Why is it so often that humiliation and grace appear together, or in close proximity, if we are willing to listen?
Do you remember a hugely humiliating time, when you were little, perhaps, when your spirit was reduced to cringing ashes?
And did anyone or anything insert a saving grace?
I Break All the Rules at Ben Franklin Elementary
I am talking to a hundred of them
about death, God and the Indians
when one of them farts loudly
and time stops;
the silence and the stink hang there.
All of the scoldings and whippings
and public humiliations are not enough
to stifle the low wave of giggles
and then I say, Who farted?
All hell breaks loose.
The teachers are lined up along one wall;
their faces freeze over.
The principal rises, her jaw set like iron pipe.
Jeffrey, she intones in an icy rage,
you go wait in my office. NOW.
The little boy rises from the sacred circle
I have so carefully made. No, I say,
able to save only one face, hers or his.
I put my arm around him and sit him
up front, next to me. When I am done
she comes up to me with a look that
would bring God to heel.
3 things you never do in a school,
she says handing me my $50 check,
Talk about God or death
or violate a teacher’s authority.
I give her back the check,
which stops her in mid-reprimand.
She seems pleased and dumbfounded.
As I walk to my car, the students along
one side of the building bang the windows
and wave to me. They do not know
I have just purchased Jeffrey’s redemption,
all they know is that here is a man
who laughs at farts and
does not like the principal.
—Red Hawk
Humiliate, by root definition, means to bring low, to be made humble. So although we tend to avoid humiliation like some dread plague, the agonized captivity of it can somehow spring the trap for the soul’s release. Take two of the most humiliated women in Shakespeare’s plays, Desdemona and Ophelia. Hamlet wounds Ophelia’s heart cruelly, infecting her with his scorn and germy indecisiveness, until she drowns herself in the river. Desdemona—Othello’s perfectly attuned true wife—suffers at his hands literally, when he is duped into believing she has cuckolded him. Othello strangles her at play’s end.
Put them in Pasternak’s hands and you get this.
English Lessons
When it was Desdemona’s time to sing,
and so little life was left to her,
she wept, not over love, her star,
but over willow, willow, willow.
When it was Desdemona’s time to sing
and her murmuring softened the stones
around the black day, her blacker demon
prepared a psalm of weeping streams.
When it was Ophelia’s time to sing,
and so little life was left to her,
the dryness of her soul was swept away
like straws from haystacks in a storm.
When it was Ophelia’s time to sing,
and the bitterness of tears was more
than she could bear, what trophies
did she hold? Willow, and columbine.
Stepping out of all that grief,
they entered, with faint hearts
the pool of the universe and quenched
their bodies with other worlds.
—Boris Pasternak, tr. by Mark Rudman and Bohdan Boychuk
Northwestern U Press, “My Sister—Life”
I am talking to a hundred of them
about death, God and the Indians
when one of them farts loudly
and time stops;
the silence and the stink hang there.
All of the scoldings and whippings
and public humiliations are not enough
to stifle the low wave of giggles
and then I say, Who farted?
All hell breaks loose.
The teachers are lined up along one wall;
their faces freeze over.
The principal rises, her jaw set like iron pipe.
Jeffrey, she intones in an icy rage,
you go wait in my office. NOW.
The little boy rises from the sacred circle
I have so carefully made. No, I say,
able to save only one face, hers or his.
I put my arm around him and sit him
up front, next to me. When I am done
she comes up to me with a look that
would bring God to heel.
3 things you never do in a school,
she says handing me my $50 check,
Talk about God or death
or violate a teacher’s authority.
I give her back the check,
which stops her in mid-reprimand.
She seems pleased and dumbfounded.
As I walk to my car, the students along
one side of the building bang the windows
and wave to me. They do not know
I have just purchased Jeffrey’s redemption,
all they know is that here is a man
who laughs at farts and
does not like the principal.
—Red Hawk
Humiliate, by root definition, means to bring low, to be made humble. So although we tend to avoid humiliation like some dread plague, the agonized captivity of it can somehow spring the trap for the soul’s release. Take two of the most humiliated women in Shakespeare’s plays, Desdemona and Ophelia. Hamlet wounds Ophelia’s heart cruelly, infecting her with his scorn and germy indecisiveness, until she drowns herself in the river. Desdemona—Othello’s perfectly attuned true wife—suffers at his hands literally, when he is duped into believing she has cuckolded him. Othello strangles her at play’s end.
