vitalwholeness

Change often comes in catastrophic burps; the earthquake, explosive revolution, the sudden unexpected death. There is no preparation and we are thrust involuntarily into a whole new unfamiliar world. That happens and happens quite a bit, really.

But the more common experience of radical change is measured more in drips. Slowly, one drip after another, the whole personal, social or even global reality shifts. The thing about dripping is the repetition. We come to accept the present drip because of the hundreds that have preceded the most recent one. Oh, well, another one. It becomes so … normal.

We are living in an era of vast political dripping, one drop after another. A global rainfall is scattering its showers all over the globe, including in the United States. This is the rain of autocracy, fascism, oligarchy, and strong man control politics. One could hope that this is the last gasp of an endangered species, homo power hungry, but I don’t think so. I think we are in for a long, sustained and very painful ride.

The drips of this despotic storm are slowly but surely eroding the values and accomplishments of many of our long-standing democracies. What took decades of struggle to build is being dismantled drip by drip. Criticize the system as you will, for there is much fault to be found, but the present reigns of terror are not reforming. They are dynamiting.

Though the form varies from place to place the goals are similar: Consolidate power, silence and often destroy the press, favor white establishment culture, design tax laws to favor the mega-rich, employ law enforcement to silence dissent, destroy independently acting Congress and Judicial branches, prefer corporate interests to individual rights, compromise patriotic values for treasonous corruption, control the entire system and politicians with vast unaccountable money, manipulate the masses to act immorally, violently and against their own interests, and target scapegoated groups.

History does repeat itself, if not exactly then close enough. I believe that we will live to see “national emergencies” used to justify police state actions, suspension of citizen rights, delay of elections, elimination of term limits, the silencing of dissidents, the imprisoning of leaders of the resistance, and state controlled media. Right now Fox News serves that propaganda function. That program may expand far beyond Fox in the future.

Alignment with strong-man monarchies and autocracies shifts the United States more decidedly toward the autocrat club. Unilateral actions that defy international law and dismantle long-standing agreements and accords are just the first step. Utilizing tariffs as a political tool is another. Severing ties with allies and realigning with empires such as the Nation of Putin is another. Ignoring science in favor of corporate expediency insures the loyalty of the big money to the autocrats. In time the intellectuals and scientists will be contained in order to eliminate their inconvenient perspectives and even facts.

And keeping the under classes fighting one another and incoming “threats” such as new immigrants is part and parcel of the master plan to retain power. Defending good white people from this menace becomes the sacred trust of the dictator and his cronies. He will defend and protect us, as long as we relinquish certain freedoms.

I wish I could say that this may be coming. But I cannot. The ship has already arrived in harbor. The only question that remains is just how far this drip by drip regime will go until it floods every crack and cranny of nation and world. A nuclear incident, for example, could be very helpful in the effort to consolidate power even more. So could an engineered civil war, a reenactment of the mid-19th century … but without the conscience of a Lincoln to guide our worst inclinations. We already observe the way presidential rhetoric is creating that psychological atmosphere. The language of fear is energizing the masses: The crazy, deranged mob that is attacking us from over the border, within our ranks, and from the other party is on the way. Get more ammo. Prepare yourself for the onslaught.

Unless this momentum is blocked and blocked soon it will get much, much worse. And without a hint of exaggeration I say that our young republic will go the way of many previous empires that rose and fell, or rose and changed into something monstrous.

What this requires is people of courage who dare to cast a different vision for life, name a different set of values, and identify different priorities. Ironically, the way forward in this time will include reminding ourselves what our founders – with all their own blind spots and biases – called us to be. The Constitution itself, that most remarkable strong and changing document of our common life, must rise to the top of our minds, and I mean more than only the 2nd Amendment.

The answers have always depended on people power and moral vision. It is the same today. Come together, friends. Do not be afraid. Be strong. Stand together. Resist the worst we can become and strive for our highest selves.

If you are a person of faith let your faith propel you to a place beyond just thoughts and prayers. Speak your understanding of a God that has been distorted and then presented to the world in the form of something that scarcely resembles the God of Jesus. Name it. Denounce distortions. Critique false churches and their leaders. And in the end realize that the birthing of a new world requires hard and sweaty labor. It always has.

Michael Moore hits another one out of the park with his latest docu-commentary, Fahrenheit 11/9. It’s out in most theaters now and now is the time to see it. In fact, after you see it try to enlist some of your friends to go, especially those who don’t feel any special need to register and vote. A little shock therapy never hurt anyone.

