There’s the good kind of sleep, and then there’s…that other kind
Well, after 24 hours of antibiotics, my fever is gone and I feel almost back to normal. I was in bed most of the day yesterday (N tending to the baby), and that helped so much. I feel like a new woman.
So I’m going to try to put into words some of the rumblings I’ve been feeling inside. Apologies for any lack of coherence.
In the last couple of weeks I’ve watched two really great documentaries: The Corporation (about the sicknesses inherent to corporate America and beyond), and You Can’t Be Neutral On a Moving Train (about Howard Zinn and the social causes with which he’s been involved). I left both so energized. Like someone had nudged me awake, and I was seeing life anew.
I’ve long self-identified as one concerned with social justice. Before moving to the Bay, my husband’s line of work (community organizing) and the neighborhood in which we lived were daily reminders of racial/social/educational/economic inequities. These were ever in my face.
But here we are in a different season. My husband is in school, and I’m writing. We’re both caring for our son. And we live in an area where it costs boatloads of money to live. (Can anyone say “enormous student debt”?) The streets are all clean and in good repair. The grocery stores don’t have guards. Very few cars were made before the year 2000. Really, the economic diversity in the area has mainly two categories: a) students and b) millionaires.
So it’s easy for society’s inequities to fade into distant memory. It’s easy to feel the gentle sunlight and afternoon breeze (it’s sunny and between 60 and 80 degrees here nearly year-round) and feel as though all is well with the world. To feel that all is well, and, frankly, a little boring.
But these movies…they woke me up again. They gave me permission to do something other than focus on my little life in my little household. They gave different images and role models than much in the media today, all of which inspire engagement with a world where all is not well. So very not.
So I’ve once again been dreaming of what I can do with who I am and the kinds of things that stir my soul, to lead a more spicy life. A life of greater engagement with the world’s unwellness.
But here’s what happens in my dreams. I get tripped up on the fact that most social causes a person can participate in involve demonizing someone. An individual. A group. A stratum of society. And all I’ve learned and contemplated of the human psyche, and the social and environmental factors involved in any social ill, makes me unable to comfortably do that. As far as I can tell, we’re all of us caught up in systems. Systems that make some of us mean and some of us nice. Some of us conscientious and some self-absorbed. Some bitter, some arrogant, some fearful or ashamed. It’s systems that form our politicians, systems that make rich people rich and poor people poor, systems that cause some from each category to move up or down that ladder. Who isn’t shaped by their environment? By their joys and wounds…by the joys and wounds of others?
I can’t comfortably point at any group or individual and say, “You! The crap is all your fault. You’re completely to blame.”
Can I join with others to address society’s ills when such others might be saying these very things?
And this leads me to my next thought: I think I’m too principled. I think I care too much about being genuine. Is that possible? I care too much about never participating in things that I can’t fully, consistently back. I’m wondering these days whether there isn’t a healthy place for lowering one’s principles. Lowering them for the sake of doing things in the world. Working for social change. Connecting with others. Participating in religion, even.
What would it look like for me to not fear the wrath of the authenticity police, those boogie men who crouch and watch for me to say or do anything contrary to my convictions? I’m sure there are some who could really use a dose of that wrath. But there are those of us on the opposite extreme, who need to stop fearing it. Whose fear of it, oh so ironically, actually keeps us from doing much at all about all our “authentic convictions.”
I’m not about a guilt-based life, but I am about a spicy one, where I’m not asleep to the spectrum of light and dark in our world…where I’m satisfyingly involved in the spreading of the light, and containment of the dark. As tempting as it is to let my environment lull me back to sleep, I want to shake that. I want to be awake and alive in the best sense of that word, and, though getting a little dirty in the process, try to care a little less about being 100% principled all the time.
What do you think?
October 1st, 2005 at 7:37 am
There will always be weeds in the wheat field, and if you want a crop, you have to tolerate them while your crop is growing.
October 1st, 2005 at 11:46 am
This is my struggle. For a while now, I’ve been out of any formal “bible study,” but this week attended one for the first time in a long time. It wasn’t easy. I didn’t like the structure of the study, or the fact that the verses referred to talked all about “sons” and “fathers” and not one mention of a woman. I sat with arms crossed, feeling that old Sunday school resistance in my throat.
