ACTIVISM FEEDS WRITER'S CORE; ALICE WALKER AFFIRMS LOVE OF NATURE, HUMANITY, NOT ONLY IN BOOKS BUT ALSO IN CAUSES LARGE AND SMALL.

Byline: Jeannine Perriseau

GIFTED with a singular voice, Alice Walker is one of America's most original and inspirational writers, author of books such as ``The Color Purple'' and ``In Search of Our Mother's Gardens.'' The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner has recently produced a unique collection of short essays, ``Anything We Love Can Be Saved'' (Random House; $23), about activism as a way of life.

These are essays intended not to convince the reader of the worthiness of any particular cause, but to go to the heart of what it means to take action.

Walker's own examples of activism are eclectic, ranging from the most personal of choices not to alter her hair chemically, but let it exist naturally as dreadlocks, to international issues of denying aid to Cuba and the multicultural horrors of female genital mutilation.

She is drawn to causes as a woman, a mother, an American and a writer. Some essays deal with injustices that unexpectedly crossed her path and compelled her to action.

Through her example, Walker encourages each and every person to think, to judge right from wrong from the deepest inner spot of personal humanity, and to act on that organic sense of rightness.

For Walker, activism is life-affirming and liberating from a sometimes angry and bewildering world. Her activism is as simple as sitting down and writing a letter of protest, to speaking out at international conventions.

In a recent interview at the Hotel Peninsula in Beverly Hills, Walker talked about her book and about the worth of activism, not only as a means of changing the world, but also a means of self-expression.

Lively and youthful, Walker exudes the same warmth and earthiness in person that she does through her writing.

DN: You give people a new way of looking at activism. Many people think that activism means going on marches. But you suggest it can be something as self-affirmative as growing dreadlocks or just making personal choices such as diet and which household products to buy.

Walker: Yes, and it's a way of strengthening the spirit. There are things we can do (through activism) to strengthen our own essential nature and strengthen our spirit.

DN: The kind of articulation you have, and the ability to get in touch with what strengthens your spirit - where do you think that came from in your background?

Walker: Well, I grew up in the country, and I feel that has everything to do with it. I am used to - and I feel my spirit requires - a real deep quiet. I had that as a child. I had space and I had the sky and the trees. I think that's really the answer - my love of nature. I am completely happy as an earthling. I have never wanted to go to Mars. I have never wanted to get off to a comet. I am so comfortable and happy as an earthling. It's all so magical.

DN: People associate intense anger with the word ``activism.'' Yet, your lack of anger stands out in the book. Each time I expect you to get angry, you describe something different - mostly intense disappointment. How did you move beyond anger - the kind of anger you experienced as a child when one day white men threw bottles and swear words at you while you just sat on a front porch?

Walker: Well, part of it is, you don't want to be those people who are throwing the bottles. They are so ugly - and they are spiritually ugly. You don't want to go there. Also, I have been very angry in my life and I've learned over time that often you are carrying around a lot of oppression. So often it turns out that the people you're so angry about were not even aware you were angry, and there you are stuck with this burden.

I feel that meditation helps you get through this anger. It is a great way to ground yourself. It's a gift to become so familiar with your own anger and your own despair, your own craziness. So when you see it in other people, instead of hating it in them, you already have some familiarity with it and an acceptance that this is something you both share.

One thing we all share is our ability - and our love - of complaining about everything, especially the weather. This is a very human trait. When I came back from being on the road recently, everybody was complaining about the heat in San Francisco and I was so annoyed with them. But the very next day I was complaining, ``Oh, it's so cold!'' The fog had come in. That's an example of how much we all are alike.

Even when someone is being very mean to you, you can begin to see that they're often coming from a place that you also have. You also have a place that is very mean and a place where you can be mean and nasty.

Think of all the times you've wanted to say something really cutting and hurtful, but because you know what it feels like you don't. So, I still do get angry, but I realize that it's not very helpful or useful. And it's very self-oppressive. The more you begin to understand yourself, the more you understand where other people's anger comes from. And it's not that you love their anger or want to be around it, because you don't. But if it leads to a kind of understanding, that's helpful.

DN: In going beyond anger, you write about your feelings of disappointment in the way people behave. In that disappointment, I sense there is an element of forgiveness. In fact, it seems to be a theme throughout your work - the ability to forgive.

