[June 2001 journal entry]
I have been preparing to write for the first time to the small circle of physicians with whom I have experienced ‘community’ as a group about the ‘non-religious’ approach to ethics and spirituality that has formed for me over the past twenty years as I have worked with them in advocating a humane practice of medicine that is grounded in a resolute social conscience. My experience with them individually and collectively is my most authentic and intimate experience of ‘community’. However, few of them know each other or think of each other in this way as far as I know. As I have thought about what to say to them, my appreciation has deepened re the reality that entering a ‘non-religious’ experience/identity of ‘community’ (as I will be describing to/for them) puts significant pressure on one’s sense of place and loyalty within other ‘spheres’. At one end of the spectrum is the option of assigning priority and finality to one’s ‘spheres’. My motive for writing to these physicians is not to pressure them to address such pressure, but to give to them the results to which working so closely with them has led me.
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