Kent Nerburn

At long last we know who the candidates are going to be. I, personally, hope that Obama chooses Hillary as his running mate despite the issues of electoral value and the unpredictability of Bill. As to John McCain, I am indifferent to his choice so long as the end result is a loss for the Republicans.

This is not to say that I don’t respect John McCain. He has earned our respect by what he did for the country, even though he almost erased that claim to respect by his unsavory involvement with Charles Keating and the Savings and Loan scandal. But no one will remember that, and even if they did, few of us have any real understanding of its true significance and complexities.

My concern now is the way our electoral system turns candidates’ assets into liabilities, and the way the press foments these misinterpretations. You may rest assured that the candidate who grows and changes his opinion will be accused of “waffling” and “flip-flopping.” The candidate who attempts to be civil and accommodating will be questioned about his toughness. Acting the belligerent bully will be seen as a sign of leadership qualities. Thus it has always been, even when wrapped in soft velvet as it was by Ronald Reagan. One can only hope that the current cabal of jackals — Bush, Rove, Cheney, and Rumsfeld — has soured us on such behavior and revealed its dangerous underbelly.

What bothers me the most is that the nature and quality of discourse that we accept from our candidates would result in our children being sent to their rooms if they were to practice it with their friends. Already we have seen McCain become a barking terrier nipping at Obama’s flesh; Obama become dissembling and disingenuous when forced to jettison his friend and mentor, Jeremiah Wright; and Hillary become a passive-aggressive whiner taking around-the-corner shots at Obama and the press for situations almost entirely of her own creation.

This is a sad state of affairs. These are good people. We each have our horse in the race, but anyone with an ounce of forgiveness and compassion sees that these, and the other candidates now fallen by the wayside, are concerned human beings with strengths and flaws no different than our own. Unlike the present administration, I see no cruelty in any of them. Yet our measure of their worthiness is their success at a game of “gotcha!” If they can avoid getting caught more than their opponents, they are likely to win.

What I would like to see is an attitude of tolerance and forgiveness on the part of each of the candidates and the press. Allow the candidates to be themselves, to make mistakes, to correct their mistakes, and to move on. Let them reveal themselves to best advantage in a long, slow unwinding of their thoughts and beliefs and ideas about governing. Give them room to adapt and grow.

Then, make your choice.

By my lights, the choice should not be hard. But the issue beneath the issue is that we must find a way to allow our candidates to show themselves to best advantage, not to measure their worthiness by how well they stand up under absurd questioning and relentless, often irrational and irrelevant scrutiny. To say that this sort of pressure is what is needed to temper the presidential steel is to promote a negative as a way to uncover a positive. It’s like saying if I spank my child enough, I’ll find out what he or she is made of. Perhaps this is a good way to determine who will be a good Marine, but, I submit, it is not a good way to raise a child or to determine who will be a good president.

So let’s watch and see how this plays out. We may well have broken some barriers in who we can choose as candidates. Now it’s time to break some barriers in finding ways to assess them.

I received this email from a man whose path crossed mine several years ago. He is an exceptional human being involved in exceptional work: several years ago he took off went to Gambia to do some doctoring for no reason other than it was a way to serve. His blogs and stories were the stuff of a modern day Schweitzer, though he would likely deny the similarity.

Anyway, he sent me a response of one of his friends to my last blog on Hillary. I find it instructive. I’m sending it on to you with my response attached. I would love to see others write their thoughts in the “comments” section at the bottom of my blog.

Here is the exchange:

Kent, here’s an email I got from a friend after pointing him to your latest “News from..” column.

Geoff

And my response to his response:

Hi David,

Good to hear from you. I stand in awe of what you’ve done since we met several years ago. We’re too old to have heroes, but we can certainly have exemplars, and you have proven to be one. Thanks for what you do.

Your friend is a smart man. I heard the same thing from a national photographer who was covering Hillary in Pine Ridge. He had been shadowing various candidates since before New Hampshire. He said that he thought McCain was going to win because the middle of America didn’t like Obama. He wasn’t as convinced that it was pure racism, but that was one ingredient in a stew that was potent and boiling. “There are no people that look like us” in Obama’s audiences, he said, referring to middle aged white guys.

Unscientific? Perhaps. But those were his words.

