Into The Breach

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

I read an argument over at Huffy this week about which books would better serve our college-bound high school seniors. The author cited the classics — Twain, Shakespeare, Dickens — as necessary reading, but bemoaned the lack of works by multicultural authors, writing of far-off places and peoples. This, asserted the author, failed to give students the rounded view of the world they needed for higher learning. It was suggested that graduates are hampered by their focus on Western literature and in most cases, an all-American, all-white view of life.

While there may be something to that, as our racial demographics shift in this nation, that will change as well, although I expect it will take academia some time to refresh its notion of what “classic” means. Meanwhile, we have contemporary classics* that allow us to shift the kaleidoscope on cultural imagery and kids who enjoy reading will probably stumble upon some of them. A few come to mind, works like Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, and I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou’s early autobiography. To Kill A Mockingbird continues to be everyone’s favorite. All of these are still timely today — the definition of “classic” – and now is a perfect time to reread The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.

As a young woman, I was influenced by the great British classics, by the works of Ernest Hemingway, by playwrights like Tennessee Williams and poets of all stripes. I learned an alternate history from the Am-Ind anthology, Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee and James Michener’s homage to the Pan-Asian islanders and exploration of Calvinism’s emotional bankruptcy, Hawaii. I would much rather discuss Judeo-Christian philosophy with someone who has read his wonderful history of the Holy Land, The Source. As an avid reader, my list of early influences is much too long to include here.

Deciding what is mandatory reading in preparation for higher education is another of those topics that will be wrestled into infinity by those in the know, sure to change slowly, but I think we can all agree that humans are third-dimensional creatures, largely defined by their experience. Our activity, our thought process will mirror what we are accustomed to within our environment, our belief system and culture.

Whatever we can do to enlarge that experience gives us opportunity to see the world through fresh eyes. That’s why education is so critical, why people like Rick Santorum don’t want Christian kids in secular colleges, the bottle uncorked and their true-believer status shaken by a larger world-view. What was Golda’s prayer for her daughters in Fiddler On The Roof? “Let them be like Ruth and like Esther. Let them be deserving of praise. Strengthen them, oh Lord, and keep them from the stranger’s ways.”

When the picture gets big enough, the doubts get thicker and then all the rules slip out the side door. That’s why enlightenment seems always to follow on the heels of noticing what doesn’t work, what doesn’t add up, what shakes the very pillars of our understanding. The more we know, the less sure we become, and that is fertile, holy ground. The Course in Miracles’ affirmation, “You can be right or you can be happy,” says it all, I think. The more we insist we’ve got the answers, the more tone-deaf we become to what’s going on around us, the less we hear our authentic self.

I’m sure you know a lot of people who are absolutely, unshakably and undeniably right; I do. And it’s not too hard to extrapolate their behavior based on those variables, which is why I think we really dropped the ball as regards how far afield we now find our current political schisms. In order to deal with our deep polarization, we must muster the courage to explore our differences in a less divisive way, which exposes us to danger (that we find the mote in another’s eye) as well as to grace (that we discover our own.)

For instance, this business about the Middle East not understanding American first amendment rights of free speech may seem lame to us, here in a nation that doesn’t kill its dissidents (or so it claims), but in those countries, if something is allowed, it is nationally sanctioned. If it is not, it can only be discussed in whispers, behind closed doors. More than a decade ago, arguing for a square shake for Palestinians, I would point out that a child born into perpetual war would grow up, if s/he survived, to be a perpetual warrior; expecting otherwise was the fantasy of an untraumatized population. We do what we know to do.

Now that America has begun to change her collective mind about unwavering Zionism, the terrorism of 9/11 under our belts — now that we’ve spent all of a decade and more with our eyes on the chessboard of desert battlefields half-way around the globe — we can agree that there is no surprise in the fury accompanying protest in a part of the world where people are 1] hungry, angry, frustrated, and 2] physically and morally repressed. When children see their parents blown up, they will learn how to blow things up.

Tribes tend to coalesce around the common enemy. We must be careful to understand the frightened humanity at the core of those protesters, careful not to demonize them for their activity. Where each of us is in consciousness is simply where we are, where our experiences have left us. If we want peaceful solutions to Middle East problems, we must make new choices. If we want peaceful solutions, we must begin with peaceful actions and the end to occupation; we have yet to do that. We have yet to understand it as necessary.

A recent interview with an Afghan soldier who murdered his American trainers indicated that he’s heard that Americans “burned the Koran.” How many of us would give up our life to take revenge on someone who burned a Bible? I’d think none, even if we attended the bonfire and protested the activity. How, then, do we relate to such a primitive inclination? Can we respect the humanity of this man, complicated by his cultural miscalculations, despite his crime?

