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That Day

9/16/2020

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     I know what last Friday was. So do most of you. This past September 11th, (Patriot Day, if you must) was oddly quiet compared to the ones that followed 9.11.01. If it was reminiscent of anything, it was an awful lot like the latter half of the first 9/11 of the century.

     The common question everyone seems to ask and sometimes answer year after year is the same line of inquiry that is asked about any watershed event. Where were you when the Challenger exploded? What were you doing when the Berlin Wall was dismantled? What do you remember about the events of 9/11?

     Not much, really. I worked third shift at a youth crisis center. We'd had a rough night.  One of my coworkers admitted a twenty-three-year-old prostitute to the program at the end of his shift, left it to the second shift people to tell her she couldn't stay, and then I came on duty just in time to do the paperwork, and... I just wanted to go home, take Dogface McFuzzybutt out for a wee and a quick jog, then sleep off the frustration.
And that's exacty what I did, having no idea the world as I knew it was going to end in a little over ten minutes.

     It was just after eleven in the morning when my mother woke me up to inform me the Pentagon had been attacked and the World Trade Center was gone. As I tried to wrap my sleep-fogged mind around what she told me, she went into the living room and turned the television to CNN.

     There was the then new, now ubiquitous crawl running along the bottom of the screen. Every edge seemed to stream information as if the newsreaders couldn't get it out fast enough. These new elements framed the shaken journalists who introduced replay after replay of what happened earlier that day.

     "Do you have gas in your car?" my mother asked. I shook my head. "Well, you need to fill up your tank. I don't want you to get stranded coming or going. In fact, I'd rather you stayed home."

     A quick sidebar to explain something about Nashville. Whenever something goes wrong anywhere in the world, people here immediately panic and go buy as much gas as they can. There can be a storm somewhere  in the Gulf of Mexico and everyone else is fine. Atlanta? Chattanooga? Houston? Safe as houses with full tanks. Nashvillians will suck the pumps dry and then sit shivering over stockpiles of Oreos and AA batteries. So yes, there were lines at some stations while others were already closed with "Out of Gas" signs taped to their windows.

     After we took care of that errand, we bought lunch and sat out on the patio. We listened to reports that no one was flying anywhere over the U.S. until they knew more. The skies were indeed emptied of everything but birds. 

     The shelter was just a few streets over from Vanderbilt's medical campus and on the most used path of their Life Flight helicopters . For the rest of the week and then some time after, every time a rescue craft roared over, our residents would pile out of their rooms and sit in the common room. Nobody slept. Normal was something we figured out we  took for granted.

     For the fortunate children at home, their senses of what was sure and safe had shifted. Crisis calls had never been particularly frequent. My one or two callers an hour who needed to blow off steam were now jockeying for talk time with children who waited for their parents to go to bed. Mom or Dad worked in the Tennessee Tower or at Fort Campbell or BNA. What if bad things happened there?

     One night, my conversation with a young boy was interrupted by his mother. When she reaized who he was talking to, she sent him back to bed and started talking about dealing with her and her children's fears.

     "When does normal come back?" she asked.

     I told her what I told everyone who asked that question. I didn't have an answer.  Almost twenty years later and I am back to listening to people talk through their hopes and fears. They ask about normal. They tell me their hopes for life when we all go back to normal.  I listen and tell them I hope they move forward to what makes them happy.

    Like many Americans, I've been dreaming a lot lately. The dreams are vivid. Sometimes the information that streams through my unconscious state lingers as I surface through REM back to wakefulness.  I hear and see fleeting  remnants of those dreams.

     Very early last Friday, I woke to find I'd been sleepwalking. I remembered following my old sheepdog down the hall where I was sure there was a door to a room that had something I needed. (This has a point. Please bear with me.) There was just a bookshelf, as there had always been. Touchstones to the things I loved live on those shelves: Zipes and Dundes on fairy tales, Levi-Strauss' elegant account of a taxonomic record of shared experience expressed in a new disciplinary language and yet has the brocaded feel of a fable, Turner's rabbit hole of ritual behavior defined and parsed in Western theatrical terms.

    I began to panic. Where was it? I looked at my dog, who in waking life  has been gone over ten years now. He shook his head, making his hairy ruff fly wild and his collar jingle, and looked back at me. 

