Black Battle, White Knight. Michael Battle
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think it is in this realization that I cannot be human alone that I approached Malcolm Boyd to be my spiritual director. I knew I needed someone, himself complex enough, to help me navigate turbulent waters of identity. I needed someone with a strong name, a strong identity, who could help me know my own. I feel as though I am a member of a church like America’s song “A Horse with No Name”—a church whose name has changed or perhaps, no longer has a name. This journey is key to this book.
Malcolm writes me:
Dear Michael: I don’t know how you’re literally planning the book. It seems to me you need a short, succinct introduction to follow the foreword—and precede chapter 1—in which you introduce yourself, explain “who” you are and “why” you’re writing this book. The entire book hinges on this.
You need to move deep, deep, deep into yourself. Tell us your story/stories. Total authenticity here. The reader must “know” you. Otherwise you are just another abstract “thing” such as an “Episcopal priest” or “a scholar.” Actually, why did you become both? What else did you become? What does race—and faith—have to do with it? What is our relationship (yours and mine) and what is something strange and esoteric called “spiritual direction”?
This involves the relationship with me, too. Where/when did you first hear of me? What have been your feelings or impressions? I remember when we met and when you asked me to be your spiritual director. When did you think of writing the biography? Why?
This leads to some self-examination in terms of your own life. (A writer must be open and vulnerable.) Where are you heading in your own life? (What do you want? What do you feel God wants from you?) “How” do our lives intersect? (Do they intersect in the book?)
Once this kind of thing is firmly established in the reader’s mind, you can refer back to it again and again as you progress through the entire book. Finally, what are you progressing toward as you complete the book? Will there be any “answers”? What will be the big questions?
It boils down to that classic line in the classic film Alfie. “What’s it all about, Alfie?” The book is a terrain. You are moving (across) it as a kind of pilgrim or wanderer. What in your past has motivated you to do this? What skills or insights do you possess? Have you a sense of a destination? (What form might it take?) I’m really talking about your whole life—the wholeness (holiness?)—of your entire life experience.
I’ll look forward to what you will be sending me in the coming days. All best. . . .10
Whenever I do speaking engagements, usually on the themes of reconciliation and human spirituality, I like to tell my audiences that the reason I am an Episcopalian is because I grew up in the black church denomination National Baptist, and attended the University of Notre Dame my freshman year—being Baptist at a 99.8 percent Roman Catholic University cooked me into an Episcopalian. The confluence of Baptist congregationalism and Catholic ubiquity set me on a course for an Anglican middle way.
As a result of my own anomalous life, this biography was born in spiritual direction, looking for God in the desert. As a spiritual director myself, I realize the demand of the naming process—of learning your real name. After all, there are so many stereotypes given to me as my names. In many ways it’s easy for me to just accept them and move on. It’s hard to find those individuals who refuse the false names, the masks we hide behind. I needed such an exemplar to know my own unusual name.
Similar to the beauty of the rite of passage of a Native American vision quest, I set out on a journey in search of a sage who could guide me.
Being an unusual person myself, I required an unusual spiritual director. I was picky. So, when I needed to find God, I approached Malcolm Boyd.
Being an unusual person myself, I required an unusual spiritual director. I was picky. So, when I needed to find God, I approached Malcolm Boyd.
Malcolm prays, “Enable us to see complex people instead of simple images, Christ. Enable us to be complex people instead of simple images, Christ.”11
Look at the popular black singer Tina Turner, for example; she’s a Buddhist! Even if you do know Malcolm Boyd and recognize no irony in my voice as his biographer, the burden is no lighter in trying to convince you to read a biography in which you may feel uncomfortable because, for many, finding God in Malcolm is blasphemy. How could anyone find God in a gay, political, rebellious, celebrity priest? I say to all of you who approach this biography from a myriad of perspectives, come into a desert with a horse with no name and I think you will be surprised by the new identity you discover in yourself and in Malcolm Boyd. The irony, of course, is that Malcolm has a world renowned name. Malcolm bashfully writes me:
Apropos of nothing, I’ve listed a few major and fascinating personalities with whom I’ve (to say the least) “interacted” on one occasion or another. In other words, there are “good stories” here. The Washington Post’s Katharine Graham (“America is not an imperial power,” she thundered at me as she bolted from the TV studio in Chicago). Rosemary Radford Reuther, the Catholic theologian (and great person) who, in a meeting in East Harlem, announced: “The problem with Malcolm is he wants to be loved.” Well, yes, damn it—as a faggot and queer and leper, YES, I DID want to be loved!!! Hugh D. Auchincloss, Jackie Kennedy Onassis’s step-father, muttered to me in Newport Beach: “Why don’t you write some prayers for stockbrokers?” You already have in the manuscript the classic scene in Hollywood where I come too close to opening a window and shouting at Howard Hughes and Samuel Goldwyn to “SHUT UP!” And there’s an utter classic scene with sainted Mary Daly that is almost too awful to recount. . . . Where would a paragraph of these fit in the manuscript? Oh yes, and the time when I introduced Bishop Donegan of New York to the vodka martini??? (Which he then drank every evening for the rest of his life). I’ve marked the entire chapter in each instance of doing editing. So I’m ready for our meeting Friday 15 at 1. All best . . . M.12
What’s fascinating about Malcolm is that although his name is great, it can evoke pain.
Malcolm once told me about a particular portrait of him painted by world-renowned artist Don Bachardy. Malcolm wondered what the artist would see when he examined him closely, paintbrush in hand? Malcolm drove to the artist’s home feeling like the proverbial Cowardly Lion. Sitting in a chair facing the artist, with a view of the ocean over Malcolm’s shoulder, Malcolm sat for his first portrait. For the second, Malcolm sat on a couch and propped himself against pillows. For the third he lay down on a couch with his head resting on a pillow. Later, when Malcolm saw the portraits, he liked the first and third. But he had an immediate negative reaction to the second. Malcolm explains, “I didn’t like the ‘me’ it reflects.” That is to say, it didn’t resemble Malcolm’s own idea of what he looked like—or wanted to look like. Malcolm concludes, “Yet I had to face the fact that perhaps this picture showed a part of me I chose to reject. Maybe I didn’t want to deal with this person (a part of myself) at all. As a further complication, was it possible I hadn’t a clue how this person could be an integral part of ‘me’? Who am I? This remains a central question in all our lives.” When asked specifically if Malcolm could identify what “part” of him he found in the portrait that he didn’t like, he responded, “No. Only the awareness or an opening up to a different reality of self that you didn’t see before often scares you.”
Malcolm was born in New York City in 1923 as the child of a prosperous investment banker. His parents divorced by the time of the Depression and he went with his mother to Denver, where he graduated from high school in 1940. Bronchial trouble kept him out of military service during World War II and led him to the University of Arizona. An indifferent student, he graduated in 1944 with a major in English and a minor in economics.
From Arizona he went to Hollywood and a $50-a-week job with the Footer Cone and Belding advertising agency. After directing a homemakers’