Perhaps my hope is based on being the father of a 19 year old who grabbed one of his friends and went to the Obama speech at the Excel Center last night. I guess I still believe in, or hope for, a “Children’s Crusade.” After all, we had one when we were young, though we didn’t pose it in those terms. Old white folks always come out to vote; perhaps young folks of all colors will be energized to do so by Obama. It’s my wish — more than that, it’s almost my prayer.

The frightening thing is that McCain even has a chance. If the Democrats can’t win this one, they should fold up their tent. They’re running against one of the weakest candidates in memory; they’re running on the worst economic situation in memory; and they’re running against easily the worst president in my lifetime and, perhaps, in the history of the republic. If they lose this, what hope is there?

At this one moment in time I have to refuse to let myself be as cynical as your friend, though I fear that his cynicism is simply realism. If we start to see some swiftboating bulletheads turning Obama into an upper class white man, and the Democrats let it happen, I’ll buy your friend a drink and we can drown our collective sorrows. But, for now, I’ve got to believe in the light in the young people’s eyes.

Thanks for writing. May our paths cross again.

Kent

If any of you have thoughts, please weigh in. Is Hillary’s constant refrain that she’s the candidate with the best chance to beat McCain really just realpolitik in action? Is it really just code for, “A black man can’t win”?

A number of folks have written to ask where I’ve gone. For a number of reasons I’ve chosen to stay quiet during the political season. I’ve needed my writing time for my books, and the political season is so seductive that I dare not write the first word or, like a reformed smoker deciding “just one can’t hurt,” I’ll fall off the wagon and find myself blogging every day about the political situation. So I’ve sworn off blogging while the political pot is boiling.

I would like to make one entry, though. It comes after standing on the windblown plaza in front of the Little Wound school in Kyle, South Dakota, watching Hillary make a speech to a small group of maybe 150 folks deep in the folds of the Pine Ridge reservation. I had recently had the good fortune to hear both her and Obama give presentations in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and I was impressed. This was a chance to see her up close (within about 20 feet) and see what she was like in a truly unfamiliar environment. What would she wear to show solidarity with the sweatshirt and blue jeans crowd on the rez? Would she reach down and pet one of the wandering rez dogs? Would she give a booming “fill the hall” oration to a group of several hundred? Would she have some policy initiatives or just “turn the crank” one more time?

Well, the answers were simple: she wore a well-chosen calf length black coat that was either from Christian Dior or Wal-Mart, thus appearing to be in sync with the rez folks whose favorite color is black; she petted no rez dogs; she started her speech slowly and unimpressively, but became animated and passionate when she hit on the theme of health care and started getting some response from the audience. She had me until she started her usual disingenuous thundering about making every vote count, which, sadly and irritatingly, is just an inversion of a whine about why she should be given the nomination. In that moment she became mean-spirited and unpleasant, and I left to go across the street to get a burrito.

Nonetheless, it was a rare experience seeing her in a small crowd on the rez, and it reminded me of everything that has me frustrated, confused, and, ultimately, dissatisfied with her as a candidate.

First of all, as in Grand Forks, she was uncommonly well-prepared. In Grand Forks, Obama gave one of his stem-winders about hope, with a few vague references to North Dakota sprinkled in. He was galvanizing, uplifting, and likable.

Hillary, running late, was like listening to the professor after listening to the preacher. She was whisked in from the airport and gave a solid, nuts and bolts talk that referenced very specific problems in the Dakotas and farm country. She knew her facts and had her policy proposals well prepared. She seldom referred to her notes. In short, she knew her stuff about a place that, frankly, neither she nor Obama cares one damn bit about. But, as in her talk on the rez, she was alive to the issues and had good, solid, helpful, and practical things to say, far more than did Obama.

As I watched her warm the dour Indian crowd on that plaza, I kept saying to myself, as I had in Grand Forks, “Damn! This woman knows her stuff. We’d do well with her at the helm. She could get things done.”

But just as I entertain this thought, another truth reveals itself: she has convictions but no principles. Anyone who is even mildly objective knows that her grand posturing about making every vote count is nothing more than her way of trying to get the party to include the results of the Florida and Michigan primaries. If there is anyone alive who believes that she would be making the same demand had Obama won in those states, I’d like to meet them. The hard truth is that Clinton consistently wraps self-serving ends in high-minded rhetoric about the common good. It is the curse of the Clintons: their policies and hearts are in the right place, but they have no principles about how they will get themselves in a position to effect those policies.

Such behavior is, of course, part of politics. But one should have moral clarity if one wishes to make claims on principle. If you would not hold the same position if it did not benefit you, you should look closely in a mirror before making grand claims about the high minded principles you are asserting.

