Pain: “The Cry of Debris.”

Snapshot:

Waking up on July 21, I realize that the work of a decade in Lebanon has ended and citizens of another country are being bombed back at least 30 years, all in “my” name, with the support of “my” government, and if I dare utter a word about it, I am anti-semitic, most especially because I am Jewish. Sitting at the kitchen table, I shake with grief and rage, especially because, just the day before, I had been compelled by HR at the Naval Academy to stand, face the flag with my hand raised (something I’ve not been asked to do before) and recite my oath to the Constitution, simply in order to teach. I did it, with nausea and bile rising in my gut; then I fled the room. I cannot do this. But for now, to put food on the table, I must for a little while longer. Clarissa has emailed me from Cairo. She and the girls are safe, but demonstrations in large public places have begun making transportation difficult. She has been unable to contact her friend in Beirut (and as of 8/24/06 still has been unable to do so), and so cannot verify his safety. My entire life seems to be a contradiction of principles. And yet, somehow, something tells me to stay put.

I feel like I’m always going to live with clenched teeth. I don’t want to become numb, but I do not know how to bear what I know without the poison of hatred. Our lives (or the news about our lives) are filled with people who hate, bombs, murders, rapes, home invasions, diseases, businesses who cheat us, doctors who rob us, abductions, disasters, global warming, vanishing animals, studied willful ignorance and just plain stupidity. These bodies of the dead and afflicted are my body…this is what the great Unity has taught me. How does one maintain ones seat in the crashing tsunami of despair that seems to greet every single day?

Snapshot:

8/6/2006--I attend a seminar held by Dr. J.J. Hurtak, a new age guru whose career I have followed (as a scholar, not devotee) for many years. This is my first opportunity to actually see and possibly meet the man. His organization has invited me to attend, which has surprised me, since some of my published comments regarding his work have been a bit critical. Despite Hurtak’s somewhat vigorous public stances in press, he appears to be a very timid man, not really looking at his audience, allowing his wife to do most of the talking. He seems to be thinner than photos have suggested and has a stoop, moving slowly through his accumulated papers and films, all of which are piled before him, like a slightly befuddled librarian. Although he has written a great deal in the 30 years of his spiritual career, he focuses on his prophetic work, reading aloud his own words, that he says were “given” to him by Enoch explaining how this and that passage has come to pass. He’s proof-texting his own work. It’s curious and as I watch him I realize what an extraordinarily difficult burden it must be to act/be/become the prophet. His rambling words reveal and conceal painful realities: an allusion to how he lost his academic standing when he publicly “came out” with his revelation (no more fellowships, no more academic postings, not even his mentor Mircea Eliade calling him back). His demeanor and clothes do not indicate wealth, but continuous struggle with poverty, self-doubt, being battered by a world that doesn’t want/care about your message. He says things like, “We live in a lesser kingdom of deceit,” and “The most important thing is to ascend beyond the body.” He gets his followers (some 120 strong in a tiny little Quaker meeting room in a small Virginia town), to chant Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew phrases with him, including the words that Jesus is supposed to have said on the cross: “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me.” I wondered about this as an invocation. His entire life has been an exercise in trying to understand what happened to him when he was “taken” by a beam of heavenly light. He cannot accept the possibility of being abandoned. He refuses to take questions, but declares the seminar done when the clock strikes 7p. I cannot accept his message that we need to simply leave this world behind, but I am very moved by his struggle and I realize, that in future, when I write about him, I will have to take his pain into account. I have been chastened.

Two days later I “attend” a special training session at Whole Foods because I’ve been working for the company over a year. It seems strangely like the Hurtak seminar, dis-organized, searching for a message, with the guru CEO John Mackey in discarnate attendance everywhere. We have samples of food sold at our stores at each table and we’re supposed to be interested in the ‘history” of each product. We’re told about Whole Foods larger mission to eradicate poverty in the world by helping micro-banks issue local loans to poor people, mostly women and children, to encourage them to start businesses. While I agree with the intent, I wonder out loud if turning folks into little capitalists is really helpful….just wondering…needing the rest of the picture. Then I further frighten the facilitator by asking her privately, during a break, about the relationship that Whole Foods has with the migrant workers in this country who pick our grapes and other produce (actually, the non-organic produce we sell comes from the same sources as that of any other commercial grocer). Are we doing anything to help their poverty? Isn’t this part of the “history” of each product? She has a mild freak out. Despite my full participation in the seminar, I am the only person present who gets no “prizes.” Several of the other attendees notice. I’ve caused pain, discomfort in the system and I “pay” for it. While I have benefited from the “system” at Whole Foods, I am not allowed to ask about the price of those benefits….be grateful I don’t work at Wal Mart? And what about the workers at Wal Mart? There’s always an ouch.