But then I decided to listen, and there was something to hear in the lesson and in what others were saying. And I decided to answer honestly, and while I could have said more, it was enough for that moment. And I was able to see that these are good people, that they love God, that they have insight into good things.
For me, sometimes spicy means messy. And right now, I have to be willing to let my fingers get sticky.
Peace.
October 1st, 2005 at 8:42 pm
I’m pretty impressed you can be thinking about the “deep social justice stuff” when you are living moment to moment with a new baby. But, that’s what will keep you involved during these months when the little one needs so much attention. My daughter in law, a clinical psychologist, had two babies 15 months apart, both very premature, and she has been a full-time mom now for the past 2 1/2 years. It has been so interesting to see her switch from one life to another.
October 2nd, 2005 at 10:41 am
Yes, Fran - it’s surprising me too, actually. Some switch turned on after birth that’s making me alive to everything all at once…including the need for more sleep. :)
So true, Roger! And Chandra! Yes! That’s exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about. Your comments make my mind go in a bunch of other directions, too…thinking about where the lines might be for any of us between being healthfully “unprincipled” for the sake of learning and growing and participating and being in relationship with others, and actually taking a stand on things that are important to us. Surely those things don’t have to be mutually exclusive. But I think there are times when they probably are. Would I join a “good” cause that’s sponsored by the KKK? By a group who hates gays? Or ___ (fill in the blank)? When is the time for a person to say “sorry, this ‘good’ you’re doing just doesn’t justify the ‘bad’”?
Thanks for getting me thinking…
October 2nd, 2005 at 1:37 pm
Saul Alinsky (considered by many to be the founder of modern-day community organizing) seemed to capture the tension surrounding compromise in this quote:
“Compromise is a word that carries shades of weakness, vacillation, betrayal of ideals, surrender of moral principles. But to the organizer, compromise is a key and beautiful word. It is always present in the pragmatics of operation. It is making the deal, getting that vital breather, usually the victory.”
Worthwhile change is messy and makes some people mad. Always.
Another quote I like:
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Edmund Burke
October 2nd, 2005 at 5:19 pm
i’ll throw my two cents in…
for me, process is a big part of things, and the line between oppressed and oppressor runs so fine when the end result looms too large in the foreground and everyone decides we just want to get something done. how we do things matters, too, right? the spirit of the thing is important. sometimes though i am paralyzed completely by these ideal values and i can’t do anything at all, waiting for the pure moment. which violates the spirit of things as well, too. at this point, i have to tell myself that there’s a difference between casting your lot with the imperfect, messy process run by flawed people and engaging in methods that lack ethics in order to achieve a certain end. sometimes the only way to get a glimpse of the difference in my own soul is to dive in and be willing to find out which side of the line i fall on from time to time. i’ve been flawed and self-serving more than pure most of the time, but those are always the deepest, best lessons. i wish i had the courage to dive in more often.
the most dangerous posture i think, is thinking i can stay on the “right” side of an issue or that my participation somehow brings purity to the project. this inclination is part of my heritage, my tolerance teaching friends would say, as a White american. i’m still learning that being a learner is first and foremost my best posture and that the complexity of issues doesn’t exempt me from bringing my passion and my longings for wholeness to the table.
i don’t know if it makes any sense but for what it’s worth.
October 4th, 2005 at 9:33 am
Thanks, Jen and Nate. I want to respond to everything here with a post. Hopefully today!
October 7th, 2005 at 11:08 am
There is a bible proverb which says, “Where the stable is clean there is no life”. In other words life, and all it’s vitality and vibrancy is…. invariably dirty.
btw, congratulations on your new baby and here’s a book recommendation for first time parents: “Operating Instructions” by Anne Lamott a fellow mom, seeker, christian, bay area writer.
October 8th, 2005 at 11:26 am
Thank you, Denise! And thanks for the reminder of Lamott’s book! I read it some years back, but I’m sure it would have new relevance for me today.