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The Season turns. . .

9 Comments / knerburn / January 11, 2015

This has been sitting in my “draft” box for awhile. Since I haven’t written much to you of late, I thought I’d shoot it out.

I hope the holiday season went well for all of you. It is such a knife edge to walk — there is the excitement and anticipation, the feelings of inadequacy, the desire to give meaningful gifts, and the sad (and, I would say, “real”) recognition that what was once “over the river and through the woods” has become “over the internet and through the mall.”

This last reality weighs on me. The childhood magic is gone, the religious significance is gone — partly because of the irreligious consumerism of our culture and partly due to our own loss of spiritual simplicity (some would say, “clarity”) — and we are made to look directly at the tawdry underbelly of a culture that has as its primary goal the selling of stuff.

So, the hawkers line up, kill the magic of Santa Claus for children by using him to sell iphones and Toyotas and seasonal brews of beer. It wouldn’t be so bad if those sales pitches didn’t traffic in the images of nostalgia (Can you say, “Budweiser Clydesdales”?). It seems more than a little disingenuous to show us families shaking off the snowflakes and listening to sleighbells only to end up in a Westchester driveway looking at a Lexus with a bow around it.

Do you live in Westchester? Did you get a Lexus? Did you give one?

I may sound jaundiced, and perhaps I am. But I admit to having a deep nostalgia for a time when we had less, did less, and were more able to establish sacred time and space in our families. I think we all make great efforts to create this magic around Christmas, and, by and large, we find ways to do so. But it is not easy.

I think the key is creating new rituals that retain the spirit of giving, and finding ways to bring the story of Christmas back into those rituals. One thing that always strikes me in dealing with Native cultures is how continuous their cultural and spiritual practices are. They may be diluted, but they are continuous. Our cultural practices are discontinuous: baby Jesus in a manger and wise men and a star are anachronistic to most modern Americans, and reduced to myth in order to be kept alive at all.

There are ways to transcend this — to say that God has appointed times and events to reveal the spiritual mystery of the universe, and Jesus is one of them; to say that Jesus and Christmas are alive and embedded in the spirit of giving. But these are not easy for everyone, and for those who do not even acknowledge the spiritual dimension of life beyond ethical norms of human kindness and fellowship, they are as impossible or, at least as uncomfortable, as the actual belief in Jesus as the only Son of God.

So we are left with establishing new rituals around the act of giving and doing lip service to the religious origins of performing these acts at this time of year. Choosing a family to help, visiting the lonely, feeding the homeless — these are fair gestures that draw our hearts back to the act of giving, and, in some measure, counteract the insufferable sense of obligation and pressure that come from pushing our way through a Best Buy to find an electronic gadget to give to someone who probably would remain more humane and connected to humanity without it.

But life is what it is, and we live in the times we were given. Ours is not the first generation to fight against a loss of spiritual clarity and innocence, and we won’t be the last.

As we move into the new year and begin the long slow march toward spring, I hope we keep an eye toward authenticity in our lives. Our culture promotes too many false values, and the best way to stand against these is to live the true values that we hold most dear. Care for the young, bring peace to the old, eschew cynicism and irony to the extent possible, keep anger to a minimum, and have the courage to be kind. These are some of the values that I am trying to keep alive in my life as we slowly move out of the winter darkness. It’s always a struggle; it’s always a slog. But now is the time to lean toward the light. The earth is doing it. Why shouldn’t we?

The Season turns. . . Read More »

A few thoughts on the cast and characters of the film version of Neither Wolf nor Dog

For those of you who love the book Neither Wolf nor Dog and wonder how the film will compare, I have a few observations, starting with the caveat that I have no idea how the finished product will look or feel or play. What I do know from my few days on location is that the three primary actors bring some fascinating dimensions to the characters.

Chris Sweeney, the man who plays me, has a sharp edge to him that is very intriguing. He is a veteran of the first Gulf War and carries a latent and watchful power within him. I will be fascinated to see how he deals with the scenes where Dan and, especially, Grover and Wenonah, are pushing on him. I could see in the few days of watching him with Dave Bald Eagle, the man who plays Dan, that the two of them had a deep respect and growing love for each other. I would expect to see less wariness and wistfulness in his portrayal than I wrote in the book — that, and more overt love — beyond respect — for the old man.

Richard Ray Whitman, the man who plays Grover, seemed a man of deep and profound gentleness. In the book, Grover was distant and self contained with a latent anger that was both personal and cultural. He was written to embody a kind of person I know well from reservations — someone with an interior strength that admits of no compromise. It is intimidating and humbling — the warrior as protector who, in the case of the book, had taken on the role of protecting Dan. Richard, in my short time with him, seemed to have another unique characteristic of strong Indian men: he had a kindness that is almost global in its expression. This is hard to explain. It has to do with being deeply at peace and possessing of a great forgiveness. The character of Grover as written for the script was even more edgy than in the book. How Richard, who has even less of this edginess than Chris, portrays Grover and serves as a counterpoint to the character of Kent, will be fascinating to see. I am guessing we will see less of the severe moralist and more of the befriending teacher. Grover in the book and the script took pleasure in knocking Kent around; I think Richard will approach it differently and, as a result, will create an incredibly interesting dynamic with Chris, who will very likely be stronger than my character as written in the book.

Dave Bald Eagle will simply be a natural force. I did not see him work, but I listened to him around the dinner table. Like anyone 95 years old, he husbands his emotional and intellectual energy, saving it to be revealed when needed. When he moved into his own stories, everyone fell silent. He is the embodiment of an elder who has earned the profound respect of anyone with a caring heart and a mind to learn. There are people of great age who wear their experience as wisdom, not grievance or tragedy. Dave is such a person. Whatever he does with the character of Dan, if he is able to embrace the rigors of the acting craft at his age, will bring Dan alive like no other actor I can imagine. When all else is forgotten or put aside, I look upon this film as a chance for me to have used my own talents, along with the talents of others, to give this worthy and even great man a chance to speak as an elder for the Indian people.

I can only speak for myself, but the book Neither Wolf nor Dog was always meant as a gift to the Native people for all I have received from my time among them. Dave, as Dan, is the embodiment of that gift. To see Chris and Dave connecting in a way that seemed almost spiritual, and to see Richard serving and honoring Dave in the humble and natural way that only a Native man could truly understand and express, made me think that there is magic here if it can be brought out.

We may have something very special here.