Crumbling Walls

For those of my readers not in the US, tomorrow is a pretty important US holiday: Thanksgiving, or in my house better known as "Turkey Day" because I am all for feasts and giving thanks for the yearly harvest this time of year, but just can't swallow the dominant narrative of happy Indians generously sharing a feast of turkey and more with the colonial invaders who were soon to murder and displace their welcoming neighbors. Especially this year, in the midst of images of war and displacement all around us, I just can't pretend that all is well on Planet Earth.

As both a historian and a German, I have been having a hard time these past few weeks, months, and years with making sense of the world. Many times, I have wondered whether my beloved friend, soul sister, and wise counsel Lillian Bridges, who died unexpectedly from cancer about two years ago way too young in her sixties, saw the future, whether unconsciously or consciously, and on some level sensed that it wasn’t worth fighting to stick around for. In my clear moments, I know that Lillian had simply finished her life’s work and fulfilled her mìng (destiny, or “Golden Path”), passing on her family’s wisdom and teachings. But I also know how much the crassness, ugliness, and hatred of the Trump years, compounded by the isolation and trauma of the pandemic, hurt her tender loving heart. It is no coincidence that we both quite literally lost our ability to see when things got too bad, whether from allergies, styes, or (in my case at one point) a bee sting…

I am blessed with a pretty strong body and resilient constitution, which I take ruthless advantage of, from swimming naked in snowstorms to slinging hay bales to swinging a chain saw or working on the computer 60 hours a week when in the final stages of writing and publishing a book. So, when I do get sick, I pay attention. And usually can figure out what the message is. This past week, I got violently ill with a throat infection that left me voiceless for most of a week. I also incidentally banged my head pretty hard on the chicken coop when I had to do animal chores even though I was running a fever, giving myself a concussion that made my ears ring and computer work impossible. In a way it was a relief to just lie down and doze for a few days, instead of trying to figure out how to be effective as a force of goodness and love and peace in a world that seems overrun with news of atrocities and hatred and senseless human-caused suffering. It was humbling and important to just be with the suffering, knowing that there was nothing I could do physically. I tried to facilitate another healing sound bath recording at one point, like the one I recorded with Brenda Hood on October 22, but the technology just didn’t work out. It wasn’t meant to be. When the time is right, we’ll try it again, we promise. In the meantime, how many of you have sat down and made friends with this hard question:

What can I personally do right now, in this moment, to be a force for goodness and peace in the world?

In some iteration, this question has been with me since October 7, and before that since last year’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Most days, I wake up with it and go to sleep with it. I scribble in my notebook. I contemplate it while walking the dog. I discuss it with friends and neighbors, near and far. Every once in a while, I hit on something small but useful, like a fundraiser last year for herbs and needles for my Polish friends treating Ukrainian refugees. Or that healing soundbath I recorded for Brenda.

For the most part, I bake, make kimchi, love up my goats, bury my head in ancient Chinese texts, and walk. I stay informed on the news even though it hurts my soul and I have to take it in doses, dipping my toe in and pulling it out quickly when it threatens to overwhelm me, because it often feels too close to home and too triggering for my own fragile nervous system recovering from my personal and intergenerational experiences. As a German, I am acutely aware of the trauma that war brings to both sides, the victims and the perpetrators, in the moment and for generations to follow. The way I see it, no matter the outcome, the only people winning in a war are the angry and greedy and narcissistic old men at the very top giving orders from a safe distance and sending their young men (and women) into the inferno.

I have always been a pacifist, and remember getting into nasty arguments with a very smart and much slicker, more eloquent and less emotional Chinese colleague in graduate school in Arizona when I naively tried to defend my anti-war position as a descendant of Nazis. How could it not have been a good thing that the Germans got bombed by the Allied forces and were made to surrender, as the only way to finally stop Hitler and end World War Two? And yet, was the destruction of my hometown of Würzburg in Bavaria by Allied fire bombing, 89% of the historic downtown in less than 20 minutes in a town full of historic cathedrals, hospitals, and starving refugees with zero military value at a time when the war was pretty much over anyway, necessary? Beneficial? Justified? I still don’t have a good rational response in defense of pacifism. I honestly don’t know what I could have possibly told Ukrainians defending their country against Russian tanks rolling towards Kiev last year. Or even what I would do if I had to protect my precious daughter… And truly, who am I to even open my mouth and make any sort of judgment? That is why I think the universe took my voice away for a week and made me just shut up and sit still.

As Wang Fengyi always taught, 不怨人 bú yuàn rén “Do Not Blame!”

