THE FAITH I POSSESS

Life and its demands, its requirements, its rules, its regulations, even its well-worn patterns-become-beliefs-become-traditions demand their pounds of flesh, their money and angst and submission. It is a deadly game played, a stupefying and numbing game, a giving up of the soul in bits and pieces until one must not only play but be … dead. The body itself requires that it be fed, that it’s teeth be cleaned, that it be made to survive healthily as long as possible, that its bed be comfortable, though it is the mind the requires that the body be attired fashionably and that it maintain an attractiveness in society. It all requires the maintenance of a certain level of control of all external and internal forces as if there could actually be such a thing, as if we could respond instinctively and intuitively and most appropriately to all stimuli, like a sunflower’s trope towards the sun. And so we end up in contrivances of all sorts that will give us the impression and belief that we are in control and possessing the image of success, of this control, whatever it may be. If not material wealth and social power and fame, then at least savoir faire, a convincing pretence of such, or perhaps a little of each, though a small amount of pretense properly applied can cover a surprisingly large area and last a goodly amount of time.

          I once more consider “taking all my writings and publishing them in an actual book.” At least partly so that I can bury or otherwise hide a few copies in a redwood trunk and then find that said redwood trunk next lifetime so that I can be further bored out of my wits. If life cannot be “tongue and cheek(s),” it has no purpose. My life has purpose. To be able to be self-denigrating in a most humorous manner allows me the wherewithal to successfully denigrate other selves as well. But why? Why would that be a life purpose? To remove the one thing we are most proud of and that we hold onto to prove that we are worthwhile in this world: self-image. Self-image, which is false at heart, self-deceitful, usually mean-spirited (especially in its showy, smiling, goodness), superficial and simply stupid. We are good creatures at heart though generally know no better in mind, though which we sin against the God of our own being, not because we are evil but because we just don’t know what’s real, because we are so utterly ignorant of ourselves, especially of ourselves in the world. Even the world is not evil, though the devil best dwells in our minds and souls here. To be in bodies with which we come to identify is utter and complete temptation to become what we are not, and to cause a rift, if not an abyss, between our true selves and our false selves. We make wrong choices based in wrong identity, mistaken identity, and only life itself, or, the gods acting upon us through the exigencies and emergencies of life, has the effect of sloughing off our false skins and our false notions and identities, returning us to a true semblance of our being. It is not that there is “hope”; rather, it is that truth does will out in the end in spite of us and our stupidities. And it is not that “life is cruel”; we cannot blame life for our own blindness: life just comes at us, as it were, and we just respond poorly until we finally learn, by trial and error and perhaps even by divine grace, how to respond appropriately, according to our true nature, true being.

SAYING WHAT IS NOT SAID

Whenever I write something, whenever I “make a point,” I am acutely aware that I am “opening Pandora’s box,” releasing so much more which has not been said. My so-called “thesis” releases so many anti-theses. In making a “positive” statement, so many negative statements are instantly revealed, though unwritten. David Miller expressed such points of view, noting also the revelation of so many “mis-takes.” To “say something,” one must “take a point of view,” “a position,” that, by its very nature, is de-cisive, that is, “killing,” as it were, other points of view which are also “true in themselves.” So, is it wiser or “truer” to not delineate anything at all, but to keep silent? Or is silence itself a particular point of view or position taken? It would seem that silence could be a definite statement and not representative of impartiality or a superior moral stance whatsoever. It seems to me that silence can be quite active, with its own inherent agency. For instance, if one does not vote as an expression of one’s disapproval, the absence of that vote is a vote for the “other side.” Of course, there are those who believe themselves to be “above it all,” and of the cosmological and metaphysical “greater context” in which time and space and humanity and history occur, so that they may deduce that “nothing matters” in such a context. I have been of that mind and still often am, however, it is a fatalistic and nilhilistic perspective that perceives one’s life and oneself as inherently insignificant, if not even invisible to the point of non-existence. It is a view that one is fated to nothingness, to be nothing. And it is an absolutely false view in that it holds the individual as somehow not a part of the whole, as not a participant in the unfolding of what happens and of what is. In fact and logically, we are a part of “it all”; we participate in the unfolding and expression of fate, of what happens, of life, and of our own lives in particular. What we may call “God,” “the universe,” the “Dao,” our “ground of being,” Self, or source, is not separate from us, not only “out there,” but also “in here,” within ourselves. Of course, this brings up the questions, “Well, then, just what are ‘we’”? and “Just how do we define ‘inner’ and ‘outer’”? Every thought we have digresses to another perhaps underlying thought and endlessly so. Nothing can quite ever be explained, much less understood in the way of explanations.

