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| The USS Arizona Memorial (Photo from Hawaii Magazine) |
As noted elsewhere in this blog, I am not a religious person, but I do believe in ghosts.
I'm not talking about the Scooby Doo kind of ghosts that chase those meddlesome kids and compell Shaggy to overdo it with the Scooby Snacks, I am talking about ghosts in the sense of resonance. The sense that there are no new paths through this life and that our ancestors have "gone on ahead" to lead the way.
I think that each of us have had the experience of being in the presence of ghosts. It might have been on a forced march while in school to some nearby historical site, or it may have been the discovery of a long forgotten photograph of a parent, or sibling. Perhaps it came when finally making the pilgrimage to the birthplace of a childhood hero, or when you literally walk in footsteps from the past.
When we were kids, my mother tried her best to connect my brother and sister and me with our Canadian history. She took us to a place called Upper Canada Village which is in eastern Ontario and, like Colonial Williamsburg, is a recreation of a point in time. While many of the buildings are authentic to the period and had been moved to the site from locations all around Ontario, it never had the sense of having been truly historical. It was more like an historical amusement park, but without the rides. It was interesting to see how a water-powered sawmill worked, or how food was prepared, but it was more a shrine to history than a place where history had been made.
Many years later, I was in Wyoming and on the way to dinner one night, the car pulled to the side of the road and my friends showed me a pair of parallel tracks running off to our right through the grassland. It wasn't much to look at, but when I learned that these were the tracks left by the wagons following the Oregon Trail west from St. Louis then it became a place--about half-way between Laramie and Centennial--that I recall to this day. I am not a serious student of American history, but, standing there, I had a strong sense of the many ghosts that had to have passed that point. That the grass had never grown back to erase those tracks was downright spooky.
My wife and I went to Paris and one of the many highlights of that trip was a visit to the cathedral at Notre Dame. There are many majestic images to take away from a visit to this crown jewel of gothic religious architecture. For some it is the famous Rose Window, for some it is the gargoyles that line the roof, others may be inspired by it as the setting for Victor Hugo's famous story. For me, the resonant image is of worn stone steps.
In order to get to the roof to see the gargoyles, you have to climb a circular staircase of some 387 steps. Doesn't sound like a big deal and it certainly didn't sound difficult while we were standing in line waiting our turn. What makes it difficult is that the steps have been worn from the centuries of those who came before. Your footing is uncertain and you are under a certain amount of pressure to keep up with the person in front of you in order not to incur the wrath of the endless chain of those behind.
The stair tower is a little bit like a chimney: it's tall and narrow and lined with stone. Cold air rushes in at the bottom and the smell of sweat and desperation comes rushing out the top as people quickly recognize how much physical effort is required to actually climb all of those steps. Aside from the occasional kids who rush past you in their exuberance to see where the Hunchback lives, it is remarkably quiet as this league of overweight pilgrims prays for the stamina to make it to the top without collapsing and promises to begin an exercise regime just as soon as they get home.
You can't climb those stairs, or stand anywhere in that magnificent building and not think of the passion that sustained the generations of builders over the 182 years of its construction. Day after day, year after year, they worked to capture their beliefs in stone and glass. And, in the process, they created a place that has inspired the spirit for generations of their descendants.
You don't have to believe what they believe in order to appreciate the church. There is, however, no escaping the power of the beliefs that drove its creation. Being in that space is inspiring. Contemplating the achievement that is Notre Dame helps to understand all that we are capable of.
* * *
I love writing with a fountain pen. Not only is it increasingly rare to see handwriting practiced at all--and mine could use a lot of practice--but writing with a fountain pen is a little like painting with a fine brush: the pen lets the writer not only capture an idea, but also something of the emotion behind it.
My newest pen is perhaps 70 years old. It belonged to my grandfather--the one I never met--and it came into my possession only recently. I just got it repaired and I am learning how to write with its fine point.
I know little about my mother's father. I know that he was an electrician. I know that he served in both world wars. I know that he was well-liked and came from a large family. I also know that he and my father's father were at Vimy Ridge during WW I, although there is no evidence that they would have known one another.
With such a meager framework, the pen has no context and yet it contextualizes me as a tangible souvenir of one-quarter of my family tree. It resonates with my history.
As I consider this subject, I recognize the ever-present threat of hypocrisy: I claim not to be a person of faith and yet I am writing about having a certainty of things unseen and unseeable.
Taking care of your spirit is a strategy to reduce tension and relieve stress. For some this may mean meditation or communing with nature; for others it may mean being more observant of one's particular faith. People of faith are known to have experienced more rapid recovery from illness and are better able to deal with life's rich variety of potholes and detours. The promise of a brighter day, regardless of its source, has inspired many to endure much.
I am forced to acknowledge that I am not that optimistic. I do not trust in that brighter day. I know that there are people who do, but that ain't me. I have today and I want to get to the end of it thinking I did more right than wrong and more good than bad.
I am inspired by ghosts and the things they have done and the spaces they have built. I know that most of the meaning of life is, like an iceberg, largely unknowable until you run into it. Though they represent significant hazards to navigation both in the shipping and in the metaphorical sense, it is important to consider the challenges these icebergs may present.
* * *
I need to explain the choice of the photograph of the Arizona Memorial.
When I was in high school Life Magazine was relaunched as a monthly and I had a subscription for a couple of years. In the December 1981 issue they predictably commemorated the 40th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. On the Table of Contents page there was a small photo taken from directly overhead of the Memorial.
Anyone who had ever seen Hawai'i Five-O had seen pictures of the Memorial but they were always taken at sea level. It looks like a post-war modernist houseboat where the names of the 1100 sailors lost when the battleship sank are inscribed on the end wall. What I had never understood until I saw that Life Magazine photo was that the USS Arizona lies just below the surface; that this site, for all intents and purposes, is the shallowest of shallow graves and, as the constant leak of diesel fuel from its tanks shows, one in which the corpse still bleeds to this day.
In that one image, the Arizona went from being a citation in a history book to being a visceral war wound. I am not a member of the "Greatest Generation" but I can appreciate the power of everything that the Arizona represents to them. Even though I have never been there--and am frankly too afraid to go--my life is informed by that image.
It is a powerful testament to the cost of war and a reminder of the value of peace. The Arizona itself is a testament to self-sacrifice, its crew still aboard.
Human beings are messy, disorganized creatures who can occasionally be united in the service of grand ideas. We spend more than we earn, we eat more than we plant, we race when we are not being chased and yet we can also seek common ground, follow our curiosity and strive to be better. And we do, eventually, learn from examples which is why I welcome the presence of my ghosts.
I don't have a good close for this. There is no tidy resolution, no fortune cookie takeaway. Taking care of the spirit is a profoundly personal task and, despite what you may have heard, my answer is no better or worse than anybody else's. However, I imagine that each of us benefits from considering the question.
--Graham Campbell
Associate Director
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