Our ability to defuse these kinds of cultural landmines comes as an afterthought to outrage: we mostly don’t see them coming. It is not in our culture to be so thin-skinned — our melting pot society toughened us up, a nation of immigrants — but in these last years of political polarization, we’ve become increasingly tribal ourselves, and in a most uncivilized manner. Killing in the name of the Prophet doesn’t seem quite so crude a practice when we consider that two women considered national leaders — Mrs. Palin and Mrs. Bachmann — both practice a form of religion that includes exorcism for the “demons” of homosexuality and masturbation, and approves the witch hunts in Africa that have resulted in deaths.

Neither is our government above reproach. The bodies of women and children, collateral damage done by our drones, remain nameless as we hunt down and kill those accused of endangering “our interests” across international borders. In a nation quickly being dubbed a “prison nation,” who is being locked up and why? In a legal system gone understaffed and overburdened, our law seemingly corrupted by big money and power, what happened to justice? Why is business given a pass on responsibility while ordinary people pay every bit of the price? How is it that we kill people in wheel chairs, taze pregnant women and handcuff elementary school children? What have we become afraid of in this nation?

So the question — how to best deal with extremism, here, there and everywhere — requires us to cross a breach of cultural understanding that tests reason as surely as does some of our own home-grown hysteria and political denial.

Modernity in the Middle East sometimes looks very far away. Modernity in the thinking of some Americans seems almost as challenging; they are so frightened of the future they invoke a past as fantasized as Richie Cunningham’s Happy Days. Have they no faith in our future, no belief in our ability to grow through this painful period? How can we convince them of the truth that there is no “standing still” in the universe, neither is there “going back.” We can pretend these thing for awhile, if need be, but the big Pluto/Uranus energies won’t let them go unaddressed for long. We have come to make waves, to help loosen the strings holding the old paradigm in place. We arrived just in time to yell like banshees and bounce on the bed, to make a mess of what has been in order to make room for what is to be!

My friend, astrologer Jessica Murray, has a wonderful new book out, a collection of her essays from Mountain Astrologer, DayKeeperJournal.com, and her website, Mother Sky. They are full of the details we all love here at Planet Waves, transits and corollaries to news events, along with projections of upcoming energy and probable outcomes. It’s entitled At The Crossroads: An Astrologer Looks at these Turbulent Times, another book I highly recommend. This one reminded me of things I knew, instructed me in what to anticipate. Weaving together planetary placement and incidents of the last two years, this read is full of those tidbits I call “dots” — bits that connect to one another, that create a bigger picture of our choices and make our life-path a little easier to walk — and the picture Jessica is painting is all about this remarkable period we call the Shift.

Here’s one of the many quotes I appreciate:

Underlying this idea [that we are at a threshold of decision] is an essentially spiritual premise: that human beings are on this Earth to learn. Astrology presumes that individuals possess an identity that predates and outlasts their conscious ego identity — let us call it the soul — and that this soul has a growth plan: our natal chart and the transits in it. Moreover, this plan is inextricably connected to the growth plan of the whole of humanity. Whatever the daunting lessons implicit in tumultuous historical periods like this one, they are part and parcel of our own individual soul intentions. We chose to be here, right now. There is power in this understanding.

There is power in that understanding, power in the notion that we came to this time/space to do something important, not just for ourselves but for one another. There is power in being gentle with one another, power in true discernment as opposed to judgment, power in finding our commonalities even as we hold one another accountable. That is called “learning.” That is how we make our vision larger, connect the dots, and discover the better course.

Stumbles are allowed, do-overs are encouraged. We must constantly remind ourselves that there is no one way to do something, no human born that isn’t love-incarnate, and no way to be right and happy at the same time. To find the courage to relate to one another in an authentic manner, we have to breach the void space we project out to keep one another away, that barrier we create to keep us “safe.” We must learn to cross this border into one another’s hearts. Nothing is more important in this moment.

In a time this chaotic, that looks harder than it has to. It requires little more than an active understanding that we are all part of one another — cells in the body of God/dess, if you will — entitled to respect and inclusion, and that we cannot cause another harm without harming the whole of humanity. To simply stand next to someone who knows this is dharmic healing. To attempt to lead our life in that dharmic flow is the beginning of wisdom and the prologue to Shift.

* The short list of books I mentioned are oldies. I no longer have much time to read for pleasure, and when I do, I rely on spiritual/astrological books and a handful of fiction authors that hold my attention. I would be very pleased to learn which books have impacted you into adulthood and beyond, which ones you would want to pass down to the next generation as a “must read.”