My two younger brothers and I, all born within less than four years, spent our earliest days as a cluster. They were often mistaken for twins, and the lot of us perhaps fraternal triplets had I not been so much taller. We’re still close, talking frequently and visiting in person when we can, but geographically, it’s as if we’re trying to escape the communion of our youth. They both live on the West Coast—one in Southern California and the other in Canada, and I live across the river from Washington, DC.
My brother who lives in Canada visited me recently with his wife and two teenaged daughters, who had never been to DC. In four exhausting days, we did all the tourist things. We walked every inch of the National Mall, climbed every step up to Mr. Lincoln and read his words, visited the Spy Museum, the Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the National Portrait Gallery, and buzzed on scooters along the Potomac. As I packed them off to Union Station for their train up to Manhattan, my brother hugged me, thanked me for all the adventures, and said that his favorite memories would be the conversations around my dining room table. Amen to that.
Our meals sizzled with talk of doing high school in French and girls’ basketball (a prelude to my new obsession with Caitlin Clark and Kamilla Cardoso). I learned things about my own brother that I never knew. He almost enlisted in the Marine Corps during college. He was a long-haired ski bum at 18. Who knew he might have been lured by the marching cadets? My 18-year-old son listened to his uncle talk about decisions he made as a teen that he later regretted. I could lecture my son with those sorts of cautionary tales all day, but they would never land the way they did while we were relaxed, laughing, and enjoying good food.
And why is that? If you’ve experienced it, and you probably have, you know that a collection of people pulling chairs up to a table laid with a meal is like dropping a needle on a vinyl record. As everyone settles and ice clinks against glass, you can almost hear the crackle that precedes that first sound of notes and voices merging. It’s no wonder that worship of the divine is often performed at a table. For Jews there is no holier act than Shabbat dinner on Friday night. Catholics recall Christ’s words as they receive the Eucharist during Mass, “Blessed are those called to the supper of the lamb.”
Still, there is no scientific name for the energy that builds and combusts around a table during shared meals. It’s one of those human experiences, like love and faith, that you know to be as real as gravity, yet can’t be proved by science.
The writings of French sociologist Emile Durkheim might give us a clue. I like to read 19th century sociology after I’ve finished whatever Jenna, Reese, and Oprah tell me to read. Not really. The truth is that Jonathan Haidt introduced me to Durkheim in his new book The Anxious Generation, which I recently read and reviewed (see last week’s post).
Haidt’s book is about the unnatural effects of some technology on the developing human brain. One of his arguments is that the smartphone is harmful because it isolates the user. We are communal creatures, he says, meant to interact with eye contact and facial expressions. Children need that communion for healthy development and to properly adapt to their culture. The book is full of charts and graphs, lots of science to make his valid points, but there’s a chapter toward the end titled “Spiritual Elevation and Degradation,” which asks the reader to consider, not only what modern technology is doing to our brains, but what it’s doing to our souls. This is where Durkheim comes in.
Durkheim wrote that humans exist on two planes—the “profane,” which is the survivalist, self-focused realm of the ego, and the “sacred,” which is the ego-free realm of the collective. This is not the profanity of dirty words and vulgar acts, rather the base activity of living as a human. It’s the realm we inhabit as we brush our teeth and take out the trash. Thankfully, there is a loftier space available to us if we seek it; the realm where we love and grieve and share memories with our siblings. The profane realm is how we live, but the sacred is why.
Haidt explains Durkheim’s theory this way:
“… nearly all societies have created rituals and communal practices for pulling people ‘up’ temporarily, into the realm of the sacred, where the self recedes and collective interests predominate.”
Notice he says “communal” practices. We enter the sacred realm collectively, not individually.
Haidt cites examples of church goers with hands clasped singing hymns and sports fans screaming and cheering for the same team to illustrate the transcendent power of groups with a collective focus. He writes as a scientist, from a secular perspective, so this is not about worship, but shared experience. To move out of the profane into the sacred, a group can be singing together, cheering together, or sharing roasted chicken with candied yams. The magic is not in the activity, but in the souls of the gathered humans. Durkheim called these kinds of shared group feelings “collective effervescence.”
Sure, there are exceptions. There are humans among us who can reach the sacred when they are utterly alone. I think of former Soviet dissident, Natan Sharansky, writing to Alexei Navalny just months before Navalny was murdered (excuse me, died of natural causes at 47) in the gulag where both men were held years apart. Sharansky writes,
“In prison I discovered that in addition to the law of universal gravitation of particles there is also a law of universal gravitation of souls. By remaining a free person in prison, you, Aleksei, influence the souls of millions of people worldwide.”
The opposite is also true. There are collections of people who move away from the sacred and fall even below the profane into evil. Hooded marchers with burning crosses come to mind. But most of us, those of goodwill striving to do our best, reach the sacred realm more easily if we travel there with friends and family.
Sometimes we gather to watch basketball. Other times we might sit around a fire and sing songs, but more often than anything else, we prepare and share food. We eat to survive but also because we enjoy it, and therein lies the magic. Haidt writes that sharing food is “among the most widespread of human customs: people who ‘break bread’ together have a bond.” A meal is the surest way to take the profane and make it sacred.
There’s no App for escaping the profane. You can scroll on your screen all day long seeking the sacred. You won’t find it. But if you make spaghetti, set the table, sit down and share, people might argue or throw noodles or refuse to talk. On the other hand, your tiny gathering just might levitate, leaving the world below your dangling feet as you fizz and pop in collective effervescence.
Notes
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