Personal history. Cultural history. Political history. Tribal history. We all have history. Sometimes that history can be quite a “cross to bear” as we set out on our spiritual journeys. But, must we be prisoners of our history? Are we victims of it? Can we ever be masters of it instead?

How much of our history is baked into us before we even start asking questions?

By the time most of us set out on a spiritual journey, we do it already loaded down with baggage. How do we minimize the baggage so as to maximize the spirituality?

Alan’s Show Notes & Sources

History is not an abstraction.  Just beneath the broad sweep of history is the place where — often — terrible things happen to otherwise innocent people.

I grew up in the shadow of the Holocaust.  That colors my concept of history and what it means to the present.  

We didn’t shy away from the topic in the community where I grew up.

We couldn’t.  Our community was filled with survivors like Mrs. Lederkramer, one of my Hebrew School teachers.  I have no idea how old Mrs. Lederkramer was.  I was 8 or 9.  All I knew was that she had a number tattooed onto her arm — like an animal being sent to slaughter might.  She also had a very distinct facial tic — a product of PTSD.  She didn’t have the tic before she went to the camps apparently.

Yeah, I know.  It wasn’t all Germans.  I have German friends.  I don’t blame them.  Of course, I don’t.  But I’ll never be 100% comfortable with them either.  To be honest, I don’t know how Jewish people can buy German cars.  We do, of course.  I have myself — an Audi.  

But BMW made aircraft engines during WWII.  Mercedes Benz was way more complicit.  From the LA Times — June 12, 1988: In 1944, 46,000 forced labourers were used in Daimler-Benz’s factories to bolster Nazi war efforts. The company later paid $12 million in reparations to the labourers’ families.

A whole $12 million?  Really?  Considering what the real cost of all that stolen labor would have been for all the years Daimler-Benz was stealing it, $12 million is an insult.  Not that reparations can bring back dead people.  

Yeah, on the one hand, forgive and forget.  On the other hand — can I show you a picture of the Warsaw Ghetto after the Nazis got done with it?

That was specifically because the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto rose up.  For a month — 19 April to 16 May 1943 — the Ghetto was a kill zone for German soldiers.  Every attempt to go in and collect more Jews to send to the camps, was paid for with German lives.  

And then the Germans had enough and they put an end to their problem definitively.  

That’s history.  

The country with that history makes Audis, BMWs, Mercs.  Great cars.  But, history… 

If any of the people who died in the Warsaw Ghetto — or at any of the camps they were dragged to and murdered (simply because they were Jews) — were to miraculously rise from the dead? I’d hate to be the one tasked with explaining to them what happened since the German state (with its industrial partners) murdered them.  But, but — they’re such good cars!

Then we wonder why we keep repeating the same ghastly mistakes all through history.  

A lot of our history is the story of tribalism.  The bible is a story of tribalism — of a Chosen Tribe (according to itself) which begat (ironically) a tribe that would forever be hell bent on killing it.

How many tribes is each of us a member of?  That’s the trick to successful living — finding a home in as many tribes as possible.

Leon Uris, Mila 18 — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mila_18

Randy’s Show Notes & Sources

Main point:  spirituality and history enable us to boldly look at the whole story and thus to be able to respond to the problems of the world in a more effective way.

Objectives:  

• Spirituality and history can be used to simply justify our preconceived notions.  Thus they harden and narrow us into extreme positions.  But this is not the way they are used at their best.
• Spirituality begins with a sense of wonder and awe that draws us outside of ourselves to engage reality from a less ego-centric and more appreciative manner.
• History can also draw us out of our own assumptions to a less ego-centric and more helpful perspective on the issues of the day.
• Let’s take the history of slavery.  
  • It can be used to simply justify our opinions.  Example:  There is slavery in the Bible so it is acceptable.
  • But it can also be used to expand our horizons.  
    • Quick facts which open our minds:
      • The greatest loss of life among the enslaved took place in the long journey from the hinterlands of Africa to the coast.  50%.  An estimated 2 million of the 12-15 million slaves on the ships died en route.
      • Brazil received more slaves from Africa that the Unites States
      • The Slave trade formed a triangle:  A British ship would take rum from the carribean to Britain.  There they would sell the rum and purchase the trinkets desired by those in Africa who would trade in slaves.  In Africa they would trade for slaves.  Then they would take the slave to the Carribean to work in the sugar cain fields.  Then the process would continue.  It was a multinational business benefitting elites in Africa, the Americas and Europe.
      • Christians certainly were heavily involved in the slave trade.  

Middle Passage by Robert Hayden

Jesús, Estrella, Esperanza, Mercy:

      Sails flashing to the wind like weapons,
      sharks following the moans the fever and the dying;  
      horror the corposant and compass rose.

Middle Passage:
              voyage through death
                              to life upon these shores.

       “10 April 1800—

       Blacks rebellious. Crew uneasy. Our linguist says   

       their moaning is a prayer for death,

       ours and their own. Some try to starve themselves.   

       Lost three this morning leaped with crazy laughter   

       to the waiting sharks, sang as they went under.”