          To come back to my original statement that what we say reveals in its own particular way (which is not just “reading between the lines” and surely not necessarily oppositional or paradoxical) releases so much more of what is not said. I read somewhere that Wittgenstein said of his writings, something to the effect that, “the value to be found in this book is in not what I say, but what I do not say.” Forgive me for not being able to find the exact quote. However, Wittgenstein does reflect, in Tractatus, my own points here and elsewhere:

The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no value exists—and if it did, it would have no value.

If there is any value that does have value, it must lie outside the whole sphere of what happens and is the case. For all that happens and is the case is accidental. 

What makes it not-accidental cannot lie within the world, since if it did it would itself be accidental.

And so it is clear that ethics cannot be put into words.

If we take eternity to mean no infinite temporal duration but timelessness, the eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end…

God does not reveal himself in the world.

(John Gardner, Mickelsson’s Ghosts, Knopf, 1982, p.479)

          Everything we think, believe, and say is out of context because we do not, at least consciously, have a knowledge or even really a grasp of the possible vastness or simplicity of context. Our thoughts, and the thoughts of the “great minds” of religion and philosophy and physics (for that matter) weave in and weave out, warp and woof, ebb and flow. That which I present in my writing tends to be that which “arises within me” implicitly (to use Giegerich’s descriptive term in The Soul’s Logical Life, 45), or somewhat intuitively, which I then truly attempt to make explicit. If it simply provokes thought in the reader, I am satisfied. 

SOUL, IDENTITY, "LOCATION"

Just where are we “located”? This is a “loaded” question, requiring a multiplicity of answers.

          First, there is the “we.” The many “I”s. Theosophy (and Hinduism, in particular) present a person as consisting of the physical body, the emotional (or astral) body, the mental body, the soul (or embodied spirit). There are other sub-bodies, as it were, but this is sufficient to work with. It is said that the soul, which is “higher” or less dense than the other “bodies,” is inclusive of them. This implies that if the physical body is eliminated at death, the soul still includes the emotional and mental bodies, which is to say the feelings and thoughts (mind) of the person who did exist, which thus both “individualizes” the soul and limits its self-awareness, for it remains “tied” to specific feelings, thoughts, as well as memories. Just because it is now absent the physical aspect neither makes it “enlightened” or “purified,” for it remains “tainted” and even with a personality. It still has a long road to haul, be it purging of that which is false through the Catholic “purgatory,” or through myriad reincarnated lives.

          Second, if, in fact, we are souls (including mind, emotion, and body), or embodied spirit, just “where” is this. Doesn’t spirit permeate the universal? Would it be equivalent to what we refer to as “God,” that is, if it were purified to the extent that it was free of ego, which is to say, self and self-reference, which is to say further, from thought, feeling, and flesh? Wouldn’t it become as “pure energy” permeating the whole universe and even universes? There have been Hindu holy people who have stayed coma-like in meditation, maintained by devotees, apparently connected to their body by a thread of consciousness only, and/or not even needing normal nourishment. I have read of such things and known a few people who knew a few other people. I take it as true. Over the years I too have had my own “out of body” meditational and otherwise experiences, which took me out of my body and far out into the universe. I don’t think it was sheer imagination or a dream-state. I believe “I,” my consciousness, my self-awareness, traveled spatially great distances. I have also noted elsewhere in these writings that I have traveled through time, as it were, and experienced different reincarnations of my “own,” that is, of this soul of which “I” am the current manifestation as the person I am.

