Today we honor the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his legacy. I’m not sure how to do that now in this divided nation that doesn’t seem to have any clear or agreed-upon understanding of its own history. I have been listening and learning for all my life about the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, the legacy of slavery, the Civil War, white supremacy, and racism. I am learning more details of American history, and trying to comprehend how our path to this moment influences how we think and act, and make decisions, as individuals and as a nation. Whether I’m examining my country or myself, it isn’t pretty.

In the last several years I have observed some simultaneous enlightenment and denial, facts in conflict with fantastic fiction of which the toxic seeds were planted so long ago that it has taken root like a tenacious, noxious weed that hasn’t left room for anything else to grow. But in the movement towards enlightenment I am seeing seed of hope are being sown.

In my own small way of amplification of some of this truth-telling, I will share here things that I have been absorbing in the last couple of years that are giving me hope. These are things that are helping me to understand America, my identity and responsibility as a white person in working towards the anti-racist society that is the world I wish to live in.

At the top of my list are two podcasts that I recommend to anyone whenever I have the opportunity:

Uncivil tells stories of the Civil War that are often left out of its official telling. These are stories of the agency of black people, the exposure of the lies of the Southern “Lost Cause”, and a deep look at how racism is embedded in our culture. There is hope here, at least for me, in that exposing these truths of American history perhaps we can understand and unravel the paradigm of white supremacy.

Seeing White from Scene on Radio is another American history podcast that dives deeply into white identity in a way that we are not used to doing. This podcast challenges the position of privilege that white people occupy, a paradigm so dominant that white people haven’t had to think about what it means to be white. It’s a fascinating look at how the social construct of race came into being and how it was used to justify white supremacy.

Another podcast, Reveal (fantastic investigative journalism), had an episode in December of 2018, Monumental Lies. This story exposes the making of the distorted history that many Southerners cling to that frames Confederate generals as heroes and claims that slaves in the South were happy and treated well. It is galling to hear how children in the south are still being taught these lies, and Confederate monuments have been and still are preserved with taxpayer money. The story traces the history of how the seeds of these lies were planted and leaves the listener hopeful that the revealed truth will unravel these false teachings.

Notable readings:

• “White People Assume Niceness Is the Answer to Racial Inequality. It’s not”, from the Guardian, January 16, 2019
• “America Loves to Praise Martin Luther King, Jr., But We Ignore His Message”, from CNN, January 15, 2019
• “Sins of the Fathers”, from the Washington Post, November 28, 2018
• “A Former Plantation Begins To Tell A Fuller Story Of Slavery In America”, From NPR, December 9, 2018
• “The Heartbeat of Racism is Denial,” from The New York Times, January 13, 2018, by Ibram Kendi
• Stamped from the Beginning, Ibram Kendi, 2016
• Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates, 2015

 

…or perhaps just picking up where I left off…

So, I’m here again to dust off this old blog. It has been quite a while since I have mustered the discipline to write regularly, just not making it a priority for a couple of years. After some encouragement from loved ones near and far, I’ve decided to pick it up again. Not that I expect wide readership, but I think that if nothing else I will appreciate the time capsule of part of my life recorded here, where I will mostly likely talk about what I’m reading, listening to, watching, observing, thinking, feeling.

Today I began the discipline by updating my Inspiring Lives page, looking at obituaries from 2016 to now. Wow. 2016 was really a terrible year for loss of public figures who meant a lot to me and my generation. I remember well going through that time, on social media people were declaring 2016 the worst year ever, as more and more of our role models and icons died. Not to mention the presidential election inexplicably going to Donald Trump, which was the real tragedy that year. At the time I was super sad, but I also thought to myself “this isn’t the worst year…..that is yet to come.” Indeed, the years that followed have been pretty terrible. But at the same time, for me personally, I have much to be thankful for, and I remember every day all that I am grateful for.

But I digress.

Mary Oliver died last week. My social media feed was overwhelmed with grief at her passing. It’s odd how comforting it is to share in the collective grief online, reading the quotes from her poetry that people chose to share in their remembering what she and her work have meant to them. Honestly, though I majored in literature and I have a real love for beautiful writing, poetry is not something that I have read regularly in my adult life since college. I have certainly read many Mary Oliver poems that friends and family have shared with me over the years, but I can’t claim the attachment to her that many others I know do. I am certainly saddened by her death, and inspired by her life, and like, I suspect, many others, my appreciation of her work will grow, especially now that she has passed. A notable death is a moment in time to appreciate and learn from a life well-lived. One of the many reasons I love a good obit.

Since Oliver’s passing on January 17, there have been many excellent articles about her life and the impact of her work. They are all worth reading. And then afterwords, get to reading her original words!

• From the wonderful BrainPickings website, they republished a post from 2015 about Oliver’s life with the photographer Molly Malone Cook.
• Another from BrainPickings: Mary Oliver on commitment to a creative life from 2016.
• “Mary Oliver on Grief and Loss“, from the New York Times.
• “Mary Oliver’s Deep, Direct Love for the World”, from the New Yorker.
• “Listening to the World”, an interview with Krista Tippet for On Being.

I taught a yoga class this week, and was inspired to conclude it with a Mary Oliver poem that I found. I thought it was fitting as it was about how the spirit occupies the body, something that I think about a lot in my yoga practice.

Poem

by Mary Oliver

The spirit
likes to dress up like this:
ten fingers,
ten toes,shoulders, and all the rest
at night
in the black branches
in the morning

in the blue branches
of the world.
It could float, of course,
but would rather

plumb rough matter.
Airy and shapeless thing,
it needs
the metaphor of the body,

lime and appetite,
the oceanic fluids;
it needs the body’s world,
instinct
and imagination
and the dark hug of time
sweetness
and tangibility to be understood,
to be more than pure light
that burns
where no one is —

so it enters us —
in the morning
shines from brute comfort
like a stitch of lightning;

and at night
lights up the deep and wondrous
drownings of the body
like a star.