Or is there?

Can a work be at once a work of fiction and non-fiction, or are the categories so ill-fitting that The Wolf at Twilight belongs in neither one – a veritable situation of being “neither wolf nor dog?”

These are questions that bear some discussion, because they underpin the dilemma that has confronted my two creative works about Native America, Neither Wolf nor Dog and The Wolf at Twilight, from the moment they first came out.

Let me tell you where I stand on the issue.

It is my personal conviction that we human beings are “believing” creatures.  Until we take something into our hearts and embrace it with conviction, we are seeing through a gossamer (and distancing) veil of analysis.  It’s true that the information we gather during analysis guides us toward belief — and one would hope that our information gathering is informed and educated – but it is not belief.  Belief is saying, “Yes, this is the way it is, and I will stand by it and defend it.”  It is a commitment of the heart.

I come from a long background in the study of religion.   One of the ongoing arguments in the intellectual field of religious studies was whether or not one must be a believer to understand a faith or a belief system.  After participating in this discussion for years, I came to the conclusion that the knowledge you gain is different based on whether you are a believer or an observer.  Each has its role:  sometimes it is better to stand on the outside for perspective; but to the extent that you can enter into a belief system and inhabit it, you come closer to the heartbeat of the spiritual experience that it expresses.

I came to believe – and I believe to this day – that the goal of any work of art that addresses spiritual issues should be to bring those who see or hear or read it as close to the experience of real belief as possible.   When I worked as a sculptor I sought to embody spiritual states rather than describe them.  When I turned to writing I sought to recreate moments of spiritual encounter rather than discuss them from the outside, and to walk my readers into them so they could participate in those encounters.

When I came to the unlikely calling of giving voice to the deep and complex spirituality of Native American people – a spirituality that has, I believe, much to teach us all — the challenge became more complex: how could I help you, the reader, enter into a complex spiritual experience not my own in a way that your hearts could be touched and your spirits informed by the richness of their belief?

I did not want you to be able to move to the distance of analysis.  I did not want anyone to leave my writing saying, “That’s interesting.  I’ll have to give it some serious thought.”  Yet I did not want you to think you (or I) could appropriate Native belief – a complex, multiple, language- and culture based-spirituality – for ourselves.  To encourage that would be to continue the long tradition of cultural appropriation that has been our way of dealing with the Native peoples since our arrival on this land, and I wanted no part of it.

What I needed was a way to bring you, the reader, into the presence of Native belief, just as I had been brought into its presence, without allowing you the distance of the observer or the false identification with it as if you were donning its mantle as your own.

This was no easy task.  But I believed that Native experience contained truths we needed to know, and I knew that I had to make readers believe what I told them in order for them to take it into their hearts.   I had to write in a way that would grab you at the level of belief; I had to bring you into the presence of Native experience so that you would participate in it, be inhabited by it, and leave a changed person.

A tall order, yes?  But that’s how important I thought the truths of Native American experience were to the shaping of an authentic American spirituality.  We as a people have gotten lost somewhere between dogma and agnosticism, yet we are a spiritual people who hunger for belief.  The Native way, with its tradition of granting each person the right to his or her own spiritual journey, while finding truth and meaning in the land, seemed to me to feed that hunger with an authority and authenticity that nothing else possessed.   I needed to find a way to lead you into its presence in a way that would invest your experience with the authority of belief.

And so I set upon the task of searching for a literary vehicle that would serve that end.  Neither Wolf nor Dog, and, now, The Wolf at Twilight, are the results of that search.   Though done as traditional narratives, they use aspects of the novel, oral history, mythology, parable, and spiritual homily, to bring readers into the presence of Native experience as participants and not as observers.

How I came to create that narrative form is a story in itself.   It involved learning from Native storytellers, the fortuitous accident of becoming involved with collecting Native oral histories, and long personal and scholarly experience with the methods and purposes of sacred texts.   It also involved exploring ways of using language to describe, evoke, engage, and transport readers to the physical and emotional places I wanted them to go.

The end result, as reflected in Neither Wolf nor Dog and The Wolf at Twilight, was a genre-blending, category-blurring literary vehicle that placed you, the reader, by my side as I walked into another world and handed you off to people whose spiritual reality was so integrated into their daily life that it could not be separated from it or reduced to homily, lecture, or teaching.  What I experienced, you experienced.  What I felt, you felt.  And by making myself and my responses as emotionally authentic as I could (readers can sniff disingenuousness a mile away) I convinced you to follow me, participate with me, and take my experiences into your heart as your own.

