COLM McAINDRIU
One of my favorite writers is John K. Galbraith, who wrote The Affluent Society, and was still writing at the age of 96. He seems to have kept growing younger in spirit no matter what his physical age. The French philosopher, Roger Garaudy, has spoken of youth as ‘the spiritual strength . . . to stay open to new possibilities’ and the courage to continue to strive ahead (Ikeda, 1999, p. 71). Today it seems that the ‘sun is shining at high noon’ in my life, as they often said in the Delta of my youth. Research and writing have always been the two dreams that could wake me up at 3 a.m. to create. These are the best of all dreams – except for the dream of earning my PhD through the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS). Research, like writing, can be “a solitary profession” and yet, since my kindergarten years, “I always enjoy(ed) the exquisite ‘retreat’ and silence of capturing ideas and feelings in words” being at all times “deeply aware that everything I write is, nevertheless, a collaborative process” (de Quincy, 2005, p. xi). In brief, since my earliest memories, I’ve been a loner, lonely, and creative in a supportive context.
When I began doctoral studies at CIIS in 2007 I read in Dr. Allen Combs’ article titled ‘My Life in Chaos,’ of him saying:
I cannot overemphasize the importance of the encouragement and stimulation a scholar receives from participating in a community of like-minded people, ones with whom she or he can share ideas and celebrate accomplishments’ (p. 10).
CIIS proved to be just such a place for creative spirits. Once I’ve created a product, my larger support group – an academic community, for instance, becomes my audience and not necessarily supportive. In Albert Low’s article, A Cigarette is Sometimes Just a Cigarette, he writes:
We suffer because we are divided against ourselves. We seek to overcome the suffering by discovering a new unity, uniqueness. That I am unique is not enough. I must be known to be unique by others. In other words the product must have a demand, it must be linked into a wider context, which in a company is called a market. We look for praise, acknowledgement, and recognition. We seek after certificates, honors, degrees, medals, and rank. (p. 21).
To this listing of ‘things’ Low itemizes, I will assert that we seek enduring relationships above all else as a foundation upon which to grow and to create. Without relationships that deeply care and support, we cannot come out! In collaboration with someone else or others we see and feel a relationship in which we participate in the creation of a new unity. By creating something together with others we create a sense of trust, as indicated by Prof. Montuori in his article, Reflections on Transformative Learning. It is from within this community of trust or sympathy for each other ‘that makes creativity possible. This “ground of sympathy” is also part of the “capacity” that makes the “content” of knowledge possible’ (p. 36). The same is true of my individual accomplishments from my earliest memories till this day. As early as December 2004, Prof. Davis Houck of Florida State University (FSU) has encouraged me to write my memoir; and Prof. Kay Picart, also of FSU, recommended using autoethnographic methods as the appropriate mode of my inquiry. I began to write easily enough and found it absolutely fascinating to study the institutions and prevalent beliefs dominating the lives of the world in which I grew up. This essay continues to reflect on the world of my youth as an autoethnographer. As with William Faulkner, no matter where else I go, the small town of Shelby, Mississippi is my place on the planet where I spent most of my youth growing to manhood, and creating my own modifications to its Jim Crow culture. In the acts of writing and publishing I am taking my ‘postage stamp’ (Jim Crow Shelby) to a larger and larger audience.
To study and write about this place is an opportunity to share with my reader a touch of consciousness or experience I am aware of and that will not return except through me. Sitting before my computer, within my writing nook, composing my godmother’s story, I recall Prof. Montouri’s comment that this act encompasses the . . .
Envision(ing of) the process (of inquiry/writing) as a spiritual practice, and a spiritual path. A way, in other words, to gain a deeper understanding of who we are. And this practice is not confined to the at times seemingly mystical moments of insights and illumination. If anything, it is more appropriate to such mundane struggles as ordering the endless references required for articles published in academic circles, copy-editing, and checking the formatting. The entire process of inquiry (and writing) can become an opportunity to dwell in a sacred place (p. 33) as perhaps the highest definition of inquiry.
The sacredness of my research and writing grows out of the spiritual dance between my godmother and I as I go about each aspect of creating a body of ideas and stories. ‘Relationship is at the core of who we are . . .’ (de Quincy, 2005, p. xi). This is not the kind of experience I associate with most other black males my age or older in the Jim Crow Mississippi of my youth. Separate from the body of my peers, separate from the white community by laws, taboos and rules, and other broken relationships, the endless disparate elements comprising the background of my writings as a finished product seems best described by F. David Peak’, (1988), Synchronicity: the Bridge Between Matter and Mind, in which he says:
During a synchronicity, different objects and events congregate together to form an overall pattern in space and time. According to the writer Arthur Koestler, these conjunctions indicate how different objects in the universe show an affinity for each other (p. 65).
