Location, Location, Location

Darcie Vandegrift

 

When most people relocate to a new city, they do it alone, or with only their partner, or perhaps some children, or a friend.  Through unexpected alignment in the universe, we moved here at the same time as some friends from our previous home in Janesville, Wisconsin.   Our family arrived first, and their family of four stayed with us for a week while they looked for housing.  The previous months had been an intense forced march:  pack, clean, load, drive – and then arrive to do it all in reverse.  Our friends were a few weeks behind us in this process, yet we were grateful to have them here, to accompany each other during this hopeful but intensive new beginning.

On their second or third night in our house, the more restful half of each couple had retired to bed.  The insomniac halves sat at the dining room table of our new-to-us 100 year old house in the Drake Neighborhood.  Newspaper addicts the insomniacs were, and our tired eyes scanned our new hometown paper, the Des Moines register.   Around 11:30, my friend looked up, tired, but deeply thoughtful, and asked.

“Darcie, what are we doing in Des Moines, Iowa?”

I would chance to wager that many present today who are not from here have been asked the same question.  For folks not born in Iowa, Des Moines is not a place one aspires to move.   And yet, 31 months into what I hope is my last relocation for a very long time,  I think I understand the philosophical intent behind my friend’s question.   Where we live sets the parameters for what we can do, what we experience, and with whom we associate.  I’m a sociologist, a discipline that by definition believes that social conditions shape individuals.  We may believe that we’re completely free agents, making all of our own choices and living guided only by our and intentions values.  To some extent this is true.  But it’s not the whole story.  Location matters.

By location, I mean where we are, who is there with us, and how we are in relationship to nature and people.  Our location shapes us through our relationship to the natural world and the people with whom we share the world.  In the last five years, my family and I have transitioned from California apartment renters to Midwestern homeowners, first in Wisconsin, and now, in Des Moines.  Since buying our first house five years ago, I have been a big fan of digging in dirt.  This in itself is related to location; as an apartment dweller, food was something that came from a grocery store.   My desire to garden may have been lying latent within, but there was no place in my world at that time for this desire, pardon the pun, to take root.  Here in Des Moines, with my own yard, the call to the dirt in the spring seems like a physical craving.  Must find turning spade!  Must plant arugula!  My kids and I rejoice at the season’s first earthworm sighting.  When we moved to Des Moines, we were delighted at the beautiful dark earth we had inherited.  And without even looking too far, we kept running into folks who encouraged us to grow our food.  My next door neighbor gave us seeds.  Teva Dawson, head of community gardens, and a member of this church, started emailing me Des Moines community garden newsletters.  This city, in no small part to Teva’s influence, has native prairie plant fever.  We don’t think enough about urban spaces as part of a larger environment, but we live in the middle of a land that was prairie much longer than it has been city.  And wouldn’t you know, as I live in this location, I have planted these natives that use less water and provide home to the birds. 

What I am asserting may feel alarming , that we are as much a product of our location as we are of our own intentions.  As a person of reason and free will, I often want to believe that I alone make the choices that determine who I am.  Each person may understand that he or she exercised choice in important life decisions: education, partnering or not, parenting or not.  All of us can at least name something that we experienced as entirely of our choosing.  A friendship to pursue.   A house to live in.  A pet to adopt.  Some time alone.

I don’t think that choice ever occurs without the shaping force of location.  What we do – which is, in the end, the only thing that demonstrates who we are – is the result of what social psychology calls interactionism.  Interactionism is the mutual influence of  personal intention with the natural and physical world.  We never act or make choices without the structure of our environment.  The field of social psychology is filled with research that documents how individual choices are shaped by the surrounding environment.  At the most shocking, pessimistic end of the spectrum, sociologist Stanley Milgrim designed an experiment over forty years ago to demonstrate that under the right conditions, people will obey authority to an alarming degree.  He had research volunteers go to what they believed was a corporate office.  The research subjects thought Milgram was a scientist in charge of a learning experiment being conducted on a person they could not see, in another room.  As he stood behind them, Milgram urged research participants to administer electric shocks to who they thought was a stranger in the next room when the stranger gave the  wrong answer answer to a question.  The person in the other room was actually a part of Milgram’s research team.  They feigned receiving the shock.  But believing they were actually inflicting tremendous pain, ninety percent of the research subjects administered the shock as requested.  In a location that seemed like an official lab, doing official research, with the urging of an authority figure in the room, good people subverted what they believed to what the situation pressured them to do.[1] 

Milgram’s experiment is disturbing, and extreme.  It points out a part of human nature that we do not like to see in others or in ourselves.  But haven’t we all acted in a situation in a way that did not represent the values we hold most dear, due to our location?  One remains silent on something of crucial importance because one does not want to offend.  Or one is too tired after a long day at work to extend the kindness to others, even as one holds kindness as an important values.  Or, without encouragement to pursue a dream, a person simply lets it go, doing instead what seems more sensible given the place where one is at.

