Looking for Clarity in the Fall

November is National Native American Heritage month. By mid-November we are way past the Autumnal equinox and only a month or so away from the onset of Winter. November is also the month when Americans gather their families around a bountiful meal and re-count a false narrative about the peaceful and cooperative nature of the relationship between early English settlers and the aboriginal people of North America. It makes for a lovely and hopeful story. In fact, Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. 

I have been thinking about the Native people who lived on this land before the Europeans arrived. I wonder if there is a way to turn our traditional Thanksgiving into a day to reflect upon the genocide that resulted from the European practice of colonialism. We should honor the Tribes and Nations and the descendants of the first Americans by committing to learn more about them as a people that still live among us now. We often act as if these people just moved on and we hardly acknowledge their existence. 

So, here we are in mid-November. I find myself wishing that my mind was as clear as the Carolina blue skies. I can find small moments of clarity, if I stop and breathe in the cool air and take the time to notice how especially brilliant the fall colors are this year. When I try to write these days, I find that the moments of clarity show up amidst a bundle of thoughts that refuse to connect with each other like I want them to. So, I decided that I will just write anyway and put it out in the world to be read or ignored. Here is what that looks like:

 

It feels like Fall arrives suddenly. And it is welcome when it arrives. Sure, summer is great. For a while. Summer is that party guest at your home that never seems to know when the party is over. Summer wears out its welcome. 

Just when it feels like you can not bear another day of the smothering heat and humidity, you hear a rustling of the leaves high up in the white oaks and a crisp cool breeze brushes across your sweaty skin. You feel like your whole body just ate a Peppermint Patty! Ah, what a relief. As the sun goes down, the humid air in your house turns into a chilly dampness. You might even think that you should start a fire or turn on the heat for just a bit to knock the chill down. But you don't. Instead, you pull a nice quilt out of the cedar chest and let the new crispness in the air allow you to sleep comfortably for the first time in what has felt like an eternity. And just like that, you wake up the next morning and immediately know that Fall has arrived. 

I rarely use the word autumn at all. Autumn does not feel like a word that captures the suddenness in which Fall seems to arrive. But, if we really pay attention, we realize that Fall doesn't really arrive suddenly. It is just that the initial onset kind of takes you by surprise. Fall is a bit of a tease.  Fall gives you a taste of the cool days for a week or so and then lets Summer make a brief return visit. For some reason we all seem to love that Summer has come back to visit. This second appearance of Summer is milder. It's like Summer grew up and mellowed out a bit and comes by just to say, "see you next year."  

In the United States we call this second mini -Summer an Indian Summer.  Just last week, we had some pleasantly warm fall days. I was in a Zoom class when the instructor said that he was enjoying the Indian Summer. I have heard and used this term my whole life. But, for some reason it clanged on my ears when he said it. I am not sure why. I wondered if this term might seem offensive to Native Americans.

I remember when I was a kid that if you gave something of yours to someone and then changed your mind, the person you un-gifted might call you an Indian-Giver. I had no idea what the giving and taking back scenario had to do with American Indians. It was a common thing to say or hear.  Sometime during my education, I became aware of all he treaties, agreements, and promises that had been made by the United States to the Indian Nations. In almost every case the United States government would back out of the deal. It occurred to me that we were the real Indian-Givers. As a people, we regularly gave a promise of land, or peace, or compensation to the American Indians, and then we took it back. That perspective kind of turns the term on its head, doesn't it? Fortunately, the use of the term Indian-Giver has all but disappeared from the vernacular.

But the term Indian Summer persists. I decided to investigate it a bit. There is much speculation about its origin and why it is used to describe this short, second summer-like weather appearing in Autumn. The only thing that everyone agrees on is that it originated in America. The earliest written reference is in a French poem from the 1700s. It does not appear in writing again until an English document in the 1850s. It became and is still used as an official meteorological term for unseasonably warm weather. However, the term is now being discouraged among meteorologists due to trainings being offered by an organization called The Corporate Indigenous Training Company. They believe the term had a racist origin in that referring to a late summer that way is a way of saying Indians are always late. Since this term is primarily a white, southern saying, I am pretty sure that the folks at ICT, inc. are correct.

But let’s turn this term on its head too. The first Europeans to land on these shores were completely ignorant that the Americas even existed. Christopher Columbus thought he had sailed around the world and landed on the Western side of India. Therefore, he thought the indigenous people he found there were, in fact, Indians. We, Europeans, are stubborn people. Hundreds of years after realizing that Columbus was mistaken about finding the other side of India, we still insist that the people who were living in the Americas for thousands of years before Europeans arrived were Indians nonetheless! I think it is time to admit that we got it wrong. 

