No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
-- John Donne, Meditation XVII, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions
This poetry has stayed with me, and this year is more fitting than ever. Through the Trump years, through the rise of greed and racism and misogyny, through the months of the pandemic, the desire to live one's life on one's own terms has hit strongly. But it's not just each of us. It's all of us. What each one of us does affects others. It's the ultimate in the flutter of a butterfly's wings changing the world.
That we are all connected, whether we want to be or not, is one of the foundational truths in Lydia Millet's A Children's Bible. A group of children, mostly teens and pre-teens, are on their own while their parents party in an old country mansion that they have rented for the summer.
The beginning is idyllic. There are so many parts of nature to explore -- the waterways, the woods, and the writing evoked the joyful memories in Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse. Millet doesn't stop there, however. She describes the deer in the woods that cannot be scared away. The deer that carry insects that bring deathly disease. So, this is no idyll of childhood. This is a story of survival.
At first, it seems the survival will be The Lord of the Flies type. The kids are bored by their parents' lazy drinking and casual drug use. So they bundle gear into rowboats to go to a nearby island on the sea. It takes the parents a bit to even figure this out, although the kids did tell them.
They discover that a venture capitalist with his friends and their families has dropped his yacht's anchor on the other side of the island. Surely, we're going to find out which of the abandoned children is Piggy. But, no, the rich kids share their goods until they sail away.
Just as a hurricane hits the East Coast.
The parents rouse themselves long enough to think about boarding up the old house, but their efforts are half-hearted at best. The kids continue to try staying away from them. When trees rip through the roof, most of them set up camp in the stolid treehouses. The kids who tried to stay in the house soon join them, as the parents go full bacchanalia.
Disgusted and disheartened, the kids and the house's groundskeeper take off, finally finding a hobby farm whose owner is in the city. Some dire things happen. But so do some kind acts, for there are angels among us, and some fascinating ideas.
The most fascinating come from the two youngest kids. The narrator's little brother was given a children's bible by one of the rich mothers on the yacht. Jack and his friend have interpreted the new information and mythology in a way that blends imagination, logic and an acknowledgement of what they are facing in the aftermath of the storm.
The boys equate God with nature. Jesus is science (knowing stuff) and the Holy Ghost is making stuff. As one explains, "It just means science comes from nature." Brilliant way to connect the dots and live in fragments no longer.
The plot has further confrontations and resolutions. And accusations and reckonings. And interventions and adjusting to the new reality. It is what the kids learn about others and discover in themselves that matters. Using biblical terms, they found Paradise. And were driven out. What happens in the end? Well, as as been said, we are the stuff that stars are made of. As well as dreams. And living can be a form of art.
A Children's Bible is a fable. It may not always be true in the sense of being factual, but it is true in the way that anything touching upon the reality of who we are in our hearts and minds is true. Two major truths are clear: We are not isolated, and we are the leaders we seek.