Sort The Beans, Free The Mind*

The passage of years can change a person’s opinions on most anything. So it came to pass on the subject of beans. That shift was a long time coming. Beans were an infrequent visitor to the tables of my younger days. Kidney beans sometimes joined us under cover of chili. Bean soup brought navy beans or their kin. I do remember enjoying those dishes, even though I have no clear memories of the taste of those beans. They were never considered with the same enthusiasm reserved for fried chicken or spaghetti with meatballs or my mother’s (via her mother) potato salad. Those dishes made me happy to see them on the table at dinnertime.

Not so with the beans. Have you ever made pleasant small talk on an elevator, or in line at the grocery store? Beans seemed the gustatory equivalent of that chatter: it made the encounter enjoyable but unlikely in the long run to take up residence in the warehouse of imagination. Beans were okay but my palate focused its attention on the matrices that supported them. Matrices of salty broth or spicy sauce. In fairness, the household of my youth was no hotbed of bean culture. The olla of Mexico, the bean pot of New England, these were strangers to our kitchen. It was simply a pot. Cans were the delivery method. Such reality explained my long belief that little was to be done with beans.

The years would prove me wrong. Happily, happily wrong.

In terms of taste memory, the first major shift in thinking was triggered by a dish that was neither chili nor navy bean soup. It was refried beans. Where I had them is lost to the mists of history. The effect on my palate was not. Beans, simple and good. Another door opened in the mind’s kitchen. I finally had an inkling of the possibilities inherent in a food that, to date had not captured the imagination. Eating beans ceased being incidental and became a purposeful activity. True discovery began.

True discovery requires commitment. Commitment eluded me at first. Bean possibilities were unearthed but not pursued. The acquisition of new knowledge, in my mind, appeared low in relation to its costs. Consequently, enlightenment was slow. I recognized the laziness in myself. It carried with it a faint, sour whiff of prejudice: that beans were still too humble to take seriously. Later in life, this would be a source of culinary shame.

The second major shift in my thinking occurred after an encounter with charro beans. It was in a restaurant in Washington, D.C. The name of that establishment escapes me now, but the charros? They delivered a heartfelt (bellyfelt?) message. Swimming in a spicy broth laced with chorizo and jalapeno chilies, these beans were well-made, delicious, an exemplar of the style (as I later discovered). That happy congruency of place and food would lay in my subconscious for decades. Curiosity took the reins to lead an on-again, off-again relationship with beans.

Fast forward about a baker’s dozen set of years. Curiosity reawakened. I embarked on a research program that has lasted into the present day. I was, as Thoreau put it in Walden, “determined to know beans.”

Thoreau also posed a great question, asking “What shall I learn of beans or beans of me?” One of the most important lessons for me also took the longest to sink in. The lesson was of the time involved to respectfully cook beans. While cooking beans at a basic level is simple, time and attention are key to crafting a good pot. A hard head and impatience kept me from properly fulfilling those criteria. Consequently, excellence in beans constantly hovered just out of reach. Serendipity leant a hand one fateful Saturday afternoon. Circumstances conspired to push me. In my pantry were pinto beans. On the clock, there was plenty time. Fortune favored my hunger in that onions, garlic, and dried chilies were on hand, too. All the earmarks of good, basic pot beans. Cooking them slowly was not a conscious decision on my part, but it was meant to be that day.

Dozing off in a chair certainly contributed to the slowness. The heat was down very low. Everything simmered undisturbed while I slumbered.

It is grand to awaken to a home redolent of the good earth. What a blessing we should all have! The pot, low on water, needed a good stirring. If the color and aroma were any indication, dinner that night was going to be good. Really good. The pintos did not disappoint. I reckoned it was the best pot of beans I ever had the good luck to cook. I finally understood the importance of time as an ingredient. The lesson sank in. I know it is true because in some subsequent batches of beans when I succumbed to impatience, the quality suffered. The mistakes get eaten, though, because so far mediocre beans have always been better than no beans. Time plus patience equals goodness.

