This I know: In the heart of Borneo, deep in the cool of Beilschmiedia crassa trees and periwinkle lives a caramel-colored leopard covered with clouds. The claws of this big cat are such that it can walk a tree limb while hanging upside down. Its incisors are comparable to those of a saber-toothed tiger.
Genetic tests confirmed that the Borneo clouded leopard is a species separate from the mainland clouded leopards first identified in 1821. No one knew this.
A parabola-like bridge of possibility exists between what we know and what we don’t.
This I know: Grace Notes is new to The Denver Post; I’ve written it for 2 1/2 years for smaller papers. In that time I’ve received hundreds of e-mails. A few were so full of bully-spit as to be almost funny. Many were kind and stunning.
One was in disagreement with everything I’d ever said, and my right to say it at all.
It stuck with me. It was well written and respectful, and I feared that I half-agreed with some of what the author said, which was, paraphrased, this: Columns about God or spirituality don’t belong in a public newspaper, religion is private, and that my column should be countered with one from a “not-so-sure spiritual type with no gospel to spread.”
Some background. When I began thinking about this column, it was in response to my own voice yelling at the TV and radio. Six months before the presidential election of 2004, I’d had it with God-mongering and religion-baiting. I was tired of a conveniently manufactured image of God being hauled into the public arena like a giant white Moby-Dick-whale and grandstanded as a “Looky! I got the biggest fish!” political tool.
Family values? I was tired of hearing about how only half of us had them. Dignity? Tired of hearing it narrowly defined. Worth? Goodness? Conscience? Tired of hearing such universals framed as if they belonged to only one group.
I felt that no one gets to legitimately claim a monopoly on truth – not any church, religion, political party, nation, race or gender. It seemed that the name of God was being used, that the definition of decent was being cookie-cut and manipulated to divide us, and that both these things burdened us all with ill will and fractured discontent.
We are deeply alike in a multitude of ways – straight, gay, old, young, male, female, white, black, brown, Christian, Jew, Muslim, agnostic, atheist, Democrat, Republican, American, or not. I found this to be self-evident.
I thought it was time to discuss the things that we shouldn’t pretend to always know.
Religion is a private thing – with that I agree. But, spirituality is universal and innate, and ironies of ironies, I found myself trying to write about one without offending my own sensibilities regarding the misuse of the other.
This I know: I have no gospel to spread, and I am quite proud that I am sure of very little.
I believe language is powerful, especially poetry, that words can be weapons or gifts, that healing is always possible, and that we are each more holy and worthy than we think.
I believe that readers will slow down to ingest an article that makes them think, that most of us are not looking to skim over the hard questions that can’t easily be answered, and that sensationalism and anger-insult-gotcha writing are not the wave of the future. I believe that some newspapers too often grossly and insultingly underestimate their readers.
I believe that we are complicated and at our best, we know it, and that trying to reduce things to black and white usually makes us stupid.
Wonder and amazement are necessary, and the ordinary can be profound.
What do I know? That a clouded leopard lives in the heart of Borneo, stalking monkeys and young bearded pigs for sustenance, and that for more than 100 years scientists thought they knew it to be the same species as the mainland clouded leopard. They were wrong.
Of God, I know nothing for sure. For me, for today, that is faith enough.
Natalie Costanza-Chavez is a Fort Collins poet and writer. She welcomes e-mail at grace-notes@comcast.net.