The power of environment and location are demonstrated strongly in Milgram’s experiment, but I think that even this most disturbing example can provide us with a positive insight.  If you find yourself in a place that does not resonate with your core values, how could one proceed?  We often think that the only thing needed to change our behavior is a redoubling of effort.  But if location has power, to create a change in your life requires placing yourself in a location in which such a change is possible.  This may be a new job.  A different neighborhood.  It may mean seeking out a committee or program here at church where people share your values. Maybe it’s time to let go of a relationship.  Your location may shift thanks to a conversation or intentionally connecting with people who make your location more in line with the person you want to become.  The first step is paying attention to how “where you are” impacts “who you are.”

 

But a positive location, I believe, can lead us to move closer to our most cherished values.  Many parents of elementary and preschool age children in our church send our kids to one of two Montessori schools in town.  At the core of Montessori philosophy is  that the conduit for learning is not the teacher-student relationship, but between the environment prepared by the teacher and the child.  The child’s entry into a prepared environment is what makes learning possible.  If a location is established that is created for learning, with the materials and the structure appropriate to the child’s developmental stage, the child will blossom into the learner that is always within.

When you think about it, we all live in a prepared environment.  The place where we live, work, love, struggle and grow is our prepared environment.  Being in Des Moines gives us a natural and social environment that presents each of us with specific beauty, challenges, relationships, limitations, and possibilities.   Where each of us lives specifically in the metro area shapes us.  The kind of workplace or home we are in shapes us.  The existence of a strong Unitarian Universalist Congregation in our city shapes us.  Each of us could share stories about how living in Des Moines has formed our lives, the influence of place on how we live, learn, and labor.  As we sang together this morning we are not our own – we are part of a location that includes a natural world, a history, and a society, that helps us recognize who we are partly by our location.

But if our location forms so much of who we are, do we pay attention to this profound influence?  Do we live in awareness of where we are?  I admit that on many days, the answer for me is no; the structure of contemporary life often conspires against this awareness.  I think of this non-awareness as dislocation. 

We fall into a state of dislocation in many ways?  The demands of work, the attention to details of managing a household, or getting here or there on time pull us out of location.  We abandon the here and now through feverish attempts at multitasking.  How many autumn days have I missed on my walk home from work because my mind is planning the grocery list or things to do for next week? We fall into dislocation when we abandon the here and now to a grudge about an act of hostility or thoughtlessness.   Simply, our mind is elsewhere.  Instead of shoveling snow with Buddha, of finding joy in the crisp aliveness that a Des Moines winter day can bring to us, our minds rush to consider the task that awaits us after we are done with our required snow removal, or repeat a thoughtless mantra about how much we hate winter. 

When we learn about our location exclusively through commercial news sources, we also can pull ourselves into a state of dislocation.   I quit watching as much local television news when I read research in the field of communication studies demonstrating a strong correlation between tv news and believing one’s community to be dangerous and poorly managed.   But I don’t need a communication studies scholar to tell me this.  My son, who gets tired of hearing the news on the radio each day, sums it up for me.  “They only have bad news on there,” he complains.  “Why don’t they talk about peace?”  Or, to quote Garison Keiller for a second time on a Sunday, “You'd learn more about the world by lying on the couch and drinking gin out of a bottle than by watching the news.” 

Now, I’m not that cynical.  Usually.  But my son and Mr. Keiller have a point.  News has a bias, and I’m not talking liberal or conservative.  News stories turn on the dramatic event, not the long haul or continuous process.  For example, community building work such as that done by A Mid-Iowa Organizing Strategy, a broad-based organization that our church is a part of – that kind of work is very difficult to fit into a newscast format.  I’m a news consumer, but I’m suspicious of how news takes my location away from me in many ways, making location into an object for consumption or filled with problems that are insurmountable.  I’m not making an argument for ignoring the news, but for someone who wants to live in authentic relationship with place, you have to go beyond a journalists’ account of it.  We have to listen to others tell their stories not mediated by commercial news interests.  We can step forth to experience our own stories.  W can take part in creative interchange to examine how your story connects to mine, and consider what this teaches us about the location we share.

