New Light

Yesterday I visited the Bromley by Bow Centre, an experiment in organic community that went from seed to forest in the past twenty years. It stands tall as a place of integrative, holistic living for all.

The centre's hub is a healthy living centre. People from the surrounding neighborhoods can come in to see a GP, get help with plugging into adult learning opportunities (the area is predominantly Bangledeshi, so many people come in needing ESOL classes and other avenues for work and living here), get your housing sorted at the main reception desk which includes a representative from the local housing cooperative. Meanwhile, if you need complementary therapies like art or massage, you can schedule that. Around the place are artists' studios, full of activity because each artist receives the space free in exchange for teaching. There were a number of groups of very happy and engaged persons with development disabilities working on painting, furniture making, and who knows what else. The children's nursery was busy having lunch. We met a stone sculptor who mentioned that because her studio has windows onto the street, many people just stop in because so few of us see people making things by hand any more. She was working on a beautiful, rare piece of blue alabaster and was thinking she would create a piece of sky with it.

Reflecting on the experience, which was a lot to take in because so much happens around the place, I realized what the good vibe of it was all about, for me at least. There was a deep and abiding, yet lightly held, sense of common humanity. The place and the employees weren't serving "those in need." There was no power differential between those giving and those receiving. It was simply the flow of people connecting as people. There was no self-consciousness about being a professional or being in service, there was just a sense of getting on with it because life is engaging and worth sharing. Very pragmatic things were happening all over the place, but with a lightness of being. Very little earnestness or do-goodery.

Having read a recent book about the place by the person who simply showed up and started to get to know people and what they needed and wanted to do and be, Andrew Mawson, I can see the roots of this ethos in his way of being. It has gone on in the manner in which it started. He marveled at the persons who came around, at the human light that was in each one, no matter how circumstances of birth and the various powers that be had tried to cover them in bushels. He always saw the light, believed in it, recognized how ordinary and extraordinary it is at one and the same time, and did what was in his power to clear the way for it to shine.

It was a bright day.