I’m wracking my brain to remember where I first heard of “The Navajo Blessing Way” — how to be a human keeping the highest values of being, functioning as part of the life lived. The result would be a Good Person. Doing your best with what you have. And then, passing out whatever gifts you have to others. Blessing Way People are always looking through the lens focused on “doing unto others…” 

My interest stemmed from a period when my  study of world mythology was heightened. There was avid attendance at the Jung Institute’s (SF) lecture series on that particular shelf of self-knowing. Something stuck about the three ways of being in The Blessing Way. To live a life inside one of those Ways it offered—The Medicine Way, The Warrior Way, and The Beauty Way. 

And, recently receiving this photo from my cousin Sara, taken in 1955, I could begin to parse the idea of The Blessing Way through this image. These three children seemed destined and chosen to follow a particular path, destined to be on the blessing way, each in their own individual way. Both in affect and effect…HEALING, POWER and ART.

So here we are sitting under the aegis of the protective father. A lot of Mea Culpa ink has been spilled about the ravages of the unchecked masculine, deservedly so, and a lot of it true, but this picture could be an illustration of the idea that there exists a muscular masculine mind protecting the followers of the Blessing Way, both in affect and effect.

 

 

Self-reliance is the theme of this group of genomic fellow travelers. Self reliance— your fate and destiny is up to you. All three of these children forged a life you would recognize as as “wheels rolling out of their own centers.” That’s Nietzsche’s expression—a wheel rolling out of it’s own center—here are an artist, a doctor, a lawyer and a Grand Father forging lives as exemplars of the highest value one is capable of. The point—you are looking at all four people who did what they did navigating via an internal compass, relying on that self-generated compass, making a way in this world. 

David, the doctor — Medicine is the most obvious attribute of The Blessing Way. Imagine Dr. David Lang with his comforting hand on your arm, saying “You’ll be good as new.” Or, “I’m sorry about the pain, but we’ll take care of you the best way we know how.” I sat with David in his boyhood room, at Christmas break, (probably 1964 ) he, fresh from his Psychology 101 class at Yale, spun out a story of the work of Freud. The interpretation of dreams, specifically. I was a high school sophomore  and I was dazzled, sent spinning into a new world of the life of the imagination. By all accounts he is an excellent surgeon, though we’re told a bit of a workaholic.

Michael, the attorney—The law usually the bastion of money and power, changed the conversation from using the club of money, to battle out conflicts—a modern form of hand to hand combat—to using reason to to solve conflicts. He practically invented the art of Mediation and started the first graduate program for accrediting Mediators. In case you think he shied away from power this little moment may be illustrative…He was taunted by a wealthy uncle (the inventor of the plastic raincoat and the Burlington Coat Factory )  At the time, Mike was a lawyer for Legal Services, organizing a rent strike for denizens of Newark NJ. Uncle Fred says, “When are you going to come to reality and stop all this helping the poor and be a real lawyer?” “Fuck you, old man…” sometimes a shortcut between spirit and flesh is required.

Richard, the artist— I was a little defensive about my choice for The Beauty Way: 1) because I’m having entirely too much fun doing what I do every day, (if you call wrestling with angels fun…I do.) I’m awake every night at 3 AM ready to take dictation as my bedroom becomes the mountain top observatory. Those angels come flying in. Can you hear the weighty doors of the mind at 3 AM rolling aside to give that sliver of blackness, speckled with stars, access to the heavens? By what authority is this access given? Good question. 2) Because I feel special access has been given. (Not without struggle—did I mention wrestling with Angels?) To bring ideas, existing like the cyphers of math formulae, on the blackboard of the Institute of Advanced Studies, indecipherable to the uninitiated and bring that information into the world as beauty and form. To make a picture of thought, full of meaning, all on the great conveyer of culture. And then, dedicating a life to helping others by teaching and creating an institution where others could be expressive and enter the market place for making a living.

Paul, the Grandfather — The progenitor of all this Blessing Business is the guy on top.  Came here on the immigrant train (boat) fleeing a village where all the Jewish inhabitants would eventually be wiped out. That village, Kvarsk, Lithuania is memorialized at the Holocaust Museum. Papa brought well over 100 people to safety. As a kid, you felt protected as well as presented with a sea-mark to lay a course by. Excellence of spirit and action will alway be required. He had zero tolerance for the indolent. He had studied to be a Rabbi in the old country and in those politically fraught times had aligned himself with the Menshivicks, a faction most liberal, in opposition to the violence- prone Bolshivics. On the boat ride over he learned his first English idiom—”Time is money.”