No Such Thing As a Still Life

I walk in harmony, heaven in one hand, earth in the other. I am the knot where the two worlds meet. "The Knot of Isis" from Awakening Osiris

I once heard a scholar named Beatriz Morales, when speaking on the Abakua of Cuba, say that her devotion to scholarship was not motivated by a desire to accumulate knowledge. Her probing, traveling, lecturing, documenting and the like were more a kind of spiritual practice. Morales is one of the only people I have ever heard to say this outright. And though I'd never made that exact connection between scholarship and spiritual practice, I'd say that in many ways the same is true for me.

Rummaging around in my books and papers, I recently rescued notes from a talk given by filmmaker/writer/scholar Trinh T. Minh-ha at Agnes Scott College back on September 27, 2007. At that time, I was still a (mostly) stay-at-home mother doing all that needed to be done to tend to the needs of my new baby and my new self, a self that had changed in some extremely uncomfortable ways. To make myself feel connected, I'd done number of things including start this blog, get involved with some online communities and sign up for newsletters.

One social connection that I plugged in to was Agnes Scott College's events calendar. They often brought in prominent artists and, even better for my SAHM budget, many of these events were free (Sandra Cisneros and Nawal el Saadawi were two that I had previously seen courtesy of ASC). The Trinh T. Minh-ha event was one of several that stood out on the calendar. I recognized her name from bell hooks’ Sisters of the Yam which I'd read back during the end of undergrad when I was living what I think of as my Magical Maiden phase of life-- mind expanding, blooming, curling tendril like in every direction it could fathom. Deciding to go to the talk was, in some bizarre way, like me trying to get in closer touch with an old self who completely believed in the power of art, beauty and culture to transform the individual and the community.

I prepared for the event kind of like others might preparing for a day trip, mindful to pack dinner for Jared and a snack for myself. I also bathed my baby (ignoring protests of having him out in the "night air") and dressed him comfortably in his pajamas, which my mother advised I do whenever I thought I might be out late, which these days meant past about 7 or 8 p.m.

I honestly had no idea whether my somewhat unpredictable little Jared would sleep or stay awake. If he stayed awake I didn't know how kindly he'd take to the two of us sitting still. Why didn't I get a babysitter? Likely, I couldn't find one. Despite the fact that Jared was born into a fairly large African family, they rarely volunteered. This made me often seek the help of a teenager who lived a couple of doors down from us. I would call on her when I really needed an extra pair of hands, had the money and when her schedule would permit. This was probably one of those times when she was studying or had volleyball practice or something. Part of me considered canceling my plans while the other (satisfied as she was with the blessing of getting time to spend and bond with her baby) stubbornly refused insisting that she was bound and determined to get some air-- city air!

I had become the poor soul so outing-deprived that she’d take her wailing or chattering baby to a movie or concert, trying her best to ignore it as others cast her dirty looks living, as I did, out in the burbs with Jared's father/my in-laws. For one reason or another it was hard to make face-to-face or telephone contact with friends. Though I did get out of the house it was usually to grocery or clothing shop for the baby, both things that I enjoy but both of which can also get old. And quick. Often, the baby and I would go for walks around the neighborhood, and we had begun hunting for good neighborhood parks. Sometimes I'd make a big deal out of taking us to the Fiesta Mall on Buford Highway hoping to catch one of those parking lot carnivals, a mariachi band or simply soak up the festive atmosphere.

What all of this amounted to was that I often felt seriously isolated and sought ways to do something about it. So, I took my chances as well as the advice I'd heard passed down from so many artist-academic elder mamas: wrap your baby on your back and tend to your business as women of color have done for ages. You serve as an example when you love, support and nurture your interests right alongside those of your child. (As it turned out, the baby fell asleep in car and ended up sleeping soundly in his stroller as I wheeled him across campus and to the auditorium. He slept through the talk and woke up, as if on cue, exactly at the end.)

