Panacea

No I haven't found the panacea, but I damn sure like the word.
I plan to see ya, even though it won't be a panacea
Wanna be my fantasia?

Shall we look it up? OK, let's. Panacea was a Greek goddess of 'healing' This brought about the concept of the panacea in medicine, a substance meant to cure all diseases. The term is also used figuratively as something intended to completely solve a large, multi-faceted problem.

When I talk about 'the next big thing', I guess I'm referring to something that will focus my mind and give me the answers which I seem to be struggling for. (a panacea, if you will). But then again, my brain is such that it probably wants to struggle on some level and I feel a knot coming on. On the one hand, I want that sense of direction in which I'm committed and sincere and directed, yet in all likelihood, I will analyze it, wonder about it, wrestle with it, if I'm lucky enough to find it.

OK, Rich, here is the end to all doubts.... (Uh, I doubt it)

Back to wrestling, it's a Jewish thing... no not that kind of wrestling, but mental wrestling, and the name 'Israel' actually means 'God wrestler', from the time Jacob had a dream in which he wrestled with an angel. When he awoke, God gave him a new name, 'Israel', for one who wrestles with God and with man.

I've definitely got the God wrestling gene and the conflict gene, even though I live in Eugene. Eugene is full of old hippies, very liberal on the surface, but quite intolerant (ironically). There is a common conservative gripe that liberals are very tolerant... until you disagree with one, and that scene plays out here quite often. There is a smugness and a 'political correctness' that I loathe here, Hell even the idea of 'political correctness' is infuriating.

I remember the first time I heard the term from a girlfriend in San Francisco. She had lived in Eugene previously, and one time I offered a comment which she found distasteful. She said, 'that's not politically correct'. I said, 'What?'. She repeated herself, 'that's not politically correct'. I thought she was kidding until she assured me that she wasn't. I'm thinking, 'how could there be a term 'politically correct' especially among the left?'. It's sounds more like something out of Stalin's Russia. Of course I launched into a spirited dismissal of the very idea of something being 'politically correct', and I'm happy to admit that I was well ahead of the curve as far as seeing that concept for the hokum that it is. Now it has become a laughingstock (deservedly), but at the time, it carried some weight. Joder! (Fucking A!)

And the opposite of that is how I feel about the song 'Kumbaya'. I've likely written about this before, but it's been awhile, so I don't mind repeating myself. 'Kumbaya' has become a standard issue put-down for people who don't like the 'touchy-feely' stuff. 'What are we going to do, sit around and sing Kumbaya?' is how the put-down goes. Maybe I'm extra sensitive about this because in my family, I was the one who would try and break through the standard issue communication that my brothers and I engaged in, and it usually didn't go well. My older brother would say something like 'Here comes a psychodrama', which I suppose is correct, although it was intended as an insult, and as some kind of a warning that he was uncomfortable with the direction that things were heading.

I heard about how Kumbaya was brought to America by a South African song leader who was guest artist at an annual gathering of the Methodists somewhere in Indiana back around 1950. He taught the song and they sang it at every meal for 5 days, letting their harmonies ring off the rafters. Then when they got back on the busses to go home, they kept singing it and it spread around the country. Eventually Pete Seeger had a big hit with it, and it got over-exposed, and then like we do in this country, we had to hate the thing that we loved. So now it's a joke and a put-down.

But for me, it's a song with simple harmony that almost anyone can sing. And the message is 'Come here, God'. Not a bad message. And in this culture of 'no singing together, no harmony, high technology, low interaction, well sir, it's a good antidote, perhaps even a 'panacea' for what ails us. I've been wanting to reintroduce it to the community, along with the story of how it came to be, and I believe that I have the perfect vehicle. A few weeks ago, I wrote about my idea for a 'spirit cabaret' and I sent a letter to the minister at the local Unity Church because I heard he was interested in something similar. We have a meeting tomorrow morning, and I sense that one of the things I can offer at a spirit cabaret is this Kumbaya story along with a big old group singalong of that very song. Funny and true.