Happily Ever After

I sat in the gymnasium at an Oakland elementary school this morning (btw, it’s now called a “multi-purpose room” – I said gymnasium to some kids last week and they looked at me like I was from Mars) and I listened to one hundred or so 3rd and 4th graders put on a play about their ancestors. Aside from two teachers, the project director and the theater director, I was the only white person in the room. The children walked on stage in groups of twenty and, three or four at a time, they acted out stories they had collected from their mothers, fathers, and grandparents, putting together a “Family Tree.”

The children were nervous and rambunctious and could hardly keep quiet for two minutes, but their stories were beautiful and heart-breaking, and showed me once again how powerful the human spirit truly is, and how bravely we all live our lives, though we show our courage in such different ways.

“I survived hurricanes and tornadoes.” “Crossing the American border – no food for six weeks.” “We loved our country, but had no money and no job. We had no shoes.” “Three hundred people in a truck with no ventilation or air conditioning and we immediately started to suffocate.” “You could smell the birds and the rain, and the wet ground and the sadness from leaving my country.” “I survived a gang shootout.” “I came to America because of war. I escaped from Laos to Thailand. I walked a long way to a refugee camp.” “I got caught by the cops and spent 8 days in jail, but I was in America. Thank God.” “My great-great-great grandma cleaned house for a white doctor in the South. This was in 1937 when whites and blacks were not equal. The doctor’s son knew that my great-great- grandmother was afraid of snakes, but he threw one on her. She got mad and beat the boy up. In those days blacks were killed for doing things like that. My great-great-great grandmother had to take her two children and catch a train to California at night to save her daughter’s life.”

Parents sat in the audience listening to these 8 and 9 year olds recount their traumas, their desperate experiences, their most challenging times. They sat proudly while their children wiggled and talked too fast and giggled at themselves and each other. As I watched, it struck me how little we often know about each other - how de-personalized our experience is in this country at this moment in time. We know what we see in our own community, sure, but beyond that, and even inside of that, we are often more familiar with what we see on TV, on the internet, on our Gameboys and PlayStations.

What would we do if we knew that our neighbor’s mother and father had spent six weeks without food, walking a thousand miles through coyote-infested deserts, raging rivers, crossing hostile borders just so they could have a 600 square foot house with running water for their family? What would we think about them then? What are we thinking about our own families? Have we lost sight of our own ancestors’ hardships?

I really want to forget the negative parts of our history. Our country is practically founded on forgetting. The Melting Pot. The American Dream. Come on over to the Promised Land where you can start anew, and anyone can become anything if they just work hard enough. I want to believe in the American ideal and focus on the future. But in forgetting those negative parts, many of which have not been gone that long (some would say they still aren’t gone at all), don’t we lose sight of each other’s courage? Don’t we miss out on huge parts of who we are, where we came from, how much valor exists in each one of us?

It’s hard to comprehend 6 billion stories of hardship and courage. It’s much easier to categorize people into several nice pat stereotypes and file them away in our internal warning systems – better watch out for those people –they’re dangerous! But maybe it’s not easier. I mean, it definitely is hard for us to imagine how brave people have to be, because it’s so overwhelming to the human spirit to think of how much pain we all live through. To feel that much empathy – well, it could drown us. It could make us feel hopeless about the odds of having a Happily Ever After, which after all, is what we secretly crave, isn’t it? So to not feel it – to deny the pain’s existence – feels easier.

But really – let’s look at that. To deny the existence of pain in the world, to deny the truth that every human heart is required to be brave at least some of the time, actually takes quite a bit of work. First we have to see the pain someone is experiencing and shut down our own feelings around it. This is a feat in and of itself. It takes emotional maneuvering – twisting what we see so we don’t have to bear the thought of such injustice or pain – it must be their fault, they must be lazy, they brought it on themselves. Once we’ve justified the story, and stuffed our feelings of sadness, outrage, and pain deep down inside, then we have to work constantly to keep the feelings from leaking out. So we overeat, we drink, we play video games and watch insane amounts of TV, we cruise the internet for hours. We argue over trivial little things so that the bigness of the world’s pain is kept at bay.