Time investment in cooking is not the sole arbiter of goodness. Time investment also extends to the prepping of the beans before they even grace the pot. Sorting, rinsing, and soaking the beans are all key steps. They may not have as much say in the taste of the beans but they have high gravity in deriving satisfaction from the process. I did not understand this until relatively recently, much to my chagrin. It was not that those things were not done, it was that I was blind to their value in creating a flow state of cooking. A state where even the so-called drudgery of such actions is performed mindfully, with focus, and knowing they all give energy to a savory, satisfactory outcome.

So it came to be. Sorting is now a favorite part of the process, one to look forward to rather than sighing at with impatience. Sorting serves the practical need to check for pebbles, dirt, and other interlopers. It has the spiritual value of a simple thing, done well, from love.

Sorting, as with many things in life, is not immune to bias, benign or otherwise. This truth I did not understand until earlier this year. Prior to that revelation my sorting had diligently followed the prevailing wisdoms and voices I trusted. Ridding one’s beans of pebbles and dirt is, and always will be, sound advice for anyone determined to know beans. But the voices went further. They urged me to check all the beans carefully. Be on the lookout for the floaters, the shriveled that surely would not cook right. Discard the fragments, the cracked-skinned ones, to stave off the uncertain sin of mediocre taste. I did, faithfully.

Too faithfully, perhaps. Faith serves as an anchor in many things, but it often short circuits the ability, or desire, to ask questions. It was not that some of what I was advised to follow was without merit, it was that I had never asked why, conceptually, I should follow it without considering what it meant to me as a cook. Perhaps I sorted too diligently. Pebbles and dirt were out, no doubt there. With such concentrated scrutiny, I considered every odd fleck, every off color, or broken bean to be suspect and therefore not worthy of consideration. Doubt fed the fear that if such oddities were not removed the bean pot would be embarrassed and sullied, slightly shamed to cook such a mess.

In my ego-besotted cook’s mind, such interlopers would not be tolerated. I did not spare the rod when it came to removal. A lot of beans and fragments thereof went into the rubbish bin.

Continuance of this state of affairs was a given, maybe, if the dual-headed beast of Disease and Brutality had not slipped its leash to threaten the world. “Sorting the beans” took on a new dimension. A soft clicking as they pour onto a towel, with cool, glass-like tactility greeting the palm and fingers. In the soft light of a spring morning these sensations became meditation. A prayer, of sorts, for some respite from daily waves of selfishness, hatred, and death.

They are called cranberry beans, these beans that turned on the light. I was sorting them for an overnight soak. In my palm fell a half-bean, split right down the middle. I made to put it in the discard pile. Doing so, it landed skin side up. Looking at it from the other side, as I did, it was hard to tell it was only half. I nudged the other pieces, wondering where the problem lay.

That’s when I knew. There was no problem with what amounted to was another spoonful of beans. Over the years I had willfully thrown away mouthfuls, to my detriment, and disrespecting that which would nourish me. The half-piece and its neighbors went back in the keeper pile. The next day, the pot cooked up nice and fed three people for dinner. The pieces, well, they belonged.

Not everything falls among the shapely or comely that we have been led to believe are the only recipients worthy of our attention and affection. Misshapen, broken, or simply just different, they are all beans. Be kind when you sort them. Each has a story to tell. Welcome them. The pot is all the better for having listened.

---

*Writing this piece began in April of this year. Two months ago seems a lifetime now. The world overtook it by events, changing the tone, direction, and length I set out to write. I hope it speaks to you the way it did to me.

A Brief Meditation On Account of the Dead That Sacrificed

Put down the drink
Set aside the coupons
Challenge yourself
To grasp tight
Sadness and memory
Of all the souls
Wrapped tight
In that freedom rag
You worship
And exalt
Without care
At the ruination
Of another’s arc
Cost paid by them
But extracted
By the powerful
And the delusional
Who cannot stop
Fabricating reasons
To carve more names
In the stone wall
Of our violent privilege

Be Proud You're A Rebel?

