No State is an Island

In high school, my dad took me on several day trips to the Abbey of Gethsemani, a Trappist monastery on ‘Monks Road’ about an hour from where we lived in Louisville. It is a beautiful drive through Kentucky’s hallmark rolling hills. Upon arrival a sign greets you with the three pillars of the monastery-- “Contemplation. Silence. Prayer.” The invitation is palpable.

Gethsemani was the longtime home of Thomas Merton, a Catholic monk, prolific writer, social activist, and student of the world, who lived from 1915 to 1968. From his hermitage, tucked away on the grounds, Merton authored many of his 50 books, with topics ranging from eastern faith traditions to the growth needed by white liberals to truly support the civil rights movement. 

One of his central works, No Man is an Island, argues that interdependence is the core of what it means to be human. We can neither falsely center ourselves nor fully deny ourselves. Instead, we must boldly enter relationships wherever we go, giving our lives to others while nurturing that which makes us whole. 

Neighbor Love

When the freeze hit Texas in February, the relational nature of our reality was on full display. Our connections - with both our institutions and one another - quickly determined our well-being and survival. 

Before the freeze, one neighbor warned several homes on our block to keep our sinks running, so that nobody’s pipes would freeze. Michelle stayed up late the first night of the freeze and dutifully ensured a steady drip coming from two bathroom faucets. Regrettably, I woke up early that morning to the sound of one of those faucets running and I sleepily turned it off. Making matters worse, I then made a round through the house and turned off the other faucet as well.  Two small but very consequential fumbles. 

Having lived through a dozen Chicago winters with no major problems, I did not take my neighbor’s warning seriously enough. I had registered the threat as important, but not as truly real, as capable of reshaping our family’s welfare. 

Our pipes inevitably froze. We ended up with one burst pipe in our outdoor water softener, the gateway to all our household water, and another burst pipe inside the home. Like more than 20,000 other Texans, we went more than a week without running water and are still in the home repair process. 

In that week, we relied entirely on our neighbors. The same neighbor who gave us the unheeded warning graciously helped me refill our 5 gallon jugs each day, giving several of his own jugs to our cause. The neighbors on the other side of the house did the same. Even though they were battling COVID at the time, the neighbors across the street would have been right there if we had asked. All of this support came without hesitation or judgement; a reminder that solidarity and grace are both natural states.

Our challenges were small compared to millions of Texas apartments and houses, especially those in disadvantaged areas facing other vulnerabilities. While I could have helped our home avoid a water loss, that wasn’t the case for so many others. Entire neighborhoods lost water at some points and even those with uninterrupted access went under boil water advisories. Most centrally, the two millions households that lost power was through zero fault of their own.

Another type of Trinity

While consensus can be hard to reach in the Lone Star state, there is no denying that ERCOT (aka the Electric Reliability Council of Texas) failed to prepare our towns and cities for extreme weather. For more than a century, Texas has kept its electrical grid out of the reach of federal regulation. It made the state an electrical island, barring interstate power connections. 

Will fierce independence get us through the 21st Century? The data suggests it won’t. Rather than just rely on neighbors helping neighbors to get us through future crises, Texas policymakers would be wise to learn from the interdependence that great neighbors model. And they could apply those lessons to much smarter federal-state-local partnerships, where supply shortages are not existential threats. While most neighbors have fences, we still know that our wellbeing is intrinsically tied to one another. Not only at the spiritual level Merton described, but with our most concrete and human needs.