In the end, it makes Hillary unlikeable, because it sets her high minded claims in stark contrast to her venal self-serving. In some ways it is no different than Hubert Humphrey, but Humphrey was protected by the simple fact that he seemed to genuinely like people. Hillary does not exude the same feeling. She didn’t seem to care about those Lakotas who were listening to her; she cared about their causes.

This is a valid political position. But she would be better served by taking the political stance of Lyndon Johnson, who said, famously, “If you grab them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.” She could grab the political process by the balls and move it to some solid, humane positions that have been lost, if not destroyed, during the deranged reign of George W.

But the unnerving self-serving nature of her movement from position to position to gain electoral leverage is unsettling and, ultimately, unappetizing. She moves her arguments wherever she has to in order to continue toward her goals. I’d be a whole lot more comfortable if she simply said, “I want to win because I’m the most experienced candidate with the best ideas, and I’m going to twist this political process every way I can to get into power to turn those ideas into policy. Watch me work.” But she doesn’t. She’s always asserting some high principle of democracy, but she discards a principle as easily as she discards outfits meant to make her look like the audience to whom she is speaking.

It is, indeed, sad that she sought to grab the hour just as Obama came onto the scene. But it happened. Now she has to accept it gracefully, and she is being anything but graceful. She is being bullheaded and unsavory. Her end game makes you want to hold your nose. Yes, she might still eke out a victory — though I doubt it — but at what price? That is the question. For my money, the ends do not justify the means, because the means will taint the end. It is time for her to withdraw with grace and civility. I hope she does so.

I, personally, moved to the Obama camp long ago. My reasons are simple: he puts hope in the eyes and hearts of young people. My generation was deeply wounded by the assassinations, cover-ups, governmental lies, and Viet Nam. Many of us, myself included, became deeply cynical about the political process. We were troubled by our emotional disenfranchisement and hoped not to pass it on to our children. We retreated to the local, or, in many cases, to the personal. The void was filled by a strange breed that took their cues from Ayn Rand, Ronald Reagan, David Stockman, and others who made the flawed case that seeking the personal good would ultimately benefit the common good. This point of view still holds sway.

These proponents of the self have hijacked the concept of freedom so that “government” has become synonymous with usurpation of rights, when, in fact, they have used government as a tool of self aggrandizement. Dick Cheney and his minions are among the most polished practitioners of this craft. Blessedly, their moral bankruptcy and self-serving manipulations have become too obvious for even the blindest to ignore. But they have been able to do this because those of us from my generation have either abdicated our political responsibility, gone over to the dark side of flat-out self-serving capitalism, or disappeared into a navel gazing that is wrapped in neo-Buddhist or psychologized claims that one must fix the self before one fixes society. In this latter case, the practitioners never quite get around to society, because the self is an ever expanding and self-renewing need.

Those of us who feel caught in this trap look at the Nelson Mandelas, Lech Walesas, and Vaclav Havels, and say, “May one like you come along and do for our country what you have done for yours.” To me, Obama is the closest we have. And I’ll hitch my geriatric wagon to his star if that’s what it takes to get the kids to look skyward with hope.

So I tip my hat to Hillary. She is a good person who has better and more fully thought out policy ideas than Barack. But she missed her moment. The measure is simple: if Obama gets in, he will reach out for Hillary’s expertise. I truly don’t believe Hillary would do the same.

This is a time when a new vision is needed as badly as new policy. Hillary will only be able to offer new policy; Barack might be able to offer them both. May he win, and may he put hope in the eyes of this current generation.

In light of what is happening in the current Democratic dust-up between Obama and Clinton, someone reminded me of a blog entry I wrote in September of 2006. I read it and my jaw dropped.

You could go back in my blog archives, but I think it deserves reprinting. Here it is. I believe it was entitled Looking for Leaders, Looking for Vision. I wish I could get it to Obama.

Blog Entry — Sept 27, 2006

Politics is heating up around here, as I’m sure it is in your neck of the woods, too. Invariably, the claim is made that “we want to run a clean campaign.” But fear sells in America, and a politician who wants to win in America is in the business of selling. So he or she almost inevitably ends up trying to peddle fear about what his or her opponent proposes to do.

Look for people who are visionary. I don’t mean those with good ideas - lots of people have good ideas. And I don’t mean only those with correctives - we all know that there are past mistakes that need to be corrected. I mean those who make you think about the world around you differently.

