I really hate writing my biography. On the one hand I believe that who I was yesterday is not who I am today and is not who I will be tomorrow. Biographies seem so final: the sum of a person. Unending equations have no sum. On the other hand, I also believe that the following quote from Albert Camus is true:
A man's work is nothing but the slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.
Somewhere in the interplay between the capacity for infinite variability and change and the constancy of primary seminal traits, a personality is formed which gives rise to a journey that spirit travels. I define myself by the journey, not by the way stations and stopping points. I am not what I have done or where I have been or even what I think. I am, as you are, something beyond the concrete forms of life. I am spirit. It is my travels in the medium of this idea that have led me to my darkest hours and to the depths of peace. Frequently I alternate between them.
But..... since we do take up these journeys in bodies, and since we do recognize each other, at least in part, by the concrete and shared experiences of life in this plane of existence, I will tell you some details of my life.
I grew up, an American, in Germany. By the time I was 11 years old, I had acquired a permanent shadow. The shapes and hollows and darkness of the Holocaust follow me wherever I go. As a child, I remember sitting on the brick walkways around the "dormitories" in Dachau and willing myself into the experience of such utter privation and bestiality. I think I believed that if I could feel what it felt like, I would understand why it happened, or at least leave the mark of my compassion on the stones where so many had suffered.
I lived in a small German village at the juncture of two lush rivers. My best friend, Uta, lived in a house that was over 400 years old. We passed through her door everyday and ran our hands over the smooth, smooth, cool boulders that formed the basement walls. I was enthralled by the idea that these rocks had once been stacked upon each other, each one separate and alone, forming crevices and spaces before the mortar filled them in. But now, four centuries later, there was not a seam to be found. A thousand hands, surely, had smoothed them; a thousand backs, surely, had rubbed against them, and now they formed a solid wall.
Uta's mother was from Prussia, which was then East Germany, and now is, simply, Germany again. During the years of the Nazi reign over much of Europe, her mother was chased across the frozen tundra by Russian soldiers on horseback, with their dogs; she was raped and left to die in the freezing wilderness. She was 16 years old at the time. She did not die, and the warmth and smells of her kitchen, the fullness of life in the bubbling pots and pans on her stove, and the softness of bunnies raised to be killed for food, contained by those cool, smooth stones, always left me wondering at the mystery of opposites.
I loved my German friends and their German homes. I loved my Jewish friends and their Jewish homes. I loved my Russian housekeeper, a tiny wizened lady of some 70 years, who hauled an old Samovar out of my parents' attic and shined it religiously and lovingly every week for a dozen years. I knew there were questions to be answered that went beyond the issues of good and evil, went beyond the simplistic question of who is good and who is bad.
The theme of how opposite qualities relate to each other, which is, to me, the fundamental underlying nature of any query or consideration of good and evil, is the thread that has tied my life together. It forms the woof to the warp of a desire to live a good life that structures the loom on which I weave my experiences to my understanding.
I have been homeless and discovered goodness in the people that most of our society considers evil, or at least, disposable or different. I have been challenged over and over again to see beyond the notion that evil exists at all. Bad things happen and harm is done, but is it necessary, is it in the nature of our species, a requirement of life, to accept that bad things MUST happen? I don't think so. I think it is a more natural state to live in peace and harmony. We have simply forgotten this and the task of our journey is to help us remember.
Religious traditions across the face of the globe and throughout history speak to the yearning of the human soul to know goodness. Often these ideas, interpreted through the limited understanding of the human mind, preoccupy themselves with a focus on evil or sin. Regardless of what man has done with God, God remains inviolate, the pure expression of infinite mercy, generosity and joy. We are created in God's image; we must also be the reflection of infinite mercy, generosity and joy. We need only remember that that is our true nature.
There really is no such thing as an opposite; it is only our perception of opposition and conflict that brings these states into being. Night and day are part of an integrated whole; black and white are more related to each other than they are different. As a culture, we focus on difference rather than sameness; we prefer to analyze our lives, our science, our political policy, by its discrete and separate elements. We believe that separateness and difference have value and deserve our attention. Yet, joy is the singular experience of joining to something, or someone, or someplace or event, without reservation. Joy is our birthright. Perceiving our samenesses with mercy is the ticket to a wondrous journey. Forgiving ourselves when we cannot do this is the currency that buys the ticket.
The separateness of mind
is a lonely place.
And as the tree sways, fed by the people,
to the gentle breezes of prayers sent skyward,
red and yellow, black and white,
I am returned to the dancers' steps that
together
throb a rhythm of life.
Bright red drops the blood.
One for each child and elder
another for the women;
together
we are the pool of water
that flows from the mountains to the sea
where we see
the campfires of ancestors still
hanging in the mists on trees above the cliffs
of oceans.
The tang of sea salt, the smell of life,
the pungent smoke, smell of hope, of the most holy cedar,
our prayers rise
for infinity,
for the purity of spirits
so as one mind, we are not separate.
The sun dance
place of willing sacrifice
blood of my blood,
kin of my kin,
all my relations.
The phone rang in the booth,
brrrrrrrring,
and jarred me out of my reverie
into the sharp reality
of metal closets
made for communicating,
pavement made for waiting
and barren parks
made for
gatherings in the twilight
of people who have nowhere else to go.
