Out of Myself

by Donna Schoenkopf

Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk, a convert to the Faith. He lived in at a monastery which was mostly a working farm. He was given dispensation to contemplate and write. His days were silent. His mind was not.

He was a real force in the peace movement of the ’60s and died in 1968. He was relatively young ... 53 years. He was electrocuted when he stepped out of the bath and touched a fan that had bad wiring.

You never know.

But I digress.

The thing that he wrote that changed me was this (and I am paraphrasing):

Human beings cannot be happy unless they are behaving in their true nature and the true nature of human beings is that of relationship, with each other, with the universe.

To stand alone, to look inward only, is to be unhappy.

This really rang a bell with me. When I read this I thought back on my life and realized that I was truly happy when I was out of myself. When I was involved with others—human, animal, plant, earth.

And when I was self-involved I was engulfed in misery.

It was then that I realized that I wanted relationships with the rest of the world. I wanted to be connected.

So, here I am years and years later, in Oklahoma, with friends and neighbors, some of whom are on the same page as I am and some of whom are not, but nevertheless, we're all in this together.

This past week has been a wonderful example of Thomas Merton's idea.

I belong to a wonderful environmental group. Because I am a retired teacher I was asked/volunteered to be the head of the “Education Committee.” I have been in that position for a couple of years. Mostly I feel guilty that I am not doing enough, but this week I was able to fulfill my “Holy Obligation” to spread the word to people of all ages about how to deal with environmental issues.

My first customers were teenagers. Thanks to library policy in our state (and probably every other state) there is a strong outreach program to children of different ages. Our group was contacted about presenting a program to these kids and I was to do the presenting.

I like to do this. Puts me back into teaching mode. Makes me feel alive and ... you know ... out of myself.

So a date was set, postcards were sent by the library coordinator to interested teens, and I wrote it on my calendar. Wrong. Of course.

(For years I've been getting dates wrong—for example, I'd write something like Friday, December 22, when in actuality it was THURSDAY, December 22. Or I'd get the time wrong. I guess I have “Date Dyslexia.” It doesn't happen every time, which would make it easier. It only happens now and then, so just when I have begun to trust myself with dates and times, I screw up.)

Gaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!

Anyway, I got the time wrong this time. And showed up two and a half hours early. But no harm done. I could unload the car and take a breather and have a little something to eat.

I pulled up in front of the library's door and started the excavation of my car.

A large laundry basket full of tin cans of all sizes; glass bottles from salad dressing, olives, and other delicacies; and plastic bottles from mayonnaise and fruit juice.

A huge cardboard box with cardboard packing in the shape of the satellite dish that came in it.

A pot of plant cuttings taken from the houseplants in my house.

A pot of gravel I had dug from the pile Peewee left me for use around the house. I had dug one shovelful, dumped it in a sieve and rinsed it off outside under my orange water pump. The gravel was beautiful, green and orange and black and brown. And shiny clean.

A pile of magazine pictures and magazines full of garden flowers and high fashion models.

A giant container of Elmer's Glue.

Paint brushes of every size.

Ribbons and yarn of various colors, scraps of material, twigs bundled with rubber bands.

Acrylic paint, all colors.

Buttons.

A tall, lanky, red-headed man, about 40, in a baseball cap, eyes really bloodshot, asked if I needed help and I said yes, thanks!

“I'm Donna,” I said. “I'm Al,” he said. That was about it, conversationally.

As we began to work a woman came out to empty the Book Return box and I asked her if the Community Room was unlocked.

“No, but I'll take care of it for you,” she said. Then she asked if we wanted a cart for all our stuff.

Yes, indeedy, and thank you very much.

Al and I loaded up the cart and the librarian in charge of outreach programs came out and we all traipsed down to the Community Room. I surreptitiously looked in my wallet for a couple of dollars for Al, because as neatly dressed as he was, and clean, there were those bloodshot eyes and a kind of hangdog manner to him and I knew he was homeless.

But I had no dollars. Change would have been uncomfortable. Dammit. I turned around to thank Al, but he was gone.

Mary quietly told me that they didn't encourage the homeless here at the library.

Now I can understand that. The Salvation Army is around the corner from the library and the homeless come to the beautiful, federally built library to use the bathroom, smoke and hang out at the entrance and in the lobby, and use the computers and sit on the chairs reading newspapers, or just plain sleep on them.

And sometimes they pee on the sidewalk. (The homeless people. Not the chairs.)

That can make a librarian want to shoo them away. I understand this.

But I think of my own dear children and how they feel about the homeless.

Sarah, who LOVES the homeless even when they are “ungrateful” or curt or mean to her little twin girls. She just sees their behavior as a result of life throwing them a bunch of bad luck. And this makes her want to help them even more.

And Becca who ALWAYS gives and had a homeless friend who waited for her every day at the same corner when she drove to work. And Eric who always gives with huge generosity and kindness and John who always gives like his big brother does. Their giving is with love and generosity and goodwill and RESPECT and a true recognition that it could be THEY who were on the street and fucked up and sad.

