PODCASTING PODCASTING WISDOM WISDOM 13 13 GRANDMOTHERS GRANDMOTHERS CYCLING CYCLING TOWARDS TOPEACE PEACE THE HEART OF THE LIVING WORLD
THE HEART OF THE LIVING WORLD
BIONEER’S
NINA SIMONS
What the World Needs Now PAGE 22
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I S S U E 14
TOM GOLDTOOTH
WE’RE ALL INDIGENOUS PAGE 30 LESLIE MARMON SILKO
A SHIFT IN HUMANITY & VISION PAGE 26
5
Pieces of Heart PAGE 40
Speaking The Whole World is
Be still a moment. Listen with your heart. There are beings all around you. Don’t be afraid to hear them.
the ancestors the elders the living spirits of nature With their guidance, we’ll thrive. Together.
Listen deeply Be in conversation with the world
SACRED FIRE MAGAZINE / 3
contents SACRED FIRE
On The Cover
Jen Judge photographed Nina Simons in her home in New Mexico
DEPARTMENTS 04 06 07 08
13
Flares From Our Readers Editor’s Note
What We Call Heart Publisher’s Note
Mind, Meet Heart
COLUMNS 14 16 18 20 56 POETRY 46
The Lite Site | By Swami Beyondananda
10
State of the Universe
Light and Shadow | By Rob Preece
Pursuing the Awakening Warrior
12
Matters of Death in Life | By Prema Sheerin
Thunderstorm of Grief
Logs for the Fire | By Ann Rosencranz
At the Hearth of My Heart
Final Flicker | By Maria Alice Campos-Freire
You Cannot Kill Life
What the Old One is Thinking | By Geneen Marie Haugen
4 / Issue 14
10
16
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: MERCEDES MARTHA AQUINO SANCHEZ; ROB PREECE; COURTESY JACOB GEORGE; COURTESY OF ROADSIDE ATTRACTIONS.
Flint and Tinder
The Transition Movement Cycling Towards Peace Speaking Truth to Beauty Woken with a Wooden Spoon Maybe Not Headed to Hell Mining the Sacred
JEN JUDGE
features
22
22
Third Way Leadership
26
Generous Spirit
30
Everyone’s Indigenous
36
Achieving a Place of Heart | By Kathy Dancing Heart
40
Encounters with Heart
By Nina Simons
To reach integration and interdependence the founder of Bioneers encourages us to abandon the win/lose paradigm. By Marilyn Berta
In this interview Leslie Marmon Silko weaves stories of her life, vision and the land she shares with the Tucson Mountain rattlesnakes. By Sharon Brown
An interview with environmental activist Tom Goldtooth explores tribal genetic memory, manipulation of the sacred and the truth of all peoples’ connection with the land.
When we trust one another connections between youth and elders occur in a place we’ve almost abandoned. By Jonathan Merritt
Each of us lives a life of moments, fragments of memory and emotion that relate one to another, to nature and to Divine.
SACRED FIRE MAGAZINE / 5
Sacred Fire The Heart of the Living World
flares FROM OUR READERS
Issue Number Fourteen
sacredfiremagazine.com
L A K O TA W I S D O M I N W O O D
PUBLISHER SHARON BROWN EDITOR-IN-CHIEF JONATHAN MERRITT CREATIVE DIRECTOR MACE FLEEGER MANAGING EDITOR KATHY DANCING HEART MARKETING DIRECTOR ROBIN RAINBOW GATE CONTRIBUTING EDITOR CHRIS SCHLAKE SUBMISSIONS MANAGER STEPHEN MICHAEL SCOTT EDITORIAL ADMINISTRATOR JAN LEENHOUTS-MARTIN FREELANCE COPY EDITORS & PROOFREADERS LYSSA FASSETT & ZAN JARVIS PHOTO EDITOR ROBIN RAINBOW GATE SUBSCRIPTION MANAGER KATHY AFTAB SUBSCRIPTION COORDINATOR MARILYN BERTA AD SALES MANAGER LYN FELLING ADVERTISING ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE ROBIN RAINBOW GATE I.T. & WEB MASTER DAN CERNESE
THANK YOU! To Fran McKeough and David Thiermann and all who have shared their time, talent and financial support to bring life to Sacred Fire and, of course, Grandfather Fire.
Letters We encourage readers to share their reactions to Sacred Fire by sending emails to editor@sacredfiremagazine.com or letters to 10720 NW Lost Park Dr., Portland, OR 97229. We reserve the right to edit submissions for length and clarity. Submissions We accept queries and unsolicited submissions of writing and illustration. See sacredfiremagazine.com for guidelines. Email editorial inquiries to submissions@sacredfiremagazine.com and illustration inquiries to artsubmissions@sacredfiremagazine.com. Advertising Inquiries For an ad sales media kit, visit sacredfiremagazine.com/the magazine/advertising sales or email advertising@sacredfiremagazine.com. Change of Address or Other Subscription Inquiries Email subscriptions@ sacredfiremagazine.com and include both your old and new address. Please allow 6 weeks for address change to take effect. Subscriptions In the United States: Four issues: $28, in Canada, $38, all other countries, $48 (all amounts in USD). Subscribe online at sacredfiremagazine.com Single Copy Sales Bookstore sales in the United States: $7.95, Canada $9.95. Order single copies and back issues online at sacredfiremagazine.com, $10 includes shipping within the U.S. Distribution Services Sacred Fire is available to newsstands in the U.S. and Canada through Ubiquity, Armadillo, Kent News, New Leaf, One Source, Ingram, Source Interlink and Disticor Direct. Sacred Fire has an electronic licensing relationship with EBSCO Publishing. Postmaster Please send address changes to: P.O. Box 7284, Santa Cruz, CA 95061-7284. Reproduction No part of this periodical may be reproduced without the written consent of the publisher. Any requests to reprint material appearing in Sacred Fire magazine must be made in writing and sent to publisher@sacredfiremagazine.com. PUBLISHED BY SACRED FIRE FOUNDATION, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization that supports initiatives that honor and sustain traditional wisdom and indigenous spiritual approaches, because these ancestral lifeways foster global balance and healing. Through its educational and charitable activities, the Foundation supports the sources of ancestral wisdom and brings this wisdom to the world.
SACRED FIRE FOUNDATION sacredfirefoundation.org P.O. Box 11014 Marina Del Rey, CA 90925
Board of Trustees CHAIRMAN DAVID WILEY TRUSTEES ALAN KERNER, ARTEMIA FABRE EXEC. DIR. DEVELOPMENT WILL BERLINER EXEC. DIR. PARTNERS AND GRANTS SOFIA ARROYO EXEC. DIR. COMMUNICATION AND EDUCATION SHARON BROWN SECRETARY VICTORIA REEVES The opinions expressed by Sacred Fire contributors are not necessarily those of Sacred Fire magazine, the Sacred Fire Foundation, the Sacred Fire Community, and/or their respective staffs.
6 / Issue 14
A SIMPLE ACT OF PRAYER I don’t know what made me buy your magazine this month (Issue 12). I had never noticed it before. Something on the cover spoke to me. I am not sure if it was the words “Wake Up Call” or “Mayan Shamans taking on Monsanto.” But my hat is off to Sharon Brown. Your commentary, “Acts of God, What disasters tell us” was profound. For many years, I have been struggling with the mind-boggling problem of people (including myself ) mindlessly participating in the demise of our planet, yet at the same time feeling a close connection to Nature and the spiritual impact it has on our lives. It has seemed hopeless in light of corporate greed, government participation in fraudulent international banking and the catastrophic, systematic destruction of our natural world. What can we do? It is a lonely feeling. And I too was sad after leaving Avatar. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could tap into a spiritual connection to all things, past and present? How would we be different? How would life change? It fills me with a sense of profound hope that in a simple act of prayer we might change our direction. What would happen if the people on our globe prayed for nature? How would the universe respond? What an original yet obvious idea. Imagine the possibility. Thank you for bringing it to light. Thank you for sharing it with us. Let us pray. BOB JONES Sterling, Massachusetts
L I F E FA C I N G D E AT H
RITES & BIKING
P R AY E R F O R G R A N D M O T H E R E A RTH S A C R E D F I R E M A G A Z I N E .C O M
THE HEART OF THE LIVING WORLD
MAYAN SHAMANS
Eda
Zavala
take on
CEREMONY AND HEALING FROM THE RAIN FOREST
MONSANTO FLYING with THE RAVEN GOD
BY JON TURK
HEART TO HEART LIFE AND FICTION
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WA KEUP CALL from WIND, RAIN, EARTH & FIRE
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I S S U E 12
Indigenous Innovations
REMNANTS OF SACRED MEANING I appreciated the loss and pain in Chris Schlake’s “A Rite or a Ride” in Issue 12. I also enjoyed his description of the elements of real rites of passage versus the Ride the Rockies. When I heard his lament, I felt his pain. And mine. While there is value in calling out what the riders (and most of us in this culture) lack, I want to look at this from a slightly different angle. Here is a family who acknowledges the importance of initiation, though they do not have the community or traditions to express it in its fullness. They are doing the best they can. Perhaps this ride is the only kind of ritual in their lives, or perhaps it is part of a rich family life in a culture empty of spiritual meaning. At least they are aiming in the right direction. Initiation within an intact culture, such as described in this article, is certainly ideal. And I feel the lack of that in my core. Yet all we can do is start from where we are and preserve the idea that rites of passage/initia-
tion are important, even just as words. When the words are gone, so is the idea, though not the hunger. I believe that the hunger cannot be forgotten. People know they are starving—they are just not sure how to feed themselves. If some people realize a kind of rite of passage is more important than a big-screen HDTV, that gives me hope. One bite of “food” will not make the hunger go away, but it may help people realize that they need more. I give thanks for the remnant of sacred meaning preserved by this family in whatever depth they can manage at this time and place.
MACE FLEEGER
MOLLIE CURRY Asheville, NC
GET OFF YOUR HIGH HORSE The other day, I picked up my first—and last—Sacred Fire. I’m still shaking my head over the mean-spirited tone of “A Rite or a Ride” by Chris Schlake. In a self-congratulatory harangue, Schlake disparages the motives, energy and dedication of riders in a fundraiser called Ride the Rockies. He scolds these 500-mile riders for thinking they have experienced a rite of passage. And he paints them with a wildly broad brush as a disparate, disjointed, egotistical, unaccountable and lost bunch of mere do-gooders who don’t know what a real rite of passage is all about. Last summer I volunteered to staff a team tent at the end of a 100-mile disease research fundraising ride. Not all the cyclists did the “century” route, of course; some rode 75, or 45,
or just 25 miles. No matter how far they rode, though, it was a hard passage, and reaching that tent was a deeply meaningful rite for them and for us. There were elderly riders who stashed their oxygen tanks in their panniers; skilled riders who would camp out overnight and ride the 100-miles back; people who’d never ridden farther than the grocery store or library but who came in exultant over the limitations, anxieties and frailties they’d met head on and beaten. Riders and volunteers experienced a rite of passage together as we celebrated their determination, their changed visions of themselves. Maybe some of the millions of people who participate in events for good causes are in it just for the t-shirts, but many more see it is a life-adjusting, revelatory and truly communal event for which they deserve our thanks and respect, not highminded, below-the-belt criticism.
And finally, let’s not forget that alongside these riders are the spirits of the men, women and children experiencing their own rites of passage through lifechanging, sometimes life-ending, diseases. There’s something way bigger happening on these rides
than Mr. Schlake seems to get. If this piece is typical of Sacred Fire’s “heart of the living world” view, no thanks. I’ll leave the magazine on the store shelf next time. BETH PALUBINSKY Philadelphia, PA
Chris Schlake Responds Thanks to Mollie Curry and Beth Palubinsky for joining the discussion. While there is no easy consensus, I’m glad that this neglected part of conventional culture is charged with energy for at least some of us. I was touched by Mollie’s compassion for the family in my column as they seek to find meaning where they can. She may be right that, in some perhaps not-entirely-conscious way, they do acknowledge the importance of initiation. My fear, however, is that if we use the phrase “rite of passage” to refer to merely difficult, powerful or uplifting experiences, we might believe we’ve experienced the real thing. And the real thing, I’m claiming, is ineffable and
involves Divine. It mercilessly shatters us and lovingly knits us back together as new creations. Like Mollie, I’m grateful that at least a dim memory of such rites exists. But is it true that “the hunger cannot be forgotten?” I worry that if we call a bike ride a “rite of passage” we might forget that deeper experience is even possible. I was surprised, annoyed, and a little hurt by Beth Palubinsky’s letter, but eventually came to an important realization. While she disagrees with my narrower definitions of both “rite of passage” and “community,” she seems especially upset by my uncompromising stance. I see now
that in presuming to speak with authority about such matters, I was really trying to provoke a discussion about spiritual leadership. Who, really, is capable of arbitrating disputes about meaning or authenticating “rites of passage?” If know-how about rites of passage has essentially disappeared from mainstream culture, then it seems that the only option is to turn with a prodigious and unprecedented humility to the intact ancestral indigenous cultures, to people for whom the real thing is still a fact of life. If we can muster an inspired diplomacy and practice a kind of reverse colonialism, we may yet avoid catastrophe.