          Third, so where am “I” (or we) actually “located”? The answer lies in which level of being that we identify ourselves as primarily existing in and in which our living experience actually occurs. A case in point: Over the last ten years I have “moved” my “level of being” so that it is less physically-identified, less emotionally-identified, and more mentally identified and probably soul-identified. Very recently, I “returned” to a specific situation which requires greater physical and emotional beingness after a ten-year movement away from that kind of being. In that situation, which was a bit surreal for me, I remembered how it used to be but is not now. It was very clear to me that I had made such a shift out of necessity and out of love. My point here is not to be enigmatic or vague, as it may appear, but that this identity we have of “ourself” can express and manifest on many different levels in many different, even very distant, “locations.”

          It seems to me that we have a rather habitual bias that “we” are definitely located in the physical body, since the physical body is our primarily apparent locus of activity, even though our locus of feeling and thought may be even more primary than our body, especially if we consider that perhaps we have had many physical bodies that have “dropped away” over the eons, but the emotional and mental bodies have evolved and continued to develop for a very long time. We may have forgotten that this is so, believing that it has always been a “clean slate” upon each new birth, but there are many who realize that they have carried feelings and thoughts, if not actual memories, from previous existences. So it is that we have a “predisposition” to our physical existence, which is also a biological predisposition with the purpose of survival of our species, of “ourselves,” as we see it.

          At this point I could digress into the notion that “I” do not really exist but, rather, am a figment of my own imagination, which begins to flow more towards the Buddhist way of seeing. But I won’t go there for now. Rudolf Steiner’s view is that upon physical death, the soul “blasts” (if I recall correctly) out of the body into the universe, literally passing the planets and proceeding to the “edge” before being drawn back into the next body into which it has reincarnated. I have no idea as to the veracity of this. It could very well be that, for a physical body to be animated by a soul, that soul must literally focus itself within that body and thus be “contained” for a lifetime. Given some of my own experiences and that which I have read and heard, I don’t believe that such energy is necessarily that contained. Is not the whole notion of “enlightenment” one of one’s consciousness or awareness going beyond, while still including, the physical body? Don’t the various “saints” and shamans of religion “talk to God”? Of course, this leads me to “the cloud of unknowing” of Meister Eckhardt, which I will not pursue here and now.

          If an atom bomb exploded down the street, my body would be instantly vaporized. But that would still leave me right where I am. That’s how I see it. We think so many things to be certain, when they are not at all.

YOUTH OF DISTRACTION, AGING OF DEATH

We find much “purpose in life” in youth and middle age, in family and career. It is the “normal distraction of life,” it could be said. Such distraction = purpose and meaning. A very apt carrot hung before us that is truly motivating. And we tend to live our lives accordingly and engaged.

          When family and career fade and we are then left with ourselves in old age, we lose the “inherent distraction of youth and middle age,” and, left with ourselves and perhaps a spouse as well or even still with children, our bodies begin to reveal themselves as a painful limitation to our activities, even to ourselves “as we are,” or so is our interpretation. We begin to “bide our time,” to become more aware of our lives “slipping away slowly” (or perhaps even quickly). We find ourselves waiting to be out of these pained bodies that we still inhabit.

          “Life” in itself does begin to become invasive and demanding as the culture and society changes, dumbs down, loses itself even more in falseness, becoming even more violent and cruel and downright stupid, electing a representative president and government who takes pride in lying, falseness, violence, cruelty, and stupidity. The world goes merrily to “hell in a handbasket.” It becomes ominous and hateful; one begins to feel this weight upon oneself. The Kali Yuga brings us down on “all fours”; we find ourselves barking and biting.