So Al evaporated and the librarian whispered, “We don't encourage them.”

And I understood everybody's issue.

Then I set everything up in the room, left and got a hamburger, went home and picked up my dishcloths and my happy face cups and plates because I didn't want to produce ANY trash.

When I returned the kids started coming in.

The kids included two middle school environmental activists. They arrived first. They were smart and funny and faced the world as a duo.

There was the sixth grader, a pretty and perky brunette who was a cheerleader and soccer player. Her grandmother brought her.

There was the Beautiful Princess, seventeen years old, with long blonde princess hair which reached to her waist. She was home-schooled. She was delicate, soft-spoken sweet and lovely, like a Renaissance painting.

I invited her mother to stay and for a flash of an instant I saw the Beautiful Princess's expression show the slightest hint of disappointment. I realized that she had been looking forward to some time away from mom.

Ooops.

There was the Big Guy. Robust, alternately serious and funny, wanting to fit in. His eyes lit up when he saw the two pretty girls.

This was my little crew of Worker Bees.

Everything was set out, displayed beautifully, I might add. Plants, cans, bottles, paints, the works.

The librarian had brought in lemonade and pretzels.

We introduced ourselves and I told them they could build a landscape with the huge cardboard box and its oddly shaped packing material or they could make decorated bottles and cans for plants or whatever their imagination desired. The boys liked the idea of a futuristic city. The girls began looking at bottles and cans for decorating.

Funny how they separated themselves.

The evening moved along. Lots of talking to each other. And laughing. They began to relax with each other. The librarian talked to the mother of the Beautiful Princess. I needed stuff for a project the next day at a local college, so I began decorating cans and bottles and planting them with succulents.

Every once in a while I would ask, “Who wants to hear an environmental fact?” And everybody would say, “We do!” and I would throw out some obscure item or other.

Like the hookworm story.

The hookworm story comes from NPR. Heard it on the air a couple of weeks ago.

The narrator of the story is a man who had terrible allergies. Asthma so bad it would almost kill him when it hit. Allergies so bad his eyes would swell shut. Life was a trial.

One day he heard of research being done on allergies and that an odd fact had arisen from the research ... that people in Third World countries had hardly any allergies or asthma and that scientists had discovered that it was a result of being “infected” with hookworm. Hookworms live in soil and get into the bare feet of people, travel up the bloodstream and eventually take up residence in the intestines of their hosts.

This is a good thing it turns out. People and hookworms have evolved together and, like all good parasites, hookworms have provided their hosts with a startling benefit. Somehow they managed to keep their human hosts from going into hypersensitivity to alien life forms. This hypersensitivity is called “allergic reaction” or “asthma.”

So our hero, the narrator, not being able to find any hookworms for sale anywhere, went to Africa, got a driver who took him to small villages, where our hero tramped around barefoot in the outdoor latrines.

He came home and waited for his allergies and asthma to begin. They never did. He is still allergy and asthma free.

He tried selling his own hookworms (self-harvested and cleaned) to allergy and asthma sufferers and was successful until the public health department closed him down. He moved to Europe and sells to everybody but the good old U.S. of A.

Being a teacher, I knew this would be a show-stopper and that they would want more. And sure enough they did. And we were all merry and slightly irreverent and funny.

A good time was had by all (except the mother of the Beautiful Princess who told me that the hookworm story was a bit too much for her) and the Big Guy said it was the most fun he had ever had at one of these things.

The next day I had another gig at the local college.

Again a small audience. They, too, were told the story of the hookworms, LOVED it, but we didn't do crafts—we did a game in which we agreed or disagreed with statements I would make, like “I leave grass cuttings on my lawn.”

The time passed quickly. People were excited and shared their own experiences and thoughts and time was up quickly enough and I gave away aloe and pretty succulents in nicely decorated cans and packed up.

And was given A STIPEND! The first of my life.

The next day I took my neighbor's dog to be spayed in Oklahoma City. I did this because he couldn't afford it and my dog played/shook his dog's newborn puppy to death and I felt responsible.

I found a wonderful cheap spaying place. $35 for spaying, $5 for rabies, and $5 for Frontline for ticks. (She is COVERED with them.)

The people at the clinic were generous and happy and sweet. They had lots of volunteers. The place smelled clean and sweet. Everyone was treated with respect.

And when I picked up Princess (aka Angela Davis), they had bathed her and put a kerchief around her neck and a new collar with a pink name plate that read “Princess” and a phony phone number I gave them because I couldn't remember my neighbor's phone number.

Thomas Merton was right. Being outside yourself makes you a happy person.

Just one more thing. If you pick up a stray dog with a name tag that reads “Princess” and call the phone number on the tag, and the person who answers doesn't know what the hell you're talking about, it's me.

Call me.

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