They are Alive and Well Somewhere

"I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps.

What do you think has become of the young and old men? 
And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.

All goes onward and outward .  . . . and nothing collapses,
And to die is different from waht any one supposed, and luckier.

Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it."

Whitman's prose was going through my mind even before I pulled Leaves of Grass down off the shelf and took it to bed last night. My heart was heavy. I'd just sent an email to one of my closest friends--an email that felt so inadequate given the circumstances but I had to let him know I was thinking about him and his family. News came earlier that his dad had passed away. Stuff like this tops the list of things that make me wish the journey between Kannami and Clovis was a easier. I've lost count of how many times I've gotten sad news from home sweet California home and wished as much since first arriving in Japan nearly two decades ago. I wished it the year before last when a dear friend and old roommate left this life, then again last year when my karate sensei became terminally ill and passed, and yet again after receiving the sad news yesterday.

I've wished it were easier and less time consuming to live 5,500 miles away from the place where I first emerged on this earth, but all the wishing in the world won't make it so. My life is here and the lives of so many I love and hold dear--family and friends, is far, far away. And so after sending the email, hugging my wife for the longest time and explaining to my curious younger son why I was so sad--after seeing him go quiet and listen intently as I told how I was about his age when I first met this genuinely good man who passed away last night, I did what's become a little personal ritual of sorts in times like these.  I took Leaves of Grass down off the shelf and sought solace in Whitman's words.

Words like those above.

And these below:

"And I call to mankind, Be not curious about God,
For I who am curious about each am not curious about God,
No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God 
and about death.

I hear and behold God in every object, yet I understand God not in the least,
Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.

Why should I wish to see God better than this day?
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,
In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass;
I find letters from God dropped in the street, and every one is signed by God's name,
And I leave them where they are, for I know that others will punctually come forever and ever.

And as to you death, and you bitter hug of mortality . . . . it is idle to try to alarm me. 

I read that Walt Whitman nursed wounded soldiers during the Civil War. He was surrounded by unimaginable death and carnage and sat with an untold number of injured men as they breathed their last.  News speaks of the division and polarity of current day USA. I would argue a nation polarized enough for brothers to be murdering brothers; cousins cousins, friends friends and neighbors neighbors, as quite a bit more polarized, negative and godless than many say America is nowadays. Yet try to find complaint or negativity in Whitman's work. Contrast the death and disgust he met on a daily basis with his affirmation of life without end, with his exalting in all races, all religions, all of nature, with all of life right down to his armpits or the grass he tread  underfoot. William James wrote of him in Varieties of Religious Experience. He placed Whitman as the example par excellence in the chapter titled THE RELIGION OF HEALTHY-MINDEDNESS. And aptly so I'd say.

Mr. James wrote:

"The supreme contempary example of such an inability to feel evil is of course Walt Whitman"

Then went on to quote a Dr. Bucke, who said of Whitman:

"He never spoke deprecatingly of any nationality or class of men, or time in the world's history, or against any trades or occupations--not even against any animals, insects, or inanimate things, nor any of the laws of nature, nor any of the results of those laws, such as illness, deformity, and death. He never complained or grumbled either at the weather, pain, illness, or anything else. He never swore. He could not very well, since he never spoke in anger and apparently never was angry. He never exhibited fear, and I do not believe he ever felt it" 

The last words about fear there may ring a bell for anyone who had a church upbringing, or indeed many who didn't even. They may remind some of the sole force substantial enough to cast out all fear.  I refer to "Perfect Love" of course. (i.e. 1 John 4:18)

Henry David Thorough held much the same opinion of him after meeting Whitman on a few occasions in 1856. In a letter to a friend Thorough wrote:
"I do not believe that all of the sermons so called that have been preached in this land put together are equal to [Whitman's poetry] for preaching"

Alas Walt Whitman was not a proponent of any one particular faith. Indeed, he was not a faithful member of any church, not even a churchgoer, nor did he preach any specific faith or doctrine as being closer to the truth, and thus salvation, than the rest. Yet there it is for all to see. The record of his faith and its fruits speaks for itself. Whence did he find it?

We must turn to Ralph Waldo Emerson for the answer methinks.
Emerson wrote:

"The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?"

"By revelation to us"
So true.
I can't recall if it was also Emerson, or perhaps Thoreau or maybe even Thomas Paine, who wrote that revelation can only be experienced firsthand. Anything other than that, be it hearing about it from a friend an hour later or reading about what some prophet wrote 2000 years ago, is mere secondhand information. Revelation must be experienced. If we're to know any truth we must live it and feel it and experience it ourselves. Of this, I am certain.

