by Alice Walker
The intuitive part of us, the deep feminine, whether in male or female, knows when we are being ridiculed, laughed at, told to forget about being women, or having a Feminine, being wild, or being free; led to sleep if not to the slaughter.
In those small areas where we do have some control, the words coming out of our mouths, for instance:
When are we going to say Stop?
Today we are learning that the Acting President knew about al-Qaeda’s plan to hijack airplanes. Long before September 11th. Knew about unusual Middle Eastern flight applicants entering the nation’s flying academies. Yesterday I heard a spokeswoman for the Acting President explain that, while they knew about the possibility of a hijacking, they had no way of knowing it would not be an ordinary one. How were they to guess the planes would be used as bombs to demolish the World Trade Center and a wing of the Pentagon? In a pause, a moment of universal reflection, we can ponder this comment. Suppose you or I had been on one of those planes piloted by some “unusual Middle Eastern flight applicant” with only a few flights under his belt. Would we have wanted to be warned? Would we have wanted planes even to fly, until this issue had been looked into? I don’t think so. Now we will have an opportunity to see the cultural resistance to dealing with the pause. We have seen it before; all our lives, actually. The rush to act. The distaste for hesitation. The absolute hatred of spending time in emptiness, what Buddhists refer to as groundlessness. The Pause.
Imagine if other members of Congress, along with our courageous Congresswoman Barbara Lee, had said WAIT. Don’t give this Acting President everything he wants. Don’t let him make war on anyone he chooses. Let’s observe a moment of reflection. Let’s give ourselves a pause. Can you imagine how much lighter our hearts would be today? How much less chocolate and junk we’d consume because we can’t stop ourselves from knowing our comfort—the junk food, heated houses, spiffy new cars—is connected to severed heads, and limbs of children, lying somewhere in a ditch?
In the Christian Science Monitor a few months ago there was the following article:
AFGHANS SAY DIGGING CAVES FOR AL QAEDA “WAS LIKE A PICNIC”
“It started almost two months ago, and I am happy because I made a lot of money from them,” says Jalad Khan, a driver who could only hope to make the 70,000 Pakistani rupees ($1,100) that al-Qaeda paid him in two to three years. “They gave us food and goat meat, and we were laughing every day. We were having a very good time—it was like a picnic.”
“When we were there, they were joking with us, saying: ‘We will strike the Pentagon from these mountains,’ says Ahmad Wazir, an unemployed father in grime-blasted clothes. He followed that with: “I don’t even know what the Pentagon is, if it is a tree or a village, or a leader.”
If we pause, we can easily see that killing these men, who didn’t know if the Pentagon was a tree or a village or a leader, is neither sensible nor sane. Yet I would guess that by now these men have been, thanks to our tax dollars that have purchased weapons whose only use can be for inaccurate evil, blown into pieces smaller than dust. What of the women they were laboring to support? What of the children they were trying to feed? What of their ignorance, or, more accurately, their innocence? There are millions of people living in this country who, thanks to September 11th, know where the Pentagon is, but they still have no idea what it actually does. Do you? Do you know what really went on in the Twin Towers? I don’t.
Sometimes, of course, it is all simply too much. We’ve heard enough. We’ve seen too much. It is hard to bear our own human thickness. Our laziness and stupidity. Our addiction to our toys. Our comfort. Our ways of thinking and behaving. Life hears our weariness. And into it begins to pour moments of the pause. We slow down. We can’t think. Our hair attracts lint. Our socks don’t match. It isn’t easy to see that this is a good time.
My Friend Yeshi
My friend Yeshi
One of the finest
Midwives
Anywhere
Spent a whole
Season
Toward
The middle
Of her life
Wondering
What to do
With herself.
I could not
Understand
Or even
Believe
Her quandary.
Now
Thank goodness
She is over it
Women come to her
Full
Babies drop
To her
Hand.
It is all
Just the way
It is.
Sometimes
Life seizes
Up
Nothing stirs
Nothing flows
We think:
All this time,
Climbing this
Rough tree
The rope
Attached
To
A rotten
Branch!
We think:
Why did I choose
This path
Anyway?
Nothing at
The end
But sheer cliff
& Rock-filled
Sea.
We do not know
Have no clue
What more
Might come.
It is the same
Though
With
Earth.
Every day
She makes
All she can
It is all
She knows it is all
She can possibly
Do.
And then, empty, the only
Time she is flat, She thinks: I am
Used up. It is winter all the time
Now. Nothing much to do
But self-destruct.
