Parabola's Spring 1992 issue: Solitude and Community We come into this world alone, and alone we leave it; and between the entrance and the exit, we spend our time searching for companionship. What is this essential loneliness of the human being, and the equally essential desire to escape from it? Is it a recognition of incompleteness, that something is lacking? Is itan affirmation of a unique individuality? Or both? --from "The Inner Family" Cover: "Poet on a Mountain Top" by Shen Chou Ink on paper, fifteenth century Photograph courtesy of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri In this issue:

• "The Inner Family" by D. M. Dooling
  - The lifelong study of essential relationships
• "Reunion with the Source" by Mary Ann Troedsson
  - A death in the family
• "Surrounded by Water, Dying of Thirst" by Lambros Kamperidis
  - Withdrawing from the world as preparation for re-entering the world
• "The Soul of the Community" by Eliezer Shore
  - "Before we can know God, we must come to know ourselves"
• "Finding the Gift in It" by Jean Harris
  - Solitary confinement and communal empowerment
• "All My Relations" by Linda Hogan
  - Re-establishing universal connections in a sweat lodge ceremony
• "The Forest of Eyes" by Richard Nelson
  - The unity of two separate worlds in nature
• "Grain Elevators" by Ruth Rudner, photos by Bruce Selyem
  - "Where land lies without bounds, the emptiness is huge"
• "Selfless Service" from The Bhagavad Gita
  - The two paths of the pure heart in yoga
• "Dweller in the Cave of the Heart" by Wayne Teasdale
  - The Hindu sannyasi's search for the mystery of distinction-within-unity
• "Between Work and Prayer" by Thomas Merton
  - The cloister garth as the monastery's inner light
• "On the Life of the Therapeutae" by Philo
  - An early Jewish monastic sect near Alexandria
• "Aboriginal Solitude" by James G. Cowan
  - Community with the earth, the Dreaming, and totemic ritual
• FIVE POEMS by Ch'iu-ti Liu, Brian Swann, Anne K. Smith, Rosalie Cutting, and Rob Baker
• "Hoeing Garlic" by Stanley Crawford
  - Two opposite tendencies at odds in physical labor
• "Paid in Gold: An interview with Ruth Cooke"
  - A 96-year-old woman looks at life alone and together with friends and ideas
• "On Solitude and the Attainment of God" by Meister Eckhart
  - A medieval mystic's challenge to withdrawing from the world

Tangents - Reviews

• "The Art of Dislocation" by Daniella Dooling
  - A new show points to the rift between the artist and society

Epicycles - Traditional stories from around the world

• "Three Fables" / Jewish, Greek, and Persian
• "The Secret Garden" / English - by Frances Hodgson Burnett
• "Mullah Goes to Market" / Middle Eastern - retold by Paul Jordan-Smith