After all of the effort it took to get there, I admit to initially being underwhelmed by the presentation. Trinh was not a dynamic presenter like, say, Robert Farris Thompson. He's such a showman that few can compare, so I don't think that that is what I expected. But I did come in search of a particular thing. Don't ask what. An anecdote or candid reflections on artistic process, maybe. No dice. Her manner was formal, and she read from carefully prepared notes that outlined complicated ideas that had me contemplating easing out of the door within the first ten or fifteen minutes of arrival. As is often the case, I wasn't in much of a mood to translate dense, lofty Academese. (Completely nonsensical seeing as how I was at a talk given by a scholar on a college campus, I know. Maybe I thought that her presentation would pitch a tent somewhere between the lands of Artist and Intellectual.) I also admit to being a little taken aback by what sounded to me like dismissal of a metaphor or image that is dear to me: that of earth as mother and giver.

What ended up being really cool and made the event well worth the effort was that once I really settled in and held my mind steadily in the moment, what Trinh had to say became more profound and absorbing, something like the gradual breaking of day. I found that she does belong to the sisterhood whose work blurs the line between what we know of the mind and what we know of the soul. I needed simply to be still to receive or witness what she was working up to.

She spoke about light and movement as they relate to her film Night Passage, film inspired by Kenji Miyazawa's late 1920s novel Night Train to the Stars as well as, she acknowledged, Antoine Saint Exupéry's The Little Prince. We humans lie somewhere between the machine world and the spiritual world, she said, and we live in a time when the crossing of boundaries of land and sea is so much a part of what we do. This kind of traveling is important yet should not be seen as more important thatn paying attention to what's going on in the space in which we're standing. We must take the time to "traverse the snare of illusion," or simply look at ourselves and at life in such a way that we can sort out what is real, and I would add, worth our attention. So much that we think is important is not; what remains here after we have traveled on is that which is intangible. She said that Night Passage speaks most importantly to the idea of time and asks questions: In the flash of emergence and vanishing, what will you put in the story space of your life? What will your pose be?

This tied in to her speaking about the dance of opposites and it being best to use opposing forces as complements to one another. She echoed a thought put forth by the Dalai Lama in his talk "Spirituality and Nature" when she eloquently cautioned that science without conscience does no good and that technology without poetry does little to empower. She named the middle, the place of neither extreme, as the true place of freedom. There was talk of music, which made sense being that it is essentially the child of light and time. (I later learned that she was originally trained as a music composer and taught at the National Conservatory of Senegal.) She gave something of an affirmative nod to notions of sound healing held by dancers, musicians, metaphysicists and even some hard-nosed acoustic scientists when she went on to speak about the importance of sound vibration, mentioning that the body that is out of sync takes a while to attune to its instinctive bio-rhythms.

Trinh spoke about the slow but steady "speed of the flowering mind" and called attention to the notion that, philosophically speaking, there is "no such thing as a still life" in Asian art. Life is always moving and changing, and if we sit still and mindfully observe it for long enough we see that even a mountain changes-- be it in the plant life that grows upon it, the animals that graze upon it and so on.

I took away from the talk what was useful to me and found that like so many teachers connected to ancient Eastern traditions, her very manner of presentation reminded me of something important: being fully present allows us to perceive the life that vibrates within us, through us, all around us at all times.

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Abakua URL: AfroPop Worldwide "Voice of the Leopard: Ivor Miller talks to Ned Sublette"

Dance images depict traditional Balinese and Indian Bharatanatyam dance. For more on Indian story dance, see the 74 minute India Blooms: Stories in Motion , a program of the Chicago Opera Theatre.

Hybrid Soul

I fished the piece below out of several hundred pieces of paper that fill notebooks, folders and spirals near my workspace. I wrote it back around 2001 or 2002 in response to a call for submissions for an anthology on modern, young women's perspectives on spirituality.

The publisher was (is?) a West Coast press with a small list. The submissions were to be lighthearted, pop-flavored yet informative, hip and perhaps even a little glib and sarcastic. I sat down, thought and gave what I had. My truth.

My submission did not end up appearing in the collection, but I like it because it is one of my first attempts at composing a black and white concrete meditation on a topic that's actually more sterling silver and fluid. What appears below is a slight expansion of what I orginally sent in.

