Complements Put Together

A few weeks ago I went on Loyola’s Kairos to College retreat for students who had gone on the Jesuit retreat known as Kairos while they were in High School. Kairos to College, or K2C, is centered on two things: forming a deeper relationship with one’s peers and forming a deeper relationship with God. Kairos is uniquely Jesuit and we listened to talks on things like the Jesuit Exam, which aims to garner a deeper personal relationship with God, and on the Jesuit idea of using one’s own gifts to help others. One talk we heard was about one priest’s decision to become a Jesuit. He emphasized the support he had throughout his training as a priest and told us that it was only with the help and blessings of his closest friends and family members who got him through his challenging Jesuit training. Through his talk I also noticed his strength as an individual. In much the same way, “One’s-Self I Sing”, “I Sing the Body Electric”, and “Lush Life” all celebrate individual parts of a sum, but they each emphasize the value and power of the total. In the talk we heard on K2C and in the works read for class I can see the power of the individual. However, more importantly, I can see that, when complementing features are put together, they can accomplish much more.
“Lush Life” is a short story that shows the extreme importance of teamwork. It introduces Earl, “among bandleaders…he was one of the best” (McCluskey, 564) and Billy Cox, “the best composer in the business, period” (564). They both work together to “get twelve voices…to shout or moan as one” (564) and this worked well for them, as their band was considered one of the best in the business. Earl and Billy are good friends and, though their jobs are different, they bring their own considerable and complementary skills together to create art. “Billy and Earl brought opposites or, at least, unlikely combinations together” (565). Considering that they are a great band, this works for them. They each bring something different to the table and, thus, can work together to create a unique piece that neither of them could have created on their own. In the same way, the priest on Kairos would have had a much tougher time becoming a priest had he not had the help of his supporting peers.
“One’s-Self I Sing”, by Walt Whitman, is a poem about a single person or a single body, but it emphasizes the entire person. The speaker explicitly states that he does not want to merely talk about one or two parts- “Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse” (Whitman, One’s-Self I Sing, 4). Although many people talk about the beauty of the face or the power of the mind, this speaker wishes to look at the whole body as one- “Of physiology from top to toe I sing/…I say the/Form complete is worthier far” (3-6). Interestingly, the speaker is talking about just himself, but he says “Yet (I) utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse” (2). He says this because of his emphasis on the unity of the entire body, a union of complementary parts that work together to form a beautiful work of art. The Jesuit speaker told us about the support he received and in his talk he did not emphasize any single reason that he made it to where he is now. He did not explicitly talk about himself and his own strength and, likewise, he spoke of several supporters, not a single supporter, who all influenced him to a similar degree.
Just as the Jesuit spoke of the strength he gained from the unity of his peers in their support for him, Walt Whitman speaks of the strength of the body by talking about each of its parts and how they fit together in “I Sing the Body Electric”. Whitman goes through an extensive list of body parts and then he says “these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but the soul” (35). In other words, the parts make the person. The strongest bodies or groups are those that come together to work as one.
Thus, while single parts are special in themselves, they should be put together so that each can use its own strength for the good of the group. Whether it is in composing songs and leading a band, or in the body, or in the support of a good friend in a trying time, unified groups work better than any single entity can because of the support and complements that each part lends to the other.