Does Anyone Beat Your Heart for You

by Melissa S. Green | crossposted at Bent Alaska

does anyone beat your heart for you —
oh yes I know there are some who
will quicken it
or slow it at their leaving —
but when you are alone at night
and sleeping, dreamless . . .
it is there . . . beating —
it will be there . . . beating —
till you die

does anyone beat your heart for you
does anyone live your life for you
do you cast a vote — plea for
intercession
do you hasten your death by forgetting

do you close your eyes and believe
what others say you see

[January 9, 1982]

About this poem

I spoke this poem today at the Community Building for Alaska workshop sponsored by the Alaska Community Foundation & Alaska Pacific University, after a morning’s discussion.  It’s not possible to walk together in community as anyone other than who we are, carrying our own minds, hearts, souls.

I wrote this poem many many years ago, mostly in my head, one day walking across my home town of Columbia Falls, Montana, & thinking about people who seem to need to have other people tell them what to think, what to believe — or even to know who they are. But how can you know who you are, unless you discover it for yourself?  How can others know you unless you are yourself?  How can any other person have the arrogance or violence of spirit to claim better knowledge of you than you have of yourself?  To do so is a violation of your very integrity.

This is the second time I’ve posted this poem on my blog. The first time was in the summer of 2009, during the height of the public hearings on the Anchorage equal rights ordinance AO-64. You can read here about the occasion of my posting it then.

Related posts:

1. Does Anyone Beat Your Heart for You (poem)
2. I won’t abandon my integrity, even if you abandon me
3. Buddha in the coffee shop

As usual, Sullivan nails it.

The blog post by Andrew Sullivan that WC points at begins,

The relationship between religion and politics is, to my mind, the central question of our time. As the false totalisms of the twentieth century – communism, fascism, Nazism – have been revealed as oppressive, murderous lies, insecure and inadequate human beings in need of totalist solutions to the human dilemma have returned to religion. But more accurately, they have returned to fundamentalism, because only fundamentalism, with its absolute certainty and literal precision and binding, unquestionable authority, can assuage the anxieties of a world dislocated from tradition, up-ended by capitalism, globalized to the point of cultural panic….

And later,

This ideology comes perilously close to arguing that something must be right because America does it, or has done it. It paradoxically removes the potential for moral improvement and reform by arguing that America was immaculately conceived, and that all that is required for its revival is what Sarah Palin calls a “fundamental restoration”. The core moral narrative of the country – its founding on slavery and its bitter brutal internal conflict to achieve racial justice over the centuries – is simply ignored. This is what we are hearing from Santorum and Romney and Palin: American fundamentalism.

All of this is routine for authoritarian nationalist movements. What distinguishes this one is a co-optation of Christianity. But, of course, Christianity cannot be co-opted by nationalism. It is opposed to all such distinctions:

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Yes, the Messiah came from a Chosen People, but in Christianity, Jesus’s death and resurrection made the whole world that chosen people. At the Feast of the Ascension yesterday, we Catholics heard at Mass the words of Jesus from Matthew:

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.

And so the notion of America as a unique nation in the eyes of God is a Christian heresy.

But read the rest.

Here, again, is a reminder of what Christianism is.  Also known as Christian dominionism, also known as Christianity as political ideology, rather than religion. In this case, it’s a form of nationalist idolatry, or idolatrous nationalism — the stuff, in any case, that theologian Paul Tillich wrote about in in a passage of Dynamics of Faith whence comes this quote:

In true faith the ultimate concern is a concern about the truly ultimate; while in idolatrous faith faith preliminary, finite realities are elevated to the rank of ultimacy.

Among which idolatrous faiths counts the style of Christian dominionist nationalism practiced & preached by Palin & her ilk.

Related posts:

1. Christianist, defined
2. Illimitable god, & related thoughts about why I’m not a Christian
3. Good, evil, & great waves of god

… or so she would have me believe.

Her ship looks suspiciously unlike an early-1960s British blue police box. Maybe the Eleventh Doctor (or who knows, Dr. River Song, who seems to know how to operate a TARDIS better than the Doctor himself) finally was able to fix the control that was broken in the First Doctor‘s time, which makes it possible for a TARDIS to adopt the most appropriate disguise so as to be inconspicuous in its surroundings. Surely an old Alaska beatermobile of indeterminate color is more inconspicuous at my apartment complex than a 1960s-era British blue police box.

But wait! — look closer! Look at the plate! It doesn’t say TARDIS — it says TARD1S! That’s the numeral 1, not the letter I!

And look: here’s the back plate. Same problem here! “Time And Relative Dimension In Space” has become “Time And Relative Dimension —” what? — “One Space”? That doesn’t even make sense!

I think my neighbor’s messing with me. An imposter. Not a Time Lord at all.

And here it is, Rapture Eve, with a Rapture Van driving all over Anchorage warning about a “Judgment Day,” like some bizarre new form of Dalek aiming its harsh, Bible-Purple cry of exterminate, exterminate! against any who are not Dalek. From all over the world we’re hearing reports of people claiming that they will be somehow caught up into the sky, mystically teleported — apparently beginning tonight at 10:00 PM Alaska Time* — to some indefinable place called Heaven: the name, one must suppose, of an alien spaceship belonging to the powerful and xenophobic race to whom these people owe their allegiance.

And then, over a period of five months, the spaceship will rain its destruction down upon us.

And the Doctor, who could save us, is nowhere to be found.

Unless…

Do I have the wrong mythology? Yes. Yes. It’s obvious.  Like Sunnydale, California, and Cleveland, Ohio, Anchorage obviously sits on a Hellmouth, in our case centered somewhere in the vicinity of Baxter Road and Northern Lights Boulevard.

Surely Buffy will avert this apocalypse, as she has averted so many others.

But please, Buffy, please. Do not avert the Rapture. Let them go. Let all the xenophobes go.

* Note about Rapture timing: Per The Atlantic, The Rapture will begin 6 PM on March 21 in the first time zone at which that time occurs, then will proceed around the globe time zone by time zone. “So, according to these calculations, the Rapture will actually begin like a rolling brown out across the globe at 11 p.m. PST on Friday, May 20th” — i.e., 10 PM AST. But we’re in daylight savings time now, so I’m still a tad confused. In any case, those Alaskans whose loyalty to the xenophobic aliens is expected to be rewarded with Rapture will be among the last on the planet, at 6:00 PM tomorrow, to be rolling brown-outed to the alien mothership.

h/t John Aronno, Alaska Commons; Julia O’Malley, Anchorage Daily News

Related posts:

1. The Daily Tweets 2011-05-26: The sun’s gone wibbly
2. Q & A: What happens when you click "Volunteer" at the Alaskans for Parental Rights website?
3. There is more to life than Real Life

I feel like talking about the Book of Job again. This might be because a month ago I was asked to speak at Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship (AUUF) on June 26, which coincides with the end of Alaska PrideFest, on the “need for liberal religious people to reach out to the LGBTQ community,” and today I was asked for the name I wanted to give my talk so it could be printed in the AUUF’s bulletin.

