Outside, we are still emerging from the darkest days of winter. Between the Chocolate Church Arts Center and my house, I’ve been seeing a constant flow of HVAC guys. One congenial technician I spoke with today — Brandon — told me that the winter is starting to take a real toll on people.
“People are exhausted, stressed and irritable,” he said empathetically. “Who can blame them?”
On Centre Street, I’ve watched so many folks spinning their wheels, hoping to make it up the hill. It looks a lot like how I feel these days — trying to make it up that proverbial hill myself.
The news feels like its own cold front of grief. Beyond anyone’s politics, if you strip away the commentary, the images of violence and civil unrest remain — realities that none of us with a warm heart could want or wish for. Broken systems have led to broken communities. Insult and injury take turns compounding one another, looping endlessly, so that instead of healing, we find ourselves festering.
The organizer and writer Lewis Feldstein wrote, “Community connectedness is not a luxury — it is a necessity.” When I think about the effects that intense cold, snow, ice and darkness have on individuals and communities — and when I think about what the events of this moment are doing to us — I’m convinced that every moment of connection, even a small one, is part of the healing.
When we encounter one another and share ideas, prayer, music or art, we are tending toward the connectedness that lies latent between us all. Anyone who has lived through a hard winter — or a hard time — knows this: Harsh seasons show us that even as we isolate and nest up, survival ultimately requires us to be more interdependent, more together, not less.
With all of this in mind, know that the CCAC has some fine offerings ahead: this Saturday’s Jason Anderson piano concert, intimately presented with audiences sitting on the main stage, and next weekend’s retro-rock band, the Dooryarders, in the Annex. The art lab is open, our lantern parade is taking shape and there is paper mâché to be made. These are small acts, maybe — but they are not nothing. Come sit, listen, make and be with us. Come take part in this work of staying human together, with fellow humans — also known as neighbors.
Matthew Glassman is executive and artistic director of the Chocolate Church Arts Center.