Twelve Dead in Shooting at Army Base.
That’s what the headlines of my newspaper say on the morning I write this. Just as I am trying to let go of this story; tragedy strikes again.
It’s part of our world, this violence.
This week, in our study of Gerald May’s The Wisdom of the Wilderness, the author dares to ask the question, Why? Why such violence?
His answer? Because it is.
In chapter six, Violence at Smith’s Inlet, May relates four separate instances of violence that occur at his favorite fishing place.
Turtle, mutilated and left to die.
Fish, released with a broken jaw.
Duck, preyed upon and drowned by a swan.
Woman, beaten and killed.
Of the four , it was the turtle that haunted May. The memory of its lifeless body triggered memories of other violence–the violence of war, of his time in Vietnam.
We learned from Parker J. Palmer in the foreword that May served as a medic in Vietnam. We also learned that he refused to wear a sidearm and later became a conscientious objector. The full extent of the horrors he witnessed we can never know; he shares little of his experience. But the turtle takes him back there.
…there were memories from Vietnam… especially the high keening wail of Vietnamese peasant women crying over their dead. I can still hear their cry in the back of my head, a sound like no other I have ever heard. It is high and shrill and plaintive and it makes me imagine the scream of bleeding mountains.
We are bombarded with images of violence every day. Soldiers deployed, people oppressed, ideas clash…hands strike out.
I turn away. Turn the channel, turn the page, turn my eyes to something else…
Because it makes no sense. In the face of it I feel helpless–out of control, impotent.
And I wonder if this is what May felt when he happened upon the dead turtle that day at Smith’s Inlet.
We struggle to understand.
Why?
It’s understandable that we want reasons: the more we know about something, the more we can predict what’s going to happen, the more in control we can be. And the less vulnerable. The word vulnerable literally means “capable of being wounded”. When it comes to violence, knowledge is like a shield that makes us less “woundable”. Quite rightly, then, we collect as much knowledge as we can to predict hazards and protect ourselves against them.
We must stop these attempts to explain, says May, if we truly want to join with nature.
If we want to be a part of nature instead of apart from it, we must make friends with a mystery that is both joyous and horrifying, and this will never happen as long as we’re obsessed with explaining and controlling everything.
May is right, of course. As long as we live in this fallen world there will be brutality and bloodshed that we cannot understand. But I think it’s important to remember that this was not the original intention for our world.
I think of the sparrow mentioned in the book of Matthew. I think of this tiny bird falling to the ground and I know that God is not blind to losses of this world. Genesis tells us that Abel’s blood cried out to God from the earth after he was murdered by his brother.
And it doesn’t seem that farfetched to believe the mountains must scream in grief at the shedding of blood.
Food for thought:
**Regarding how he responded to seeing the dead turtle, May says:
“Psychiatrically, I suppose I handled the whole thing wrong…the psychologically correct ways of handling things are often just downright impossible in the real moment. This of course makes things worse, because you know that you’re upset, and you also know that you are not handling being upset in the correct way, and so you are doubly upset. This is the negative side of psychology. Like the negative side of religion, it gives you all kinds of good ways to manage your life, only you can’t really do them, so you wind up feeling worse than before.”
Do you agree with this assessment? Have you ever been in a situation where it felt impossible to respond in the “psychologically correct” way?
**Have you listened to the wilderness this week? What has it been whispering to you?
Related Posts:
Maureen’s The Enigma of Violence
Glynn’s Violence in the Wilderness
Monica’s Such Was I
photo and post by Laura Boggess
{ 2 trackbacks }
{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
Laura, I liked you post about the chapter better than I liked the chapter. May troubled me here; he seems tosay we need to embrace violence to udnerstand it as part of the natural order. I’m rereading the chapter to see if I somehow missed what he was actually saying. (I’m also no fan of violence in popular culture – movies, books, TV – and that may have somethignt o do with my reaction.
I could not get the image of the turtle out of my mind–and that troubled me. So I tried writing about it; my essay is here: http://writingwithoutpaper.blogspot.com/2009/11/enigma-of-violence.html
I told my husband, who had read May’s work years ago, that the chapter left me unsatisfied, with questions May did not seem interested in pursuing. He reflected on his love of fishing, for example, but just kind of tossed away the thought that fishing results in the killing of life. I couldn’t imagine May giving up fishing. He might have used the turtle incident in a discussion with his children. That was a lost opportunity. He did not seem particularly moved by the murder of a human at the Inlet; his words in that section felt flat to me. Yet, the turtle stood out.
