Displacement

November 18th, 2013  |   

Taken Hostage On My Drive Home

The three-hour drive from Lexington, Virginia, to Charleston is wrapped in beauty. The mountains are resplendent in their pumpkin-season attire. The golden, brown and red leaves drain the last remnants of summer from a sun that cannot promise deliverance very much longer from a winter that lurks longingly for its own rightful place in time.

It is a quiet drive. I am alone. Judy is not with me. I cannot rub the back of her neck as I drive, watch her doze, listen together to music, or talk with her about this trip to the Shenandoah Valley. I have plenty of thoughts about my four days away from home, but they are stuck like a car with a flat tire, unable to go anywhere. And I am alone, driving.

One word keeps reverberating around in my head, like a haunting melody that keeps repeating itself, that won’t go away, that jealously guards its space, that won’t make room for another thought. It wants to be the only child in the house. It wants to cozy up to me even though it’s not one I embrace very often in conversation or in my writings.

Displacement. That’s the word that holds me hostage as I return home. Displacement.

I could, while going seventy miles an hour, actually talk to myself, say the word out loud, let it meet silence and rebound like an echo in some dark canyon. Plenty of people do. You’ve seen them in a car while driving, or at a stoplight, or even walking down a city street alone. I could pretend that Judy is actually in that seat next to me.

Better still, I decide to engage this word in the solitude that faces me as I return home, I’ll find some resolution, some enlightenment, some release from this twelve-letter word that holds me hostage. Maybe even a peace that will put to rest the sense of displacement I have felt since the woman who used to be my traveling companion is no longer here.

Snow Falling On Cedars In Lexington, Virginia

“It is quite possible” says Noam Chomsky, “overwhelmingly probable, one might guess—that we will always learn more about human life and personality from novels than from scientific psychology.”

That’s one reason why Judy and I have gone to Lexington in the fall to attend the annual Washington and Lee University Law and Literature seminar. The Law School and the English Department collaborate to focus on the legal and literary aspects of a particular novel. David Guterson’s, “Snow Falling on Cedars” was the novel under scrutiny this year. If you haven’t already read it, please do.

The story is set on a fictional island in Puget Sound, Washington. Kabuo, a fisherman of Japanese descent is accused of killing another local fisherman, a white islander. The setting is 1954, with flashbacks to World War II when over 110,000 Japanese Americans in that region were taken from their homes, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and placed in War Location Camps.” The majority of these folks were American citizens.

What better setting could there be for the subjects of racism, prejudice, injustice, tribal loyalty, war, journalistic ethics, and, yes, displacement—all wrapped tightly in a book reviewers like to label “a page-turner.”

During WW II, as a kid, I read and heard the racist term “Jap,” but nothing was ever said about the painful up-rootedness experienced by Japanese Americans who were displaced and carted off to internment camps. They were there, but I wasn’t. That’s the difference.

On August 10, 1988, President Reagan signed House Resolution 442, named for the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, comprised of Japanese Americans. He apologized on behalf of our nation. The act provided money for 60,000 survivors and required that the history of internment be remembered in classroom studies, monuments and museum collections.

Last Friday night, Grayce Uyehara, a retired Philadelphia social worker was honored for her grassroots effort to win redress for all who were displaced, who lost their homes, jobs and savings. On this, the 25^th anniversary of House Resolution 442, take just a minute to read an account of that ceremony. (http://articles.philly.com/2013-11-16/news/44117249_1_civil-liberties-act-japanese-americans-internment)

Years ago I had the honor and pleasure of working with an Episcopal priest, the Rev. Michael Yasutake, confined as a child to an internment camp. That encounter awakened me to what the novelist John Hersey called “the bitterest national shame.” Driving home, I thought about Michael, now dead, and how displacement had influenced his dedicated ministry toward social justice ministry.

A bloody stream, carrying displaced people, flows beneath the surface of our nation’s history. When I examine my 50 years of ordained ministry, it could easily be described as work done in the midst of that stream. I think specifically of black and Latino migrant workers, homeless people, prisoners, gays folks in a closet, veterans displaced physically and emotionally by war, and numerous people grieving over the death of a loved one.  

What was, no longer is. What was here is no longer there. What could be held and touched is out of reach. What could be seen is no longer in sight. Ground once stood upon has collapsed into a sinkhole. Therein lies the thread that links all displaced people.

When Christians, like me, talk about death, it’s all about displacement. And when the subject of resurrection is broached, hesitatingly at times, I might add, it means very little unless it finds roots in the residue of grief. 