This is a bit of a long one, but it could not wait. It contains some words that are hurtful demanded by context. I submitted a version of this in December 2016, in response to "We Are Bitter, No. 2: From 2016 Forward," an essay (linked here) by Chuck Reece, editor-in-chief of The Bitter Southerner. The Bitter Southerner is a fine online magazine about the South and things Southern, in its myths, its realities, and its futures. I did not hear back from The BS (as it is affectionately referred to), but with the horrible events that occurred in Charlottesville, Virginia over August 11th and 12th, I felt compelled to give it another turn in the light. It has been edited to take into account those recent events.

I was born and raised in southeastern Virginia, Portsmouth to be exact. I went to college at Virginia Tech, up in the Blue Ridge mountains in Blacksburg. Upon graduation, I wound up in Baltimore, Maryland where I stayed for over twenty years to find myself with an ex-wife, a daughter I adore, and probably nowhere to go from there. This before life got really crazy and I ended up in love again and in Kansas, where I lived until July 2017. Things did not work out in the heartland, and I moved myself back to Maryland, this time to the city of Annapolis.

To talk about a new South, a new America, we have to discuss the ugly, nasty truths of the past. The last election cycle in particular made everyone –hopefully, everyone—look inward to reexamine their consciences and outward to reexamine the cultural matrix to which they are beholden. I know I did.

To my shame, racism and bigotry were part of my upbringing. It never reached the magnitude of joining the KKK or actively seeking out the “others” for abuse and belittlement, but it was there. It was casually woven into the fabric of our daily lives. We, including myself, had no qualms about telling ‘nigger’ jokes or using it to say “those niggers” in the same way that more enlightened people would say “those folks.” You would hear stuff like that among white peers at the same time you wouldn’t actually say it to someone’s brown face.

The same shameful treatment was applied to Hispanics, Middle Easterners, Asians, the disabled, and LGBTQ folks. Equal opportunity bigotry, no doubt. I often felt uncomfortable spewing such things, but it never bothered me enough to stop myself or call out others when they did. I let myself be misled because I did not think to question it.

That is until the day I had a jarring break with the culture in which I was embedded. My awakening to what was really going on around me. An occurrence I will never forget happened in front of me as I walked into a shopping mall in my hometown. Ahead of me were two white men, appearing to be in their 20’s. Bearded and clad in a fairly typical set of work clothes that almost could have been our city’s uniform, they reached the door just as a little African-American girl was coming out.

She was probably no more than about four or five years old, carrying a toy and pushing on the door while her mother followed behind. The girl paused in the doorway which momentarily blocked traffic. Just as I came up behind the two men, I heard one of them snarl at the girl “Get outta the way, you little nigger!”

Thunderstruck is too mild to describe what I felt. I stopped while the two men pushed rudely past the girl and into the mall. To her credit, the girl did not seem to notice the slur hurled at her. But I am sure her mother heard it, because she hustled the child out the door much faster than you would expect for something so casual as a shopping trip. A few steps into the building, I had to stop a moment to collect myself.

I felt sick. A churning stomach and a racing heart catalyzed by the brush with violence and hate I witnessed. I had no understanding. How could that be? The girl was being a child, no bother to anyone, and yet these men saw fit to verbally abuse her because of her skin color? The illogic and injustice of it made my head spin. It sank in that this was how a lot of society, my society, operated, hurting others with thoughtless cruelty because they could get away with it, backed up as it was with structural and institutional racism.

The first of many switches flipped that night. I went home uneasy and sad while trying to make sense of the loathsome behavior I witnessed. It sparked the first of many years (in my teens then, in my 50’s now) of introspection and inquiry into the causes of such bad behavior and how to eliminate it in myself. I started turning a skeptical eye towards society. Intellectual laziness and lack of awareness had led me down a slippery, dead-end path. I began to question things, starting off with how I had allowed others to do my thinking for me.

I felt ashamed of the Southern way of life in which I lived. The people around me began to sound backwards. My own voice started to trouble me because I realized I did have a drawl, even if it wasn’t as deeply twangy as some of my friends and relatives. Arriving at college, I actively sought to drop the accent and even leave behind certain figures of speech. I was around a lot of different people in that time, and was self-conscious about being considered too “Southern.”