Let's let go of Indian Summer just like we did with Indian Giver. Let's find another term for it. I like halcyon days, but that will never catch on. Let's just call these mild days in autumn what they really are. A pleasant gift. A mild day with the clearest blue sky. A chance to stop and notice the world as it is and not as we pretend it to be. Take a moment to reflect on the words we choose to use and think about whether they are hurtful or disrespectful of others. Take a moment to just enjoy the weather. While it lasts. 

Let's Re-think Policing

I am certainly not a criminal justice expert. But it does not take an expert to realize that we need serious criminal justice reform in this country. My education in psychology and sociology provides me with some basic knowledge about human behavior that inform my opinions on this subject. I have also been in the business of managing people in various industries in which conflict and intense situations arise. I spent two years working in the mental health field and learned the importance of recognizing potentially explosive situations and received training in how to use de-escalation tactics to resolve dangerous situations. The organization I worked for did not allow the use of physical restraints nor did they have any security staff. Although my experience is certainly not equivalent to the hostile and volatile situations that police officers are likely to encounter, I do believe that much of the practices employed by uniformed police officers exacerbate the volatility of a situation and increase the probability of a violent encounter taking place. 

 When I worked in the mental health field, I was the Director of a program that primarily provided employment and vocational training to individuals who had barriers to finding employment in the community. The individuals we supported typically had a combination of issues they were dealing with. Most had a primary diagnosis of a developmental disability. It is common for people with developmental disabilities to have a co-morbid diagnosis of mental illness. This could be anything from anxiety to psychosis. On most days, these were some of the most deeply beautiful and loving people you could ever spend time with. However, it is imperative that the conditions under which this population works, and lives must be tailored to their general sensitivities to noise, disorder, confrontation, smells, as well as a multitude of specific and peculiar needs. If the staff neglected to maintain the appropriate conditions, it could have led to agitation, outbursts, or even imminent danger to the individual or those around them. I understand that we can not control the conditions of any given situation prior to police involvement. But I do believe that police can control the manner of their approach to a situation that would minimize their contribution to an already chaotic situation, or in many cases, not create a chaotic situation where none existed. 

 Ronnie, a participant in our program, was burdened with developmental deficits, as well as a propensity for psychotic episodes in which he heard the abusive voice of his deceased father. One day the voice told him to take a pair of scissors off a supervisor’s workstation and kill the people around him. Ronnie was clearly not in control of himself. He began waving the scissors around wildly in a threatening manner. He was screaming that he was going to stab and kill anyone that came near him. The Office Manager told all this too me in a hurried and worried manner. The workshop floor was about 25 yards from my office. The staff had already acted promptly and wisely by evacuating all the other participants to the safety of our on-site cafeteria. 

I made my way quickly to the workshop floor. Ronnie was still wildly waving the scissors and slashing them through the air. Our Production Manager and one of our Job Trainers were keeping a safe distance, but directly engaging with Ronnie. They were speaking lovingly and kindly to him. Please understand. They were not only speaking to him calmly, but with love and humanity. They were being empathic. I observed the situation and made a few quick decisions. Our Clinical Director was with me as we assessed the situation. Our Office Manager was standing nearby waiting for instructions. I turned to them both and said that we needed to call the police. The Clinical Director advised that the sight of police officers could drive Ronnie cover the edge and could make matters worse. I agreed but felt that we had to have back-up in case he spiraled further out of control despite our efforts to de-escalate. I asked the office manager to call the police, but to ask them not to turn on sirens, and to please stay nearby but out of Ronnie’s field of vision until we could determine if we needed them to intervene or not. 

I then joined the others in speaking to Ronnie in that same kind and understanding way. I told him that we needed for him to lay the scissors down. I did not yell out for him to drop the scissors. I did not draw a weapon. I did not threaten to taser him. I simply reminded him that everyone loved and cared about him and that we really needed him to put the scissors down. The police officers had arrived and, thankfully, they watched from the cafeteria doors out of Ronnie’s sight. I saw a change come across Ronnie’s face. It was like something had released him from its grip. All the tension left his face, and the tears and sobbing began. He gently laid the scissors down on a desk and the production manager moved with stealth to slip them into his pocket. Ronnie staggered to me with his arms outstretched seeking a much-needed hug. As I embraced Ronnie, he buried his face in my neck. His sobs were coming hard and fast now. There was no more danger. I caught the eye of one of the police officers and indicated with a wave that all was ok. I suggested to Ronnie that we should go out the back door and sit on the picnic tables. Some fresh air would help. 