To do this, I used first person narrative – that magical, distance-destroying literary point of view — to bring you along as fellow travelers into a world that is populated by actual people (though often well-disguised), actual settings (rendered with as much physical and emotional accuracy as I could muster), real events (though often not experienced in exactly the sequence or the manner in which they are presented), all developed along time-honored, almost archetypal, plot lines and universal stories of the human heart.

But none of this would have mattered if the works had not been absolutely authentic at the places where they touched against Native belief, practice, and understanding.  The words spoken had to be captured and shaped with the fidelity of the best oral history, the conversations and sense of humor had to be pitch-perfect, the experiences of such places as sweat lodges and boarding schools had to be as carefully rendered and factually precise as if this were an historical documentation.   I could take liberties with the characters and their narrative, but not with the world through which they walked. You and the other readers, both Native and non-Native, had to give total assent to the possibility of what I presented.  Factually, culturally, and interpersonally, there could be no false notes.

And so Dan and Grover and Wenonah and Jumbo and I and everyone else – real people all, but well-disguised where necessary – set off to lead you to a place of absolute emotional, cultural, and, to the extent possible, spiritual authenticity.  We went into Native reality and made you part of it.   There were no lies in that world; no falsifications of cultural circumstance, emotional response, or historical event.   You met real people, heard real stories, experienced real emotions, and participated in real events.   To the extent that I was able, I took you beyond understanding into participation.

So, what was I creating — fiction or non-fiction?  I truly don’t know, and, for my part, I truly don’t care.  My job was to bring you into the presence of a people and way of life, not to pass a litmus test of factual accuracy.   For me, the question of “is it fiction or non-fiction?” was as irrelevant as asking if Van Gogh’s Wheatfield with Crows is fiction or non-fiction, or if Bach’s Mass in B Minor is fiction or non-fiction.  My goal was to create something authentic, and to the extent that I was able to do so, I was not bothered that it did not fit neatly into standard literary categories.

To put it another way, I was creating works of spiritual encounter, not literary or historical documents, and the liberties I took were directed toward that end.  In so doing, I was working in a long and honored tradition of spiritual writing.  The Gospel writers employed contradictory narratives to communicate the spiritual richness of Jesus’ mission; Taoist teachers placed stories from many sources into the mouth of Chuang Tzu to help people apprehend the Tao; Kahlil Gibran created the character of Al Mustapha to give proper voice to his spiritual teachings.  Neither Wolf nor Dog and The Wolf at Twilight were my journeyman efforts to use the skills at my command to open people to the interwoven cultural and spiritual reality of Native America.

In the last analysis, I was following the guidance of the man who served as the primary model for Dan:  “People learn best by stories,” he told me,  “Because stories lodge deep in the heart.”   Neither Wolf nor Dog and The Wolf at Twilight were created as teaching stories meant to bring you into the presence of the rich, human, and deeply integrated spirituality of contemporary and historical Native life.   If they did so, they have served their purpose.  How they should be categorized, I leave up to you.

Last week several websites actually attributed my cab driving story to me. For those of you who don’t know, it is a story that I use in my book, Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace, to illustrate the line in St. Francis’ famous prayer, “And where there is sadness, joy.” The entire book is a series of ruminations/meditations on Francis’ beautiful prayer that begins, “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.”

I wrote the book about a decade ago as a kind of spiritual meditation. I took each line of the prayer and tried to find some exemplification of it in my own or other people’s lives. My thinking was simple: St. Francis, of all the religious figures of the past, is perhaps the most universally beloved. He is beyond sectarianism, beyond doctrine. And though he was thoroughly Christian — some would say, too Christian for the church of which he was a part — something in his deep humanity has resonated down the centuries and transcended theological differences. I felt that I could do myself some spiritual good by engaging in an extended meditation on the prayer that may be the most universally beloved on the planet.

It was, and remains, an uneasy book for me, because it is in no way Christocentric, which Francis most assuredly was. But he was also the most embracing of the Christian spiritual thinkers. I figured that if he met me, he’d probably find a way to enfold my spiritual strugglings into his faith, so why not work backwards, and use that faith to illuminate my spiritual strugglings? It proved to be a good choice: writing the book was one of the most clarifying experiences I have ever had as an author.

But, back to the cab story. In the book I tell the story of when I was driving a cab in Minneapolis and picked up a woman who was going to a hospice. We drove around all night at her request in what was very likely her last real journey through the outside world she was preparing to leave. It was one of those “blue moments,” as I call them, when some kind of spiritual light shines through the ordinary affairs of everyday life. As most of you know, this is one of the primary themes of my work as a writer.

Well, this cab driver story, in various iterations, has moved virally around the internet for years. It got changed, detached from the Francis book, and attributed to any number of anonymous and not so anonymous sources. It frustrated me, but I tried to listen to my better angels and take satisfaction in the fact that at least it was being read.