My godmother’s entrance into my life-space at such a momentous time helped me to grasp the difference in myself, as compared to my peers, and to appreciate all of me as normal. She is Motherhood, my Motherworld and supreme gift. The dance of our spirits opened an even wider vista and began the integration of other disparate spirits across the concrete sidewalk that divided white and black communities, like and unlike challenged my growth. In Dr. Martha Brumbaugh’s (2006) dissertation, in paraphrasing J. S. Bolen (1994) in Crossing to Avalon, she notes that:
Motherhood or Motherworld “the world of the Mother we once lived in if we were cherished in infancy; in growing up . . .” However, my godmother is not my biological mother; yet she lived in the cultural world into which I was born and nourished me at a crucial time in my life. She enclosed me as if I were in her womb. I honor and cherish her spirit, and thus for me she is my Motherworld. She is “personally prehistoric, before (my) own specific memories, as matriarchal history is also.” She is “side by side with, and in the shadow of my patriarchal, or, rational consciousness, “to be entered only when we alter consciousness by falling asleep and dreaming, fall in love or are in a situation in which the veils between the worlds are thinner and we cross over . . . whenever what we are doing nourishes the soul, we are out of ordinary time and in the motherworld (p. 80).
De Quincy describes ‘spirit’ or ‘spiritual’ as ‘intuition’ (Ibid) and I accept his description here as the foundation of all meaningful relationships so as to advance in personal self expression. It is this ‘feeling-based’ way of knowing, in contrast to the typical American white male, Protestant, ‘reason-based’ way of knowing (de Quincy, 2005, p. xii) that I will present as my way of understanding and knowing. It is a gift from my godmother; and it is an African American cultural tradition. Moustakas recalls that ‘as a child, stretching back to my earliest recollections, I am aware of certain focal points. What stands out immediately is the awareness of being different, feeling separate and apart from others’ . . . I, too, remember sitting alone for hours on the steps of our front porch, observing my peers and noting my deviations from their interests and behavior. I felt a separateness that is still an important feature of my identity.’ Half a century later this deviation and separateness is still an important feature of my identity. I knew, instinctively, that I could not discuss Macbeth with other blacks my age or older and so I never attempted it. I am still a solitary creature who, like Moustakas, likes ‘to explore the mysteries of my solitary living and the unpredictable wondrous rituals that I create when I am alone. I sometimes find magical invitations in nature as I walk alone on a lonely path, ‘intentionally not seeking the company of others’ (Moustakas, 1972: p. 16). As a kid, I remember once seeing a yellow butterfly flickering through the air. My eyes followed its travels through space, moving up and flickering left, right and back down again to taste a flower. As with Dr. Brumbaugh, since my earliest memories I’ve talked to birds and butterflies, snails and frogs, the earth and rocks, and each has been as real to me as “having coffee and a good conversation at the local café”. Sometimes I talk to my godmother, and she to me, and as with animals and portions of the earth, their spirits are as real as my own or as having coffee and a good conversation at the local café.(Brumbaugh, 2006, p. 78). Memories . . . Yet, I cannot recall one high school classmate who might be interested in such creatures as spirits and butterflies, etc.
Driving toward my godmother’s house in 2005, I was reminded of Irmina Van Niele’s method of writing her doctoral dissertation. She called it a Deleuzian rhizome system in which youthful experiences serve as a basis upon which all other experiences are almost always perceived through, layered above, and interwoven with. I will add that there appears to be a kind of yo-yo sense of dynamics to the rhizomic system, as in looking at the town’s welcome sign which read:
I pressed the accelerator and drove towards the sacred place where my godmother once lived in hopes of seeing her old home, touching its grounds and perhaps creating a flower garden around her home. I prayed on my way to her little home, as I remembered it, and knowing that:
There are many elements involved in a prayer being answered, but the important thing is to keep praying until it is. By continuing to pray, you can reflect on yourself with unflinching honesty and begin to move your life in a positive direction on the path of earnest, steady effort. Even if your prayer doesn’t produce concrete results immediately, your continual prayer will at some time manifest itself in a form greater than you had ever hoped,” (Ikeda. 1999, p. 98).
My godmother’s name is Essie Allen and I want more than ever to make her memory stand out clearly above all others and for eternity.
