The Ravages of War and Faulty Religion

I am a child of the mid-1960’s born to parents who served in World War II during their youth  – my father as a Navy gun control-man aboard the U.S.S. Minneapolis and my mother as a Navy cadet nurse stationed in Oak Knoll Navy Hospital in Oakland, California.   

For them, the very mention of the word anxiety was unaffordable and unacceptable, not only because of war, but also because they hailed from impoverished, struggling families in East Tennessee and Western North Carolina - states still haunted by the Civil war and still steeped in a kind of twisted,  religious fundamentalism.

I wouldn’t describe either of my parents as “self-aware”, a term reserved for the industrialized, postmodern world into which I was born. They lived their lives out of a somewhat blind sense of tough, Puritanical, Christian duty and obligation in a universe that, for them, was highly unpredictable. All emotions were awkwardly and inconsistently expressed, swept under the rug completely, criticized by other family members, or contorted into a kind of dark, inner hunger, particularly in the case of my father.

In his late 50’s, my father, crippled by anxiety and depression, spent time as a patient in a variety of psychiatric hospitals; was briefly committed to a state mental hospital, and finally admitted into a V.A. nursing home all before I reached the age of 18.

This had a profound effect on me and my family. Because my parents had no tools to navigate their own emotions and identities, I really didn’t either, in spite of the outside influence of culture, school, etc., which actually caused greater anxiety for me because it didn’t match up with my life at home.

I had my first panic attack at the age of 17 in a dark movie theater. I became dizzy and claustrophobic and my heart and thoughts raced. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. To escape, I ran into the brightly lit women’s restroom and rested my head against the cool metal door of one of the stalls. Looking down, all I could see was my immediate environment, which, in this case, happened to be a very ugly, brown tile bathroom floor. I worried that it might cave beneath my feet. I told no one about the experience.

This severe attack subsided, only to be replaced by a chronic, lower-grade version. I wondered if I was losing my mind like my father.  I thought this meant I was a bad person who lacked trust in a loving and compassionate God. After all, my parents’ Christian worldview virtually demanded the suppression of all emotion. The result was my father’s mental illness and, now, my own.

Strong negative emotions such as hate and anger in a fundamentalist Christian world are understood not just to be sinful but to be, somehow, unforgivable. However, even emotions such as fear, sadness and self-pity can connote a lack of trust in the Divine. Combine that with the ravages of World War II my parents saw, and the result is a nasty concoction.

But herein lay the real rub. Even to surrender to innocuous emotions like happiness, peace and contentment meant that you were ignoring your Christian duty to “suffer as Jesus suffered”; to focus solely on the happiness of others to the exclusion of self. Life becomes a purely black-and-white world floating amidst the “absurdity” of the real.  

Still, I don’t blame Christianity for my personal anxiety or that of the world. I believe the genuine teachings of Jesus are gentle, forgiving, creative, and not easily understood by the average mind. After all, the parables of Jesus are jam-packed with paradox.

However, it is still easier for people, especially those who have experienced the trauma of war, to give into a dualistic, all-or-nothing interpretation of Christianity to the exclusion of genuine spirituality because to do so would mean to risk vulnerability. This is dangerous, anxiety-producing, and pervasive in American culture and in spite of progress such as the Civil Rights Movement, the sexual revolution, and the existence of all great American art.

I am now in my mid-40s and have lived with anxiety and depression since my youth. I have even been hospitalized. Though I still fall into dualistic thinking and struggle to find some solid sense of self, I’m gradually learning to let go of the notion that such a self exists.

In my living room hangs Pablo Picasso’s “La Guernica”. I’ve come to personally view it as redemption not only for the legacy of war that I, and the world, have inherited, but also the influence of faulty religion. It’s curved asymmetric images reveal the chaos of war. Painted in black and white, though, they also reveal what happens when we see the world without color, through a dualistic limited lens. 