     "This is normal," he said. "Might as well be who you are. Nothing else is an option."

I started to kneel down to pet him, and that was when I woke up.

"Normal is gone," I said to myself.

I meant to write this essay last Friday. For some reason, words would not come.  Morning prayer included a meditation on 9/11.  At that time, the minister... (Celebrant? What is the proper word? Me talk purty one day.)
The minister made the observation that sometimes the best tribute is silence. Maybe that's what some of us needed last Friday: quiet skies and the time and space to just think in the midst of our current state of sturm and dang.

     What is normal? It looks like whatever it will be is up to us.

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Let's Talk!

8/20/2020

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     I had a teacher at Western Kentucky who used to introduce herself at the start of every semester with a roll call of her areas of expertise, some of her accomplishments in her field, her bona fides, and a little bit of information about her life so far. She always added this at the end: "...and I'm Roman Catholic. Get over it."

     At the time, I thought it was curious, maybe a bit quirky. As I got to know Kentucky through fieldwork and just general experience,  I saw there was a strong Roman Catholic presence in the commonwealth's religious life.  So why the strange coda at the end of every first class? I got used to hearing it and then forgot about it. After all, it was almost thirty years ago.
"Time flies like an arrow and fruit flies like a banana"
                -Groucho Marx or S. J. Perelman, Ahdunno...

    Funny how you can find yourself in situations similar to those you bore witness to as a callow youth and realize how and why those things happen. I find myself wanting to talk about my spiritual life, about what moves me, and remember most of my friends are not Christian. In fact, quite a few of them are atheists.  This makes discourse problematic.

     As far as my friendships are concerned, I don't think anything has changed. I feel the same way about them as I did before I had the time and energy and quiet to think things through. Still, I want to seek people who share my view of things and at the same time, I'm not planning on giving up my friends. I hope they feel the same about me. Do they look at my posts and updates and wince? I don't know and am a little afraid to ask.

     It looks like the combined causes, the COVID-19 sheltering in place thing and the list of churches I know aren't for me that was starting to reach bad boyfriend proportions might keep me doing this online and in a solitary situation for the foreseeable future. Maybe I can be okay with this.

     I could worship with my mother, who is Methodist and reminds me quite often that my people made her boy, John Wesley, WORSHIP IN A FIELD LIKE A PEASANT COW.  I am still not sure I follow this. Are Anglican/Episcopals purebred patrician cows to her plebian livestock? Are Episcopalians from Texas Longhorns? Could I be a Tennessee Walking Anglican? Moo.
  "Forget it. I'm rolling."
                                        -Not original to me, but I'll take it

     Maybe this would be a good time to answer concerns that have been brought to my attention in the past.

Concern: "I'm scared I am going to wake up one night and you'll be standing over me, ready to pour holy water on my face. Also, my people killed Jesus."  - an ex who shall remain nameless

Answer:  First of all, you're mistaking me for Astrid, a classmate who got a little too into her fieldwork in Memphis and was suddenly no longer enrolled after she broke up with her boyfriend. He claimed she sprinkled graveyard dirt on him one Friday when his cousin (his story) or ex-girlfriend (her story) called him at stupid o'clock just to talk. I don't do that nonsense.
     Second, my father was a Red Sea Pedestrian. Second part two, you're oversimplifying the whole "Who Killed Jesus?" thing. No, it wasn't just Mister Pilate in the chambers with an angry mob. It was a whole mess of politics that start with P which rhymes with T that stands for Trouble.

Concern: "Penn Jillette says..."

Answer: Oh goodness, the Penn Jillette dictum. I'm sorry, go ahead.

Concern: "Penn Jillette says, he doesn't want to be around Christians because they'll try to convert him. If a Christian doesn't want to convert him, then they're a bad person or a bad Christian or something because they are neglecting to help him get into heaven and he doesn't like hypocrites, so he doesn't want to be around them. This makes a lot of sense to me.  So, um, why don't you want to convert me? Or do you and if that is the case, you're dead to me."
 - Taylor Slow, who desperately wants to argue about this some more.
No.

