“If you haven’t been fed, become bread.” - Robert Bly
I think we also forget how much of authentic confidence comes from real competence.
If you are good at something you will tend to feel confident about it.
When we are doing something we aren’t good at and we fail, it’s a terrible feeling. People have been let down. People have been hurt. We didn’t do a good job. If we’re an alive, empathetic human being, we’re going to feel bad about that because, in our heart of hearts, we’d never want to hurt someone.
When someone isn’t skilled in an area and is being asked to take on a big job in that arena, the appropriate response is not, “You can do it! Just believe in yourself.”
In a traditional culture, you’d never become a medicine person after taking a year-long course. You’d be mentored. You’d apprentice to someone. You’d be set up for success and not failure. You’d have support. And you would have, likely, been recognized as someone to groom for this role from a young age.
If a young person was born with a fascination in stories, maybe they might become a story teller. If they were more athletic, maybe a hunter. If they were drawn to crafting, maybe that.
But, in this culture, we are raised to conform, fit in, be a cog in the wheel of industry and progress. In this culture, we are told how to be based on our gender. In this culture, we are put into boxes of reward and punishment. In this culture, we are led so far astray from the reason we might be here, the gifts we brought in the trust that our community would recognize them, that even finding our way back there is a miracle. And finding our way back to that without help? It’s a miracle.
I found myself amazed at the work this Yahya was doing. “What you have done is Herculean” I told him. “It’s huge. You’ve taken on the work of a whole village in trying to find those gifts and then craft a way to give them. It’s too big. Robert Bly has the line, “If you haven’t been fed, become bread.” You’ve done that. You’ve become bread for these young men. And my hope is that your work with them helps ease their burden, that it’s another step towards some sort of a village so that those to come aren’t left with the too heavy burden of trying to figure out their gifts on their own or believing in themselves.”
*
The following is something I came across on Facebook. I can’t verify the truth of this story, though I have heard of it from other sources I trust as well who have looked into to,
“There is a tribe in Africa called the Himba tribe, where the birth date of a child is counted not from when they were born, nor from when they are conceived but from the day that the child was a thought in its mother’s mind. And when a woman decides that she will have a child, she goes off and sits under a tree, by herself, and she listens until she can hear the song of the child that wants to come. And after she’s heard the song of this child, she comes back to the man who will be the child’s father, and teaches it to him. And then, when they make love to physically conceive the child, some of that time they sing the song of the child, as a way to invite it.
And then, when the mother is pregnant, the mother teaches that child’s song to the midwives and the old women of the village, so that when the child is born, the old women and the people around her sing the child’s song to welcome it. And then, as the child grows up, the other villagers are taught the child’s song. If the child falls, or hurts its knee, someone picks it up and sings its song to it. Or perhaps the child does something wonderful, or goes through the rites of puberty, then as a way of honoring this person, the people of the village sing his or her song.
In the African tribe there is one other occasion upon which the villagers sing to the child. If at any time during his or her life, the person commits a crime or aberrant social act, the individual is called to the center of the village and the people in the community form a circle around them. Then they sing their song to them.
The tribe recognizes that the correction for antisocial behavior is not punishment; it is love and the remembrance of identity. When you recognize your own song, you have no desire or need to do anything that would hurt another.
And it goes this way through their life. In marriage, the songs are sung, together. And finally, when this child is lying in bed, ready to die, all the villagers know his or her song, and they sing—for the last time—the song to that person.”
*
The industry of believing in ourselves is often a band-aid solution to a deep laceration. It’s covering up something so immense. It’s an industry that whispers to the sapling, “Water yourself. Be your own Sun. Be your own soil.” As Stephen Jenkinson puts it,
“If you’re on the receiving end of that stuff long enough, what happens is, there’s this little bud that grows up from you being bombarded with somebody being certain that you’re loveable, no matter what you think. And that little bud is a bud of worthiness. That you didn’t do anything to conjure, or manufacture. It’s not a meritocracy getting loved, getting grieved, getting understood and seen. It isn’t. It’s a consequence that you’ve got sane people around you. That’s what it is. But if you have this bud of worthiness that somehow, involuntarily starts to take up room and your take on yourself? The inevitable consequence is your ability to love somebody is born there.”
In the video below, Poet Maya Angelou once recounts to comedian Dave Chappelle about her experience of meeting young rapper Tupac Shakur. The way she related to him was the way an elder relates to young people, a feeding of their deep importance in the scheme of things. This kind of interaction is one that every young person deserves on a regular basis. What she does to Tupac is not to feed his ego, but to feed his soul and to tether him back into the history of his people. She places him back into belonging. She nails him back to time and place. She tells him, “This is who you are. This is where you are. This is when you are.”
And how many young people will ever be on the receiving end of such a moment? How many will be fed in this way? How many will ever even meet someone capable of this kind of beauty?
I recall one story I heard from an elder who was sitting with a young man, an activist wrestling with the state of the world.
“I am depressed,” said the young man.
“Yes, you are.” said the elder. “But, depressed as you may be, while we are here together, you won’t be depressed alone.”
He was affirming his feelings. He wasn’t trying to change him. He was letting him know he mattered enough to have company in the matter.
While speaking to a group of kids at Vashon High School in St. Louis, ET the Hip Hop Preacher, a black motivational speaker, was confronted with deeply disrespectful behaviour from his audience of mostly black students. His response was not to attack or shut them down but to confront them with a fierce love and honesty.
There are so many ways this kind of love and believing in people can look.
But most of us didn’t get a lot of it.
These past two newsletters have shown me why the children's programs I directed many years ago were so well-received. They also explain why so many of the participating children whom society had written off became successful adults. Yet, it is so difficult to teach someone how to do that. It is indeed something that requires apprenticing. So many things go into it, but especially language. But small, constant successes, acceptance, endless love, and clear boundaries are also parts of it. I loved weaving all these things together for each child.
I am also very grateful to see your comment about becoming a medicine man, which many now call a shaman. When we first opened, we had a person call us saying they had studied for 2 weeks somewhere in South America and wanted to teach shamanism at our center. I was appalled.
Medicine people are indeed chosen pretty much at birth and apprentice for at least 20 years before being allowed on their own. Not only do they study with their tribal elders but are also sent to other spiritual elders to learn. Even more important, they never claim the title. Either people recognize them or not. Anyone who claims it is known to be not in his heart.
The post is insightful but I'm heated, haha.
Anyone not from here needs to stop talking about African tribes, unless they have deeper context. Africa has 54 countries. 54!! And many of those countries are already widely diverse in themselves.
Using the phrase "African tribe" flattens the continent into a monolith, and perpetuates stereotypes about Africa-as-a-country. It's lazy, even when well-intentioned.
If you don't even know which country the tribe is from (which is truly, truly the bare minimum context required to talk about people's cultures), that's a sign you don't have enough knowledge to speak on it. Even if the story is really cool. Sometimes we don't have to say everything we want to say. Sometimes we need to recognise when it's not our place to speak.