These days, I see so much passion, so much anger and righteous judgment flying around, the dance of metal and wood in the Five-Element way of looking at human behavior, if you know what I mean. And in the midst of justified (but perhaps not helpful?) emotional upheaval, I also observe a fair amount of SELF-righteousness. The small act of forwarding aninformational social media post or link to an article may be justified and/or understandable, and may feel good in the moment as an act of us versus them, right versus wrong, good versus evil. But if and when we are able to take a step back and ask ourselves calmly whether this action is one that contributes to peace and healing in the world, the answer may surprise us. While many of us feel a great urge to do something, anything, to show our support for our suffering friends near and far, sometimes it may in fact be better to remain silent than to further fan the emotional flames. And just to be clear, I am writing this as advice for me as much as advice for you! In any given situation, is my choice to remain silent an act of doing that minimizes harm, or is it the sort of passive by-standing that made the Nazi atrocities possible? Can we consider this choice through the lens of Daoist無為 (wúwéi non-interference) versus Confucian wéi 為 (interference)? And is there ever a clear answer on whether one may be better than the other?

In this context, it may help to remember that the atrocities currently being committed by both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are nothing new in the history of humanity. I grew up with stories of desperate mothers and children, including my own parents and both grandmothers, scrounging around for food and fuel in bombed out cities full of nothing but rubble, literally “shellshocked” by far too many nights in bomb shelters when their homes were turned into dust above them. I have inherited my grandmothers’ insomnia, nightmares, and fear of losing my child. We have no family heirlooms because on my mother’s side we are refugees, and on my father’s side, it all went up in flames. Like so many other German families, my family history comes to a screeching halt with my grandparents’ generation, and there is only dead silence beyond that.

I grew up in a country and continent with mass displacement and centuries of war due to historical circumstances out of the control of the vast majority of the suffering populations. Which only ended (with the exception of World War I and II), when we were able to export that bloodshed to other continents in the form of colonization. And I now live in a country and community on Whidbey Island north of Seattle where the displacement of the indigenous communities by colonizing invaders happened only a few generations ago, in the very recent past from a European perspective. In spite of this bitter history of immense suffering, betrayal, injustice and trauma, amply documented in photographs and personal narratives, the process has been so complete, the brain-washing so thorough, the European narrative so dominant, that most (White) Americans can celebrate the myth of Thanksgiving as the story when white settlers feasted harmoniously with their happy, kind, sharing native neighbors who welcomed them with open arms. It behooves all of us to remember who we are, where we stand, and whose blood fertilized the land that our crops grow in. Wasn’t it Jesus who said something about not throwing stones?

At the same time, I grew up just a short drive from a wall running through the middle of my native country of Germany, a deathly swath of barbed wire and mines and floodlights that young men were forced to guard night and day, shooting to kill anybody trying to make it across to the other side, whether they were looking for a banana or freedom of speech. I shall never forget walking through the infamous “Checkpoint Charlie” in Berlin and entering a different world in communist Germany, spending a few hours sightseeing and shopping for cheap sheet music in the grey uniformity of East Berlin under the cruel thumb of Russian communism. Unlike the German girl I met for ice cream, the daughter of my mother’s friend from “the other side,” at the end of the day I was free to return to the West under the icy glare of Russian soldiers pointing their machine guns at me but unable to harm me or stop me from leaving because of my European passport.

And then, one day --November 9, 1989, to be specific,-- that wall and the regime that had created and maintained it crumbled and disappeared seemingly overnight! Families and friends and communities and the country began the long dreamed of, but not all that easy process of reunification after almost three decades of division. Maybe that childhood experience is what formed my intense dislike for men in uniforms and governments with power trips. I was in Taiwan at the time when the wall came down, studying Chinese and having limited access to international news before the age of the internet. At first, we all thought the news about the end of the wall and the oppressive German regime was just more Taiwanese government propaganda because it just seemed impossible to believe, coming at a time of heightened tension only a few months after the heart-breaking Tiananmen massacre.

I am currently reading a book about the history of East Germany to give me hope and perspective. 1989 was a dark time too, but a time when the horrors in another land didn’t invade our living rooms and lived reality in quite the same way, because we weren’t so interconnected and didn’t have close friends in far-away places who we communicated with on WhatsApp and on social media. For better or for worse, our current exposure to the wars raging on the other side of the world is unprecedented, as is our experience of those wars through the direct connection so many of us have with friends and family members who are living through the reality of these wars. What I witness around me right now is that many of us, quite frankly in dark moments including myself, don’t feel like we have the emotional tools, the life experiences, the spiritual resources to cope with this experience. If you are feeling this too, please take really good care of your tender heart and hurting soul. And remember, war has always been part of the human experience. Yes, the current moment is a very potent opportunity for cultivation and growth and transformation of each of us individually and communally and nationally and even globally, but it must be balanced with love, with healing, with kindness and beauty. With a child’s smile, the goat’s loving meeeeehhhhh, Brenda Hood’s singing bowls, the neighbor’s gift of cookies and chicken soup, the owl’s hooting and the hummingbird’s dancing. Take the time to do whatever eases your mind, like me spending two hours last night stirring goat milk and sugar to make a batch of cajeta. Listen to the cedar. Translate Laozi. Kiss a horse. Notice the weed flowering in the crack of cement. Or crank up the music for a spontaneous dance party.

With much love,

Sabine

A child placing a flower in a crack of a remaining section of the Berlin wall, on the 25th anniversary of it coming down, in 2014.