SACRED FIRE MAGAZINE / 7
editor’s note
WHAT WE CALL HEART
FOR SEVERAL ISSUES WE’VE
run the tag line “The Heart of the Living World” under our name on the cover. In doing so we make several assumptions. First, we assume that people understand that the world itself is a living being. Second, we assume that this being has a consciousness at its core, what we call Heart. We are not speaking here of a visceral heart, that great pump that circulates the blood through our veins. Nor do we mean the fragile, sentimental heart of romantic literature. The Heart we refer to is indomitable and unbreakable— though paradoxically, it must be broken many times. Passion and courage arise from the Heart and, at the same time, it is the place of stillness, akin to what Buddhist and Vedic traditions refer to as the Natural or Big Mind, which is inseparable 8 / Issue 14
from the Heart. It is the source of wisdom and, ultimately, enlightenment. The Natural Mind/Heart is distinct from the ego-mind, which is primarily concerned with the needs and desires of the individual and is driven primarily by fear of loss and the need to protect against loss. It sees the individual as separate from and in conflict with other beings, and it moves to gain advantage over others. It wants to shut down those pesky emotions that move us in irrational ways. The ego-mind wants to control the world, to make safe that which is vast and wild and unpredictable. Heart Consciousness, which becomes available when we quiet the chattering voice of the mind, is comfortable in that vast wildness. It recognizes the wisdom of emotional flow that allows us to laugh when we are happy and weep when we are sad, to share when we have plenty, to flare when we are angry. It sees our deep connection to each other and to all of life. It remembers that connection and reminds us that we belong in this time and place, in these families and communities, in relationship with the world.
Heart Consciousness has the capacity to connect with all beings, with beingness itself. In this we include not just the animate beings but also the weather beings, the beings of land and water, the soil itself and the many layers beneath the soil and waters. This beingness also includes the innumerable beings that compose the unseen layers of this infinitely complex realm we call Earth. What we are saying, then, is that the world is conscious of and in constant relationship with every aspect of her beingness. Our third assumption is that everything has this consciousness, this vital relatedness at its core. The single element common to every cell and molecule is fire. Fire is the element of connection. Fire is the element of Heart. This is what we call Sacred Fire. It moves us and moves through us, connects us and transforms us. It creates us and consumes us in this intricate dance of being. When we open ourselves to that Sacred Fire, when we stoke those flames of connection and emotion, we find that, while we may at times need to react in fear, fear needn’t control our lives. We can begin to engage
in and enjoy the mystery of life itself. We can open ourselves to wonderment at the utter magnificence of this realm. Our fourth assumption is that Heart Consciousness exists both in time and beyond time, that it belongs to eternity, what we call Divine. While the individual fires of every heart— including the world itself—will be ultimately quenched, Heart Consciousness will continue and be transformed. What we will be, when death claims us, is beyond our knowing. But life itself is eternal. And, because we have life and are life, we are expressions of Divine. Everything we are, everything we experience and create, reverberates in the infinite song of being. It shapes that song. It belongs to that Heart. In this issue of Sacred Fire, we have many expressions of Heart, from Kathy Dancing Heart’s story of connection between a teacher and her students to the fiery activism of Tom Goldtooth, from Ann Rosencranz’s prayer, “At the Hearth of My Heart,” to Geneen Marie Haugen’s ecstatic poem. Our hope is that, as you read these pages, you will find your own heart opening.
JENNIFER MEANS
By Jonathan Merritt
publisher’s note
MIND, MEET HEART By Sharon Brown
COURTESY SFC
WHAT IS WISDOM?
Although I use the word frequently, I’ve had a warm but fuzzy relationship with its meaning. Wisdom, so weighty with importance, seemed both overused and underappreciated. The word felt trite, as if it had been co-opted by New-Age speak, or had become a philosophical museum piece, revered but somewhat inapplicable for our times. Then I came across a fresh definition of wisdom, and I’m newly energized by its potential. In his 2006 book Animism, UK religious studies teacher Graham Harvey posits that wisdom might be “the sum of knowledge and ethical behaviour,” a blend of known “facts” with a type of knowledge that is less self-evident, perhaps even extraordinary. What struck me about Harvey’s marriage of “knowledge and ethics” was its balance
of heart and mind. What we understand is of the mind, but what we value and how we apply our knowledge is of the heart. Where mind is tempered by heart, we can find wisdom. Not long after finding Harvey’s definition, I came across an article in Orion magazine in which Sandra Steingraber speaks about attending an EPA public forum on fracking, the oil and gas extraction technique that pumps water and chemicals into miles-long tunnels thousands of feet below the earth’s surface. The resulting explosions shatter impermeable layers of shale to release “natural” gas and oil. Basically, the earth receives a massive blunt trauma body blow so she can bruise and ooze and bleed. Fracking poisons and permanently entombs millions and millions of gallons of fresh water, removing it completely from Earth’s circulatory system of evaporation, precipitation, temporary use by animate creatures and ultimate return to its source. When speakers complained about this grossly imbalanced misappropriation of water, she says one pro-fracking speaker intoned sanctimoniously: “Energy is Life. Water
is a Resource.” Where’s the wisdom in this? What are the values being expressed? In this issue’s interview “Everyone’s Indigenous,” (page 30) Tom Goldtooth talks about the spiritual and cultural battle going on in the world today. It’s a battle about wisdom. Tom, whose parents are Dakota and Diné, describes his journey to discover the source of the dominant culture mind-set that values technical and economic power over the heart’s desire to share a healthy relationship with the earth. Tom, executive director of Indigenous Environmental Network, would be the first to point out that Water is Life. It is energy that is the resource. How should we fight this spiritual battle? In her article “Third Way Leadership,” (page 22) Bioneers co-founder Nina Simons proposes that we look to the circles and cycles of nature to discover a new way of resolving conflict. When we’re faced with apparently insurmountable contradictions, she invites us to drop our mind’s attachment to being right, which only increases polarization, and instead find guidance in
the way plants, birds, bodies of water and landforms reconcile conflicting forces through adaptation and resiliency. When we model the values found in the heart of nature, we are embracing the earth’s own wisdom. In these times we can all use a good dose of wisdom, a good dose of putting the mind in service to the heart. We need a context for sharing our wisdom-work with others and a framework for transmitting heart-knowledge to succeeding generations. That’s the goal of Sacred Fire Foundation and of this magazine. It’s the purpose of an event we are holding May 1922 in Port Townsend, WA. The Ancient Wisdom Rising gathering will bring traditional elders and indigenous wisdom keepers together with hundreds of people who are ready to engage in an active, felt relationship with our living world. Ancient Wisdom Rising will balance modern culture’s mind with ancient tradition’s heart, and introduce ways to incorporate “ethical behaviour” into our dance on this earth. We invite you to join us. For more information, visit ancientwisdomrising.com. SACRED FIRE MAGAZINE / 9
BY CHRIS SCHLAKE
The Transition Movement Gears Up for Powering Down GIVING UP GAS IS A GAS
Don’t look now, but there are a lot of smiling faces headed toward the Apocalypse. Alert to the inseparable challenges of peak oil, climate change and economic decline, people from around the world are coming together in a wide range of creative initiatives collectively known as the Transition Movement. Committed to community resilience and local self-reliance, these engaged citizens are “skilling up for the power down” by starting everything from community gardens, bakeries and breweries, to ride-share programs, clothing swaps and local currencies. By reducing carbon footprints and turning consumers into producers, Transition Movement projects are weaning entire towns from dependence on oil. In the process people are connecting with one another, with the places they live and their own growing desires for simple living. Bump into a “Transitioner,” and you’re likely to find someone whose activism for local food security includes the joys of vegetable gardening or organizing a neighborhood seed bank. Rob Hopkins is co-founder of the Transition Network—a website dedicated to inspiring, encouraging and supporting communities as they organize themselves to transition from oil dependency. He says that the collapse of the global oil economy is best seen as the “Great Opportunity.” Convinced that the Transition Movement can “look more like a party than a protest march,” he sees in the decline of industrial society the chance to build a world most people have always dreamed of. Through his “Energy Descent Action Plans” local communities collaboratively vision, design and implement plans to move away from fossil fuels. He says these plans help people to embrace challenge as a collective adventure that can make them “feel alive, positive and included in this process of societal transformation.” From small (and very local) beginnings in Totnes, England—the first official “Transition Town”—Transition initiatives now number close to 700, continually springing up around the world from Australia to Chile, to Europe and the U.S. Various nations have Transition “hubs” to help coordinate national resources and to network internationally as more and more local citizens, agencies and institutions begin to forge grass-rooted pathways to a future dependent less on oil and more on the power of community. Rob Hopkins publishes on all things Transition at transitionculture.org. Be sure to view the inspiring film In Transition 1.0, available on the site. For Transition’s global presence go to transitionnetwork.org and for the multifarious happenings in the U.S. visit transitionus.org.
even peak personal income. And, connected to it all since at least Malthus, is the unpredictable wild card: peak people. See a pattern? Bob Banner thinks he does. Instrumental in bringing the Transition Movement to San Luis Obispo County in central California, he calls it Peak Ego. While many have seen the driven selfcenteredness at the heart of consumerism, Banner is convinced that even with the ego there are limits—and that we’ve hit them. Banner believes that, while people have been deeply and deliberately indoctrinated to believe in a highly materialistic means to happiness, the myth is beginning to crack. “How much more separate can we become?” he asks. “How much more ego can we have before the level of ‘happiness’ runs out?” Though amused by the idea of Peak Ego, Banner is more interested in implementing it. True to the Transition approach, he drafted his very own “Ego Descent Action Plan.” “[M]odernity has designed our internal lives,” he says “to actually encourage us to believe that we don’t need people, that living in an isolated apartment eating and eliminating can all be done in total isolation, having nothing to do with others.” Instead, he decided he wanted to surrender his status quo lifestyle of ego enhancement and “listen to others’ viewpoints and perspectives and reasonings and let go periodically of that self-righteous perspective that ‘I only know what’s right,’ etc.” The full article “Peak Ego and the Ego Descent Plan” can be found at Bob Banner’s online magazine HopeDance, hopedance.org. He lives in Santa Barbara, CA where he teaches Laughter Yoga and workshops in Heart/Right Brain Connections.
ARE WE PEAKING YET?
Peak oil is the tip of the (melting) iceberg. Go ahead and include peak coal and peak natural gas. While you’re at it, don’t forget peak phosphorous, peak copper, and peak platinum. In his recent book Peak Everything: Waking Up to a Century of Decline (Gabriola Island, BC, Canada: New Society Publishers, 2010), Richard Heinberg adds, among other things, peak freshwater, peak grain harvests, and 10 / Issue 14
THE SACRED IN TRANSITION
Congenial inclusiveness is central to the Transition Movement’s worldwide success. Folks of every political bent have found common cause in the movement because of their shared belief that
FROM LEFT: ROB HOPKINS; ANDREW WILLIAMS; ROB HOPKINS.
nearly every major issue needs to be engaged locally. According to the latest edition of the on-line news letter, Transition Times, however, an unexpected, and perhaps emergent, dimension has now entered the arena: the Sacred. Though emphatically open to “challenges to a comfortable consensus,” the movement has just been hurled headlong (and maybe “heartlong”) into some unprecedented soul-searching. It all started with an impassioned article by Michael Brownlee, co-founder of Transition Colorado. Titled “The Evolution of Transition in the U.S.,” it begins by characterizing Transition as “one of the most hopeful signs of the 21st century” but eventually condemns the movement’s marginalization, if not its disavowal, of “the Sacred.” To him the process of regenerating ways of life that are harmoniously balanced with the natural world ultimately “seems rather mystical, even spiritual.” He says, “We eventually discover that . . . wholeness and connectedness and aliveness and sacredness and holiness are all one seamless, unfolding evolutionary process.”
