Index -- Special On Opiate Use (Daily News Of Newburyport) --

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v05/n042/a03.html

NOT MUCH IN OUR CULTURE TO SATISFY THE SOUL

To the editor: I know I am not the only one stirred by your series on the
crisis of OxyContin and heroin use by young people in Essex County. Neither
am I alone, I'm sure, in my gratitude to those who wrote and published the
series, to fellow parents and survivors who courageously shared their
stories and to the public officials, especially our sheriff and district
attorney, who clearly care deeply about our young people.

In calling our attention to the dimensions and danger of this problem,
District Attorney Jonathan W. Blodgett has risen beyond his job as a
prosecutor, reaching out in a way that shows great leadership.

We are fortunate to have his and other voices speaking truth to power,
power which in this case is truly in our own hands, since we alone have the
means to turn things around, though at this point we don't know how to go
about it. There is bound to be a lot of discussion and many ideas put
forward. For my part I would urge consideration of one fundamental
dimension of the issue, and that is what is often referred to as "soul."

There is nearly a complete suppression of soulfulness in our culture. Too
few of us, myself included, hear or speak of soulfulness, but when parents
and even district attorneys weep over lost children, then it is not what
we know but what we understand that counts most, and the seat of
understanding is the soul. Our lives are abundant and comfortable to a
degree that has no parallel in history. Yet by the soul's calculations, all
that this material wealth adds up to is emptiness.

Young people, in particular, feel this vacuum keenly because there is
little that the culture offers "over the table" to satisfy the soul. In
this regard, facts are as useless as any other material possession, and yet
we are caught up in a fetish of facts, of high-stakes testing, of
competition, of research-based curricula that leave little place for
making art, poetry, music or even taking recess.

With our schools more or less shackled by this obsession and its politics,
we turn to the parents. But as parents we are caught up in the old story of
"much wants more." The notion of "quality time" sounds like the setup for
a joke: The soul, unfortunately, does not run by the metrics of our
daytimers. And the problem is not a lack of soul. We have as much soul as
we ever had. It's only that there is too much darkness in too many souls,
young and old. No blame here, but soul needs to mingle with life in order
to gain balance and share in the light.

How do we do this? We get off our high horse. We teach our kids to sing,
and we sing with them, even if out of tune. We laugh at ourselves. We
instigate pillow fights or pond hockey games or cribbage or pick-up
football on the commons. We eat dinner together and hear stories. We
practice stillness and try to listen well before we speak, and we show our
kids by our example how to do the same. We encourage them when they want to
stand up for a cause, whether or not we agree with that cause.

This crisis of kids and narcotics is a complicated one. Many points of view
will lead to understanding. Hopefully, many will be heard at the Jan. 13
forum at Merrimack College. I only hope that in our soul-searching, we find
a way to include soulfulness in the solution.