Commemoration

On July 4th, Americans have a tradition of commemorating the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Commemorate means “brought to remembrance” and implies respectfully doing something to celebrate this memory. I have adopted a tradition from my uncle of reading the document each year. I find consulting primary sources an invaluable exercise. While doing so may not be as showy as a fireworks display, it successfully avoids the hazards of polluting the air, risking wildfire, terrorizing animals and children, and creating toxic trash.

The Declaration is a powerful and enduring document. Its assertion that “all men are created equal” is a principle but not a practice in the American experiment of democracy. About a decade after the Declaration was signed, another document was drafted to codify the arrangement of a federal government. The Preamble of the Constitution opens with “We the People” - powerful, enduring, and more inclusive than the language in the Declaration. As with any text, there is more than one way to interpret this document. We have seen a landmark example of interpretation this past week.

It is often the case that order matters. The order in which things are listed can reveal the priority of the authors’ values. The Preamble continues,  

…to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

All of these values are processes, not ends. Can the people of today endeavor to keep a unity of spirit in the bond of peace? Can we recognize, practice, and codify that there can be diversity without division and unity without conformity? I think the revolution confronting us now is to include but go beyond the Enlightenment values and institutions of the 18th century. If we desire to secure a posterity that would commemorate us, we must ensure that the blessings of liberty apply to all. 

Beauty and Silence

When I was young, there was a small sign that hung next to the bay window that overlooked the backyard. It read, “How beautiful the silence of growing things.” Now, nearly three decades and three thousand miles from that place, I see the verdant green of new shoots on plants I put into the ground last year. I see the slow and enduring cycle of the natural world open to the light of summer. I see…a rainbow unicorn jump all over this keyboard as the laptop screen is forcefully closed by the small hands of a clumsy yet determined toddler. 

These days are a reminder that silence, while essential in its own right, is not required for or characteristic of growing things. What we might take for silence is actually the fundamental - the lowest and most prominent pitch upon which the harmony of nature unfolds. Our task continues to be finding signal amidst a cacophonic information landscape. Perhaps if we open our ears and eyes to the peace of wild things we can come to rest in something not quite silent, but beautiful. 

Process and Return

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

— Viktor Frankl

The total lunar eclipse last night was a reminder that the alignment of bodies is always a temporary phenomenon. The silence of the still point, the momentary pause in which everything is just so connects us to limitless (re)Source. In our human bodies, this is analogous to a return to a regenerative parasympathetic state, in which we “rest and digest.”

Far from a fixed point or a straight line, we express health and wellness in a dynamic process, characterized by motion and change. Our objective in chiropractic, therefore, is to promote our adaptive ability to move and change. We find balance by returning to center after we’ve been away.

Just as the flow of blood in the body moves in a circle (“circulation”) throughout the body, it returns to and emanates from the heart. There is a pause between stimulus and response, between beats, between moments. It rarely lasts long and doesn’t need to. It is the gift of the present.