Gathering Threads

I’m not an anthropologist
But I’m interested in human beings.
I’m not a psychologist
But I live in a human mind.

What choice do any of us have
But to piece together
A sense of self and soul
Directly from our experience?

Exactly how those woven threads
Connect our time on earth with
Our innate predispositions,
Has been a theme of the ages.

A French anthropologist/philosopher,
Lucien Lévy-Bruhl,
Knew in the 1930’s that
“Etre, c’est participer”.

Pluming that “To be is to participate”,
He swam beneath modernity’s imagined freedom
Adrift from any anchor; and flew above
Any anchoring of personality in innate individuality.

He studied peoples called “primitive”
And noticed that they were immersed
In their culture, knowing that they were part of
Something greater than themselves.

They didn’t need to surmount or
Break free from their beginnings
Because they were those beginnings
Branch, root and vine.

And now, almost a century later,
We are catching up.
We are beginning to appreciate the enveloping
Wholeness those “primitives” lived in.

Too late for the children treated
As primitive mistakes and robbed
Of life in their families, in the
Boarding schools of Canada and America.

Too late to banish the deformed ‘superiority’ that
Killed millions a few years later in Europe.
And too late for the “primitive ancestors” enslaved
In the cotton fields of America.

But an understanding is making its way–
While life keeps breaking the hearts
Of beings so much like us–that,
No matter how winnowed and judged, they are our kin.

So much that is mistaken is exposed
In that simple recognition:
We become our own person when we honor
All that has made us who we are.