Kent Nerburn

There has been a great deal of interest lately regarding what makes Neither Wolf nor Dog work. Much of this has been generated by class discussions and assignments at high schools and universities.

I’d be curious as to what you as readers think. If any of you wants to offer a thought, send it to me via the website contact and I’ll post salient parts. It would be nice to know if you’re a native or non-native reader.

This could be instructive for all of us.

I’ve received several responses to my post-election comments, and I want to follow up a bit.

I made those observations — which I truly believe — with full knowledge that there is a certain portion of my readership that either does not wish to find political engagement in my writings, or holds to the belief that self discovery and self realization are basis for any meaningful political change.

To the first, I must say that all our decisions and actions are political. To think otherwise is to misunderstand the word, “political.” I go back to my basic premises in life: We are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers, and some part of our moral responsibility on earth is to “afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted” until such time as there are no more afflicted.

Since the history of human affairs has given ample indication that there will never be such a time, we must continue to challenge those around us who would draw the lines of their human concerns at the boundaries of the own lives, consciousness, or front yards, and demand that they see the power their actions have for good and ill. Simply put, we cannot opt out of political decision-making, even if we choose to ignore the political process.

If this seems too engaged and too far from the spiritual for some, I would counsel that the gospel of social justice and liberation theology are vehicles of spiritual development as well. If this seems too Christian to some, I would direct people to the boddhisatva path. It is one of the great failings of New Age thinking that self-transcendence has ratchetted down into self-realization, which has, in turn, ratchetted down to self-fulfillment. We do ourselves no honor when we disregard our fundamental responsibility of service to our fellow humans.

This is a long spiral, but it is worth following. There was a great cultural (and spiritual) struggle in the sixties between those who believed that social justice was the precondition for individual freedom and growth, and those who believed that individual freedom and growth were the precondition for social justice. The latter group won out when Ronald Reagan came up with the marvelously impactful idea of “trickle down” economics, which applies to spiritual economics as well: If I do good for myself it will trickle down to those around me, and they will benefit.

What a great way to avoid direct involvement in the difficulties of the world around us, and what a perfect fit with the belief that we must realize ourselves first before we can help others. Ignoring the very real possibility that we best realize ourselves BY helping others, this mindset took strong root in a culture long steeped in individualism and personal initiative.

By the late eighties it was the cultural law of the land, and the predicate of helping others after we had realized ourselves was dropped completely. Self realization became the goal; self-fulfillment became the desired end; and the promotion of means of self-fulfillment became the hollow reed of ostensible service to humankind. Ratchetted up again, it became the spiritual belief that we must accept what is with spiritual indifference and magnanimity and assist others in their own quest for self-fulfillment — a pyramid scheme of self-referential spirituality.

Meanwhile, the streets of the world run with blood and the hungry go unfed. And those mechanisms that use the political process watch gleefully as the best among us spend our spiritual energies studying ourselves while the politically savvy build a world where everything goes into their lunchbaskets while the situations for those in the streets only gets worse.

We must find a way to reverse this. And that is one of the reasons I am so committed to the Native way of seeing life. I hold strongly to the belief that we are all part of the drum, and when the drumhead is struck in one place, it reverberates through us all. I also hold firmly to the belief that service to others is our highest calling. Anything less constitutes a failure to pay our spiritual rent on earth. To be given the miraculous gift of life is to be given something so precious that it can never be repaid, even though we cannot give a name or a face to the mystery that bestowed this gift upon us. So we must express our gratitude with service here on earth.

Now I am sure that some of you are either glazed over or plugging your ears at this point. It is, indeed, a bit of a diatribe. But it is not unwarranted. In fact, it addresses the second group of disappointed readers who see my political leanings as a misdirection of spiritual energies away from self-realization and self-transcendence: We dare not turn our eyes inward when we live in a world where ideologies are at war, because individual human beings eventually get crushed in such a world. We must not let individuals get crushed while we happily sit in the lotus position or practice five rules for living the perfect life.

Ideologies too easily lose their human face. This is what happened with the Islamic fundamentalists, and it is happening with our own fundamentalists, who now control our government. Small fry like you or me may think this is about freedom, but it is about ideology. This is a holy war, and our government has decided to fight it on those terms. Consequently, it is a clash of ideologies — belief systems if you will — and such clashes take place in the skies far above the heads of ordinary folk. We simply accept what falls out of the skies upon us.

