Won’t you be my neighbor?

Last night Rob and I turned on the documentary about Fred Rogers.  Rob left after about thirty minutes, I stayed through the end.  I haven’t asked him why he left but I know why I stayed.

I was curious.  The Neighborhood used to bring up all sorts of feelings in me.  I thought Fred was a dork, I thought his show was saccharine, and tedious and the puppets were lame.  I was, all in all, disdainful of the program and so we watched Sesame Street instead.

Don’t get me wrong.  Sesame Street was and is a wonderful show.  Funny and bright and energetic.

Mr.  Rogers Neighborhood is earnest and relaxed, more kid-centric; as kids are, not as adults think kids are.

I watched this show with an open heart, with my mind at ease and only occasionally did my cynic emerge.  I had to kindly ask her to leave.  Fred Rogers speaks to the damaged as well as the undamaged child.  He speaks to us before we have been bullied or shamed.  He asks to be loved just the way he is and says that we can too.  We can be loved just the way we are.

Oh how tender this is.  How tender and sweet and brave.

 

Dreams of my father

“In ancient Greek, Chaos is translated as ‘the gaping void.’ The first deities that emerged from Chaos were Gaea (the Earth), Tartarus (the Underworld) and Eros (love); and later Erebus (Darkness) and Nyx (night) also were created.”

Does logic inform the world, or does Chaos?  Did God take a lump of nothing and form it into meaning:  from amoeba to man, from the minutest piece of plant matter to the giant Sequoia.  Intelligent design; someone thought the world up. Espiritu sancti.  From nothing, everything.

Sometimes I take chaos and at other times I favor reason.  Hard to say what is really true.

It’s probably not important.  Either way, one has to choose to act in faith.  Or with faith.  I’m not sure.  ‘In faith’   implies immersion. ‘ With faith’   implies a partnership.  Some people would prefer to think of it as a partnership thereby protecting their own autonomy.  For myself, I chose immersion.  Just diving in and trusting that it will all work out.  If I think too long about a thing, I end up getting in a tizzy, not knowing which end is up, spiritually speaking.    So just dive in, the waters fine.

So what is this faith I talk about?  I don’t think I mean this in a religious way.  I mean this as in be a faithful servant.  Be a mensch.  Is that too fucking vague (and can we really say fuck when we’re talking about such weighty matters?)  Again, I don’t know.

I think the faith I’m talking about is being steady, being forthright, being grounded.

Aunt Fran thinks I should move on because I’m doing a pisspoor job of explaining what the hell I’m talking about.  She does, however, love the picture of Chaos above and would like an introduction.

Moving right along.

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I need to rework my dad’s dream.  I dreamt my dad was in the prow of a longboat.  It must have been an old schooner, and they were sending the longboat out to meet the natives prior to landing on an island.

I dreamt of huge trees going hundreds of feet above my head and an equal number of feet down.  I touched the bark.  It was scored like a land mass after eons of floods, scored deeply, profoundly.  The bark was hard, hard as stone in places and then soft and spongy in others where the water still flowed.  The trees were like the pipes of a huge organ and strange noises would emerge.  Like intakes of air and then whooshes like the wind blowing in a forest.  Sonorous and beautiful and solemn.  Worshipful.  Cataracts of water poured out of the ends of some of the trees.  It was a noisy, clamorous dream.

I dreamt that my dad was a leader of men. He is in the prow of a longboat directing his rowers onto a long beach.  On this beach, huge men bang on drums.   It is a dark night.  There are no stars.  Fires burn on this distant beach sending sparks high into a dark dark night.  The popping, snapping, fires and the drumming draw them in, pull them in.

What the hell is that all about?  It is primeval;  a dream about a dream of Gods.  A dream of an all powerful father: our Father.

Surety is the name of that dream;  someone is in charge. So while I may count myself a rationalist, a realist, I too dream of a savior.

I know why the ancient peoples dreamt of gods.  We need them, otherwise, it’s a free fall in an unsure universe.

We dream of a world that’s safe and secure.  We dream of a world that never changes, that we can count on.  To dream of saviors who will save us is to have false hope.  We are giving up our agency.  Human needs are too immediate, we want too much and we think/hope that supplies will last forever.

There are those among us that will swallow our world whole while they piously pray their false prayers.  Who will stop them?  Will it be their mothers or fathers?  Will it be the good ones, the protectors?  What do the protectors have in their quivers?  Small arrows, legal darts to shoot at these madmen who burn our forests, trample our heritage and think that there will be another world to travel to when they use this one up.

Fools.

Chilling

I am reading a wonderful and disturbing book, Milkman.  It is not an easy book.  Set during the Troubles in Belfast, it quite clearly describes the polarization/demonization that occurs during extreme sectarianism.  It is “call-out” culture in the extreme.

It’s like Mao’s China when children ratted out their parents, brothers ratted out brothers.  Nobody could be trusted.

This calling out goes from political and religious to personal as people play out their  grievances and their peculiarities.

There are so many levels to this that it gives me mental indigestion just trying to understand it all.  Individuals shrink, constrict, and hope to just save themselves and their loved ones.

The fables they tell themselves are heartbreaking and understandable;  just keep a low profile, go to work, find a regular man, have children, don’t stand out, don’t look up, just barrel through.

Meanwhile, in the canopy, the war rages on between the so-called forces of good and evil.  It is black and white up there.  There is no compromise, no reasoning—the only tune they play is “my way or the highway.”  Who can grab the power—will it be the Protestants, or the Catholics?  Who will it be?

Those in the canopy are fighting for a CAUSE.  Those in the Understory are fighting to survive.

In the understory, people are scuttling around trying to survive.  Whatever happens, most folks just want to be on the winning team.  Winning means surviving.

Most folks just want a little bit of ground, some air to breathe and their families to be safe, and let the canopy-dwellers rage far above them.  Sooner or later, though, the whole forest is consumed.  The understory is the field on which the canopy plays.

This is a fucking brilliant book but it’s hard as well.

Society becomes tribal and deadly. It is the beginning of a society disintegrating.

America isn’t like that yet.