The key to great political leadership is to make the people see the world in a new way and to believe that this new vision can come to pass. Kennedy had it; Ronald Reagan had it.

I didn’t like Reagan’s vision - it seemed to me to lead to the kind of selfishness that envelops us today. But it was a vision, and it galvanized people. Kennedy’s, though based a great deal on personal charisma, brought the nation into a forward-looking mode that it dearly needed after the long, exhausting emotional recovery from WWII. Clinton had the charisma to do the same, but he squandered his moral capital and lacked a vision of greatness for the country, and, ultimately was taken down by his own stupidity and a cabal of ferrets who used every means at their command to shred him bloody. GW is beneath discussion. In fact, his abject failure and political divisiveness make the need for a national vision ever more crucial.

But it is not simply in national politics that vision is needed. Look to your local races. Who can inspire you to believe that there can be kindness, honesty, clarity, and compassion at the heart of your state or community? Who can take a visionary dream and make it seem like an attainable goal? Who seems to understand you and your needs, as well as those of the people less fortunate than you, and can still shape a vision of a future that will be better for your children?

Just promising to tune up the machine is never enough. No matter what your politics, there will always be opposition to any modifications of existing systems. What is needed is always a re envisioning of the world in which we live, both locally and on larger levels.

Who says to you, “We can be better,” and not just by putting in or removing programs and kicking the current bastards out? Who inspires you with the vision that would reshape the streets and community and world in which you live? Who calls to you with the strength of Sitting Bull’s admonition, “Come, let us put our minds together to see what kind of lives we can create for our children?”

Look for those people. They are the real leaders. They are the ones who can take you to the places where your children can live a life of hopefulness and dreams.

Technorati : Clinton, Democrats, Obama, Politics, President

As long-time readers of this blog realize, northern Minnesota winters induce a cryogenic state. I have been using this period of prolonged darkness and below zero temperatures to do a lot of writing on two main projects as well as trying to assist those who are pushing forward on the film of Neither Wolf nor Dog. I’ll write more about those various projects as they congeal and take better shape.

But I don’t want you to think I’ve disappeared into the witness protection program, so I’ve decided to send out an interview that a friend brought to my attention recently. I don’t even remember the circumstances under which I gave it, or to whom.

But I like it.

I hope you do, too.

INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR KENT NERBURN

Can you briefly describe your writing philosophy?

My work has been a constant search, from various perspectives, for an authentic American spirituality, integrating our western Judeo-Christian tradition with the other traditions of the world, and especially the indigenous spirituality of the people who first inhabited this continent. Someone once called me a “guerrilla theologian,” and I think that is fairly accurate. I am deeply concerned with the human condition and our responsibility to the earth, the people on it, and the generations to come. I believe that we are, at heart, spiritual beings seeking spiritual meaning, and I try to honor this search wherever I discover it in the course of my daily life.

Your writing seems very poetic in style. Is this something you do consciously?

I take the music of language very seriously. Like a heartbeat, it exists right below consciousness, but it animates and infuses your language with life. As both a reader and a writer, I tend to sub-vocalize, thus making my pacing and thoughts more auditory than conceptual. I want the sentences to aspirate, and pulsate with cadence and internal music. A good sentence should sound good and feel good and roll comfortably off your tongue, not simply serve as a conveyor for ideas.

Who inspires you? Who are your favorite writers?

Donatello, Rainer Maria Rilke, Nelson Mandela, Black Elk, Lao Tzu, good elementary school teachers, caring nursing home workers, and anyone who spends time with people who can offer them no benefit.
I love Graham Greene, Jim Harrison, Annie Dillard, and Rainer Maria Rilke.

You quote the Sioux writer Ohiyesa in Small Graces: The Quiet Gifts of Everyday Life. Do you have a favorite quote or thought of his?

I constantly hark back in my own life to his comment about spirituality: “Whenever, in the course of our day, we might come upon a scene that is strikingly beautiful or sublime - the black thundercloud with the rainbow’s glowing arch above the mountain; a white waterfall in the heart of a green gorge; a vast prairie tinged with the blood-red of sunset - we pause for an instant in an attitude of worship.” This, it seems to me, is the key to a humble appreciation of the gift of life we have been given and a proper way of honoring the Great Mystery we have come to call God.

What makes you hopeful about the future?