• But there would be no slave trade without African chiefs willing to sell people to the Europeans.  Also, many Muslims were enriched by their involvement in the slave trade.

And there was one—King Anthracite we named him—

fetish face beneath French parasols

of brass and orange velvet, impudent mouth

whose cups were carven skulls of enemies:

He’d honor us with drum and feast and conjo   

and palm-oil-glistening wenches deft in love,   

and for tin crowns that shone with paste,   

red calico and German-silver trinkets

Would have the drums talk war and send   

his warriors to burn the sleeping villages   

and kill the sick and old and lead the young   

in coffles to our factories.

Twenty years a trader, twenty years,

for there was wealth aplenty to be harvested   

from those black fields, and I’d be trading still   

but for the fevers melting down my bones.

• Does this release Americans or Christians or Europeans from guilt?  Not at all.  As a matter of fact, when the Christian reformer John Wesley in 1778 published a tract “Thoughts Upon Slavery” which denounced the practice and spoke of slavery ad the “execrable sum of all villainies.”  It simply shows the depth of the problem.  It wasn’t simply something that the United States was deeply involved in.  It wasn’t simply Christians.  It wasn’t simply Europeans.  It is a human problem and must be recognized as such if we are going to eradicate it.   (It is also interesting to note that the Native Americans who were in the Los Angeles are when the Spanish conquistadores arrived had developed trade with other Native Americans which included slavery).
• One example of how such a global view leads to creative problem solving is seen in the story of the first inhabitants of a small land that became Sierra Leone in West Africa.
  • William Wilberforce and the Clapham Sect, strong and activist Christians in their day who were committed to banning slavery in the United Kingdom:  convince parliament by acknowledging the economic part of the problem by buying land in Africa, establishing freed slaves there, and prove that economic production is higher among free people than enslaved people.
• Paradoxically, at first glance, slavery has actually produced a deep and lasting spirituality.
  • But another point:  many of the traits of African-American Christianity, many scholars argue, developed in the midst of this horror.
    • “The Middle Passage.  A voyage through death to life upon these shores.”
    • The loss of family, ancestors and ancestral land.  The loss of culture and language.  The loss of freedom.  All speak of a horrible death, even if one lived.
    • After the prayers all that is left for human beings is a moaning and deep rocking.  Slaves on ships were brought to the surface and made to dance so that their muscles would not atrophy.  Many scholars argue that the moaning and deep rocking, and dance developed into an American expression of Christianity still found in many African-American churches today.  A spirituality which brought forth the fruit of the spirituals.  A Christianity which has deeply influenced the United States.
  • That, again, is not to say that it was in any way acceptable.  It is to say that spirituality is so integral to human experience that it can survive, and even flourish, in the midst of the darkest of evils that humans commit with other humans.
• Spirituality and History, when properly used to open our minds, can enable us to deal with issues of injustice in ways which do not narrow, and harden, and justify yet another round of human upon human violence in the name of justice, but which draw us out of our pre-conceived biases to name the correct source of the problem and develop more adequate responses which bring both justice and healing.

Middle Passage

BY ROBERT HAYDEN

I

Jesús, Estrella, Esperanza, Mercy:

    Sails flashing to the wind like weapons,

    sharks following the moans the fever and the dying;   

    horror the corposant and compass rose.

Middle Passage:

               voyage through death

                            to life upon these shores.

    “10 April 1800—

    Blacks rebellious. Crew uneasy. Our linguist says   

    their moaning is a prayer for death,

    ours and their own. Some try to starve themselves.   

    Lost three this morning leaped with crazy laughter   

    to the waiting sharks, sang as they went under.”

Desire, Adventure, Tartar, Ann:

    Standing to America, bringing home   

    black gold, black ivory, black seed.

               Deep in the festering hold thy father lies,   

               of his bones New England pews are made,   

               those are altar lights that were his eyes.

Jesus Saviour Pilot Me

Over Life’s Tempestuous Sea

We pray that Thou wilt grant, O Lord,   

safe passage to our vessels bringing   

heathen souls unto Thy chastening.

Jesus Saviour

    “8 bells. I cannot sleep, for I am sick

    with fear, but writing eases fear a little

    since still my eyes can see these words take shape   

    upon the page & so I write, as one

    would turn to exorcism. 4 days scudding,

    but now the sea is calm again. Misfortune

    follows in our wake like sharks (our grinning   

    tutelary gods). Which one of us

    has killed an albatross? A plague among

    our blacks—Ophthalmia: blindness—& we   

    have jettisoned the blind to no avail.

    It spreads, the terrifying sickness spreads.

    Its claws have scratched sight from the Capt.’s eyes   

    & there is blindness in the fo’c’sle

    & we must sail 3 weeks before we come

    to port.”

               What port awaits us, Davy Jones’

               or home? I’ve heard of slavers drifting, drifting,   

               playthings of wind and storm and chance, their crews   

               gone blind, the jungle hatred

               crawling up on deck.