Listening to interview with climber of “El Cap” and his perspective on free climbing the most perilous rock walls in the world. When asked by his girl friend if she ever enters into his equation about whether to take these huge life and death risks, he asks a clarifying question: “Does that equation include extending my life span as long as possible?”

“Yes,” she replies.

He answers, “Then no, not if that equation means extending my life span as long as possible.”

It’s the only answer he can give. He couldn’t do what he does and also be seeking the longest life span as the highest value.

How would we change how we live if living as long as possible was not our most important goal?

That’s right – vote on Nov 6! And take three people with you!

What a sublime and wholly under appreciated gift it is to choose your friends rather than have them chosen for you, to assign the amount of time your most important interests, causes, and relationships deserve.

In a world of obligation liberation often comes in the simple movement from one word to another, from must to may.

One dimension of the recent furor over the nomination of a Supreme Court Justice are assumptions about the way that memory functions, especially memory surrounding trauma. For those of us who have spent countless hours listening to people’s stories of trauma this polarized debate seems strange. Some have declared that unless the entire story is remembered en toto testimony lacks credibility. Others reflect a different view, that memories are somewhat like photographs and to be trusted in the same way. Both views are found wanting.

First, traumatic memories are encapsulated within a mental story line and that story line contains a series of capsules/memories/recorded impressions attached to sensory experiences. As I have worked with vets processing a firefight, for instance, they remember particular things – not all things – but standout fragments: A powerful odor, the expression on someone’s face, a deafening sound, an image and its color. All of the emotions of the entire trauma are vested in these capsules and the work of clearing the emotions from these individual pieces is crucial to draining the entire story of its crippling emotion.

When a person who has experienced assault remembers pieces those pieces are the embodiment of the whole story. They are the standout memories of intensity. And when you deal with those you are dealing with the whole story. They are as real as real can be. In fact, in terms of healing, unless you get to the particular you probably won’t make much progress.

On the other hand our memories are not like video recordings of what happened. They include our sensory experience of the moment, selective attention to certain details and not others, and our interior reactions to outer events. That is why no two people have exactly the same memory of the same event; only a consensus of many eyes and brains creates some believable scenario that may have taken place. The memory of one person includes partial remembrance and very personal emotional response.

And of course, memory can change. We do change memories every time we access them. Our minds contain surprising ways to interpret and give meaning to what has happened. That is one of the hopes of therapy; we can actually adjust memory, add additional interpretation, and even complete unfinished stories in redemptive ways. So memory is never static.

I remember the death and funeral of my mother in a very particular way with very particular images in my mind. These same images, however, are not shared by my brother who ostensibly passed through the same experience. Our two recollections are very different. What we can do is remember and hold the emotional response, the importance we have granted the event, and deal with that. Though my brother and I don’t have identical memories of our mother’s passing and the the death rituals that followed, we do know how much it impacted us and left its powerful mark on our young souls. That very subjective reality we do share. But it is not a record that can be objectified.

As regards this current high court nomination and its resistance, I observe several things based on these realities of memory:

Nothing like objectivity can be attained by an exchange of he said/she said testimony. It is too subjective. That can only be corroborated through multiple attestation. Short of that, nothing conclusive can be determined. And if anyone in power limits investigation so that multiple witnesses are excluded, they short-circuit the search for truth.

Fragmentary memories are not to be dismissed, especially from supercharged traumas, either recent or from the distant past. I’ve experienced people accessing and sharing these kinds of memories in exactly these kinds of ways. As I listened to the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford it rang quite authentic in its fragmentary nature and emotionally charged content.  It should not be dismissed because it was partial. In fact, taking the emotionally super-charged story line seriously – as a testimony of emotional impact – is the least level of empathy we should extend.

No memory, however, is utterly objective and unchanging. That includes the memory of Brett Kavanaugh. His memory, too, is partial and the product of his own emotional and mental state at the time. He, too, has changed his memory over time to conform to the self he believes he is and others believe him to be. That’s what we do. Quite apart from any attempt to intentionally mislead is the subjective nature of memory itself. Which is why, of course, multiple attestation is so important.

It has often been said and I believe it to be true that what we remember about a person is not what they said to us but rather how we felt about them at the time. That reality is surely in play as a part of this highly emotion-filled and politically charged issue. Whatever the truth of Kavanaugh’s history and the ways he has either stayed the same or changed in intervening years, what is remembered by one woman so very long ago is the powerful and real feelings she had in a particular place and moment in time. Since we cannot observe it for ourselves and witnesses are kept unavailable to corroborate the stories for us, we can never know, not for certain, the meaning of what was experienced for that woman in that terrifying moment.