I told Beatrice — that’s Beatrice Hitchcock, AAUF’s interim minister — to title my talk “Take it to Heart: Faith & LGBT Youth.” “The first half of that title,” I told her, “is based on a poem I wrote, called ‘Sermon,’ which I plan to begin my presentation with” — that’s a poem based on the Book of Job — and went on to explain,

I will probably continue the presentation after the poem with Job: the idea of holding on to one’s integrity, in line with the UU principle of “the inherent dignity and worth of every person” and how members of liberal faiths needs not only to teach that to “their own” but also to reach out to people who have been taught to internalize self-hate & give them new heart… as it were.

(Yes, I’ve been reading a bit about Unitarian Universalism. I’m not a member, stubborn non-joiner me — but I am in profound agreement with the Unitarian Universalist 7 principles, the first of which — “The inherent worth and dignity of every person” — I relate to all that I think about that so-important-to-me word, integrity.)

And then again, I might want to talk about the Book of Job because I’ve been delving deeply into my email-retentive archives. The archives, in particular, of an email discussion list I belonged to during the latter half of 1998, when I was reeling from the loss of a relationship & the betrayal I felt over it.  As it happened, my partner & I later came back together — but in 1998 I didn’t know that would happen, & in 1998 I was hurting. Hurting like Hell.  And anyone who was on that list knows just exactly the double-sense in which I mean that word.

(Parenthetical: The character Hell from my portion of the shared story I crafted on that list has been renamed Helvetti in the novel form of the story, which is called Mistress of Woodland. Which I am working on again.  Which is why I’m delving into the email archive, because it holds much of the raw material of which Mistress of Woodland is made. Helvetti is Finnish for hell.)

In 1998, the Book of Job was already important to me.  I had, after all, already written that poem “Sermon.”  But now it took on new meanings, stemming from my visceral sense of being like Job: innocent, yet suffering.  And, moreover, being told that my suffering was my own damn fault. Which false accusation, of course, added to my suffering.

I’d say that Job walked into my thinking when a demand was made of me, early in the breakup period, that I felt incapable of meeting, without utterly compromising & losing myself — even though not to meet the demand could possibly mean losing the one I loved out of my life altogether. Which at the time seemed a distinct possibility.

But what’s the choice, really?  I wrote back to her, an email in which I quoted the Job poem — “Sermon” –

“I must abandon my integrity / or you abandon me.”

And then I said,

Well… I won’t abandon my integrity, not even for you.  Not even if you abandon me.

And I cried.  Long days of summer I cried.  Because it goes like this: call it your Self, or call it your Integrity — either way, it’s like a pole at the center of you, that you can grab onto in a high wind; or it’s an axis like the Earth’s axis, around which you spin.  If you keep a firm grip on that pole at the center of you, through even the worst storm, you’ll know where you are.  You’ll know who you are. But it won’t keep the bad shit from hurting you.

But if you let go of it, you’re lost. You’ll go kiting off into that storm, & you’ll be a long time finding yourself again, if ever you do.

That hurts worse.

I’ll have more to say about the Book of Job, both the stuff I learned back then, & the stuff I keep learning now.  But this is enough for tonight.

(I’m trying to learn how to write the reasonable-sized blog posts that other people write, instead of the long-winded posts that are my usual.  How’d I do?)

Related posts:

1. Sermon (a poem)
2. No Questions, Questions (poem)
3. Integrity, violation, healing

My own reaction was a combination of glad he can no longer bring harm, but also pensive & mournful about the harm his followers & sympathizers, as well as his detractors & enemies, have already caused & will continue to cause.  That, or something like it, seems to have been a pretty common reaction… a sense of relief or release coupled with sadness, as at the end of a long ordeal. One of Andrew Sullivan’s readers:

You know the odd thing? I’m not feeling … ecstatic. I’m just feeling a kind of sad relief. I recall reading Miep Gies‘ book about her role in hiding the Frank family. When it was declared that there was victory in Europe, she said that people in Holland were hysterical and tearing into the streets to celebrate. But her husband, who’d risked so much working in the resistance movement, just sat quietly. She asked if they should go out and celebrate with everyone. He said no. It seems too much had happened. Too much pain witnessed. Too much death as a result. He was tired. It was enough to just know that it was finally over. I think I know what he meant.

Andrew Sullivan himself:

I pray tonight for the souls of the departed who died that awful day, and all their family members and friends. I pray for the souls of those great Americans who resisted on Flight 93. I pray for all those who have died in the two wars that followed this atrocity. As a Christian, I am also required to pray for the soul of Osama bin Laden. Yes, even him.

Some conservative Christian leaders quoted a biblical caution:

Do not rejoice when your enemies fall, and do not let your heart be glad when they stumble. (Proverbs 24:17)

(Never mind that there are also biblical verses that celebrate the deaths of enemies.)

Quote added 12:05 PM: His Holiness the Dalai Lama today in Los Angeles, per the Los Angeles Times:

As a human being, Bin Laden may have deserved compassion and even forgiveness, the Dalai Lama said in answer to a question about the assassination of the Al Qaeda leader. But, he said, “Forgiveness doesn’t mean forget what happened. … If something is serious and it is necessary to take counter-measures, you have to take counter-measures.”

Here’s my take.

In 1979 I wrote a paper in college in which I quoted an article from a Japanese academic journal from 1970. (In translation — I didn’t know Japanese then, & I don’t know it now.) The article was “Religious Consciousness and the Logic of the Prajnaparamita Sutra” by Nishida Kitarō (1870–1945), an important Japanese philosopher.  I still have my college paper somewhere hereabouts, but damned if I’m going to track it down in the middle of the night. However, I still have the quote handy because I wrote about it on an email discussion list I was part of in 1998.

(Yes: I have email archives that go back that far — as far back, in fact, to 1994.  Besides having an MFA in Creative Writing & a B.A. in Religion, I am also a geek of the email-retentive variety.)

Let’s assume that there is not only Him and man represented in the quote which follows herewith, but also Her and woman:

The absolute God must include absolute negation within Himself. It must be God who can descend into absolute evil. It is a truly absolute God by being God who saves the wicked and the immoral. The highest form must be one which transforms the lowest matter into form. Absolute Agape must reach even to the absolutely evil person. In the relationship of inverse polarity, God must be hidden even within the heart of the absolutely evil man. A God who merely judges is not an absolute God. But this does not mean that God looks indifferently at good and evil….

