Gates of Reconciliation: Literature and the Ethical Imagination
Summer 2008 (vol. 20, no. 1) • 192 pages, illustrated
Edited by Frank Stewart and Barry Lopez
from the Epilogue by barry lopez
Time is short—for those who believe the biology of man is calling to us over the din of warring ideologies. Even if it is only to reduce the level of noise, we could consider reconciliation. How many marriages are yet to die on the kitchen floor? How many boys with Bibles are to be blown into streamers of bone and flesh by plastique fashioned into a bomb by a boy who can't spell jihad? Less and less can we afford the wars. Less and less can we afford to separate philosophy from fact, to wonder whether the Internally Displaced Person is a victim of politics or ecology, of bad luck or mental incapacity. The person is in agony. We would do better to offer a real hand. We would do better to study the internal dialog of the tormentor, the abuser living in the interior of each of us.
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from "One Story House" by rebecca solnit
It is in the nature of things to be lost and not otherwise. Think of how little has been salvaged from the compost of time of the hundreds of billions of dreams dreamt since the language to describe them emerged—how few names, how few wishes, how few languages even, how we don't know what tongues the people who erected the standing stones of Britain and Ireland spoke or what the stones meant, don't know much of the language of the Gabrielanos of Los Angeles or the Miwoks of Marin, don't know how or why they drew the giant pictures on the desert floor in Nazca, Peru, don't know much even about Shakespeare or Li Po. It is as though we make the exception the rule, believe that we should have rather than that we will generally lose.
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from "Pollen: an Ode" by Christopher Cokinos
Language evolves its architecture from need. So trauma comes to us essentially unaltered from the Greek, meaning "a wound," but it's the Indo-European base that underlies this word and another, throe, that intrigues me. The base is ter-, "to rub, grind; cf. THROW." By the time Old English picks up the word thrawu, throe's most immediate ancestor comes to possess denotations of pain and affliction—related, my dictionary tells me, to Old Norse, thra, "strong yearning."
Well, I think, that sounds about right.
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from "stellwagen bank " by lydia peelle
People leave offerings here, tokens brought up from the beach: turtle shells, dogfish vertebrae, seashells, feathers, stones, a whale rib. Conspicuous among it all are the bright pink and orange beads of a child’s plastic necklace. So that this great nation might prosper and grow. So that plastic necklaces might be cheap and available and disposable to all. Sometimes I look at the waste and the plunder, and wonder, Can this great prosperity long endure?
But for the current state of things, who can be blamed? Mothers had children had children had children. Other things happened along the way: great wars and misguided pursuits, presidents and dilettantes, greed and joy and mistakes, but this is what it comes down to. This has been the gradual catastrophe that has left us in our current state, burdened by our great misdoings, growing lonelier in this place by the minute. Mothers had children. Had children. Had children.
In this collection of essays, fiction, and poetry set in South America, Europe, Australia, the Middle East, Asia, the United States, and elsewhere, a diverse group of writers explores the role of literature in confronting the most pressing issue of our time: how individuals, communities, and nations can reconcile differences and grievances and forge a future with a renewed sense of dignity and mutual respect.
In these works, past and present conflicts—some resolved and some not—are illuminated by literature, uncovering the complexities, subtleties, gestures, and necessary deliberations of forgiveness and healing. The urgency of such deliberations is captured by guest editor Barry Lopez when he asks, "Who will heed the plea of Everychild for a less brutal future?"
Contributors to this volume are John Luther Adams, Aku Wuwu, Margaret Atwood, Christopher Cokinos, Jorge Edwards, Hwang Sun-Won, Barry Lopez, Taha Muhammad Ali, Alexis Nelson, Lydia Peelle, Samih al-Qasim, Santiago Roncagliolo, Davide Sapienza, Aharon Shabtai, Rebecca Solnit, Sasson Somekh, Lysley Tenorio, and Mark Tredinnick. Translators are Mark Bender, Peter Cole, Yahya Hijazi, Nazih Kassis, Peter H. Lee, Gabriel Levin, Laura Ponce, and William Tydeman. Linda Connor contributes photographs of sacred sites around the world, and Kate Joyce an essay and selections from her "Threshold of Human Touch" project.
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from "In Memoriam" by Jorge Edwards
We finally embraced in the darkness, in one of the interior bedrooms, a space unknown to us in a stranger's house, and with the curtains open in order to contemplate from the bed the reflection of the moon above the trees. It was a moment completely without a future, a chance encounter, an accident—or, if you prefer, a magical coincidence. It was the unforeseen meeting of two worlds that normally never communicated with one another, and that would very quickly return to their separate orbits.
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from "save the i-hotel" by Lysley tenorio
They left the Dreamland, then walked up and down the streets. Vicente named them: Kearny, Washington, Jackson, Clay. Certain blocks felt more familiar than the rest: those lined with small eateries and shops named Bataan Kitchen, the Manila Rose Cantina, the Lucky Mabuhay Pool Hall. Up and down the street, Filipino men smoked, laughed, and drank from silver flasks, hollering for each other and darting across the street as if this city had been theirs from the beginning.
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from "threshold of human touch" by kate joyce
Abusive behavior—whether to oneself or another—is a trespassing, or a betrayal of our humanity. In its many forms it makes us blind and terrified, and we cast aside our sense of interconnectedness. And yet, I feel a deep sadness and compassion not only for the person who is victimized but also for the person who hurts another. It’s a kind of compassion that feels suffocating, liberating, and wholly necessary—all at the same time.
Photograph by Kate Joyce
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from "the dogs of deng xiao ping" by santiago roncagliolo
Lanssiers listened to all those who spoke, and asserted that all the cases would be examined but that those who had committed violent crimes would not be freed. He did not say it in defiance. It was simply the truth. But he said it looking into the eyes of Comrade Ramiro and the other prisoners whose crimes he also knew. What caught my attention was the degree of respect Lanssiers manifested, even for these men, the murderers, as he fixed his eyes on their pupils. Later I would discover it was the same gaze he directed at policemen, functionaries, and attorneys. It was a blue gaze of stone that gave recognition to human beings. No more, no less.