Transitions: Introduction

Transitions. Originally, the thought behind the title was that we all seem more and more exposed to events with the potential to discomfort or disorient us. The catalyst can be the experience of a friend, the sound of screams and gunshots on the street at night, or the report of a child who has just run up against something cruel in the world. It might be a news report on radio or TV, the photograph on the front page of a newspaper, or the casual communication of a neighbor. We are never far from shock or horror. Transitions are the vertiginous passages into and out of the influence of such experiences, or the lingering residue of dread and uncertainty which haunts us until we are reassured that our world is back on track.

Our world has not always been so wild, so most of us seem unprepared to deal confidently — not to say appropriately — with such moments. Certainly, the parents among us might feel the need to fortify ourselves to properly prepare our children for life in such a capricious world.

The task the editors took on, then, was to present this problem to active and accomplished individuals (outside the therapeutic community) who might be expected to have been called upon to deal with it in their lives, and to ask them to share their experiences. How do they cope with the questions of tearful children, afraid that they will be nuked into oblivion before they attain adulthood? What hope have they to offer the elderly or infirm, who feel they have been discarded by society? What optimism can they muster in the face of environmental degradation and the consequent epidemic of immune-deficiency illnesses?

What follows are the responses which found their way to us over time, along with reprints of two chapters from previously published books which seemed to definitively round out the collection. These are the articles by Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder. I have appended an article of my own, simply on the basis of the depth of my concern about the issues addressed here.