I am hopeful for human beings because I believe that, at heart, we all seek the same thing - a chance to love and be loved, to raise good children, and to live in peace with our neighbors and families. That we so consistently fail to do so is troubling. And I admit to being deeply upset by the selfishness that is abroad in our own land - believing that we must look out first and foremost for ourselves - and the tendency, both here and abroad, to use religious belief to justify cruelty toward others.

When you write, do you ever feel that something greater than yourself is providing the words or ideas?

Alas, no. I wish I did. But I do believe that we are all God’s hands here on earth, and that in and through my writing I must endeavor to do God’s work, however one chooses to define or give a shape to God.

You write about experiences you’ve had that suggest you’ve studied with various spiritual traditions. What’s been particularly helpful or pivotal in your path?

I love the Beatitudes from the Christian tradition, the use of natural forces as analogy in the Taoist tradition, and the spiritual commitment to the power of the earth in the Native American traditions. I believe we are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers, that the ways of force and acquiescence shown in nature must govern an integrated and balanced life, and that each person must, indeed, find his or her own spiritual path and live each day with an attitude of prayerful awareness.

Do you recommend spending time in nature?

Let me quote Ohiyesa again. “All who have lived much out of doors, whether Indian or otherwise, know that there is a magnetic and powerful force that accumulates in solitude but is quickly dissipated by life in a crowd.” We should all seek the healing and clarifying power of nature so that our spiritual focus and power is not allowed to dissipate.

You talk about the importance of ritual in Small Graces. Are there any rituals or practices you’d recommend to someone seeking a more spiritually focused life?

Prayer - not as petition, but as reflection and contemplation. Mentoring. Service with no thought of recognition. I know these are not specific. But each person must find his or her specific expression of these general principles. Helping a child or an elder or someone in need will do more for one’s spiritual focus than closing any deal or building any building or achieving any position of fame or celebrity.

Do you believe that “coincidences” may be more than that?

I believe in the subtle power of intention - again, like the Taoist belief in the slow, inexorable power of water - and I believe that the miracle of life cannot be accidental. As to whether there is a force that guides our every move and shapes outcomes for some greater or smaller purpose, I don’t occupy myself with that thought. All I know is that I must be God’s hands on earth, and I must express thanks for the goodness that befalls me. Whether my actions are guided or determined is not something I contemplate.

Do you believe in miracles?

Interventionist miracles? I’m not sure. The general miracles of two people creating a child, the impenetrability of death, the endlessly renewing human experience of love? Yes. I guess I believe that God embedded the miraculous in the ordinary, and it is our task to discover it and celebrate it.

Do you ever imagine some sort of ideal world somewhere in the future? What’s it like?

I am less a visionary than a caretaker. I have seen too much sadness and injustice to have any faith in an ideal world. I admire those who do, and I believe they are the ones who should lead us. But I am more concerned with the alleviation of human suffering and the fostering of human kindness than I am with overall visions.

Do you plan to write more books like The Hidden Beauty of Everyday Life?

I see The Hidden Beauty of Everyday Life as a part of a trilogy that includes my two other books, Simple Truths: Clear and Gentle Guidance on the Big Issues in Life, and Small Graces.

Hidden Beauty is an expansion and elaboration of the core idea in Small Graces, that we may not all live holy lives, but we all live lives that are alive with holy moments. Whereas Small Graces followed a single day, Hidden Beauty ranges farther afield, casting its glance on such events as standing before one of Donatello’s sculptures in a cathedral in Florence, Italy; watching a legless man in a wheelchair fly a kite in the sunset over Gallup, New Mexico; and attending a native funeral on an Indian reservation deep in the woods of northern Minnesota.

Simple Truths addresses the fundamental issues of being human, like love, work, parenthood, tragedy and suffering, loneliness and solitude, old age, and death. It was really a book inspired by my desire to express, in the clearest and most heartfelt way of which I was capable, those things that I think it is important for my children to know about life.

I guess a better way to say it would be that Simple Truths sets out to speak of a life well-lived, while Small Graces and Hidden Beauty show us the ordinary, everyday events that serve as epiphanies of such a life. Small Graces is more a celebration of the moments close to home, while Hidden Beauty casts its vision at the larger world around us.

Whether I will write more books like this depends on whether or not I feel I have something new and meaningful to say. I always want my small books to move gently over deep waters. Should I find myself traveling over such waters in the future, and feel that I have the words and insights to give expression to their depths, I will happily write more books like Simple Truths, Small Graces, and Hidden Beauty.

