Dear Friends, Family, Neighbors, and Those of You I Don’t Yet Know —
Sometimes the topic for an issue of Odd Company walks up to me and introduces itself, and won’t take no for an answer. So it’s been with this issue. As usual, I have been reading widely from many and varied sources. But in a truly *unusual* way, the bits and pieces of my recent reading have coalesced around a few important, related observations. These observations are about violence and violent people.
I am, of course, talking about our most recent series of mass shootings. But there’s more to it than that. We are a violent species. I hold up the practice of war as evidence. Many species are known to kill one another on occasion. But none have perfected the art of wholesale intraspecies slaughter as we human beings have. Let me begin by saying that this sad fact has sometimes left me feeling utterly helpless. How can we change something so deep about ourselves? And what can I, one small, oldish person with limited time and energy, do to make a difference?
This week’s music is not about that issue in any direct way. The song, “Ordinary World,” was written a long time ago, in 1993, first performed by the British New Wave band, Duran Duran. The version I’ve chosen is performed by the American singer, Joy Williams. It has a quality of loss, and of finding one’s way in spite of darkness, which is what I like most about it. The lyrics can be a little hard to make out. Click here for a text version. I am particularly moved by the last stanza. It’s a message we all need now. “Any one is my world, every one is my world.”
Just today I came across the Jewish story of The Birthday of the World. It must be very well known, but I was unfamiliar with it. Here it is, as retold by Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen (recalling her rabbi grandfather’s telling of it) during an interview with Krista Tippett for the “On Being” podcast:1
So this is the story of the birthday of the world. In the beginning, there was only the holy darkness, the Ein Sof, the source of life. And then, in the course of history, at a moment in time, this world, the world of a thousand thousand things, emerged from the heart of the holy darkness as a great ray of light.
And then, perhaps because this is a Jewish story, there was an accident. [laughs] And the vessels containing the light of the world, the wholeness of the world, broke. And the wholeness of the world, the light of the world, was scattered into a thousand thousand fragments of light. And they fell into all events and all people, where they remain deeply hidden until this very day.
Now, according to my grandfather, the whole human race is a response to this accident. We are here because we are born with the capacity to find the hidden light in all events and all people, to lift it up and make it visible once again, and thereby to restore the innate wholeness of the world. This is a very important story for our times, that we heal the world one heart at a time. And this task is called “tikkun olam,” in Hebrew — “restoring the world.”
This may be a little off the main road, but it reminds me of a line in the late Leonard Cohen’s song, “Anthem.” There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in. I have long thought of that line as an example of Cohen’s sheer genius and originality. Now I see that, although it is still sheer genius, it’s also — as so much genius is — an echo of something else. In this case, The Birthday of the World.
This story, and the idea of “tikkun olam,” restoring the light in the world, one heart at a time, lights a candle of hope in me. It begins with the idea that there is something of value inside each of us, no matter how sad and misguided we may be. A light that only has to be uncovered and nurtured, and that uncovering and nurturing can be done one heart at a time by anyone with a little kindness to spare.
This leads me to something I came across a few weeks ago, which seems related — an Ethiopian proverb. Its wisdom is striking. “The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.” We are so very much in need of one another’s love.
I am struck (and stricken) by the fact that so much of the killing is done by boys who are still so young that their brains aren’t fully developed yet. Looking to Robert Sapolsky again, from his book, Behave (I’m paraphrasing here): Childhood adversity (by which Sapolsky means poverty, but also neglect or outright abuse, which can happen at any socio-economic level) messes up the developmental relationship between two key parts of the brain, the amygdala and the frontal cortex. You might recall from previous issues of Odd Company that the amygdala is primarily about emotions, and the frontal cortex is about executive function — reason and the ability to think ahead. In people who have suffered childhood adversity, often the frontal cortex never gains the ability to overcome the impulsive urges of the amygdala, or this ability may develop only late in life. (Which in my view would account, at least in part, for the fact that so many criminals give up criminal behavior as they get older.)
Children who have grown up convinced that they have little or no control over events in their own lives (which is one effect that poverty, neglect, and abuse have on people) are prone to drug addiction, anxiety causing over-exposure to gluco-corticoids (flight or fight hormones), which in turn depletes a body’s supply of dopamine, leaving the person prone to depression as well. Does any of this sound familiar? In America, we have these problems in epidemic proportions.
Now toss generous truckloads of firearms into the mix. What do we expect to happen? Recall that I was raised in Nevada. I can’t really remember how old I was when I learned to shoot a rifle. It seems as if I’ve always known how. My dad taught me, and we spent many happy hours tramping through the sagebrush together, mainly shooting at tin cans and paper targets, though we did get jackrabbits now and then. I got my first National Rifle Association membership card when I was ten, I think, after passing their fairly well-laid-out gun safety and marksmanship course. That was back in the days when the NRA saw itself mainly as a sportsman’s organization, and had not yet gone off the rails into John Birch territory. I recount this piece of personal lore as evidence of the fact that I don’t just hate guns on principle. I hate the misuse of guns. And I hate the idea that a child with a history of anxiety, depression, and threatening behavior can freely buy an AR-15 and all the ammunition he wants. That is just insane.
Obviously, one of the things we can do about the problem is elect reasonable people to represent us in our state and national governments, which would also involve throwing out a large number of cynical politicians who are willing to use firearms as a wedge to divide us one from another. But that seems far away, you’ll say, and after all, we’ve been voting for years and nothing has changed for the better.
Then perhaps the most important thing to do is love our children and embrace them, so they won’t feel so starved for warmth that they set fire to the village. We don’t have to mount any huge, impressive effort. We only have to be kind, pay attention, and listen more often than we speak. We can restore the world one child’s heart at a time.
Time for bed! See you in two weeks. Here’s a newly written poem by yrs truly to tide you over.
WARMTH WITHOUT BURNING
stop talking about the guns.
talk instead about the child.
did his mother want him, did
anyone love him, did anyone
ever take him aside and say to him:
i am happy you exist, come and walk
with me, no matter if it's night,
the night is filled with stars
and owls, i will show you and when
the cold has got under our coats
i will lead you home to our window
light, the soft-furred cats, and make
something hot and sweet to drink,
and maybe you will see then how
to feel the world's warmth
without burning it down.
"On Being: How We Live with Loss,” first aired on August 11, 2005.
Thank you, Nancy. Your words are such a gift. ❤️