He held tight to me as I opened the door to the open field and the blue sky that suddenly sucked any remaining tension up into its vastness. We sat down on the tabletop of the picnic table. As his sobbing subsided, Ronnie talked to me about how he missed his father. I mostly listened. 

What if we could stabilize the conditions that lead to disturbances that require police intervention? What if we established policies that eliminated poverty in the wealthiest nation on the planet? What if we provided adequate childcare and nutrition to all of our citizens? Wouldn’t this at least reduce the number of situations that police are called to? What if the police approached with less noise and sirens? What if they did not draw their weapons immediately? What if they stayed a safe distance or took cover while they assessed the situation? What if there could be a standard practice of training citizens to clear a scene so that the officers do not need to worry about the immediacy of acting? What if the police did not start yelling orders at the suspect? What if they ruled out using violence as a way to resolve a situation? What if they spoke with love and kindness to the troubled human that was lashing out, or maybe had not done anything wrong except being black in the wrong place at the wrong time? What if they said this? “You are loved by your family. We care about you. We need you to put down that knife.” 

 Of course, this will not work in every situation. But I know this. I have seen video after video of black people being killed by police officers in which this approach would have worked and someone’s child, husband, daughter, or father would still be alive.

Morning has Broken in America

It feels like Spring in America. It may be bone-chilling and snowing outside your door. Your driveway may be covered by a sheet of ice. And yet, I am overwhelmed by the feeling that Spring has arrived. The jonquils and tulips are pushing up with all their strength, causing cracks to spread through the icy layer like a spider’s web. I imagine that if I were to watch the frosty garden that I might witness the moment that the buds burst through and reveal themselves. I envision a miraculously spontaneous change of season. The gray skies turn blue and the leafless limbs turn green with new foliage just as the morning breaks. Yet nothing that I am conjuring in my mind need happen for Spring to arrive in America today. 

 “Morning has broken, like the first morning.” These words from a hymn first published in 1931, are most familiar to us from the beautiful arrangement by Cat Stevens. The hymn is a prayer of thankfulness for each ordinary day that recreates itself over and over for us. But it is also a song about redemption. A reminder that God gives us an endless supply of new opportunities to re-create ourselves by letting go of yesterday and claiming today. We can choose to open our eyes this morning as if everything that we see and hear and taste and smell in brand new to us. So, on this morning, as we let go of four years of yesterdays, we must claim our collective shot at redemption. We can be a new America that chooses love, compassion, and unity over jealousy, greed, and hate. 

It feels like Spring to me because Spring is the season of redemptive opportunity. This is a spiritual theme that is an integral part of many religious faiths. From ancient pagan practices to Judaism to Christianity, Spring is the time to begin again. America must redeem itself. Redemption has requirements. We must acknowledge our faults, actively work to heal those that we have hurt, and reconcile our spiritual accounts. We must live up to our ideals with honesty and integrity if we want the reward of a new season of hope and liberty. 

Each Spring, Jews are freed from the bondage of Pharaoh’s slavery as celebrated at Passover. Each Easter, Christians are born again and freed from the bondage of the tomb. Buddhists believe that we can have a new Spring in each moment by practicing seeing the world as if you are a newborn baby. They call this “seeing with new eyes.” It is time for our Country to see with new eyes. It is time to let go of the bondage of hate and white supremacy. Our country must be born again, while acknowledging the sins of our past, but recognizing the beauty of the idealistic words of our founding documents. Then we must make reparations. Reparations are essential to reconciliation. And without reconciliation, we can not enjoy the new life that abounds in Spring. 

 “Morning has broken like the first morning 

Blackbird has spoken like the first bird 

Praise for the singing, praise for the morning 

Praise for them springing fresh from the world”

The Sound of Silence

 

Silence:noun 

1. absence of any sound or noise; stillness. 

2. the state or fact of being silent; muteness. 

3. absence or omission of mention, comment, or expressed concern:the conspicuous silence of our newspapers on local graft. 

 “Silence” is a powerful word. The first definition that usually appears in dictionaries describes it as the absence of sound or noise. Despite its literal meaning, “silence” seems to be a favorite word among song writers. Music is our highest form of noise. Music is organized noise. Carefully chosen frequencies that form wordless poems. How ironic it is then that we actually sing the word frequently. It seems like a word that should be impossible to raise in song. Yet it is a common word in hymns and spirituals. Something about singing the word “silence” feels sacred. We can feel the power of the word, when each year at Christmas, choirs and congregations sing “Silent night. Holy night.” I imagine this type of silence as a beautiful act of reverence. Meditative. Silent like a Quaker or Buddhist. Prayerful. And yet in song, the word almost always appears in a context that conjures nighttime or darkness. Or the silence of a tomb. 