You have a lot of wonderful quotes at the beginning of each chapter of Small Graces. Is there one that’s particularly special to you?

I believe in them all. But I would think that the essence of my philosophy about life is in the quote, “We are not all called to be great. But we are all called to reach out our hands to our brothers and sisters, and to care for the earth in the time we are given.”

Do you have any final thoughts you’d like to share?

Seek the unseen in life. Celebrate the ordinary. Serve the weak rather than currying the favor of the powerful. Find a way to direct your life towards God. And live for the seventh generation rather than for yourself. Most of all, follow the invitation of the Lakota chief, Sitting Bull, “Come, let us put our minds together to see what kind of life we can create for our children.” To live in such a way would be a worthy legacy and an honorable gift of thanks for having had the privilege of sharing in this miraculous experience we call “life.”

A few weeks ago I received a wonderful selection of student responses to Neither Wolf nor Dog from Bill Davis, a teacher of philosophy and East Asian Studies at Blue Valley North High School in Stillwell, Oklahoma. The very fact that they have those courses speaks to the quality of education available to the students, and their papers on Neither Wolf nor Dog confirmed that quality.

I can’t always carve out writing time to offer a worthy response to the emails and contacts I get. But the efforts of these students merited something more than a short note of thanks and appreciation. I thought I’d share my response to them with the rest of you. Perhaps it will be of some value to those of you who teach Neither Wolf nor Dog in your classes.

It’s a long read, so get your cup of coffee.

Here goes:
Read the rest of this entry »

Most of you know Neither Wolf nor Dog, my “literary child” that has drawn the most attention of any of my books over the years. Few of you know To Walk the Red Road, the collection of Red Lake tribal members’ memories that set in motion the events that resulted in the writing of Neither Wolf nor Dog.

This is because To Walk the Red Road was done as a reservation project and was published only locally, and in very small numbers. But its effect was huge. The photos it contained and the way it gave voice to the tribal elders caught Dan’s attention and resulted in him inspiring me to write Neither Wolf nor Dog.

I’ve always felt that to really understand Neither Wolf nor Dog it is important to see the photos and hear the authentic, heartfelt voices of To Walk the Red Road. But up until now that opportunity has never been available.

Now, for a short moment, that opportunity is here, and I’m excited to be able to offer it to you for this holiday season. The Red Lake School Board has authorized me to do a limited reprint of To Walk the Red Road, and these are now available. My sisters at wolfnordog.com have packaged an autographed copy of To Walk the Red Road with an autographed copy of Neither Wolf nor Dog and are offering them at a special holiday price of $34.95. They have told me that they will do free gift wrapping and work out special gift boxes if you so desire. You need only to go to their website, wolfnordog.com, to place an order or to find out more.

I know that a lot of you have asked about To Walk the Red Road over they years, since it figures so prominently in the story of Neither Wolf nor Dog. It has always been a frustration to me that I could not help you find copies. Now I can, at least for as long as the few hundred we have printed last. I think the book by itself is a wonderful accomplishment, because it gives you a glimpse, through photos and memories, into one of the few closed reservations in the country and a place that has been in the news for all the wrong reasons for the last several years. If you want to see what it was like to grow up on a reservation, and to hear the stories as the elders told them to the children, To Walk the Red Road offers you the rare opportunity to do so.

I hope this posting gets to those of you who have asked over the years, as well as to those of you who would find this pairing of books to be something valuable to own or give. I don’t keep track of the numbers of remaining books, so I can’t guarantee how long this pairing will be available. But, for now, we have them.

Click here to go to wolfnordog.com to order your own copies.

A good day. A good week. I’ve spent these last warm days of autumn on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota with John Willis, a photographer and professor at Marlboro College in Vermont, and his wife, Pauline. John and I are collaborating on a book of his photographs. My charge — and it is as wonderful a charge as a writer can get — is to use my words to create a parallel text to John’s photographs. I am not to provide commentary or to write cut lines. This is a book of two artists responding to the same environment and experience through their respective art forms. I am both honored and excited to be able to share pages with John.

John has been going to the Rez for well over a decade. He and I first met through a program he runs there in the summer. It is called “Exposures,” and it attracted me with its authenticity and integrity. In Exposures, he takes young people from Vermont, the Bronx, the Navajo reservation, and other disparate cultural settings and brings them together with young people from Pine Ridge. They all work together on photography projects that document the people, places, and life on Pine Ridge.