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Most of the boundaries between traditions are artificial. Truth has no boundaries. The differences are mostly in emphasis. ~Thich Nhat Hanh, Reflections from Living Buddha, Living Christ

I am drawn to examine (and re-examine) the Old Ways, the Old Beliefs. To link up my own feelings with inquiries, faiths, passionate dedications which...sometimes startle me by popping up from deep in my subconscious. I think, irresistably, of magic, of blood memories, of God, even of Christ. It is a matter of roots, of place...a search for the essence of my people found in my own blood. ~Alice Walker, from the preface to Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems

Not long ago, I decided to take public transport to work and happened to sit near two people who, before the end of my ride, would engage in something of a religious debate.

He was a middle aged African American Muslim dressed from head to foot in Eastern garb. He was a cool brother, Last Poets-type that I will call Abu. Directly across the aisle from Abu was a young woman whom I guessed was in her mid-twenties. She was also black. Their seats were the ones nearest the doors, seats with the backrests against the train walls so that Abu and the young woman sat facing each other. Sitting nearby in a parked stroller was the woman's daughter, a toddler engrossed in a story told in the pages of a large picture book. Young Mother wore glasses and was neatly dressed in a style very similar to Abu's. However, I doubted that she was Muslim; her head was covered, but her arms were bare.

Abu craned his neck so that he could speak around the bodies of the communters who streamed in and out of the canyon-like space, easing into conversation with Young Mother by commenting on Baby Girl's apparent fondness for "reading." I couldn't help but tune in as he used smooth sly-chology to begin to question Young Mother. He began by soft-pedaling and asking whether or not she was a student of Islam. Her polite reply was that she didn't follow any organized religion. Next Abu, apparently appauled, let go of a barrage of questions: Are you a Christian? (At this question, I wondered if he'd fallen momentarily deaf when the young woman said that she didn't follow an organized religion or whether he viewed Christianity as chaotic, as opposed to organized, religion.) Are you monotheist? Do you believe in God? Do you believe that God created all of the planets or that they just appeared through happenstance?

The interrogation ended with Abu offering that the Prophet Muhammed, peace be upon him, was quite liberal in his views of women and that Islamic sharia, as it related to women's dress, was a protective measure. It was only put in place to protect women from men's bestial nature. All of these were reasons, Abu pointed out, that Young Mother should strongly consider converting. At this final statement, Abu turned to a young Levantine/Persian/Desi-looking woman sitting across the aisle from me and asked, "Isn't that right, Sister?" The woman gave a polite, faint smile but looked clearly annoyed by Abu's attempt to get her to help in his mission.

Unruffled, Young Mother held her ground and gave matter-of-fact, pleasant replies to his questions: Yes, she believed in God. Truth is contained in all religions. She had no idea when or how the universe was created and dared not speculate.

I don't know exactly when and how their conversation ended, but after getting off at my stop, I realized that unlike Young Mother whose composure, wisdom and responses reminded me of Scheherazade of A Thousand and One Nights, I was irritated by Abu's aggressive nosiness. It called to mind conversations that a Muslim friend of mine with Louisiana roots would have where he'd laugh and say (in the very Southern way that he had) that minding one's own business is a full-time job as well as a gospel song that I used to hear as a child that advised folks to sweep around their own front doors. Abu's self-serving concern reminded me of numerous encounters I'd had with men, as well as women, who claimed to have the my soul's best interest in mind when they sidled up on publc transport, in elevators, at school or at work. I've been eyed warily and asked whether I am Rasta, Hebrew Israelite, Unitarian. I have even been accused of being a "witch" and can remember being warned by a West African evangelical Christian that despite my being a "good girl" I had a confirmed reservation to hell if I didn't start going to church every Sunday.

I think that for people like Abu, those of mixed spirit are as troubling as people of mixed bloodlines are to some, despite the fact that we're all mongrels. Within our families are some variaton of The Roman Catholic grandma whose rituals and practices speak to secret Jewish roots, the uncle who sold bean pies and Final Call newspapers back in the '60s and twenty years later converted again to orthodox Islam, the cousin who studied abroad in Asia and came back with an appreciation of Buddhism and tai chi. All of these people contribute something to our spiritual understanding.

