Published: May 22, 2008 03:10 pm         

A soft tangle of meanings

I shouldn’t call him “Jack.” For 30 years he’s been John L. McLaughlin, Ph.D., clinical psychologist, now former president of the Maryland Psychological Association, a respected community leader down in Laurel, Md. Nearly all his friends and certainly all of his professional colleagues call him, “John.”

Even his wife does. So what’s this “Jack“? Well, Jack and I are friends from our late teens. We met as classmates in training as Christian Brothers, and we both spent more than a dozen years living the same monastic life. I’ve called him Jack since 1956. It’s just too late to change.

Jack and his dear wife Peggy (a match for him with her Irish energy and wit) raised two fine boys whom I’ve known from their birth. Last year it was a joy to conduct the marriage of their younger son, Matt, to his Leslie. And that happy day put me back in the company of their older son Brian and his Jennifer.

I’d attended their Connecticut wedding 12 years ago, and on the way back to Fly Creek had made my first visit to Hanford Shaker Village. That wasn’t a coincidence. Jack McLaughlin had long studied the Shaker tradition, and he introduced it to me. Now, because of their dad, Brian’s wedding of a dozen years ago and Matt’s of last year are somehow intertwined with what I saw that day of the Shakers’ life. Somewhere in that soft tangle, there’s a life truth I’d like to grasp. Maybe you won’t mind helping. Twelve years ago, that drive down to Fairfield was rain all the way. I went through the Catskills on 145, then 70 or so miles on interstates, then 40 more on Route 25. Wipers on, the whole way. This was all before my dear Anne. I was driving alone.

By the next morning, weather had cleared. We all followed Brian and Jen out of the church into brilliant summer sunshine and then convoyed under blue skies to a country club with deep porches facing hills of evergreens. Jennifer’s family is Italian, so food and drink were abounding, irresistible. Brian (yesterday, it seemed, I had watched him baptized!) and a radiant Jennifer had a wonderful time at their reception, making the rest of us especially happy watching them. I ate too much, danced too much, raised too many toasts. The next morning, dull-eyed but very content, I headed for Fly Creek. But not the same way. It wasn’t a day for interstates, so I picked up Route 7, straight north through Connecticut and into Massachusetts. Up there, I thought, I’d snag good old Route 20 and head west and home.

After 30 miles, Route 7 broke out of suburban traffic and tunneled under arching trees, following creeks and valley bottoms. I glided alongside the Housatonic for miles and drove through lovely Berkshire towns. And later, sure enough, there was Route 20, spooling off towards the Hudson.

Forty miles east of Albany was the place Jack had told me to watch for: Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield, Mass. It had been home for 170 years to members of the United Society for Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing. The Shakers are gone now; only a few remain in the world, in a village near Bethel, Maine. (Jack had visited them there.) But, though Shakerless, Hancock Village is beautifully maintained by a museum trust. Buildings and grounds are kept neat and spotlessly clean. (“No dirt in Heaven,” said the Shaker foundress, Mother Ann Lee.) In the many workshops, tools are arranged on benches and walls as if waiting the Shakers’ own second appearing.

I visited the barnyards and gardens, walked through silent dining rooms and dormitories. Then I sat alone in the meeting house, trying to imagine the community at worship there. It’s a graceful room, about 30 by 60 feet. Men and women, celibates all, filed into it through separate doors. The 150 of them sat on backless benches and settled into profound quiet, awaiting the Spirit’s touch. Then someone would feel that touch and rise to sing. And dance.

Benches would be pushed back, and straight ranks of Shaker men would dance toward the room’s center in a strict, stylized pattern — hop, shuffle, step — as the women danced the same pattern towards them. Then the rows would recede like waves, dancing backwards toward the walls, only to sweep solemnly forward again. This sometimes went on for hours, and they sang as they danced. Their hymn we know best is “‘Tis a Gift to be Simple.’” Its words contain that dance pattern.

I sat for a long time in the silent room, gazing at oblique bars of sunlight moving across the wide floorboards, trying to raise the strong unison singing, the thump and scuffle of 300 feet. All that single-minded devotion — focused, not only in worship, but in every daily action. (“Hands to work, hearts to God,” said Mother Ann.) Perfectionism, expressed in every cow milked, every cabinet made.

That wonderful afternoon with the Shakers, as I say, is now interwoven with my life shared with two generations of McLaughlins: Jack and I, in black habits and stiff paneled collars, growing from boys to young men in a life that Shakers would have understood and readily approved. And now, bracketing my day of communing with the Shakers, those two joyfilled weddings, those two fine sons and their beautiful brides.

All those elements echo some vastness beyond my ken, one that also encloses my own life. For, though celibacy for me ended 40 years ago, I will end my days childless as a monk.

But all that is a silky tangle in my mind. Maybe you’ll see a loose end and gently pull on it for me.

Learn about Jim Atwell’s book, “From Fly Creek — Celebrating Life in Leatherstocking Country” at www.JimAtwell. com