I don’t have any illusions of being absolute God in my abilities or desires to love, agape-wise, the absolutely evil person.  Yet to the extent that I can recall my own wrongdoings and, by extrapolation, imagine my way into the skin of someone further along the spectrum towards evil than I (presumably!) am — well. I’m not sure how far I can go.  But I can go at least a ways in that direction. Usually I can find there a person who is recognizably human, and recognizably suffering, and  recognize my own humanity and suffering in that person.

Sometimes I can’t imagine that far. Yet I’m certain that illimitable god, the truly absolute God by being God, can.

I have been a universalist (in a nondenominational sense) for a long time, in at least some degree since late junior high when I put behind me the belief that there is only one way to God.  Universalist: someone who believes that all will be reconciled to god: in my case because if, as I believe, god is the universe and everything in it, then no one is completely separable from god.  God is in our breath & our bones, our very substance — body, mind, & spirit.

Nishida Kitarō (1870–1945). Via Wikimedia Commons.

I think that conviction was implicit in my understanding as early as back then, in late junior high; but it was probably my 1979 encounter with Nishida Kitarō which brought it explicitly to my consciousness. (A big thank you to my professor, T. James Kodera at Wellesley College, who put Nishida’s article, & so much else, in my hands.)  I don’t have that article still, but I recall Nishida saying something about how (in the Christian scheme of things) God is seen as absolute good, Satan as absolute evil: but that by virtue of them being absolutes in opposition to one another, that also puts them in relationship with one another.  They are not, in other words, flung off from each other, but are inextricably tied to one another, like the two ends of a ruler, or two ends of a rope in some cosmic tug-of-war.  With God, of course, on the winning side, such that even Satan will ultimately be pulled over to the side of good.

Actually, I can learn much more from Nishida now, because I recently ordered a couple of books by/about him, which are sitting at my bedside as part of that rather large pile of books to be read. And in fact one of these books, Last Writings: Nothingness and the Religious Worldview, appears to incorporate Nishida’s discussion in the article I encountered in 1979.

But I’ll get to that later. Right now its enough to know that in 1979 I found Nishida’s argument persuasive, and I still find it so today.

In the relationship of inverse polarity, God must be hidden even within the heart of the absolutely evil man.

And so it was with a sense of recognition that I read a blog post that a Facebook friend linked to yesterday.  It’s a post by Susan Piver called “Osama bin Laden is dead. One Buddhist’s response.” Here’s the passage that particularly stood out for me:

Was there even a hint of vengefulness or gladness at Osama bin Laden’s death? If so, that is a real problem. Whatever suffering he may have experienced cannot reverse even one moment of the suffering he caused. If you believe his death is a form of compensation, you are deluded.

There has been an outpouring of misdirected jubilation, as if a contest had been won. Nothing has been won. Unlike winning a sporting event, this doesn’t mean that our team has triumphed. Far from it. There is only one team and it is us. When those of us (especially our leaders) who now foment violence choose instead to try to create peace, then we will truly have cause for celebration.

One of us is gone, one apparently horrific, terrible, vicious one of us…is gone. I don’t feel regret for him or about this. I’m regretful for the rest of us who are now left thinking that this is a cause for celebration. It is not.  It is a cause for sorrow at our continued inability to realize that there is no such thing as us and them; that whatever we do to cause harm to one will harm us all. [emphasis added]

There is only one team and it is us. Not just a Buddhist sentiment: I agree with her.  For whatever reason, some twistedness took hold of Osama bin Laden, & in thus he wrought evil upon evil.  All the same, he is — he was — one of us, as much as were all the people who lost their lives or loved ones in consequence of his twistedness.

But while I myself can’t bring myself to celebrate bin Laden’s death, precisely, nor do I regret it.  Nor do I begrudge or judge those who do celebrate it.

A God who merely judges is not an absolute God. But this does not mean that God looks indifferently at good and evil….

That’s all the further I got with the quote when I cited it in an email in 1998.  But what’s Nishida say after the ellipsis? In Nishida’s Last Writings, the same or a similar passage (with some differences — whether because Nishida refined his language, or because it had a different translator, I don’t know) reads:

A God who merely judges the good and the bad is not truly absolute. But this does not mean that God looks indifferently at good and evil. To conceive of God as a supremely indifferent perfection does not square with the testimony of our spirit. [emphasis added]

It’s the testimony of our spirit that leads some of us to raucous celebration of the death of the terrorist who did so much evil — just as many must have celebrated the death of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot.

As for me, the testimony of my spirit is that doing good — being in right relationship with and taking right action toward myself and others and this grand and infinite universe of which we all are part — is reward and motivation in itself to continue to do good.  I feel at peace & easy in my skin when I do good.  Whereas to do wrong is its own punishment: it makes me feel horrible to hate, & even worse to harm others — to harm is a hell that also harms me: it twists me, it makes me ugly, it makes me a stain on the face of creation & a stink in my own nostrils.

That’s what Osama bin Laden did to himself, however much he may have rationalized that such twistedness was demanded of him by God.  Few of us who suffered from the evil he did will ever be able to forgive him.  If illimitable & absolute god is not merely a judge — yet god does judge.  And so, part & parcel of god, do we.

And sometimes the testimony of our spirit demands that we take ruthless action against those whose evil would continue to spread, if we did not stop them.

In that sense, I am glad that Osama bin Laden is dead.  I find myself untroubled to know it.

Meanwhile, I also agree with what my niece, who’s living in New York City now, wrote on her Facebook wall yesterday:

maybe folks think it’s tacky to be happy about bin Laden’s death, but I think it’s even tackier to criticize the NYC folks’ feelings about it.

Obama 1, Osama 0. Photo by Dan Nguyen taken at Ground Zero in New York City after the announcement of Osama bin Laden's death. Photo used per Creative Commons license.

Related posts:

1. The death of Osama bin Laden, & an Obama appreciation
2. Good, evil, & great waves of god
3. My story of 2009

A couple of days ago Andrew Sullivan highlighted a post by former Anglican priest Mark Vernon, in his blog “Philosophy and Life.”  Vernon’s post which he called “The great waves of Japan”, is worth quoting in full:

I was hearing about the famous painting, The Great Wave of Kanagawa, by Hokusai. It captures something of the horror of what’s fallen northern Japan, with its image of the fishermen dwarfed by the majestic, indifferent tower of water.

It’s a religious image, representing the very different approach that Shintoism has towards nature, compared with Christianity. In Christianity, human beings are at the centre of nature: creation is for humanity, along with other creatures, and it’s humanity’s task to care for it. Hence, in part, the offence we feel when nature turns against us.

In Shintoism, nature is recognised as infinitely more powerful than humankind — as in the wave — and that humankind is in nature with the permission of the gods but with no particular concern from the gods. Shinto rituals show respect for the gods of nature, befriending the enormity of the forces, if you like. But, apparently, there won’t be much of the moral affront at what’s happened — the problem of evil — from the Japanese perspective.