Walker It's the only way you can be free. Because at some point things are so horrible, the only relief you can get is to forgive. What else can you do if you don't want to constantly carry that burden?

I think probably one of the worst things that can happen to anyone is to be in love with someone who is unforgiving. What a torment. Seeing what that feels like, I think, teaches one that forgiveness is crucial to love.

If you cannot open your heart, nothing gets in and you're trapped with a hard little knot. And so whatever is happening in the world, no matter who is the abuser, no matter who is the oppressor, it is well worth continuing to try to open your own heart.

DN: There's been a lot of publicity in recent years on volunteerism being on the rise, and some states are even requiring it in public schools now. Many volunteers testify to the fact that they feel they get more out of volunteering than those they seek to help. Would you describe your growth in activism in similar terms?

Walker I love it. It's what I'm drawn to in the world. It reaches me at a level deeper and deeper each time, I feel. Maybe that's just an illusion, but at the time each cause, or each struggle, seems to bring me to a place in myself that has been prepared by the activity before it. God only knows where this could eventually take me - but someplace really good I think because, really, what you are constantly doing (through activism) is building yourself, creating yourself, so that by the end of your life, however long or short it is, if you have flat-out been in service to a change that needs to occur you will (be fulfilled). And that is what is joyous, and that is what people are referring to when they say, ``Well, I volunteered and was reluctant at first, but now I get more out of it than the people I'm supposedly helping.'' Fortunately, it really is a two-way street.

When you give, it's almost magical. The love you give always comes back to you. My mother used to always echo the Bible and say you should just give. ``Cast your bread upon the waters, and in time it will return to you tenfold.'' It's true, and emotionally it's true.

When you open yourself and give, you get it back (intensified). In a way, what you give is never gone. You give it away, and like magic, you just get more of it. That's what is so wonderful about love itself - you can never really give it away.

DN: In your book you include a photograph of the church you grew up in and you discuss all the wonderful things that went on in that church. And yet you have come some distance from Christianity. Is it any problem for you to reconcile your childhood Christianity with your adult paganism? Did you bring up your daughter with any certain spiritual belief?

Walker No, I didn't. Her father is Jewish and much more orthodox in that religion than I've ever been in Christianity. But I have always been a naturalist pagan, and I say naturalist because sometimes people think I mean by pagan who knows what. But what I mean is someone whose closest spiritual identification is with nature, and I think that has always been very clear to my daughter. I actually worshiped by lying on the ground - until I got bitten by ticks. Then I decided to change my style of worship. Now I get back out there, but I first spread out a quilt.

DN: What importance did the church have for you as a child?

Walker Luckily for me, I love the people in the church. I love the little church itself - it's so sweet. And that's where communities were formed, and that's where everybody went every week. For those things, I'll always (consider myself) a Christian. I have to honor this kind of spiritual connection to my ancestors and to my parents. But for me, the pull of nature easily had more force than the doctrines of the church.

And in music you hear the soul of the people. You used to be able to hear it more clearly than you do now. Nowadays people fake soul. When I was growing up, you couldn't even imagine that people would fake soul.

I remember when I was working on the film of ``The Color Purple,'' there was this big choir and they were going to be doing the soundtrack for some of the music in the film. I was so shocked to see that the conductor would just make a motion and (the choir) would moan or do whatever on cue. It shocked me deeply.

DN: In a community - let's say San Francisco or Los Angeles - is there any replacement for parents who don't want to go to a traditional place of worship, yet want to bring up their children with the same sense of community you had? Or was your experience more about being in a time and a place that can't be duplicated?

Walker: I don't know. I'm much more interested in religion these days, especially Buddhism. I am not so interested in the religion (aspect) so much as I find the teachings to be profound. Meditation is a real foundation, and I believe it will essentially lead you to the gathering you need to be in.

There are people around the world who have managed to structure other ways to (worship) than through Christianity: Islam, or Judaism - which are very sky-God oriented religions that take you away from Earth.

People (need to realize) they are the children of the Earth, not the parents. The Earth is the mother. If people had religion that honored the Earth, we wouldn't be in the situation we are in.

What I'm trying to say, in the first essay (of the book), is that it would be very helpful if people tried to see religion very clearly, and not just accept it because it's handed to them. You have to examine (religion), because your spirit is the most important thing. You have to agree, I think, that given the wonderful way we are constructed our spirit tells us what is real.

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: Author Alice Walker has written a new collection of essays.

David Sprague/Daily News