But then,
In the night, in
The darkness
We love so much
She lies down
Like the rest of us,
To sleep
& Angels come
As they do
To us
& Give her
Fresh dreams
(They are really always the old ones, blooming further.)
She rises, rolls over, gives herself a couple of new kinds of grain, a few dozen unusual flowers, a playful spin on the spider’s web called the internet.
Who knows
Where the newness to old life
Comes from?
Suddenly
It appears.
Babies are caught by hands they assumed were always waiting.
Ink streaks
From the
Pen
Left dusty
On
The shelf.
This is the true wine of astonishment.
We are not
Over
When we think
We are.
Just this past week I’ve suffered from exhaustion. I got out of bed one morning determined to go to the nursery to look for heirloom tomatoes from Russia named after Paul Robeson, who sang a whole generation of rebels through some very hard times. Only to find my body was not into it. It wanted to get back into bed, lie in the sun, and sleep. Later on, a friend came and made soup and tea. And in the pause of this moment I thought of the blessing it is to have a home; to be warm and sheltered. To be cared for. I said to my friend: it is possible for everyone on earth to have this. It is not some distant fantasy, it is a reality. It is the pause that gives us this clarity, this certainty. It is our time of gathering the vision together, of reminding ourselves of what we want for ourselves and how we want the same for everyone. This is the vision most in danger of becoming extinct in our time: that what we enjoy and want for ourselves is possible for all; that this is the reality we must work toward. The pause, so brief—if only in retrospect—gives us a wonderful intuitive knowing about abundance. After all, we ourselves were empty, and now we begin to fill up again. So it is with everything.
Following is a poem about the writer’s life, riddled as it is with pauses, times of incredible emptiness, times that can sometimes feel as fearful as the deepest night. And yet, with time, with maturity, and above all, with patience, one learns to dance with them.
The Writer’s Life
During those times
I possess the imagination to ignore
The chaos
I live
The writer’s life:
I lie in bed
Gazing out
The window.
To my right
I notice
My neighbor
Is always painting
And repainting
His house.
To my left
My other neighbor
Speaks of too much shade
Of tearing
Out
Our trees.
Sometimes
I paint
My house—
Orange and apricot,
Butterscotch & plum—
Sometimes
I speak up
To save
The trees.
The days
I like best
Have
Meditation
Lovemaking
Eating scones
With my lover
In them.
Walks on the beach
Picnics in the
Hammock
That overlooks
The sea.
Hiking in the hills
Leaning on
Our
Hiking sticks.
Writers perfect
The art
Of doing nothing
So beautifully.
We know
If there is
A butterfly
Anywhere
For miles
Around
It will come
Hover
& maybe
Land
On our head.
If there is a bird
Even flying aimless
In the next
County
It will not only
Appear
Where we are
But sing.
If there is a
Story
It will
Cough
In the middle
Of our
Lazy
Day
Only once
Maybe more
& Announce
itself.
You have completed something of major importance, your studies at CIIS. May you embrace the pause you have earned and enjoy the emptiness for all it is worth and for as long as it lasts!
Most of us believe emptiness is nothing, and we fear having nothing. Emptiness, however, is filled with possibility, filled with space. I have learned to enjoy watching my empty mind. Unlike the minds of many of my friends, my mind is often completely blank; I know it is there, but there is nothing in particular in it. My memory, for that reason, is sometimes described—by those who know me—as poor. My retrieval system slow and faulty. Having this empty mind though, has many benefits. I may not be able to recall something said twenty years or minutes ago, but I can watch the gentle arrival of something entirely new. A poem, the plot of a novel, the ending of a short story. I can “know” something in a flash, as if it simply appeared on my mind’s blank screen. It is because I cherish my empty mind that I am careful what I put into it. I limit television especially, even though I think the medium of television is astonishing. I limit other things, too, like movies and public events and other people’s conversations. If my mind is crowded with ideas or thoughts or plans or other people’s creations there is less room for my own. And it is my own mind and journey that I wish to experience, because it is from this vantage point that I can most truly engage others.
Contemplate your mind. What is in it? What is in it that you wish were not? Is it like a clothes closet that is filled with 1980s fashion? Or is it like a busy TV show, a sitcom, where people are saying idiotic things to each other and there is canned laughter? Is it like a horror movie? Do you know how to empty your mind? Do you believe you can learn to trust a mind that isn’t always speaking to you? Can you imagine a mind that feels itself part of one big mind; the mind of the Universe, waiting on instruction?