          But then, it is the weight of the crumbling, the deterioration of the body, of the mind too—of the life one has defined for oneself and lived, be it partially or fully, according to one’s retrospective. Such is normal; it is preparation for actually looking forward to leaving the body. Some religions celebrate such a parting. My own perspective is at least an appreciation for the unfolding of my life, even in its strange and often painful ways. But the pain of life leads us beyond itself into something much more real, much deeper, so far within that it is beyond; it may be called the “underlying life” not just within the outer life, but which is the matrix of all life itself. It is not a belief system or doctrinal though it finds its way into those institutional contexts. I, with the suggestion of John Gardner, the author, may call myself an “opportunistic fatalist,” or what could be a “positivistic nilhilist.” The notion of “life’s unfolding” I see as “fate,” and I am a student of fate, a follower of “what is,” of what reveals itself in each moment, including my particular hopefully evolving, contextually expanding, response to it. It’s not so much that I see life as a “good thing,” rather, it is the “happening thing.” It is thus not to be denied, simply because it IS. One must participate, so why not make the best of it? And one makes the best of it by knowing what it is. And “what it is” is not what it means or how I feel about it, though those may be by-products of knowing what it is. And, of course, one cannot know what life is unless one knows what one is in this context of living. So, “knowing fate” is based in knowing oneself in the context of one’s life, which is the only context in which one can be known, for it is the only backdrop, the only comparison available that we have. We can only see ourselves in the context of our existence. That said, “our existence” is of a multi-leveled nature; we “exist” physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually (or, taken as one, psychologically). This is my particular perspective. I also see that there is some kind of “matrix” or “living structure” in and through which we exist, such “structure” permeating all existence, all life, in some way. This “matrix of being,” as it were, has myriad names, mostly religious. This would define me, not as an atheist, I suppose, but as a deist. But the deity is not inherent self-conscious and could be Nature, or the permeability of life, or even perhaps the “storm god” or “mountain god” of the ancient Hebrews. Do I “worship” such a “god”? No. Rather, I am aware of such a “matrix” upon which all like “hangs” and depends, like all children upon their mother, though I also see this matrix as fundamentally and completely existent within each person or thing, which is a central notion of pantheism, though my running joke is that I’m a “pantyist.”

NEGATION OF THE NEGATION: UNIFIED OPPOSITION

Sometimes I find myself in a state of “utter compassion” in which I am overwhelmed with a “beingness of complete love” of all things, and find myself moved by all of it. But before this occurs, I became aware that it is not “knowing” but rather “being” that matters. Being is the end-all, not knowing. To be is reality; “knowing” only seems to be an attempt to explain that, as if it even matters. Of course, it’s very “interesting”—all distractions are most interesting.

          Giegerich, in The Soul’s Logical Life (Lang, 1998), speaks of the “negation of the negation” which is to say, the “living dialectical relationship” of that which we see as opposite, but which is in a living relationship of tension within itself, perhaps like Jung’s transcendent function, perhaps like Hegel’s opposition of thesis and antithesis moving to synthesis, perhaps like my own metaphor of the electric light in which the positive and negative poles interact when electricity is introduced by producing an arc of light, of illumination, a living dialectical relationship borne of the tension of polarity, of time and space, of dual location. When faced with pain (often pain-of-recognition), one chooses to accept it to the point of experiencing it and becoming it, which is not the same as even “becoming one with it.” If one becomes pain, pain-as-an-external affect ceases. This may be similar or even the same as “letting go of oneself” so that “I” am not at the effect of anything. These notions can become more than just philosophical concepts; one can experience so completely that one is identified with that which is experienced; “it” becomes what one is and is expressed through oneself. The wording makes it seems like ideas are being combined with experience, and “experience” itself becomes confusing because we have different levels of experience, including physical, emotional, mental, psychic, spiritual, and these in themselves overlap and become vague and simply conceptual rather than experiential; any interpretation is thus further removed from any reality of what is really happening. The point is that there is no escaping ourselves or what is happening. In that non-escape, we face the negation with our own negation, our own psyche, which is our own not-self. And so the seeming opposition of our nature and being is thus expressed as a unity even of non-united elements.

