Quest of the Spirit: From Suffering to Acceptance

Courage to Overcome! Goldman,Ginsburg,Yezierska,Levien,Meir,Roosevelt

  1.    Life is unfair, and so is death, especially in the midst of war,  senseless bombing, and intolerance. What shall we do? We must never succumb to the brutal devastation associated with the cruel ideals of communism today.  We must all stand strong and united, despite the odds! "For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known." This well-known passage from Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians suggests a veil or chasm between what men apprehend of the present and the future. In this verse, the apostle admonishes his listeners to manifest the courage and faith of martyrs, and at all costs, to war against the emotional trauma accompanying feelings of isolation, loss, and despair. In essence, man lives in a kind of cloud of ignorance or unknowing from which he must emerge with a greater understanding about himself, his world, and his creator. As the fourteenth-century theologian wrote in his treatise The Cloud of Unknowing,  "By 'darkness' I mean a 'lack of knowing'--just as anything that you do not know or may have forgotten  may be said to be 'dark' to you, for you cannot see it with your inward eye. For this reason it is called a 'cloud,' not of the sky but of 'unknowing,' a cloud of unknowing between you and your God" (66). Like Jonah in the belly of the whale and Odysseus in the heart of the Underworld, man must delve into the recesses of his own personal darkness to discover his true identity.  As Swami Vivekananda said, "Do not lower your goal to the level of your abilities. Instead , raise your abilitites to the height of your goals." In another passage, the Swami said, "When we use our imagination properly, it is our greatest friend; it goes beyond reason and is the only light  that takes us everywhere." Civilizations throughout history have recognized the inner strength and integrity of heroes such as these who have found that inner consciousness that directs them to the sublime. The time or circumstance may vary, just as the nature of human opposition, be it man, society, or his own shortcomings; but the significance of the heroic quest remains pre-eminent in the minds of all individuals. In essence, the man wrestling with the forces of fate must persevere in order to ensure freedom for others, as well as self.