Brrrrrring,
James sprang,
could be the call he'd been waiting for;
they might be called the waiting people,
stuck on pavement
and barren parks,
maybe some heroin
to add a heavenly haze
to the earthly glaze
of dirt and grime,
and the waiting, endless waiting
of nowhere to go.
A place is a critical thing,
an idea,
about how to organize yourself,
and your life,
it gives structure to time.
You might not know this,
if you've always had a place,
taken for granted that you could sit
when you were tired,
or lie down when you're awake,
lean on a kitchen counter and wait for the coffee to brew.
Waiting with a purpose is an entirely different matter
than waiting as a way of life
with no prize at the end to delude
you into thinking
you've learned patience.
Brrrrring,
damn, I'd almost traveled home again,
in my thoughts, the closest thing I have now to a closet,
the only place to store things,
the only things to store;
and now that door was opened by a phone,
and I am here, not almost home.
The park stretches,
brown,
as far as my eyes can sweep,
'til they touch the grey
of the sidewalks
we are allowed to call home
until the uniforms come to
tell us we've invaded someone else's place,
the people's space,
public sidewalks,
citizens' sidewalks.
What are we?
Deciding what is rigid and immutable,
what is flexible and ready for change
is the art of living life in a good way.
A mountain is pretty solid, immutable,
until water wears it away
one drop at a time,
and carves a cavern or a creek.
Nothing stays the same.
That water
washes away the granite,
slowly pulverizes it into dirt
which settles in a gully,
and builds a mound,
preparing to become the mountain
again.
Nothing really changes.
Only time and the nearness of our lives
deludes us into anxiety.
But time is meaningless, except to clock people.
What a relief.
I can change or stay the same; it doesn't matter.
Indians are barbarians
said those who put nails through the hands of
Christ.
The Sun Dance makes flesh sacrifices,
willingly,
each dancer choosing,
committing,
for the good of all,
just as Christ chose,
for the good of all,
forgive them father for they know not what they do.
Christ gave of his body,
knowing it was a meaningless form,
in the face of the Spirit which is abundant, rich and timeless;
Sun dancers give of their flesh,
knowing it is a meaningless form,
in the face of the Creator, which is abundant, rich and timeless.
They all gave so that others might live.
Coyote messes up, bad sometimes,
he gets flattened into rugs,
run over by a truck a white farmer drives,
who then throws old coyote on the floor of his
square house.
Coyote springs up again the next day and flees through a window,
hale and well, resurrected, life after death.
The sins of others cannot harm us. Forgive and move on.
Easter, a time of celebration,
great joy,
He is risen,
life after death,
waking after sleeping,
innumberable second chances.
Forgive and move on.
Easter,
we mourn the crucifixion
that man created,
focus on death,
give our attention to pain and suffering,
worship grief,
when we could
celebrate life,
dance the joy of the risen,
the forgiven,
the forgiving.
The sins of others cannot harm us when we forgive.
Coyote teaches us lessons of joy, mischief,
humor and forgiveness. He shows the way
with a light heart. He messes up,
bad sometimes,
but his people love him.
He shows up in disguise.
sometimes,
where he is least wanted.
Now he is the fool; now he makes the fool,
but his people love him and learn from him.
Christ and Coyote. They are brothers.
Everyone walks their own path.
Different and the Same.
Where people love, all is forgiven.
So speaks the gospel, so speaks Coyote.
How fathomlessly deep
are the oceans of grief.
Only a shadow here and there
amid the shifting depths
reminds me that light exists;
Above and Beyond.
How ageless and timeless the
sharp edged woe
that cuts awake
and through my meager attempts at
sleep;
as though I could sink
to the bottom,
float gently down
through waters that
Sylvia Plath
might have roamed,
her own trails
staining a path
to the heart of desperation.
What is loss,
but a place
in the soul
that has been torn apart.
In this place
comes a long standing chill;
with luck it numbs the heart
and lays its hypothermic fingers as a balm
across the pain.
Luckless,
it freezes and burns,
stimulating and tickling
the jangled nerves of aloneness
in a white and deadly silent
forest.
Stillness:
not of rippling waters,
but of isolation.
Pristine cover:
not unsullied snow banks
along manicured parks and hedge lined lanes,
but the icy crust
undisturbed by the imprint
of the soul's tender, trusting feelings.
What is loss,
but the baleful cry
of a wolf silhoutted against the night;
my own cry, it comes unbidden,
part moan, part rage,
all helpless.
I have become a quieter place
a stiller pond
a stronger tree
in my silence.
I share sparingly
of myself,
my mystery intact.
The snow is crisp and chill.
The white buffalo snorts
steamy mists,
like the ancestor's campfire smoke
which hangs in the trees at dawn.
A regal call escapes from her mouth,
a call for silence,
for turning in
to real warmth.
I sit at the campfire of my ancestors and am reassured by the easy quiet.
I rest in my silence,
dance to the mystery
to the cadence of the chill,
the gentle throbbing of the dawn's energy,
the massive solid power of the buffalo,
who gives all to her people,
the massive solid power of the beast.
I rest in my silence.
(Copyright by Kristi Shelloner, 1999 - No reproduction without express permission from the author)