          Giegerich refers to “the idea of merely freeing the … opposites from their insulation [and isolation as ‘opposites’ in our mind] and bringing them into living dialectical relation with each other, into a situation where the pulsating … movement from one to the other and back is no longer artificially prevented. … this movement does not occur as a succession in time (now this, now the other). It occurs as the internal logic of one and the same (truly psychological) other.” ... One “no longer divides something or someone else into two (the person into ego vs. self, consciousness into an old vs. a new status), and his dividing is no longer an activity that he executes upon someone (or something) else” (34). “The soul is not ‘empirical,” it is not a ‘transcendent mystery,’ it is the dialectical logical life playing between the soul’s opposites” (38).

          Soul as used here is psyche. Paradoxically (I suppose), as it reveals itself, it further hides itself in such revelation, for its nature is a negation; it is definitely not what it appears to be, not as one thinks it to be, or as it seems to be: it continually and perpetually opens upon itself. The soul is not conceptual but experiential, but not sensorially experiential. It is the process of self-becoming; the process of being. Consider, for example, Jung’s process [as described by Kerenyi] of being “reached and touched, indeed ‘gripped’ by the Notion of the soul. And because he had been touched and gripped by it, he had a grasp, … a Notion, of it and he could grasp it. Both oppositional aspects … belong together. (41)” A specific example of this is Jung’s words regarding Freud as “ ‘… a man in the grip of his daimon’ … because the idea of sexuality ‘had taken possession of him’; for Freud, sexuality was undoubtedly a numinosum.’ The ‘emotionality with which he spoke about it revealed the deeper elements reverberating within him’” (35). Thus, Freud’s seeming “psychological discourse” is not that, but rather a revelation of psyche, soul, or daimon, however, as it is reflected upon and interpreted, such “psychological reality” fades into psychological presentation and case study. But even so, Freud’s “work as a whole with its fixation on sexuality allows one to sose that there must have been a mystery, one that has been systematically excluded and obliterated” (35).

           Having personally experienced the state of negation, the apophatic, the via negativa, the dark night of the soul, studied and researched the topic, and written a thesis, The Rebirth of the Christian Apophatic Spirit; Embracing the Dark Night of the Soul (The Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, March 1996) on it, I feel that I do possess a vital sense of the “Notion of the soul,” though it is best expressed not in words but in no words, which is challenging when presented in the medium of the written word.

GHOSTS AND OTHER THINGS

When I was young, in my 20s, I was so sure of myself, so certain in my thinking. I think it came from all the support I got from this theosophical group, Arcana Workshops, to which I belonged for ten to fifteen years and with whom I meditated daily and then studied the writings of AAB and wrote a lot for my mentor there. I actually came to believe that I was the World Avatar! Now that’s confidence. It’s also delusional but then I never shouted it from any rooftops or even whispered it to anyone, including my wife. It was my secret and I was just biding my time until the right moment to reveal myself to the world—which never came.

          My participation began in 1971 after I was assigned to two years’ civilian alternative service as a conscientious objector at Greer, A Children’s Community, near Millbrook, New York. I had never meditated in a disciplined way before, though I had been exposed to some Rosicrucian (AMORC) meditation techniques, and also teachings pertaining to the various “levels of being.” I had learned, for instance, that it was the astral level, or emotional level, on which ghosts or earth-bound spirits existed, and that to free oneself from haunting by ghosts, one had to raise one’s level of consciousness, of being, above the astral, to the mental.

