Midlife Changes

 

As I mentioned yesterday, Bruce Gerencser’s blog has been one of my regular reads for nearly a decade. For one thing, I enjoy his writing style, which I cannot emulate. For another, I admire his learnedness and sheer integrity. He was part of Evangelical churches almost from birth through the next fifty years 

and was a pastor for twenty-five of them. Like many clergy and lay members of such churches, he was a conservative Republican though, he says, that slowly changed. So did the way he defined and preached his Christianity.

The latter had much to do with his study of the Bible—about 20,000 hours’ worth, by his own reckoning. Finally, he left Christianity and faith altogether. As you can imagine, he has received many dismissive and even threatening letters and e-mails from self-professed Christians. Some say he was studying the wrong way. Others  say that it was a “midlife crisis” and he should get over it. Still others accuse him of becoming an atheist and humanist for personal glory or  monetary reasons.

From what I know of him, through reading his blog and corresponding with him, none of those charges make any sense. First of all, what is the “right” way to read or study the Bible, or to worship? As for fame and glory: Although the United States is nominally a secular country, religion, and Christianity in particular, is central to many of our institutions and people’s lives. So I don’t think becoming an atheist improved anyone’s social or economic standing. 

So, was he having a “midlife crisis?” Perhaps. If he was, so were many other people who changed their opinions or way of life based on what they’ve learned.  An example is how Gloria Steinem viewed transgender people. Like other second-wave feminists during the 1970s and 1980s, she was critical of us and said some of us chose gender reassignment surgery because of rigid gender roles imposed by patriarchy. Later, however, she publicly changed her stance, recognizing that transgenders and feminists share many of the same goals, including bodily autonomy and dismantling the very gender norms she previously believed to be the reason why we underwent surgery and other changes. 

People who changed their opinions are often accused of being weak “flip-floppers” or, worse, opportunists. If anything, I respect them for having the courage to continue learning and evolving, even doing so may result in a great personal cost. (I think also of how his pilgrimage to Mecca changed the way Malcolm X saw his faith, causing him to leave the Nation of Islam. Some say it led to his assassination.) They are nothing like those who abandon principles or, worse, betray those who loved and  trusted them only for personal gain. That is the opposite of integrity.

In brief, I have the utmost respect for people who are willing to learn and, if need be, change their behavior, beliefs or ways of life in the middle of their lives. There are many such people whose names I will never know. But I am glad that others, like Malcolm, Gloria—and Bruce—have given us, in one form or another, accounts of their journeys.

Perhaps they did, after all, have a “midlife crisis.” But sometimes a “crisis” is exactly what we need to become better, or at least more authentic, versions of ourselves.

A Ride Through History

 One of my passions—obsessions, perhaps—is learning the history, especially African-American and colonial, I wasn’t taught in school.

I got to thinking about that when I realized that next month is African American history month—and the sixtieth anniversary of at least two important parts of that history are coming up.

One of them is the marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. The other is the assassination of Malcolm X.

About Malcolm:  He was completely misrepresented, if he was mentioned at all.  I first realized as much when I read his autobiography. (That, I believe, motivated me to learn as much as I can about the history I wasn’t taught.) It seems that educators—and the culture generally—has misunderstood and misused “by any means necessary” to paint Malcolm as a maniac with homicide in his heart. He was changing even as he told his story to Alex Haley, his collaborator on his autobiography and, I believe, would have repudiated some of the things he said then—let alone in his earlier speeches—had he lived longer. But even the portrait that emerged from his autobiography and his speeches made him heroic to me because one of his underlying messages was that people have to free themselves from whatever enslaves them, whether it’s an exploitative system, an addictive substance or William Blake’s “mind forg’d manacles.”