All this being true, I do still recognize the necessity of giving due respect to one's spiritual roots and that these roots have a strong tie to ones history and culture. Spirtual leaders like the Dalai Lama have spoken to this point. As has Thich Nhat Hanh when he eloquently writes, "After one retreat, a young man told me, 'Thay, I feel more Jewish than ever. I will tell my rabbi that a Buddhist monk inspired me to go back to him.'" So, in a nutshell, it is best for seekers to come to terms with the spiritual beliefs of their ancestors, perhaps picking up tools and techniques of other traditions to shed new light on their spiritual inheritance. Ignoring one's roots puts the seeker at risk of having a kind of identity crisis of the soul. It's like being grounded by one's sense home, family and place yet still showing respect and receptivity to one's neighbors and larger community. As absolutely true as I feel this insight is, I know also that for people with complicated histories it is difficult to figure out what qualifies as being one's spiritual True North.

The particulars of the history of people of color is often convoluted (or fluid, depending on how one sees). I am, for instance, a black woman born in the American South during the 1970s to a common family of modest means. Many of aspects of my history have been obscured or forgotten. In some cases, the amnesia was forced. In other cases, memories and ancestral wisdom were thrown overboard because they were too heavy to carry forward. Most of my ancestors, as far as I know, came from West and Central Africa. Looking at the weathered pictures of long-dead family members makes me also see that we carry the blood of the Native American. In my pale skin, eyes and English name I see traces of the European. I am descended from recent ancestors who were mainly Baptist and Methodist with a few Catholics. I am also one who cannot forget those other ones who were taken from the "wilds"of Africa and hustled into stone-cold churches on islands like Goree, christened with new names like Adam and Eve, exported to ports like Charleston and New Orleans and Santo Domingo and Mantanzas and Salvador. I must honor the Native American whose ways I was never taught, the European ancestors who belonged to the peaceful bands that Marija Gimbutas and Monica Sjoo have written about because there are also insights to be gained through them.

My walk with God has involved holding fragments of truth to light trying to see the ways that the various myths, legends, stories and beliefs fit together and how they, in turn, hold me together. I know that dominant traditions are built upon smaller structures. What may have, for instance, been an ancient shrine or feast day for an ancient diety gets a few bricks added and becomes a cathedral, temple, mosque or in some other way labeled as a new tradition. The Old Ways are the silent spaces that exist in our lives without much comment, while the heralded religion is the printed note that is actually written upon the scale. We need both to make the song.

I was born to a mother who loved the seaside and the moon, who would burn incense after cleaning the house and who pays close attention to what her dreams tell her. Courtesy of my family members, I own at least three Bibles and keep them on a bookshelf beside my bed and take a lot of comfort from the Word written down within them. I came to understand these Bible stories as much from hearing my minister grandfather deliver sermons from his pulpit as I did from listening to long-memoried reggae musicians tell stories of faith, history, struggle and love. My ancestral memory begins to stir when it hears bata drums, muezzin calls and jubilee choirs. I have spent blissful days having outdoor Sabbath at the home of a friend whose yard brimmed with green things because he is a master gardener and true lover of nature. I appreciate goddess traditions (because I know that in order to beget any fathers and sons, mothers and daughters must be given due respect) and yearn for their to be a more solid connection between abstract spirituality and day-to-day education and action. And as uncomfortable as it may sometimes make me feel, I also know that there's a lot I don't-- and never will-- know or be able to explain about the mysteries of Creation.

I like what Jorge Amado once said about Brazilians being ones who revel in syncretism. He said, half-jokingly, that when comes to religion they believe in covering all of the bases. Brazilians also joke that God is Brazilian, probably meaning that there's no escaping the fact that contains multitudes as well as contrasts.

One of the many pictures that my mind holds of the Divine is that God is the grand story. We each hold pages of the mysterious and magnificent text and must use the scripture as the light by which we get to know our highest and most incorruptable Self.

Above image from The University of Arizona Spiritual and Community Resources page