I succeeded, to a degree. In my early years out of school, working for what ended up being about 20 years in Maryland, many of my co-workers seemed mildly surprised to find out I was from Virginia, because I did not sound particularly Southern. I even lost my taste for sweet tea, if you can imagine that! The net result was that slowly over time my roots loosened their grip on the soil from which they sprang. I became untethered from the past in such a way that I cast off the prejudices I despised but forgot to hold on to some of the good things I loved.

As the years unfolded I thought more and more of myself as American, but without regional identity. I was haunted by the notion that I was missing something that I could not put my finger on. I cannot tell you exactly when my search began to find what I lacked. But I can tell you my primary research medium was food. I have always been a trencherman, and learning about myself through cooking and eating foods from my birth region was a natural fit even if I was not fully cognizant of why I wished to do so.

Smithfield ham. Cornbread and grits. Fried chicken and collard greens. Some things I loved to eat and some things I thought I could happily do without now became more important than ever. Mail-order sorghum even made an appearance or two in my house. An old cast-iron skillet of my maternal grandmother’s fell into my hands as an inheritance when she passed away. It took me years to understand the great gift that skillet was, one that I still hope to live up to when I cook.

The point is that each dab of sorghum and butter on a biscuit, each skillet of cornbread, each forkful of collard greens I washed down with my (unsweet) tea began to fill me up in ways beyond the mere existence of calories in the belly. It all filled me up with home. The sense of dislocation I dragged around for years slipped away and the roots began to push themselves back into the dirt of my creation. There was an eagerness to share with others the Southern boy that I was and am. My adventures in cooking also taught me history as a spectrum, and food as a bridge to others.

This eagerness and comfort grew in the years between my divorce, subsequent relocation to the Midwest, and the travesty of the 2016 election year. My sense of well-being took a big hit as I watched the ugliness spewing out of the mouths of our President-elect and his repugnant followers. Who could pay attention to the news cycle and not be shocked and upset by the flood of bigotry bearing down on us as a nation?

Memories started creeping back in. Flashbacks to the times as a teenager when I paraded a Confederate flag around the neighborhood because I thought it was cool. Embarrassment at having participated in Civil War reenactments, on the side of the South of course, because I wanted to be a rebel. Shame welled up when I recalled telling and laughing at ‘spear chucker’ jokes, thoroughly thoughtless and disrespectful of the African-Americans I personally knew and liked at school. Waves of regret when I remembered that little girl at the mall and how I lacked courage to stand up to racist bullies and call them out on their vileness.

I was young, once, and stupid.

So it was when the election results were announced that I felt horrible for Americans in general and Southerners in particular. All this time having gone by, the history under our collective belts, and we have learned not enough to elect such a terrible representative of the American ideal? 

Watching the news about racists and neo-Nazis marching Charlottesville stirred up the muck again. The horrific act of murder we witnessed in that car plowing into a group of marchers who had taken upon themselves the hard work of opposing hatred, bigotry, and evil. A young woman who stood up for many good things killed by a man who took hatred and spite to obscene levels: this is the malignant fruit falling from trees planted long ago. 

Hearing the president generically condemn the violence, with the morally bankrupt stance of "many sides" being at fault, it hit me hard that we could have done so much better. We have to do better, be better . For the sake of all of us, we are going to have to oppose the white nationalist agenda of hatred, discrimination, and violence. 

In the South, whether you live there or carry it in your heart (as I do) and in America in general, we have to learn to talk about Confederate flags without waving them or using them as tools of fear and oppression. We have to stop fetishizing statues of deeply flawed, sometimes evil people. We have to understand we can move into the future without necessarily burying our past, but that future means inviting everyone to the table and being honest in our conversations with our fellow Americans. Claiming  superiority because of skin color and heritage is a desperately weak gambit to demand participation in the ideal of America. It only shines a bitter light on the institutional racism built into our society.

Difficult work is needed to determine who we want to be as Americans moving into the future. The arc of history is pretty clear on that score. We carry the moral imperative to resist hatred and bigotry wherever we encounter it. I learned that lesson long ago, acknowledging my personal shame in these matters and opening my mind and heart to cast out the hate I had thoughtlessly absorbed. After Charlottesville, it is clear that many white Americans have not done the same. We cannot avert our eyes, stifle our voices, shut our ears. We have bridges to build, not burn, if we claim to be Americans.