Speaking of enslavement:  The March from Selma to Montgomery occurred just a few weeks before the 100th anniversary of the American Civil War’s end. (Anyone who tells you that the war wasn’t about slavery is ignorant or dishonest.) But a century later, Blacks—and poor Whites—weren’t free of their shackles.  Moreover, they were paying a tax, if you will, on those restraints they bore. But they we’re fighting—and often paying with blood and flesh—to fight them, and their imposers, off. That is about as far from the picture of the Civil Rights movement textbooks and the media painted for us: a sunny diorama of Martin intoning “I have a dream” and well-intentioned people chanting “We shall overcome,” all of it sepia-tinged to make White liberals of the time look heroic and those of today feel good about themselves for admiring them.

All right, I’ll get off my soapbox. (Standing on it while wearing cleats is precarious!) There will be a number of commemorations, including a marches. And, the other day, a bike ride followed the route.

Malcolm X

 On this date in 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated.

On this date in 2015, I wrote a post commemorating the 50th anniversary of that tragedy:

50 Years After Malcolm X

On this date fifty years ago, Malcolm X was assassinated in the Audubon Ballroom.  Today the site of the Audubon, in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Upper Manhattan, is a laboratory for Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center.  I have ridden by it many times and, in fact, once went inside the Ballroom.  Every time I passed or visited the site I thought, however briefly, about his importance, not only to the history of the US and the world, but in my own life.

I first read Malcolm’s autobiography when I was about twenty.  It was around the same time I discovered African-American writers like Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Richard Wright and Zora Neale Hurston—and when I first heard Bob Marley.  In one way or another, they all not only expressed the burning desire to be free, but also made oppression—which is to say, the things that turn people into slaves of all kinds—clear and vivid.

I identified with their wishes and feelings for, as it turned out, reasons very different from theirs.  How could mine not be different?  After all, as difficult as my grandparents’ lives were, nobody brought them here in chains.  Even more to the point, I knew who my grandparents and their grandparents were, even though I had never met the latter.  So, even though I knew that so much of what I learned in school was a whitewashed (Yes, I am conscious of that word choice!) version of the truth, I wasn’t—couldn’t be—conscious of it in the profound way that Malcolm and all of those black writers and artists were. 

So, in my own clumsy way, I reacted to the injustices that persisted long after Malcolm’s murder and the deaths of the others I’ve mentioned though their polemics, rhetoric, rhythms, intuition and sense of irony.  What I did not understand was that they could use those tools or gifts or whatever you want to call them because they mastered them in ways that exact terrible, terrible costs.  (Baldwin has written that any people who has a language of their own has paid dearly for it.) What I could not understand was that I was paying my own dues, as it were, but I did not yet understand what I was paying for.  So I borrowed anger, grief, pain and a very dark kind of humor in my own feeble attempts to come to terms with why I could not live the kind of life for which I was being trained—or why anyone should want that kind of life.

So why am I mentioning such things on this blog?  Well, for one thing, being a cyclist has freed me from a lot of things.  I think of all of the time and money I didn’t have to spend on buying, fueling, maintaining and parking cars.  That is part of the reason why I have been able to live in New York and spend time with things I love:  I didn’t have to work in some job or in some business that would have destroyed my psyche or other people’s lives.  Being a cyclist when it wasn’t fashionable also, I think, has made me less vulnerable to propaganda and groupthink, if it hasn’t made me a better critical thinker or more creative person (though I think it’s done the latter for me). 

Of course, for me, freedom has meant living as the person I am.  Anyone who cannot live with integrity and with dignity is a slave or a prisoner or worse.  One way I identify with Malcolm is that it took him as long as he did to truly come into his own, even if he accomplished a lot else before doing so.  His descent into slavery, as it were, came when, in spite of his academic success and oratorical skills, his eighth-grade teacher mocked his dream of being a lawyer. When he, as an inmate in the Charlestown (MA) Penitentiary, became a disciple of Elijah Muhammad, he found a voice.  However, it took him much longer, I think, to find his voice.