These sharp moments seem to be about when something about the great Reality infuses awareness. Yet the pain is never the whole story. Arjuna’s despair opened the door to Krishna’s revelation. Jeremiah’s cries were tempered by his absolute conviction that the city of Jerusalem would rise again (and it did). We tell the story of Moses and Pharaoh because there is always that moment of transformation which turns on our acceptance or rejection of the pristine razor of Presence. I love the story of Peter, for who among us has not betrayed someone or something that we love? It is such a human story. I often think that Peter probably told it about himself as an example of a timidity and self-absorption that he later overcame. The pinch is that many of us might not be able to tell that story as a reflection of someone we once were but are no longer. And then there’s the image of the sorrow of the earth hinging on the opening of the world to the lie of despair. Why can no one see that the “evil” of terrorism is borne in despair…the remedy as the Buddha suggests can be found in realizing that anger and the search for revenge is actually accepting the despair as a reality against which we must “defend” ourselves.

And yet, we are all too familiar with these images of pain in our own lives, in our newspapers, on our televisions. We know that we must find a way to be very still in the midst of it, to help if we are called upon, to ever affirm the greater Presence that persists beyond our obscurations. While I’m not advocating masochism (refuge of the ego), or nihilism (another refuge of the ego), denial/or false retreat (another refuge of the ego) or morbid fascination (still another refuge of the ego), I confess that living on this crest of awareness is very painful.

As we come upon the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s land fall, I am reminded by something that a friend who rode out the storm shared with me. He is a babalawo, a initiated priest in the ancient Yoruban/Nigerian tradition of Ifa. For Ifa practitioners who live/d in New Orleans, the hurricane season is known as the Season of Oya, mistress of the marketplace, the whirling storm, sea-surge and sudden permanent change. He sees Katrina as a physical manifestation of the goddess that in the process of her playful romping through the Gulf of Mexico, just happened to destroy the homes of many people. He told me, “Katrina didn’t hit the coast because New Orleans was there. Or, because Biloxi was there. Of course there are human tragedies, because we don’t seem to think that we are subject to the rules of earth, sea and sky. Blame the authorities or the people for the “tragedy” part of the event, Mother Oya as Katrina had nothing to do with that. She plays, she lives. In the past, my people knew that things were coming, as Pharaoh knew the Nile would flood. We would take our belongings and run for higher ground. We wouldn’t defy the Mother, or our own lives, by making it impossible for the people to escape, and then blame them when they couldn’t.” That’s exactly what he did. A full week before the Weather Service issued its dire warning, he had relocated his family in a high part of the city with other relatives. He did lose his physical home, but not all his resources, and he bears no one ill will. Today, he travels about the country collecting money and resources which he distributes to centers and individuals in the city. He doesn’t think New Orleans will ever recover, nor does he think the city should return to what it was. “Oya has changed things and given people new choices. It does no good to be angry about that. Oya says to change and grow…let this pain of transition be the new ground upon which you plant.” He has a large photographic poster of Katrina from space, taken by a NASA satellite. “Her face here is so beautiful…how blessed we are to be able to see her this way. Now maybe we can come together in a new way. And if not,” at this he raises his shoulders rather like a rabbi, “well, I guess we won’t have ‘gotten it’ this time around.”

So, as Inayat Khan indicates, pain exists because we are, indeed, connected. But, it is not an index of our powerlessness. It is an acknowledgement, and can be a tool. Peter didn’t let his failure become the measure of his life. And neither are my country’s failures the measure of mine. May this pain be a goad and a guide to a higher awareness, the position point from which issues all Presence.