By Suzanna Leigh
Strange word, “mearcstapa.” According to artist Makoto Fujimura in his book “Culture Care,” mearcstapa is an Old English word used in Beowulf. It translates as “border walker” or “border stalker.”
A mearcstapa was someone who lived at the edge of their group or tribe, someone who moved between groups. Remember Strider from “Lord of the Rings?” He was a mearcstapa, moving in and out of the human, hobbit, and elven worlds. A mearcstapa might be distrusted because they didn’t quite fit in; they might question the values of the group because they saw things differently. On the other hand, they might bring new knowledge or insights.
Think of Emily Dickinson and Vincent Van Gogh. Both rejected and were rejected by their church communities, yet both brought us visions of the Divine Spirit as they perceived it, through their art. Emily saw herself as unfit for the Amherst Calvinist church she grew up in; she found God in nature, and she brought us this understanding in her poetry.
Van Gogh was rejected as unfit for the ministry of the Dutch Reformed church where his father and grandfather before him were pastors. He then turned to art to express his experience of the Divine. Art was his ministry. Think of his painting “Starry Sky,” with the sky so alive and vibrant, while the church is dark.
By expressing their experience of a Divine Spirit not acknowledged by the church of their time, Dickinson and Van Gogh brought us a larger vision. They were mearcstapas.
Think about Native American Sacajawea in her roles as wife of a French trapper and part of the Lewis and Clark expedition; she was moving in at least three different worlds. Meriweather Lewis, for that matter, left “civilization” to explore new worlds. Baroness Karen Von Blixen-Finecke, better known as Isak Dinesen, who wrote “Out of Africa,” wrote in Danish, English, and French – moving in and out of three different languages. More mearcstapas.
You might be a mearcstapa if:
You enjoy getting to know people of different races, religions, languages, and cultural groups;
You feel claustrophobic when forced to conform to a group’s norms;
You feel like you don’t fit in;
You want to dig deeper into what is commonly accepted, to find the truth beneath the truth;
You question your group’s assumptions.
Artists and mystics tend to be mearcstapas, seeing and expressing a vision that transcends the mundane, that exists beyond social norms, that is outside of dogma. I see transgender, gay, and non-binary people as mearcstapas in today’s world; in refusing to conform to traditional sexual norms, they force us to confront our own relationship to sex, to sexually determined roles, and to power structures based on sex. To this I say, “Yes!” Yes to new insights and new understandings of what it means to be human.
Fujimura suggests that people who are mearcstapas can be leaders in healing the divisions and fragmentation of our culture. They can bring understandings that bridge cultures. Culture Care, not Culture War. We need mearcstapas!
My friend asked, “How can they heal if they are not understood or accepted?” I’ve been puzzling on that for weeks.
It seems to me that they aren’t always distrusted. Sacajawea was able to create trust and safety for the Lewis and Clark expedition precisely because she was a part of so many groups. Sometimes, we don’t discover the insights a mearcstapa offers until they are gone, like Dickinson and Van Gogh. Sometimes, one is rejected by their own group but finds acceptance in another, like some transgender people whose families reject them but they find community with other non gender-conforming people.
Remember the phrase, “A prophet is not accepted (or recognized) in their hometown”? Some people who bring us new knowledge, insights, or perspectives ARE accepted, at least by a group of people, like Ai Weiwei, whose art is on exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum. Ai Weiwei was definitely NOT accepted by the Chinese government, but he has a following of millions worldwide.
A person doesn’t need to be accepted by their community to provide a vision that lifts us out of our limited thinking or brings information that gives us a new perspective. Chances are the status quo-keepers will call them stupid or crazy and try to discredit them, but some people will listen, and change begins to grow.