Wouldn’t it truly be easier to sigh a collective sad sigh, give each other a hug and move on? Wouldn’t it really honestly be easier to cry for a few minutes, an hour, whatever, and then help each other on down the road together?

It seems to me that hiding and denying and managing our feelings is far more work than just having them, as they are, in front of whoever’s watching, shame be damned. If we did, perhaps people would see our struggles and judge us less. Perhaps people would know the stories of our ancestors and ourselves for that matter because we wouldn’t need to keep such distance. Perhaps we’d be able to connect and honor each other and have world peace and all that good stuff. That’d be my Happily Ever After.

We Got NEEDS!

I’m thinking about our need for contact. Not just people to talk to, not just friends, not just sex. Real physical contact that nurtures our spirit. I sat in a school gymnasium last week watching 8 year olds prepare for a school play. Now 8 year olds are spunky, ok? They’re not the most “sit-quietly-in-your-seat” type of group. But there was one particular girl in this bunch that stuck out from the crowd. From the moment she sat down (if you could call the legs-everywhere squirrely sprawl she did “sitting”), she was an electric bundle of wiggles. Even her eyes drifted around in their sockets, like they just couldn’t be bothered to focus. She slid about on the floor, feet up, feet down, feet sideways, now leaning on her hands, now laying back, now flipping over (yes, flipping!), all the while not-so-furtively sneaking glances at me. Well, at first it was sneaking glances. As soon as I returned her gaze and added my own smile, she was hooked (or maybe I was hooked). She started openly looking at me, staring, some might say. Then, between slides and circles on her tush, she began mouthing secret messages to me. I was trying to pay attention to the rehearsal in front of me, but was constantly distracted.

I started to feel a pull inside my own still, well-seated body. It was like a cord stretching out from my core to hers. It unfurled itself from my belly and floated to her, wanting to pull her in. I felt the pull and thought to myself – what is this? What is she calling up in me? Why do I feel this pull?

Then I had a deep desire to hold her tight. She was no small baby of a girl. She was a tall, skinny girl with legs for days and the awkward face of growing, but I wanted to cradle her like she was six months old, like she was my own daughter.

As I thought about this desire in me, I realized that my body was longing to help hers – to help her quiet herself, ground herself, calm down. I didn’t want to suppress her energy like it was bothering me. Rather, I wanted to comfort it so it could have a moment without distress. I could immediately feel the infant inside of her, wanting to be held. I could feel my own son nestled against me, his body borrowing it’s calm from my own, feeling safe enough to let his mind and spirit range confidently in the big world. I realized how important my calm body has been to my son – giving him a feeling of safety from which he can launch himself out into the world. I longed for that kind of safety for this girl.

I thought about calling her over to see if just proximity could bring her some calm. Then I saw her crawl over to an aide and ask for help with a worksheet she was trying to complete between moves. As she wrapped her arm comfortably around this aide, someone she clearly knew and trusted, her body relaxed for a minute – a complete shift.

I realized how grateful I am that I got to sit and hold my baby as long as I did (years). I remembered that cheesy old song that goes “I’d like to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony. I’d like to hold it in my hands and keep it company.” I wanted to hold her in my hand, wrap her in my arms and let her body get still – tell her she was safe. Maybe not forever, maybe not even all day. But in this moment, she was safe, and her body could use that safety like a blanket to keep her warm whenever she was chilled with fright. Her body could use that safety to support her to be whomever she wanted to be in the world. Her body could be her resource instead of something she and everybody else felt the nagging urge to control and pin down.

I need holding too. Think about it. Don’t you just melt when someone reaches out to you lovingly? Do you feel your heart and body open to that? Do you remember ever being stroked on the face by an adoring parent, or having your hair run through by a loved-one’s fingers, and releasing immediately into a calm that consumes you? Don’t you wish sometimes that you could curl up in someone’s arms and be cradled once again like you were a teeny baby, innocent, pure, not judged or dismissed or wrong or lost or Under Pressure? Somebody stop for one minute and give me a hug!!!!!

