The Squirming Buddha
By Robert C. Koehler
September 17, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" -
The world hemorrhages. Refugees flow from its
wounds.
Is there a way to be innocent of this?
People are washed ashore. They die of suffocation
in humanity-stuffed trucks. They flee war and politics; they flee
starvation. And finally, we don’t even have sufficient air for them
to breathe.
For words to matter about all this, they have to
express more than “concern” or even outrage – that is to say, they
have to cut internally as well as externally. They have to cut into
our own lives and personal comfort. They have to cut as deep as
prayer.
“Wonderful column, Bob. It brings up the
post-Katrina images of armed citizens blocking a bridge so that our
own refugees could not infest their neighborhoods.”
These are the words of my sister, Sue Melcher, who
emailed me last week in response to my column about the refugee
crisis and the global shock over the picture of 3-year-old Alan
Kurdi’s body, which washed ashore in Turkey after his family’s boat
capsized during the short crossing to the Greek island of Kos in
their attempt to flee to Germany. As she let her personal feelings
wash ashore as well, I thought about where I had not gone with that
column: into the realm of personal responsibility for the larger
welfare of the human race.
“I thought,” she went on, “of offering to open my
home, and then the multiple worries, inconveniences, fears, etc.,
etc. sounded in, trumpets shooting fire as ‘practical arguments’
shot down compassion.
“What in my life today, in myself, in my
community, in my culture, prepares ME, not some other person in some
border area trying to live his or her own complicated life, what
prepares ME to take in a refugee?”
This is where I felt the cut of razor wire.
“My bigger TV? The little glider in my backyard?
Any of my stuff? My careful savings in order to have enough to pay
my quarterly estimated taxes and what’ll come due next April? My
love of poetry and Shakespeare? . . . I look around at my
conservative neighbors, who and wherever they are, and I wonder just
how very different I am — not in what I believe but in what I will
actually do.
“I’d contribute money — and occasionally do — but
to which Band-Aid?”
I open this door of uncertainty not to pretend I
have answers but precisely because I don’t.
Sue concluded: “I really and truly do not know how
to work effectively for the changes that are needed. I know it is
not ‘up to me’ — thank goodness for that — but my day-to-day life
just leaves me so unfit for much more. Even taking the time for this
email effort at dialogue means that I’ve blown the window of time I
had to maybe catch up on my paperwork, a daily and weekly depressing
dilemma for me. I’ve never fit in solidly with collective humanity,
and that I have not remedied this in any realistic way, I can truly
attest, is a failing.”
I confess not knowing what to say in response. I
think about the words of Somali-British poet Warsan Shire: “no one
leaves home unless/home is the mouth of a shark . . .” I think about
the refugees in my own city, Chicago, standing at intersections
holding signs that plead for help. Help means money. Maybe it also
means eye contact. Sometimes I don’t even have any of the latter to
spare.
But no, that’s not quite it. Eye contact can be
the beginning of God knows what. A dozen years ago I gave eye
contact to an old friend, a Guatemalan who had fled U.S.-sponsored
hell in his native country in the 1980s. I’d written about him when
I was a reporter. We were friends, but I hadn’t seen him in a long
time.
Then, there he was. It was 2004, a year into
George Bush’s occupation of Iraq. We were at the Federal Building,
at the end of a march protesting the war. When I saw him, my blood
ran cold because I could tell in an instant that his life had
collapsed. I could tell that he was destitute and homeless and
utterly lost and the last thing I wanted to give him was eye
contact, but I did. And with it I offered him the mirage of hope.
We talked. I invited him for dinner. He was a
skilled carpenter and did some work for me. Eventually, a few months
into our reconnection, I invited him to move into my house. He lived
there for almost five years.
This was not an easy situation. His spiritual
wounds were deep; he treated them with alcohol. I know that I helped
him, but I don’t think I would be so open again. I’m careful about
the eye contact I dole out, but I cannot sever myself from a sense
of responsibility to others in need.
Once I found a $10 bill in a parking garage. As I
exited the garage, I passed a man panhandling for spare change and
kept on walking, but half a block later, stopped, paralyzed with
guilt. Whose money had I just found? I returned to the panhandler,
reached into my pocket and dug out a dollar in change. I was still
$9 ahead. As I continued to my destination (a movie theater), I felt
my inner Buddha squirming inside me with disappointment. I had
selfishly kept the bulk of my lucky find, to be squandered, no
doubt, on junk food. And suddenly I knew the title of my
autobiography, if I ever wrote it: The Squirming Buddha.
I hate the idea of razor wire on national borders.
I am torn apart by the suffering of refugees and the bombastic
manipulation of politicians, who try to turn the planet’s most
vulnerable into national enemies. But like my sister I don’t trust
or understand my relationship with collective humanity. Who are we
in relation to others? What do we owe them? What do we owe
ourselves? How do we unite in all our flawed humanity? Let the
dialogue begin.
Robert Koehler, a Chicago reporter and editor
for over 30 years, proudly calls himself a peace journalist
© 2015
Common Wonders