Vernon explained further in response to a commenter’s question,

The problem of evil arises from the Christian doctrine that an all-powerful and good God made the world for us, in some sense, though that world is full of horrors. How come? In the Shinto cosmology, though, the gods are not anthropocentric with their attention, so Shintoism teaches, as I understand it, that one should expect evil from nature quite as much as good.

Good and evil — that’s the question that theologians call theodicy (not to be confused with Homer’s masterpiece The Odyssey, though they’re pronounced much the same).  Theodicy comes from the Greek, theos “god” + dike “justice” (Dikē was the Greek goddess of moral justice), & has to do with trying to reconcile a benevolent all-powerful God (especially as understood in Christianity & other monotheistic religions like Judaism & Islam) with the existence of evil.  Or with, simply, the fact that bad things happen to good people — as happened, & is happening, to the people of Japan in the aftermath of last week’s devastating earthquake & tsunami.

I’ve written on this blog about theodicy before — most extensively just a little over a year ago, after Christianist lackwit Pat Robertson blamed the January 2010 Haiti earthquake on Haitians.

And sure enough, another lackwit, this time Glenn Beck of Fox News, has made a similar suggestion about the Japan quake.  So has South Korean pastor David Yonggi Cho of Yoido Full Gospel Church, the largest Christian church in the world.  Meanwhile, a longtime Internet troll who posed as an extreme Christianist pulled her YouTube account after public outrage over a video she posted last Monday praising God for killing the “atheist” victims of the quake. Her authenticity had apparently long been debated; but, strikingly, a lot of people believed she was for real.  After all, many Christianists are routinely just as offensive, even as they earnestly call upon others to worship a god whose “acts of god” they attribute to their god’s own enforcement of ideological purity.

(It sure as hell ain’t to enforce moral purity that a god would slaughter innocents by the thousands.)

(Reminder: Christian and Christianist — not the same thing.  A Christian is a follower of the Christian faith, whatever politics she or he might follow — conservative, moderate, liberal, independent.  A Christianist is one whose supposed Christianity has become, in the words of Andrew Sullivan, “ideology, politics, an ism…. It is the belief that religion dictates politics and that politics should dictate the laws for everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike.”)

But back to what Vernon said about Shintoism:

In the Shinto cosmology, though, the gods are not anthropocentric with their attention, so Shintoism teaches, as I understand it, that one should expect evil from nature quite as much as good.

(I don’t think that a natural event like an earthquake or tsunami has a moral dimension such as evil per se; but beyond that quibble) … there’s a book of the Bible that teaches much the same: the Book of Job.  As Stephen Mitchell writes in the introduction to his 1992 translation of the Book of Job regarding Job and his friends, who are  “comforting” Job after he’s lost nearly everything, including all his children:

The friends and Job all agree that God is wise and can see into the hearts of men.  He is not the kind of character who would allow a good man to be tortured because of a bet; nor is he a well-intentioned bungler.  Given this premise, they construct opposite syllogisms.  The friends: Suffering comes from God.  God is just.  Therefore Job is guilty. Job: Suffering comes from God. I am innocent. Therefore God is unjust.  A third possibility is not even thinkable: Suffering comes from God.  God is just.  Job is innocent. (No therefore.)

And later,

[Job] wants to die; he wants to prove that he is innocent; he wants to shake his fist at God for leaving the world in such a wretched shambles. God is his enemy; God has made a terrible mistake; God has forgotten him; or doesn’t care; God will surely defend him, against God. His question, the harrowing question of someone who has only heard of God, is “Why me?” There is no answer, because it is the wrong question.

The harrowing question of someone who has only heard of God.  But then the Voice from the Whirlwind comes, and Job not only hears but actually sees:

The storm rumbled and thundered.  The wind tore at my clothing
and took my breath.  I could not stand or speak,
and she had not the breath to make a curse.
Here was the justice of the Unnameable!
We would be smitten by that self-same howling wind
that had poured from the desert like a band of outlaws
to destroy my sons and murder my daughters.

And then was stillness, as death, a steep silence.
And look! we raised our eyes to the maelstrom’s clouded throat,
dizzied.  Spinning vapors formed and broke away and blew;
lightning flashed in the turbulent dark belly of the wind.
I was dust to be blown by that wind  but was not blown.
I stood under the very eye of the Unnameable.  And within me grew a stillness.

(from my poem “Job 42.13″)

It’s hard to put into words what Job’s experience of the Unnameable was, that we so often name “God” — and which I name as god with a lower case g, the very substance & being & energy of which the universe & everything in it has its being.  The poet of Job did a damn good job, nonetheless, of pointing to what that wordless and awesome and terrifying and profound experience was.

But none of it has a damn thing to do with human understandings of justice and injustice, of good and evil.  It just is what it is.  Sometimes bad things happen to good people. In hopes of being good people ourselves, let’s help those who need our help.

* * *

“Behind the Great Wave at Kanagawa” (神奈川沖波裏) by Hokusai (1760–1849) is actually not a painting, but rather a color woodcut.  It’s one of the series “36 Views of Mount Fuji.”  I come by the reproduction of it at the head of this post by way of Wikimedia Commons.  The Wikimedia contributor comments, “Although it is often used in tsunami literature, there is no reason to suspect that Hokusai intended it to be interpreted in that way. The waves in this work are sometimes mistakenly referred to as tsunami (津波), but they are more accurately called okinami (沖波), great off-shore waves.” M.J.  a commenter on Vernon’s blog post, shared the explanation given him/her by a docent at the Smithsonian Sackler Gallery during a Hokusai exhibit there:

All the diagonal lines and dots represent movement, things not always remaining the same. Some of Hokusai’s paintings, such as this one, depict scary moments like this big storm. You can see the ends of the waves looking almost like claws, which are scary but also symbolize our wishing to hang on to things the way they are, not wanting things to change. Our wish for things to remain the same makes the situation look worse than it really is.

When you look closely at this picture, the waves don’t don’t look so scary and are actually quite beautiful…. In this painting, you can see people in boats huddled together and crouching down. This is not because they’re scared but because they know how they should position themselves to take on this challenge. Actually, they seem to be in reverence of the big waves. In the midst and at the end of this picture is Mt. Fuji, representing calm at the end of the storm.

A good meaning; and also, I think, one which ties well with the peace, even joy, of Job by the end of the book that bears his name.  The end of my poem “Job 42.13″ —

There are tears now in her eyes as she watches them play —
yes, seven sons, three daughters — as before.
I rejoice in them, but also grieve for our windlost children —
the only love I gave them was to make burnt offerings
against sins I feared lay hidden in their unknown hearts.

But listen! they laugh! she laughs!  And I laugh, too.

May it be so also for the survivors of Japan.

