Paths, Crossing

First path—Susan. She sends me an article entitled “Religion for Everyone” by Alain de Botton. The thesis is that however much organized religion got it wrong, it did do some good things. Mostly, he says, it brought everybody together—rich and poor, strangers and friends, and formed a community. Also, of course, got people to think of a higher goal than money in the bank or the car in the garage.

But why not let him tell it?

Religion serves two central needs that secular society has not been able to meet with any particular skill: first, the need to live together in harmonious communities, despite our deeply-rooted selfish and violent impulses; second, the need to cope with the pain that arises from professional failure, troubled relationships, the death of loved ones and our own decay and demise.

Well, it’s a point of view. And it’s also true that some religions—one thinks of the Quakers—do a nice job of the two points above without intruding too much annoying theology into the whole business. And yes, it would be nice to go somewhere, be in a community, share pain, joy, and sorrow.

Also true, of course, is that we’re a stratified society. And very likely a lonely one. How many times has a person sat and just listened to you, asked questions, heard your story? And when was the last time you did that for someone?

I was lucky—they paid me to sit in a room and hear the stories of people’s lives. They didn’t know that, of course—they thought I was teaching English. And since the students were speaking English, in a sense I was. The students knew better.

“You’re the psychotherapist for the Wal-Mart Home Office….”

Could have been. I heard a surprising amount of information prefaced by, “I’ve never told anybody else about this, but…”

And here’s the rub—most of my students went to church every Sunday. Reading Facebook, as I now do, I realize how profoundly religious they were and are.

They were also very lonely.

Their churches taught them that God loved them and that He was all-powerful and that loving Jesus was all that mattered. In many cases, it provided an emotional vent, a way of letting go. A sort of spiritual rock concert.

The rest of the week?

For the single mothers, there was no adult contact beyond co-workers and child-care providers (that would be mamita).

Didn’t use to be this way. There was a time, I told the students, when everybody sat down and ate together, three or four generations, and extended family as well. Sundays were long, slow days—sitting in a rocking chair, swapping stories, remembering the good and the bad times….

Sometimes people chatted. Sometimes they just sat in silence together.

Well, we don’t do that anymore. At least, most of us don’t.

Which leads us to the second path: Truman Lowe, or—to use his Ho-Chunk name—Hawk.

He drifted in the door last May when I was up in Wisconsin, attending a party in my mother’s house, and getting her out the door. And the first thing I noticed about Hawk?

He listened. Oh, and observed.

It’s a quality that’s sufficiently unusual that I wanted to look him up. And that’s easy to do—he’s a significant figure in the world of art.

Born in Black River Falls on the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin reservation, he grew up in a family of six kids. The language spoken at home was Winnebago. Even now, he considers English a second language.

Goes to the University of Wisconsin, but during the summers plays “Indian” at Wisconsin Dells. (Where he meets a young Eric Newhouse—hence the connection.) Then he begins to teach—first high school, then (and currently) at UW-Madison.

From which he took a leave of absence to become the first curator of the National Museum of the American Indian.

And so he’s had—or rather is having—a distinguished career.

I like his work very much. As much, in fact, as I liked the quietness in him. And as much as I liked this quote, freely lifted from Wikipedia

If I have a religion, it must be canoeing...I canoe wherever there's water. It puts me in a totally different state of mind and provides all I need to exist. - Truman Lowe[2]

Was that what I sensed that May day in Wisconsin? A man who can be alone, who likes to be alone on the water, who feels joy in his arms making the rhythmical motions of paddling, who sees a landscape float by in God’s time?

Think so. As well as a man who grew up as few did or do—in a family, yes, but also in a community. Which gave him all the strength to be alone.

And to listen.