by Alice Walker
Consider the Ice Age. The people in the North desperate for shelter; their use of caves, some of which they decorated beautifully with pictures of life before the great ice came. Contemplate their joy when the ice receded, though it was still very cold. Think how natural it must have been, and ingenious too, to build housing that resembled caves. Something substantial, often of stone, built to keep them warm.
Now there are heavy houses everywhere and more of them being built. In fact, it is only when more houses are being constructed that some countries consider their economies healthy. Yet each house is a heavy footprint on the Earth. Just as all our possessions represent—if we cannot learn ways of sharing them—a weight and a clutter that often means the faces of future generations will look up into darkness and the pressure on the Earth of “things.” My family had no home of our own when I was a child—we were tenant farmers and quite poor—and therefore I inherited an intense house hunger, which I have fed by owning several. Only one of them did I build myself, and I will never build another, even though that one was built off the ground, and sunlight can indeed reach some areas underneath it.
It seems wiser to do as hermit crabs do, find a shell and inhabit it. This is more ecological too. To use what is still beautiful and sound, repair what is broken; in a word, renovate housing that already exists. And as houses and buildings fall, clear the debris, make firewood or build other useful things with it, but leave the land free and breathing. I realize there will be new buildings placed on the site of the World Trade Center, whose towers were destroyed on September 11th, 2001, but I consider it a backward step. A monstrously heavy step on the faces coming forward.
One of my favorite indulgences when I visit any large and heavy American city is to imagine what the place was like two and three hundred years ago. The huge old trees, the clean and shining rivers, the fish so thick an explorer exclaimed one could walk across a river on their backs. And the human faces that assumed they would always find a clearing in the grass.
As you sit, make peace also with the reality that, after you die, it won’t matter to you how you are remembered; you will not be here to experience it. All the grand things that you do or say, all the skyscrapers you build and cover with gold, your elegant tombstone, all will be completely forgotten eventually. Even your children, and their children too, will be forgotten. That being so, perhaps it is best to begin to erase your presence well before you leave the scene. This can help make a space for one of those faces coming up through the grass.
Contemplate giving away possessions and practice giving away your self. Talk to the young; offer whatever you have learned that might be of use. Sponsor students and artists of whatever age, whenever possible. Artists and seekers of knowledge often face enormous challenges just to keep themselves and their visions alive; this is especially true if they are poor. When you give of yourself to them you make a wide clearing in a world that is too often overgrown with bad art and substandard education. Keep track of family members; talk with them, work and plan for the future with them, vacation with them, take them with you when you have something joyful to share.
In deep meditation the self, the ego busy with its many projects, completely disappears. It is the most delightful experience imaginable. Perhaps death will be like this. You are sitting there, but light is streaming right through the place where you sit. This experience can be had in motion, too, and is the experience we have when giving ourselves away. It is as if we are dissolving into everything and everyone around us and we recognize the illusion of separateness. And when someone thanks you for something, you thank them, because you realize it is only their acceptance of your gift that allows you to give.
Sit with the thought of erasing yourself so that others might more gracefully arrive. One easy way to do this is to imagine the spot you are sitting in without you. It will remain full of itself, which contains also, somehow, the invisible essence of you.
4.
All Praises to the Pause; The Universal Moment of Reflection
Commencement Address
California Institute of Integral Studies
San Francisco, California
May 19, 2002
After Completion:
He brakes his wheels.
He gets his tail in the water.
No blame.
One of the many gifts I received from strangers after writing The Color Purple twenty years ago was a bright yellow volume of the I Ching. It opened to the sixty-third hexagram: After Completion. This is a time when a major transition from confusion to order has been completed—for instance, it would apply to this moment when you have concluded your studies at CIIS—and everything is (at last!) in its proper place (you are graduating) even in particulars. Interestingly, according to the I Ching, this is a time not of relaxation, but of caution:
In times following a great transition, everything is pressing forward, striving in the direction of development and progress. But this pressing forward at the beginning is not good; it overshoots the mark and leads with certainty to loss and collapse. Therefore a man (or woman) of strong character does not allow himself (herself) to be infected by the general intoxication but checks his (her) course in time. He (She, They) may indeed not remain altogether untouched by the disastrous consequences of the general pressure, but … is hit only from behind like a fox that, having crossed the water, at the last minute gets its tail wet. He (She) will not suffer any real harm, because his (her) behavior has been correct.
The I Ching is a compass of great value. Uncanny in its ability to share its Wisdom at just the moment it is required. How many friends, even best and closest friends, can do that?