* * *

The Book of Job is obviously important to me — my favorite of all the books of the Bible. But Hokusai’s Great Wave has also been important to me, ever since I got it engraved in my skin in December 1983.

Due to the process used by the tattoo artist — Larry Allen of Anchorage Tattoo Studio —my tatt is a mirror image of Hokusai’s original.

At the time it was done, I was still deeply enmeshed in my pre-aha period of self-hatred and almost continual despair.  But I had come across to a reference somewhere to the Chinese ideogram that we translate as crisis.  According to my source (which may or may not be correct), the Chinese character literally meant opportunity rides a dangerous wind.

Or something to that effect.  That’s, at least, how I wrote it in a poem the following year, after the aha.  And there is Hokusai as well, his Great Wave etched on my arm, linked to the meaning (putative or not) of that Chinese character —

On my arm, tattooed, is the large wave, the boats,
the mountain — my life, crisis on crisis:
opportunity rides on the dangerous wind.

It’s wonderful then to read what the commenter on Vernon’s post said about Mt. Fuji in Hokusai’s woodcut:

In the midst and at the end of this picture is Mt. Fuji, representing calm at the end of the storm.

Or the Chugach Mountains, for me —

Day followed day, the old stream of time,
just the same as before.
But each day I saw the mountains change —
one day growing gold in the afternoon sun —
one day dusted white by the season’s first snow —
one day touched by clouds as soft as white roses —
I could see them and breathe them and touch them and feel them.
Each day I saw the mountains change —

so did change find me.

Related posts:

1. Job 42.13
2. On celebrating the death of bin Laden
3. Japan’s earthquake heard from Alaska

I have a B.A. in Religion.  That was one result of looking for “the answer.”  I eventually found my answer.  And sometimes, as now, I have to talk with people very dear to me, whose answer is different.

It’s awkward to discuss matters of faith, religion, spirituality — whatever word one chooses — when there are differences in belief, even (maybe even especially) between people who care about one another.  Beliefs are deeply held, and it can be too easy too get into arguments about which belief system is right or wrong in ways that hurt each other.  But if we don’t risk the awkwardness, then instead there’s silence…which also hurts.

I’ve been having a conversation with someone dear to me about this religion stuff.  It’s been a sporadic conversation, because it’s been an awkward one.  But if argument is one way, and silence is another, there’s also a third way: to accept the awkwardness, while resisting the urge to argue.  If I love someone, then I want to listen and to know what’s in her heart, his heart —and I want that person I love to be able to know what’s in mine.  Not to argue, but simply to speak from one’s heart, in hopes that one’s interlocutor will listen, even if s/he disagrees.

This post is based upon things I’ve written on my side of the conversation.

I have been cautioned that it’s an unforgivable sin to deny Jesus Christ as the Son of God and our Savior.  I don’t believe there is such a thing as an unforgivable sin, at least not in any ultimate sense.  On a human level — just people being people, no god in the mix — some people will forgive each other for things that other people won’t.  The thing that sticks out in my mind with Jesus was when he said, of the very men who were killing him, “Forgive them father, for they know not what they do.” That’s what I believe of Jesus, whom many call Christ — that he had compassion even for his own murderers (which is what they were, even if they had the “law” of their time and place to “justify” their execution of him), because he knew how confused and limited human understanding can be.

That’s where I place myself, too, as a limited human being often confused about this or that, and knowing I have no final answers for everything I meet or see in the world.  But no other human being is any more empowered to give out final answers than I am: every one of us is limited.  And so I don’t believe in any such thing as inerrancy of, say, the Bible, because the people who wrote down its words were human beings.  So were the people who copied down the Bible’s words for later generations, so were those who translated those words into Latin or English or any other language.  So were all those who spoke or wrote down and propagated the words and ideas of Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism, and every other religion.  And being human beings, however much they strove to know and understand the mystery that we call God, they made mistakes. Unfortunately, they also often institutionalized those mistakes in ways that brought uncountable harms to other people — often even to themselves.

I’m not a Christian, nor have I been one in at least  since junior high, because I reject the notion that there is only one way to approach or to believe about god — a notion of exclusivity that is  commonly held amongst Christians, as it is also by adherents of other religions.  If I have a confession of belief, it’s the one I’ve used for years: God is the universe and everything in it.  Illimitable god, I called it in a poem I wrote a couple of years ago: incapable of being limited or bounded, measureless — that is far beyond what I or any human being can completely comprehend or contain.  As my calculus tutor in high school taught me: No system can contain a metasystem.

And so god shows it/him/herself in ways that are infinite in their variety.  Jesus was and is a son of god, but so are all of us are children of god.  And following from that, I believe that Jesus was not the savior, but was a savior: not for having died crucified for our sins but because he taught his followers (and all of us who still heed his teachings rather than only the circumstances and meaning of his death) an understanding and a compassion, even at the point of his own death, that few of us reach even on our best days.  The thing he said that I love the best is: “The Kingdom of God is within you” — and within the limits of my own understanding, I do my best to live according to the goodness, the godness, that is within all of us to live by, if only we choose to.  Righteousness is another word that some use: to live in right relationship with ourselves, with each other, and with illimitable god and the illimitable creation that is one with it.

Being limited, I may be wrong about any of the conclusions I’ve formed so far about the world and god. No “conclusion” that I can make can be final anyway.  If it turns out I’ll be judged and damned for believing as I do by some specific God of some specific ideological belief system — well, mainly that’ll mean that, much to my disappointment, the universe is run by a Big Bully of the Sky who has all the morality of a Hitler, a Stalin, a Muammar Gadaffi, or even that putative enemy of the Christianist God, Satan.

But I don’t think so.

I will meantime try to base my judgments of other people on their actions — whether they do good or cause harm — not on the name by which their faith is called.  When I have problems with some Christians, it’s when they attempt to justify behaving harmfully and hatefully towards others in the name of their religion — not because they are Christians per se. And so with Muslims, Buddhists, whoever — anyone who attempts to justify harmful behavior in the name of religion, and treat their religion as not religion, but ideology: not Muslims but Islamists, not Christians but Christianists. Religion become ideology has ceased to be religion: it’s just ideology, in all its nasty worldliness, used as a club to namecall, batter, murder, and war upon people who believe differently.

So many of the disagreements between people that lead to anger and hatred and war anyway are not really based in who and what they are fundamentally as people, but on the the names they’re called by — Republican, Democrat, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, whatever.  Does god care more that call upon him (or her!) by one name rather than another? — or that we behave toward one another and toward the creation we have all been gifted to live within with respect, love, and the best effort of our hearts and minds?  God has as many ways to enter into people, as there are people: we all have our own language, and god knows them all.

From another poem of mine,

God cannot be enclosed in a book
or in the miser’s soul
which portions out justice in dribbles
and rations out love in crumbs,
then wonders why we starve.