 2.         Quest of the Spirit focuses upon man's endless struggle for transformation against the prejudice of religious oppression, social and political ideology, scientific advancements, or materialistic values.  In  our present society, the coronavirus proves an equally formidable opponent, and in each of these cases, ethics plays a foremost role in men's treatment of one another. The free exercise of love and mercy must supersede economic theories, technological achievement, and notions of progress frequently employed to justify unwarranted discrimination. As Marie Curie suggested in a debate over "The Future of Culture" in 1933, "I am among those who think that science has a great beauty. A scientist is his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale. We should not allow it to be believed that a all science can be reduced to mechanisms, machines, gearings, even though such machinery also has its own beauty. Neither do I believe that the spirit of adventure runs any risk of disappearing in our  world. If I see anything vital around me, it is precisely that spirit of adventure, which seems indestructible and is akin to curiosity"( Curie 341.)   This psychological coming-of-age involves the subject's transition from a state of innocence to awareness, death and rebirth, or loss and redemption; and often necessitates the character's coming to terms with truth, even at his own expense. The protagonist, whether real or fictional, must also learn to recognize the flaws inherent in any form of government or collective that prioritizes policies above public welfare. This process of discernment known as philosophical psychology suggests that the hero must initially find inner meaning in order to identify the inconsistencies in policies that serve to enslave him. Only then can he free himself through courage, faith, and perseverance. According to Thorstein Veblen's  The Theory of the Leisure Class, "The life of man in society , just like the life of other species, is a struggle for existence, and therefore, it is a process of selective adaptation. The evolution of social structure has been a process of natural selection of institutions. The progress which has been and is being made in human institutions and in human character may be set down broadly, to a natural selection of the fittest of habits of thought and to a process of forced adaptation of individuals to an environment which has progressively  changed with the growth of the community and with the changing institutions under which men have lived" (Veblen Chapter 8). This idea of forced adaptation is equivalent to determination and perseverance. As Anzia Yezierska avers in "Wings" Hungry Hearts, "With a defiant resolve she seized hold of herself and rose to her feet. 'Show him what's in you. If it takes a year, or a million years, you got to show him you're a person. From now on, you got why to live. You got to work not with the strength of one body and one brain, but with the strength of a million bodies and a million brains. By day and by night,you got to push, push yourself up till you get to him and can look him in the face eye to eye" (Yezierska 16). In Alan Robert Ginsberg's The Salome Ensemble (Syracuse University Press 2016) the author chronicles the lives of four famous women whose ceaseless struggles definitely altered the course of social legislation and culture. According to Ginsberg, "By turning ideas into action, the women of the Salome Ensemble sought deeper meaning and helped to fashion the culture. Men and women today are better off because Rose Pastor Stokes and others fought for suffrage and birth control and freedom of speech. Workers still benefit because Rose Pastor Stokes and Jetta Goudal fought, each in her own way, for labor unions, and workers' rights, and equal legal status for employees and employers. Movies and screenplays written by Sonya Leven still edify and entertain, as do the works of writers whose careers she enabled by editing and publishing their stories in magazines. Among those writers is Anzia Yezierska, who reaches a growing audience larger than the one she attracted in her lifetime" (Ginsberg 272). A perhaps even more famous woman of the twentieth-century is Eleanor Roosevelt not only the cultural aspects of America's future but the political ones as well. In National Policies  of Educational, Health, and Social Services (1955), the former First Lady wrote an  article entitled "Social Responsibility for Individual Welfare, " in which she expresses her views of on the importance of leadership  in the United States:  "It is basic in a democracy that leadership for the welfare of the people as a whole must come from government. It is true that we pride ourselves on holding the reins of government, but we need leadership. We need a voice to define our aims, to put into words the things we want to achieve; and so we look to government to do just that--so that we do not  stand still but move forward. Just as Alice in Wonderland had to run very fast in the same place, we must run even faster to stay in the same place, and we have to do even more in order to go forward. We ill go backward unless we go forward" (Roosevelt  270). In The Moral Basis for Democracy (1940), Mrs. Roosevelt goes on to say, "One of the gains of Democracy would be that constant sense of  vigilance and alertness which makes of life an adventure and gives it a continuous appeal. We cannot remove sorrow and disappointment from the lives of human beings, but we can given them an opportunity to free themselves from mass restrictions made by man" (Roosevelt 57).  In an earlier portion of The Moral Basis,  of Democracy, the revered First Lady humbly says, "I am hoping in this little book to give a clearer definition of the thinking of one citizen in a Democracy. By so doing it may be possible to stimulate the thoughts of many people so that they will force themselves to decide what Democracy means to them--whether they can believe in it as fervently as they can in their personal religion; whether it is worth a sacrifice to them, and what they consider that sacrifice must be" (Roosevelt 45). In "Women in Politics," from Good Housekeeping 1940,  Mrs. Roosevelt says, "In the business and professional world women have made great advances. In many fields there is opportunity for them to work with men on an equal footing. To be sure, sometimes prejudice on the score of sex will be unfair and a woman will have to prove her ability and do better work than a man to gain the same recognition . . .It will always take all kinds of women to make up a world, and only now and then will they unite their interests. When they do, I think it is safe to say that something historically important will happen" (Roosevelt 58). When Franklin was having difficulty sustaining the New Deal in the late 1930's, Eleanor championed his programs and took the forefront in protecting the rights of the poor and underprivileged. According to James MacGregor Burns in The Crosswinds of Freedom (1989), "It was in these waning days of the domestic New Deal that she moved to the fore as a leader extraordinarily sensitive to needs her husband's program had not fully met. It was not surprising that she would work for women's rights, or concern herself with dire problems of housing, health, and poverty  in the field and factory, or devote an enormous amount of time in the plight of the nation's young people, several million of whom lacked jobs. But the First Lady advanced as well into the nation's most sensitive political and social battlefield--the needs and rights of black Americans. She established  close working relationships with black leaders like Mary McLeod Bethune and Walter White" and and resigned from the Daughters of the American Revolution when its members refused to let Marian Anderson "so sing in Constitution Hall." She then She then made "arrangements " for Anderson to sing"in front of the Lincoln Memorial" (Burns 113). In her book Killers of the Dream (1949), Lillian Smith recounts  an episode in her early years concerning a young white girl who was found living with an African-American family in her Georgia community. At the time, members of the city voiced their displeasure, and not long afterward, Smith found the young girl living in her own home as her new sister, Janie. The pair soon became fast friends until her parents received word from a nearby orphanage verifying that Janie was African American;  shortly thereafter, Janie left the Smith home forever, a sad departure that left an indelible impression upon Lillian. Years later, Smith wrote,"I began to know that people who talked of love and Christianity and democracy did not mean it. That is a hard thing for a child to learn. I still admired my parents, there was so much that was strong and vital and sane and good about them and I never forgot this; I stubbornly believed in their sincerity, as I do to this day, and I loved them. Yet in my heart they were under suspicion. Something was wrong" (Smith 26- 30). Has America actually changed since this time?  Lillian Smith was born in 1897 and later become a prominent advocate for the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960's. She died in 1966.(For more on Civil Rights, please see Chapter 115.) Being true to yourself must supersede the prejudice of society. As Frederick Douglass said, "I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and incur my own abhorrence." (Please share Quest of the Spirit with your friends.)