next time (1/4)

self reflection

The One Spirit workshop "The Fire Next Time: Unveiling Baldwin’s Humanism Through Buddhist Concepts" facilitated by Rev. Ali’a Edwards happened way back in October but I've only just recently gotten around to listening to the recordings. Somehow it's just what I need right now.

Rev Ali'a talks about the common threads she sees in the prophetic voices of the Black liberation movement, Mayahana Buddhist philosophy, and applied humanism. But she takes the time up front to say that she doesn't know all there is to know about these subjects, that she doesn't require or expect that they will speak to everyone in the same way, and that she expects that the course attendees will bring their own experiences and questions into the (virtual) room. "Co-learners" was the word Leaf Seligman used...and it's so easy to throw around trendy-sounding vocabulary and then run an otherwise bog-standard I-teach-you-listen class. But there is a fundamental difference in approach, and both (Rev.) Leaf and Rev. Ali'a beautifully model what I think nonviolent adult education should look like.

I didn't realize that the course title referred to a book by James Baldwin, so when Rev. Ali'a referred to The Fire Next Time as our "course text" I had to do some scrambling. The only copy the library had was a huge art book with pictures of the civil rights movement by Steve Schapiro, which I'm slowly making my way through. The gaps in my racial education are embarrassingly large. 

Rev. Ali'a told us to listen to Baldwin's "The Artist's Struggle for Integrity" and in particular this part:

If I spend weeks and months avoiding my typewriter—and I do, sharpening pencils, trying to avoid going where I know I’ve got to go—then one has got to use this to learn humility. After all, there is a kind of saving egotism too, a cruel and dangerous but also saving egotism, about the artist’s condition, which is this: I know that if I survive it, when the tears have stopped flowing or when the blood has dried, when the storm has settled, I do have a typewriter which is my torment but is also my work.

Her point being, if the great James Baldwin sharpened pencils to avoid his work, it's no great surprise or shame that we do the same. 

She also asked us to name our patron saints, the family or friends or teachers who "brought you to this moment." I drew a blank and felt quite sorry for myself, and then went to my bookshelf and started writing down authors who have inspired me, and then remembered that indeed quite a few real live people love me too... I might lack an idol or a guru but I've had no shortage of teachers. 

Somehow in all of this, "my work" got to feeling less like an entirely imaginary concept. 

Related, weirdly: on Monday I visited a trial class at an oriental dance studio. I have not attempted to dance in front of a wall of mirrors in a very long time, and by and large it wasn't pretty, but in one moment of the class, just out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of myself not looking stiff or awkward or nervous or uncoordinated, but, like...relaxed and poised and normal?

Me, if I believed in myself. What a concept. "Saving egotism" indeed.