Flare: A Series - Part 3: Where Is This Going?
Pilgrimages, Prophets, Eric Clapton, Mary Oliver- and Yes - Stevie Nicks and Tim Gunn Again
Here we are, at the final installment of a three part series. Part One is here, Part Two is here. You don’t need to read those previous posts. Small warning, this involves a lot of cat pictures, which will make sense but might also make you sad.
Recently, I was reading some Alexis de Tocqueville. You know, like you do. Who among us doesn’t use the Google for a random reference to agrarian America? Is it only me, who is besieged by media newsletters on indictments and politics all day that decided to refresh her memory on this fellow? It seems early to lose my point in this essay, so I’ll redirect: de Tocqueville, that rascally commentator on American politics and culture, apparently had a hell of a time navigating the country. His boats failed to set sail and when they did, ran aground quickly. His goal in traveling wasn’t that far from an anthropologist: to observe both the structures and the relationships to structures. He noted, apparently, American’s hatred for woodlands.
Thus it's against the woods that all the energy of civilized man seems to be directed . . . . There is therefore in America a general feeling of hatred against trees . . . . They believe that the absence of woods is the sign of civilization; nothing seems uglier than a forest….1
What struck me in stumbling across his thoughts was not “mmm, that explains our environmental crisis,” but that reminds me of an Eric Clapton lyric.
And I'm standing at the crossroads believe I'm sinking down
First, I know. It’s not a Clapton or Cream lyric. It’s a Robert Johnson lyric. Having gone to college with enormously talented jazz musicians, I’m very versed in going to the shed. Yet, somehow, when Clapton sings it, it seems more about being stuck at the crossroads, less about no one giving him a ride. It’s not lost on me how difficult travel for Black Americans is today, let alone what it would have been like in 1936 when Johnson was in the shed writing this song. Legend holds that Johnson did a deal with the devil to become more talented and went into the shed and returned gifted, his version seems more about God giving up on him, than when Clapton sings it.
I went down to the crossroads, fell down on my knees
Down to the crossroads fell down on my knees
Asked the Lord above for mercy, "Take me, if you please"
Maybe it’s just me, having the knowledge of the background in the forefront of my mind, but in Johnson’s rendition, the lyric sounds like God rejecting him not about being lost. In Clapton’s, it seems more about the pain of becoming lost. What do you do when you find yourself at a crossroads? Who gives you directions? How do you stop from sinking?
Part of the reason I pulled up de Tocqueville had to do with his current status among political commentators. Some regard him with prophetic treatment, as if his statements about America’s obsession with middling issues as politics potentially causing a downfall was the equivalent of a cry to turn back! That made me ask two questions: what is a prophet and what is a pilgrimage? Also, related sub-question, how many times will I misspell pilgrimage in my small life on this post?
According to my research, a prophet is someone with the language capacity to build a bridge between the mystical/theological and a specific community so that when that community goes astray, they can warn them to take specific action. “Repent your wicked ways” is but one part of the prophecy, the other part is “if you keep going down this road, something terrible will be fall you.” And yet, repent and be saved sometimes lacks specificity, as far as instructions are concerned. But the instructions alone are not sufficient to make someone a prophet. It’s the connection to the mystical. Without the connection to the mystical, one with a boatload of data and a laudable language capacity could be a prophet. Take Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring as an example. If you are unfamiliar with her work, Carson’s book, arguably, moved a generation to take action to protect natural spaces leading to a campaign that continued after her death to protect water ways ultimately culminating in the passage of environmental laws like the Clean Water Act. Was Carson a prophet? She had an ability for personifying natural elements to make them seem more dear. But as to mystical, that’s not clear.
The other question I have about prophets is more specific to the instruction part. Back to Clapton: when you find yourself at a crossroads, to whom to you seek directions? More importantly, when you find yourself at a crossroads, why would you decide to fly to another country and walk a really long trail? And yet, that seems to be what many people do in a spiritual crisis. It is often what people do sans crisis. Here, I’m thinking of Cheryl Strayed’s book Wild. She put herself into the woods, full of trees, precisely to get away from civilization so that she could get clarity, find her sign so to speak. In a way, that’s not that different from a pilgrimage.
