The Island in the Swamp

I grew up in small-town America with parents whose moral framework was so sturdy their adopted creed had to fit them, not the other way around. Catholicism was the chosen fit. And four siblings exemplified it.

Honesty. Humility. Heart. Honor. Our guides and daily bread — and, mercifully, not our names.

Mum and Dad were strict but loving, and always true to their word. They impressed upon us scalawags the importance of that. The problem was that this added up to an exemplary foundation for an 18th Century Scottish crofting community — Dad's roots — and almost zero preparation for the world at large. Especially America in the nineties.

I had the good fortune of going straight into overseas charity work. My siblings were not so insulated. They launched one by one into society like bottle rockets over a swamp full of alligators, cottonmouths, pike and panthers. They got chewed up and mauled by every job and business venture out there, by narcissists fed fat on post-Reagan consumerism. Battered and demoralized, they landed home periodically for a top-up of humanity before venturing out for more punishment.

Then the middle brother happened across an online gold vein and had the unique technological skill required to garner protection from a shark who clearly saw him as the hen who lays the golden eggs. They both got stinking rich.

My brother — a golden-hearted light being who just happened to have the right talent for the right moment — held to his roots and built something. A family sanctuary. A place where those of us with less dexterity in navigating modernity could thrive, explore our ideas and passions, and make things that were not about making money but about humanity and its healing.

Hence chickenlist.

We call our home the island. Built by our parents. Sustenance and fortifications supplied by my brother. The island in the swamp that is 21st Century America.

In the years between the last fledgling flown and the island established, none of us caved. That is testament to something. We turned from opportunities that would have brought wealth. We were elbowed aside by those less honest, our toes stomped by the heartless pushing ahead. We recoiled from places that demanded we discard our humility and forfeit our honor.

Were it not for my brother we'd all be less comfortable and a great deal more battle-worn. But we'd still be that. Not Machiavellian. Not the compromisers.

Not because of some familial spell. Not because we'd be disowned for selling out — we were too penurious to have anything close to an inheritance as carrot. But because we saw in our parents wise and loving people who wanted us to be happy before renouncing happiness for wealth. Who wanted us to put people first.

Not because all people are wonderful. They're not. Many are repellent. But because it is the essential armature — to use a Buddhist inclination — of the only life worth living. Our human responsibility is to manifest that on earth, even in the smallest way.

Each of us can make a circle of two at minimum. A mandala within our space. An orb of light that, even if it reaches only a few feet, will warm another being coming in from the cold.