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Tribute to Chris Iijima (4 of 5)
5. And in the end, Chris would like you to know something about meaning. A few years back, before we knew that Chris would hit the wall of illness, he began prodding friends about the Big Questions. He observed with interest that progressive Asian American feminists of a certain age were going to the dojo and turning to Buddha. Chris and I were both raised by Nisei progressives who inculcated a healthy skepticism of religion. If religion is the opiate of the people, why was spirituality suddenly so intriguing to Chris?
Chris Iijima is a humanist and he takes human beings seriously, just as Marx did. A coal miner/organizer/communist named George Meyer changed the way I see Marx's famous quote on religion. He described his father leaving for the coal mines every morning. His mother would say goodbye with a look of terror on her face, because nearly every family they knew had lost someone in the mines. Every mornings' good bye was quite possibly the last good bye. George's father would say gently to his wife, “don't worry, the good lord will bring me home to you.” That, George Meyer explained, is what Marx meant by the opiate of the people. You don't reach for the drug because you are a stupid dupe to capitalism, but because you are in pain.
Well, aren't we all. Many of us who do social change work throw ourselves into it with life-eclipsing zeal. As a young lawyer I was pulled into doing pro bono work for Na Loio, and stayed up all night at the Xerox machine, borrowed from the ILWU across the street, making copies of briefs. The quick dinner grabbed from the food court, the stapling assembly line, the agonizing over strategy, the big emergency – no time to sleep or to stop and think about your messed up personal life or the fact of your mortality, or to confront whatever demon it is that breathes down your neck. The People! The Struggle! The Cause!
Chris the activist might have lived that way at times, but Chris the artist never has. The guitar won't resonate for fingers that are denying the existence of the soul. When I picture Chris the musician, I see the eyes close, the brow crease, the head tilt forward in the posture of the seeker. In theoretical terms we might call it thesis/antithesis, or simply contradiction: that a guitar playing atheist brings forth the voice of God.
