Culture Bound

Culture, identity, home, belonging, etc.

As those cultural anthropologists insist, each of us inhabits a range of cultures; more than a single culture encumbers each of us. We see, hear and feel; we remember, dream and hope through the senses our cultures have given to us and we've inadvertently received; and to some extent, our cultural identities constrain and limit us.

Wednesday evening, August 18, 2004, I watched The Reunion, on our local ABC affiliate, KGTV Channel 10. The subject struck me extremely: present-day interviews and retrospective reminiscences of the experience of some Shaker Heights, Ohio residents who'd been part of an intentional racial integration project beginning with their kindergarten class and continuing through high school in the Shaker Heights public schools. Those were the identical years I spent experiencing blockbusting, white flight and redlining in Boston; those same years some of the neighborhoods around me blazed with anger and rage at the same time Watts, Detroit, Atlanta and too, too many U.S. inner cities became furious conflagrations and locales of supercharged and globally publicized citizen/police interactions.

But that's almost a digression, since lately I've been thinking I need to go home, and although there's no way I can return (or would return) to Big Tree Place or any of those other physical dwellings, no way could I return to First Mariner's Church (especially since it disbanded a while ago), I can return to my *home* culture, the culture that's my Muttersprach, my cultura franca - to invent an idiom - and I need occasionally to do so! Besides, in the same way you never step into the same river more than once, because both of you and the river have changed, the home you return to cannot be the home you left, so even if I had a physical option to go back there, I still wouldn't be able to relive something that's no longer there, a location that even in terms of my heart's identity I've rationalized, streamlined and simplified.

from Psalm 119

from Psalm 119:

¹⁰ With my whole heart have I sought thee: O let me not wander from thy commandments.
¹¹ Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.
¹⁴ I have rejoiced in the way of thy testimonies, as much as in all riches.
¹⁶ I will delight myself in thy statutes: I will not forget thy word.
¹⁷ Deal bountifully with thy servant, that I may live, and keep thy word.
¹⁹ I am a stranger in the earth: hide not thy commandments from me.
⁴⁴ So shall I keep thy law continually for ever and ever.
⁴⁵ And I will walk at liberty: for I seek thy precepts.
⁵⁷ Thou art my portion, O LORD: I have said that I would keep thy words.
⁷² The law of thy mouth is better unto me than thousands of gold and silver.
⁸⁹ For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven.
¹⁰³ How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!
¹⁰⁵ Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.
¹²⁷ Therefore I love thy commandments above gold; yea, above fine gold.
¹⁵⁹ Consider how I love thy precepts: quicken me, O LORD, according to thy lovingkindness.
¹⁶⁴ Seven times a day do I praise thee because of thy righteous judgments.

from Psalm 73

from Psalm 73:

²⁵ Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee.

²⁶ My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.