My elder brother was in Vietnam, so I have some experience with what war produces. The effects aren’t pretty, and they last forever.
I can accept that my questions about violence will never get answered. What I struggle with accepting violence’s inevitability. Being asked to do that is where my faith begins to break down.
Glynn and Maureen,
I’ve responded a bit more in depth on your individual posts, but let me just say this: I’m with you here. I don’t believe that accepting violence–not against humanity anyway–is the answer. I think that oversimplifies May’s intention in this chapter, but the implication is there. May’s life, I think, spoke more about what he means by this acceptance…becoming a conscientious objector to the war that he was a part of speaks of anything but passive acceptance.
It sort of reminds me of the admonitions in the Bible to wait patiently on the Lord…the original word used for wait is a word that implies action. In accepting that violence is a part of life we should be stirred to try to change this. As Christians, we should be people of influence.
That said, I’ve been more than guilty of sticking my head in the sand on this one.
My first thoughts after (and while) reading this chapter: myself. (May touched on this but left that a little hanging, too.) Flashbacks of my own cruelties. As a girl, I often was mean to anyone younger. I had older siblings who (from my perspective) were often mean to me, so I took every “opportunity” to be mean in situations where I was the big kid. Ugh. And I thanked God for all His mercy. I also thought of a friend’s comment, “Hurting people say and do hurtful things,” which made me thank God again.
Monica,
Funny how emotions remember, isn’t it. (Not funny ha-ha, of course.)
On my run this morning (oxygen deprivation of the brain sometimes helps me think better with my heart) I was thinking, too, that perhaps there was a bit of fatalism in May’s acceptance of violence. As the violence of his illness ravaged his body, perhaps he was more inclined to accept our helplessness in the face of these things.
This makes me think of Annie Dillard’s “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,” in which she discusses at length the violence inherent within nature, and God’s sovereignty over it.
The last paragraph of your post is the one that stood out to me Laura. I’m not sure what May’s experience of the “negative side of religion” is. Perhaps, if approached in the same way as one approaches a psychologically correct way to manage life, we are left feeling worse than before.
I just kept thinking that any approach apart from the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is just so much “trying” and will most often lead to failure.
I don’t have any easy answers to violence. I can’t understand the cruelty of it. I think the incident of the swan bothered me the most – the violence of something more powerful over something so weak and powerless. I usually end by thinking that evil is part of this fallen world and we simply can never underestimate the power of the enemy. I believe what Monica said is very true, there is the capacity for evil within each of us. It is grace that redeems us.
Megan,
Thank you for reminding me of this! I plan on re-reading this portion of Pilgrim tonight. Perhaps it will smooth out some of these wrinkled thoughts. Annie has a way of doing that.
Linda,
Yes, I agree. The “negative side of religion” can harm well-being. I like how you say that the “indwelling of the Holy Spirit” is the best helper. We must differentiate between religion and faith here, I guess. Sometimes religion just makes me tired. But, if we let our faith lead, all will fall in place.
The swan bothered me the most too…thus the picture of the swan. See the pretty swan?
i am sorry, i have gotten behind on my reading. but, i do plan to take the book to the library today, so that i can get it renewed again, since i can’t renew it again on line.
but, reading through the comments makes me think of the continual spiritual war that is always going on, since the fall, even when we can not see the negative repercussions, such as anger, hate, jealousy, war, greed, murder, abuse, addictions, violence, abandonment, death, hell…even when we can not see these things, they still exist, and will exist, until Jesus returns and all things are changed.
we don’t have to like it, or understand it.
but, all it takes is for me to see something that is natural, that God has made, and is not totally messed up by sin in the world in and man, and we can get a glimpse, not a clear look, but, enough to see what God intended, and what God wants for us. some day, we will all see clearly. my heart knows this is true, but, it is still very easy to dispair. yet, i believe that God understands our feelings of loss and grief, and i know that He is with us in this.
well, hell will exist after all things are changed…but, God’s children will live without the effects that sin has made upon our life here and now.
anyway…done blabbing
I agree that this chapter troubled me. It seemed to need a few more pages to tie everything together. I sort of assumed he was referring to some darkness ( from the war perhaps) , and just left it at that.
Laura, the discussion you are leading is incredibly more enlightening than May on this.
