1 result for (book:deavf1 AND heading:"essay 1 thursday april 1 1982" AND stemmed:communiti)
[... 16 paragraphs ...]
We do not just receive the torch of life and pass it on as one Olympic runner does to another, but we each add to that living torch or flame a power, a meaning, a quality that is uniquely our own. We do this as individuals, as members of the family, the community, and members of the species. Whenever that flame shows signs of dimming, of losing rather than gaining potential energy and desire, then danger signals appear everywhere. They show up as wars and social disorders on national scales, and as household crises, as illnesses (pause), as calamities on personal levels as well.
[... 17 paragraphs ...]
—wiped away the results of the three strong doses of prune juice I’d been given. Yet there was, I knew, a fellowship even in those processes—one that I had perhaps too long ignored: the quality of fellowship, as a species or a family or a community comes together to help one of its own kind. And as I was to see, even for all of the pessimistic suggestions of medical science itself, in the very middle of crisis there was a certain indisputable sense of cooperation—a “vulgar” physical optimism, and a kind of humor that I had long forgotten existed.
[... 8 paragraphs ...]