A Black Letter Day

Antikyra, Greece.

I just skimmed through the Guardian and the New York Times – I can only spend 15-30 minutes on the Times, in particular, or I get too depressed – and my husband asked, from the kitchen, “what are all those sighs?” It’s unbelievable, what’s going on, and the place that both the U.S. and the U.K. have come to, not to mention the world and climate change. And it’s difficult for me, sometimes, to understand my own life in this context. Everything I've based my life on and care about deeply feels irrelevant, and, at the same time, endangered.

I think it’s imperative that we try to talk about this aspect of being alive now, not just the issues that we’re all so concerned about and which are affecting us nearly every minute of every day.  So many of us are living with grief, pain, and helplessness, plus we’re being fed a steady diet of anxiety, but the message given by capitalism, advertising, entertainment, and even many of our spiritual and educational institutions, is to carry on as usual: don’t talk too much about it, do your work, shore up your own future, play with your friends and family, pretend this isn’t happening as long as you possibly can. Unfortunately, most people in leadership positions have little idea how to talk about such a dire psychological crisis. And in the U.S., the denial of interconnection of all the major issues in the world has reached epic proportions. Today we read that Greece is building a floating migrant barrier. It’s horrible, but far more understandable to me than a wall on the southern U.S. border. Greece and Italy have borne the brunt of the refugee crisis for all of Europe and the rest of the world, while the richer countries have set quotas and washed their hands. And America has the gall to criticize Greece? Or refuse to acknowledge whose policies have caused the terrorism and refugee crises in the first place? How can people be capable of such hypocrisy and poor thinking? And that’s just one part of the whole interconnected mess.

So we have a probable impeachment acquittal and Brexit coming on the same day. An American who I love very much recently said to me, “This country is really booming!” They meant it, and believe it. It's as if what that person sees, and what I see, are two entirely different views of reality.

As friends who share similar views, however, we have to find ways to talk to each other, and help each other not to be crushed by the weight of grief and anxiety about the future, our sense of the sheer wrongness of what is going on, and our utter fatigue at the rigidity of the current moral divisions in society. It’s extremely difficult. If you focus on your own personal life, or on pursuits like art, for instance, it can feel like putting your head in the sand even though those pursuits are vitally important for lifting the spirit. Writing about what is wrong can be cathartic, and make us feel like we’re doing something, but does it actually do any good when no one is willing to change their mind? Is there anything truly useful that any of us can do against these sorts of forces, other than doing our best to try to change the political leadership?

I think of people in concentration camps, or civilians caught up in wars. We in the privileged West are not being literally bombarded by explosive weapons, but we are being bombarded emotionally and psychologically every single day. We are not literally imprisoned in concentration camps, but we are actually imprisoned in a situation that is doing violence to innocent people and to the earth as we watch, and this situation of being a constant witness is draining and depleting to the point of paralysis, no matter how secure we are, how much money we give, or how many changes we make in our own lifestyles.

So I also remember the importance of people who have kept hope alive in the past, and who kept LIFE alive, by living as fully, joyfully, lovingly, non-violently, and wisely as possible while being absolutely clear about what was, in fact, happening. As Thomas Merton wrote, we need to become people who can hold the darkness and the light in our hands simultaneously. This is only possible through contemplation and a great deal of thought and inner work, but that is part of the work we are being called to do.

The other part of the work is to band together to take collective action -- together we can accomplish much more than as individuals, and we can do more to help one another through this extremely challenging period of time. Do something. Help build a house for someone who can't afford it. Work collectively to force institutions to divest of fossil fuels. Sponsor a refugee family. Send aid to imprisoned Hispanic children. Teach. Bring art and music into other people's lives. Start a group where thinking, caring people like you can discuss the challenge of being alive right now. Turn your own despair into someone else's hope.

Comments

[Jean in London]

Thanks, Beth. On this sad day, it does help a lot to know that a friend across the ocean is seeing and feeling all the things that I am, and that you can express it so precisely and eloquently (though at the same time of course I wish for you that you weren't) xx

[Leslee]

Funny, I came across a FB post you made I think after the 2016 election that I had saved (can't find it again right now) about resistance over the long haul. I love your last paragraph here - sometimes it's hard to know what to do, but it does help to "Do something." I will write postcards to voters again soon, which I did before the 2018 midterms. Today's small bit with my small bit of free time was to go to the JFK Library's nomination page for the 2020 Profile in Courage to nominate Marie Yovanovich and Fiona Hill for speaking truth to power and fighting corruption. I need to look into something more collective locally going forward...

[Leslee]

Ah, apparently the Profile in Courage award goes to elected or previously elected officials. Amended my nomination to Adam Schiff.