Beginning My Week With Syria And A Dead Dog

Death is often depicted as the Grim Reaper who comes knocking at the door. But death has many disguises and multiple ways of arriving on the scene. I choose to see death as a burglar, an intruder who breaks a window and enters one’s home, intent on stealing something valuable, a person or even an animal. Yes, even an animal. 

On the Monday following my trip to Lexington, I got an early morning call from friends reporting a robbery. Death had come to steal their dog.

Prior to that call, I had gone to my computer and found a video sent to me from a local friend of Middle Eastern descent. It was painful to watch because it featured a young Muslim rapper singing a doleful lament, while displaying pictures of dead and wounded Syrian children killed in the war that is being waged in that land.

Death leaves a bad odor behind, after it has carried away its booty. It is the smell of grief and it can be found in many places. It can only be washed away with tears and fumigated with conversation. And so I had a conversation with my friends about their dog.

It might be tempting to engage the subject of death and grief in a hierarchical way. You know, the death of thousands of Syrians ranks higher than Judy’s death when it comes to grief. And the death of an animal ranks lower than both. But I choose not to go that route. Instead, let it be said that grief is grief, no matter how or when it arrives on the scene. Displacement and loss are the common ingredients that arrive when death shows up to claim whatever it has come to claim.

Perhaps the price for getting out of bed in the morning is the requirement that each one of us be prepared to bump into grief as we go about our day. That’s because it can be seen on the faces and in the lives of people we meet, even those who cover their wrinkles with a smile. It just happens to be part of the human condition, not to be fled from, but to be acknowledged, and, dare I say it, embraced.    

If that looks a bit glum, perhaps it’s because we’ve been looking for our glee in all the wrong places. Maybe it’s best found in that grim place called Sheol, later dubbed Hades, or Hell—the place where a member of the Reaper family was baptized with the name Grim.

Once again, turning to a novelist for insight, William Saroyan might be of help. In his book, “The Human Comedy,” he writes: “One day in the afternoon of the world, glum death will come and sit in you, and when you get up to walk, you will be as glum as death, but if you are lucky, this will only make the fun better and the love greater.”

Even though I might prefer faithful for the word lucky, and pleasure substituted for fun, I do believe Saroyan, who had to move through some very dark places in his own life, is onto something worthwhile. Not a bad way to greet the day, don’t you think?

Internally Displaced People In The Philippines

At the end of 2011, according to the United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees, there were an estimated 26.4 million internally displaced people around the world.  Internally displaced people are folks who have fled armed conflict or a natural disaster, but have not left the country in which they live.

The typhoon, a natural disaster that hit the Philippines last week has created huge numbers of internally displaced people. The pictures of people trapped on the islands there, their homes destroyed and family and friends dead or missing, is heartbreaking.

One day these people were getting out of bed, going to work or school, eating around a table, and making plans for time with family and friends. Then the wind and water came and washed it all away.

I watched the news and listened to an NBC reporter describe the scene in Tacloban by saying you have to wonder if life will go on after everything you had is lost.

Displacement is a broken record—loss, loss, loss, loss, loss, loss.

Appalachian Displacement

West Virginians know a great deal about displacement. We have a long history of being associated with people who have been uprooted.

While serving a parish in Michigan, I discovered a section of Detroit inhabited by transplanted Appalachian folks who had come there for jobs. That pattern continues as the people move from West Virginia for a job they can’t find here, or for pay that is above the wage level here.

Transplanted West Virginians talk about going back home, where life is familiar, the land is loved, and the people are their people. But, for too many of them, that hope is destined to be an unfulfilled dream.

On trips to Central American countries where war was causing a huge exodus of people in flight to jobs and safety here in the United States, I could always count on Appalachian travelers to understand the trauma associated with displacement. A connection occurred across ethnic, national and cultural boundaries. It always wore an empathetic face.

Obama In Free Fall

Watching President Obama at his recent press conference, in which he apologized for the mess surrounding the Affordable Health Care Act, was like watching a shirt without starch. Talk about a displaced person. There can be little doubt that he is in free fall, along with his presidency, with people wondering if he will land on his feet.

A second term president is often labeled a lame duck, but he may be a dead duck, unable to move important legislation forward—particularly immigration reform.

I ask myself, was the Affordable Care Act assassinated, or the victim of an assisted suicide? Republicans have been trying to shoot president Obama out of the saddle ever since he was elected. To be perfectly honest, it was good to see a president apologize. I saw no weakness in it. More politicians should practice the art. But it is hard to watch him assist his opponents with ammunition—a seriously flawed plan, out of touch with its details, and emasculated by a broken website.

