A Crucible

Every fall I teach a unit centered around The Crucible.  The assignment I give my students is to draw connections among the witch-hunts of the 1690s, the red scare of the 1950s and then to an issue of their choosing for today.  The students are charged to find three parallels among these three time periods.  Their working thesis is that a culture of fear creates strikingly similar social situations, and that some parties exploited that culture of fear for their own gain.  That these witch hunters begin by targeting social outsiders, and rely on the common persons' tendency to want to fit in - to conform - to support their purge.  Ultimately, the common person is cowed into conformity (and consequently hypocrisy), because they fear for what they stand to lose if they challenge what over time becomes the new status quo.  These situations call for heros - for uncommonly brave individuals to stand against this tide.

One of our examples is Ed Murrow's crusade against Joe McCarthy in the film 'Good Night & Good Luck' - well worth watching and extremely applicable to this topic.  What has been driven into me over these past few weeks are the words of Arthur Miller and Ed Murrow among others, as they have spoken out against the terrorizing McCarthy.  Their words have been echoing in me.  Particularly Murrow's sentiment that 'No one can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices.'  Many of Murrow's contemporaries, including his boss, believed that McCarthy would self-destruct, and encouraged Murrow to spare himself from being 'subjected to the attentions of the junior senator from Wisconsin.'  What prompted Murrow to make his stand against McCarthy and the red scare he hid behind?  For that matter what gave Arthur Miller strength to refuse to 'name names,' placing his promising career in jeopardy?  Perhaps most bafflingly, why do individual children, in the face of their peers and sometimes their superiors, stand against violent bullies when their likely reward is more of the same?

One of the most common examples used in my students' papers is homophobia - a social pressure they feel themselves.  This unit has come to mind for me again and again as I follow the conversations about the church's most recent pathological pursuit of sexual conformity.  I am employed in an institution that is compelled to support this pathology.  The place itself is dear to my heart, as all of you know, and the people who work there are some of my closest friends and allies.

While the mainstream is coming about to accept the differences among its people (yet again), the church and its institutions remain in the grip of fear and paranoia.  These institutions will still require some brave people to stand against them, at great risk to themselves and possibly the people around them.  I cannot claim to be one of those exceptionally brave individuals; while I attended an event at O'Gara's and am writing this, you will notice that I have carefully avoided using certain words that would betray me to someone looking for dissent with a Google search.  I have struggled, pathetically at times, with the tension between the draw of safety and job security within the folds of a hypocritical church - the church deeply and secretly divided on this topic - and the desire to maintain my integrity as a person; to stand outside, exposed to scrutiny and bright light.

The lasting effects of the delay I exercise, along with my struggling colleagues, is shame.  We have been put in the position where it is impossible to be ourselves and remain in communion with our church - we are personally divided, and nothing holds us back but ourselves and our fear.  It is the same paralyzing shame experienced throughout our history, used to suppress dissent and to control.  Coming from the church, this should be no surprise.

The results of the witch hunts and red scare seem to have been a bewildered population waking from a stupor, the careers and lives of those targeted detritus around their feet.  So far the desire to be among the walking stunned has outweighed the desire to be among the martyrs of history.  But I am paying for that safety with little parts of myself, and so are many of us who are compelled to silence.  Thanks for reading.

Once upon a time ...

For most of the last year I have anticipated sitting down to develop my experiences abroad into something deeper and touching more upon, with the benefit of hindsight, my emotional states at the time.  India in particular unsettled me deeply and I have struggled to find the language to express how it left me when I left it in the spring of 2010.  However, the direction of the next few threads will concern another facet of my life; one somewhat related to my Indian experience.  Almost twelve years ago, in August of 2001, I was diagnosed with kidney failure.  The first two years were a wild ride, comparable in a number of ways with my experience in India - it was a paradox of the intense and the ordinary, being hungry without being sated, and interminable in that instantaneous way - an off year of life.

Then from 2003 on my life returned to its normal trajectory - I started a career teaching, I lived in a few apartments before buying the duplex where I currently live, and as you all know I traveled enviably, extensively.  Thanks to the generosity of my uncle Bruce and many many others, my life was barely compromised by my chronic illness.  Like India, the period of my early twenties feels comfortably distant, dim on my horizon.  

Yet while I can choose to avoid the subcontinent in my future, my transplanted kidney function will most likely slow, and at some point it will need to be removed, setting in motion the same machinations that interrupted my senior year of college.  No one can say when that might happen - there are few people in my situation who might serve as guides, I am otherwise healthy - there was no known cause for my illness, and I am very young relative to most people with kidney failure.  I have labs done every few months to keep an eye on my blood levels.  With a few small adjustments, I have been on the same course for nine years.  Recently, however, my numbers have started to creep, and labs done last week indicate that there might be something wrong.  

There are so many aspects to these stories that I have not told - so many of my thoughts and feelings.  It is difficult to create a linear narrative.  This was my initial hope with this blog- to suss out the untold details and meta-narratives of my world travels; how the music I listened to in different countries remains locked there - lilacs, perfume or that smell in an old brick building - I turned on Beach House to sit down now and my mind keeps playing images from Morocco.  Morocco feels as distant to me as it must to you until this music starts and slam I am on a bus, climbing a hill, lonely and scared, clinging to the English speaking travelers I met.  

I had labs done today to double check the results from last week.  Leaving the clinic I called C and opened a bit in the car.  I flashed back to a number of episodes that continue to resonate in my memory - experiences impossible to relate.  Flashes of being in a dialysis center, of outpatient procedures, of doctors and nurses, 9/11, coffee shops - all neatly associated with this pervasive facet of myself that has been dormant.  I had not yet written about India because I knew it would be right there waiting for me.  I knew that time would not dim what I had experienced there.  Even so, I underestimated how close these 'kidney' experiences were to me.  

I have not talked about almost any of this publicly for reasons that are difficult to explain or understand myself.  I often think that I do not want to complain or sound whiny, but it also feels private to me, like a secret weapon almost.  Certainly some psycho-babble could explain a lot of this.  Even what I wrote so far has felt intimate.  

The labs look at a few indicators of kidney performance, most importantly creatinine.  Creatinine is exclusively cleared by the kidneys and thus is a useful indicator of kidney function, and it was my creatinine levels that have recently caused alarm and raised this blog post.  

A 'normal' creatinine is 1.0 - mine had floated around 1.5 - 1.7 for years.  When I returned from traveling, the number drifted up to around 1.9 - or roughly 50% of healthy kidney function.  In the last few weeks it spiked at 2.1 and then last week at 2.35.  That is a pretty high number, and the clinic responded by scheduling a biopsy for next Tuesday, pending similar labs drawn today.  

So that's where we sit today - wait for the numbers.  It's possible the numbers will adjust and we will be back to normal and wiping the sweat from our brows in relief.  Yet I must confess that this most recent health incident is weighing heavily on me.  The world shifts slightly on its axis with a potential adjustment like this on the horizon and I'm not terribly hopeful about it.  

This afternoon, however, it is summer.  Tony and I posted quite well in another Urban Assault, 5th overall this time.  C and I are planning on burgers, wine and backgammon tonight.  And I'm thinking about buying a new bike!  All very exciting things going on, and now time for an afternoon nap.  

Thanks for reading!