[Beth]

Thanks for writing, Jean. I've been thinking of you and our other British friends today, of course, and wishing we were all together. Canada is a funny in-between place for both British and American people; now that I'm a dual citizen I feel more removed from the travesty of current American politics, but I'll also always feel connected. And I have a number of British friends here too, who are uniformly heartsick about what's happening today.

Leslee, I especially like your first nominations and wish you’d been able to keep them! Yes, we just have to keep doing our bit. Thanks for writing, I was glad to hear form you today.

[Tom Kempton]

Hello Beth,

I take a quote from your excellent post, as follows:-

"The other part of the work is to band together to take collective action -- together we can accomplish much more than as individuals, and we can do more to help one another through this extremely challenging period of time. Do something."

The problem for us and like-minded individuals is that the majority have done precisely that. And that collective action will have its consequencies, for good or for ill.

[Vivian Lewin]

This morning I'm remembering hearing that during World War Two my German aunt, half-Jewish and somehow still living un-apprehended with her young children in a little town somewhere in Germany, played the piano for her friend a ballet dancer, first to offer dance classes to the children of that town and then, too, to their mothers. I was leafing through online archive copies of the Berlin Tagesblatt for December 1928. And I'm thinking that W. H. Auden trumps Mary Oliver.

[Roderick Robinson]

Hereford to Montreal is 3125 miles, I've just checked. I'm warmed that someone so distant understands the British state of affairs and is sympathetic.

Strange that. Better for you that you didn't know. How do I profit from your amplified distress? Perhaps because shared misfortune is in some way diminished misfortune.

Certainly misfortune tarnishes things. My singing lessons started before the referendum and brought with them an unexpected and gratifying sense of elevation. But it's a private sense, only I benefit. In the strange tug-of-war I am subject to these days, singing becomes a bolt-hole and thus - somehow - unfair. Others don't have access. I'm privileged in a way I don't welcome. A very minor matter in the scheme of things but nevertheless unwanted.

I could encourage people to sing but it would be an odd and seemingly trivial bulwark against their problems. Besides... and besides... and besides...

[Duchesse]

We have talked about this in person and on your blog, I appreciate others' comments.

A friend lis committed to tracing the rise of transnational organized crime and its goal of perverting or subsuming democratic governments to suit its ends. Her form of activism is to send her friends (with their permission), reports from accredited journalists and investigators, both in the mainstream (e.g.,NYT) and specialized newsletters. This material disturbs me. Yet at the same time, I appreciate that she is trying to alert persons to how fragile their political systems are and that their rights are not immutable. Once informed, one would be unlikely to say "the country is booming!"

We need courage to counter that complacency (and it's not essential to take on everyone), compassion to see the fear behind it, and discernment to select leaders (not just in electoral politics- look at what is happening in various faith communities!) who have solid, achievable, comprehensive plans.

[Beth]

Tom, so good to hear from you. And you're totally right: their form of collective action has worked very well indeed. History shows that it's a lot easier to get people to draw together and support authoritarian leaders whose message is based on fear. Action based on love, courage, hope, compassion and justice is a much harder sell, especially in times like these, but it's quite possible for us to do on our own and in small groups -- and we must do that, I think. Clothing the naked, visiting the prisoner, helping the widow, feeding the poor are ancient directives. Anonymous individuals and small groups sheltered Jews, created safe passageways for escaping slaves, leave water in the Mexican desert for refugees, drive oppressed minorities to the voting booth. There's a great deal we can do, with determination and courage.

Robbie, thanks for commenting. It's not hard to have compassion and understanding for people and societies far away, because the basic principles behind human division are always similar. I hear you about the singing, but I'm going to continue and I sincerely hope you do too. Imagining a world without music, and without people who can put aside their troubles and sing, is unbearable. And I don't think it's a matter of privilege. People in poor villages are probably more likely to get together and sing or listen to local music than most of us are; it's always been a way of rising above troubles, poverty, oppression.

Duchesse, yes, I share your discomfiture at the rise of a new type of organized crime and subversion of democracies, and wonder if doing all that research and sending this material to liberals who would probably vote the same way actually accomplishes much. Nor am I convinced that all our "educational" efforts can, or do, reach those who are firmly convinced they are also "right". My question is what we can do that actually makes a difference in suffering people's lives (see my response to Tom, just above). Volunteering in a soup kitchen, or helping refugees, are harder choices for many of us who have lived lives of privilege, but it does good -- both to us and to the people in need. We have to be willing to put something of ourselves on the line, to step outside our comfortable lives, to take a risk. As you say, that takes courage.

[Beth]

Vivian, yes, that's exactly the sort of courage I'm remembering.
Which Auden and Oliver poems are you speaking about, or do you just mean their different ways of engaging and speaking about the world?