McCullough's John Adams: United and Apart is Best

I. United--while Divided--We Stand

Fortunately, in our home we share a love of American history--and a really, really good story--and so all have been positively glued to the HBO series based on David McCullough's Pulitzer Prize winning biography, John Adams. The script is true to McCullough's text--he was very involved in its treatment for the screen. As I watch, I am also aware of how much more my freedom, and the responsibility to protect it, have come to mean to me as I have aged, suffered, celebrated, and lived through 9/11 and a complex war now five years running with no resolution in sight.

The "good story" that the mini-series hinges upon, is the power and paradox inherent in compromise without surrendering integrity. In other words: how to win while losing, how to be true while allowing what you oppose to transpire.

During the debate over how to deal with British King George's policy of taxation without representation in the Colonies, Pennsylvania Quaker John Dickinson made an impassioned--and impressive--case for pacifism, not insurrection. More impressive was his ultimate decision, made when he realized that he was not in the majority, to heed the advice of fellow Continental Congress delegate Ben Franklin, and "be indisposed" when it came time to vote on whether to declare war on Britain. Understanding Dickinson's anguish over what he knew would be monstrous, and perhaps useless, bloodshed--how could one not be moved?

I was. And it caused me to reflect on our current election--a process made possible by men like Dickinson and Franklin who were willing to stay with the dilemmas presented them until they had resolved them. Unlike what I keep hearing from presidential race watchers who say that we need to all just "come together" and stop the partisanship, Dickinson did not unite with his colleagues. Nor did he fight them with intimidating words or intrigue, other than to agree to be "indisposed." He also did not, at least not publicly, vilify his colleagues. He remained true to himself. He was a hero, even though he failed to stop the violence he loathed. His thoughtful maturity showed him that the world is imperfect, and that to have an open heart and mind, and to consider the views of others while still being paradoxically convicted of a Truth, was the best way to serve and protect.

Concurrent with this mini-series are the events unfolding in Tibet and one of the most arresting political moves I have ever witnessed: the Tibetan-leader-in-exile, and non-violent, Nobel Peace Prize winner, Dalai Lama, saying he will abdicate his political position (albeit, remain a Buddhist spiritual leader) if his followers in Tibet do not end their violent insurrection. These are people who have been tortured, degraded, and oppressed by the Chinese for half a century, atrocities which the Dalai Lama fully knows--probably better than anyone, and yet he is choosing NOT to unite with his people, i.e., not support their choice. What a paradox! He opposes what the Chinese have done, and yet in order to encourage his people to stay unified with him in principle, he opposes them, too! What will happen? I am riveted.

Knowing that there are guns pointed at you by merciless souls...is there a right answer for how to achieve peaceful freedom in the face of them? Is freedom worth death?

Leaders have to lead and take decisive action, even when they have misgivings. The Dalai Lama has certainly made a decisive statement--what is more powerful than an ultimatum, but the actual execution of it? As for Dickinson, he eventually did support the Declaration of Independence, and the Revolution itself. He didn't condone the violence, but he saw that it was the chosen way to freedom, even if it wasn't his choice.

These men demonstrate that we don't need to all "come together" in the sense that I hear the talking heads suggest. That's for sissies. The pacivists among us, and perhaps the warriors as well, might agree that it's much safer for us to be adults, united and apart at the same time.

II. United while Divided and Standing on Fishes
I wrote this back in November 2004, after hearing John Kerry's concession speech to George W. Bush. I think it's even more true today as we scuffle through election 2008...

The defining moment for me in this year’s presidential election was when my mother, a life-long Republican who lives in a quite un-environmentally sound “McMansion,” informed me that she had joined the Green Party and was voting for John Kerry.

It made sense.

Also an avid gardener, bird watcher and “see-the-beauty” Sunday driver who, when we were kids, taught my brother and me to survive in the woods (but never to hunt), my mother recently had challenged a developer backed by the local Republican machinery and had, against the odds, won. Her efforts resulted in the patch of land in question being declared “open space,” protected in perpetuity from development.

My mother’s subsequent change of parties seemed to me a natural progression of this victory; it was not an act of spite, but a current reflection of how protecting what she loves had changed how she defined herself.

But love in action, whether it is of ideals, of country, or of home and hearth, is a shadowy thing. Sometimes, we twine ourselves tightly around what we hold dear, wringing the very life out of it until, eventually, all that remains is our own form twisted around the memory of what once was. Sometimes we call this “tradition” when what it truly has become for us is a prison of our design.

Other times, we are inchoate and uncommitted, taking our loves for granted, either because we are arrogant or because we are truly incapable of fully understanding something or someone’s significance in our lives, until the day we are thunder-clapped with regret to find that our beloved ideal, lover, homeland, what-have-you has slipped away and we are powerless to restore it to its former place.

So that what we love does not elude us, we must commit to letting the shape of what we love shift. It is as though, as the poet Rilke wrote in his poem, “Moving Forward,” we must be willing to “stand on fishes,” letting the currents flow around us and carry us deeper, ever mindful not to let them carry us away.

Ultimately, my mother is not bound by party lines. Her seeming incongruities—her conspicuous consumption of land for her super-sized home juxtaposed against her doggedness in battle to preserve an oak grove and a fox den—merely indicate she is rooted in the land of her true self: a passionate devotee of all things beautiful. By switching parties, I see my mother as digging deeper into the earth of her soul, not careening around the political landscape looking for a slogan or a candidate to define what matters to her. Other changes in how she sees herself and what choices she makes as a result might still be to come...

Senator Kerry said that in his concessionary call to President Bush, the two, “talked about the danger of division in our country and the need - the desperate need - for unity, for finding common ground and coming together."

Perhaps that “common ground” will be easier to reach if, like my mother, we are willing to first visit the interior landscapes beyond the fences of our proscribed, public identities. Perhaps for many this is “fishy” territory: a place where we fear there are too many surprises to assimilate and so would rather not tread.

Yet, coming together as a nation seems impossible if we are not wise and patient enough as individuals to know it is that interior place that is constant and true, not the boundaries we construct around it. Our convictions might not change, the way we define them probably will. This does not mean we are fractured, simply that we are alive to the currents within and committed to letting them flow.

Which brings me back to what my tree-hugging, house-proud mother’s announcement caused me to realize: we are not a nation divided so much as a nation in-between. Our unity relies not upon resolving our differences so much as living with them.

In order to protect what we love in this nation we must learn to stand on fishes.

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