Put them in Pasternak’s hands and you get this.
English Lessons
When it was Desdemona’s time to sing,
and so little life was left to her,
she wept, not over love, her star,
but over willow, willow, willow.
When it was Desdemona’s time to sing
and her murmuring softened the stones
around the black day, her blacker demon
prepared a psalm of weeping streams.
When it was Ophelia’s time to sing,
and so little life was left to her,
the dryness of her soul was swept away
like straws from haystacks in a storm.
When it was Ophelia’s time to sing,
and the bitterness of tears was more
than she could bear, what trophies
did she hold? Willow, and columbine.
Stepping out of all that grief,
they entered, with faint hearts
the pool of the universe and quenched
their bodies with other worlds.
—Boris Pasternak, tr. by Mark Rudman and Bohdan Boychuk
Northwestern U Press, “My Sister—Life”
Grace/release usually comes utterly unexpectedly.
One great example of this comes in Father Gregory Boyle’s Tattoos on the Heart. Boyle is a brand new priest, serving in Bolivia. He’s asked to give Mass at a native Quechua community high in the mountains where locals harvest flowers for their living. He starts a flop sweat on the drive up, because not only does he not speak Spanish well, he doesn’t even know mass in English without his missive, which of course he is missing. These people have not received holy communion for a decade. They await Father Boyle in a huge open field, hundreds of them.
He recalls, “I hobble and fake my way through the liturgy of the Word, aided by the health workers, who read everything in Quechua . . .
One great example of this comes in Father Gregory Boyle’s Tattoos on the Heart. Boyle is a brand new priest, serving in Bolivia. He’s asked to give Mass at a native Quechua community high in the mountains where locals harvest flowers for their living. He starts a flop sweat on the drive up, because not only does he not speak Spanish well, he doesn’t even know mass in English without his missive, which of course he is missing. These people have not received holy communion for a decade. They await Father Boyle in a huge open field, hundreds of them.
He recalls, “I hobble and fake my way through the liturgy of the Word, aided by the health workers, who read everything in Quechua . . .
I’m like someone who’s been in a major car accident. I can’t remember a thing . . . lifting the bread and wine whenever I run out of things to say, I can’t imagine this Mass going worse.
When it is over, I am left spent and humiliated. I am wandering adrift, trying to gather my shattered self back together again . . . I turn to discover that I have been abandoned. The field where we celebrated Mass has been vacated . . . I am alone at the top of this mountain, stuck, not only without a ride, but in stultifying humiliation. I am convinced that a worse priest has never visited this place or walked this earth.
With my backpack snug on my shoulder and spirit deflated, I begin to make the long walk down the mountain and back to town. But before I leave . . . an old Quechua campesino, seemingly out of nowhere, makes his way to me. He appears ancient . . . As he nears me, I see he is wearing tethered wool pants, with a white buttoned shirt greatly frayed at the collar. He has a rope for a belt. His suit coat is coarse and worn. He has a fedora, toughened by the years. He is wearing huaraches, and his feet are caked with Bolivian mud. Any place that a human face can have wrinkles and creases, he has them. He is at least a foot shorter than I am, and he stands right in front of me and says, ‘Tatai.’
This is Quechua for Padrecito, a word packed with affection, and a charming intimacy. He looks up at me, with penetrating, weary eyes and says, ‘Tatai, gracias por haber venido’ (Thanks for coming).
I think of something to say, but nothing comes to me. Which is just as well, because before I can speak, the old campesino reaches into the pockets of his suit coat and retrieves two fistfuls of multicolored rose petals. He’s on the tips of his toes and gestures that I might assist with the inclination of my head. And so he drops the petals over my head, and I’m without words. He digs into his pockets again and manages two more fistfuls of petals. He does this again and again, and the store of red, pink, and yellow rose petals seems infinite. I just stand there and let him do this, staring at my own huaraches, now moistened with my tears, covered with rose petals. Finally, he takes his leave and I’m left there, alone, with only the bright aroma of roses.”
--Tattoos on the Heart p. 36-38