God is too wide and vast and long
and knows us for what we are
as is known the sky, the river, the rocks,
as is knows each creature that breathes.

God is too wide, too vast, too long
and knows us as we are.

Since I’m still engaged in the awkward & sporadic conversation that gave rise to this post, I’ve been thinking a lot more about religion again, and will probably be writing more about it too.  Meanwhile, here are some of the other posts I’ve written about religion, religious/political ideologies, & my own personal god stuff.

• A brief spiritual history (27 Apr 2006)
• The god thing (30 Apr 2006)
• Hiisi (15 May 2006)
• Sermon (a poem) (17 May 2009; poem written in 1992)
• Religion v. belief (19 May 2009)
• Christianist, defined (23 Jun 2009)
• No Questions, Questions (poem) (24 Jun 2009)
• James Dobson’s God is a child abuser, & so is Jerry Prevo’s (22 Sep 2009)
• Job 42.13 (poem) (9 Jan 2010; poem written in 1995)
• Helping Haiti (& telling Pat Robertson to STFU) (13 Jan 2010)
• Integrity, violation, healing (21 Apr 2010)
• Metsän henki (poem) (30 Apr 2010; poem written in 2000)

Related posts:

1. Religion v. belief
2. An indictment of the Christian heresy followed by Palin & friends
3. God of Mosquitoes (poem)

Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America by Robert Whitaker
(New York: Crown Publishers, 2010).
416 pages. ISBN 978-0-307-45241-2.

An epidemic of gargantuan proportions has been afoot for some time, according to Robert Whitaker, author of Anatomy of an Epidemic. I have felt it so myself, but who listens to previous customers of the great professional class of biological psychiatrists?

The epidemic

Whitaker originally came to this research in 1998 as a journalist reporting on clinical testing of new drugs, when he became aware of studies in which schizophrenia patients were withdrawn from their anti-psychotic medications. He was appalled, believing that anti-psychotic medications were as necessary for schizophrenia as insulin was for diabetics — which is what the psychiatric profession wanted us all to believe. But he came across the results of two World Health Organization studies, both of which showed better outcomes for sufferers of schizophrenia in Third World countries like India, Nigeria, and Colombia than in the Western world (U.S. and European). The kicker is that only 16% of those sufferers were maintained continuously on anti-psychotic medications, compared with 61% of the patients in developed countries. This began a long research for Whitaker, leading to his earlier book, Mad in America (2001), and Anatomy of an Epidemic (2010), both of which confirm what many opponents of forced treatment have been saying for years without the benefit of “a white coat” or the aura of respectability (they were “just patients,” or they were “just members of a mind control cult called Scientology” — biopsychiatry’s largest opposition). Whitaker has shown that there is no “chemical imbalance” that is rebalanced by anti-psychotic medications, but that the medications cause harm to the nerves of the brain, which do not always recover, creating more illness over time than there had ever been. The result has been an epidemic rise in the population of disabled mentally ill, from 355,000 adults in state and county mental hospitals in 1995 to over 4 million on SSI or SSDI for mental illness — 1 in 76 American adults.

Anatomy of an Epidemic goes far beyond how those suffering from schizophrenia are treated, but covers all major classes of mental illness. The epidemic is most evident in the history of depression and bipolar disorder. Bipolar disorder especially used to be very rare, occurring in only 1 in 13,000 people in 1955, but now occurring in 1 in 40 people. Whitaker points to antidepressants as the culprit, giving those who suffer from depression debilitating outcomes, where as before many people recovered from depression on their own. In one study discussed by Whitaker of 87,290 patients from 1997 to 2001 who were diagnosed with depression or anxiety, those treated with antidepressants converted to bipolar illness at three times the rate of those who didn’t take antidepressants.

The epidemic has also spread to children all the way down to toddler ages. In children, ADHD has been the beginning diagnosis, leading to high outcomes of bipolar and poor outcomes further on as the children grow into adulthood if they are placed on stimulants that are supposed to address their issues. From 1987, when the practice of prescribing psychiatric medications to children gained traction, to 2007, the number of American children getting SSI or SSDI checks for disability because of mental illness increased by 35 times, from 16,200 in 1987 to 561,569 in 2007. This is in spite of medications that the psychiatric profession has assured us are supposed to help people — not disable them.

So, finally after 60 years of misinformation and withholding of truth from psychiatrists, a book of rational upstanding merit has hit the media. Anatomy of an Epidemic also documents how psychiatrists and their allies the pharmaceutical companies have managed such a scheme. It has been the most important book for me to read in over twenty years as I struggled to tell others about the possibility of real disability from taking psychiatric drugs. Those who did the research chose alternatives to drugs. I also have friends who are on the medications because they have been on them too long to stop. They are still in pain and it saddens me, but I understand.

Getting off psychiatric medications

I also understand that there are some people who have been helped by psychiatric drugs, and I would not want them to go off them because it is better for them to be taking them. No one knows why they work, or what causes mental illness in the first place. Whitaker himself does not advise anyone to stop taking their meds. One reason is that withdrawal from medications is a process that will uncover the nerve damage from the medications and any previous problems that were unsolved will be more present. I will not hesitate to suggest to people to do their research and read Peter Breggin’s book Your Drug May Be Your Problem. Breggin provides food for thought about medications and life itself for someone contemplating trying life without drugs. Breggin gives sound information on how to safely transition off psychiatric medications. It is dangerous, but many people have done it successfully. BUT DO THE RESEARCH and HAVE A PLAN and BACK UP people you trust to go through this with you, including a sympathetic doctor. I understand that this can be hard. So many people are locked into their drugs with housing, SSI, SSDI and family relationships that make it even more complicated.

The reality is that no one knows what causes mental illness. All this talk of a biochemical cause has been a nice looking charade for people to look like they are scientific and keep their jobs. [not to mention gaining professional prestige and making lots of money.] They’ve done an amazing marketing job on the American public; unfortunately they have misled us all in a way that is worse than criminal. Prozac was known to cause suicidal thoughts and impulses in the first trials of that drug. But did they [Eli Lilly, Prozac's manufacturer] tell anyone? Did they put it on the label? Did they hold it from production? No. They did none of these things. It was the reporting of incidents and several lawsuits that finally led to a label being put on the bottle. Many places in Europe the drug is banned. Whitaker’s book fills in a lot of the gaps in information that people so desperately need that the press has not delivered — having gone straight to the “experts” for their information.