Theologian Barbara Holmes in her discussion The Cosmic We says that art is prophetic because it opens portals to new realities. This brings to mind Mary Oliver. Throughout her work, her poems ask us to see with new eyes, and in so doing to take on new versions of ourselves: to kill an identity to experience more of life. Every Day/I see or Hear/Something/That more or less/kills me/with delight.
Mary Oliver gives us instructions, from time to time, such as bringing our worries to the seashore and washing them in the ocean’s salty irreverance.
I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour the waves
are rolling in or moving out,
and I say, oh, I am miserable,
what shall—
what should I do? And the sea says
in its lovely voice:
Excuse me, I have work to do.
Is going to the shore a pilgrimage? It’s certainly holds the gravitas of a holy trip for some Philadelphians to go down the shore. Pope Francis, who seems to be a reasonable authority on spiritual things, defines pilgrimage this way:
A pilgrimage is a spiritual journey. We don’t choose our destination; it is God drawing us into Himself. Something inside us simply yearns to go. We feel invited, even summoned. Actually, we don’t have to “go” anywhere, for life itself is a pilgrimage. But going offers us the opportunity to leave behind that which hinders us from moving forward.
So no, the travel is not the pilgrimage just like the poetry is not the prophecy. But a prophet and a pilgrimage share the same thing: leave things behind that are keeping you from moving forward. Let go or be dragged.
Here’s the trick about a pilgrimage that stops me in my tracks, literally and metaphorically: you don’t know what is going to happen, just that things will be different when you return. This kind of trust in spiritual change, in letting the old dusty parts of you go, is a big deal, no? In that way, anything that requires you to let go is potentially a pilgrimage.
In the series Ted Lasso, Leslie Higgins says that his family includes his 20 year old cat, Cindy Clawford, whose impending death would wreck him emotionally. Letting go of a creature that loves you unconditionally that you know, because of the passage of time, that your connection to them is becoming more tenuous, is a pilgrimage. I know this personally, because my tiny Hannah Jane is winding down her time.
Each day I spend with her now requires an enormous dose of faith and a lot of questioning of myself and my capacity to make choices, such as how much longer to wait before I let her go. My attachment to her is so strong that a life with out her seems impossible. In the moments when she seems like her body is suffering but her little cat brain is still going strong, purring sitting next to me, or blindly crawling into my lap, I feel overcome with grief before she is even gone. And yet, from the start, she has been a profoundly disabled little kitty. How do I then teach my brain to think of a different future?
I turned around
And the water was closing all around
Like a glove
Like the love that had finally, finally found me
Then I knew
In the crystalline knowledge of you
Drove me through the mountains
Through the crystal-like clear water fountain
Drove me like a magnet
To the sea
I would wish to be a witch in this moment. I would use any number of magic wands to be able to keep her with me, make her live to be 100. I would sit in a stew of myth and prayer to change the outcome here of losing this precious nugget. And yet, magic doesn’t work that way. This moment is why we love Stevie Nicks. As I said in Parts 1 and 2 of this series, her lyrics teach our brains to think of a different future. In these moments, before she is gone, when I feel overwhelmed, when drowning in emotion seems inevitable enough that I can add it to the schedule in pen, Nick’s lyrics suggest something else: a forward motion.
Clapton’s version of Crossroads differs from Johnson’s in this important regard: it is the moment before the crisis - believe I’m sinking down - that gets emphasized in Clapton, not the moment of being lost as in Johnson’s, the past tense Asked the Lord for Mercy. Clapton fears he is about to become lost, so he laments. He asks for help. He is seeking the hand of another. Johnson is already lost and telling you how it happened.
I thought about mercy recently. Mercy, grace, and justice. What’s the difference? Justice is getting what you deserve. It has no timetable. Henrietta Lack’s family, more than a half decade after her death, are finally getting some small justice for the use of her cells, without her consent, in scientific research. Justice does not expire. Grace is getting what you don’t deserve. A second chance, a home run on the last bat, as Anne Lamott says. But mercy is asking God to avoid what should be your due. My time with the extraordinary Hannah is coming due. I can’t ask for mercy any longer. Mercy, at some point, without action from me, expires. Either I scientifically find a way to make a 17 year old cat’s kidneys last forever or I accept that her time is finite. Acceptance, in this case, may take as much magic as science.
Yet, to reference Lamott again:
Every single person I have loved and lost had us around–their most beloved–and had Hospice, had the richest most astonishing love and sense of safety at the end. They had peace, like a river. Even if their death was sudden, Grace always bats last.