From over in Totnes Rob Hopkins quickly published a response, essentially noting that including “the Sacred” would be more divisive than constructive, and the latest U.K./U.S. conflict was on, complete with a rhetorical “declaration of independence.” Finally, Carolyn Baker posted “Transition: The Sacred, the Scared, and the Scarred” as a rejoinder to both. In it she largely defends Brownlee’s position, while adding a few chops of her own: “Oh isn’t this lovely—we’re ‘transitioning.’ Never mind that our entire way of life is dying. Never mind how we actually feel about that in our guts and in our hearts. Whistle a happy tune because we’re ‘transitioning.’” All three articles are lively, articulate reflections from Transitioners neck-deep in the trenches of community re-localization. To follow along and track the fate of the Sacred in one of the most dynamic social movements around, go to http://transition-times. com/colorado/. Clockwise: Sue Holmes at a Totnes garden during the Edible Garden Crawl; Launching the Brixton Pound; Johanna and Dan McTiernan, co-founders of The Handmade Bakery
PEAK TV
The movement to disentangle dependencies on the global economy and promote local production of things like food, fuel and fiber is unquestionably legit—it’s on TV! Turn your proverbial dial to Peak Moment Television: Locally Reliant Living for Challenging Times (peakmoment.tv), and you’ll find a biweekly, online television series featuring local luminaries creating resilient communities for a more sustainable, lower-energy future. From permaculture farms to electric bikes, ecovillages to car-sharing, emergency preparedness to careers for the coming times, over 187 programs are available to inspire and inform. SACRED FIRE MAGAZINE / 11
Cycling Towards Peace A veteran falls back in love with his country and humanity Like many returning soldiers, Jacob George’s re-entry to civilian life was rocky. Heavy drinking, homelessness, and volatile emotions emerged as symptoms of a man disconnected from society. For 28-year-old Sgt. George, however—a three-tour, Special Forces combat engineer in Afghanistan— a supportive community in his hometown Fayetteville, Arkansas and the discovery of writing and poetry guided him through a profound recovery and transformation. Today he walks—and bikes— a path of peace. Moved by his perception that the war in Afghanistan is senseless and unwinnable, he took to the streets on his bicycle to tell his story and enlist other veterans to join him in speaking publicly what goes unreported by either the government or the mainstream media. Dubbed “A Ride Till the End,” the campaign operates as an improvisational road show using music, art and storytelling to raise awareness of the real consequences of the war and to plant seeds of community as it moves from town to town. Sacred Fire caught up with George after he rode in to Nashville, Tennessee, nearly 3,000 miles into his pedal-powered pilgrimage for peace. SF| A lot of people hold compelling visions of a better world that they rarely act on. Why do you suppose it’s so hard to take the leap?
JG I think a lot of that can be tied to identity. If one is part of a family that believes that even if you question the war, it’s still patriotic to support what the nation is doing, then challenging that challenges the entire worldview of the family unit. That’s exactly what happened to me. When I announced to my family that I was going to drop out of college, quit my job, sell all my stuff and ride my bike until the war ends, they thought I was going crazy. They didn’t want to talk to me. They told me not to use their names in the media. My mom is a real estate agent, and she was worried that it would hurt her sales; my dad has a brother who’s a politician, and he was worried it would hurt his brother’s career. You went against the grain of your conditioning as you followed the promptings of your heart. How did you manage that?
On the Road from New Orleans to Houston: Bath and banjo time with Jacob. Outside Baton Rouge after helping with the clean up of the BP oil spill. Group on a ridge. Camping: Jacob’s brother on playground equipment.
When I got out of the military, I was not a functioning part of society. I needed help, but basically worked through my stuff by myself—which wasn’t that smart. I wound up going to college, and I started to learn how to articulate my frustrations through writing and speaking. I literally learned how to say things out loud that I couldn’t express before about the military and what had happened. That, combined with yoga, meditation, rock climbing and a lot of bicycle riding—plus a supportive community—really helped me go through a spiritual transition. I came to understand that I was no longer Sgt. George and that my military service was a part of my life that I could move past, that I could even draw from and grow from. It sounds like college helped you experience a profound transformation.
I was taking a cultural anthropology class and learning about indigenous peoples and indigenous ways. In the military I worked a lot with the Pashtuns who are indigenous people of Afghanistan and operate as tribes. And it dawned on me that what I had done for the U.S. Army was close to the sweeping atrocities, the genocide that happened here on our own continent. But I had never understood that I had participated in erasing indigenous people until I went to college. The road caused me to fall back in love, not only with this nation, but with humanity altogether. You tend to see the dark side of things in the military. But take away the uniform and we’re just human. I think that without our hard political convictions, we could all truly just get along. “A Ride Till the End” vows to remain on the road until the troops come home. To learn where the cyclists are headed next and find roadside photos, videos, updates and events, go to www.operationawareness.org.
12 / Issue 14
COURTESY JACOB GEORGE
It seems that even though you’ve traded in your fatigues for cycling shorts you’re still a warrior.
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New from the legeNdary Native americaN author of ceremoNy
SIBYLLE ZILKER
Still Fighting for Fish Lake The Tsilhqot’in people’s fight (see SF #10 “To Save the Sacred Waters: The Teztan Biny Story”) to protect their lands and waters from the attempted predations of Taseko Mines Limited continues. Despite a November 10, 2010 Canadian Government decision to reject Taseko’s original application to build a two kilometer-wide open pit mine in the heart of the Teztan Biny/Nabas region, using Teztan Biny (Fish Lake) as a tailings sink, Taseko has responded with a new, potentially even more damaging application. Taseko’s original plan would have destroyed Teztan Biny and much of the surrounding watershed—lands and waters of sacred cultural significance to the Tsilhqot’in people. That plan prompted universal opposition from the Tsilhqot’in Nation and First Nations across Canada. The Government’s decision was based on an independent review panel’s environmental assessment that Minister of Environment Jim Prentice described as “scathing” and “probably the most condemning report that I’ve seen.” Even Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper concurred with this decision, citing “the myriad and serious environmental concerns that were raised by that assessment.” While Taseko consistently presented its original plan as providing the “lowest environmental risk,” only three months later it presented another plan that, by its own criteria, would potentially cause even greater environmental damage. The new plan, while preserving Teztan Biny, does not address the host of significant environmental impacts identified in the environmental assessment, including impacts on threatened grizzly bear populations. It also ignores the effect the proposed mine would have on Tsilhqot’in cultural heritage and their rights to the use of the lands and fisheries for traditional purposes. However, the independent review panel observed that the open pit and associated mining facilities would still be close enough to Teztan Biny to eliminate the intrinsic value of the area. It concluded that the Tsilhqot’in people would still suffer the unfathomable loss of their long-standing cultural connection to Teztan Biny even if the lake itself were preserved. The Tsilhqot’in National Government has called on the Government of Canada to stand by its original decision and categorically reject Taseko’s efforts to resurrect this fundamentally flawed project rather than unnecessarily subject the Tsilhqot’in people to another round of divisive and draining regulatory proceedings. For further information and to support the Tsilhqot’in effort to preserve their culture, go to teztanbiny.ca. —Jonathan Merritt
oN Sale Now A deeply personal contemplation of the spiritual power of the natural world—of what these creatures and landscapes can communicate to us, and how they are all linked. “ For my money, Leslie Marmon Silko has always been the finest prose writer of her generation. This lovely memoir of growing up in a little visited place only convinces me again.” —Larry McMurTry also by Leslie Marmon Silko and available from Penguin classics
a member of Penguin Group (uSa) www.penguin.com
VIKING
SACRED FIRE MAGAZINE / 13
Speaking Truth to Beauty EDWARD ESPE BROWN
Woken With a Wooden Spoon
If you’ve ever succumbed to thinking you’re the master (chef) of your domain, this film might just whack you with a wooden spoon and wake you up. Something of a wisdom teaching masquerading as a cooking class—or vice versa—the documentary How to Cook Your Life cheerfully invites viewers to chew on how cooking is a place where our humanity is routinely laid bare—warts, heart and all. Tagging along with chef and Zen priest EdHARCOURT-SMITH ward Espe Brown—author of the beloved Tassajara Bread Book—to retreat centers in Austria and the U.S., viewers pick up morsels for the kitchen and beyond. “When you’re cooking,” says Brown, “you may have a few fiascos and—it’s part of the deal. Maybe it’s that our whole life is just a fiasco.” By turns tearful, irritated and mischievous as he leavens culinary routines with Buddhist insight, Brown’s uniquely transparent presence carries the show and keeps it all down to earth. Despite originally being known, he says, as “an arrogant, bossy, short-tempered know-it-all,” the posture he strikes most frequently throughout the film is laughing unrelentingly at himself and his pretensions to mastery. Pick up a copy of How to Cook Your Life, directed by Doris Dorrie, wherever fine DVDs are rented. 14 / Issue 14
By now you may have recognized that those “different” folks down the block, despite their religious practices (or taste in house paint), are not barbarians—or even Neanderthals. Good for you, and score one for civilization. But how are we really doing as a global community of diverse spiritual traditions? Filmmaker Catherine Corona wonders into that question in her featurelength documentary The Great Mystery where she engages with followers of the world’s major traditions and asks the questions that burn inside many of us. Tagging along inconspicuously with Corona on her 2,700-mile trek across the western U.S., viewers witness sincere, intimate
moments with practitioners and leaders from a variety of traditions. These include one of the first female Rabbis, an AfricanAmerican Christian businessman, the Staff Keeper of the Lakota Nation and an old South Dakota cowboy named Buck. Unsatisfied as a girl with her priest’s declaration that all nonbelievers were destined to an eternity in hell, Corona’s lifelong inquiry into spiritual traditions and her career in television and film coalesce into an engrossing and ultimately hopeful presentation. Noting that 85% of the world’s 6.7 billion people follow a religious tradition, the film affirms the untapped but prodigious potential for peace that lies at the heart of inter-spiritual cooperation.
Visit The Great Mystery on the web at thegreatmysterymovie.com to learn about screenings or how to obtain a copy. While you’re at it, make a little friendly with the infidels next door.
FROM LEFT: CANTON BECKER; COURTESY OF ROADSIDE ATTRACTIONS; THE GREAT MYSTERY.
The cultural fiber of community is oral tradition: myths of origin, poetry of place, social dialogue, the expressions of generational learning. At FuturePrimitive oral tradition goes digital. Featuring contemporary voices speaking “Truth to Beauty,” the podcasting website has an archive of 300 intimate conversations with leading-edge visionaries and veterans of alternative living that connects soulful perceptions with practical ideas for change. From the healing to performing arts (and their frequent intersections), shamanism to activism, farming to filmmaking, listeners join Joanna Harcourt-Smith in dialogues with the likes of Vandana Shiva, Jesus Sepúlveda and David Abram. Seeking “an effortless and aesthetic harmony with the living world,” the podcasts are dedicated to assisting people in participating in the renaissance of awareness that is animating contemporary life around the world. www.futureprimitive.org
Maybe Not Headed to Hell
Cerro Quemado, venerated by the Wixarika (Huichol) as the birthplace of the sun in the sacred desert of Wirikuta.
MARCELO ARTURO NAVARRETE PONCE
Mining the Sacred In the high deserts of central Mexico water supplies and the wider ecosystem are imminently threatened by foreign mining operations eager to extract the remaining deposits of silver. But the real story in these dry, fragile highlands is much bigger than the latest battle in the global resource wars—bigger, perhaps, than anyone can imagine. Of the 22 mining concessions granted to the Canadian firm First Majestic, 80% of the claims exist in a place called Wirikuta—holy lands where every year loyal pilgrims arrive to make offerings and pray for the welfare of all living beings, including humanity. While UNESCO recognizes the area as a World Cultural Heritage site, and the state of Mexico acknowledges it as a National Sacred Site, the indigenous Wixarika (Huichol) see more. Here is the home of the gods. Here is the very center of the universe. Often traveling hundreds of miles on foot, Wixarika pilgrims make annual offerings here to complete the cycle of exchange and offer gratitude to the very sources of life. As they have for thousands of years, these humble servant-ambassadors maintain crucial connections with the indomitable forces of sun, moon, ocean and land. Through relationships painstakingly developed over countless generations, harmony and hospitality extend not just to the Wixarika, but the entire web of life. According to the Wixarika, this expertly-brokered balance of powers keeps the wild environs of the planet a habitable place for humans and their kin. If, however, the mines prevent the Wixarika from performing their ceremonies and honoring their obligations to their ancestors, they feel that fragile rapport could go up in smoke. Along with the desecration of the sacred springs, mining these lands could silence the songs of the flora and the fauna. The authority, generosity and amiabil-
ity of the “Cerro Quemado”—a sacred mountain recognized as the birthplace of the sun—might soon be violated. And the Wixarika, with their ancestral ways of life and prayer, could cease to exist as a people. “What they are talking about,” says one jicarero (keeper of the ancient pilgrimage), “means the annihilation of our culture. It’s like a spiritual death for us.” As a result, the very balance of the world would be at stake. While no public debate has transpired to determine the consequences of the disappearance of the Wixarika, what is known is that instead of making their usual offerings—left with humility and reverence—humans will dump vast quantities of cyanide into scarce creeks, streams and rivers. In lieu of respectful restraint, workers with machines will use more water in a single day than a pilgrim family uses in 20 years. As of this writing, company officials have yet to consult the springs. No high level meetings have been planned with the sun. The subterranean silver itself could not be reached for comment. In October, 2010 the Wixarika published a call for support from the international community, demanding cancellation of all 22 mining concessions and a moratorium on mining altogether. The declaration can be found at nahuacalli.org/Wirikuta__Wixarica__Eng_.html. Listen to an interview with Wixarika representatives at the Cancun Climate Summit at blogtalkradio.com/brenda-norrell/2010/12/06/huicholes-fight-mining-sacred-land and watch a video interview with Wixarika marakame (medicine man) Julio Parra at comuntierra. org/site/index.php. To sign the international petition and learn about additional ways to support the Wixarika, go to theesperanzaproject.org/2010/12/saving-a-sacred-tradition-in-wirikuta/.