          At Greer I began to experience a whole horde of grabbing, mischievous, dark, frightening “ghosts” who would literally grab at my clothes, face, hands, and try to force me to slow down my pace and stop when I would walk out of my cottage at night. But worse, they appeared to the children to whom I was houseparent, at night when they were in bed, and literally pinch their toes. The children would wake up screaming and terrified several times a week. My first response to this situation was to instruct the kids to say to the ghosts, if they could gather their wits to do so, “In the name of Jesus Christ, I order you to leave this place and to move on.” I even splashed “holy water” from a Catholic Church in the rooms, and burned sage, though more for the kids’ sense of safety than my belief it would work. The hauntings actually increased, probably since they now had our full attention. At that point, I noticed a small ad, I think in the back of Atlantic magazine, that said: “Meditation with a meditating group. Raise yourself above the astral level.” I was amazed that it actually noted “raising consciousness above the astral.” I became involved very quickly, was practicing the mental-spiritual meditation, and was noticing that when I did go out and walk at night, the ghosts no longer bothered me, even though I could still sense their presence. I was “raising my vibrations” through this meditation. Then I got my boys together, ten of them, ages four through ten, and I taught them how to do this meditation, which, in turn, gave them the confidence to confront the ghosts and tell them to go away “in Jesus’ name.” Each night we meditated together for a few minutes before bedtime. The children were “on board” with the whole process, since they, having firsthand experience with the ghosts, definitely did not like them.

          Not long afterward, I had one more intense experience with the ghosts. My wife, Nikki, was very susceptible to the ghosts. She could literally see them; they would fully materialize in front of her. I didn’t see them, but would feel them, emotionally and physically. However, on this one night we were in our apartment in our cottage and suddenly Nikki froze, her eyes staring at something, her mouth open. I looked where she was staring and saw a woman standing there in an ankle-length black dress and high-buttoned black shoes, but only as far up at her knees. Nikki could see the whole person. Then, in that same moment, the whole room, which had lights on in it, suddenly became darkened, as if filled with odorless smoke. And the temperature in the room fell below freezing so that I could “see my breath” condensing in the cold air. There was then another dark figure in the room and a frightening sound of the wings of a large bird, like a crow. We were so terrified in this darkness, these figures, and this sound of wings—so overcome by a feeling of overwhelming evil. The room was pitch black and freezing. As strange as it may be, we both jumped into bed and piled covers upon ourselves, holding each other tightly, waiting for the very worst to happen. Then they were gone just as quickly as they came; the room was lit and it was warm. The ghosts never appeared again in such a personal way, though a couple of times after that, in broad daylight, I saw perhaps twenty ghosts standing at the edge of the meadow at a distance in front of the great trees of the bordering forest. They seemed to just stand there unthreatening and still, gazing at me. I felt a sorrow and silently told them to move on.

          There is a historical explanation for the presence of the ghosts. In my research, which consisted of talking with a few “old-timers” around the town of Millbrook and a farmer near Greer, plus my own study of the history of the place itself, I discovered that it had been an Episcopalian orphanage, built in the mid-1800s, consisting of two large Georgian structures, which now housed the administration and the school. What had happened was that, in the 1890s, the place was swept by some kind of plague, probably either smallpox or cholera, that killed almost every adult and child who was there. And the adults, in their black Episcopalian, Victorian garb, for whatever reason, remained. But it wasn’t just that, in my estimation. It seemed to me that there was also a particular presence of evil that permeated the atmosphere even on the sunniest, most beautiful days, like the day I saw the figures lined up along the edge of the meadow. I had thought that perhaps they were just shadows of the trees behind them in the late afternoon, but they were not; the sunlight was directed towards the forest—there could not have been shadows where the figures were.

          Some of the houseparents there, who had been there for many years, should not have been there, in my estimation. I knew one or two that physically abused the children or were able to bribe the other children under their care to beat certain “disobedient” children. And there may have been a pedophile, though I couldn’t be sure about it. On the other hand, there were other conscientious objectors like myself, who were young and caring and tuned-in to the children, and were excellent houseparents. One old woman had survived the fire-bombing of Dresden in WWII and told me horrendous stories about that. Another, Galen, a conscientious objector, was a cowboy from Montana, who played a guitar and sang cowboy songs to the teenage “tough” boys from Harlem, who loved his music and respected him greatly. My little kids liked me too because, though white, I was a bearded, long-haired hippie, and rather disliked by the administrators and campus policeman, who once called me a “recalcitrant, Marxist hippie” in front of the kids. Though I doubt whether they knew what “recalcitrant” and “Marxist” meant, they certainly didn’t like and were afraid of the campus cop, and must’ve felt I was somehow “on their side” after that.

