"Kinship is healing; we are physicians to each other." Unknown

During one Maine Winter, I found myself stranded at a Burger King in a snowstorm from nine at night until the early hours of the following morning. I arrived at Burger King anxious and angry. My daughter was at home with a young baby-sitter without electricity, and my husband was out of town on business. I sat at a table by myself, head down, nose buried in a book, feeling exhausted, and worried about my daughter. There were others who were stranded all around me. I ignored them. From time to time someone would attempt to engage me in a conversation. My responses were polite but short. As the hours passed, I began to really listen to the conversations of others and found myself eventually participating. Soon we all moved in closer together forming a tight and increasingly more intimate group. As the night wandered into dawn, I found myself engaged in one of the most satisfying conversations I have ever had with any group, let alone complete strangers who had little more in common (so I thought) then our present captivity. We began to share our frustrations, our triumphs, our fears, and our dreams. One man, a trucker, spoke of the many out- of- body adventures that had been occurring to him since childhood. Another, a psychologist from Pennsylvania traveling to Eastern Maine to check out a potential college for his son, shared his own out- of- body experience that had occurred after a car accident. Each person shared (or confessed) their own amazing story. I, who could not wait to leave, found myself reluctantly getting up to attempt once again to return home around dawn. Two of my new friends were standing by their vehicle preparing to spend the little that remained of the night bedded down in their wagon. I slowed my truck down, and yelled out my open window, "I'll miss you." The young man looked up with a smile and replied, "We love you." Feeling very warm and extraordinarily happy in the cold stormy darkness, I glanced at the Burger King while driving to the exit. There in the window stood the rest of my special companions gathered to wave good-bye. I blew them a kiss and headed toward home.

Ken Wilbur once defined depression as, "Having no where to put your love." It's not just that most of us simply want to be connected - we need to be connected. I remember reading somewhere about a town that had an extraordinarily low heart attack rate. When researchers investigated, they found that what made the town exceptional was that families had remained living there generation after generation. Later, when the economy made it necessary for people to leave home in order to locate jobs, the heart attack rate rose. Why? Because the support system was no longer as intact with people leaving.

There's been a substantial amount of research indicating the ill effects of loneliness and isolation on health and well being. A study conducted by sociologist James House found that the adverse effects of social isolation on health are equal to the health effects of smoking, high-blood pressure, and obesity. Psychologist Janice Keicolt-Glasser, found that those of us who suffer from loneliness are also more likely to have problems with immune system functioning than those who possess a sufficient support system. Numerous physical complaints and societal ills (including criminal behavior) have been connected to social isolation according to the American Psychological Association's publication, the APA Monitor.

The late Mother Theresa sadly observed that the United States suffered poverty far greater than that of India and that our poverty is called loneliness. According to Cecile Andrews, author of The Circle of Simplicity: Return to the Good Life, there are a number of reasons that it's so difficult to establish healthy communities here in the United States including:

• We're a competitive society
• We're a highly status conscious society
• We're preoccupied with work
• We're not a particularly trusting society
• We're consumer oriented
• We're a mobile society
• The design of our living spaces discourages community (air conditioners keep people inside, suburbs have few places to gather with the exception of shopping malls, we have fewer front porches, and poor public transportation.)
• We're an affluent society often isolated by television, computers, automobiles, and a lack of interdependence.

Andrews lives in a neighborhood in Seattle that has made enormous strides in terms of building a sense of community. Residents enjoy frequent potluck dinners, watch videos together, combine their resources to jointly purchase useful equipment and appliances that are then shared among neighbors and they garden together. There's also an active neighborhood center near by that offers classes, a "well-home" program where people can borrow tools, a child-care center, book discussion groups, and programs designed to foster increased connections among residents and provide mutual support and assistance. Andrews also converted her large house into apartments, thus allowing her still greater access to community while at the same time reducing the family's cost of living. In addition to her involvement locally, she's also joined a local bartering association, become active in her church, and facilitates Simplicity Circles. A Simplicity Circle is a small group of individuals that come together on a regular basis in order to support one another's efforts to live lives offering high levels of satisfaction and low levels of environmental impact. The popularity of these study circles has grown to the point where they are now occurring in both large cities and small towns around the country. One of the questions explored by individuals participating in Simplicity Circles is, When in your life have you experienced community? What is the core of that experience?"