SACRED FIRE MAGAZINE / 15
THE LIGHT SITE
BY S WA M I B E YO N DA N A DA
State of the Universe
The shift has hit the fan... and all heaven has broken loose. The shift has hit the fan. And all heaven has broken loose. You say, “Heaven?? Where the hell do you see heaven?” And yes. If you look at the news headlines from the past year, you’d have a hell of a time finding any heaven. It’s a dogma-eat-dogma world out there, and everyone seems caught up in the bipolar insanity. Even Poland is polarized—the North Poles and the South Poles. We talk about peace in the Middle East, and we can’t even make peace in the Middle West. Here in America we have a deeply divided body politic. Half the population believes our election system is broken. The other half believes it is fixed.
In 2010 political anger became all the rage, as town hall meetings turned into “I scream anti-socials,” and enlightened discourse into heated detestimonials. The Tea Party Movement, a coalition of civil libertarians and uncivil libertarians, provided an ideal cover for mining interests (as in, “that’s mine... that’s mine... that’s mine”) to throw barrels of anonymous money into Congressional races to defeat Democratic candidates. Of course we all know that when it comes to defeating Democratic candidates, no one does it better than the Democrats themselves. In the area of self-defeat, the Democrats are simply unbeatable. Somehow, in just two years they turned a mandate into a man-who-can’t-get-a-date.
The alter(ed) ego of political scientist-turned-high school teacherturned-journalist Steve Bhaerman, the Swami, asserts that his path is strictly “non-dominational” and invites the faithful to visit him at his website temple/revival tent and “join the upwising!” wakeuplaughing.com
16 / Issue 14
American Middle Class Tops Endangered Species List To add injury to insult, the American middle class continued to top the Endangered Species List, caught between the lowly criminal at the bottom and the highly criminal at the top. Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I’m nostalgic for the good old days when people robbed banks. Once again in 2010, Chase chased us, Wachovia walked over us, and the name Goldman Sachs tells us all we need to know: We have been sacked by the gold men. Gold-collar criminals have overruled the Golden Rule with the Gold Rules Rule: “Doo-doo unto others before they can doo-doo unto you.” And let’s be honest. Not just the people at the top, but everyone seemed to buy into the boom that could never go bust. And then... BOOM! The bubble popped, and just like that, we’re busted. So, the moral is: don’t put your faith in false profits. Sadly, the financial fleecing didn’t awaken the body politic, but it was harder to sleep through the alarming oil spill in the Gulf last spring. So perhaps it takes a pillage AND a spillage to wake the village to stop the drillage and wildlife killage. The upwising continued to gather esteem in 2010, and the irony curtain is becoming more and more transparent. Wikileaks emerged to challenge our official media, Weaky-Licks, to help end the other “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy—that’s where the American people promise not to ask what the government is doing to “keep them safe,” and the government promises
TRUDY BHAERMAN
A Wolfowitz in Sheepowitz’s Clothing? There is one prime cause of disillusionment, and that is illusionment. And in these challenging times, it’s understandable how a population can get strung out on hopium. America has been going through a dark night, and who wouldn’t want a white knight on a dark night—albeit a slightly darker white knight? But a lad and a lack. So far, our lad seems to lack the will or the power to stand up to the forces of endarkened self-interest. Barack Obama’s neoliberal foreign policy looks pretty much like George Bush’s neoconservative one, and disheartened progressives who believed in Obama’s election rhetoric are beginning to think they fell for the old “debate and switch,” and we ended up with a Wolfowitz in sheepowitz’s clothing. On the other hand, how can we expect a president to stand tall, when the body politic is so sickly and out of shape? After all, we’re still suffering from the lingering effects of Mad Cowboy Disease and chronic electile dysfunction, not to mention irony deficiency and truth decay brought on by weapons of mass distraction. And let’s not forget the Deficit Inattention Disorder that led to our near-debt experience.
MACE FLEEGER
not to tell them. When the people choose to not see what is too uncomfortable to look at, the inevitable result is Not-Seeism. Time to Gather Under One Big Intent But enough about our small world down here. This is, after all, the State of the Universe, and there’s a big, big Universe out there, which is pretty much purring in perfection. Which is to say, there is a hell of lot of heaven out there. So, you are asking, why the hell isn’t heaven here, already? Everything seems to be crashing down, and heaven is nowhere to be found! As a cautious optimystic, I say that contrary to the way things appear, the sky is not falling. It only looks that way because we are ascending. Yes, thanks to the evolutionary upwising and the recently declared state of emerge-‘n-see (where we emerge from fear and separation and see how we are connected), we humans are better able to rise to the occasion than ever before. And when it comes to rising above whatever has been bringing us down, nothing works like levity. Now, I certainly would never want to impose my spiritual faith on anyone else, but I must declare that I am a FUNdamentalist, accent on the FUN. While some of the less fun fundamentalists believe that heaven is above us, we FUNdamentalists believe that heaven is where we make it. FUNdamentalists are strictly non-dominational, so we have no commandments. But we do have One Suggestion: “Let’s go for heaven on earth, just for the hell of it!” “OK,” you protest, “that’s the ideal, but how do we deal with the real deal?” It’s simple, although it may not be easy. If the uncommonly
wealthy have hijacked the commonwealth, we the people must higher-jack it. And we do so by acting on another FUNdamentalist suggestion: we’re not here to earn God’s love, we’re here to spend it! That is how heaven is breaking loose, with people spending their love like it’s going into style. Think about it. Someone comes into a room overflowing with love, and 300 people leave with that love... and pay it forward somewhere else. Love, joy and laughter... they are the loaves and fishes of spiritual nourishment. Yes, heaven has broken loose, and we are here to put it together. Each of us—if we so choose—brings a piece of heaven. You have a little piece here, a little piece there, and before long, you have one big peace everywhere. So... now is the time for all those heaven-bent on planetary transformation to gather under one big intent that reflects the heart-core values shared by humans the world over: “We are here to re-grow the Garden, and have a heaven of a time doing it.” And when the cosmic beings ask, “Oh, by the way, how did the human race turn out?” the answer will be, “They won. They achieved Oneness and won.” This is the true second coming. The human drama achieves a pleasurable climax, as everyone comes together. © Copyright 2011 Steve Bhaerman. All rights reserved. Swami Beyondananda is the cosmic comic alter ego of Steve Bhaerman, and can be found online at wakeuplaughing.com. And, seriously, read Steve’s serious book with Bruce Lipton, Spontaneous Evolution: Our Positive Future and a Way to Get There From Here, available at wakeuplaughing.com along with some free bonus articles.
SACRED FIRE MAGAZINE / 17
L I G H T & S H A D OW BY R O B P R E E C E
ginning. It was this wounded sense of self that my Tibetan teachers recognized and as a result were at first somewhat at a loss as to how to address in us. What becomes particularly problematic is that with the degree of wounding we have in the West it has become normal to be self-preoccupied and solely oriented to In a world where sickness of heart is a cultural normality, personal gain and personal gratification at the it’s a long road to the heart of the Bodhisattva. expense of others. Our culture seems to see the ruthless attainment of one’s own needs WHEN SOME OF MY TIBETAN TEACHERS first began to visit the in a competitive world as something of an accolade. In the West and teach Westerners, they were surprised or perhaps cutthroat political and corporate world being able to achieve even shocked by something they experienced in us. When and satisfy one’s own aspirations for power and status at the they described it in their own terms, they called it sok lung, expense of others’ is encouraged. Our sickness of the heart a damage or blockage of the primary life-supporting “energy- has become a cultural normality. wind” or lung (in Sanskrit: prana) within the heart chakra. From a Tibetan Buddhist point of view this wounding to What they recognized in this was that something about our the heart causes a contraction and closing around the heart way of life in the West was putting a kind of pressure in the chakra that cuts us off from a deep essential quality that is inheart that led to a deep yet subtle level of pain and depression nate within us all. This is a quality of mind known in Sanskrit of the energy there. One of the ways this manifests is in subtle as chitta. Chitta is often translated as mind, heart or essence yet deep insecurity and anxiety. and is a quality of mind that dwells in the heart chakra. But If we translate this into a more Western, psychological lan- this is not our ordinary, worldly conceptual mind; it is a deep guage, what we begin to understand is that there is something quality of mind that is essentially clear, peaceful and pervadabout the stresses and pressures we grow up with in the West ed by a natural compassion and loving-kindness. Indeed, it that has a dramatic impact upon this very subtle energy in the heart. One of the most significant aspects of this problem is that we experience a much more accentuated sense of insecurity and alienation in the West because of the very nature of our culture and its expectations of us from a very early age. From early in our life we are more is our ordinary mind with its emotional entanglements and likely to experience separation from the wounds that obscures this essential heart-mind. mother and a far greater expectation In the Tantric tradition this essential nature of mind is also to be independent and self-reliant. We known as clear-light mind and has a number of significant grow up into a world that then demands characteristics, one of which is its innate clarity and emptithat we survive and become individuals ness and the other is a potent, innate vitality that brings with in an extremely competitive environ- it a felt quality of joy, happiness and bliss. Our problem, if we ment where the pressure to succeed is like to see it as such, is that while this natural quality has nevendemic. If we add to this the absence er been defiled, it is, however, obscured by our gross ordinary of a supportive sense of community and mind and its emotional proliferations. As a result it is largely the often dysfunctional nature of the nu- inaccessible to us. It has been described as being like a golden Rob Preece, author clear family, insecurity, anxiety and fear statue wrapped in filthy rags. From a Buddhist point of view, most recently of The become a root emotional drive. if we are able to gradually clear these obscurations, then what Wisdom of Imperfecnaturally manifests is what could be called bodhichitta or the tion (Snow Lion, 2010) is a psychotherapist, IS IT ANY WONDER that this alienation has awakening mind or heart. spiritual mentor, leadan impact on the heart and the energy Our innate heart potential is the deep vitality of our mind’s er of Tibetan meditaof the heart? The consequence is that natural, undefiled and clear nature. So long as we are still caught tion retreats, and an initiated Granicero we experience deep-rooted wounding to up in our primary wounds of the heart, it is going to be extreme(weather worker) in our sense of self, and our ego-identity is ly difficult to begin to awaken qualities such as compassion and the Nahua tradition. built on shaky ground from the very be- loving-kindness. If I have deep-rooted feelings of low self-worth, mudra.co.uk
Pursuing the Awakening Warrior
18 / Issue 14
ANNA PREECE
SOMETHING ABOUT OUR WAY OF LIFE PUTS A KIND OF PRESSURE IN THE HEART THAT LEADS TO A DEEP YET SUBTLE LEVEL OF PAIN AND DEPRESSION OF THE ENERGY THERE.
Chenrezig, the Bodhisattva of compassion, holding at his heart a piece of lapis lazuli representing the quality of Bodhichitta. By Rob Preece
lack of self-acceptance, feeling I am not good enough and so on, then these close the heart leading to sok lung. It is very easy to speak of opening the heart and having spiritual ideals of love and compassion, but if we have not addressed our essential wounding these will just be a kind of veneer of spiritual correctness burying deep wounds. To open the heart we must first begin to heal our sense of self. To do this we need to develop compassion and acceptance towards ourselves with all of our failings as well as our gifts and qualities. The contraction around the heart then begins to soften, and the innate energy within the heart starts to awaken. This may not always be comfortable because as we soften the contraction in the energy around the heart we re-awaken our wounds, but as we go deeper we can begin to feel the natural chitta that lies in the heart. The term bodhichitta, which is often translated as the “awakening mind,” emerges from an opening of the heart and brings a deep compassion for the suffering of all beings. It also awakens a powerful quality of intention that is willing to dedicate life to the welfare of others. Bodhichitta is sometimes called the “great will,” but this is not the will of the ego but a deeper intention that requires that we surrender to the process of awakening to the state of wholeness or Buddhahood for the sake of all beings. It is like the shift from “I will” to “thy will be done.” While this “awakening mind” lies at the heart of Buddhist life, it is something that emerges only when we have begun to heal our own wounds so that there is the fertile ground for its growth. Once present, as a quality of
the heart, it will underlie everything we do in life, like a steady flowing river moving us towards the ocean of full awakening. It will then be natural to wish to dedicate our lives to the welfare of others and indeed to the planet that so unconditionally supports us. Bodhichitta is the heart of the Bodhisattva, often translated as “the awakening warrior,” one who with courage engages with the journey of life to transform adversity into the path of awakening for the welfare of others. SACRED FIRE MAGAZINE / 19
M AT T E R S O F L I F E I N D E AT H
Thunderstorm of Grief The gift of transforming energy can shudder in every cell of the body.