Nancy,
Very well said. Please blab here anytime!
Deb,
It did feel at loose ends, did it not? I agree, I think his experiences from the war contribute to the undertone of…hopelessness? Is that what it is? But also his impending death, too, I think.
You are quite right! We have some very insightful participants in this discussion! I’m glad you came by.
My wilderness experiences this week:
- the dog needed to go out three mornings in a row at 5am. The temperature was lovely, so I stood out in the darkness, barefoot, under a shining full moon. Orion hung in the sky just above the tree line. Rather than shuffling back to bed and sleep, I stood outside and felt the cool pavement on my feet and admired the night sky.
- sat out in the grass and harvested seeds from the annuals I planted last year. Salvia, zinnia, beards tongue, hollyhock, black-eyed susan, echinacea. I’ve never taken the time to harvest seeds before.
- I’ve been considering that the more I go to nature, the higher the likelihood that I’m going to find poison ivy, Eastern diamondback rattlers, a white-tailed buck in rut, or a nest of yellow jackets under foot. Am I ready to embrace the wild?
This was a hard chapter to read, wasn’t it?
Personally, I was least disturbed by the “swan” episode, and after pondering it for a bit the other three stories upset me more because they involved a human acting in the perpetrator’s role.
What makes us different than animals? I think one answer is that God gave man and woman a higher place in Creation than He gave the animals and plants- with a capacity to love and the ability to choose to love (or not). It’s upsetting to see humanity choosing to not love. (Not to get all philosophical on everyone, but could the swan choose to love or not love the duck he was drowning?)
I am also re-reading this chapter to see if I might have missed something profound that May observed. It raises some questions for me in regards to his “the tongue has no bone/ spring comes every year” philosophy. If we are to be in the moment with everything, there would be no ruminating on the moment after the fact. We would let the sunset be the sunset for as long as it lasts and then move on to the next thing nature offers us. No questions asked, no deeper meaning sought, no commentary necessary. Just rolling along like the cicadas. We’d let the dead turtle be the dead turtle, the drowned duck would be drowned, the murdered woman would be just a murdered woman in the water.
Why would even May write this book if he believed whole-heartedly in living in the pure essence of each moment without commentary, description or explanation? Would I be reading this book if I believed in that?
We aren’t satisfied with what sense we can make of this fallen world. We are not content to let nature wash over us in a completely sensory fashion without any urge to find meaning in that washing. We want answers about why things die, why people kill, why wars happen, why we receive love and grace, why we hurt and why our hearts sing. We know there’s got to be more to this life than just “shit on a stick.”
That’s the point. God’s wired us to crave meaning beyond our existence- something above and beyond a purely sensory event.
There’s another thing that makes us human.
Erin,
I have spent many a morning with Lucy Mae–barefoot, under that same moon. This wilderness experience made me smile.
Good observations. I have felt these contradictions in May’s writings. Even moreso in our next chapter (tune in next week…) I am thankful for writers such as he, though, who share their experiences. If there is no passing on of the wisdom, there is little point, I think.
I don’t believe we can sustain a constant state of contemplation anyway. So I see these things as happening in chunks. Chunks of contemplation. Chunks of writing about it.
I love your last point. We were meant to live for so much more (to steal a line from a Switchfoot song). That’s why we don’t understand and sometimes feel overwhelmed.
So true.
Laura,
I’ve thought about that too- how are we able to sustain extended periods of contemplation without melting down? On the flip side, how are we able to skate through life without pausing to consider things even once? Both are necessary.
I’m glad May was able to articulate his experiences in written word (something I’m not good at). They’ve been a blessing to me the entire way through.
And what does it mean to be human if you’re not conflicted, right? Add that to the list.
Late to the conversation, Laura. But how amazing it has been to this point. I found I could only add the solace of blush roses…
I liked this chapter because it was a change of pace. And also, perhaps, because I enjoy the endless and analytical search for why people do what they do.
This is probably why the conversation with the police officer intrigued me the most. While the chapter has much to do with “mystery” and “because it is,” his conversation with the officer is full of analysis and reason-giving. He dissects the dialogue, leaving it not to mystery, but to a keen observation of human interaction between two fishermen.
May rightfully backs off from trying to decode violence in general, but I think he accurately assesses the mild violence taking place in the ranking and pecking between him – a lowly, worm-using, shore (and canoe)-based caster- and the other man – an artificial lure-using, boat-based, superior.