I'm a crossover. Or actually a re-crossover. For over thirty years I’ve worked with dying folks and others experiencing catastrophic loss. Yeah, I was involved in the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement in the sixties and early seventies. In fact it was that involvement and the failure of the “Movement” to look past the immediate issues of race and the Vietnam War that finally drove me out of the system. Or as far out of the system you can be and still live in the United States.
To be fair, for me personally, the shock of seeing the massive grass roots movement, which affected significant change in civil rights and ended the war, disintegrate, drove me to look closely at my own beliefs. I could not believe that hundreds of thousands of folks took to the streets and became radically involved but did not understand that racism and the war were symptoms of deeper, fatal flaws in American political, economic, social, and spiritual institutions.
By that time my family and I were ensconced in a commune on a 350 acre farm in Stafford County Virginia. After disillusionment and many months of confusion and depression, I finally understood that before I could examine and make judgments about what was going on out here in the world I needed to look at what I believed. Not what I said. What I believed.
I found two startling realities.
One was that while I clearly understood the underlying dysfunctional issues that needed to be changed, I had no clear idea of alternatives. I knew how to shake my fist and holler, but solutions – not so much.
More startling, and disheartening, was the realization that every bias and injustice against which I raged lived hidden, but still very, very real, in my heart. Racism, sexism, self absorption, greed, arrogance – I guess we do hate on the outside what we secretly harbor inside.
I was humbled.
And there was more.
When I was a kid in school we came home for lunch. None of that namby-pamby sitting in nice warm cafeterias for the scholars of northern Wisconsin in the forties and fifties. Eighteen degrees below zero? Wind blowing at 15 miles an hour? Harrumph! “Bet you won’t be lollygagging on your way home from school today.”
Oh, it was cold.
In late April when I was about twelve I was sitting on our front porch steps after lunch. Had some precious minutes before I had to hurry back to school. I was basking in the fifty some degree heat wave after the long, long cold. There was a warm, Wisconsin muddy spring smell in the air. I don’t know the sequencing of my thoughts. But on that warm Wisconsin midday, as I sat welcoming back the sun, there came a bright, clear, illumined thought. It was a turning point in my life.
I may have been thinking about my Missouri Synod Lutheran religious training – eight hours a week, two on Sunday. Maybe examining the tension and condescension between the Lutherans and Catholics (who were going to hell regardless) and “Dyke Jumpers” (who might not go to hell but were still way sub-standard). The Jews? Weren’t enough of them to really matter (But when one crossed ones path they were well and roundly hated).
And I thought,
“Why do I believe what they say?”
They’re all wrong. We’re right.
“How do I know?”
I became a radical that day.
That question finally drove me from Christianity onto the familiar path from belief to atheism to agnosticism.
I found and understood love. Didn’t examine it too closely. But I knew from the beginning that it was at the center, at the core.
The radicalism that question set afire in me, when agnosticism freed me from my spiritual search and my anger at organized religion, that questioning, that examination of the moment became the driving force in my life. Well, in my teenage years, that and having sex as often as possible. Actually that sex thing is still a big boon, but more a blessing than a drive at seventy-two.
That radicalism, that drive, brought me all the way to the communal old farmhouse in rural Virginia. And finally to an examination of love.
As those years of political activity centered and consumed our lives, the experience was mediated and enlightened by the drugs I took. I won’t waste time weighing the cost of taking drugs. There was a price to pay. I’m likely still making payments. But the bottom line for me is that the drugs opened me in ways that I can’t imagine reaching any other way. And at the heart of the new vision was love. And Darkness. It takes nothing to find the darkness – it will find you. But love. Oh we can lose it, not find it, waste it.
So after the disillusion and depression, the self examination, it was love that led me back to the life of the spirit. Because I found at the heart of love – more. I knew that this truth called me to open myself to my spiritual path. I went back to the Eastern teachers. I still couldn’t accept Christianity, but the teachers from the east gave me direction.
One of those teachers told me, “You want to see changes? Look to your moment. Be totally in your moment. Find what needs to be done in that moment – or what does not need to be done. Moment by moment by moment. You will know what to do. Do it. Then look around and see what changes have happened.”
This is the sort version. But I did what he said. He was right.
I was outside my society now. I was outside looking in. It’s where I wanted and needed to be. Yet within months I became involved with dying people (another turning point in my life). I approached the work with the same attention. This moment. My moment. Love. Darkness. Open.
It’s thirty some years later. It’s still the same.
So all those years ago when I was so disillusioned and depressed by what I perceived to be the Movements failure, it was really me who needed to reevaluate. The direction that came as a result of that experience has brought me here. Now.
The Death and Dying movement has allowed not only dying folks, but all of us to look at death differently. Maybe more importantly it has allowed us to look at life differently. The leading edge of the Death and Dying movement has always been outside the culture looking in. It still is.
We are still learning about how death and grief effect a human life cycle.
In the past decade we’ve become acutely aware of how profound an effect death and grief has, not on individuals, but on institutions. Every social, economic, political, and spiritual institution is deeply affected by our inability to integrate death, grief, and loss into our lives.
We have been running a 501( c )3 nonprofit group Called Sena Foundation www.sena.org . We offer free hands-on care to the dying and those experiencing catastrophic loss, as well as free Death Dying, Grief, & Loss education. We’ve been doing it all over the country, and in a number of foreign countries, for over thirty years.
But as we began to understand and experience the connection between denial and our cultural inability to make obvious, healthy changes to our institutions, our involvement has become more and more political. 501( c )3 nonprofits cannot be involved in political activity. Hence Quicksilver Times, www.quicksilvertimes.org .
So I’m re-crossing. Into the fray. From the inside. Funny thing, now the whole world is inside. Who’d a thunk it. Makes this easy.
I was startled all those years ago – no solutions. Now? Oh, we know the solutions. The paths to get there are sometimes not clearly defined. But like the teacher said, in this moment it’s clear what we need to do.
We haven’t even begun. The site is in development. The Facebook page is too. We are trying to get our philosophy, goals, and concrete direction down in black and white.
This may be a confusing beginning post. There is so much to say. So many facets. It would be easy and comfortable to say, “No, this is too much. Choose something smaller. We can’t change THAT.” But we can. I hope you will continue to read the upcoming posts, and will give us your feedback. Some of you, I hope, will join us and help. Notice I’m not asking for money. Seems lately I can’t seem to do what I’ve done for almost half a century. Raise money. Sorry, still can’t get over that.
Thank you for reading this.
Love,
bill