for the funeral of her mother who she had not seen for two years. Although she had shed some tears since the news arrived, nothing prepared her for what happened at the funeral. Family and friends were approaching the open casket to say goodbye. No one was speaking, and the room was shrouded in silence. As Wendy walked up to look at her mother lying there peacefully, she felt an overwhelming tide of grief arise within her. It felt wild, and she knew that if she allowed it, she would begin to sob uncontrollably. She simply could not break down so completely in front of everyone. She mustered every shred of her self-control and suppressed the flood of emotion. She turned from the sight of her mother and did not look back. However, to this day she feels the loss of that moment. One thing that is striking about our relationship with death in Western culture is the difficulty we have with grief. There is enormous pressure not to break down, as if the experience and expression of authentic grief were some kind of malfunction. Instead, we value the ability to present a brave face, to soldier on in the face of loss. The belief that the open expression of grief is a sign of weakness, lack of dignity or lack of self-control is something very particular to our modern culture. Many other cultures understand that the unfettered expression of grief is a natural and Prema Sheerin is an healthy response to deep loss. initiated shaman in the Grief performs a vital function in our Huichol tradition of Mexlife. It is the movement of energy that alico and has a shamanic lows us to process loss and let go of that healing and life coaching practice. She heads which must pass. In our grieving we the Death and Dying honor the living beings (or the circumCouncil of the Sacred Fire stances) that we are losing, and we allow Community. For more ourselves to release that which we have information go to held so dear. When we deny this essential premasheerin.com. WENDY RETURNED HOME
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expression, we thwart our ability to let go and move on. We tend to cling to the past, to fear the future or become resentful about life. So why are we so challenged by the emotion of grief? It is partly rooted in our orientation towards our emotions as either positive (happiness, joy, compassion, gratitude) or negative (sadness, grief, anger, fear). However, each of these so-called negative emotions has an essential role to play in our wellbeing. Each one of them provides an authentic response to certain life circumstances. Since we associate grief or sadness with weakness, we view it with fear and distaste. Above all, we fear becoming lost in our grief. It feels like a tidal wave that will take us down, never to surface again. At least, this is the perspective of the ego-mind, which wants to maintain control at all costs. It is threatened by authentic emotion, which is uncontrollable and which brings us into our bodies and connects us to our hearts. The ego-mind will do anything to have us think about the situation rather than to feel it. However, simply thinking about grief does not allow grief to play its role. It tends to lead to depression, bitterness or fear. While grief may be intensely painful, it feels real and true. Each of us has our grief. While we may understand grief when it arises as a response to death, we generally do not accept it at other times. However, grief as the emotional response to loss has actually been our companion through all the smaller losses in our lives. Our unwillingness to acknowledge it in the moment causes us to store it inside like a still pool hidden deep within our being. Then, when the loss is so great that it cannot be ignored, it triggers a pool of grief. Suddenly, the many small, apparently unimportant losses come rushing to the surface. It is important to attend to the smaller losses in our lives, even when they don’t make logical sense. A friend of mine described this process very beautifully: “I cried in the shower today—gut-wrenching, primal sobs as I curled into a ball. Over what, I can’t verbalize, really. Just flashes of things pouring through me, one after the other, with intense lightning bolts of pain. Knowing that I am losing something and I can’t verbalize what. Knowing that I am being asked to step forward, let go, surrender, and I don’t quite understand to what or for what. Just a knowing that lies deep within my bones that is holding my eyes wide open to the truth around me and within me. And I find myself straddling a ravine in this moment, with one foot in the old way of living and all that I knew and the other foot in this new way of living and all that I don’t know.” These words speak to the way in which our minds attempt to grapple with something that is beyond our comprehension. Grief brings us to the knowing of the heart. It asks us to recog-
KENEDY SINGER
BY P R E M A S H E E R I N
©ISTOCKPHOTO.COM/ DEBI BISHOP
nize the mind’s fear of pure, present emotion, its terror of dissolution, its need to control the outcome. True bravery in the face of loss simply allows the most natural, visceral expression of grief to move through us and carry us onward. The way we experience and express our grief differs for each of us. Some of us need to speak, some to be silent. Some need to move, some to be still. Nevertheless, there is one thing that is true for all grief: it is not a mental exercise. It is not about identifying with our story of loss. Authentic grief is a felt experience. One of the keys to supporting it is to acknowledge and allow it as a feeling in the body—perhaps as a sensation in the chest, perhaps tears in eyes, perhaps a shuddering in every cell. This feeling asks us to abandon ourselves to an energy that blows through us like a storm, sometimes with a power that feels as though it will destroy us. And yet no storm lasts forever. If we allow this process, without resistance, it can leave us washed clean like the crisp air after a thunderstorm. Susan Vos lost her twenty-four-year-old son Simon in an accident. She was utterly shattered by the loss. She felt the grief in every cell of her body. It took her to the darkest places in her being, and she wondered if she would ever find her way back to wholeness. However, she understood that there are two faces to grieving: the tragedy and the gift. For her this meant she needed to value every inner experience that came with the death of her son and not try to escape the pain. “In a simple way it meant that if I looked at a photo or smelled Si-
mon’s clothes I would not run away. I would . . . feel the surge of feelings that came up and let the tears flow, AND with that, express gratitude for my life, gratitude to Simon and even gratitude for the pain because it was serving some great purpose which was beyond what I could comprehend. . . . I chose to live. I learned to let go and trust. As I worked inwardly, I was showered with the purest love I have ever known, and my heart began to sing with joy.” Susan knew that through her own journey with loss and grief she could be of service to others. She has gone on to create resources and offer support to those who have lost a loved one, particularly parents who have lost a child. Her work can be found at www.the-way-of-love.com. There are no shortcuts through grief. We cannot get around it; we must go through it. Grief is one of the great healing and transforming energies of life. It penetrates and dissolves the brittle layers of our protection. It plunges us into the fear that pervades our minds and drives us to avoid pain and loss at all costs. As we dare to look into the face of death, we engage more deeply with living. Grief reminds us of what is truly important and intensifies our appreciation of life. Ultimately, we can only experience the intensity of our joy to the extent that we are willing to experience our sorrow. When we let go and grieve without holding anything back, there will be great pain, but there can also be an opening to the love and joy that contains all experience. SACRED FIRE MAGAZINE / 21
LO G S F O R T H E F I R E BY A N N R O S E N C R A N Z
It emerges. And so it emerged for members of our community, Kayumari, as we joined together decades ago, recognizing one another through our common yearning to “be a walking prayer.” One of the founders of the community, my sister, Jyoti held the torch of this vision and hundreds of people have gathered around that light. In 2003, members of our community sent out an invitation to fourteen grandmothers: . . . We are approaching our indigenous grandmothers to ask for help and guidance in these times . . . The dream of the vision is that our grandmothers who hold traditional lines of medicine and healing come together in council, not to mix, but to share their teachings and prophecies . . . We come to you, inspired by the stories of the original indigenous grandmother councils who were honored and listened to as the final authority on most all the tribal issues, including waging war. Thirteen grandmothers answered the call. When they convened in October, 2004, many of the grandmothers shared their visions and prophecies that guided them to say “yes.” Grandmother Rita Pitka Blumenstein, a 75-year-old Yup’ik traditional healer, told us that in 1942 a nine-yearold Rita sat in sacred circle with her great grandmother who entrusted her with 13 sacred bundles containing 13 stones and 13 eagle plumes. She told Rita that when she became a grandmother, she would be a part of a council of thirteen. She guided her to save these precious relics for that time when she would hand them out to each of the council grandmothers. And so she did. As I sit here with my prayer smoke in hand, I wonder at the way Creator has brought us all together as part of this emerging matrix of love. Each of the Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers has been a great gift in my life. As I journey now in my prayers, I give thanks for their teachings, their humor, their families, their humanness. I am deeply grateful and deeply troubled this morning. I fall into the vast chasm between the pristine astral grandmothers’ intact way of life and the reality for these very human, physical beings I call sister, grandmother. I cry out in pain as I feel the shattered vestiges of their cultures of belonging. Many of their people are exiled from their original homelands. Even if they remain on their original land, it is unrecognizable. Many of their languages are becoming extinct. Many of their plants and animals that used to flourish are now hard to find or extinct. The waters that used to be medicine now need to be filtered. The foods that used to offer vitality now poison the blood. Many of their children and grandchildren have been lost to drugs and alcohol. Many of their ceremonies have been forgotten. They are not alone. We are all traumatized by this era of disintegration. We are all doing our best to survive in this time of exile. Each one of the grandmothers is a courageous warrior
A morning prayer woven with the gift of the Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers settles inside a world in relation.
IT IS MORNINGSTAR TIME. I kneel at my hearth. Only the stars are
awake; all is silent and still. I reach for the fire stick and light my prayer smoke. Once again I return to commune with Creator, to connect with my deepest self and, through the light of my smoke, connect with the heart of the fire and the light of the stars. I polish my own heart’s fire so that later I might meet the daily whir with grace. My sisters have been keeping vigil in the ICU for the last six months as my baby niece has been cut open again and again to save her heart and then, finally, receive a new heart. She is just months old. We are all cracked open. Please, Creator, help us all. I pray; I give thanks. I launch a net of gratitude. Thank you for my son, my husband, all my family and the wondrous creation we belong to. I open my aching heart, pour out my deepest confusions and raise up my thoughts in praise. I give thanks for the visitation that I received more than twenty years ago when a council of thirteen astral grandmothers encircled me and began to teach. I speak now to my astral grandmothers. They are like pristine stars, each one of them shining with the unique pattern of their Ann Rosencranz, minister, prayer-singer, transindigenous culture. Their languages are lator and program direcblueprints, gateways into the world of tor for the International belonging. Their languages have no “I,” Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothno form of cursing, disdaining or sepaers, an advocacy alliance rating. Through their eyes I settle inside of the Center for Sacred Studies, sacredstudies. a world in relation. I kneel now and give org. The next Council thanks that they entered my life to guide Gathering will be held in me for all these years. They told me that May in Alaska, to honor Yup’ik Grandmother I would be a part of calling together the Rita Pitka Blumengrandmothers’ council on the physical stein. To learn more plane. And so I am. about the International Council of Thirteen Now, for almost a decade I’ve been Indigenous Grandmothliving this waking dream. My Arapaho ers, please visit their father-in-law spoke to me about his peoofficial website: grandmotherscouncil.org or ple’s prophecies. “Adwah Hiya,” they say, the website for their meaning, “The unity is in motion.” The documentary film: forthcoming era of unity is a growing entity. enext7generations.com. 22 / Issue 14
THIS PAGE AND OPPOSITE: MARISOL VILLANUEVA/GRANDMOTHERSCOUNCIL.ORG
At the Hearth of My Heart
The Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers gathered for private council in Assisi, Italy.
and a simple, exhausted human being devoting her life to reweaving the frayed remains of her way of life. All of them have knelt in vigil at the bedside of their dying cultures, as their mothers and grandmothers have done for generations before. They persist, bringing forward what they can from their hearts of belonging, bringing forward what remains of their ancestors’ teachings. The grandmothers on the Council are no heroes. We do them a disservice if we idolize them and set them apart from ourselves. Our modern civilization yearns for superhuman heroes so that we can avoid our simple, individual responsibility to the whole. At the same time the grandmothers on the Council are to be cherished like so many elders throughout the world. They are the fruit of our people. Sometimes bitter, often sweet, we cherish them as they guide us to return to ourselves, to kneel at the hearth of our lives and give thanks. There is no longer time for separate agendas. We are all holding vigil at the bedside of life itself. This is why the
I FALL INTO THE VAST CHASM BETWEEN THE PRISTINE ASTRAL GRANDMOTHERS’ INTACT WAY OF LIFE AND THE REALITY FOR THESE VERY HUMAN, PHYSICAL BEINGS I CALL SISTER, GRANDMOTHER. prayers of these thirteen grandmothers have touched so many hearts and called forth so many of us who are in a life of service. We are joining hands in devotion to one another and to all of creation. Together we can launch our prayers. By making relations with the fire, the birds, the water, the plants and all beings, we reawaken them. Without relation, these elements will disappear. Remembered, we enliven our world again. Once again I call out in thanks in closure to this prayer. I cast my one voice into the great web: one thread of yearning to be a vehicle of peace, an instrument of love. This Morningstar prayer has ridden on the cusp of the dawn. My son and husband are rousing. I am ready to greet the day. SACRED FIRE MAGAZINE / 23
By Nina Simons
TURNING TO ARCS, CIRCLES AND SPIRALS TO FIND OUR WAY HOME
Photograph by Jen Judge
N
ina Simons exemplifies Mahatma Gandhi’s guidance to “Be the change you want to see in the world.” She’s always felt called to transform culture, to make it more inclusive, tolerant and just. And now, decades after a life rich with experience, she is being the change she wants to see by modeling women’s leadership in the world. Simons’ life path has been neither a straight nor logical line. A New Yorker, she originally sought to change the world through theater, music and film. But when she and her husband (social entrepreneur and filmmaker Kenny Ausubel) visited Gila, New Mexico, she “felt as if the spirit of the natural world tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘You’re working for me now.’” She jumped fully into developing heirloom seeds, organic farming and nuSINCE STORIES CAN BE LIKE LENSES IN tritional juices as agents for social change. Drawing on her skill for orchesdefining the context, bounds and scope of our trating diverse groups of people to work together toward a higher purpose, vision, let’s shed this dual perspective we have she guided Ausubel’s start-up companies, Seeds of Change and Odwalla, to inherited—the zero sum game that ensures someone loses and that locks us in defensive national prominence through community-based and innovative approaches and assertive postures. Let’s cultivate tales that to corporate management and strategic marketing. celebrate reconciliation, integration and interIn 1990 she and Ausubel co-founded the non-profit Bioneers (“Revolution dependence instead. Let’s compost the myths from the Heart of Nature”), producing an annual conference that attracts that the shortest distance between two points thousands to San Rafael, California in October. The event’s presentations, is a line and that our brains alone can think our panels, keynote addresses and exhibits bring together internationally known way through—the myth that being busy is betsocial activists, environmentalists, technological innovators, journalists and ter or necessary or makes us more valuable or indigenous wisdom keepers with an engaged audience to seed and propatrumps self-care or being with those we love. gate collective change with solutions usually inspired by nature. Bioneers Let’s shed the notion that the sole options for also produces an award-winning radio series, anthology book series, televiaddressing conflict are fight or flight. sion programs and rich media website. Cultural anthropologist Angeles Arrien Simons thinks of Bioneers as “a three-day ceremony.” Typically, she and suggests we’re shifting from an either/or to a Ausubel open each day’s plenary sessions with remarks. The essay below was both/and culture—one that requires opening the aperture of our irises to better perceive developed from her oral address on the final morning of Bioneers, 2010.