 

  

Death Is An Advertisement

Since my last post on this blog, I have moved from Washington, D.C. to Tennessee and then to North Carolina. I've also gotten married and taken a new job. In short, my life has rotated 360 degrees.  No, that's not right.  Maybe more like 180 degrees.  I definitely haven't come full circle.  I wish I knew what I was doing, exactly, but I don't.  Nevertheless, I plan to live out loud.  After all, I don't think anyone really knows what their doing anyhow.

I am now employed by a media conglomerate that owns several newspapers and television stations in the Southeast.  My new title? "Obituary Specialist".  I process obituaries for six newspapers (Well, only three right now, but the plan is to take on three more in the coming weeks).  This means copying text forwarded by e-mail from funeral homes into a program designed to process classified advertising.  Today, I was told I no longer am required to implement AP Style, or, really, edit the obituaries much whatsoever.  They are now considered paid ads and nothing more, and newspapers will now print only what funeral homes provide.  If you've ever seen an obituary written by a funeral home, what I just said may disturb you.  Funeral home directors aren't exactly prolific writers.  Most of them seem on the verge of death themselves.  Anyhow, this news, to me, doesn't bode well for the individual grieving process, or how we as a society deal with death in general.  If death was already considered an after-thought where news is concerned, now, it's an after-thought that is also solely a method by which funeral homes advertise their business and make money.   This is not uplifting news. 

Why I Admire Amelia Earhart

 It's not the flying, though we wouldn't have ever known her if she had never flown.  And it's certainly not the fact that the media/government needed to promote her as a ray of hope during the Great Depression.   What struck me, and still does, about the story of Amelia Earhart was her determination to hold on to some sense of self through the journey.  She knew her love of flying was her own.  Even though her husband, and the government, and the world at large clung to her as a beacon of light in darkness, as some extension of their own desire to soar; she had the strength to focus on the thin line that separated her own fragile veins from theirs, and held on to the mystery of her own evolving identity. This is what separates heroes from the famous.

The Train and the River

On the train yesterday a young girl, maybe 12, stood at the front and held tight to the silver pole with her left hand.  On her right arm she wore a cast colored with red and blue magic marker to look like the American flag.  She focused on keeping her balance.  A few feet away from her, everyone else in the car was seated.  Watching her.  Reading.  Sleeping.  Staring out the window.

Her two younger brothers sitting in the front row seats were dressed alike in plaid shorts and striped shirts. Off to the zoo.  The younger one flirted with me while sitting on his father's lap. Looked at me seductively. Dismissed their parental comments. He must've been 3 or so. Funny.

There is something about the train that is like the river. It delivers. It is generated from a source. It can rescue but will not hesitate to annhilate. Its final destination may be indifferent to the individual. It brings out the best, and worst, in people.

Today, on the train, a young kid offered me his seat. He was wearing a Redskins jersey and khaki shorts with his hair cut short. "Normal". I'd been careening my head around to see if there was an open seat and had found none. Then he sprung off the gold vinyl bench and told me I could sit down because he felt like standing. He must've been 16 or 17. Eighteen at the most.

I sat down and immediately started crying. Chivalry is not dead, even in the young.

A couple of minutes later I listened while two teenage girls (one of them wearing a flowing blue dress with black palm trees on it) studied for a vocabulary quiz. They were discussing the difference between "empathy" and "apathy".

It was only recently I realized that copperhead snakes swim in the Nolichucky River in East Tennessee, my home.

Even though I grew up not far from its winding, omnipotent current, I didn't want to admit that, like me, copperheads need to cool off now and then.

After years of basking in the sun and swimming in the river, I finally saw a copperhead last summer. It was coiled on the sandy beach like a useless, rusty hose suddenly sprung to life; its small head greeting the air, kissing it. My friend Debby asked me to hold onto her dog, Sammy.  "It's a copperhead,"  she said.

I don't remember what happened next except that, now, I live in Washington, DC.