class that no single technological development has done more for human flourishing and saved more lives than modern plumbing that assures that our drinking water is clean and our waste is managed. In this light, plumbers are heroes. Think of that the next time you turn on a water tap. Or flush a toilet. And give thanks for those involved in tending these most basic needs. Our wellbeing depends upon them.
That got me thinking. My wellbeing and that of my neighbors is in the hands of people who work at the water works and the sewage treatment plant. People I do not know. Where else is that true? Once you start thinking about it, the answer is as clear as clean drinking water – everywhere. We are always and everywhere living at the hands of – mostly – unknown others. As suggested above, we do celebrate some, e.g., first responders and health professionals. And rightly so. But it is true of others less celebrated. Just about any civil servant/employees. It is true of utility workers. It is true of farmers and those who harvest, process, and deliver our food, along with those who work at grocery stores, and all involved in the agricultural and food delivery system. The clothes we wear depends others. We could add the merchants on Main Street and those who work in shops and restaurants. One graphic way to understand this is to imagine all the people involved in making sure the passenger of a commercial airplane makes it safely from one place to another. The same is true of trains and buses. Or when we “just” drive a motor vehicle anywhere. The list goes on and on. The fact that we pay some of these people for their service does not make us any less beholden to their labor.
If we were truly aware of how much our lives depend on all these others, we would move around the world in wonder. And we would be continuously moved to gratitude. Thank you. Thank you. And you and you and you . . .
We are, as Charles Williams would say, all knit to one another, ultimately, to every other, and to all creation in a great web of exchange. There is no autonomous individual. None of us is independent. We are all interdependent. I live in the hands of others. Others, God help me, live at my hands. Williams liked to use the classical theological term, coinherence, to name this reality. It is on the one hand inescapable. But we can live it it well or badly. When we embrace our coinherence with gratitude, harmony, and justice we experience our life and our life together as coherent, anticipating the New Jerusalem we read about at the end of the Revelation to John. When we try to reject our coinherence through selfishness and presumed independence, there is disharmony and injustice. Then our lives and our life together become incoherent and echo the desolation of Hell.
I am trying to live with the awareness of my interdependence. I am cultivating the practice of gratitude. I say thank you a lot to those I encounter. I especially make a point of saying thank you to public employees who make sure things keep working. If I ever see someone at the city water works or the sewage treatment plant, I intend to say, "Thank you for your service."
No comments:
Post a Comment