What it is referring to in this hexagram is something that I am going to call “the pause.” The moment when something major is accomplished and we are so relieved to finally be done with it that we are already rushing, at least mentally, into The Future. Wisdom, however, requests a pause. If we cannot give ourselves such a pause, the Universe will likely give it to us. In the form of illness, in the form of a massive mercury in retrograde, in the form of our car breaking down, our roof starting to leak, our garden starting to dry up. Our government collapsing. And we find ourselves required to stop, to sit down, to reflect. This is the time of “the pause,” the universal place of stopping. The universal moment of reflection.
I am here today to encourage you not to fear it. And why is it important to be told, to be reminded not to fear the pause? Because some of the most courageous people on earth are scared of it, as I have been myself. Why is this? It is because the pause has nothing in it; it feels empty. It feels like we have been jettisoned into wide open, empty space. We can not see an end to it. Not seeing an end to it, or for that matter, not even understanding a beginning or a need for it, we panic. We may decide to make war, for instance, in the moment the Universe has given us to reflect. By the time we recover from our hasty activity a thousand small children may be lying dead at our feet.
Sometimes there is a feeling of not being able to continue. That, in this pause, whichever one it is, there is no movement. No encouragement to move, at all.
There is a poem someone sent me that speaks beautifully of this. It is called “A Blessing” and is by Stephen Philbrick. It was sent to me as a gift for having done a benefit reading for the Women’s Fund of Western Massachusetts. I was experiencing a pause of major proportions when I did the benefit, with no idea this poem would be the treasure I would receive. I dedicate it with much metta, (a Buddhist term that might translate as caring, or loving-kindness) to you.
A Blessing
Don’t try so hard.
It comes in a shiver sometimes,
Sometimes in a winter windowpane,
Wild with the unseeable
Frozen there in ice:
The shapes above clouds,
The score and the libretto of wind,
The plot of waves.
Don’t try so hard.
Sometimes it falls,
> A flake at a time,
Into your life while you’re asleep.
Sometimes it comes as a winter
Blankness,
Waiting for storm, or ice, or thaw,
Or even wind,
And then the still air groans,
And the trees crack,
The swamp shudders,
And the woods thrill.
Sometimes it comes when you least
Expect it.
And sometimes it doesn’t.
Quiet, still, no voice (even small),
No whirlwind, no reply; no burning.
Just a bare winter bush.
This is God, too.
The space between stars,
Where noise goes to die,
And the space between atoms,
Where the charges thin out:
These are places, too.
The moment in the movement of the soul
When it all seems to stop,
Seized up.
This is true, too.
Ice is, also.
And dormancy.
And I don’t mean the stirring
Of seeds beneath the snow,
But the place between
And the moment before.
And I don’t mean a lightning bolt,
But what it passes through.
I don’t mean a dream,
But dumb sleep.
“Not a thing” is something.
After the end,
And before the beginning,
Is time, too.
Let it alone, don’t try so hard.
This is God, too.
All of you is.
As a culture we are not in the habit of respecting, honoring, or even acknowledging the pause. (Culturally the most common reference to the pause was given over to Coca-Cola, which promised “The pause that refreshes.” In other words, whenever there is a moment you are not busily doing something, Eat. Drink. And here’s what we want you to eat or drink.) Women know this very well. At menopause, a time of extremely high power and shapeshifting, we are told to behave as though nothing is happening. To continue the “game” of life as if we are still girls. We are not girls. And to continue to act as though we are robs the world and the coming generations of our insights. Insights readily available to us during this particular time which is a highly significant universal moment of reflection.
I am convinced that in earlier times women during menopause drifted naturally to the edge of the village, constructed for themselves a very small hut, and with perhaps one animal for company—and one that didn’t talk!—gave themselves over to a time without form, without boundaries. They were fishing in deep waters, reflecting on a lifetime of activity and calling up, without consciously attempting to do so, knowledge that would mean survival and progression of the tribe.
Until I Was Nearly Fifty
Until I was
Nearly fifty
I barely thought
Of age.
But now
As I approach
Becoming
An elder
I find I want
To give all
That I know
To youth.
Those who sit
Skeptical
With hooded
Eyes
Wondering
If there really
Is
A path ahead
& Whether
There really
Are
Elders
Upon it.
Yes. We are there
Just ahead
Of you.
The path you are on
Is full of bends
Of crooks
Potholes
Distracting noises
& Insults
Of all kinds.
The path one is on
Always is.
But there we are,
Just out of view
Looking back
Concerned
For you.
