The Monster That Now Pursues You

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 21 October 2015.



I don't think this will go in the blog either because I'm not going to be able to express what I feel about this coherently. You may be able to understand what I mean.

I think the so-called uneducated people of America are just pissed as hell having been essentially ridiculed for the last 8 years by everyone from the POTUS to Bill Nye the Science Guy. I feel some of that anger, even though I am not a Creationist or automatic weapon owner or even someone who has smelled sawdust or animal entrails in the last month. But I feel like this is a reckoning. The vengeful, silenced masses are now sending us their inarticulate messenger. The basic message is:

You have banished us from the table, from the public square, from civic discourse. You have been unwilling to engage with us in dialogue, preferring instead to use your monopoly of major media outlets and the bully pulpit of the presidency to shout us down, to proclaim us unclean, to paint our demands and desires as ridiculous, unconscionable, or worse. We, for our part, have attempted several times to present our arguments coherently according to the terms of engagement. But you have killed our most articulate messengers, replacing them with straw men whom you burn in effigy all the day. You have successfully demonized us, silenced us, and caricatured us. And so we now send you the only messenger you can recognize: the caricature, the demon, the vengeful, inarticulate angel. Its exaggerated, grotesque, almost comic features are a function of the toxic underworld from which this monster emerges. Had you extended the warm embrace of civility and dialogue, you might recognize in it a brother or sister or friend. But it is too late for that now. No, you didn't create this entity, but you are the one who turned it into the monster that now pursues you, wordlessly and inexorably.

In my prophetic imagination, this isn't Trump. This being would actually overtake and kill Trump at some point, Trump being far more articulate than the underlying impulse the entity represents. At best, Trump would be a perverse John the Baptist figure:

I am baptizing you with water...but the one who is coming after me is mightier than I. I am not worthy to carry his sandals. (Matt 3:11)

I am not saying anything about the relative validity of issues such as flying the Confederate Flag, espousing traditional views of marriage, believing in the Genesis account of Creation, etc. I'm just saying that it's been relatively quiet lately. Voices have been summarily and successfully silenced. Hillary Clinton is the odds-on favorite for the presidency, Bill Nye has parlayed his Bachelor of Science degree into a second career, and Barack Obama is taking victory laps.

Drop the mic, right?

But you are a fool if you think those voices that raged so violently are just gone. They fester in the fetid darkness, their individual voices echoing, melding into a cacophony of incoherent rage. To be clear, if this were a horror movie, I would be killed along with everyone else. I'd be that traditional character who thinks he understands the being, who thinks he can reason with it, who is fascinated with it, who tries to explain to others how it became what it became.

What the Lord Hath Made Crooked (Part 4 of 10)

The following is a series of attached photos sent from Liza to the group. As usual, we publish typed excerpts of these illuminated texts along with the original photo. The best way is to read the text, of course, is to to experience it in its illuminated form.