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the truth that surrounds apparent paradox. Though two conflicting views may seem irreconcilably opposed, when we expand our vision enough to encompass a whole that’s larger than both, a new reality often emerges—a third way that’s big enough to address each of them within its purview. In a both/and culture instead of avoiding dissenting views, we might embrace the opportunity they raise for expanding vision, exploring them through practicing respectful disagreement. Apparent contradictions can serve to make visible truths that may not have been otherwise seen or acknowledged, enriching the health of the whole through their emergence. From seaweed to ferns, birds’ wings and rainbows, nature reveals that a spiral, arc or circle can connect and encompass—while resolving conflict—more directly, elegantly and without creating harm. When buffeted by the ocean’s riptides and currents, seaweed curls and spirals in adaptation, conferring remarkable resiliency for weathering conflicting forces. Ferns unfurl from their buds in spirals, offering them greater strength as they face uncertain winds and rain to stretch to their full height. As the rainbow’s arc emerges from the sun’s fire meeting rainwater, and as birds’ wings gracefully bend to slice through disparate wind currents to navigate, nature reveals how the flexibility of curves, circles and spirals creates new pathways for navigating seeming contradiction. As cold milk poured into hot tea elicits a spiral of reconciliation, I am reminded to question our linear ways of addressing conflict. Jeannette Armstrong, of the Okanagan First Peoples, practices an ancient system for reaching group coherence. In their culture the most valued perspective is one that’s 180 degrees across from the majority view. When encountering one whose position is diametrically opposed, they know that they must expand their vision to be big enough to encompass and integrate that dissenting voice. They know that without hearing and weaving in the perspective of that voice, the whole won’t be fully dimensional, resilient or complete. To transform the story, to escape the calcification of being stuck in opposition, what might we call on to find a third way? On the edge of Kilauea, an active volcano, 26 / Issue 14
young people danced a traditional hula. Heads crowned with furry grasses, their bare feet padded softly, flexed gently and stomped hard on gravel of volcanic rock as sharp as glass. If it hurt, their teacher said, they weren’t praying hard enough. Bodies swayed with the winds, undulated like ocean waves and then offered syncopated prayers in precisely attuned staccato rhythms. Their 50-50 masculine/feminineembodied wholeness was exhilarating, enlivening and intoxicating. Each was able to call upon any point in that gender spectrum to access all their human capabilities, to offer their prayers fully. Without being confined to an identity that was either masculine or feminine, the dancers’ wholeness transcended that polarity and encompassed them both. Their purposeful dance was so powerful it lifted them beyond the anticipated pain or conflict of feet slapping sharp stone so that their bodies became integrated instruments of a deeper sacred relationship to the goddess Pele, to Earth, to spirit. I am daunted by the complexity we face. How might we bring ourselves to serve this
transformative time in a good way, without becoming so identified with our own perspective, or being “right,” that we add to the polarization? How may we navigate opposing forces to help identify the ways of the spiral, ways that reveal new possibilities? One clue comes from Third Possibility Leadership, a style that’s proving effective in many areas. Developed by a woman named Birute Regine, it also brings the best of all aspects of our selves to bear. It reveals another pathway for embracing all of our relational intelligences, for integrating diverse ways of being while reconciling the false contradiction of inherited and limiting gender identities. Human organizations are complex, adaptive systems, she says, where a traditional, command-and-control style of management will inevitably impair the system’s creativity and adaptability. To enhance organizations as learning systems, complexity science demands a shift in focus toward the world of relationships, prioritizing the realm of the between rather than the separate, or distinct. Prioritizing the web of the
Igniting Her Power A new book from Nina Simons Moonrise: The Power of Women Leading from the Heart delivers practical and inspiring examples of third way leadership as it is emerging all over the world. As she says in her introduction, “The goal of Moonrise is to ignite the power and capacity within us all to create change by leading in ways that are joyful, healthy and whole.” These ways value the feminine and value relationships as essential to individual and social health. Edited by Nina Simons with Anneke Campbell, and featuring an introduction by Terry Tempest Williams, this collection of 37 stories, essays and dialogs illuminates an upwelling form of leadership that arises from the heart and stems from a desire to protect, transform and strengthen whatever we most love. Since it does not resemble what we were taught
to expect leadership to look like, this emergence has been largely unseen. The collection features a diverse array of voices with richly differing perspectives to deliver a whole picture of leadership reinvented, leadership that integrates our masculine and feminine natures. It calls for a potent union of discipline, focus and determination with compassion, humility, intuition, somatic wisdom, empathy and receptivity. To live in balance with the natural world requires a shift in emphasis from counting things to a focus on mapping relationships. The reintegration of the feminine into our human wholeness reflects the ancient wisdom of the Tao, the Yin Yang and most indigenous and shamanic traditions. Most of the chapters were
originally delivered as talks at Bioneers conferences, and they flow with the color and immediacy of stories told orally. Few things can create connection and grow our own capacities more meaningfully than immersing ourselves in each other’s stories. The medicine of these stories reorients our vision, strengthens our hearts and liberates our capacities to participate fully in this third way of leadership.
collective over the individual. It suggests attending to the unifying field, the commonalities that connect, rather than reinforcing divergence or buying into arguments that polarize or compete hierarchically. To navigate and lead a complex system well requires a holistic view, one that can see from within and without at once. Native shamans have long taught “as above, so below,” since any part of a system may serve as a fractal toward revealing and understanding the whole. This third way leadership requires being able to recognize and adapt flexibly to patterns, rather than holding a singly-focused goal or perspective. Leaders that thrive in this environment bring not only strongly developed masculine values and behaviors—like being action-oriented, analytical and generative—but also embody strongly developed feminine traits, including nurturance, collaboration and relational intelligence. Third possibility leaders, who flourish in complex adaptive systems, typically exhibit three traits: •They are gatherers who bring people together and are careful to include those who are disenfranchised or marginalized. •They are paradoxical, encompassing fire and water, capable of being both fierce, decisive and persevering, while remaining flexible, vulnerable and empathic. •They are holistic, adept at seeing the big picture as well as the connections within.
How will we find our way home to belonging? The native Hawaiian language is an elemental language. With each syllable the speakers are invoking their relationship to Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Each phrase or sentence becomes a prayer offered in gratitude for belonging. Who among us might not long for such a way of communicating? How might we remember our place in the web, reconnect with our relations? Perhaps it’s by practicing a third way and humbly listening for the teachers who surround us—for the wisdom of the salmon who find their way home to the same river from which they were born, for the sea turtles who navigate the Earth’s blue continent to return
to lay their eggs on the same beach where they were spawned years before, for the whales who carry our ancient ancestral memory. It may be by closing our eyes to see, listening with our knees flexed to feel the Earth’s instructions, navigating by the guidance of our hearts and attending to our dreams, visions and intuitions and the guidance of those who came before us. May we rediscover the power of circles, of sitting in council to listen and learn; the power of trusting the wisdom that emerges from the voices that are quietest, least valued or that we least expect to learn from. May we recall the power of listening patiently for the intelligence of the whole to emerge, without rushing toward conclusions. May we risk that first step of standing on behalf of what we most love and value— knowing that the first step is the hardest, and trusting that once we take it we will be met tenfold. May we practice growing ourselves, cultivating our capacities to connect and curbing our habituated tendencies toward comparison, hierarchy and isolation. May we be willing to feel the depths of our despair so that we may dream ourselves into the possibility of soaring together. May we be informed by our wounds but not defined by them. May we remember the power of empathy and practice seeing the world through other’s eyes. In this great interdependent web may we remind ourselves that whatever befalls others happens to us. May art remind us that it can reveal and awaken new possibilities as we look to our artists to reveal pathways forward. May we recall, celebrate and invoke our belonging to our one and only home. In Wyoming, as in Alaska, nearly every man, woman and child receives compensation from the oil and gas industries. It’s also a state filled with pronghorn antelope, creatures almost every Wyoming native has seen, admired or felt their hearts gallop with as they leap across the plains. These animals have one of the longest migration pathways in the lower 48 states. They bound across landscapes as if released from gravity. Their 6,000-mile migrations are now being thwarted by enclosures and development.
I invite you to experience the Council of Pronghorn, an art installation co-created by writer and naturalist Terry Tempest Williams, sculptor Ben Roth and artist Felicia Resor. Imagine that you walk into a courtyard that is filled with a circle of 23 pronghorn antelope skulls. Mounted on white stakes about six feet tall, their pointed noses face inward; their curved horns arc upward. Standing at the center, you are seen by the empty sockets of their eyes. As Terry Tempest Williams says in her poem “Council of Pronghorn,” We, The Council of Pronghorn have convened as witnesses to this moment in time when our eyes wish to peer into the hearts of humans and ask what kind of world are you creating when we can no longer run as Windhorses but are relegated to watching behind fences dreaming, dreaming of Spirit Migrations? 8 September, 2010
May we make this migration together, Finding our ways through obstacles, habits and fears. Guided by the beauty, love and truth that surround us. May we liberate the pathways, for them and for us. May we remember to reach out for each other’s hands, to ask for the guidance of those who came before us, to listen for the guidance of those who walk, swim, fly and crawl among us. Amen, Awomen, Aho and Ashe. —Nina Simons SACRED FIRE MAGAZINE / 27
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Asked four questions, renowned writer Leslie Marmon Silko shares her wondrous world. by Marilyn Berta
Photograph by Nancy Crampton
A
spark ignited in my heart when I read that Leslie Marmon Silko was coming to Santa Cruz. What was the chance of getting an interview with one of the founding mothers of American Indian literature in just three days? From the moment that question arose, the doors opened effortlessly. I felt the presence of the gods smoothing the road ahead. Artist, author, poet, photographer, playwright and professor Leslie Marmon Silko was one of the first recipients of a “genius grant� from the MacArthur Foundation. Her ancestors are Laguna Pueblo, Cherokee, Mexican and Anglo American. Raised on the Pueblo in New Mexico, Leslie trailed along behind her great grandmother, pulling the hose while she watered the cosmos and hollyhocks, picking graahdunt (cilantro) and helping to carry the coal bucket. At age six she walked into the high plateau country with her father on her first deer hunt. Our childhoods could not have been more different. Adopted at birth, my ancestors are unknown. I grew up on the ninth floor of a twelve-story apartment building in Los Angeles, sit-
ting alone on the floor of my bedroom, playing both sides of the checker board and trying hard not to cheat. When I was six my mother schlepped me to piano and ballet lessons several times a week. After catching the elevator and walking through an antiseptic lobby, my contact with the natural world was limited to Bermuda grass, oleander bushes and an occasional olive tree. These days, Leslie carefully tends her garden in the Tucson desert, living side by side with rattlesnakes, spiny lizards, roadrunners and night-blooming cacti. I live on a ridgetop beneath towering redwoods. I, too, lovingly tend my garden. Perhaps it is the lives we have chosen as adult women that forged this connection I felt when we met, this sense of being kindred spirits. Having just finished reading her memoir, The Turquoise Ledge, I felt as though I were sitting down with an old friend to share a pot of tea and bask in the richness of her life. Dressed in jeans and a purple sweater, turquoise and silver jewelry, with a red bandana around her neck, Leslie is a warm, funny, angry and passionate woman deeply connected to the natural world. SACRED FIRE MAGAZINE / 29
What inspired you to write this memoir?