For the Greater Good

Field notes, November 7th 2016. Approximately 3:30 PM.

The walls were closing in, so I bestirred myself out of doors. Ambling though a local park, I heard some small voices raised to one another in greeting. Two little girls were shouting hello to each other from yards apart. They ran to one another, kicking up little rooster tails of dried leaves. As much as little girls can be said to bear hug, they embraced each other like there was no tomorrow. Like best friends after a long absence.

It may shock some to know that the scene actually made me smile. Watching those girls take obvious delight in seeing each other created some light in the darkness that has threatened to swallow me up in the latter half of 2016. Some long time readers will know, or have guessed, that depression is not unknown to me. We have, if you will, an understanding.

This year has been rough. Financially, personally, emotionally. The godawful mess that is the election cycle has only worsened over time, compounding the misery we felt earlier in summer when our granddaughter died in her sleep. Shifts in work arrangements, to the detriment of revenue streams for yours truly, added a bitter icing to a leaden cake. The cherry? My big brother's fifty-third birthday is today, but he has been gone for seven years.

Seven years. A dog's age. A lifetime. My heart bears the bruises still.

I know what this gray shadow is looking over my shoulder. I feel the chill of cold hands reaching for my heart. I feel as if I know what Harry Potter felt facing dementors, if fiction can be said to mirror reality. My younger self would have been all over that, identifying with a fictional character as if I were him.

My older self nods knowingly. My older self does not give in all the way, though. I know now through dint of hard experience that real life is stranger than fiction but the myths we indulge in give us the strength to carry on. Hope is found in the oddest of places. 

Maybe not so odd. If we want to be hopeful and not consumed by cynicism, maybe hope shows up where we need it most. This is the lesson I told myself I should take away from the scene before me. That I should cease being so wrapped around the axle of my fears, and nurture the flame of hope in my heart.

So I saw these two little girls, one African-American, one Caucasian, shouting hello and running gleefully through the leaves of an early fall day. They appeared to know nothing of the trash fire that is our election of the next President. They knew nothing of the weight on my heart, my troubles with the universe. And they did not need to to. Watching them say hello and embrace each other, it occurred to me that maybe I don't need to know either. What I need to know is that greeting a friend with a great big hug is the starting point to pushing back those great gray walls, and getting on with the business of living.

Burning In the Name Of

The air is thick with the stench, the smoke resulting from the explosive clash between love and hate these recent days in the United States of America. There has also been a light, and strong rainbow light streaming out the gaps in the smoke. It's love versus hate, and even a hard-core pessimist such as myself can see that love is winning. But there is a shadow on my heart. Impatience upon the soul to hear some of us talk as they do.

On June 11th, 1963, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc sat down in the middle of a busy Saigon intersection, was doused with gasoline, then his hand struck a match thereby setting himself on fire. The photograph of his burning body, taken by Malcom Browne of the Associated Press, has become one of the most famous mass media images in the history of the modern world. He did it to protest the oppression of Buddhists under the regime of Ngo Dinh Diem. He felt it was a necessary act to bring effective attention to persecution.

On June 23rd, 2014, the retired Methodist minister Charles Moore knelt down in the parking lot of a strip mall in Grand Saline TX, doused himself with gasoline then set himself on fire. Bystanders put the flames out but the pastor did not survive, dying later that night in a hospital. There are no photographs of the event of which I know. The Reverend Moore had a lifetime history of advocating for social justice, particularly to rid society of racism and the hatred of gays, lesbians and transgender folks. He felt it was necessary to inspire action for social justice.

On June 16th, 2015, the irrationally anti-gay pastor Rick Scarborough, indicated that he and his followers would 'burn' if the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage equality. He also made remarks indicating that leaders in the anti-gay marriage movement need to get out front and proclaim "Shoot me first!" to protest what they see as godlessness and the destruction of our nation.

