All places of worship are symbols
of the One Beloved.
Bow your head when you see a temple,
and salute when you see a mosque.
When the flowers of the church, mosque and
temple gather together,
Spring will blossom forth
in Your garden, O Lord.
Darshan Singh
-------
So the frequent meetings of this ragtag band hanging on in the face of
futility has brought me to a recent realization of the beneficial aspects of
splitting into factions.
M. Scott Peck mentions this in his dissertation on Community Building, that
when you stop trying to heal or convert those with whom you disagree, and
you accept their differences as GOOD, then you are on the path to True
Community.
So a week ago Sunday, I went to a meeting at the UC Davis campus with Rudy
and while we were there and Rudy was repeating his mantra of "Tribal law
good, everything else bad" we had an angry incident occur when it was time
for this one guy to speak. Usually when a person gets up in a meeting and
expresses himself angrily and loudly, there is a group reaction against that
person. In the presence of Rudy, the calm and stoic elder in charge, it
seemed even more out-of-place and inappropriate. The perp was named "Quana"
and his dad, as I've learned recently, was a longtime teacher at DQ U when
it was still a going concern.
Quana rings a bell with me. Even as uneducated as I am, I recognized it as
a name from activist Indian history, although vaguely, as a trouble-maker.
There's a lot of trouble makers in Indian Activism movements.
My kind of people, actually.
Quana's main beef was with this guy who had committed some sort of sin which
gave the current board of trustees (a widely aknowledged group of assholes)
some sort of ammo in the war of occupation that was then in progress, but
Rudy doesn't like loud angry conflict and he stated so calmly when it
happened. I guess he's better at dealing with such things than you or I
could know. I mean a big mean and angry Indian is actually a sort of scarey
thing to us white guys.
Afterward, Rudy expressed some displeasure with this sort of outburst to me,
and I was uncomfortable at the time... but at the same time I had a few
realizations concerning this outburst. The primary realization is that you
don't get vociferously angry at another unless there is some deep caring
under the surface. In the wasichu (white people) world anger is more
muted and repressed and sneaky, but I think with Indians it is more honest
and out in the open. So I appreciated that. The other thing, was that
while he (Quana) held the floor, he remained. After his outburst, Rudy
expressed his displeasure at such displays and Quana just stood there and
listened to the rebuke of this elder, and took it. Took it like a man. In
front of everybody. That was a powerfully good thing I saw there and I
realized that sometimes when the individual takes on community approbation
like that, it means he's willing to accept judgement and censor in the cause
that motivates him. He's got an issue, yes, he really cares, yes, he's
willing to raise his hand, even when everyone is going to look at him as the
bad guy. Yes. But he's staying. He's fighting for his perception of the
good. Flouncing out in anger, like my people do, just shows you don't
really care about the issues to stick around when the going gets tough.
Then we had another meeting, on Wed., this time at a person's house in
Davis, and I got to hear Rudy's spiel for the 27th time.
Ok, I exaggerate to express a certain fatigue with hearing again the
importance of "respect for the elders" "respect for traditions"
again and again and again. It comes across as self-serving when repeated
over and over by a traditional elder. But that's probably just the age-old
gripe of youth. You can see these patterns up close and it changes your
perspective. You learn to value patience - which comes across as wisdom, by
patiently listening to your elders for about the hundredth time.
Anyway. I came to a point of recognition, I emailed my solution, there
hasn't been a lot of feedback lately, but I have a feeling this is going to
be an interesting Christmas, which I'll tell you all about later when I'm
not so sleepy, with a warm bed beckoning, Lu moaning and needing me and the
rain falling on the roof.
Life-giving rain, melting the deathly white snowy frost. I decided I "don't
do snow".
Hey. I'm an Ecotopian on purpose, ya know.
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