14. Onward to my next miscommunication. I did NOT in fact interpret "devil" to mean "enemy." Not by any means. I understand the demons of which you speak. I was merely trying to outline the preliminary steps in combating them: recognizability of their pervasiveness, perspective, patience, and love. Step 1, as I mentioned, is to recognize them in others. In recognizing them, my suggestion was to love these people nonetheless. The implication in my last letter was not that our enemies are the demons; I rather meant to imply the fluidity spectrum of ethical existence, as well as to bring light to the inherent connection weaving its way beneath us, above us, and through us on a constant loop. It's through this understanding that I AM HE AS YOU ARE HE AS YOU ARE ME AND WE ARE ALL TOGETHER that we're able to humanize and love even the most corrupt and brutally inhumane. It's through this understanding that we take collective responsibility over our actions and our brothers'/sisters' actions with equal investment. Whether young or old, moral or immoral, beautiful or ugly, kind or cruel, intelligent or vapid, we must not only recognize the divine in our earthy brothers and sisters, but it's paramount that our simultaneous gaze is on the demonic and mortal within them, as well. This, of course, extends to ourselves, too. (Note: back to Ubuntuism). EVERY ATOM BELONGING TO OURSELVES AS GOOD, AS BAD BELONGS TO ALL OF US. THE HAND OF GOD IS THE PROMISE OF OUR OWN. THE SPIRIT OF GOD IS THE SPIRIT OF OUR OWN. ALL THE MEN EVER BORN ARE ALSO MY BROTHERS, AND THE WOMEN MY SISTERS AND LOVERS. AND THAT IS KELSON OF CREATION IS LOVE.
15. It's through Whitman's lens that our eyes may reveal to our hearts the understanding not only to guide us back toward our path but to become agents of guidance ourselves for the least of our brothers and sisters who mistook the earthly path we've paved ourselves with gold for the heavenly path that's been paved through the dirt for us from above.
16. Art, you mentioned in your last e-mail that the souls of Trump and Gilber are still in play, though you were referencing actual demons. The point I was attempting to make in my last letter and am now attempting to clarify in this letter is that these two, to me, are interchangeable; their souls have been darkened by this irredeemable devil you've referenced. Gilbert (so all of us) darkness, for instance, is personified by the presence of this inner-demon. Whether he surrendered the battle long ago from exhaustion, or whether he's been oblivious of its presence from the beginning, it's clear that Gilber does not have control over his demonic side. Rather, he is controlled by it. It's my understanding that we all have some sort of negative spirit or demon within us. (Side note: Have any of you read Martin Buber's On Hasidism and/or seen My Dinner with Andre? There's this point in the dinner conversation when Wally's just described acting alongside a Czech in a previous play. He explains the reverence with which this actor viewed the performance, as if it were a sacred event. This reverence extended past his individual role in the play, extending itself in the form of respect to each of his fellow actors. Andre, Wally's sole dinner companion, interjects and lays on the Buber: He relates this Czech man's personhood to the Hasidic idea that every moment is to be sacramentalized. You see, the Hasidics believe that there are spirits chained in everything. In you, in me, in the inanimate objects surrounding us. The act of praying, Buber writes (and Andre says), is how we liberate these spirits. This, Andre suggests, is why every action of ours ought to be lived as a prayer, a joyful sacrament. Andre opines this is an uncommon way of living because abstaining from such mindfulness is how we cope with our realities in the world, he says and I agree, that were most of us to confront our actions, we'd find our existences far too nauseating to endure.)

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.

The Fat Lady is Every One of Us (Part 4 of 7)

The following is a series of attached photos sent from Liza to the group during her electronics-limited "dispersed camping expedition" through the Keweenaw Peninsula during the month of August 2015. We will publish short excerpts of these illuminated texts over the course of the next several days along with a corresponding portion of the original photo.

Easier (as with most matters that require our patience and daily devotion) said than done. How are we of weary eye and soul to transcend sensory experience, to recognize the divine image in its lowliest form? We begin, I think with step one.

• Step 1: Acknowledge that Seymour Glass' Fat Lady is indeed Christ Himself

• Step 2: Acknowledge that there isn't anyone out there who is not Seymour's Fat Lady

• Step 3: Read aloud the following:
• Carlton Farthington is the Fat Lady.
• Don Gilber is the Fat Lady.
• That student who talks over me every single day in class and blatantly disregards all guidance and direction is the Fat Lady.
• Donald Trump is the Fat Lady.
• That person who perpetuates cruelty to our most vulnerable and oppressed is the Fat Lady.
• Hitler, ISIS, and Stalin are all Fat Ladies.
• My inner demon is the Fat Lady.
• I am the Fat Lady.

• Step 4: Repeat Step 3, but with conviction this time.

• Step 5: Acknowledge that each of the aforementioned is, indeed, Christ Himself. Acknowledge this every day.

• Step 6: For instructions on utilizing this mindfulness to combat our daily human propensity to judge our enemies (demonic as they and we may be) with love and mercy, I invoke at long last the luminous Dorothy Day (from a symposium on "Transcendence," sponsored by the Church Society for College Work, 1968):

God made men and women to be happy...yet how can we be happy today? How can we transcend this misery of ours? How can we believe in a transcendent God when the Immanent God seems so powerless within time, when demonic forces seem to be let loose? Certainly our God is a hidden God. I would say there are evidences of transcendence in the striving for community among the poor and destitute among whom we live in city and country. Men and women have persisted in their hope for happiness. They have hoped against hope though all the evidence seemed to point to the fact that human nature could not be changed. Always they have tried to recover Eden, and the history of our own country shows attempts to found communities where people could live together in that happiness which God seemed to have planned for us. (...) But how to love? That is the question.