There's a sureness that comes from where I don't know yet is far too strong to deny all the same. It's something I just feel to the core of my being--something almost palpable as it flows through and gives rise to the feeling that we're all in this life thing together; that we all came from the same place and to the same place we'll all return regardless of ethnicity, gender, sexual preference, religious belief or lack thereof or other perceived differences people often tend to dwell on.  In looking back I see I sensed it all along but was too scared to let it in. Years of turmoil over trying to force myself to believe certain things after I began to doubt them was the result. Things only got worse as time went on right up until having a moment. The moment washed in on a wave of personal defeat, humility and surrender. It broke me enough to let something in. From that moment on the old belief has given way to one in something more in tune with my soul. I couldn't tell you what the something is but I can give 4,250 reasons why it best to keep going with it.

Those reasons are days. Some 13 years, six months and however many of them now, of not reaching for a drink in an attempt to numb the inner conflict and turmoil that once plagued me. Not even craving one, which absolutely blows me away. What's more is that number increases daily and is directly related to 3 other reasons to stay on this path--the three awesome little souls who I've helped bring into this life and have been put in charge of rearing. My kids have never seen me drunk. Have never seen me hung over. They have no idea of anything but a sober, caring father. Such irony that I fought it for as long as I did though. I fought it till finally arriving at the point where the only choices left were to continue on trying to force myself to believe something that my heart rejected, such as certain things about God or death, heaven and hell and other spiritual matters, and thus go on to the bitter end the way I was, or to do as Joseph Campbell tells the knights did in their individual searches for the Holy Grail--to enter the forest where it was darkest and there was no path. i.e. To make my own path. I'd arrived at that point more than a few times before only to choose the former. This time I was beaten. I chose the latter.

Exclusive certainty has been replaced with awe, mystery, inclusion and uncertainty. I no longer pretend to know all the answers and that's okay. It's okay but seems a bit harder when someone close moves on from this life. It's harder when feeling pain because the world lost a genuinely good dude, a guy I knew well and really liked yet I can no longer allow myself to pretend to know where he is or what happened to him. I know his fate is my own. That I know. Something in me tells me the end of this life we're in is not the end. That I feel. Beyond that it's total mystery.  So I feel the sadness and wonder about the mystery and just try to be awake and aware in the moment.

As for those who are certain of where they and others who affirm the same belief will spend eternity? Heaven knows I tried long enough and hard enough to be among their ranks and have had to fend off guilt time and again over the years for not believing as I was told. If there's one thing I learned through all of it it's this: We can no more force religious belief on ourselves than we can on our neighbor. It's gotta come from within. That and, at just past the half century mark, I've experienced enough life to know not everyone is capable of accepting the same religious doctrine, and even those who do accept a certain text's or teaching's merit may read it entirely differently than others.

Words are ill equipped at conveying the relief I felt upon realizing I need not throw out the baby bible with with the bathwater.  That old saying "When the student is ready the teacher will appear" rings true for me here since, after years of living sober (something I was never able to do while trying to cling to the old belief), of living to good purpose, of trying to be of service to my family and community, be a loving son and father and husband, productive teacher and employee, etc. and so on,  I came across the work of Joseph Campbell and Whoa!

At three to four years later I'm once again able to accept much of the religious doctrine that'd filled me with conflict thanks to coming to read it metaphorically rather than concretely. Looking back I'm amazed at my inability to understand what was right before my eyes all along. I could fill a few dozen blog entries with my fascination for myth alone. The Hero with a Thousand Faces was riveting and beyond enlightening/ Another one in particular, the thin text THOU ART THAT, has encouraged me on this life path again and again since first spying it on the top shelf at Kinokuniya Books in Tokyo years ago.

Campbell taught me that my problem all along was not confined to me alone.

"The problem, as we have noted many times, is that these metaphors, which concern that which cannot in any other way be told, are misread prosaically as referring to tangible facts and historical occurrences. The denotation--that is, the reference in time and space: a particular Virgin Birth, the End of the World--is taken as the message, and the connotation, the rich aura of the metaphor in which its spiritual significance may be detected, is ignored altogether."

That was my problem. That remains humans' problem. At the time of this writing there's been a huge flareup of bloodshed in Israel. The ongoing repression, terrorism, hatred and murder over a piece of dirt.  Faceless and nameless innocent kids--kids who lost the birth lottery--entering the mystery of death long before they're due. Heartbreaking news. Why? Again, to quote Campbell:

"It has puzzled me greatly that the emphasis in the professional exegesis of the entire Judeo-Christian-Islamic mythology has been on the denotative rather than on the connotative meaning of the metaphoric imagery that is its active language. The Virgin Birth, as I have mentioned, has been presented as an historical fact, fashioned into a concrete article of faith over which theologians have argued for hundreds of years, often with grave and disruptive consequences. Practically every mythology in the world has used this "elementary" or co-natural idea of a virgin birth to refer to a spiritual rather than an historical reality. The same, as I have suggested, is true of the metaphor of the Promised Land, which in its denotation plots nothing but a piece of earthly geography to be taken by force. It's connotation--that is, its real meaning--however, is of a spiritual place in the heart that can only be entered by contemplation.
There can be no real progress in understanding how myths function until we understand and allow metaphoric symbols to address, in their own unmodified way, the inner levels of our consciousness. The continuing confusion about the nature and function of metaphor is one of the major obstacles--often placed in our path by organized religion that focus shortsightedly on concrete times and places--to our capacity to experience mystery."