So many projects, well intentioned and necessary as they are, focus on providing assistance and service. John tries to build upon strength. If he gives, which he does regularly, it is quietly and personally. In that way he echoes what I so appreciate about NANAI, the program from the Netherlands about which I just wrote. There is so much need on the Rez and so much sadness and poverty, that it is hard not to focus exclusively on need and deficiency. When you find people who acknowledge the need and deficiency, but try to build upon strength, you have found rare people, indeed.

I am excited to work with John on this book of his photographs, because we both see something far deeper and far more important than the sadness and poverty. We see the power of the people, the culture, and the land.

I invite all of you to view a few of John’s photographs at http://www.jwillis.net.

I’m going to make a strange comment, and I ask you to hear me out before you slam the computer shut in astonishment:

When I think back on the journey to the Netherlands and Iceland, I keep being haunted by the thought that the Netherlands is perhaps the greatest possible cultural manifestation of Christian values regarding the land, while Iceland is a perfect embodiment of pagan values regarding the land.

Now, stay with me.

The Christian charge regarding the earth is to subdue it and make it fruitful. More than anyplace I’ve ever been, the Netherlands has been successful in subduing the earth and bending her to its purposes. That they have done so gently and respectfully, and in the service of human good, is much to their credit. They have claimed land from the sea, they have run watercourses throughout their country, they have bred flowers and foods that increase human health and the experience of human beauty. They have, to the extent that it is possible, been gentle stewards of the land in the best manner of the Biblical injunction.

Iceland, on the other hand, has harnessed some of the power of the land in terms of such technologies as geothermal energy, but mostly they have adapted to its commands and demands, making an honest genuflection to its power and dominance. They make small roads, they live on what the land will bear in its natural cultivation rather than creating artificial environments to grow plants and animals that do not naturally thrive there, they leave great stones in their roadways if those stones have a historical precedent as having spiritual power. To travel across their country is to sense the presence of nature, not the presence of culture.

What strikes me as I consider these two worlds through which I passed is how viable each seems as a human adaptation to the land. We are, by our nature, culture builders. We do not live as feral beings and we do not live in a world of adaptation devoid of the exercise of imagination. That the Dutch have looked upon their environment and tried to master it, and the Icelanders have looked upon theirs and tried to fit into it, does not change the fact that each has, in its own way, tried to exercise a worthy stewardship over the piece of earth it calls its own.

The peril we face today does not come from such differing philosophies of how to serve as stewards of the earth, but from the failure to exercise control over how we act upon those philosophies. If the preservation and sustenance of the earth is not a core value in a culture’s philosophy; if the long term good of the earth is trumped by the belief in the short term good of the individual, then the land on which those people live will inevitably come to grief.

This is not a political position, it is a simple fact. Each person pursuing his or her self interest does not necessarily add up to the best interest of the land. It takes an active decision to believe that acting in the earth’s interest is actually in your own self interest. For a long time this seemed like a philosophical canard and little more. But, as the condition of the earth is shown to be ever more fragile and the threats to it ever more borderless and international, what was a philosophical canard is fast becoming a practical grounds for personal and governmental action.

In the last analysis, it does not matter how we look at the earth — as Christians, pagans, Muslims, Hindus,Taoists or Confucians or atheists or Jews — so long as we look at it as the place that must sustain our children. If we put aside our philosophical and political differences, if we recognize that the earth on which we walk must remain healthy enough to hold the footsteps of our children, we can truly weave the tapestry of cultures that the dreamers among us envision.

But if we don’t; if, when making our decisions, we refuse to look into the eyes of the children and grandchildren all around the world, that tapestry will be torn and destroyed before it is ever woven.

Then the winds that blow will be ill winds indeed, and none of us will need a weatherman to know which way those winds blow.

I have just received several emails from readers saying that their experience in coming into the United States was far different and far more friendly and accommodating than the one that passengers on my plane encountered. They suggest that maybe our entry was an aberration or specific to that particular airport.

I truly hope so. I want to believe that the excitement that travelers from other countries feel as they enter into the United States is supported and reinforced by the welcome they receive as they step off the plane. This is a wonderful country, and it should welcome and embrace travelers. As Emma Lazarus’ famous poem says, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free . . .”

Most travelers entering our country are neither poor nor huddled masses, but they are assuredly all tired. We need to meet them as we would meet them if they arrived at the door of our homes, excited about a visit.