A Finnish solution: Open Dialogue

Besides the research with many graphs showing the numbers and history of pharmopsychiatry, the most exciting thing to me about Anatomy of an Epidemic is Whitaker’s ponderings of what to do and who’s doing what. Particularly, the Finns in Western Lapland (which once had an incidence of schizophrenia twice and even three times higher than in the rest of Finland and Europe), use need-adapted treatment and Open Dialogue and have shown a sound record of success with psychosis and schizophrenia. In this method, the recovery rate for patients is astonishing. Only 20% of first-time psychotic patients are treated continuously with anti-psychotic medication, and only about one-third are exposed to anti-psychotic medications at all. Yet 80% — most not treated at all with medications — are back at school or in jobs within two to five years. The Open Dialogue method works by creating a team of three who work collaboratively as a team with the patient and his or her family and support system. Meetings, usually in the patient’s home, are conducted openly, with every person, including the patient, included as a full participant in the conversation, and all treatment decisions are made jointly between the patient and treatment providers. There is no forced treatment, most patients never receive medications, and only around 20% end up using medications continuously. Since 1993, not even one first-episode psychotic patient in Western Lapland has gone on to be chronically hospitalized — a very different outcome than had been common there before, or what is still common in the U.S.

The Finnish psychiatrists and psychologists in Western Lapland also have the idea that the illness is social rather than biological or even psychological. “Psychosis does not live in the head,” Whitaker quotes Tapio Salo, a psychologist at Keropudas Hospital in Tornia, Finland. “It lives in the in-between of family members, and in the in-between of people. It is in the relationship, and the one who is psychotic makes the bad condition visible. He or she ‘wears the symptoms’ and has the burden to carry them.”

This is novel language for me, who has felt that this kind of communication is essential to healing but didn’t have a name for it. Knowing who you are, what you need and having people to share your reality with is crucial to mental health. Having used a talking stick (a Native American communication tool) at home when things got out of hand with my nephew, I can attest to this firsthand. (See my story below). And it follows along with what systems theory says about how things work: that the relationships within any system are much more important to look than just its “parts.” An individual person is just one part of a system of social and physical relationships.

The Finnish doctors talk about repairing the social fabric the “sick” person is in. It makes so much sense to me that Open Dialogue therapy as used in Tornio works. Why don’t we get unafraid of being seen as “crazy” and speak up? Why don’t we get unafraid of “crazy” people and listen up as well? They’ve done it in Finland and since the 1980s have reduced the incidence of schizophrenia in Western Lapland down from 25 a year to 2 a year as measured from new cases. I could see collaborative methods like Open Dialogue working with all sorts of problems. Creating this space, we could face a lot more than we can alone and in this process we could do restorative justice, heal our children, change the school system, and change how we all look at what’s important.

I highly recommend Anatomy of an Epidemic to anyone associated with psychiatry as a patient, family member, friend, city planners and care providers because the truth must be made known and the large construct of lies that underlie bio-psychiatry and the the psychopharmaceutical marketplace needs to stop. If you want the short version before buying it, watch Whitaker’s on BookTV here: http://cs.pn/magicbullets. (Whitaker also has links to all the studies referred to in his book at his website: http://www.madinamerica.com/.)

A personal story

But before you go and hate all these doctors, think about what kind of culture we live in. I for one have had to struggle with my own illness and treatment that was supposed to help. In the late 1980s, I had several problems that I understand today, but didn’t at the time. It all culminated in me starting to drink — alcohol was my lead-in drug. It led to LSD really fast, and then to me getting lost in the streets of San Francisco, losing four days of sleep and food. Of course I was crackers. I needed sleep and food. I got it in the hospital, but I also got a cocktail of heavy drugs. I only survived not becoming a statistic through having become aware of what Haldol (an “antipsychotic”) was and what others have suffered before me by the hands of psychiatry. I had a short stay in the hospital because I started tonguing the meds (and secretly spitting them out) as soon as I was able to figure out where I was. I think it was day three, when I finally got enough sleep that I was able to look at the map of San Francisco that was on the wall, and it all came back to me. I was oriented again times three. (This is medical provider talk meaning that the patient can state who he/she is, where he/she is, when he/she is — day, year, etc.) So, very shortly I got my support team together and advocated myself right out of there.

It took years for me to overcome the stigma from what happened to me and finding words for who I am, what I need in order to form healthy relationships. Even though I knew the system was screwy, I had a rough time with what I did. I did take too many drugs, I got lost, and I felt a lot of shame about that. That was over 25 years ago and I’ve recovered and I understand what happened from a deep level. I can now talk about how it started for me: being a kid from an alcoholic family who also happened to be a transman. I started drinking when I hit adolescence, but before I could even face my rare “queer” identity, I was sexually molested by my therapist. Now if anyone understands how that can affect a kid, well, of course it felt weird, but also I was getting attention for being special and getting attention period. It also gave me the idea that I was really an adult. Other than giving me a few tools on how not to drink, he didn’t “cure” me, but instead gave me a sexual addiction to carry with me for a number of years. I went off to college to try and figure out my vocation and didn’t succeed.

When I returned from college, I was assaulted again, but after this time I went on to a woman’s festival in Michigan. During the four-day event, a woman was taken off the land to a psychiatric facility. There was uproar and I became politicized from it. It could have been me freaking out, but was lucky I had someone to talk to about what happened with me. So in short order, I learned about class, race, mental-ism, able-ism. Then I went on a journey to Big Mountain in Arizona, a portion of the Dine Nation’s reservation lands, and there learned about what community was. In all that journeying, I became closer to coming out as trans, but alas, what led up to hospitalization was getting back to the city where everyone is supposed to watch their own back, get a job, with no one to feed or house them if they fail. In this condition, so many things hit the fan at once. At the point of my forced hospitalization, I understood something at a gut level that took another 25 years to sort out and articulate.

I spent those years as an activist. I also found my partner who suffers periodically from depression who says she’s “dodged the magic bullets” of psychiatric medications, instead learning to take care of herself successfully in other ways. Together we raised my nephew who came to us at age 9, diagnosed “severely emotionally disturbed” and on the antidepressant Imipramine — at least the fourth drug that he’d been tried on (the others being Ritalin, Dexedrine, and Thorazine). We took him off it over the course of 6 months where he finally stabilized without it and started to work on his violent behavior. He’s been completely drug free since age 9-1/2, and is now a strapping good-hearted 22-year-old who’s just finishing up Job Corps.

Being trans was the last piece that put my life on track. I now have an inkling of who I am what I need and have found happiness in being able to communicate this to others. I have also taken off from this culture to research what needs to change before I can come back and work. I am without a house to live in, but I am not homeless. I look back in on a culture that is not facing up to facts and certainly not comfortable with facing the despair that many who are leaders of this new movement towards sustainability have felt.