I’ll hold my almost 5 year old son again tonight. I’ll reassure him that I am here, that he is safe, that the world will not destroy him, that people are basically good. And he’ll believe me for now. Give thanks…. But who’s holding the rest of us? How can we give each other some contact that will nurture us through another day? Could we stop for that one minute and run our fingers through someone’s hair, stroke their face, let their body calm? I will.

The Search for Truth and Hurricanes

Life is full of so many things – poems, wonder, joy, spring, friendships, food…. Why I choose to keep my attention here in a dark room with a sign on the door that says “Processing” I do not know. I don’t mean a photographic dark room, where you process pictures of the glory, beauty, tragedy, and poignancy of the world. I mean the dark room that is my mind, where Processing is developing all the film of my life – snapshots of my anguished childhood that emerge from the chemical bath as an incessant story in need of constant tweaking, endlessly screaming to have light shed upon it. There’s this needy, cloying little gnome climbing around in there I’m sure. It probably resembles Gollum.

Sometimes I look out into the world – I’ll have an experience with some friends, or I’ll read an article while I’m going to the bathroom (because I don’t have time to just read articles, particularly frivolous ones with no other point but to glimpse someone’s poetry slam in Harlem) and I’ll get whisked into another universe where people actually enjoy their lives rather than endlessly questioning them. In these moments I have the sensation of walking out of a movie theater in midday, you know, where you’ve been in the dark and your body thinks it’s midnight but it’s actually two o’clock and bright as anything. Shock. My God – is it really still day? Is there really life out there besides Processing my inner demons?

Don’t get me wrong. I believe that the Search for Meaning and a Truth that’s greater than ourselves is the highest occupation of humanity. I do fundamentally believe that my spiritual Freedom is my top priority in this life. But geez, can I have a minute to inhabit the human temple before I ascend? To just Be Here and muck around? And is the path to ascension paved only with the chunks of my issues I’ve been digging up for so long now? Can I actually SEE the road if I’m only looking at myself?

When I’m shown the other part of our human nature – the “not Processing” part, the part that explores its surroundings with glee, the part that shares just for fun, that creates connection through art, music, hangin’ on the block, the part that marvels and laughs with reverence at the complexity and divinity of our humanness – I feel alive again. I can feel something other than then dismal disappointment that my consciousness is not loving enough, not abundant enough, not open enough, not not not enough.

So there I was this morning, in the bathroom. (I usually rush through even this – Voila! Down the hatch and back to work.) But something in me paused today and picked up Oprah Magazine, which I keep in there for the guests. In the back I flipped to this page where a woman was telling the story of her poetry parties. It had no point really – it was just two pages of copy with 4 or 5 photos from nights when she invites her friends over to drink Hurricanes and read their favorite literary passages together. It was just a moment in time where a human being did something that celebrated her friends, her life, the beauty of the world. I didn’t even let myself read the whole article, but what I did read sparked something in me. I know my search for Truth and God is holy and good. It is where I am. But the Truth does not show itself only in the valiant and determined searching of faithful (aka obsessed) hearts.

The Truth of God and the Deeper Meaning of our lives shows themselves IN our humanness. If we look, they show themselves in the hands-on work we do to maintain our existence, pay the rent. They show themselves in the joy of a moment of connection between friends. They show themselves in someone’s sculpture of a head lying on its side or a song about dancing. Without being IN our humanness there is no transcendence. Dig too far down the well and you won’t be able to see the light anymore. All you see is the dirt you’re digging, and even that you can’t see very clearly.

So next week I think I’ll make a plan – a Spiritual plan – to do one thing just for fun, totally unconnected to the painful drudgery that has become my Search, just about being a human here on the planet for a little while. And I’ll do that one thing consciously. I’ll savor the time I spend doing it, and to notice myself enjoying it. Maybe that’s where my true healing resides. I guess I’ll see, won’t I. I hope so.