One must say Yes to life,
and embrace it wherever it is found -
and it is found in terrible places....
- James Baldwin
The Fire Next Time
I've lost my James Baldwin (collection of books) - or, at least, cannot locate him/them at the moment and feel that periodic intense need to do so - and I find myself in one of those 'terrible places' as the author and artist suggested. Being without Baldwin for those of us who've discovered him is very much like the delirium tremens experience of an addict. It seems that every year or two I feel an intense need to rediscover his brilliance and salve the wounds inflicted on my soul by this weary and wearisome world. And now I cannot find him....
The antecedent cause of this latest Baldwin jones is the excellent American Masters documentary on his life. Two truths be told, I've read a fair amount of Baldwin and not while I was in school and had both the time and the environment to do so deeply, and yet much of what was shared during this moving biograhical documentary was new to me. It seems that I've only known the man through his writings and have now been exposed more fully to his life (and the particular contexts from which his writings spring), so I am greatly enriched for the experience ... which is the same sensation I experience when reading his (mainly non-fiction/essay) work. And to think that he's been gone more than a quarter-century and my admiration for him continues to grow.
In part this is because so much of what he wrote about has yet to become timebound. James Baldwin was described not as bitter but as angry by no less than the late great Maya Angelou ... and the causes of his anger - injustice, racism, heterosexism, classism, etc. - continue to this day only slightly abated. Yes, there has been progress, but not as much as one would think in the half-century since the publication of his seminal work The Fire Next Time. We are still talking about the institutional racism in our society, still decrying the oppression and exploitation of the poor by the rich and still amazed and dismayed by the strikingly inhumane practice of religion - especially the Christian religion - by many of its supposed adherents, among the many causes of our dis-ease and distress.
Oh how I wish his writings would fade from timely to dated, from open, raw and painful to uncomfortable and embarrassing reminders of days gone by. Oh how I wish that James Baldwin weren't just as relevant today as during his lifetime ... and perhaps even more so now.
Where are our modern Jimmy Baldwins? The eloquent, articulate and elevating capturers and communicators of our hurt, our pain, our weariness ... as well as our desire for love and life? Who speaks as movingly as he did to the mass of Americans - mostly white then as now - to help them understand what it feels like to be labeled and limited against one's will? Or to be transported by those you love, whomever they turn out to be?
[This being said, one has to wonder if they would listen. The ferment of the '60s seemed to compel their attention ... but does the modern age call forth such a response, such openness and willingness to listen (even if, then as now, for a very brief time)? Some, it seems, revel in the reality of their refusal to listen....]
And yet Baldwin isn't just great to help frame and address society (and its inevitable and durable ills). He's also a profound and generous guide to life. His meditations on love, spirituality and other aspects of the human experience touch and inspire as well. For example, I continue to be transported by his observation that
Love takes off the masks that we fear
we cannot live without
and know we cannot live within.
I'm still staggered and guided by his piercing perspective on the Divine, that
If the concept of God has any validity or use,
it can only be to make us larger, freer and more loving.
If God cannot do this,
then it is time we got rid of Him.
And I finally have matured enough to understand how profound an observation it is that
To be sensual, I think,
is to respect and rejoice in the force of life,
of life itself,
and to be present in all one does,
from the effort of loving to the making of bread.
So much of what I value in my life now revolves around the gift of loving and being loved and around the breaking of bread with those with whom I share this gift....
And maybe as I sit here writing - his cardinal gift - and appreciating his influence - even if felt initially in absence, in temporarily lost access - I am more aware of him deep within my soul than I realize. James Baldwin still haunts me, and I hunger for his wisdom, so that I can live life more fully, more perceptively and more lovingly as well as be prepared for the inevitable, for the fire next time....
There is never time in the future
in which we will work out our salvation.
The challenge is in the moment;
the time is always now.
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