Battling with Baldwin again....

Take no one's word for anything, including mine -

but trust your experience.

- James Baldwin, "My Dungeon Shook" in The Fire Next Time (1963)

I have a confession to make: even though I'm a huge fan, I can't read James Baldwin's work.  Nope, can't do it.  Reading is a pleasurable pursuit; my encounters with Baldwin are something so very different altogether....

Not that I don't read Baldwin: I do, and regularly ... just that it's not pleasurable reading as such.  Sir James' work affects me like few others - MLK and Spong come to mind - and I can't help becoming engrossed.  So while pleasurable in a way - I learn and re-learn things every time I re-read him, which for an intellectually curious person, is pleasurable - it's really more like work, grueling, thrilling work.  For me, it's like the difference between lounging in the shallow end of a pool and having to swim so as not to drown in the deep end.  The experience of Baldwin is always a deep end pursuit for me....

I rarely emerge from it energized: usually, I'm exhausted - gratifyingly so, of course - but just plain spent ... and, of course, invariably educated, elevated and illumined (with a little righteous anger thrown in, too...).  Such is currently the case with my fourth or fifth (or sixth) encounter with (my third copy of) his Collected Essays (edited by the imminent and inimitable Tony Morrison) and especially his classic The Fire Next Time.  I am just spent ... and so exhilarated and enervated and bereft and inspired and committed and....

All while trying to 'relax' on vacation.  No, you can't make that up!

But since I've allowed myself to be sucked in again - joyfully, to be sure - I have to wrestle with his searing insight and piercing yet levitating prose.  If a friend were to see my newest copy of this book, s/he would laugh: the Jesuits taught me to underline important passages when reading ... and there's far more highlighted than not ... along with those myriad notes in the margins, of course!  Ah, the uplifting and yet taxing experience of Baldwin: rarely have I enjoyed working myself into such a frenzy voluntarily.

And why am I in a frenzy at the moment?  Because of that returned and sinking feeling that his writings are still too relevant to our world now, which means that we haven't accomplished enough to make them anachronistic (which is undoubtedly to our discredit).  It's as if instead of describing the America of more than half a century ago, he's speaking to our saddening and maddening current reality:

In speaking of his nephew's life circumstances, he observes:

You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced

because you were black and for no other reason. The limits of your

ambition were, thus, expected to be set forever. You were born into

a society which spelled out with brutal clarity and in as many

ways as possible, that you were a worthless human being.

Could that not describe the predicaments of the Black children still trapped in our urban ghettos (or of the Brown ones separated from their parents at our borders)?

In an effort to prepare his nephew to the inevitable challenges and oppression of racism, he cautions:

Know whence you came. If you know whence you came, there is no

limit to where you can go. The details and symbols of your life

have been deliberately constructed to make you believe what

white people say about you. Please try to remember  that

what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you

to endure, does not testify to your inferiority but to their

inhumanity and fear.

Could this not describe the resurgence of (neo-)Nazism and other forms of White Supremacy that we've experienced under the most openly racist and xenophobic president in modern American history?

Or:

They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand;

and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it. They have

had to believe for many years, and for innumerable reasons, that black

men are inferior to white men. Many of them, indeed, know better, but,

as you will discover, people find it very difficult to act on what they know.

Also this as a description of the immoral scourge of Mass Incarceration that plagues us still (with a little White Privilege thrown in for good measure):

I know what the world has done to my brother and how he has narrowly survived
it. And I know, which is much worse, and this is the crime of which I accuse my

my country and my countrymen, and for which neither I nor time nor history

will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds

of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it. ... (F)or

this is what most of mankind has been best at since we have heard of man.

(But remember: most of mankind is not all of mankind.) But it is not

permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent.

It is the innocence which constitutes the crime.

And is this not an apt mission statement for the resurgent social justice movement in our country:

And if the word integration means anything, this is what it means:

that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as

they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it.

For this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it;

great men have done great things here, and will again,

and we can make America what America must become.

And this is just from the first part of this timeless work, "My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of Emancipation."  It's but a fraction of the length of its complement "Down At The Cross: Letter from a Region in My Mind"; imagine how much more is contained therein....

That his words are still so urgent, prophetic and incisive is truly a mixed blessing: on the positive side, it denotes an historic and timeless gift freely given ... and on the other, it reminds us of just how little we've really accomplished in the past half-century and, thus, how much more work we still very much have to do....

So, back to Baldwin I go ... but not alone this time: after reading a work on his personal theology, my Spiritual Explorers Book Club peers want to read him directly.  I suspect some are in for quite a treat and others for a bracing perspective and lesson.  What I can say for everyone quite confidently is that we'll all emerge the better for this exploration, as universally challenging as it most assuredly will be.

What I appreciate most about this self-inflicted trial is that it never fails to re-acquaint me with The Truth, not just my own but our society's, especially from the perspective of those Of Color.  And it inspires me to continue my work of education, uplift and inclusion, especially given that the path is so indelibly illuminated by this singular child of Harlem and incredible and irreplaceable Man of the World....

Well, you were born, here you came, something like fifteen years ago. ...

For here you were - Big James, named for me - ... here you were

to be loved. To be loved, baby, hard, at once, and forever,

to strengthen you against the loveless world.

- James Baldwin, Ibid.