How liberating to find that by embracing the mystery, by admitting defeat, by accepting the fact that I couldn't accept the old ideas and must find my own way, that in doing so I'd unknowingly (at the time) joined scores of great men and women from every religion or none at all, from all over the earth throughout the history of our race. That I'd joined the ranks of everyone from Tolstoy to Einstein to Gandhi to many of my nation's Founding Fathers--Deists to nominal Christians heavily influenced by Deism such as Paine, Adams, Washington, Monroe or Franklin, to Transcendentalists such as Thoreau, Emerson, Muir or of course Whitman, to a multitude of early Christians of whom I heard neither hide nor hair of during all my years of attending church and Sunday school. Like those whose texts were found in Nag Hammadi. The Gospel of Thomas alone has been illuminating and then some. And so began this endless quest that's led to an intensive lay study of early Christianity, myth and comparative religion.

It's been a wild ride thus far to say the least. That moment of feeling so lost was necessary to lead me on this ongoing spiritual quest--to find the likes of Whitman and so many others who couldn't believe, indeed even rejoiced in not believing in, ideas such as spending all of eternity in an afterlife where others aren't allowed. So I wasn't alone in my inability to accept the idea that good people in this life would be sentenced to perpetual suffering for not believing as others. As an imperfect fault-filled father I just couldn't, indeed still can't, imagine anything my kids could do that'd make me condemn then to eternal damnation. Thus believing that the Father--that the source of Perfect Love--would do that was and remains anathema to me. And what of those who are, like I, a little less certain about such things? About God or what comes next after this thing we call death? About where this all leads to if anywhere? Some say this is the end. I surmise the atheist who lives a moral, productive life of service to others while believing as much to be noble soul.

Those questions for I and all of those above are answered so well, again, by Campbell:
"In all traditional systems, whether of the Orient or of the Occident, the authorized mythological forms are presented in rites to which the individual is expected to respond with an experience of commitment and belief. But suppose he fails to do so? Suppose the entire inheritance of mythological, theological, and philosophical forms fails to wake in him any authentic response of this kind? How then is he to behave? The normal way is to fake it, to feel oneself to be inadequate, to pretend to believe, to strive to believe, and to live, in the imitatino of others, an inauthentic life. The authentic creative way, on the other hand,which I would term the way of art as opposed to religion, is, rather, to reverse this authoritive order.
As in the novels of Joyce, so in those of Mann, the key to the progression lies in the stress on what is inward . .. . In the words of Joyce's hero: 'When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.'
For what to the soul are nets, 'flung at it to hold it back from flight' can become for the one who has found his own center the garment, freely chosen, of his further adventure."

And for those who are certain of their belief? Who never questioned, who've remained comfortable in their own skin and had no qualms whatsoever about anything received from the Sunday pulpit? Those who remain sure they'll be moving on to eternal bliss after this life, while I and others have to dodge fire and brimstone for all of eternity? Well as long as they do no harm I'm fine with them too. I know and love scores of them--many do a lot of good and carry the Carpenters call to help the needy.  No matter their ways though, I pray they all find much peace and joy.

Alas no matter the belief or lack thereof, the most important thing for all of us no matter the belief or lack thereof--the absolutely vital thing for myself if I'm to live a sober, creative, selfless or do unto others as I'd have them do unto me kind of life in the present as a matter of fact--is to do as Shakespeare spelled out perfectly:

 TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE.

Henry David Thoreau said essentially the same:
"Trust thyself: ...  Accept the place the divine providence has found for you." 

Upon deciding to enter the forest where there was no path I felt alone in doing so. I laugh at myself for thinking as much now that I've learned that scores had done the same before I ever even arrived at forest's edge.  I'm not so unique after all. Who knew! I learned the circumstances that led me to do so not unique either, as, again Thoreau, states so well:

"Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations."

"realize the infinite extent of our relations" So there you have it. No beginning and no ending, a perpetual cycle that we're all a part of. For me a part now with a sense of being as much. This is an idea my soul accepts and my inner constitution rejoices in as I trudge this Life's Happy Destiny Road.

Trudge or perhaps "tramp", right here alongside "I tramp the perpetual journey" Whitman himself.

Hi-HO!