          My dismay at the behavior of some of the houseparents towards their wards caused me to contact the AFL-CIO in the naïve hope that to unionize the houseparents might provided some good “child-training” courses to show the houseparents how to actually help children with love and concern rather than to promote fear and racism. When I met the local union rep, it was like meeting a Mafioso chieftain, literally buffered by bodyguards with guns. I started secretly organizing, meeting with houseparents on campus to persuade them to join the union. The campus policeman and his crew, who cruised the Greer campus with guns in the pick-ups, may have been informed by a houseparent. I had discovered, though another houseparent whose girlfriend worked as the personal secretary of the man who ran the whole operation at Greer, that this administrator had embezzled funds to send his family to Europe and actually pay his children’s tuitions at Ivy League colleges. What finally happened was that my co-organizer, a conscientious objector, Lee, was killed in an accident; the brake lines of his truck had been cut. I was closely watched by men in pick-ups on the campus after that—and was followed by them at a distance when I left the campus on errands. The union didn’t come about.

MY CLAIM TO FAME

I had been assigned to working for two years in alternative service as a result of attaining status as a conscientious objector with the Selective Service and had found a job as a “child care worker” or houseparent at an institution for “emotionally-disturbed” children, called Greer, A Children’s Community, near Millbrook, New York. I was houseparent to ten young boys, ages four to ten, in a “community” consisting of perhaps fifteen home-like buildings housing boys and girls, ages four to eighteen, who were mostly children removed from homes for neglect and abuse but whose families were unwilling to put them up for adoption or into other foster care. Though the institution termed these children as “emotionally-disturbed,” they provided no counseling or mental health care whatsoever, except, of course, for the psychiatrists who prescribed medications to keep the children “obedient” and “stable.” When the boys attained the age of eighteen, they were turned out into the world by being given the choice of joining the US Army or Navy. The children lived on site and also attended a grade school on site, though I am unsure about whether or not there was a high school on site.

          “My kids,” mostly from Harlem, had been removed from homes due to severe drug use and violence by parents, which also included neglect; in once case, their baby brother had starved to death in the same bed with them. Some of the children from other places had parents who had died and either no family to care for them or family that was fighting over custody, in the case of one brother and sister, very well-educated, and used to having servants take care of them. All the children, having had severe trauma in their lives, could fit into a category of being “emotionally-disturbed,” often with violent episodes of PTSD. They sometimes behaved quite viciously as if they were little feral creatures. But they were not “disabled” physically, were verbal and could be “age appropriate” in their social responsiveness and behavior, while also easily be pushed or provoked to aggression, including aggression towards adults.

          The institution had weekly meetings attended by administrator, a social worker, a psychiatrist, the “child care workers” (houseparents), and anyone else they deemed necessary. At this particular meeting, which occurred when I had just begun my job, there was also a school teacher from the on-site school that the children attended. She was fresh out of college (as I was too) and quite inexperienced in teaching children who were to be considered “abnormal” for many reasons, including trauma, death of a parent or sibling, physical abuse, neglect, and absolute lack of formal education. The teacher was white and very soft-spoken—not authoritative whatsoever. I note that she was white because most of these little boys were African-American and had never dealt with a white woman as their teacher. She was in tears because the children were utterly “disobedient, disruptive, and disrespectful.” She couldn’t even get them to sit down, much less listen to anything she had to say. When I started caring for them, I found them to be so distracted and restless that I had to use a much louder voice and also “bribe” them with food they liked to get them to behave and be manageable. I suggested as much to the teacher but she just didn’t feel confident enough to believe it could work. I have to wonder if she was even being paid, and that this was some kind of “apprenticeship” for the acquisition of “teaching credits” on her part.

