A long and extreme hiatus from my last entry here. Time passes. My first inspiration for these writings was sharing my experiences as a therapist and teacher and spiritual aspirant and dad.  Passing on the wisdom of the many teachers who stood with and by me patiently, as I learned a bit, here and there.  That inspiration is a little fainter now. To back fill:

I first read psychologist and hero Burton Blatt’s Souls in Extremis 30 years ago-on the radical data and poetry driven tragedy of institutionalized people with intellectual impairment: “once the good man has seen the institution, he can never pity himself”

Well I saw it over decades of working at a California State Hospital. There was caregiving, but to often abuse and neglect ruled. The Rulers made proclamations of reform, took many bows to unknowing applause-but nothing seemed to change.  There were we few who made our best effort for those souls in extremis, we were a small tribe. Some including myself were human rights advocates and part of the deinstitutionalization movement. We bothered the Rulers.

Time passes. I have two sons, Aaron and David, who on this Fathers Day remain my greatest teachers. David, my son with Down Syndrome has taught me as Blatt’s writings once did about victims and victimizers (the sub title of that book). First hand. For David became a kind of victim and taught me the deepest meaning of the Institution and its Rulers.

He has lived for seven long years in programs and placements. I have written about it elsewhere, The New Institutions. And I finally understand that the State ownership of our most vulnerable is and always has been about power, career and greed. Once Wardens lived in grand homes as their sometimes ruthless employees made careers off the owned and objectified. And the public closed collective eyes.

Time passes.

I have long worked for David’s (and others) rights and freedoms. I have met the Rulers. I have tried to challenge them.  They are well paid bureaucrats, faux advocates and guardians, hypocritical politicians. And, unsurprisingly, their lawyers. Like long ago, their power and greed make them invulnerable as they continue to use the vulnerable for their own profit.

And now in the spirit of the times, they are masters of propaganda; of crafty speeches and photo ops.  Victimizers posing as helpers. It is not as hard as you may think.

For many of these vulnerable do not speak. And we who give them Voice are hit. And hard.

At first I thought David’s circumstances were unique. And my own too. But the tragedy is that they are not.

Finding myself powerless,  I am stunned and hurt. Yet there is an abiding Gift I celebrate this Fathers Day.  For now that I have been pushed down by the Rulers that rule David and many other vulnerables, I join them. Not literally, for I will never experience David’s fate or that of his peers. But I approach it; I am at its edge and feel an ache and vulnerability that I have never known before.

On the margins now.  Marginalized. And shaken.

But I love the company.