Our voice, if you will, is how we express our authentic selves in the world.  For some, it is in their careers or vocations.  For others, it is in creative work or performing:  I think of Jimi Hendrix’s guitar as his voice.  Others express it through a passion or relationship.  Actually, I think that for most of us, our “voice” is a combination of the things we do and are.  Whatever it is, if it isn’t authentic, we’re still slaves or prisoners.  For me, that is the real importance of Malcolm X’s life and work. 

https://midlifecycling.blogspot.com/2015/02/50-years-after-malcolm-x.html?m=1

50 Years After Malcolm X

On this date fifty years ago, Malcolm X was assassinated in the Audubon Ballroom.  Today the site of the Audubon, in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Upper Manhattan, is a laboratory for Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center.  I have ridden by it many times and, in fact, once went inside the Ballroom.  Every time I passed or visited the site I thought, however briefly, about his importance, not only to the history of the US and the world, but in my own life.

I first read Malcolm’s autobiography when I was about twenty.  It was around the same time I discovered African-American writers like Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Richard Wright and Zora Neale Hurston—and when I first heard Bob Marley.  In one way or another, they all not only expressed the burning desire to be free, but also made oppression—which is to say, the things that turn people into slaves of all kinds—clear and vivid.

I identified with their wishes and feelings for, as it turned out, reasons very different from theirs.  How could mine not be different?  After all, as difficult as my grandparents’ lives were, nobody brought them here in chains.  Even more to the point, I knew who my grandparents and their grandparents were, even though I had never met the latter.  So, even though I knew that so much of what I learned in school was a whitewashed (Yes, I am conscious of that word choice!) version of the truth, I wasn’t—couldn’t be—conscious of it in the profound way that Malcolm and all of those black writers and artists were. 

So, in my own clumsy way, I reacted to the injustices that persisted long after Malcolm’s murder and the deaths of the others I’ve mentioned though their polemics, rhetoric, rhythms, intuition and sense of irony.  What I did not understand was that they could use those tools or gifts or whatever you want to call them because they mastered them in ways that exact terrible, terrible costs.  (Baldwin has written that any people who has a language of their own has paid dearly for it.) What I could not understand was that I was paying my own dues, as it were, but I did not yet understand what I was paying for.  So I borrowed anger, grief, pain and a very dark kind of humor in my own feeble attempts to come to terms with why I could not live the kind of life for which I was being trained—or why anyone should want that kind of life.

So why am I mentioning such things on this blog?  Well, for one thing, being a cyclist has freed me from a lot of things.  I think of all of the time and money I didn’t have to spend on buying, fueling, maintaining and parking cars.  That is part of the reason why I have been able to live in New York and spend time with things I love:  I didn’t have to work in some job or in some business that would have destroyed my psyche or other people’s lives.  Being a cyclist when it wasn’t fashionable also, I think, has made me less vulnerable to propaganda and groupthink, if it hasn’t made me a better critical thinker or more creative person (though I think it’s done the latter for me). 

Of course, for me, freedom has meant living as the person I am.  Anyone who cannot live with integrity and with dignity is a slave or a prisoner or worse.  One way I identify with Malcolm is that it took him as long as he did to truly come into his own, even if he accomplished a lot else before doing so.  His descent into slavery, as it were, came when, in spite of his academic success and oratorical skills, his eighth-grade teacher mocked his dream of being a lawyer. When he, as an inmate in the Charlestown (MA) Penitentiary, became a disciple of Elijah Muhammad, he found a voice.  However, it took him much longer, I think, to find his voice.

Our voice, if you will, is how we express our authentic selves in the world.  For some, it is in their careers or vocations.  For others, it is in creative work or performing:  I think of Jimi Hendrix’s guitar as his voice.  Others express it through a passion or relationship.  Actually, I think that for most of us, our “voice” is a combination of the things we do and are.  Whatever it is, if it isn’t authentic, we’re still slaves or prisoners.  For me, that is the real importance of Malcolm X’s life and work.