Call Me By My True Names

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Liza and the group on 18 August 2015.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Continuing on to some of your other letters, I see that you interpreted my question--"to what extent does reflecting 'the devil we are possessed by' necessitate identifying with that devil?"--with "devil" meaning enemy, as in Donald Trump or Dan Gilbert. And indeed, the tendency in our polarized time is to demonize anyone who is not on my side. The spiritual practice you recommend is a good one, akin to metta, or loving-kindness, meditation practiced in Theravada Buddhism.

So I agree. But we also have an obligation to stop people who, for whatever reason, think they have a right to kill other people--starting with the weakest and most innocent and working our way up from there. Otherwise any commitment to loving-kindness becomes incoherent.

I should clarify that what I meant was identifying with actual, damned, irredeemable devils. The souls of Donald Trump and Dan Gilbert are still "in play." But maybe what you and I are talking about is a distinction without a difference.

My point is that the artist and mystic, following in the footsteps of Christ, operates in a much more "collapsed" reality than do other crusaders.

In some mysterious sense, he identifies his own sin as fundamental, as constitutive of the world's problems. So if babies are being dismembered, it is because I am in some sense a dismemberer of babies. I am Pharaoh, I am Herod. I am so unwilling to allow Moses or Christ into this world that I kill everything that resembles him within myself and others. This sentiment is not unlike the one expressed in Thich Nhat Hanh's poem, "Call Me By My True Names":

Call Me by My True Names 

Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive. 

Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone. 

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and
death of all that are alive. 

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,
and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time
to eat the mayfly. 

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence,
feeds itself on the frog. 

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda. 

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving. 

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to my people,
dying slowly in a forced labor camp. 

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all
walks of life.
My pain if like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans. 

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one. 

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.