 In Simon and Garfunkel’s poetically oxymoronic “Sound of Silence”

the word is used as described in the dictionaries third meaning: absence or omission of mention, comment, or expressed concern. This is the silence of Elie Wiesel’s famous quote: “I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” In the popular song and in Wiesel’s powerful words, the concept of silence feels as sacred as it does in the Christmas hymn. And even though it is being used to mean something completely different, it is also still closely associated with darkness or night. There is a darkness that has settled upon the United States of America over the last several years. It is an ancient darkness. Familiar like an old friend as Paul Simon refers to it in his song written during another dark period in our country’s recent history. It is this type of darkness that is currently occupying my thoughts and its relationship with silence. 

 In the opening line of “Sound of Silence” Paul Simon greets the darkness fondly. The darkness has not come to him, he has sought it out. “I’ve come to talk with you again.” It makes me think about the comfort that we can find in the darkness of ignorance. Just getting through each day in this life can be difficult and it is tempting to retreat into the peacefulness of a kind of intellectual nighttime. We take refuge from worldly concerns in a tent and cover ourselves in a canvas of complacency. I think that most of us give in to the temptation of this type of retreat from truth at times. Although, many people take sanctuary in that silent place and pretend that there is no noise in the world. I’m afraid that too many of my fellow Americans have so effectively cocooned themselves away that they completely missed the alarm bells of tyranny that have been ringing out a warning ever since Donald Trump came riding down the escalator from his penthouse in Trump Tower. They told those of us who had seen the danger ahead and felt the need to broadcast our concerns that we were being too political. “Please”, they posted, “I just want to see kitty-cat videos.” They called our social media posts “rants.” They just wanted to go about their lives. They said they did not have time for politics. They could not break free from the comfort of silent complacency, so they told themselves that the dangerous rhetoric of our President was nothing to worry about. 

 I read post after post about how sick my Facebook friends were of politics. But I was not writing about politics. I was speaking truth in an effort to counter the culture of lies and alternative facts being fostered by an administration hellbent on attaining absolute power. We could not sit silently by and let the Trump family establish a new kind of tacky aristocracy. Donald Trump and his sons were preaching the gospel of vulgarity, hate, and divisiveness. They were taking counsel from dark and sinister characters like Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, and Roger Stone. They successfully tapped into the worst fears and prejudices of most of white America. They were gaining acolytes that saw political advantage in aligning themselves with Trump and his lies. These apostles embraced the lies and began to evangelize as prophets of the false theology of white victimization and white grievance. And all the while, too many ignored it all. They begged us to remain silent. They just wanted the sound of silence. They wanted to talk without speaking. They wanted to listen without hearing. And they decided that truth just was not that important. And so, the silent raindrops fell, and echoed in the wells of silence. Their foolish silence allowed hatred, fear, and meanness grow like unchecked cancer until it tore at the very tissue and vital organs of our democracy. 

 May our eyes all be stabbed by the flash of a neon light. And may the naked light lift away the veils that we have shrouded ourselves in. May it expose the fraudulence of the talk show radio hosts, the Fox News fearmongers, and the evilness of a sociopathic President. May it allow us to see the existential necessity of speaking truth to power. And may it render us incapable of remaining silent. Let us raise our voices in the truthful noise of songs of freedom and Justice and Peace and truth. I pray that the MAGA inspired militias stand down, that our tradition of peaceful transfer of power is not further interrupted, and that we begin the hard work of reconciliation. 

 “Hello darkness, my old friend 

I've come to talk with you again 

Because a vision softly creeping 

Left its seeds while I was sleeping 

And the vision that was planted in my brain 

Still remains 

Within the sound of silence 

In restless dreams I walked alone 

Narrow streets of cobblestone 

'Neath the halo of a streetlamp 

I turned my collar to the cold and damp 

When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light 

That split the night 

And touched the sound of silence 

And in the naked light, I saw 

Ten thousand people, maybe more 

People talking without speaking 

People hearing without listening 

People writing songs that voices never share 

And no one dared 

Disturb the sound of silence 

"Fools", said I, "You do not know 

Silence like a cancer grows 

Hear my words that I might teach you 

Take my arms that I might reach you" 

But my words, like silent raindrops fell 

And echoed In the wells of silence 

And the people bowed and prayed 

To the neon god they made 

And the sign flashed out its warning 

In the words that it was forming 

And the sign said, 

"The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls 

And tenement halls" 

And whispered in the sound of silence” 

 Paul Simon, at age 21