Answer: I have never spent time in Mister Jillette's head, but it seems to  parse down to, "I don't want to be around Christians." As a bit of socially graceful obfuscation of one's feelings, it's pretty elegant. My response is this: If you don't want to be around Christians, that's fine. You do you.
     No one has to agree 100% with anyone else. Can you imagine how boring things would be if we did? I have no problem enjoying Mr. Jillette's shows and books.  He's smart, funny, and is refreshingly not cynical. Skeptical I can enjoy. Cynical, not so much.
     It took me a while to find my way home. If someone asks, I don't mind talking about it. If not, I'm not going to interfere with whatever path you or anyone else is following.

Concern: "Science, religion, belief, facts...How can you reconcile loving science with theism?"
-Worried parents who find out I have an anthropology degree and worried parents who find out I am a Christian


Answer: Religion and science ask two entirely different sets of questions.  
"We are all just walking each other home"
                                     -Ram Dass

     And I believe this. Maybe it's why I am trying to change the course of things in my life and at the same time, there might be a good reason for me to be flailing a bit. There might be a reason I'm not tucked away all comfy in a flock somewhere.  There might be a reason why my life is not a bubble of other people who believe. And sometimes I wonder if it is really fair to ask others to accept someone who has turned out to be different critter from the rest of the herd on the pasture. For some, those changes look like good breaking off points and I have to accept it if that is the case.  No matter what happens, I can still wish people the best and will.

Oh, and...

Moo.
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About Compassion Fatigue...

8/9/2020

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Yesterday I spent the better part of my last couple of wakeful hours on the phone with a friend who'd driven his wife home while she cried.

They were at an organisational meeting to discuss further protests and what needed to happen after. Someone essentially screamed at her that no matter what she did, it would never be enough. They demanded to know why she wasn't on the streets screaming about the injustice of our systems from sunup to sundown, seven days a week, because that was the least of what she owed.

This couple is white. He is a former uni classmate who is the scion of a prominent agricultural family. He's also spent a lot of money trying to help keep social justice efforts going in his home state. He's spent a few nights in jail. He and his family have been threatened for this.

"I'm so tired," he said. "I know that no matter how tired I am, I can walk away from the indignities and outrages and all that. So can T____." He paused. "Do I even have a right to feel tired?"

Okay, I'm going to go there and write what I said to him. I'm pretty sure this is going to cause some anger and I hate that, but it needs to be said.

Yes, you probably are tired and it is okay to feel worn out by all this. It should be observed that you have not stopped caring.

You're just tired.


You recognise that the people you're standing up for are tired. They're heartbroken. They're scared and they're angry. You have not stopped caring about them or what is happening to them.

You're just tired.

You're used to being comfortable. You're used to feeling safe. Now you have a taste of what it's like for the rest of America, and by the rest of America, I mean the people who are persons of color, people who do not fit the Christian, cis-het, nuclear family mold that we're told is the shape and form of nice folks around these parts.

What you are experiencing is what we in the helping professions call "Compassion Fatigue."

At some point, you see a need you might be able to answer and as much as you think you should, there is a part of you that says, "I just can't. Not today. Not right now."

You may or may not actually be able to meet that need. However, you are stuck and at this point, you will either take this on in half-measures or not at all.  This might be a good time to revisit what you miss and who misses you. This is where a good night's sleep, a meal with someone you love, and unmitigated silliness in private can heal you. You need to allow for healing. You're not going to be any good to yourself or for anyone else if you don't do this.

Finally, I'll say this as someone who has worked in the trenches as a psych unit worker, a social worker, a counselor, a public health and legal outreach person, and whatever this clown-nosey experiment my clinical director is demanding of some of us right now. One thing I learned from the first week I went on the floor in 1995 was that some people will see you as an ally. Some people will at the very least get that you're on their side, and some people will treat you like trash for no other reason than they're angry and they can. That last group of people?  They're jerks.

It would be nice if the people you were trying to help kept in mind that you didn't hurt them. You're trying to fix things. It doesn't always work out that way. Sometimes they're caught in a loop of pain and anger and they can't/don't want to respond to you any other way.  Help them anyway. Love them in the general Christian/Muslim/Jewish/Humanist/Anything-elseist way that you can. They're jerks, but they're jerks in pain. Offer a hand up, and if they don't take it, walk away. You've done what you can.