I have never seen a physical picture of her; yet I’ve got a mental image of her that I will share with you. She is the third and most important bird in my life. At the age of 7 we lived next door to my godparents – James and Essie Allen. My Mother and godfather quickly became “an item” and Mother gave birth to two children for him while my godmother sat on the sidelines and waited for her husband to come home. Whenever I could find an excuse to visit my godmother, I rushed to her house. Her home was my refuge from the evils of my own home. She had a large cloth handbag with a long shoulder strap filled with the different parts of a thousand-piece puzzle. It hung on the right side wall in her dining room, behind the table. Each time I visited her, she would take me by the hand and, smiling, escort me to the dining room, take down the large handbag of puzzle pieces and softly whisper to me: “If you find two pieces that fit together, I will kiss you!” My godmother’s home was orderly, clean and infused with a tranquil air of serene peacefulness that words alone cannot describe. Within this soft gentle atmosphere my spirits surfaced and expressed itself. Even as a child I was able to grasp it and to make it my own. She was not wealthy and lived as a homemaker. She was always very calm. Childless in a small cotton producing world where other women frequently boasted of their strength based upon the number of babies they had delivered. My godmother stood alone and ostracized. She loved and read books in an environment where books were seldom seen and few people in the black community other than school teachers ever read such things. It had even become a popular joke among blacks themselves in this area that:’If you want to keep a secret from a Nigger, put it in a book!’ My godmother lived in the midst of this world. She was graceful, grateful, quiet, and composed with a serene sense of dignity, beauty, calmness and patience, respect-worthy and respectful of others. She was compassionate, loving, lovely and always faithful to her beliefs and principles. She listened to me as a kid when other black adults were giving their best efforts to “put kids in their place,” just as whites put black adults in their place. Cathcart tells us that adult blacks ‘in the presence of white people were not to speak unless spoken to, and it was better that they were not even seen’ (Cathcart, 1991, p.2). In this alien world my godmother’s individual responses to me with her soft eye-to-eye direct looks gave meanings to my own life as an individual person. This eye contact spoke its own language and everyone seemed to understand it without ever explaining what it was they understood. My godmother understood what it meant to understand another human being. In von Foerster’s Foreword to Prof. Keeney’s work, Aesthetics of Change, he writes: ‘One of the least understood things is understanding’ (p. xi). My godmother stood above the crowd which seemed to challenge her. I am now studying in an effort to understand how she ‘just happened’ to come into my life at a time when my own home was extremely violent. One such explanation lies in the principle of synchronicity. And Prof. Combs defines synchronicity as:
“meaningful coincidences”. Synchronicities are ‘acasual’; that is, not able to be reduced to a cause-and-effect explanation. “Two events, one inner and one outer, connect not by virtue of one causing the other, but by a mutual reflection of a common meaning. They are “always personal events”. They are “boundary events” that often occur at “periods of major life transitions”. They necessarily reflect “a deeper, more holistic reality” (Combs, 1996, p.xvi).
In meeting my godmother I was introduced to even more profound dimensions of human relations. This was the positive use of the power in eye-to-eye contact. In Abert Low’s article, A Cigarette is Sometimes Just a Cigarette, tells us that:
Most people, under normal circumstances, find that they get somewhat tense if they look another in the eyes. Good manners dictate that one does not stare at another, but rather that one looks into his or her eyes and then looks away, then back again and so on. Sometimes one is even forbidden to look into other’s eyes. For example when I was at boot camp as a sailor in the British navy the petty officer would yell, “Don’t eyeball me sailor!” if one inadvertently looked him in the eye. This is done because the one who looks is in the position of power and the petty officer knew that he alone could have the power. Sometimes a contest will arise between people in which one tries to stare down the other and so determine who is the most powerful. Boxers for example will lock eyes while touching gloves before the fight begins, and the fight may well be determined at that moment. Macho men will often wear sunglasses, even though the sun is absent, because in this way they can look, but not be looked at, in the eye. What all this illustrates is that only one dynamic center is possible at a time. If two dynamic centers arise, and one will not yield to the other, then tension and even a fight will follow (p. 8).
