Yesterday was a bit of an adventure. The first highlight was getting thrown out of Meadville’s Wiggin Library. I was sitting in the reading room yakking with a student about this and that for, admittedly a longish time when the associate librarian came up, and being as polite as he could possibly be pointed out this really wasn’t the visiting area which was, in fact only a few steps away downstairs. I wanted to quip how I’d been thrown out of nicer places than this, but actually it is an amazingly nice place…
A bit later I took a bus ride downtown, walked around, I guess vaguely hoping for a movie theatre, and while I found the Theatre District, I didn’t come across a single multiplex. So, I headed back to Hyde Park, getting off the bus a bit early so I could walk through the restaurant/shopping area on 53rd as I made my way to Woodlawn Ave. Lots of interesting looking places there, one or two will probably be on my take Jan to list when she gets here for a long weekend in a few weeks.
But the magical thing happened after I turned onto Woodlawn.
I had gone a block and just shy of a half when I first heard the squawking, a fierce din. It came from a largish tree just down the sidewalk. The leaves on this particular tree were quite thin, so I could make out three, four, no five very large nests, made of twigs and stuff. Not little nests, big things, veritable bird apartment buildings. As I looked up to see who could make such an amazing noise, and occupy such large nests I was shocked. There was a small green parrot staring down at me! Then another, turning its head and giving me the baleful eye, and then another. There was a whole flock of these things, happily ensconced in their tree, squawking away.
I was confused. I was still pretty sure I was in Chicago, the Windy City, a place with snow and ice and below-freezing weather disconcertingly often, say bunches of times every year. But there they were. Bumblebees of the bird world, no way they could be there, but there they were.
I do like Google. Turns out they’re monk parakeets who’ve been in the area since 1973. Reminded me of that lovely film the Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill.
In both cases there are those who see these invaders as pests or worse who need to be exterminated. And this brings to mind some of the more extreme views that have grown up around the issue of “cultural appropriation.” I recall when I was taken to task by a UU minister colleague for cultural appropriation for being a Western Zen Buddhist. Or, I also recall, the failed attempt to introduce a line into the UU minister’s codes of ethics calling cultural or religious appropriation an ethical violation. I noticed at the time, before the suggestion met its demise that a line seemed to be forming of those who were willing to take on responsibility to sort out the appropriate from the inappropriate. (Always fear the righteous…)
This obsession with cultural appropriation is a view that doesn’t seem to be going away. And I don’t mean to suggest there isn’t some merit to it. Near as I can tell it first arose with some members of the American Indian Movement who objected to all the white people burning sage and going on vision quests. Stole just about everything from us, they opined. And now they’re taking our religion. A compelling question, of course, one I’ve felt obligated to reflect on.
First, I noted for the most part the original objectors to white folk doing Native American, Indian religious things, did not themselves seem particularly religious folk. In fact as I looked around at that scene in particular, while there was a lot that was to my eye very silly, and on occasion seemed in fact to be in bad taste, those who were taking the questions of Native American shamanism seriously were for the most part studying with Native Americans.
Three things came to mind as I considered the situation. First, there are legitimate questions about the utility of transferring a spiritual practice or a complex of spiritual practices that are so embedded within a culture that it seems unlikely one or a few particular strands can be extracted in any meaningful way. This is a problem for those who hope to integrate shamanic traditions into Western culture, no doubt. As I have no particular interest in such things, I’ll leave that discussion to others. Third, if one pushes the argument of not appropriating other traditions into one’s own to its logical consequence, I would have to paint my body blue and worship Odin or some tree. So, obviously, even if there is truth in the concern of appropriation, where does one draw the line?
Which bring up my third thought. As a European-American nearly forty-year practitioner of an Asian tradition, ordained a priest in one strand and made a teacher in two lines of that tradition, I do have a few thoughts. First, when is something justifiably called appropriation? For instance Buddhism comes from Asia, but is not in and of itself a necessary part of any particular culture: it is a world religion that has from the beginning sent missionaries around the world carrying the good news of a way to heal the broken heart and a broken world. Over the last two and a half millennia it has encountered dozens of cultures, engaged in conversation, and reformed itself and its host cultures numerous times. Frankly to charge a western Buddhist with cultural appropriation is making noises that convey no information.
Today Buddhism is well on its way to becoming a Western religion (or, perhaps better Western religions, but that’s for another reflection). And in its conversations with already extant Western cultural and religious traditions mutual transformations are taking place. Some of it is probably silly. Some of it is in profoundly bad taste. Some of it will likely die away quickly and un-mourned, I’m sure. And some of it will flourish and as those little monk parakeets seem to be doing, becoming native.
Of course, as they say, only time will tell.
But, I strongly suspect it will…
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