Namaste, y'all!
Jas
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136,000

7/16/2020

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Where in the world did they get the "Samurai Cop" part of the title? Oh yeah, this is Dave Matthews, who can sometimes be the Sultan of Derp.

But I digress.

138,000 is still an abstraction to a lot of people. To those of us who get the emails we dread more often than we like, this is all too real. Please don't tell me they are in a better place. Don't ask me to not mourn. Don't ask me to not be sad. Don't ask me to not be angry.

I attended a university known for its nursing program and worked for years in medical model psych. Like many people with that kind of work history, I'm likely to know people who are putting their own lives on the line to save others. Sometimes they fall along with their patients.

The people we are losing are not just numbers to be handwaved as inconveniences. They were people who loved and were loved. They are sisters, brothers, husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, friends... They mattered.

Requiescat in pace.
Requiescant in potestate.
Animam tuam rem pertinere.


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6.26.20  Response to Re. "I'll Take My Stand"

6/26/2020

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 6.26.20   

     My mailbox has been a little busy lately. There have been the Confederate apologists/revivalists who want to kick my ass because I am not a huge fan of slavery and sedition. There are also people who had a hard time reading an essay where I described someone with CSA battleflag patches on his hat and jacket as a "nice guy."  They think I'm racist because I did not slap the man, scream at him for wearing such an evil sigil and then educate him about the error of his ways.

     Let's talk about that for a moment. Life can be cut and dried about some things: 
  • Be excellent to each other. (Matthew 7:12)
  • Live and let live. (Exodus 20:13)
  • Mind your own beeswax. (Luke 6:37)

      When it comes to day-to-day interactions, things like context and nuance can be important.  When that man in the waiting room started to talk to me about computers and I saw his hat and jacket, this was where one of two choices had to be made: I could have treated him coldly after telling him I took exception to his choice of symbols to display or I could have done what churchy folk around here call "witness by example."

     I chose the latter. Everybody can be redeemed. It's not our place to judge and it's certainly not mine to forgive or not. That is the right of those who are hurt by those sigils. However, it is my place to talk to other White people about what those can mean. Ask yourself this: Do you respond better to someone slapping something out of your hand or a friendly exchange? I thought so.

     Something to keep in mind is there really are people who do not understand the full import of what they are endorsing. That man with the cap? He is most likely an example of what Santayana was talking about when he opined about the past. To him, the St. Andrew's Cross begins and ends with identifying with being from the South. I didn't do too deep of a dive into the matter. It wasn't the time or the place. I hope at some point, he will find someone who he feel comfortable enough that he will ask all the right questions. I hope so.

     That brings me to another topic that came up in a couple of letters. Will I be changing the name of this website? No, I won't. "Dixie" has been co-opted by those who identify strongly with the Confederate States of America. Their version consists of the 13 lower southeastern continental states, the ones who seceded from the Union. 

    "Dixie" is a verbal shorthand reference to the Mason-Dixon line. The M-DL was a demarcation surveyed from 1763-1767 as a way to resolve border disputes between a handful of states. The actual line goes well north and west of the CSA states.  This is a good model for who we really are. The physical, temporal, and cultural markers go much further than we imagine.

     I am not asking anyone to forget the cruelty of the past. I am reclaiming what is vibrant, what is true, and what makes my home what it is beyond the memes adopted by those who would kill everything off rather than face their own darker natures. There are people who identify as Southern who see what is alive and true about this place. We see the need to work toward what is fair and just.  This means overdue apologies, overdue expressions of gratitude, and recognition of unacknowledged brilliance that built this place.  I have no illusions about that. We have a lot of work to do.

     So the name stays. This is my home. This sense of being rooted in place defines me. It serves as a reminder that this is a work in progress and I cannot turn my back on it.   

Namaste, y'all!
Jas
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    About this blog...

    Someone asked about an essay I write for the front page some time ago. I'd always thought of the home page as something akin to a Buddha Board. Whatever I wrote for it was there as long as I needed it, and then it disappeared. Maybe I do need to save those pieces. At least for now, I'll put them here for anyone bored enough to read them.

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