Non-Yielding: Exception, Rules, and Riddles (Day 21)

I cannot give any solid explanation to today’s writings, but merely shadows of understanding that may lead someone else to a better way. I have no answer to these problems, only more riddles.

At home I bug people by asking, “Do passing lanes exist because we have no patience, or do we have no patience because we have passing lanes?” This question cannot reveal any truth here in Haiti, because it pre-supposes order and law on the road—and even staying on the road, for that matter. We could reform the question for Haiti as: “Is there chaos on the road because there is no patience, or is there no patience because there is chaos on the road?”

In Rockbridge County I very often use slow traffic and country roads as a mindfulness practice—I can remain patient because I have nowhere to be (even if I do) and I can enjoy the beautiful scenery as I go. I often do not pass a tractor when I could in order to remember and implement the training of Buddhist teacher Thich Naht Hahn: “Wherever your car goes, you go too.” I have been having an internal struggle as I drive in Port-au-Prince, because I do not know if this mentality can even work. There is so much aggression here on the road that, even if you let someone pass by you or yield to their wanting to enter the stream of traffic, three cars will pull around from behind and go around you, making the traffic even more confused and belligerent.

Basically, if you yielded all the time, you would get nowhere. Order is maintained by taking initiative.

There is a certain level of aggression that has to be maintained in order to survive, road wise. Then that aggression eases into situations where you do not necessarily need to pass a tap-tap stopped on the road, but you feel like you want to anyway. Then you realize, “I am driving aggressively with people in the car, and, therefore, not as safely as I should.” Then three people come around you from behind and pass you by veering into oncoming traffic. Of course, no one wears seat belts of any kind, nor are there regulations enforced that say that you must drive with headlights at night.

Often more difficult to deal with than other drivers, there are poor children that come and beg money from you as you drive by. Some of them are obviously malnourished, streaks of red-hair framing their dull, angry faces, “M grangou!”

I am hungry.

Normally I would have no thought in giving some change to anyone who asked for it. It is a good practice to keep a pocket full of ones and change in all big cities for the homeless and the downtrodden. If you were to do that in downtown Port-au-Prince, you are in for a lot of trouble.

First, if you give money to one child, all three other “ti moun” with her want, even demand, money, too.
Second, if you give money to a child on one block, somehow the children on the next block know that you are coming, waiting for your car.
Third, if you give money to children on a regular basis, they recognize and mark your car for repeat business.

They are aggressive, clingy, often rude, and subtlety racist (all white people are rich and therefore must give me money), but one cannot blame them for their misery (how much we complain at even less in our well-fed, well-lit, well-built lives in the United States).

Our Lord mandated that we give money to those who ask us. At what point, then, does practicality stop you from actively feeding the poor?

I have been in the orphanage where children are sick, dying, have tuberculosis, probably HIV or AIDS, and it gives me pause—but I would not discourage anyone from giving of themselves by picking one of them up, comforting their broken bodies, staring into their often empty eyes. In fact, I would always encourage the experience. How then, could I withhold something as hollow and empty as money? One could use the anti-capitalistic “love of money” argument, that money will not make them any happier, but this concept does not fit the situation, like trying to teach a parrot sign language. If someone cannot eat, then they cannot worry about their spirit—they are in too much pain. Only those who can eat freely can fast freely. What to do when this nurturing act is overwhelmed with exceptions and even danger?

Richard Rohr points out that masculine spirituality is that of action, making a difference, asserting oneself; for him, feminine spirituality is that which is normally taught by the church: silence, contemplation, simplicity. He wonders, though, if the church has focused too much on yielding (to use my own words for sake of summary), this feminine receptivity, instead of teaching us to move forward, actively, as Jesus did, trusting the masculine version of God, Abba, Father. The end result, however way you approach it, is integration of the two poles into one spiritual reality.

Last night I chanced upon the daily reading for July 9th in my Taoism reader, titled “Nonyielding.” It discusses the reality of the world’s competitiveness and suffering. For Taoists, the world is an arena for warriors (for masculine action, Father Rohr would likely concur), but outside the ebb, flow, and sway of this aggression, one must affirm compassion always. One must return inwards to the source of life, which they call Tao, which we call God, Father and Mother, having been involved in activity during the day.
It is a spiral staircase of polarities.

I forgot it was the solstice yesterday. “All of life is cycles. All of life is balance,” reminds master Ming-Dao. The sun has reached its peak of light, then returns to the ebbing darkness of winter—only to rise again; it is a “resurrection of the spring” as my friend Chris Edwards and others have dubbed it. But it is not permanent. It goes back and forth, fading and appearing. I have been writing on the yielding nature of The Way, but I have been neglectful of nonyielding as a component part of living. Life is paradox and so cannot have a simple polarity. The integration of action and contemplation, assertion and compassion—these seem to be the recurring themes for my trip. Walking upwards and downwards on the staircase as it bridges the edge of the horizon.

In an earlier writing, our now-familiar Taoist has written on returning, this profound possibility out of exceptions: “This back and forth movement between the source and the activity of life is the movement of all things.” It is the horizon’s riddle and answer.

As my trip begins to turn towards the past like the day-after-solstice sun, I will soon return back to Lexington. But perhaps I can begin to reconcile the arena of Port-au-Prince’s aggressive streets with patience, impoverished urchins with withholding money.
Some days I will let them pass. Some days I will give out money. As we now see two sides, we can see the whole coin. We can flip it into the air as God would see fit for us and take the riddle wherever it lands, on the street or in la mer. And the horizon will gleam.

EDH: 10PM-6:30 AM, 7:30-7:40AM