From time to time this website will feature a guest blog written by Black Magic, the virtual cat who lives in my head. He is the grandson of Black Jack, the remarkable cat who authored Autobiography of a Georgia Cat. Here is his first contribution. I hope you enjoy it.
So, it has been very wet outside the last few days. I have been getting soaked just walking across the grass. I just got back home and gave myself a good washing. At least I don’t have to worry about fleas. I get some medicine every once in a while that protects me from the little buggers. My mother used to say that fleas are one of God’s mistakes. They are incredibly vexing at best, and they spread serious disease as well. But of course, God has really not made any mistakes. The universe is created in such a way that every environment invites life. So, if there is a niche, living things fill it, and not only that, but they compete with each other for the space.
Things will live where one would never imagine that anything could survive. From the bottom of the ocean to coldest environment at the tallest mountain tops, there are things that live. Or so I am told. I hear a lot of speculation about whether there are other worlds where life exists now or whether it has existed in the past.
Humans are working their way towards an expedition to Mars. There is probably nothing alive there now, but I would be surprised if there hasn’t been life on Mars in the past. There must be millions of places in the universe where life has existed, does exist, or will exist. It is only either people’s arrogance or lack of imagination that leads them to believe that this planet of ours is the only one where life can be found. This is the same sort of arrogance and lack of imagination that leads people to believe that they are the highest life form on earth. What doubt could there be that cats are the most advanced of all God’s creatures, at least spiritually?
Our neighbor at the end of the block has just walked by, walking his cat, Pinky. When I say he walks his cat, I mean that he walks, and he carries the cat. This is rather amusing, don’t you think? Some of the neighborhood cats think that Pinky is aloof because she never lets her paws touch the ground. But I believe she is not so much aloof as aloft. I think it is part of her guardian’s strategy to keep her from getting the above-mentioned fleas. Most cats would never allow themselves to be carried around like a loaf of bread, but she seems to tolerate the experience, if not enjoy it.
It is funny how different we cats can be in our personalities and retain such commonalities at the same time. By the way, some people object to the use of the word personality referring to cats, because cats are not people. But the word is not people-ality, it’s personality. I think every living thing that has a sense of itself can be thought of as having its own personality, and humans can just get over it. People think that just because it appears to them that they are the only truly sentient beings this makes them special. They think that they’re the only beings that think about the fact that they think about themselves, who they are, where they came from, and what it all means.
I think the people who achieve the greatest enlightenment are the ones who are the most like cats. Watch a cat meditate sometime, and you’ll get an idea of what I mean. It is only in any given present moment that one can be in direct contact with the universe, and by extension, with the Master of the universe. Think about it—and enjoy the moment.
On October 10, 2021, I was honored to give the guest sermon to the Unitarian Universalist Church in Boone, North Carolina. My topic was how the Twelve Steps serve as a blueprint for the Heroic Journey. The service was held entirely on-line.
I was happy to have been invited, and the talk was well-received, judging by the Q&A session afterwards. I am available to speak to other church groups, professional groups who deal with recovery, or any other groups who might be interested in this topic. I am not able to make an in-person appearance at this time. However, given the miracle of Zoom, I could address a group anywhere in the world. Please contact me anytime.
There was an article in the paper today about an attempt to secure a pardon for Homer Adolph Plessy. The Louisiana Board of Pardons has unanimously approved the measure, and all it now requires is the governor’s signature. Plessy is of Plessy vs. Ferguson fame, the case upon which the “separate but equal” principle was secured and held in force for almost 60 years until reversed by Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.
The background is that following the Civil War, Louisiana and the other southern states were controlled by federal laws and troops. Under these conditions, blacks enjoyed a remarkable degree of freedom. However, in 1877, President Hayes ordered the troops to be withdrawn, and the southern states enacted the Black Codes, ushering in an era of Jim Crow repression and terrorism. It was risky for anyone, especially non-whites, to speak out or challenge the authority of these racist governments.
Plessy was born in 1862, in New Orleans to Joseph Adolph Plessy and Rosa Debergue. The family were French speaking Creoles who had originally come to New Orleans in the 1790’s, as they escaped the slave rebellion in Haiti. Plessy’s grandfather was Germain Plessy, a white man born in France around 1777; and his grandmother was Catherine Mattieu, a free woman of color. Plessy was considered at that time to be an octaroon, that is, 1/8 black. As a young man, he became active in organizations which tried to improve the lot of black people and secure them their full rights as citizens.
In 1890, the Separate Car Act was passed into law in Louisiana. It made it illegal for blacks to ride in railroad cars designated as “white.” The following year, a Citizen’s Committee made up of Creoles of color was formed to work for repeal of the law. They decided to challenge the law with a test case in which a citizen of color would board a designated white-only carriage, and presumably be arrested. Once charged and convicted, the case could be challenged in court.