I see my dearest
Friend
At fifty-one
Her hair
Now
An even
Steel.
She blushes much
& talks
Of passion:
It cannot be
For the bourgeois
Husband
I never
Liked.
I thought life
With him
Had killed
The wild-haired girl
I knew.
But no.
There she is
There she goes.
Blushing.
Eldering.
I too talk
Stunned
Of love
Passion
Grace of mating
At last
With
My soul’s
Valiant twin.
Oh Youth!
I find
I do not have it in
My heart
To let
You stumble
On this curve
With fear.
Know this:
Surprise alone
Defines this time
Of more than growth:
Of distillation
Ripeness
Enjoyment
Of being
On the vine.
I wrote this poem a few years ago, after a pause. Nor could I have written it before or during it. Before getting to the point of generosity to youth, I had to enter into, give myself over, and endure the pause.
This next poem is from that same period, but just as this particular pause was coming to a close and I could discern, possibly, some gifts.
Loss of Vitality
Loss of vitality
Is a sign
That
Things have gone
Wrong.
It is like
Sitting on
A sunny pier
Wondering whether
To swing
Your feet.
A time of dullness
Deadness
Sodden enthusiasm
When
This exists
At all.
Decay.
You wonder:
Was I ever “on”
Bright with life
My thoughts
Spinning out
Confident
As sunflowers?
Did I wiggle
My ears
& Jiggle my toes
From sheer
Delight?
Is the girl
Grinning fiercely
In the old photograph
Really me?
Loss of vitality
Signals emptiness
But let
Me tell you:
Depletion can be
Just the thing.
You are using
Have used
Up
The old life
The old way.
Now will rush in
The energetic,
The flexible,
The unmistakable
Knowing
That life is life
Not mood.
During the pause is the ideal time to listen to stories. But only after you have inhabited Silence for long enough to find it comfortable. Even blissful. There are stories coming to us now from every part of the earth; and they are capable of teaching us things we all used to know. For instance, driving down from the country last week—I had gone there to put in my garden, which I did—I listened to a CD called Shamanic Navigation by John Perkins. In it he talks about the Swa people of the Amazon. These are indigenous people who’ve lived in the Amazon rain forest for thousands of years. They tell us that in their society men and women are considered equal but very different. Man, they say, has a destructive nature: it is his job therefore to cut down trees when firewood or canoes are needed. His job also to hunt d
own and kill animals when there is need for more protein. His job to make war, when that becomes a necessity. The woman’s nature is thought to be nurturing and conserving. Therefore her role is to care for the home and garden, the domesticated animals and the children. She inspires the men. But perhaps her most important duty is to tell the men when to stop.
It is the woman who says: Stop. We have enough firewood and canoes, don’t cut down any more trees. Stop. We have enough meat; don’t kill any more animals. Stop. This war is stupid and using up too many of our resources. Stop. Perkins says that when the Swa are brought to this culture they observe that it is almost completely masculine. That the men have cut down so many trees and built so many excessively tall buildings that the forest itself is dying; they have built roads without end and killed animals without number. When, ask the Swa, are the women going to say Stop?
Indeed. When are the women, and the Feminine within women and men, going to say Stop?
I used to be suicidal. I grew up in the white-supremacist, fascist South, where the life of a person of color was in danger every minute. For many years I thought of suicide on an almost daily basis. Other than this, and severe depression caused by the inevitable childhood traumas and initiations, I am not a person innately given to despair. However, it has been despairing to see the ease with which women, after over thirty intense years of Feminism, have chosen to erase their gender in language by calling each other, and themselves, “guys.” This is the kind of thing one can reflect on during a pause. Are we saying we’re content to be something most of us don’t respect? Conjure up an image of a guy. What attributes does it have? Is that really you? Is this a label you gave yourself?
What does being called “guys” do to young women? To little girls?
Isn’t the media responsible for making it “cute” to be a guy, as if that’s all the Women’s Movement was about, turning us into neutered men, into guys? For guys don’t have cojones, you know. They are men, but neutered, somehow. So if you’ve turned in your breasts and ovaries for guyness, you’ve really lost out.
And does this make you remember that when we were trying to get the ERA, the Equal Rights Amendment, passed, which would have assured equal rights to women, suddenly the market and our television screens were flooded with a new dishwashing liquid called, you remember, Era. A not-so-subtle message that equal rights for women was still associated mainly with the kitchen and a sink full of dirty dishes. And it must have been in the Sixties, when women were claiming their freedom to have a good time, that the dishwashing-liquid magnates came up with a concoction called Joy.