Mental health & sustainability

Finally, to share what is most importance to me about this book: The kind of collaboration demonstrated in Open Dialogue offers a way to heal in a wider sense. Open Dialogue fits into the 4th step of The Natural Step, a sustainability framework put forth by a medical doctor in Sweden (Dr. Karl-Henrik Robèrt) who cut through all the confusing arguments around what needed to be done about the environment. He saw a direct correlation to the rising rates of cancer that was killing his patients.
Simply, the four steps of the Natural Step are:

1. Reduce the amount of materials that are brought up from under the earth in to the level the natural system can make it non-toxic again.
2. Reduce the amount of man made materials to levels the natural system can t transform back into none-toxic again.
3. Reduce the destruction to natural systems so they can do the work of detoxifying these substances.
4. Meet human needs worldwide.

The fourth step — meeting human needs worldwide — is the one most confusing to sustainability folks, and I’ve given it a great deal of thought over the years since I learned of this framework. I see Americans suffering form a spiritual poverty and great alienation from their environment, while third world countries suffer from hunger and a dearth of material needs. Given the World Health Organization reports of higher cure rates in Third World nations points to a possibly more intact society, whereas in developed nations like the U.S. there is more alienation, broken families and a rare occurrence of extended families with rich supports intact. The ideal of the independent person has been very destructive to the social fabric.

Open Dialogue and similar collaborative methods offer a means of healing. It’s important as we move through this economic/ecological crisis that we find a way to mend the social fabric. As the casualties of our mental health system pile up and people are unable to take care of themselves, we will not be able to sustain all the costs. This is one of the reasons that the downtown shelters run by officials that cost so much are having so many problems. They are bearing some of the cost of psychiatry’s methods.

Where I am in Tent City 4, we’re taking care of each other and keeping our heads on straight. We do so by coming together and working it out collectively. All the people here are learning that we can take care of each other, where the system failed us. We don’t ask for much, just a job and an apartment, but we’re keeping our heads together in the meantime and living in tents and organizing so that we stay safe. This is revolutionary for people. The amazing thing is, is that it works. To run 16 shelters in the area costs SHARE about $725,000 per year to run, while around 500 beds are provided. I have faith in humans to fix all the stuff going on by talking about it.

As the epidemic of mental illness rises to a crisis point, so does the pathway to a sustainable future narrow. As more people become aware of the ecological crisis, we’ll need some kind of safe communication space to work out our despair and grief. Again, this is prohibitive work on a public scale. Much change needs to happen soon if society wants to continue.

It’s all connected. It’s time for us to start talking to each other rather than relying on the experts. We all see how it is going — we need to gather together and think together. There is such a thing as collective intelligence, and I think the Finns are on to something big. There is such a thing as opening our hearts in safe space and working it out, rather than waiting for our “superiors” or “experts” to tell us what to do. We have eyes and something special between our ears. I believe we can do it. Let’s get it done.

Related posts:

1. Government by psychopathy
2. Night of the butcher knife
3. We are all, or none

At the beginning of this month, I’d intended to post a poem — mine or someone else’s — every day in honor of National Poetry Month. I fell down on the job. But today it’s still April. Besides, my friend Kathy asked me to post one.  So here’s one.

Metsän henki

She stands outside & in me,
a flicker beckoning
at the inmost limit of vision
where the blind spot is insufficiency
of self-knowing.

She leans to whisper in my breath:
“Heed my green flow in your blood;
drink the wind; inspire
the medicine of trees.”

Leaves flutter, inviting.
She is visible in the dappled breeze
among the white trunks.
At the back of my mind she is visible,
backgrounding all.

[written in 2000; published in Teresa McPherson, ed., Transformations, Anchorage, AK: Radical Arts for Women, 2002.]

About this poem

Metsän henki (Finnish) means forest spirit.  Hence, an alternative name for my central “household god,” the forest spirit Mielikki, who is metsolan emäntä: Mistress of Woodland. The name Mielikki combined the word mieli = heart, mind, consciousness, desire, etc., plus the suffix of endearment -kki.

Related posts:

1. Mielikki
2. A brief spiritual history
3. “Anchorage Oil Town Villanelle” published in Cirque

Editor’s note: A couple of days ago in “Jane Doe, Finnish style” I wrote about how Rachel Meikäläinen, originally a character in my novel-in-progress Mistress of Woodland, became a philosophical antecedent & historical figure in the fictional Consensus society in the story universe of Long Dark & Cold.  I also said that she might be writing some guest posts “because so much of her stuff about integrity and violation is relevant to the ways the Real World we live in screws with us too; & also how we keep it together.”  The following, excerpted from a work of hers tentatively titled Whole Numbers, would have a major impact on the Long Dark character Esti Gusev when she read it as a ward of Mars Authority at Apollineris at the age of 14 years, about two years after the destruction of  the New Nazareth armed cult at Gusev Crater, where she had been born. – Mel

The root of the word integrity, is the Latin integer, which means, literally, untouched.  And so an integer is a number that hasn’t been broken or fractionated.  It is complete, a whole number.  Something which is integral is something which is essential to completeness, something which is integrated, which is to say, something which has been incorporated into a functioning and unified whole.  And so to have integrity is to have wholeness, completion, undividedness. But if integrity is undivided, unbroken, untouched — then what, in this context, is it to be touched?

Touch is not a bad thing, usually — but in this context, to be touched is to be breached, broken, violated.  That’s at its worst, anyway. But the worst happens, over and over.  Even when no harm is intended, harm often comes; and very often, of course, harm is intended.  The harms may be physical; the harms may be emotional or spiritual.  Abuse.  Coercion.  The most common harm of all to human beings — the one that most harmed me — was the simple and common harm of those who convince themselves that they are well-intended when they attempt to coerce an individual into behaving according to their arbitrary standards, rather than according to the individual’s integrity — to what should properly be understood as that individual’s true selfhood.

Integrity is whole.  The root of the word whole is the Old English word hal, which is also the root or closely related to the roots of the words heal, hale, holy.  To be truly whole, to be fully and completely healed, would be as though one had not been touched by the harm that had touched one.  But you have been touched, so how, then, can you become untouched again?  Here’s the strange contradiction of it: you must incorporate the experience of that touch, that harm, into yourself.  Meaning literally — because incorporate comes in part from the Latin root corpus meaning body — that you make that touch, that hurt, part of your body: but in a hale, healing way.  How?  When you eat an apple, does it stay an apple inside your stomach and gut?  No, it transforms: your body transforms it with its acids and enzymes into nutrients for your body, while expelling the waste. If  someone has poisoned the apple, you might not survive it, true — but otherwise, all but its waste products become part of your body.  Call it incorporation, call it integration: transformation comes with the territory of it.  You have no choice about the harms that others inflict upon you: but if they haven’t actually killed you, you usually still have the choice to transform those harms within yourself to integrate them into a new whole, a new integrity.  You are not exactly the same self you began with; but you are still your own self.  The Self itself is change.

Related posts:

1. Jane Doe, Finnish style
2. Buddha in the coffee shop
3. Building Consensus