Last week, actor Val Kilmer died. I loved him in everything, but especially in Tombstone. In the middle of everything going on in TN and in the US, including the anniversary of Dr. King’s murder on April 4, it was a deep comfort to watch clips from that film over and over.
Nonviolent leader Rev. James Lawson repeatedly referred to a brilliant bit of dialogue between Doc Holliday (Val Kilmer) and Wyatt Earp (Kurt Russell) in Tombstone.
Wyatt: What makes a man like Ringo to do the things he does?
Doc: A man like Ringo has a great empty hole right through the middle of him. He can never kill enuf or steal enuf or inflict enuf pain to fill it.
Wyatt: what does he need?
Doc: Revenge
Wyatt: For what?
Doc: Being born
Rev. Lawson called this “the hole down the middle of the soul.” He sometimes said Ringo was angry that he was “born human.” I think maybe he meant that the desire for wholeness was lacking in Johnny Ringo.
When Rev. Lawson spoke about God, he sometimes used the term “the Creative Force of the Universe” or soul force. Creative force, soul force, wholeness. What does this have to do with old Johnny Ringo?
Last week was the 57th anniversary of the murder of Dr. King. A friend in our nonviolent group sent a King quotation to us all that day: “Nonviolence is absolute commitment to the way of love.”
On the day of his death, Dr. King was in Memphis supporting the sanitation workers who were seeking better working conditions and a better wage. They marched carrying signs or wearing placards that hung from cords around their necks proclaiming, “I Am a Man.” Photos of their march have always had a strong effect on me, they arouse my compassion and, at the same time, they almost make me shudder–that this should even need to be said.
Dr. King’s philosophy, developed in his doctoral work with philosopher Dr. Edgar Brightman at Boston U, was called “personalism.” He argued that a human personality in its unique constellation of features, an inner spirit and a presence in the world, was what he called “a Shining Present,” a manifestation of being, a phenomenon that shines forth Now.
Sometimes parents especially experience this with their children; a parent sees–what deep joy– the beautiful existence that this child brings into the room, into the world, this presence–it lights up the room and fills the parent’s heart.
But I am also a student of psychodynamic theory, I’m a Freud Fangirl. So I am all too aware of our psychic fractures, the inner splits among our various parts. Instincts and thoughts and beliefs that motivate us to act, sometimes not for the best. And relations with others, where all manner of vexation arises. Well, it’s a Fight Club, isn’t it?
There’s a type of meditation called Preksha that was developed from the Jain tradition– that’s the tradition of Gandhi’s mother, that’s THE Gandhi, the teacher of nonviolent resistance from whose work both Rev. Lawson and Dr. King learned.
This particular meditation has a lot of steps to it, and I don’t know how to practice all of them, but what I do try to practice is this one step, in which the meditator looks with an inward eye and notices, just notices, what emotions he/she is feeling at the moment. Looks at the emotions from the point of view of an observer.
Feelings are one part of heart-mind, and the observing eye is another part, and weirdly, somehow this interaction between the two in a meditative state helps to connect emotions and inner perception and this helps to reconcile fractured parts of the psychic state. I call it “slow mind” in my own self. Somehow it produces a sense of compassion, not sure how. Maybe it helps to create a sense of wholeness.
According to Doc Holliday, Johnny Ringo’s soul did not experience that wholeness, or in the words of Dr. King, maybe Ringo’s darkness lacked that Shining Present.
I can be like Johnny Ringo sometimes, sad to say. Maybe you can be like that, too.
My friend, songwriter Michael Kelsh, offers this:
“When I’m feeling low,
When there’s no place I can go
When my soul is dry and thirsty,
I draw water from the well of mercy.”
Let’s do better. Let’s heal the holes in the middle of our souls. Let’s make an absolute commitment to love. Let’s draw water from the well of mercy.
Or, as Doc Holliday would say, when he won the hand of poker, “Isn’t that a daisy?”