My godmother and I looked into each others’ eyes as equals within a center she created for us and there was no tension. Prof. Keeney observes that eye to eye gazing is an old shamanic way of teaching.This is one of the many ways in which she loved me unconditionally; and in so doing, she taught me, by example, to love without limits or conditions. In my Mother’s home children were not allowed to look into the eyes of adults, as indicated earlier. In
She dressed herself each day like most people dress to attend special occasions in their churches or other very special public events. She walked about her home with a sense of grace: each step seemed to make a statement, pregnant with underlying meanings. She wore dresses and skirts, only, and gave meaning to the cloth used to make them. My godmother had a light caramel colored complexion. She was petite with naturally dark below-the-shoulder length hair. On one special day I ran to visit her, hungry for love and oblivious to the dirty clothes I wore as we came in from the cotton fields. She smilingly embraced me and said, “Come with me! Remember, now, when you find two pieces of this puzzle that fit and you put them together, I am going to kiss you!!!” She took the puzzles off the wall and emptied the bag of its pieces on the floor, smiled at me and walked away into the kitchen. The whole room was mine now, and before me lay so many tiny pieces of a puzzle. No one had ever kissed me and I hungered for love and appreciation. Hours passed and she came to tell me that I had to go home for the night and that she would not let anyone touch the puzzle pieces while I was gone. She walked me to the door, touched my shoulder and said “Good night.” Evening after evening I ran to her house after a long day in the hot sun chopping or picking cotton. And just as she promised, each day I found the puzzle pieces where I had left them. I always scanned the puzzle pieces to regain my focus before starting the new day where I had left off the day before. I wanted to do this. I would do almost anything for an inspiring relationship. It is a cultural thing. Dr. Leary tells us that when Johnny refused to study and participate in school activities for the sake of gaining external awards, such as certificates; he may be described by his teacher as ‘lacking the desire or capacity to learn . . . (yet this same Johnny) will work for the ‘relationship’ he has with his teacher if she says to him, “Now, Johnny, I am counting on you and I know you can do your work (Leary, 2005, pp. 33, 34). I searched through the many pieces of the puzzle, gently placing one piece next to another in hopes that one would easily slide into the other. On a Sunday afternoon we returned home from church and I ran to my godmother’s home and went immediately to the scattered pieces of puzzle on the dining room floor. They were all there where I left them and I lay on one side as I gently tested one piece after another in search of the two pieces that fit. The afternoon grew into early evening as the one piece miraculously slipped into the other! My heart appeared to have stopped. I could not feel myself breathing. I had become afraid, insecure, prayerful and gullible. Never had I known such vulnerability. I checked the two pieced in the middle of my right hand. The fit was a bit tight and I grew in regaining myself and thinking that if I showed these two pieces to her, she might say “No. These do not fit,” or something like that.
I bolted myself up and walked into the living room where she sat in a chair, smiling and reaching out to me with both open hands as she said, “Put them in my hands.” I did and she examined the pieces. Immediately she came out of her chair so quickly that it seemed she was already on her knees in front of me. Her bright eyes were so close; then she reached out and embraced me so tightly that I felt warm and softly enclosed as if divinely embraced by misty air and wind. Moments later I felt my face becoming wet as a few of her teardrops rolled down my face and fell onto my jeans. She held me and I reached up and put my hands on her shoulders. For the very first time in my life someone, another human being, actually embraced me. I was intensely happy. Within a glow of blissful joy I began to cry, too, as she gradually released me. Our faces were close and she kissed my right cheek and said, “This is beautiful! You did good. You did so very good!!!” Then she wiped her face dry and wiped my face and eyes dry. I had never been this close to another person, as there was no touching in my home, and especially by adults. Immediately I saw something that could only be seen if you are really close to her: my godmother’s face was covered in tiny little freckles. Each freckle illuminated her natural beauty. I stared at her freckles and visualized them as the thousand-pieces of the puzzle she imprinted on my heart. Then I heard her say, “You will have to go home now,” and she got up and began walking me to the front door. I walked out into the night and, looking back at her, my heart beat with a quiet sense of joy. I opened the door to the domestic hell I knew as “home.”