Understand this — our country has decided to engage in a holy war, and things will fall out of the sky on us, at least metaphorically if not physically. One of the reasons I have written so much about the need for people to find their relationship to God in their own hearts is because mass spiritual movements brook no compromise. They divide the world into those who join them and those who don’t. Disagreement becomes apostasy or heresy, and heretics do not tend to do well under any religious system. When your political system takes on the trappings of religious fervor, dissent becomes political heresy, and it will be discouraged, monitored, and ultimately squashed.

So, to get back to the initial issue: why I am writing in a more political vein in some of these entries. All our actions and inactions are political,and all the moreso these days. What I see is a need to for each of us to become aware of the political implications of our own choices in our lives, and not to blithely and naively assume that politics does not impact us or that our actions do not have political implications.

Those of us who care about the spiritual life must be very concerned about what is currently being done in the name of God and belief and religion. We cannot let the spiritual quest be co-opted by those who would carry on that quest with a sword.

These are, indeed, tough times. And we do need to report for duty. What that means will vary according to our gifts and circumstances. But, at minimum, it means standing up for compassion and caring, and fighting for those as fundamental, inviolable spiritual values.

I have no interest in a sharp-toothed God. And I will speak out against those who would try to make me serve one.

It has been an interesting week.

I spent a day at Michigan State University, speaking with and visiting students. They had been reading Neither Wolf nor Dog for some of their classes. It is always a learning experience for me to find out what others take from my books. In the case of Neither Wolf nor Dog, it is especially interesting, because when I speak about that book, I am not always “preaching to the converted.” Native students bring a set of expectations and judgments to it that are often very different from those brought by non-Natives, and among readers of all races, biases, and predispositions there are reactions that run the entire gamut of emotions.

It was gratifying in this instance to hear the positive comments from Native students. They, in fact, were the ones that had arranged to have me come as part of their Native Heritage Month activities — a real honor for a non-Native writer.

My feeling about this book is that it allows me to walk non-Native readers into a world different from their own without forcing them to lose their own point of view. Since I keep my own non-Native perspective throughout, I very often articulate some of the very concerns and attitudes that other non-Native readers bring. As I am educated, they become educated. We all come out the other side with a greater insight and knowledge.

For Native readers, it is usually a case of them feeling that Dan articulates some of the truths they wish non-Native people would hear and understand. He becomes their voice, just as I become the non-Native readers’ eyes and sensibilities. It is really a very fortuitous match.

But something new came out of this Michigan State visit. What I learned — and this is something the Native faculty advisor pointed out — is that Dan can deliver a message to non-Native readers in a way that does not threaten them. Because he is delivering it to me, and they are simply looking over my shoulder, it becomes less threatening and assaultive when he challenges some of their biases and preconceptions.

This was a new insight for me, though perhaps it should not have been. As I tell people about my books, “I just write them. You read them.” It is only after they have been read and reflected upon that it is truly possible to know what they have or have not accomplished.

This Michigan State experience reminded me that NWND has accomplished a lot. It is used in junior high school settings, any number of senior high schools, and many universities and colleges, both tribal and non-tribal. It is read in England, Holland, Germany, and other countries.

Add in situations like the Eden Prairie Reads program, where an entire community made it the focus of their collective discussion and public discourse, and this book is having an effect far beyond what I might have dreamed.

Dan would be proud. I know I am.

When I put pen to paper for that book it was my hope that I might be of service to Indian people. Now I am beginning to think that the service is far wider and greater. If we are going to bring our nation to a true understanding of the moral responsibility that comes with power, looking at the footprints of our past is essential. If we are to exercise that power with spiritual clarity and intelligent compassion, learning from the Native peoples who have been listening to the voices of this land for aeons is equally as essential. In them is embodied both our guilt and our promise. We need to hear, and hear well. Our responsibility is great.

These two opportunities this month, in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, and East Lansing, Michigan, reminded me that I bear a continuing part in that responsibility. I must continue to speak out. I need to do what Dan asked of me — carry the message forward. It is a worthy and necessary task.

11/17 update: Mpls Star Tribune, Nov 2: Book spurs diversity talk.)

I’m not feeling very good about our country right now. And like many of the other politically walking wounded, I sense a dark force at work. For those of you who don’t share this view, I’m sure this sounds dire and melodramatic. But, in my heart, I sense something very bad taking place, and it makes me afraid.

I could pour out my feelings in this weblog. But there is no need. A better man than I has expressed it before:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming” 1921

Those of us who care about the seventh generation, those of us who have looked clear-eyed at the footprints we have left upon this land, know that we dare not remain silent much longer, seeking spiritual satisfaction within the solipsistic comfort of self realization.

We must find a new moral center, alive to the presence of God, but free from the ideological fervor of those who would close the doors on others who do not share their way of belief.

The game may now be in motion, and it may be bigger than we think.