The tragic irony is the fact that Obama is apologizing for, of all things, mistakes made over trying to get affordable health care for everyone, not just the economically privileged, people like me. Meanwhile, “W” has never apologized for taking our nation into what has to be called unaffordable death and destruction in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now a flock of insurance company vultures have converged on the White House to pick Obama’s bones, while a flock of Democrats are fleeing from their beleaguered leader.

When Bill Clinton, the man from Hope, Arkansas, became President, I had a wee-bit-of-hope that he would begin to educate the public about a single payer system by putting it on the table. Sure, it would have failed, but it could well have been an important step toward eventual acceptance. When he assigned Hillary the task of putting together a national health care plan, she brought the insurance big-wigs into the room. The result? Any talk of a single payer approach went out the window.

Now Bill is back on the scene with advice for Obama, and Hillary is on the presidential campaign road. In retrospect, perhaps it would have been better for Obama, and those screwed over by an inadequate health care system, if he had done what the Clinton’s didn’t have the guts to do: to introduce single payer legislation rather than the Obamacare gradual approach. Sooner or later the words single payer will have to become household words, so let’s get on with it.

Converting Land Mine Fields Into Rice Paddies

 “I tell people that I was born in Vietnam, and they say ‘what?’ Yeah, I was born here in 1968. Because upon my arrival here every breath I’ve ever had since has been affected by it in some way or another. Everything I’ve ever done since leaving Vietnam has been affected by my time here.”

That’s the voice of Suel Jones, the recipient of two Purple Hearts who has suffered through 30 years of post-traumatic stress disorder. Unable to hold a job or make friends, he finally got the help he needed to move beyond his war experiences as a Marine in Vietnam. Interestingly enough, Jones now lives in Vietnam and helps run the Veterans for Peace chapter there. “I wanted to make up for what I’d done during the war. I now have a second chance,” says Jones, “to do things right. I have a chance to be a teacher here instead of a soldier.”

Vietnam veterans are the subject of a valuable article in the November 11 edition of The Christian Scientist Monitor Weekly. The title of the article says it all: “Operation Reconcile.” Another veteran, Greg Kleven gives credence to those two words. Working alongside of former enemies, they remove unexploded bombs and old land mines. In doing so, old battlefields are converted into rice paddies.

I’d call that a modern translation of the Biblical admonition for people to wage peace by “beating swords into plowshares.”

As I come to the end of my life and ministry, it is clear to me that war is a free fall into a hell in which many men and women in uniform find themselves displaced, discombobulated and disconnected from themselves and the people back home who sent them into harm’s way. Values get twisted, behavior perverted, and prohibitions about torture and killing, often learned as children, become submerged, seemingly beyond reclamation, in the crossfire of battlefield violence.

Suel Jones, Greg Kleven and all veterans, wherever they may be, who land on their feet after suffering from a traumatic displacement, give me hope that human beings can land in a graceful place no matter what ordeal they’ve come through. Reconciliation with one’s self, even one’s enemies, is possible for all of us, no matter what burdens we carry.

So Where Is The Fun In The Holocaust?

For God’s sake don’t go there, Lewis; don’t ask that question! Some folks might think you’re just a step away from denying a Holocaust in which six million Jews, along with gypsies and gay people, were displaced and mass-murdered in concentration camps.

No, I will go there, and I will take Henry Baigelman with me to lead the way.

Baigelman was a Jew who has been considered the dean of Holocaust Music. Born in Lodz, Poland, the second largest ghetto of Jews, the place from which Jews were transferred to Auschwitz. From a family of musicians, he played the violin and the saxophone and performed with the Lodz Ghetto Orchestra.

After the war he, and Jewish survivors, formed a touring jazz band, The Happy Boys. You see, he believed that displaced people, even unto death, hungered for the culture that had been denied them, and music was the vehicle for restoring a sense of normalcy to their lives. Music helped them cope with death and the grief felt from the loss of family and friends. Listen to “We Long for a Home” for an example of what I am talking about. (https://ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/music/detail.php?content=home)

This will sound familiar to those who understand the reality of African American Jazz, and white people’s music sung when our nation was spraying Agent Orange, and killing people in Vietnam, and causing young people to flee to Canada as an act of resistance.

I certainly don’t equate my grief with the horror of Nazi Germany or the slaughter in Vietnam, but as I’ve said, grief is grief no matter where it rears its ugly head, even here as I drive home from Lexington, two months after Judy’s death.

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