What I know is from the Laguna Pueblo. In Laguna, when you ask someone how they’re doing, they don’t say, “Fine.” They tell you a story about everything in their life. I wanted to pay tribute to those women and elders who helped me grow up and become who I am today. If I don’t write about it, no one will know. The world is changing quickly and not necessarily becoming more humane. Also, when I started walking in the Tucson desert, it was for cardiovascular benefit. Little did I know how profoundly it would affect my life! I soaked in everything that was quiet and beautiful—a very solitary process. It was different every day. After 32 years in the Tucson Mountains, the earth and hills and creatures welcome me. In The Turquoise Ledge I show that wonderful, surprising gifts from out of the earth can come to you at any time. They seem to magically appear as part of the wonder and generosity of the living world.
The process of writing illuminates life for me. I write because it’s essential to me and each book I write changes me. I hope that some readers will be different as well, in a positive way. What is the sacred fire that burns in your heart?
It’s taken a long time to come to this place. I have this desire for people to understand what a wondrous world we’re in and how there are all sorts of living entities like the wind and the rain that are ready to embrace us, or teach us, or give us strength, or what we need. It’s only for us to be ready to accept it. Of course, we’re completely bombarded by the feeling of murder and killing. If we get rid of that, that’s when the birds will come close to us and the rattlesnakes will be friends. Tucson is a very strange city. You come as a newcomer and people aren’t particularly friendly. I was fortunate to come to that old ranch house in the Tucson Mountains. The
INSIDE THE TURQUOISE LEDGE Leslie Marmon Silko’s memoir, The Turquoise Ledge, is Leslie’s gift to her family, her ancestors and the land around Tucson that has held her for over thirty years. She paints a vivid picture of growing up at the Laguna Pueblo and tells how her grandmother and the others of her generation “happily existed without concern for clocks, were never in a hurry, never impatient with anyone. There was always time for everything as long as the sun was up.” Silko remembers “watching great grandma A’mooh kneel on the floor of the kitchen to grind green chili with garlic cloves on the curved rectangular stone of fine-grained black lava.” The women of the Laguna Pueblo did their grinding together, and as they worked they sang songs, “songs that changed their task from hard work to pleasure as they lost themselves in the sounds and the words.” These stories feed our
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hunger to know the people who teach their children how to live in harmony with the earth. Imagine what it would feel like to be six years old, invited to walk out into the high plateau country for your first deer hunt: “The first thing my father taught me that morning is how a hunter walks. Not too fast. Stop frequently to listen. Stop and listen the way a deer listens; then the deer will think he hears another deer or animal moving through the brush, not a human. He showed me how to step from rock to rock to avoid dry twigs or leaves that make noise.” Over the course of the memoir Silko transports us to her present home in the Tucson Mountains. First on horseback deep into the mountains and later on foot up into the arroyos, she explores with the clear intention to intimately know the land and all its creatures. Slowly the mountains open to embrace her and reveal
their treasures. Silko never feels alone or afraid in the hills. She walks the land thinking of her ancestors and wondering, “Where did they go?” “Right then in the wind I hear a haunting sound that I remembered from childhood, the distinctive jingles of the ke’tsine dancers’ ankle bells. I looked northeast in the direction of the sound which seemed to come from the arroyo near the boulder with the petroglyph. The ancestors didn’t go anywhere. They are still here, right now.” Leslie Marmon Silko, The Turquoise Ledge (New York, Viking, 2010)
rattlesnakes in the mountains hadn’t been killed and harassed like they had been in New Mexico. They were friendly to me. I’ve written a number of times that they were more friendly than the people. I was so happy to find rattlesnakes that were calm and not afraid. It made me calm and not afraid. Rattlesnakes have such generous spirits. Whenever I hear my old dogs barking—there’s a particular bark that they have with the snakes—I run outside to protect the snakes. Some of the rattlesnakes know the dogs and they just give them a tiny sting on the face to back them off. They are so generous and forgiving of us humans. Over time I have been able to absorb their generosity of spirit. As soon as the wild things could tell that I didn’t have a killer in me, they were there for me. It’s not just Native Americans that can do this, it’s all human beings. It’s just that the Native American culture has kept this memory longer. We humans have this capacity because we are all animals. We are part of the natural world. What gets in the way are all of these human veneer practices of society and culture that are aimed in the direction of changing things or making a profit. We’re bombarded by technology; all of these artificial things block our natural ability to be close to other living beings. Many people are speaking about the critical importance of waking up from human amnesia and the necessity of a return to living in peace with each other and in harmony with the natural world.
I think it’s pretty clear that there’s something terribly wrong with the direction that human beings have taken in the last 50 years. We’ve gotten so good at slaughtering one another, sacrificing our physical and mental health and destroying the planet. People have begun to realize that this can’t go on. Hopefully, the ability to save ourselves and to turn away from this devastating path is in our genetic code. I fear that it might take something catastrophic to really bring things around. It probably won’t be the first time that humans have brought something down upon themselves. Something has to change! I would rather have it
be a shift in consciousness and not something truly terrible. Right now in northern Mexico a civil war is going on. In the US it is just portrayed as drug cartels fighting each other, but it’s not. They’re using military weapons. Hundreds of thousands of refugees will come fleeing north into this country and, of course, the US will not handle it gracefully or well. The hatred in all this anti-immigration rhetoric is straight-up racism. A shift in population has already started from the south. I believe this shift will bring
Hunter to go hunting for meat for the people to eat while they were doing this hard work. He had to go very far up these trails and high into the mountains. He had to go farther than he’d ever gone before. Once he got into the mountains he looked up into this steep, narrow canyon and he saw Coyote running with a melon in his mouth. And, of course, Coyote would have stolen the melon out of the fields down below. When he got across the canyon, he went under this big piñon tree and there was a man in a coyote-skin shirt
really made a terrible mistake. You forgot to deliver the message from us! We didn’t steal the corn. We stacked it carefully for you under all those leaves! Now, this is what will happen. I have injured you and in four days I will come back for you. You will have to say goodbye to your family and come live with us forever.” So she left, and the Young Hunter went home. He had terrible wounds, but they didn’t look life threatening. That part is a little mysterious. He called all his family together and tearfully told them he would soon be leaving. His family didn’t want to believe him. They said, “Oh no, you will never have to leave us!” But around midnight of the fourth night a big, beautiful woman came. She was wearing a bearskin cape and a bear claw necklace, and she came down to the village for the Young Hunter. She said, “Tell them goodbye. You’re coming to be with us, and you’ll never see them again.” And so because he did not remember, and the humans attacked the bears after the bears had only helped them, he would be her husband and live with the bears forever. And that’s what happened to the Young Hunter.
As soon as the wild things could tell that I didn’t have a killer in me, they were there for me. a kind of humanity and vision, that those people will help the rest of us turn things around. We have to remember that these are Indians crossing the border. It’s terribly important for us to recognize that something in the earth is calling these people north. It’s not just about being driven out of their homes because of the war. This is something that is supposed to happen. That’s why we have to help them get here. We have to welcome them. That’s how part of this change will be effected. Is there a hummah-hah story that you would like to share with us that portrays what we’ve been speaking about this evening?
The hummah-hah stories reveal the Laguna spiritual outlook toward animals, plants and spirit beings. They’re called hummahhah stories because the storyteller would say “humma-hah” and the people say “aayehh.” There’s one that comes to mind. I love it and so I will tell it. The story is of the Young Hunter and the She Bear. It was long ago and the people were preparing to harvest the corn. Because harvesting the corn and shucking it to dry is a lot of physical work, the elders sent the Young
sitting under the tree and there were melon seeds on the ground. The man in the coyote-skin shirt said, “I have a message for you. The bears want me to tell you this; it’s very important! You must take this message back to the people. In this area the deer and the game are necessary for the bears to eat, and so the bears said they will come down and they will harvest the corn for the people so you don’t have to take the meat from here. Go back and tell the people. IT’S VERY IMPORTANT, SO DON’T FORGET!” So the Young Hunter goes back and, maybe because he’s very tired and it’s late at night, he forgets to tell the people that the bears are coming. The next morning the people go down ready to harvest the corn. Just as they get to the cornfields at sunrise they see the last of the black bears going back into the mountains, and they see the cornfields are empty. And they assume that the bears have stolen the corn. They tell the hunters to pursue the bears. The Young Hunter shoots a She Bear. He doesn’t wound her very badly, and she turns on him. She attacks him and scratches his thigh with her claws. She says, “Oh, you’ve
ABOUT HALF WAY THROUGH the telling of
this story Anna from Bookshop Santa Cruz knocked on the door with her second request that Leslie prepare for her audience and sign some copies of her book before the presentation. I felt honored when she boldly replied, “Please shut the door, I don’t need much time to get ready. I need to finish telling this woman my story!” And with the same determination, at the completion of this hummah-hah tale, she rose and gave me a warm hug. Then Leslie Marmon Silko went downstairs to greet her audience and bring the richness of her world more fully into ours. Marilyn Berta practices Plant Spirit Medicine and Integrative Bodywork in Santa Cruz, CA where the redwoods meet the sea. For more information please go to centerforhealthsc.com
SACRED FIRE MAGAZINE / 31
TOM GOLDTOOTH speaks to reporters outside the Bella Center during COP15, the UN Climate Change Conference held in Copenhagen in 2009
Photograph by Mat McDermott
Is the world’s environmental crisis a spiritual battle that can only be won by re-identifying with our ancestral past? Tom Goldtooth thinks so.
Everyone’s Indigenous By Sharon Brown
SACRED FIRE MAGAZINE / 33
S
itting with Tom Goldtooth feels like sitting with a mountain. In part it’s his physical presence, which is tall and solid with the enduring features of his Dakota and Diné ancestors. And as we talk, I’m fully aware of his monumental reputation as an advocate for global bio-justice as executive director of Indigenous Environmental Network. But it’s his spirit that leaves me with the inexpressible impression that Goldtooth is like a mountain, undeniably grounded yet able to see into the distance, his voice a speaker for Earth, his actions a protector of Water. He was born close to the waters of New Mexico’s San Juan River and spent his early years there with his grandmother before joining his mother and stepfather in the remote Colorado River canyon region of the Arizona-Utah Navajo reservation. As an adult, he moved to Minnesota, to be with his hunka Dakota people the Bdewankanton Dakota, “the people who live in the village of the sacred lakes,” a place of fishing, wild rice, berries and deer hunting. In the ‘70s and ‘80s that sacred food web became increasingly contaminated by mercury and dioxin from coal-fired power plants, pulp and paper mills and other long-distance sources of pollution. The EPA and the Bureau of Indian Affairs ignored this and other toxic dumping in Indian Country, so Goldtooth took action as director of an environmental program for the Red Lake Band of Ojibwa. In the early ‘90s he joined a call for people of color to address common issues of environmental justice and cultural survival. The Indigenous Environmental Network was born from this movement; Goldtooth has been with IEN since 1991. Each year, he travels over 100,000 miles to meet with families and leaders of indigenous communities, the corporate industries whose projects threaten their survival and the governmental agencies whose regulations (or lack thereof) will affect environmental toxicity, climate change and cultural self-determination for generations to come. He’s a warrior for Spirit, firmly rooted in his connection to the land, who speaks as an advocate for the indigenous heart in us all. I remember a presentation you made at Bioneers a few years ago. A man who worked for a water utility said, “Goldtooth, you’ve talked about how water is sacred, but I can’t see it. Water is water. How is water sacred?” And you said, “I suggest you go without it for three or four days. Then see how that first drink feels to you.”
TOM GOLDTOOTH: (laughs) I said that? You did.
Spirit must have been talking through me. It was a good teaching.
When we started to get involved around environmental justice, people said, “You must be an environmentalist.” I responded, “I’m not an environmentalist; I’m an indigenous person.” We’re a population of people that traditionally have understood what our relationship is to this planet, to Mother Earth. The teachings that come with that are very precious because that also teaches us how to survive and how to exist as community. I come from a perspective of understanding what my relationship is to the land, which is a deep, profound, spiritual relationship. I 34 / Issue 14
was taught by my parents and my grandparents, and I have a tribal genetic memory of my responsibilities. And it’s responsibilities as human beings that I’m talking about, responsibilities that we have to respect and protect the sacredness of Mother Earth. But there’s also a humility that goes with that. Mother Earth is okay in many ways, and Mother Earth will do what she needs to do to heal herself, to protect herself. I’ve told many environmental organizations that their work is spiritual work because they’re protecting the sacred elements of life, protecting the air, water, earth and our precious soil. And they’re also protecting the fire because we have a society that is abusing the fire. Have you ever tried offering some of the people in power the opportunity to experience the sacredness of the world in a more direct way?