          Everyone at the meeting, except for me and the other houseparent, at the suggestion of the psychiatrist and administrator, decided that all the children should be “put on Ritalin immediately,” since this would allow the teacher to assert some authority and establish adequate control in the classroom. They said they would “revisit” the medication for the children once they “settled down.” That same night I was provided with the Ritalin and told to give a dose to each child before school the next day. I hadn’t even heart of Ritalin and what it was for, so I thought it might help the situation and gave it to each boy the next morning. When they got home from school that day, they were like little zombies and immediately went to bed and didn’t wake up until I woke them up the next morning. I knew this was bad and that I was not going to give them any more Ritalin. I was expected to give them Ritalin daily. At this point I knew that the boys and I would have to “make a deal” to save them from zombietime.

          The next day was a Friday, a school day. After getting them up, I told them all that I would let them stay up to watch Creature Features on Friday night, would get them pizza, make them ice cream sundaes, give them hot dogs anytime from now on if they would simply keep the secret and behave well in school and be nice to the teacher. “But she’s a honky lady (indicating, I surmise, their dislike of white, young, women social workers from the Department of Social Services),” they complained, to which I said, “Well, if you want Creature Features (which was past their bedtime), pizza, ice cream sundaes, hot dogs, and other good stuff, being nice and obedient to the white teacher isn’t such a big deal, is it?” So we made the deal and I dumped the Ritalin in the toilet—every day for the next almost two years.

          The following week, at the next staff meeting, the young teacher attended, this time with tears of gratefulness, at the “profound expertise” of the psychiatrist and administration, who soundly patted themselves on the back at that meeting, and at every single meeting for the next almost two years. Once or twice, soon after this meeting, I brought up the idea of “revisiting” the continuing necessity for the medication and was told not to “rock the boat,” since “what is working is working.” It was approximately twenty-two months later, as, once again, the psychiatrist and the administrator were crediting themselves for “having done such a fine job” in medicating the children so as to produce such “consistently excellent behavior,” I said, “In truth, the kids immediately attained all that excellent behavior on their own with only a kind suggestion on my part and their overwhelming desire to show respect to their teacher and, of course, to me.” They all stopped congratulating themselves and stared at me in utter silence. “And just what do you mean when you say ‘on their own’?” I said, “After the first day, when they returned home like little zombies, I dumped the Ritalin in the toilet, and they promised me they would behave well, which they have—for the last almost two years. They just decided, as a group, to behave, and knew nothing about the Ritalin they were supposed to be taking.” By the next moment, everyone, except the other houseparent, whose cooperation I had also engaged (but who was not suspect because I took full credit for dumping the med), was in an absolute rage, screaming at me that they would call the police and have me arrested for “endangering the children.” My response: “You’re the ones who endangered the children. Obviously, the results speak for themselves. And I would love to tell this story to the Poughkeepsie News. So go ahead and arrest me.” I was fired immediately and told to leave on the spot. 

There are lots of other stories within this one. I'll share one. The boys had to attend a music class with old Mrs. Parks, who made them sing a song when they got to class, which went like this: "Hello Mrs. Parks, Mrs. Parks, Mrs. Parks. Hello Mrs. Parks, how are you today?" The three older boys refused to sing. It may have been one more racial thing and they may have simply felt humiliated having to sing such a silly "honky" song. And so Mrs. Park's smile cracked and she sent them to the Principal's Office, who then sent them home to me, telling me to "deal with them." When they sang the syrupy sweet song to me, I understood their dilemma, even with the promise they had made to me. So I started thinking about what we might do to alleviate the situation. I had a solution but it had to be their solution and they had to arrive at it. So I suggested that they find way to sing the song perhaps with more "suitable" words. I started singing it very slowly with them. Very slowly, after mentioning that they could use words that rhyme with the words in the song. Very quickly, on their own, they were singing, with big smiles on their faces, "Hello Mrs. Farts, Mrs. Farts, Mrs. Farts. Hello Mrs. Farts. How are you today?" The very next day, I received a call from Mrs. Parks in which she praised the boys and praised me for "talking some sense into their heads." And I noticed that Mrs. Parks was also a little hard of hearing. "Praise Jesus," I thought.

Since we're on the subject, one of my other favorite bumperstickers: BEJESUS LOVES ME!