Pause for a day. Clean your mind. Sit by the ocean and let the breezes help you do this.
The River Has Its Destination
There is a message from the Elders of the Hopi Nation of Oraibi, Arizona, that speaks to this time very well. It has been circling the globe by Internet for several years and many have taken comfort from it. I read it to audiences quite often. We listen to the Hopi because they are people who have lived with Nature long enough to understand their purpose. They believe they must live simply, in a particular part of the world, and maintain specific ceremonies and prayers so that the Earth can continue to flourish. Their history contains information from times before our own when the world was destroyed. Several times. I think that because they are among the few modern peoples who seem to know and understand who they are and why they are, they are awesome teachers.
We have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour
Now we must go back and tell the people this is the Hour
And there are things to be considered:
Where are you living?
What are you doing?
Are you in right relation?
Where is your water?
Know your garden.
It is time to speak your truth.
Create your community.
Be good to each other.
And do not look outside yourself for the leader.
This could be a good time!
There is a river flowing now very fast
It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid.
They will try to hold on to the shore.
They will feel they are being torn apart and they will suffer greatly.
Know the river has its destination.
The Elders say we must let go of the shore, and push off and into the river, keep our eyes open, and our head above the water.
See who is in there with you and Celebrate.
At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally.
Least of all, ourselves.
For the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt.
The time of the lone wolf is over.
Gather yourselves!
Banish the word “struggle” from your attitude and your vocabulary.
All that you do now must be done in a sacred manner
And in celebration.
“We are the ones we have been waiting for…”
—The Elders, Hopi Nation, Oraibi, Arizona
Flannery O’Conner wrote: “everything that rises, must converge.” I thought of this when I saw that the Hopi elders had closed their message to the world by quoting June Jordan. This is a time when many will find, to their astonishment perhaps, that we are seeing the world through a single eye. Race will no longer matter, or sex, or gender, or orientation of any description. How we will survive will be our only concern, and who will be with us.
The time of the lone wolf, Capitalism, for instance, is indeed over. It cannot possibly sustain itself without gobbling up the world. That is what we see all around us. Women and children in Bangladesh, India, the Philippines, Haiti, Mexico, China and elsewhere in the world forced into starvation and slavery as they turn out the tennis balls and cheap sneakers for the affluent. Ancient trees leveled to make more housing while housing that could be saved and reused is torn down and communities heartlessly displaced. Mining of the earth for every saleable substance she has. Fouling of the waters that is her blood. Murdering innocents, whether people, animals or plants, in pursuit of oil. The lone wolf is the hungry ghost (in Buddhist thought) that can never get enough; whose mouth may be small but
whose stomach is boundless. We cannot afford him. Even those seduced by the notion of becoming rich by playing the stock market will learn they are investing their lives in a system that feeds a vampire: the lone wolf of Profit by Any Means Necessary.
The Hopi know that Nature can stop the rampaging lone wolf. That it has done so before. That is what they are telling us. That tsunamis and hurricanes are just, one might say, the tip of the melting iceberg. That we are only beginning to comprehend how dependent on Nature we are. Hurricane Katrina, which destroyed much of the beautiful city of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast of the United States, may well be the start of a massive unraveling of everything we thought whole. And like the former Soviet Union we may find all our hopes, for a system we have believed in, dashed. What will be left?
Know the river has its destination.
I was so grateful to find this line in the message. What do you think it means? What will our destination be, if we no longer have a system that, though rotten, seems at least familiar to us? Where will we be headed if we lose everything we’ve known?
Sit with the Hopi message. Linger over the question “Where is your water” and the instruction to “know your garden.” Consider who will be in the river with you.
What does it mean to cease using the word “struggle” and to think of celebration instead? When I listen to this thought I hear a vast silence advancing on the world as we have known it; this vast silence is already in motion and on its way; but between its arrival and this moment the birds are singing.
5.
Crimes Against Dog
My dog Marley was named after the late music shaman, Bob Marley. I never saw or heard him while he was alive, but once I heard his music, everything about him—his voice, his trancelike, holy dancing on stage, his leonine dreadlocks—went straight to my heart. He modeled such devotion to the well-being of humanity that his caring inspired the world; I felt a more sincere individual had probably never lived. Considering his whole life a prayer, and his singing the purest offering, I wanted to say his name every day with admiration and love. Marley has grown up on his music; Bob, leaning on his guitar in a large poster on my living room wall, is regularly pointed out to her as her Spirit Dad.