And finally, nothing can pull me out of location like a trip to the mall.  Talk about a prepared environment!  Prepared for me to spend my money to be part of a market niche.  Victor and I discuss the way shopping influences us through old Calvin and Hobbs cartoon, a comic strip that ran during the 1980s and 1990s.  After watching television jingles, the young boy Calvin runs to his parents and cries, “Mom!  Dad!  I just saw an ad for something I never knew existed…but now desperately need!”  This pretty much sums up going shopping for me.  Whenever I as a shopper decide I need something, I am declaring that my location is inadequate or deficient.  When shopping at the mall, the things that stores ask me to fill my life with are commodities generated far from here, with no thought to my local environoment.  Going shopping as a past time, for me, is a dislocating experience.  This is not to say that there are no real needs, that we should never buy anything.  But so much of how mass shopping is designed presses us towards dissatisfaction with or disassociation from where we live.   

The state of dislocation, whether from busy-ness, misframed media stories, or consumerism has serious consequences.  We experience distress when we see our location only framed through the crisis mode of the news, or through the inadequacy mode of consumerist culture.  In these scenarios, our location is either dangerous beyond repair or flawed, repairable only through spending money. 

We deprive ourselves of inward calm if we live distractedly, plaugued by the unruly jumping thoughts that Buddhism calls monkey mind, never focused on where we are.  Or, we can live in numbness, unaware of the banquet before us that is where we live in the world. 

How do we find our way home, back to a connectedness with our location?  Zen Buddhist practice has a concept of mindfulness, of being present in the moment.   Buddhist Monk Thich Naht Hanh has been one of the most influencial spiritual leaders to English speakers interested in cultivating a practice of mindfulness.  He begins us in meditation practice by asking us to focus on our breath, and on the sensations of our body in the world.   Nhat Hanh also encourages slow walking as a meditation, in which we fully experience the sensation of walking on the earth, the sights surrounding us, the sounds that fill our ears.  His writing highlights the connection of the physiological, the psychological, the spiritual, and the social.  He writes:

And when we breathe peacefully, the peace of our breath will penetrate into our body and into our mind. Then very soon, in no time at all, body, mind, and breath will become one in concentration, and we get the energy of stability, solidity, and freedom generated by every step we make. "I have arrived. I am home." That is a practice.

If you want to meet the Buddha, if you want to touch God, if you want to touch the ultimate dimension, that is the address: the here and the now. It is very special.

What has been transformative for me is how Nhat Hanh describes a practice of mindfulness, of becoming located in the world, of awareness, wherever you go.  Washing dishes.  Sitting at a stoplight in your car.  I have a confession to make.  I am a lousy meditator.  I sit in a room of practioners.  They achieve enlightment.  I…fall asleep.  Almost every time.   But Naht Hanh’s connection of mindfulness with walking in the world feels right to me.  And his practice is not isolated, but rather advocating a mindfulness of the interconnectedness in  of all things.  As we began our meditation about the Order of Service earlier, we imagined how we, in this place, are connected to the trees, the sun, the factory, and the people whose labor made the paper.  Naht Hanh’s Buddhist teachings bring the practice of mindfulness full circle.  In our own awareness, we become aware of our location.  In our awareness of our location, we become aware of the location of others.  And in the interconnectedness of us all.

Des Moines is a prepared environment, one that opened up the possibilities of gardening and urban environmentalism for my family.   After living here for two years Des Moines continues to shape my consciousness and my behavior.  The existence of Gray’s Lake has increased my wonder of eagles.  After living in California, I feel exhilarated most snowy mornings in Des Moines, my face sensing the cold and signaling my aliveness. The walkable neighborhoods where I live get people out on the street.  Many of these people out on the street are UUs!  My heart soars when I walk in my neighborhood and run into into UUs who live close by, creating with my family the fabric of location. People like Mark Campbell, Xenda Lindell, Judy Haver and Mark Metz, Harvey Martens,  Mike Shaw and Kristen Wilson. When I see these folks on the street, I feel that my location enfolds me with the gentle reminder that we are not alone in our daily journeys.

 And then there is this place, where I am welcomed and challenged, exasperated and supported, listened to and transformed by listening.  What a location to help me become the person I want to be.  And what a gift we give to each other when we form this location together.

If we are, as the hymn we sang together described, not our own, but profoundly shaped by our location, how can we act on this insight?  Perhaps you value the struggle for social justice.  Or the sacred gift of laughter and humor.  Or the joy of strong family bonds.  Or the growth obtained from a meaningful relationship.  Or the exhilaration of a healthier mind or body.  Does the location you are in support who you want to be?  My hope is that each of us can draw on mindfulness of location to see our most cherished values lived in the world.   Let us become aware of our location, of how it shapes us. 

So I leave each person here with the question – What are YOU doing in Des Moines, Iowa?

Closing Words:  Adapted from Thich Naht Hanh

People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, snow-dusted trees, green leaves, the warm smile of a friend -- our own two eyes. All is a miracle.