My godfather drove the cotton pickers’ bus that took us to the cotton fields and the next morning he came to our door, as he did every cotton picking day. He whispered to my Mother and they both look down at the floor. He went back home and Mother came back inside of our house; and, looking at me, she said, “Your godmother died!” I ran to my godmother’s house and the front door was locked. I could not get in. Returning home, my Mother met me at the door and said, ‘They are going to start getting her ready to go to the funeral home.” I asked if I could go to my godmother’s funeral; and she said, “NO!!!” I did not see them take her away and I do not know when they buried her. I do not know where they buried her. I do not have a physical picture of her. I do know that she taught me the meanings of love and the value of patience, the meaning of the word “good” and what it means to be calm when the world is spinning about me, to be sincere in word and deed, and to respect both myself and others. Her spirit lives in each beat of my heart each moment of every day. I want so much to talk to her, to know her voice again, and to feel her presence. Every since the moment of her death I have experienced her spirit as her thousand piece puzzle, any piece of which has been found to fit a piece of what I find in life AND everytime this match takes place, I am rewarded with the blissful remembrance of her presence. These matches include connections, relationships, creative emergences, intuitions, and all non-ordinary experiences. She is my third and most important childhood bird. She died when I was 9 years old. What I have of her now is eternally sacred and a living memory of how we can teach others the meanings of love by example. I chose her as my
In 2005 I turned the corner onto the street where my godmother lived and my heart raced with anticipation despite the obviously wretched nature of the whole area. I found myself looking for her old house and stopped in front of the space where it used to be. The street is paved now; and the space where my godmother’s house once sat has been disfigured by poverty and decay. An old single-wide trailer house occupied its space and leaned toward the left as if it might fall apart or collapse if touched by a soft wind. It had rained recently and the black Delta dirt had turned into mud with puddles of black water here and there. The town itself looked much like this little once sacred piece of earth, now profaned by poverty, decay and neglect. Prof. Keeney informs me that this is what so much of the Delta has become. Dead grass was noticeable in patches and it did not appear that anyone dared live here anymore. Abandoned cars leaned toward the ground in several places where shanty houses used to be and the street was silent. This whole side of the Welch Addition which I formerly called home looked this way. This once lower-to-middle class black community is now only a skeleton of its former self and without the knowledge of its wealth-supported racist and sexist past one might not be able to even imagine its former days of gravel roads and shanty houses facing the homes of the well-to-do black business people and teachers.
Parked here on this paved street, it is almost unimaginable that this was once a ‘gravel road’ teaming with depilated trucks and busses taking and bringing people to and from cotton fields and that small shanty houses once lined these former gravel roads. That so often the shanty houses were separated by several feet and often crammed packed with kids in fatherless homes with mothers and sisters who were frequently used as sex objects by Protestant white males from the other side of town. Many of the black women gave birth to children by black men, too, and many of those men were not allowed to live in the homes because the mothers were on the government dole and if the father was ‘caught’ in the house, the mother and children lost that source of ‘commodity’ foods. Moustakas tells us that:
To be aware of love, in its real sense, is loneliness: the hopes, the joys, the ecstasy, all the tensions of loss and fulfillment, of dreams and despair; this awareness that love is now and yet passing, that one reaches out to hold the moment and suddenly it is gone, suddenly it is sealed in the past, in memories, to be recaptured in reminiscence---the knowledge that this love can never exist again. It is the loneliness of returning to the town in which one lived as a child and feeling only the thin ghosts of that existence and not the substance; the loneliness of wanting longingly, fervently to recapture the feelings or just to feel but not to be able to feel and to know only distance and detachment (Moustakas. 1972. Pp. 143-144).
Sitting here and remembering godmother, a very light, warm glow covers the space where my heart normally beat its rhythmic course in silence. Yet I am eternally grateful to her, my thousand-piece puzzle, and her gift of love I dare to embrace and share. And it is to her, the dearest of all known spiritual beings, my godmother, I leave you with Prof. Keeney’s comment, that: “Love, with or without words, is our only trustworthy compass.”
Acknowledgement
I am especially grateful to Prof. Bradford Keeney of CIIS for reviewing, strengthening and confirming this piece of my life’s puzzle. Please note that all embedded artwork was created by Prof. Kay Picart of
Reference
Brumbaugh, M. (2006). Out of the Mist: an Organic Inquiry into
Cathcart, M. M. Crossing the Tracks: The Effects of the Civil Rights Movement on Race Relations in
Combs, A. (N/A) My Life in Chaos. Unpublished article.
De Quincy, C. (2005). Radical Knowing: Understanding Consciousness through Relationship.
Ikeda, D. (1999). For Today & Tomorrow: Daily Encouragement.
Keeney, B. (1983). Aesthetics of Change.
Leary, J. D. (2005). Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.
Low, A. (n/a). A Cigarette is Sometimes Just a Cigarette. Unpublished article.
Montuori, A. (n/a). Reflections on Transformative Learning. Unpublished article. The Joy of Inquiry. Unpublished article.
Moustakas, C. E. (1972). Loneliness and Love.
Peat, F. D. (1988). Synchronicity: the Bridge Between Matter and Mind.
Van Niele,