Looking across the Bay from the San Francisco Marina to Alcatraz, it’s impossible not to juxtapose the vast openness, all sunshine and gently lilting ripples, with the dark stone walls and dull metal bars that is Alcatraz. Before the somber construction, the island must have been filled with song and light. Now, the stain of human misery will probably never be washed away. I dream of bringing a sackful of sage and brushing away the heavy energy. But air and water have not done the job yet.
To claim this gorgeous piece of land in the middle of one of the most beautiful bodies of water, then to build a prison to keep hundreds of men locked against the smell of the sea and the touch of the wind – was it cruelty? Evil? A spiritual, emotional, and intellectual darkness, for sure.
Humans love their prisons. Writing odes to freedom, giving blood for freedom, yelling the word into microphones, strumming guitars or carrying guns, we claim this deep desire while we build prison walls around ourselves. Gibran said, “There are none so chained as those who would be free,” and it seems as if the very constant cry for liberation is indication of how free we are not.
But perhaps this is the whole point of incarnation. To lock ourselves up and see if we can set ourselves free. An experiment on a grand scale. Let’s build the prisons, catch ourselves in the traps, tangle into nets – create laws, relationships, customs, unwritten rules, religious doctrine, financial mores – then see if we can be free anyway. Put ourselves into complicated straight jackets, lock ourselves into unbreakable tanks, throw away the keys, then set ourselves the task of liberation.
Seen in this light, it’s almost exhilarating. If my body is locked up, what part of me is still free? If I lose my mind in complicated traps, what part of me is still free? If my spiritual dogma is a set of maze-like contradictions, where can I turn to for peace? If love is twisted into crazy coils, how do I open my heart? Like the most difficult crossword puzzle, the most complicated sudoku, puzzles without a solution – it becomes a challenge that might turn me on.
Who needs everlasting peace, joy, and beauty? Boring. Now that dark island is a symbol of human ingenuity, what sets us apart from the angels. We have set ourselves the challenge of incarnation into incarceration. What part of us is still free?
The Marmite Journal 