Thou Who Walked On Galilee

    “Deponent further sayeth The Bella J

    left the Guinea Coast

    with cargo of five hundred blacks and odd   

    for the barracoons of Florida:

    “That there was hardly room ’tween-decks for half   

    the sweltering cattle stowed spoon-fashion there;   

    that some went mad of thirst and tore their flesh   

    and sucked the blood:

    “That Crew and Captain lusted with the comeliest   

    of the savage girls kept naked in the cabins;   

    that there was one they called The Guinea Rose   

    and they cast lots and fought to lie with her:

    “That when the Bo’s’n piped all hands, the flames   

    spreading from starboard already were beyond   

    control, the negroes howling and their chains   

    entangled with the flames:

    “That the burning blacks could not be reached,   

    that the Crew abandoned ship,

    leaving their shrieking negresses behind,

    that the Captain perished drunken with the wenches:

    “Further Deponent sayeth not.”

Pilot Oh Pilot Me

       II

Aye, lad, and I have seen those factories,   

Gambia, Rio Pongo, Calabar;

have watched the artful mongos baiting traps   

of war wherein the victor and the vanquished

Were caught as prizes for our barracoons.   

Have seen the nigger kings whose vanity

and greed turned wild black hides of Fellatah,   

Mandingo, Ibo, Kru to gold for us.

And there was one—King Anthracite we named him—

fetish face beneath French parasols

of brass and orange velvet, impudent mouth

whose cups were carven skulls of enemies:

He’d honor us with drum and feast and conjo   

and palm-oil-glistening wenches deft in love,   

and for tin crowns that shone with paste,   

red calico and German-silver trinkets

Would have the drums talk war and send   

his warriors to burn the sleeping villages   

and kill the sick and old and lead the young   

in coffles to our factories.

Twenty years a trader, twenty years,

for there was wealth aplenty to be harvested   

from those black fields, and I’d be trading still   

but for the fevers melting down my bones.

       III

Shuttles in the rocking loom of history,   

the dark ships move, the dark ships move,   

their bright ironical names

like jests of kindness on a murderer’s mouth;   

plough through thrashing glister toward   

fata morgana’s lucent melting shore,   

weave toward New World littorals that are   

mirage and myth and actual shore.

Voyage through death,

                            voyage whose chartings are unlove.

A charnel stench, effluvium of living death   

spreads outward from the hold,

where the living and the dead, the horribly dying,   

lie interlocked, lie foul with blood and excrement.

       Deep in the festering hold thy father lies,   

    the corpse of mercy rots with him,   

    rats eat love’s rotten gelid eyes.

    But, oh, the living look at you

    with human eyes whose suffering accuses you,   

    whose hatred reaches through the swill of dark   

    to strike you like a leper’s claw.

    You cannot stare that hatred down

    or chain the fear that stalks the watches

    and breathes on you its fetid scorching breath;   

    cannot kill the deep immortal human wish,   

    the timeless will.

               “But for the storm that flung up barriers   

               of wind and wave, The Amistad, señores,

               would have reached the port of Príncipe in two,   

               three days at most; but for the storm we should   

               have been prepared for what befell.   

               Swift as the puma’s leap it came. There was   

               that interval of moonless calm filled only   

               with the water’s and the rigging’s usual sounds,   

               then sudden movement, blows and snarling cries   

               and they had fallen on us with machete   

               and marlinspike. It was as though the very   

               air, the night itself were striking us.   

               Exhausted by the rigors of the storm,

               we were no match for them. Our men went down   

               before the murderous Africans. Our loyal   

               Celestino ran from below with gun   

               and lantern and I saw, before the cane-

               knife’s wounding flash, Cinquez,

               that surly brute who calls himself a prince,   

               directing, urging on the ghastly work.

               He hacked the poor mulatto down, and then   

               he turned on me. The decks were slippery

               when daylight finally came. It sickens me   

               to think of what I saw, of how these apes   

               threw overboard the butchered bodies of

               our men, true Christians all, like so much jetsam.   

               Enough, enough. The rest is quickly told:   

               Cinquez was forced to spare the two of us   

               you see to steer the ship to Africa,   

               and we like phantoms doomed to rove the sea   

               voyaged east by day and west by night,   

               deceiving them, hoping for rescue,   

               prisoners on our own vessel, till   

               at length we drifted to the shores of this   

               your land, America, where we were freed   

               from our unspeakable misery. Now we   

               demand, good sirs, the extradition of   

               Cinquez and his accomplices to La   

               Havana. And it distresses us to know   

               there are so many here who seem inclined   

               to justify the mutiny of these blacks.   

               We find it paradoxical indeed

               that you whose wealth, whose tree of liberty   

               are rooted in the labor of your slaves

               should suffer the august John Quincy Adams   

               to speak with so much passion of the right   

               of chattel slaves to kill their lawful masters   

               and with his Roman rhetoric weave a hero’s   

               garland for Cinquez. I tell you that   

               we are determined to return to Cuba

               with our slaves and there see justice done. Cinquez—

               or let us say ‘the Prince’—Cinquez shall die.”

    The deep immortal human wish,   

    the timeless will:

               Cinquez its deathless primaveral image,   

               life that transfigures many lives.

    Voyage through death

                                  to life upon these shores

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43076/middle-passage