Then, last week, something happened. Several websites, primarily zenmoments.org, reddit.com, and something called, I believe, dooce.com picked it up. Within hours my website was being hit like it seldom has before. On the third day after the initial publication I had almost 49,000 hits. This has not happened since my postings on the Red Lake shootings a number of years ago.

What was interesting to me was the comments that people made in response to the story. There seemed to be two fundamental threads: “This is a beautiful story; I’m glad there are people like this in the world,” and “What a bunch of sappy, probably fictional, crap.” Well, though strange and improbable, it is not fictional. Anyone who’s ever driven a cab knows that things happen that are beyond belief.

But that’s neither here nor there.

What is important to me is that in this dichotomy of responses lies the human struggle that so many of us live on a daily basis. We want to be the good person who picks up the old woman, drives her around, and refuses payment for giving her the last ride of her life. And yet we are also the caustic, cynical, folks who pick at the world and carp about things that irritate us or upset us. As Walt Whitman said, “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes.” Or, to put it in St. Paul’s terms, “That which I would, I do not. That which I do, I would not.” We are simply complex creatures that contain both dark and light in us in varying degrees.

What I wanted to do in the Francis book was to bring out the light. I did not want to claim that I was light, or that I always lived in the light. Those who make such claims are either saints, or deluded, or disingenuous. And there are precious few saints among us.

The constant presence, and overwhelmingly positive response to the cab driver story tells me that there is, in almost all of us, a yearning for the light. We want to be the good person, the one who does the good thing, the one who makes the proper response to the situation. Yet, sadly, and far too often, we do not. That I did so in that moment in the cab back in the mid 1980’s does not make me a good person. It makes me a person who, for one moment, did something that was good. As a dear friend of mine once said, “Most people just slog through the world trying to be kind.” That’s what I was doing on that unexceptional August morning when an exceptional moment broke through the ordinariness of an ordinary day.

If I wrote a book about all the times I failed to do the right thing, or actually did something mean spirited or jerky, it would be far longer than the book of my better moments. But you don’t need to hear about those. You have your own mean spirited and jerky moments, and the world is full of folks who celebrate those moments by indulging their cynicism and skepticism. The cab drive story was a reminder to me, that I passed on to you, that we do have our better angels, and that we should assert them when we can. That the overwhelming majority of you appreciated the story is simply proof that we all feel better on those occasions when we do let our better angels have their voice.

In this time when dominance is praised as strength, where skepticism is often more prudent than trust, where disengagement is safer than engagement, we need to be reminded that the kind gesture that makes us vulnerable and serves no practical end is often the best gesture of all. The cab ride, for me, was one of those gestures.

I am pleased that so many people have found it. I only hope that they will follow it backward to the source. Forget the word, “Lord.” Replace it with whatever term you use for your understanding of the Creator or spiritual force that animates this universe. But don’t forget the next phrase: “Make me an instrument of your peace.” That’s what the world needs now. That’s what I was trying to be on that cab ride. That’s what I’ll try to be today.

I hope you will do the same.

You could go back in my blog archives, but I think it deserves reprinting. Here it is. I believe it was entitled Looking for Leaders, Looking for Vision. I wish I could get it to Obama.

Blog Entry — Sept 27, 2006

Politics is heating up around here, as I’m sure it is in your neck of the woods, too. Invariably, the claim is made that “we want to run a clean campaign.” But fear sells in America, and a politician who wants to win in America is in the business of selling. So he or she almost inevitably ends up trying to peddle fear about what his or her opponent proposes to do.

Look for people who are visionary. I don’t mean those with good ideas – lots of people have good ideas. And I don’t mean only those with correctives – we all know that there are past mistakes that need to be corrected. I mean those who make you think about the world around you differently.

The key to great political leadership is to make the people see the world in a new way and to believe that this new vision can come to pass. Kennedy had it; Ronald Reagan had it.

I didn’t like Reagan’s vision – it seemed to me to lead to the kind of selfishness that envelops us today. But it was a vision, and it galvanized people. Kennedy’s, though based a great deal on personal charisma, brought the nation into a forward-looking mode that it dearly needed after the long, exhausting emotional recovery from WWII. Clinton had the charisma to do the same, but he squandered his moral capital and lacked a vision of greatness for the country, and, ultimately was taken down by his own stupidity and a cabal of ferrets who used every means at their command to shred him bloody. GW is beneath discussion. In fact, his abject failure and political divisiveness make the need for a national vision ever more crucial.