Plessy was selected by the committee, it is thought, because he appeared to be white. The railroad was notified that the test was to be on a certain date and at a certain time. Plessy bought a ticket, boarded the white car, and identified himself to the conductor as an octaroon, whereupon the conductor had him arrested. The challenge to the law was based on the 13th Amendment, which prohibited slavery, and the 14th Amendment, which provided that no law shall be passed which would abridge the privileges of citizens.
Ferguson was the judge who heard the case and ruled in the state’s favor. The committee brought the case to the Louisiana Supreme Court, which upheld the ruling. In 1896, by a 7-1 verdict, the US Supreme Court upheld the verdict as well. The majority opinion held that the Constitutional Amendment provided for legal equality but not social equality. The dissenting opinion said that the Constitution is “colorblind.”
In 2009, a historical marker was erected at the site of Homer Plessy’s arrest in New Orleans. It came about as the result of the efforts of Professor Keith Weldon Medley and descendants of principals in the case, Keith Plessy, who is a descendant of Homer Plessy’s cousin, and Phoebe Ferguson, a great-great-granddaughter of Judge Ferguson. Together they have founded the Plessy and Ferguson foundation of New Orleans, an organization dedicated to “teaching the history of the landmark case, Plessy v. Ferguson, its historic impact on African-Americans, and how we can learn from the past to create a more just and equitable future.”
The underlying theme of my website is that life is challenging, and that at some point in our lives everyone is called upon to be heroic. Plessy’s action in these events called for courage and heroism. Not only would he be arrested and face some fine or period of imprisonment, but he could have been subjected to other risks including loss of employment, harassment, and beatings. There are many other heroes in this story, including Keith Plessy, Phoebe Ferguson, those board members in Louisiana who voted unanimously to pardon Homer Plessy and indeed everyone who finds the courage and is willing to speak out and take risks in the cause of justice and freedom for all.
UPDATE – January 8, 2022
This past week Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards has issued a posthumous pardon to Homer Adolphe Plessy. In his remarks, Governor Edwards said that this charge and conviction should never have happened, and he also acknowledged that we still have a long way to go to achieve social and judicial equality.
I suppose that one could say that my inspiration for the writing of The Twelve Step Pathway: A Heroic Journey of Recovery came from a lifetime of experience, both personal and professional. However, a key event in this process occurred around 25 years ago when I met a new patient in the course of my addiction medicine practice. He was addicted to cocaine, and was motivated to recover. He had met with his wife’s minister, but the Christian approach and belief set didn’t work for him. I asked him what his belief system was, and he asked me if I had ever heard of Joseph Campbell. As it happened, I had heard of Joseph Campbell, but was not well-informed, so I asked him to tell me about what he believes. He told me what I hear from a great many newcomers to recovery—that he believes in a spiritual element in the universe, but that he had no specific belief about God. He quoted Campbell as saying that “God is beyond all categories of human thought.”
I went home and obtained a copy of Campbell’s “The Hero with a Thousand Faces“. I read “The Power of Myth,” and I got the recordings of his conversations with Bill Moyers that were taped at George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch over a decade earlier. I was very attracted to the Heroic Journey as a metaphor for life in general and recovery in particular. I could see that my life had conformed to the elements of this pattern. I saw that the struggles my patients went through were indeed heroic in scope. Like many of my patients, sometimes I didn’t know what to think about God. I had come to mistrust pat explanations of God that were offered by religions. I didn’t believe that people could know exactly what God had in mind either in general or in particular.
What I had come to like about Twelve Step recovery was that it took no dogmatic position on God. That was left up to the individual who was walking the walk, so to speak. In the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous it does say that “He was as much a fact as we were.” But it also says that what you believe is up to you, as long as you were willing to believe in a Power greater than yourself. Another statement made is that “deep down in every man, woman, and child, is the fundamental idea of God.” This suggests that the idea of God is an archetype, a fundamental sense or idea, carried along in the structure of the human personality.
The Heroic Journey is a form of myth which has existed probably ever since humans formed social groups. Classical mythology is full of stories about heroes. Well-known examples from the Greeks are Odysseus and Orpheus, from the Hebrew Bible are Moses and David, and from American history are George Washington and Davy Crockett. But there are lesser-known heroes and even more totally unknown or forgotten heroes, but heroes, nonetheless.
I have come to understand that all of us are potentially heroic. Life presents us all with great challenges, some of which have the potential to destroy us. Some of the struggles are in the outside world, things like career, family, and military service. Other struggles come from within, such as dealing with fears or addictions. Inspired by the example of the heroes we know in our own lives, or the famous heroes noted in history, we can find the courage to take on the challenges and actualize the hero within.
This is the idea which I present in The Twelve Step Pathway: A Heroic Journey of Recovery. Every alcoholic and anyone with any sort of addiction can recover by affiliating with a Twelve Step Fellowship and following the Program of the Steps. These steps provide a GPS, a blueprint for the Heroic Journey which takes a person from the brink of self-destruction to transformation into a person who lives in freedom, hope, and serenity. I believe that an in-depth understanding of both the Twelve Steps and the Heroic Journey will give an individual the best chance of recovery from addiction and of living their best life.