The Smallest Bird [View all]

[H2O Man]

"Be a good neighbor. If my garden is ready before yours, we should share mine now, and yours later. Too many people don't understand the power of sharing. You have to remember that all of the earth is the Creator's garden, and he shares it with us. That's why I say that sharing is divine intervention.

"And we sometimes miss the song of the smallest bird. We do not listen closely enough. But that song of the smallest bird is the prettiest. It lifts the Creator's spirit to hear her song. Now that is divine intervention that people overlook every day."

-- Chief Paul Waterman, Onondaga Nation


I was thinking about the above quote -- from my 4th interview with him -- after talking to my daughter this weekend. She had been on her daily walk in a Boston park when she saw a man in distress. She told me that other people were making wide circles to avoid him, before learning that he had lost his cell phone. She tried to help him find it, as he explained it is his lifeline. He is homeless, and has a record of non-violent offenses that makes getting employment difficult. So my daughter gave him money for a new phone, and he called her an angel.

Her mother had called her as my daughter was helping the man. Her mother said the guy will probably spend the money on drugs, and that my daughter shouldn't have tried to help him. I reminded her of back when she was ten, and we were out on the lawn talking. She told me that she went to church with her mother, because she didn't want to hurt her mother's feelings -- but that she didn't think her mother or the others at the church understood Jesus's message. I reminded her that the Irish know that Jesus comes to us as the poor, and that Gandhi said he believed in no God but the God of the poor and suffering. And that Chief Waterman, who she considered her grandfather while growing up, said that sharing id divine intervention.

I read something on the internet today, where a person expressed the belief that Trump supporters were mentally ill. I will suggest that rather than viewing them as individuals with a psychological illness, there is more benefit found in considering it as a group behavior best understood in a sociological context of a cult. For while many Trump supporters have what was known as an axis 2 personality disorder in my day, many others are relatively "normal" people.

Cults have a long history in this country, and an even longer one in human history. There are many that form around a charismatic leader, often having a religious nature. Many disolve after the leader's death. Others become somewhat institutionalized, in a bureaucratic manner. Sociologists recognize several general types, including destructive cults (the Manson family), political cults, doomsday cults, and racist/terrorist cults. Thus, when we consider the Trump, we see the blending of the four, as well as the dangerous synergy of this toxic combination.

By their nature, cults must control the thinking of their members, in order to control the group's behaviors. To accomplish this, the cult members must willingly give up an increasing part of their individual identity, and as a result, decrease their sense of individual responsibility. Thus, for example, a person who sincerely thinks they are Christian will totally ignore the teachings attributed to Jesus, and walk wide circles around a human being in need, or be okay with locking children in steel cages .....and, at the same time, dismiss the Black Lives Matter protests and talk about individual responsibility.

Thus, we are not looking at individual mental illness, so much as we are confronting the shared delusions of a group psychosis. That is a distinction that is essential to understand, in order that our society might begin to heal. In order to begin to heal a sick society, we have to start as individuals. That includes sharing, and taking the time to listen to the song of that smallest bird.

Peace,
H2O Man