None of this simplifies seeking conclusions or making decisions. In fact, it makes it more complex. Make of all this what you will, but I know one thing for certain: The way that public persons have dismissed the testimony of a person attempting to share a traumatic experience is bone-chilling. It reinforces the tendency of people to not share their pain and instead carry it alone and in silence. This will not help those persons who find themselves in great peril in situations of domestic abuse. This will not help persons who have been raped and who will not be believed.

During my years of hearing many stories of trauma I have learned to say one thing if I don’t say anything else. It is the one thing that doesn’t depend on absolute rational, objective proof or a water-tight story. And it is this: I believe you. I have said that more times than I can remember. And they may be the most important words I’ve ever spoken.

The documentary Dark Money is showing right now on PBS! 9pm CST!

Be not fooled that the church or any humanly-created entity is equivalent to God, for it is not. The church is a flock of geese in search of a lake in which they may land and rest and feed. But the geese know they are not the lake. They are driven, led, guided to the lake by intimations so deep they fly without a single calculation. This internal guidance system has been cultivated over eons of time so that they fly in concert to where they must go.

The church is no more the kingdom of God than the geese are the lake. The lake was there long before them and will be there long after them. Be not fooled – the church is not the kingdom and the kingdom is not a reflection of the church’s structure, arbitrary rules or proposed certainties.

But don’t be scared to admit that we need others on the pathway, others beside us today and others who walked before us. Just make sure the object of our faith is about more than some system we created, a fine congratulatory hymn of the virtues of the saints. No, talk about our need of love and grace and hope. Talk about the ego we methodically constructed over the years and how it must now dissolve in order that the spirit may topple us into the unfathomable Mystery.

That’s enough to get us there. As long as we’re not fooled.

I recently read a poem in which the author described the way in which her brother cut his own image out of all the family photographs before he took his own life. It was a way to define his own absence in advance, an absence he already felt and  surely one that would become permanent. Those cut-outs became the way she experienced her brother’s absence. It was not simply a feeling, a grief, a regret. It was a blank space in the fabric of time and space, the absence of something present, the presence of something absent.

People who are gone seem to linger that way. Most of what made them who they were is  out of sight. But much is known by the outline of what used to be present. We find the outline everywhere. Sometimes we color inside the lines, fill in the blank. With memories or dreams.

One of the strange things is that we mostly get to choose what stays inside the lines. Even change it. The past is so fluid. We can still work on it now. Finish it up, write a new ending. And focus on which parts of them bounced around inside the lines while they were still with us.

One of the lingering powerful images of Casey Affleck’s A Ghost Story is that the departed simply shows up as a sheet covering the body he used to be. The viewer never has the privilege of even one glimpse beneath the covering. We only have the surface of his outlines, and by where he shows up presumably what still matters or is unresolved.

When you think about it monuments and statues provide a similar function. They present the outlines and surface of what was a life. He or she occupied space for a time on this planet. There was impact that can be known and felt. Touch the stone or metal or wood and your mind fills in the story.

Our Western problem is linear time, of course. We actually believe things unfold sequentially. But just imagine for a moment that they don’t. Imagine that past is really present is really future. Imagine that sequential time is one of the illusions we seize to make sense of our world. And then imagine that the cut-outs of those who once were (or will be?) are really place keepers. The ancestor is still here and may be tomorrow. The future is flowing out from what we just think is an empty space. We love to oversimplify. But the world is so much more complex and mysterious than that.

If, theologians in the house, God is eternal and reality is infinite in every way, what is the outline of a life? A punctuation mark in a sentence? The temporary material reveal for something that can never stay material? Ego wanting to hold on?

What a gift that this young man cut himself out of the pictures before he made his final exit. What he gave to his sister and everyone else was a trace that could continue. Yes, you can find me and, no, you can’t. And yes, I can find you and, no, I can’t. In the end none of us will be found except in some echo of eternity that ricochets through the cosmos with all the other ricochets.

They say that sound waves echo through space forever. At least the outlines of them do. When we hear them they seem to come from another time. And yet we hear them now.

Like an image cut out of a family photograph.

… but when you cruise Arkansas on your mechanical horse you could bet you have a glimpse of it.