Early in 2015, the would-be GOP presidential nominee and delusional charlatan Mike Huckabee stated in a video that he will "Call down fire from heaven" in defense of traditional Christian morals, to stand up against gay rights supporters and those who advocate for marriage equality.

On June 26th, 2015, the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional to deny the right of marriage to LGBT persons, thereby rendering it possible for those folks to get married just like straight Christians get to do.

On June 27th, Rick Scarborough backtracked on his statements, saying he didn't really mean it. Mike Huckabee apparently cannot get through to God, because the skies have been remarkably free of flames or even a little bit of smoke.

For many years it seems, there has been an abundance of fire on the minds of those who proclaim strong moral, ethical or religious convictions. The main difference that has emerged is that those with love in their hearts were so moved by that power that they translated it into action. Those with hatred in their hearts, people like Rick Scarborough and Mike Huckabee, will never translate the power of that hate in such a way because for all their proclamations of being people of true conviction, they are really just mean-spirited cowards with big mouths.

Hate has nothing over love, not in the long run and the big picture. Love inspires truth, hate runs from it. They run. They are cowards. They will never set themselves on fire because they do not hold love in their hearts. Outside observers such as you and I may look at the actions of Quang Duc and Charles Moore and think them to be insane, but I believe that ultimately they set themselves on fire because they had more love than they knew what to do with in the material world.

The Rick Scarboroughs and Mike Huckabees of the world know deep down they will never set themselves on fire. They are so mean, so spiritually myopic, they do not see how the decent human beings they could have been have been corrupted by hate. Hate has its own rotten heart on which it gnaws, all the while pretending to feast as the soul crumbles. Love exponentially magnifies itself when unleashed. Love has courage and conviction of which hate can only dream.

Love burns.

Feeding Yourself (Sunday Meditation #37)

Chewing my way through a shrimp po' boy the other day, hunger doing its best to overcome disgruntlement at being surrounded by competition culture. The sandwich proved to be a fair balm, but only just. Meditation on society and culture should not be done on an empty stomach but perhaps it is to be avoided whilst eating. Especially hard to do when surrounded by big screen TV's and noisy folks watching the game(s).

Nowhere is safe it seems, in this modern society, from the illness of competition. Everything has been turned into some sort of sports metaphor, with all of us required to give "110%" and to "bring it" when it is "game on". All the time, 24/7. And I am quite tired of it.

Even cooking and eating are not spared the lunacy of win or die. I noticed this one night this week while watching a cooking show on the tube, the name of which rhymes with "Flopped". I do enjoy watching the chefs work creatively under impressive constraints, but it became clear to me with the episode in question just how pernicious sports and gaming "culture" have gripped our sensibilities.

The announcers, the chefs, the ads, all using the language of conquest, domination and war. It isn't enough to create something amazing for its own sake, it has to "crush" the competition it "came after". The erstwhile chefs throw shadow punches and talk about their fellow contestants as if they were weak neighbor nations in possession of natural resources to be pillaged. They must be "taken down" and "dominated" because they are all "here to win".

It is a conundrum I face every time I set out to cook something or write something: for whom and why do it? The truth became apparent to me as I ruminated on the sandwich I was devouring. To focus on domination, humiliation and subjugation of others as "winning" is to have already lost the game. Whether it be cooking a meal or filling the pages or sending a ball through a hoop, the true competition lies not in overcoming others, it lies in overcoming one's own self.

Where the Bodies are Buried

9:39 PM. News-weary this spring night. Troubled, wondering who will be a speaker for the dead.

I reckon this time I might irritate some folks, with the thoughts I can't help but spill. Spill I must, or burst. Or perhaps just toss and turn trying to shake off dreams that make me ill at ease. I listened overly much to the news today, in servitude to its terrible fascination with the burial ground of Tamerlan Tsarnaev. No one in this country wants the body, and the ones who claim him at all cannot and will not travel here to get him.

Not that I recommend they try it, unless they travel under heavy escort, in unmarked vehicles, in the small hours of the morning.