But it is not simply in national politics that vision is needed. Look to your local races. Who can inspire you to believe that there can be kindness, honesty, clarity, and compassion at the heart of your state or community? Who can take a visionary dream and make it seem like an attainable goal? Who seems to understand you and your needs, as well as those of the people less fortunate than you, and can still shape a vision of a future that will be better for your children?

Just promising to tune up the machine is never enough. No matter what your politics, there will always be opposition to any modifications of existing systems. What is needed is always a re envisioning of the world in which we live, both locally and on larger levels.

Who says to you, “We can be better,” and not just by putting in or removing programs and kicking the current bastards out? Who inspires you with the vision that would reshape the streets and community and world in which you live? Who calls to you with the strength of Sitting Bull’s admonition, “Come, let us put our minds together to see what kind of lives we can create for our children?”

Look for those people. They are the real leaders. They are the ones who can take you to the places where your children can live a life of hopefulness and dreams.

Technorati : Clinton, Democrats, Obama, Politics, President

I truly hope so. I want to believe that the excitement that travelers from other countries feel as they enter into the United States is supported and reinforced by the welcome they receive as they step off the plane. This is a wonderful country, and it should welcome and embrace travelers. As Emma Lazarus’ famous poem says, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free . . .”

Most travelers entering our country are neither poor nor huddled masses, but they are assuredly all tired. We need to meet them as we would meet them if they arrived at the door of our homes, excited about a visit.

I get off the plane in Amsterdam and see a sign asking me to choose door A or B depending on whether or not I have anything to declare. I do not, so I choose the “nothing to declare” door. I walk right out into the street where I am part of everyone else and no longer sequestered behind an imaginary boundary that separates the fliers from the non-fliers. I can just get in a car and drive away.

Entering Iceland, the same thing.

Now, welcome to America:

We get off the plane and are herded into a holding area. These are Americans, Germans, Icelanders, and a smattering of other folks. Blessedly, most speak English, so the lack of signage in any language other than English is not a great problem. But the young men shouting orders to us in rapid-fire English are. They seem to see themselves as police officers or para-military, so they hector and badger and shout out in humorless, flat tones, telling us to get in line, have our passports ready, and not to use our cell phones or take photographs. If your English isn’t good enough for you to understand their particular patois, you are shouted at even more aggressively, as if you might be thinking of making a direct contact with Osama Bin Laden or planning to beam cell phone photos back to some angry mullah who is mapping the interiors of all American airports. And God help you if you don’t understand at all and cross one of the lines or walk into some area in violation of the shouted orders.

Now, keep in mind that these are tired travelers who are, or were, excited to get to America, the land of freedom and opportunity. Their English is imperfect, they don’t know where their baggage is, they don’t know if or where the people who are there to meet them are, they don’t know what is happening, and they don’t know how long they’ll be held in containment. All they know is that they are being yelled at and told to stand in line and not do anything that might hint of documentation or communication. Some of them are eighty years old.

The lines, of which there are four, funnel into three booth areas, where a humorless young man or women asks some questions, scrutinizes passports, makes everyone not American — little kids and eighty year olds included — ink their fingers and give two fingerprints, then remove any glasses and stand still for photographing. Children are crying; businessmen are grumbling; the elderly are in wheel chairs or standing at their walkers. But you’d better not move — it might be a terrorist rush or an attempt to send a satellite signal to the caves of Tora Bora.

The line moves glacially. Each person takes anywhere from one to five minutes. There are three lines and probably three hundred folks. Do the math. Then imagine you’re a young mother with a two year old and an infant, or an eighty year old in a walker.

Oh, and lest you think you can crab and complain, right past the booths is a wall covered with one way glass. Should you make a ruckus or show exasperation, I am sure that other humorless folks are duly noting it and photographing you or sending signals to the booths to flag your passport or mark an “x” by your name.

In general, you have found yourself in a world where there is a subterranean current of anger that has been formalized into procedure, where you feel watched and mistrusted, and where you feel that the government is not your friend, and you are not theirs. You are, in effect, guilty until proven innocent.

I wanted to shout out to the people who only minutes before had been laughing and talking excitedly about visiting the Mall of America or going to see their relatives in Iowa that this is not America, that we are not like this.

But I couldn’t. It would have been a subversive act.

And all I could think of as I watched the excited faces of the little children lose their smiles and fill with worry and concern, is that if this is what takes place for a group of mostly Icelanders arriving at a B level airport in a Scandinavian/German city in the middle of America, what is it like for a Middle Easterner or southeast Asian arriving in Detroit or New York or Chicago O’Hare?

It was a sad and sobering experience, and not one that made me proud to be an American.

Sorry, Woody. This land is no longer “made for you and me,” it’s made up of “us” and “them.” And everyone entering America is “them” until proven otherwise.