ast weekend I went to a performance of “Something Rotten,” a musical spoof of Shakespeare—and of musicals!—and I laughed throughout. After we left, my date said, “They should hire you as a living laugh track.” “ Yes!” I said. “I’ve been in movie theaters where I sometimes thought I was the only one laughing.” Which, I understand, may say how odd my sense of humor is. At least at “Something Rotten,” many people were laughing in a large (and packed disconcertingly close to one another without the distancing I’ve come to expect) crowd at Hilliard Davidson High School (the Hilliard Arts Council produced the musical).

 

Then on the next day, in a Sunday New York Times opinion piece, “There’s a Specific Kind of Joy We’ve Been Missing,” organizational psychologist Adam Grant notes that research shows that people laugh five times as often when they’re with others as when they’re alone. 

 

“We find our greatest bliss in moments of ‘collective effervescence,’” writes Grant, “a concept coined by Emile Durkheim to describe the sense of energy and harmony people feel when they come together in a group around a shared purpose. … And during this pandemic, it’s been largely absent from our lives.”

 

As Adam Grant says, “That’s not to say you can’t find delight in watching a show on Netflix. The problem is that bingeing is an individual pastime. Peak happiness lies mostly in collective activity.”

 

So, it is truly wonderful that the world is opening up once again for many of us, and we can go to movies, theater, lectures, concerts, and worship together in person.

 

One of the learnings we should take from the pandemic, says Adam Grant, is that “the return to normalcy, or something like it, is a time to rethink our understanding of mental health and well-being. We should think of flourishing less as personal euphoria and more as collective effervescence.”

 

He quotes the Declaration of Independence and Jefferson’s unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But most of these founding fathers trained in Greek scholarship, and Aristotle’s notion of happiness, eudaimonia, actually means “human flourishing,” a far different notion than what happiness means today. I wish Jefferson had used “flourishing” instead.

 

The collective effervescence signals that the right to human flourishing is for all beings, or as Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote:

 

“In a real sense, all life is inter-related. All…are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be...This is the interrelated structure of reality.”

 

So may we find ways, when we can be in community with others, to do as St. Paul advises in Romans: “Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another.” And, it is genuinely ok, and even necessary for us to practice rejoicing and to grieve in private so that our hearts become soft and warm, ready to be open to the world and one another, to share in moments of collective effervescence.

In 1983 Friends of the Homeless Shelter (FOH) was identified as the site of a local mission with a critical "hands-on" component known as Monday Meals. At that time, 40 men were housed in the upper area of the building, and ten women were in the lower level. Every Monday, a meal was provided and served by FC members from Couple Circles, Women's Guild, Councils, and a group known as "Fourth Monday."

Now, almost 38 years and 2000 Mondays later, the meals are no longer carried up a fire escape to be served, the women are housed at another shelter, and the building made over to accommodate 150 men. For many years FOH had its own administration. Still, now Southeast healthcare services manage the shelter and help the men move out of homelessness with multiple social and mental health services. The shelter has no kitchen facilities and relies on volunteer groups such as FCC's Monday Meals mission to provide an evening meal.

Historically, groups signed up to provide a Monday meal at the Missions table on several Sundays in October (considered the beginning of the church year). Amazingly, almost all the Mondays would be taken. As coordinator of this mission, I found groups to complete the calendar. But time and change have meant fewer groups were available to provide for Monday meals, and currently, we have organized "mission/friendship" groups to cover each Monday of the month. These close-knit, multigenerational, and committed groups provide a meal every Monday. For example, each year, Guild Group 7 chooses one Monday in November when the members provide a meal and have been doing this for about three decades and refuse to "age out."

Since the pandemic, half of the men are being housed at the WMCA downtown, and the Monday Meals groups are not serving the meals they provide. Instead, the groups meet in the South parking lot to organize the meals for delivery to FOH. The Monday Meals are volunteers looking forward to the men returning to the shelter and providing and serving the meals again. The men are so very thankful, and it is a pleasure to be a part of the help needed to move these men out of homelessness.

As always, volunteers are needed to keep this mission viable, and if you are interested in learning more about Monday Meals, please contact Carol at: cabjlb59@gmail.com or (614) 488-3007.

Personal History –

In 1995, after retiring from the OSU College of Nursing, my husband John and I joined the Fourth Monday group, and I became a Mission Council member. When Joel Hawley retired from FCC and coordinating the Monday Meals mission in 1999, I volunteered to keep the mission going.