FOR THIS BOUNTY
Dear Friend,
A friend of mine has a talent for dinner parties.? Every morsel is well-seasoned food for thought; every syllable savored for bouquet. ?One such evening let six women catch up on each other's lives since our last fete at Liz's the year before. One mentioned her return to temple. Her parents had been so "reformed" as to never attend. Yet, she felt herself drawn back to the fold, culturally, by the music: the cantor's plaintive wail, the congregation's "Avinu Malkeinu," the aura of her long-departed parents' embrace in each note. "I feel," she told me, "they must have sung these words to me as lullaby."?
My conversation companion is not a woman of faith, she confesses. She is a seeker. Being in the presence of a religious experience, she feels, makes her a better person. Without it she is incomplete, too goal-oriented, too focused on getting the job done, too unaware that there may be another job her life is meant to accomplish.?
I am fascinated by her candor. How can a Jew believe in a god after the Holocaust? ?Palestinians after the Nakba? African Americans after slavery, segregation; the alive-and-well legacies of both? How can Native Americans believe in anything for any reason ever again? She does not know. I do not know.?
What she has come to believe in is the chain―a continuity of heritage that has, somehow, survived the strains exerted upon it. She has come to believe that the god there is, if one there be, is one that has wanted people to survive. How else can one explain our existence across the millennia in spite of ourselves and the history our?species has made??
As a psychotherapist, she meets all sorts of people. Among them are far too many women and children who have been abused―and treating abuse is not her specialty. Her male patients, too, have been abused, but they are more reluctant to discuss it. Pondering this with her rabbi, she has learned of his personal travail. And she has come to see a correlation, of sorts, among those whose culture and religion are deeply entwined: the deeper the wound, the stronger the belief; the stronger the desire―the need, collectively―to believe.?
But, after their prayers, what do they say to themselves, we wonder. I ask my questions.? She asks hers.? Our body language shifts. We are leaning in; almost forehead to forehead. Our questions are a journey. We have moved beyond philosophy, now. We have attained unfathomed depths in this brief time together. How we got where we are in our conversation transcends all coincidence of color that has forged our difference in creed. This is about life.?
We speak of children: our own children, other peoples' children, perhaps our inner child. ?We do not say which. We have come to the part where we question what and how we tell children what they need to know to be brought to faith―especially faith in themselves.? We have come to the part where every culture, every faith converges, where we urge our children to "believe deep enough," to "work hard enough," to "live righteously enough" for the gods to hear, protect, and defend them. What do we believe when we realize our gods have not heard, protected, defended? What do we tell those so betrayed that they may never forgive their gods? Are there sown, in the explanations of faith we were given in childhood, seeds of self-hatred???
We ask. We do not answer. These are questions to be asked again and again. Will you come to my temple when you're in California? I will. Will you come to my church, asks another who has been listening in. A plan is made.?
For our menu, our host has provided jambalaya (African-Spanish-Mexican), corn (indigenous Native American), focaccia (Italian), tea (Indian), talk (universal). For this bounty, we are grateful.
ON THE SHOW AND PODCAST
DENEEN L. BROWN, REPORTER
This week on the show: the conclusion of my interview with Washington Post Reporter, DeNeen L. Brown.? ?
领英推荐
“It was not death she feared,” Hurston wrote in?Their Eyes Were Watching God.? “It was misunderstanding.”
? When I read that line at the end of Brown’s piece about author-anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, I knew we had to talk. In the passings-down of voices across the ages through Hurston and Brown, the ancestors seem to have spoken their peace; what it would take for them, at long last, to rest in peace and power.? ? From our interview:
When I had the opportunity to become a professor. my father said to me, “At some point, you'll have to give back.” Now I'm reporting, writing and teaching. And, my lessons are infused with lessons about this history. I begin each semester by showing my students a slide―a picture of Black people in Texas―who had recently been emancipated. And I say to them, “This is who I dedicate the semester to, this is why I do the work. And I want you to remember that.” ? ? ? ?I don't take any of what I do lightly because I believe I’m doing the work of the ancestors. Even though, in reality, I'm that shy little girl who wanted to just play my flute, read books on a tree, and not talk to people, I have to step out of my comfort zone. When I walk into a room, when I walk on stage to give a keynote, even though I'm shaking inside, I walk in, I believe, with one thousand ancestors at my back.I tell my audience that this is why I do the work I do. I am empowered by the ancestors.
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~?DeNeen L. Brown
Visit the show page?here . Download the podcast on Apple?here . THE JANUS ADAMS SHOW airs and streams live Saturdays at 11:00 AM (ET) on WJFF Radio Catskill. Click 'LISTEN LIVE' on the home page. ?
AND ONE MORE THING
Watch PBS' American Experience documentary, Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming a Space, directed by Tracy Heather Strain,?here
Read DeNeen L. Brown’s coverage in The Washington Post, “How novelist Zora Neale Hurston transformed American anthropology,” here .