Learning to Play Alone

I am learning to play alone. I think this is a bit different from the book Bowling Alone that came out some years ago. That was focused on the social changes in our country, moving from leagues of social relationships to engaging society as individuals.

But now my partner in play is no longer able to play. I hope in time, the number of friends with whom I can play will grow. However, for many years, my primary playmate has been Linda. People are not used to calling me and saying "Can Bill come out to play?" It is new for me to think, "Who can I call to see if they can play?"

This week I have begun to learn to play alone. One day, I got a therapeutic massage...and that just showed how my muscles were very tight...probably from too much tension and stress and too little play and stretching out my body. Then Thursday I drove alone down to Washington, DC and visited the World War II memorial, something I had wanted to do for awhile. I think that the deep reason I had not yet been was that I did not have in my mind the option of going alone.

What a special afternoon. I walked among the thousands who are always on the National Mall when the weather is so beautiful. I walked in public silence, engaged in an inner conversation with self. Every reading etched in stone at the monument was read and reflected upon. The 4,000 stars representing the 400,000 American dead was striking alongside the unfathomable number of many millions who died in that war that stretched around the world. And yet, even that was not America's worst since more than 600,000 died in the great American Civil War. I paused reflectively along the entrance walls to allow my mind to linger on the frescoes portraying that this was a national war where everyone had a part and everyone sacrificed. There was the extended family gathered around the radio to hear FDR. Images told the stories of factory workers, war bond buyers, army, navy, air force, freed prisoners of war, and the dead and dying. How striking a contrast from today, where it is declared that we are in a global war and yet only a few are asked to sacrifice much, while the most wealthy get large tax cuts, soldiers are limited to the volunteers who choose to go, and funds are borrowed from our grandchildren to pay for mind boggling deficits. Those who give their lives are brought back in private so that pictures of the heavy cost will be seen by posterity but not by present countrymen and women. Large percentages of the returning soldiers struggle with Post-Traumatic Stress and many thousands have lost limbs...but the losses are contained on the margins of the media so that the vast majority are not disturbed from their normal routines. The language of global war and threat to our lives, country and future does not match the call to sacrifice which is muted and the strategy that is so fuzzy one wonders if those who lead us even believe themselves that the threat is real. The dissonance, after years of the majority being lead along almost blindly, is growing. If the threat is real, then the country needs to be united in participating in the sacrifice. And if the threat has been amplified in rhetoric for political purposes, then may history never forgive those who have led so many astray for so long.

Yes, when I play alone, the conversation in my soul is vigorous.

From WWII, I walked along the Reflecting Pool to the Lincoln Memorial. Once again I read these two greatest of American speeches, Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address and his Gettysburg Address. Moving every time. Vision, sacrifice, honor, dedication, consecration, the role of the divine and the human actors, the conflicting beliefs, and the determination to hold to those core values that are worth living and dying for....

From Lincoln, I passed again by the bigger-than-life soldiers of the Korean War Memorial...each with striking expressions on faces as they moved through the brush of a foreign land. Today's South Korea bears tribute to the UN force that halted an invasion that would have changed the peninsular and its path into this new century.

Friday found me again, playing alone. The Metro was an ideal way to travel to the District. I walked for more than five miles according to my pedometer...all in silence. Again the beauty of blue skies and temperatures hovering in the mid-50's Fahrenheit brought out both tourists and neighbors. Few were alone, like me. Couples, both young and old, extended families, parents with children, small groups of gals or guys...few travel alone in these places. I had never noticed this before...when I was not alone.

The Museum of the American Indian was my focus. The entrance theatre which can be seen along the staircase from any of the four stories was the scene of a trio of Hawaiian Native Americans in song and dance, inviting the crowd to join them. Woven clothing and blankets with bright colors adorned walls on all floors and told stories of the millions of people and languages and cultures that far predated the arrival of the first Europeans. The "treaty history" was a sobering trail of broken promises and acts of genocide in times when such a word was not known and such concepts were not considered. Beliefs in manifest destiny for a young nation and language that dehumanized native nations by calling them savages laid foundational rationales for extermination. The role of religion and the arms industry and the state military are indictments on our failure to learn lessons and our tendency to replay the cycles of destruction in new generations. When I reflect on the Holocaust, the Pol Pot destruction of Cambodia, the genocidal acts in Bosnia and Rwanda in the 20the Century and now the continuing outpouring of crimes against humanity in Darfur today, the scenes are similar.

When we destroy cultures and people, we also either destroy or marginalize their great gifts that could have been incorporated into our national heritage. What would our life and world be like today if we had been able to appreciate the depth of honor that was bestowed on creation by the Native Americans. What if we had allowed them to teach us how to live in harmony with the natural world rather than see it as something to be dominated and exploited? Would we today be more at peace with the environment and would our children have more hopeful futures? I think so...I really do! And as a Christian who embraces a call from the time of creation for humankind to be caretakers of creation, I believe that the Native Americans could have spoken wisdom to us and helped us to hear from our own scriptures....if we could have listened and been willing to learn. Native Americans are people who carry the image of God, bear the common wisdom, carry as custodians the truth that has been revealed to them, and are instruments of wisdom and teaching for all who have ears to hear. If early European Americans had been more true to their Christian beliefs, they would have embraced other bearers of God's image as brothers and sisters and found ways to live in peace with justice...a path that can lead to greater wisdom for all.

From the American Indian Museum, I walked over to the Botanical Gardens and explored the natural beauty of plants, flowers, cacti, beautiful poinsettia of the season, and the variety of environments from desert dryness to misting heaviness of the equatorial systems. Nature sings in full octave and with amazing range and rich variety.

As I played alone, these few days, I did not find loneliness to be a major factor. I am discovering a different world that is worthy of exploration. Once again Alzheimer's steals from me, but also pushes me into paths I would not have chosen to take. And on those paths I also find life as I learn to sometimes play alone.