Breathe, part 1

Go to part 2

A couple haiku from Kobayahi Issa:

“Children imitating cormorants
Are even more wonderful
Than cormorants.”

And:

“Even on the smallest islands,
They are tilling the fields
Skylarks singing.”

Imani Perry’s little book, Breathe: A Letter to My Sons, begins with these two Issa haiku. ("Issa" -- coincidentally or not -- is also the name of one of Perry's two sons.) She then offers a poem of her own:

“Through good, nothing, or ill, your mother stands
Behind you, in front of the looking glass.
The boy standing before his mother blinks.
And there is another, stalk high.
Seeing a child, and another
I know and do not know.
My own and belonging only to himself
And to himself.
Smuggling truth off the well-worn and decent corridors.
Mother to son, we race in the woods,
Through an underground railroad of all ways.
Dear sons of cotton, muscle, and bone
I am for you.”

The first chapter opens with two further epigraphs:

"I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name. My name is my own my own my own." --June Jordan

And:

“It must be terrifying to raise a Black boy in America.” --Everybody and their Mother (and Father too)

Then she begins:

Between me and these others – who utter the sentence – the indelicate assertion hangs mid-air. Without hesitation, they speculate as if it is a statement of fact. I look into their wide eyes. I see them hungry for my suffering, or crude with sympathy, or grateful they are not in such a circumstance. Sometimes they are even curious. It makes my blood boil, my mind furnace-hot. I seldom answer a word.
I am indignant at their pitying eyes. I do not want to be their emotional spectacle. I want them to admit that you are people. Black boys. People. This fact, simple as it is, shouldn’t linger on the surface. It should penetrate. It often doesn’t. Not in this country anyway.
But no matter how many say so, my sons, you are not a problem. Mothering you is not a problem. It is a gift. A vast one. A breathtaking one, beautiful.” (1-2)

Moving now to the end of Breathe: A Letter to My Sons, Imani Perry writes:

“If I say, Follow your yearnings, that seems cliché, but it isn’t. It is a sermon, though maybe a bit crude. And it has a particularly potent meaning for us. Because at the core of American racism is the belief that the things we the Blacks desire, the fact that we the Blacks desire, are perversions, either because we get too big for our britches or because our britches are too styled and tattered at once.
Desire is such a beautiful and mysterious thing. It is dangerous too. It coils around the world as it is. We are often driven by what we are told is the source of our loneliness, our feelings of inadequacy, our suffering. And the desire that grows can become a terrible distortion of the truth, a misunderstanding of our needs. We are also, however, driven by a yearning to be seen and understood. Sometimes that yearning is so strong we allow ourselves to be eaten up by it, by those who would exploit it. But at other times, the good times, it is what makes us leave here having done something of value.
Take the time to strip yourself down to the core, to the simplest of joys. What if you dream your life but remove all money moves, all contingent material fantasies? And just fill it with connection, grace, and rituals? How would it be? What would it look like? That isn’t an ascetic's dream so much as it is a gospel of living in the along. It is a ritual of reorientation, a steadying, a sense of grace. It might not be enough, but it is something. And the fact is, if you get desire right, you will probably get love right too.”

Yes, it’s a sermon. If it’s a bit crude, it’s because this is just the short sketch. Give this brilliant and passionate woman 20 minutes to flesh out these points, and I’m sure it wouldn’t be crude.

I can’t give you that sermon – I can only give you mine – offer you this morning myself – that we might together make something we could call our sermon. In that sermon, I would ask you to sit with this phrase:

“Yearning to be seen and understood.”

Take a moment to sink into that, and let the words sink into you -- reverberate in your cranium, in your rib cage, in your pelvic bowl.

“Yearning to be seen and understood.”

How is that for you? Is it a yearning pretty much basically satisfied for you? If so, think back on times when that desire – to be seen and understood – was a driving energy of your being. Maybe it didn’t know where to drive you, but you wanted more than anything to belong – to know that you belonged, which can only be known when you see that you are seen, and understand that you are understood.

“We are often driven,” says Dr. Perry, “by what we are told is the source of our loneliness, our feelings of inadequacy, our suffering.”

Then maybe we want to hide. We might think we don’t want to be seen for the inadequate creature we are. When we are seen and understood, we are seen and understood for our worthiness – seen and understood INTO our worthiness. But if we don’t believe our worthiness, we might hide away from the very thing that would reveal and create it. Then, as Dr. Perry says, “the desire that grows can become a terrible distortion of the truth, a misunderstanding of our needs.”

Her hope for her sons – our hope for everyone – is to know and honor the yearning to be seen and understood, not back away from it – but also not, as she says, “allow ourselves to be eaten up by it, by those who would exploit it.” So watch out for that, too.

A lot of species are social, but humans are ultrasocial. We aren't the only ultrasocial species. Ants, bees, termites, certain species of parasitic shrimp, a couple species of mole rat, and MAYBE meerkats and dwarf mongooses, are also ultrasocial. No other apes are ultrasocial. Other apes are certainly highly social, but you’ll never see a chimpanzee in the wild pull down a branch so another chimp can pick the fruit which they then both share. You’ll never see two chimps carrying one log.

We’re cooperative – not quite as much as ants and bees, but almost – and we bring to the table about 100,000 times more neurons for creatively figuring out and coordinating cooperative projects.

We are made to belong with each other – to have a place among others – to contribute to something greater than ourselves – namely, each other -- to be known and recognized for our part – to be, in short, seen and understood. This desire, balanced and channeled, Dr. Perry says, “is what makes us leave here having done something of value.”

To do this, she recommends, “strip yourself down to the core, to the simplest of joys. . . . remove all money moves, all contingent material fantasies – and just fill it with connection, grace, and rituals.” This, she tells us, “is a gospel of living in the along.” “Living in the along” is an allusion to a Gwendolyn Brooks poem that ends with the lines:

“Live not for battles won.
Live not for the-end-of-the-song.
Live in the along.”

Or, as Gandhi said, “The victory is in the doing.” Or as you may remember from last week’s sermon: Only thus will you attain the good you will not attain.

“Live not for battles won. Live not for the-end-of-the-song. Live in the along.”

“And the fact is,” Dr. Perry says, “if you get desire right, you will probably get love right too.” Yes. Because that's what love is: living in the along -- carried forward by the project of building belonging -- being seen and understood by seeing and understanding others.

This is what we are. People. Naturally selected over millions of years to be this species that we are – this species that was built for – and sometimes succeeds at – building belonging together. People. It’s what we do.

Thus at the end of her book, we find that Dr. Perry has brought us back to where she started -- what she said on the first page:

“I want them to admit that you are people. Black boys. People. This fact, simple as it is, shouldn’t linger on the surface. It should penetrate. It often doesn’t. Not in this country anyway.”

There’s a long and complicated story about the psychology and the sociology, the economics and the history, of how this human species -- built to build belonging together -- produced some groups with the power and the proclivity to exclude and oppress other groups – how some humans adopted strategies so profoundly counterproductive to the human functioning for which we yearn. In denying the humanity of others, oppressors denied their own. It’s a story I won’t go into – many volumes have been written, and many volumes more need to be written further fleshing out that story.

Despite that story, in the last generation are hopeful signs that we might be getting better at this being people business. Might be. I know a lot of people are still clinging to what Langston Hughes called

“the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.”

A lot of folks aren’t able, yet, to see a better plan. But a lot of others are. A lot of Unitarians are among them.

There is a new possibility in the land.

Go to part 2