In the end, my little kitty is suffering, and it will be grace that stops the suffering. How then do I make peace with that loss? By the same magic trick I will need to get through a flare.
In part one, I wrote about why people turn to magic and Stevie Nicks:
I think many folks think that things are so burnt over, so crispy, so hopeless and themselves helpless and disempowered that they literally can’t imagine getting to a place where they feel steady or not overwhelmed, without intervention of the magical sort….
In the middle of an autoimmune flare it can very much feel like the future will be perceived only from bed. It can also feel like everything that was normal is now impossible. On days like that, finding beauty or comfort in small things can be a way to feel more well. But there’s something more. An every day item that is joyful or brings comfort is a tie to two times: first, to the past when things felt comfortable and safe, and second, to the future which might feel comfortable and safe again. That thing can bridge the gap between the two phases, making the liminal phase less scary. Looking for ordinary joys is similar to finding a way to flow in the right direction in the middle of the overwhelm.
This process of finding ordinary joys as a way to narrate the current so as to continue, to not give up, to persevere. In fact, persevere is a perfect word. It means to persist in a state, enterprise, or undertaking in spite of counterinfluences, opposition, or discouragement. To persevere, you recognize that things aren’t going well, and yet you don’t give up. To persevere, you see challenges, and find your way through them. You, “make it work.” To move through the loss of Hannah, as well as manage the next auto-immune flare. I will need to follow Tim Gunn’s advice - imagine a future that will work, assess my unique skills and talents, and then believe I can do it.
The believing it part is difficult. In part two, I wrote about how turning to magic and music empowers us to move forward.
Digging again into the roots of empowerment (as a word), it’s clear that bibliotherapy fits that construct. It draws us into strength, it pulls us towards ability…. And if those current circumstances are unlivable or unmanageable, we may turn not only to poor coping mechanisms (like food or drugs) but we may also give up. Giving up gives away our power. Giving up is a way of deciding our own power to act is mythical, like a unicorn. By turning to books about mythical creatures, we allow ourselves to think we too might be powerful. We might, just by choosing fantasy, be taking our power back.
Back to pilgrimages for a moment, not only because this is the first time in this post I’ve spelled it correctly without the magic Substack helper, but also because the act of allowing yourself to be changed by a book, or a song, is not that different from choosing a pilgrimage. Something inside us simply yearns to go.
If an auto-immune flare is a highly individual and human experience, one of the body that feels like crisis and has an uncertain end, and worse, may ask us to let go of something or reprioritize, then, in it’s way, it is a pilgrimage. Going offers us the opportunity to leave behind that which hinders us from moving forward.
The poet David Whyte speaks of the act of traveling in both the sense of locomotion and of spiritual journeys in his poem True Love, which I referenced in the last Links post I called Seed Thoughts.
so that when
we finally step out of the boat
toward them, we find
everything holds
us, and everything confirms
our courage, and if you wanted
to drown you could,
but you don’t
because finally
after all this struggle
and all these years
you simply don’t want to
any more
you’ve simply had enough
of drowning
and you want to live and you
want to love and you will
walk across any territory
and any darkness
however fluid and however
dangerous to take the
one hand you know
belongs in yours.
Whyte’s description of finding True Love, which may be allegorical to faith depending on your reading of it, may not at first seem to speak of pilgrimage. Isn’t this a poem of finding true love, which ergo, means the writer has found it? Sure, but it is also about the process of giving up the drowning. “you will walk across any territory and any darkness… take the one hand you know belongs in yours.” With belief, you will take the steps you need to get off the boat. With empowerment, you will walk across water to reach your beloved, which presumably will involve leaving behind the things that no longer serve you. Ergo, pilgrimage.
Getting through an AI flare requires a deep human experience and more. It requires tending to our humanness. This may involve the magic of acceptance, as with my small kitty’s departure. It may also involve grace, as Lamott describes it: love and a sense of safety. The idea that a future that is flowing like a river, moving you towards comfort, is coming comforts me at least.
For now, don’t give up. I will repeat don’t give up until I believe there are no more people considering giving up. And I know there are people considering it, so for today, find magic. Look to the prophets and the poets when you can’t hold your own hand.
Until then, we love you.
https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/alexis.cfm