I do not say that because I bear any hatred towards the parents of the bombing suspect. Whatever their respective characters may be---and the news is not favorable---they were not the ones who made the bombs or set them off. So I have no room for hatred of them in my heart. Pity, maybe.

I say it because of what it seems the majority of society feels towards their children, and how society is looking not just for someone to hate, but to hate with savagery. The collective conscience is howling for blood, any blood, as the only justice for the horrific crimes committed by the brothers Tsarnaev.

I understand that rage, intertwined with the need for revenge. Speaking for myself, however, I do not want it to consume me or my life. I want justice, make no mistake about that. But I have a very hard time convincing myself that justice, in some fashion, has not already been served on the dead brother. Being shot multiple times and then having a relative run over you with a car is in many ways worse than a state-sponsored execution.

Which brings me back to the news today, and its talk of where Tamerlan will be buried. Or rather, not buried. So far no cemetery in Massachusetts has agreed to accept the body. Those cemeteries have, I am sure, well-founded concerns about having such a notorious person buried there.

Because the living, or some of the living, would never be satisfied to let the body alone. This desire for revenge or "eye for an eye" says more about the living, however, than it does about the dead. The living sometimes have what seems to be an insatiable desire for hatred and revenge.

The thing is, if Tamerlan had survived, he would be in custody now along with his brother. They both would be awaiting trial and whatever punishment society saw fit to levy against them. And I cannot say I am immune to the notion that they both deserve to die for what they did.

What I do not want to partake of is the savagery that I suspect many want to inflict not just on the younger brother, but on a corpse. A savagery we decry in others, I will add, and one not entirely square with our ideals of due process and decency.

Before you scream and howl at me, thinking me soft and not living in the real world, know this: I do want justice here. I do not defend or excuse anything the brothers did, because there is no excuse or justification. Due process has to be observed if we are to claim we support the system that allows justice to be served without mob rules...because this is a nation of laws.

I also believe that, like it or not, the disposition of the body is the province of the family, not the state, nor the madding crowd. And if we allow ourselves to get knotted up in revenge and hatred then we have given up on living good lives in spite of the awfulness that our fellow men have cast upon us.

I heard a report that an uncle, the one living in Maryland, had traveled to Massachusetts to prepare the body for a traditional Muslim funeral. He said something to the effect that "Everyone deserves to be buried. Only God can judge the dead." I suppose for those who have a belief in a higher power who judges all, that belief will let you imagine any fate you care to conjure up. Some folks might believe he is a martyr, others will see nothing but eternal damnation as reward for such atrocity. Maybe both sides are right, or neither.

Ultimately, it does not matter. If only God (assuming God exists) can judge, then that judgement will be beyond the knowledge of mere humans. If there is nothing beyond this mortal coil, then maybe most of society can rest assured the murderer has no chance at reward, just annihilation.

What matters is what we, the living, can do with the measure of our days. Why do we need to care where a criminal (or monster, by some lights) is buried? Timothy McVeigh, Adam Lanza and even Osama Bin Laden all received burials, of sorts. Does anyone spend their time trying to track those ashes? Does anyone really want to spend their days spitting on the graves of criminals? If so, perhaps those people should step back and decide whose life are they really living.

I personally do not care where the remains of Tamerlan Tsarnaev end up, as I have no plans to visit for any purpose. I understand that many people won't feel the same about the issue; the desire for revenge and catharsis is ingrained in the tribal psyche of us all. My heart aches for the victims of any such tragedy as what happened in Boston, and that will always be true. But as for myself, I'll let the damned lie where they may without wasting precious time and energy on them. I will not allow myself to be pinned to the strange attractor of unrequited hatred.

Guard the Flame (Sunday Meditation #26)

Chimneys without caps,
Our brightly burning fires doused
Deadly metal rain

A Brief Word About America

In the run up to the recent elections, and in the noisy din of its aftermath, there has been much talk by the sore losers that they needed to "take back America" and that they"lost America". Such bloviation angers and saddens me.

America belongs to all Americans, not one ideology or otherwise arbitrarily defined socio-economic-political grouping of citizens.

America is a grand, shared idea. No one gained it or lost it, because it was never theirs to possess.