I’ve had opportunities where I brought CEOs to our ceremonies including the purification lodge, the sweat lodge. I remember one corporate business leader who went through one of our ceremonies. He went through a whole transformation to the point where the corporation had to ask him, “Are you with us or
against us?” and he left the corporation. So, I’d like to be positive and say yes, it’s possible, but in the course of my work I’m dealing with some of the largest transnational corporations, the mineral extractive industries that are invested with the bottom line of making money. They’re people who are invested with raping Mother Earth. I use that word intentionally to get a reaction from CEOs, and senior attorneys, and major shareholders of extractive industries. I say, “You’re raping Mother Earth.” But as I go up the chain of command, where the power is held, I don’t get a reaction. And I really ask, “Where are they at? Where’s their spirit at? Are they so empty that they don’t understand?” But as I go up the chain of command of these extractive industries and these corporations, it seems they don’t care. They’re ruthless. My own journey has taken me to Europe because I wanted to understand. Who are these people that we call “settlers,” and why are they the way they are? One time I went down the Rhine River and saw old ruins and castles. And through prayer, ceremony and talking to people, I felt the story told in the fiction book The Mists of Avalon was close to what really happened to the people in Europe. In the Old World of the settlers there was a spiritual battle around power. I think the kingdoms were threatened by the people of the land who had a profound spiritual relationship to Mother Earth. It’s difficult to control people who understand their identity and spiritual relationship to the land. You can’t overpower them. The kingdoms had to destroy that somehow. These were the young corporations, part of an emerging industrialized society. If they were to thrive and grow, they had to cut that spiritual relationship the tribal people had with the land, cut that umbilical cord, that connection the common peasant people had with the earth. But you can’t leave people void with no spiritual understanding, so they gave them a new religion, The Church. In this country, Turtle Island, we have spiritual centers, medicine lines and holy places taught to us within our ancestral stories. I was praying a lot when I traveled throughout Europe, and I sensed the tribal indigenous people there understood this. I could feel different power
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: FRANZ CHÁVEZ/IPS; BEN POWLESS; ALLAN LISSNER; BEN POWLESS.
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Tom Goldtooth demonstrating at the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, held in Cochabamba, Bolivia, April 2010; leading the Indigenous Block in songs and chants during the People’s Climate March at COP 15, December, 2009; at COP 16 in Cancun, December 2010, where he and others were expelled for a day; at the Bioneers Conference, Oct 18, 2008 in San Rafael, CA.
centers, places I often made offerings. So I was not surprised when I learned the religious leaders of Catholicism and Christianity had sought out these power centers as the places to build their churches. They made no separation between state and church. It was clearly defined in the politics of how you control people. The old, tribal, earth-based cultures that were really deep in spiritual understanding were completely rewritten and, in most cases, destroyed. And whatever happened in the Old World experience of Europeans now has radiated throughout the world. So that’s why, when I talk as a leader as executive director of Indigenous Environmental Network, it’s not just about the envi-
ronment. It’s talking about spiritual transformation and re-identification. All people have to re-identify and re-evaluate what their relationship is to the sacredness of Mother Earth. It’s very critical. All people?
In my own personal growth I’ve had to really study this phenomenon where indigenous peoples have been separated from their own identity. The churches that came to Turtle Island sent out what I call “CIA hit men,” such as the specially trained army of Jesuits—the Black Robes—that infiltrated our most sacred circles causing dissension, division and disrup-
tion within our villages. They captured our sacred medicine bundles and with their linguists captured and wrote our language. Our people thought that was beautiful, that these people were able to learn the language so easy, you know? As indigenous peoples all over the world, we’ve always respected people who talk about the sacred relationships. But this relationship was not of the light; it was darkness. It was a manipulation of the sacred for power. They were very intentional. They turned many of our people against our own shamans, our medicine men and medicine women. So whenever I talk about who we are from a cultural, spiritual framework, I have to talk about the political realities that have existed, SACRED FIRE MAGAZINE / 35
that have separated us from our own selves and our identities. You probably have read or talked to indigenous peoples who have historical trauma from residential schools, from boarding schools. This is tremendous because of the psychological and the social, but also the spiritual trauma that has taken place. So we started to organize ourselves as indigenous peoples around a framework of protecting our lands from environmental contamination and ecological destruction. We began a process of transformation in the native communities we’re working with so they can have the language to be able to understand their trauma. Okay? It has involved the need to understand the affects of internalized oppression as a symptom of colonization. Our work is bringing a spiritual transformation. A lot of our young people are developing better relationships with elders. Youth and elders are coming together to understand identity and our relationship as indigenous peoples to Mother Earth. It’s an awakening. We have to break down the foundation of our mindset and be reborn as human beings of all cultures to understand our responsibilities to the sacred. What are our responsibilities?
One of the elders that guided us for years in our work at IEN was Corbin Harney, a medicine man and holy man from the Western Shoshone Nation. When he had gatherings out on his land, he used to get us up early in the morning before the sun and stand in a circle to sing the songs he had been taught. He was acknowledging the spirit in everything. He says that as people we’re not acknowledging the spirit in the rocks and the spirit in the plants anymore, and they’re weak. We’re forgetting our responsibilities. To sing to them?
To sing to them, to lift them up because they need us, as well as us needing them. This concept that I’m talking about is deeper than reciprocity, even if that’s the closest English word to mean a deep, profound, spiritual relationship, a balance that goes both ways. He’s saying we don’t do that enough. How can Euro-Americans, who have little or no experience with sacred ceremonies, uphold the responsibility? How can they connect with
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spirit in a good way?
That’s a really good question. I believe that all people, especially our EuroAmerican brothers and sisters, have a tribal genetic memory. That’s why we have a lot of the settlers who want to come into our ceremonies. They’re drawn to educational materials that talk about the sacred; they’re drawn to having workshops and talking circles that embrace the light, however that’s defined. They want to learn; they’re thirsty for this. But they’re also like children. One of my uncles from Prairie Island, a Dakota community in Eastern Minnesota, had a vision that his sweat lodge would have people from the four colors of humans coming in. Within a couple years that started to happen. There were white people, black people, brown people, yellow people coming into the sweat lodge ceremony. But me and his son Ray Owen, started to see that these people were like children. That’s a native way of saying that it’s not a fault of their own—because their society never taught them the protocols of ceremony—but they were acting really disrespectful. We had individuals come, and they would invite other people, saying “Hey, come check out this sweat lodge,” without asking for permission. And before you knew it, there were cars lined up almost to the point you needed some kind of parking security. Sometimes there were three sweats a night, packing 25 people in the sweat. People were just coming all the time and asking for a lot of things in the ceremony without understanding cultural protocols. And, of course, the ceremony is a time for people to ask for help, but they weren’t giving back. Okay? In most indigenous cultures there’s a process within ceremony where people give back. We have giveaways, a process where people give back to the spirit and give back to the people who have put out that healing. Reciprocity—again that word. So, Uncle was getting sick because people weren’t giving back: they were taking and taking. We had to jump in and help Uncle out on this ceremony. We had to start telling the people that there are protocols. And these aren’t protocols that reflect our ego; these are protocols that are part of the Original Instructions of our responsibility to the gift of
Spirit, no matter who you are. It’s not a race issue; it’s a human issue of understanding our relationship as two-legged people to the natural laws of the universe. These laws that have been put into place— the Original Instructions—have been passed on since time beginning, saying how to have a sustainable relationship with ourselves, our families, our village and with Mother Earth and Creation. And we don’t just make these up. Okay? We have history; we have stories of where our people have broken those laws and they’re no longer here because they perished. These teachings I learned throughout my lifetime. And I still have a lot to learn. So when I started to go into those circles of many cultures of people and they were asking me lots of questions, I couldn’t just quickly respond and say, “This is what cedar means” in two sentences. All these medicines and ways of life have certain teachings where even a paragraph or one chapter in a book is not enough. They wanted you to give them a lifetime of experience in two sentences.
So it makes me very cautious about sharing knowledge. I don’t want to condone people appropriating our culture and our spiritual ways when there isn’t space and time created for full understanding. My teacher Pete Catches Sr. from Pine Ridge, South Dakota was a well-respected holy man who passed on in the ‘90s. He was very tough with me. I had to hold the line and apply myself 150 percent. I did not understand how important that was until I met other folks from different parts of the world, like Tibet where some of the spiritual teachers are very strict. Grandpa Pete used to talk about the modern culture of shortcuts where the search for spiritual truth is fast-tracked, where people don’t want to go through all the appropriate steps that may take years before reaching cultural and spiritual understanding and enlightenment. There are good-intentioned people who want to learn our knowledge, but this is not something that is taught in a workshop or retreat over four days. And that’s what gets scary for me. We have people who become instant shamans or instant spiritual healers from a workshop! I realize now that dif-
ferent people are products of the teachers that they have. So now I ask people on our red road, on the spiritual road, “Who’s your teacher?” And I know people by who their teachers are. But some people don’t have a teacher. They go to one ceremony and say, “I like the way they did it there. I’m going to incorporate a part of that.” Then they go to another ceremony and see something they like and say, “I’m going to take that little small piece, and I’m going to put that into my ceremony.” So now we have people who have altars that are a hodgepodge, a mixture of different things and different ways, and these altars don’t have a history to them. They don’t have a teaching to them. Without a foundation, it can be dangerous. They are just going through the motions with no deep understanding of the history of the teachings around that ritual or ceremony. But at some point we feel there’s an inner spirit that says, “This is who I am, and I need to find some balance and be true to my spiritual path, however that’s defined.” The person realizes they need to find a foundation. So the
transformation that’s coming down is rebuilding that foundation, raising up a value system that respects the sacred but understands the importance of history. The history of indigenous peoples everywhere.
Everywhere! I went to Bonn, Germany one time to attend a UN meeting, and this German man invited me to his home. He said, “We have a sweat lodge. I’d like to have you conduct a ceremony.” I was curious, so I said yes. We drive two hours up in the hills to a little commune with a little round yurt-type house where they grow their own food and they sell it there along the road. And in the back they have a large sweat lodge that a Cherokee man who lived there in the ‘70s showed them. And there was a curiosity in me of what would happen. Coming from Turtle Island, from my own home where I’m familiar with the spirits, where I’m familiar with the way I pour water and the presence of Great Spirit is there—Awhat happens when I go to another area of the world that has its own
Indigenous Environmental Network IEN was born of hope, courage and common vision. – Tom B.K. Goldtooth Established in 1990, IEN was formed by community-based indigenous peoples, including youth and elders, to address environmental and economic justice issues in North America. IEN is an indigenousbased, non-profit and non-governmental organization working on environmental protection, environmental health, conservation of natural resources, protection of sacred areas and promotion of sustainable development within indigenous territories. The tools of IEN include advocacy, public education, local organizing and base building, network building and policy development. IEN maintains an informational clearinghouse and organizes local, regional, national and global campaigns to lift up the capacity and resiliency of indigenous communities to address health, environment, energy and climate justice issues. It builds alliances among diverse indigenous, environmental and human rights organizations, youth, women, labor and faith-based groups and organizations. IEN is an outspoken voice against politically popular “solutions” to the climate crisis such as bio-fuels, “clean coal” technologies and the “cap and trade” carbon offset market, all of which allow polluters to buy their way out of reducing emissions. It also takes a firm stand against “bio-piracy” and the theft of indigenous intellectual property by companies who claim and patent traditional knowledge, plant genetics and other forms of ancient biodiversity. The six goals of IEN: • To educate and empower indigenous peoples to develop strategies for the protection of our environment and the health of all life forms • To re-affirm traditional knowledge and respect of natural laws • To recognize, support and promote environmentally sound lifestyles and livelihoods and to build healthy, sustained indigenous communities • To influence policies that affect indigenous peoples on a local, tribal, state, regional, national and international level • To include youth and elders in all levels of the work • To protect our human right to practice our cultural and spiritual beliefs
protocols? Spirits have their own protocols. I’m a foreign person in this area of Europe. What’s going to happen when I pour water? Who’s going to come? What’s going to come? I did what I was taught to do in my language, and I had an interesting experience. It was a full moon and the sacred fire was out to the east of the lodge. As they opened the door way out at the tree line beyond the fire, I saw people standing. The ancestors?
The ancestors of that area. But they were way over there. Way over there. And they were just looking. They were looking in a way that showed they were curious as well; they were saying, “We’re familiar with this, but it’s so long ago, so long ago.” They knew it was good, but like some sort of spiritual tribal memory of long ago, these spirits, not ghosts, were still cautious to come closer. That was such a tremendous experience to me, understanding that these ancient people of Europe had gone through similar trauma that our Indigenous peoples have experienced within the past 200 years. Their reality was a spiritual battle that must have lasted not hundreds, but thousands of years, and now the descendants of these people don’t know who they are. It could take a long time for them to remember.
It could. But I think the forces of nature are going to speed the process up. Sometimes people say the strong power of nature is violence. In Hawaiian native culture they understand that Pele has a spirit, and sometimes she releases her spirit. But Pele creates as she destroys. And water can gorge and create the Grand Canyon, but also water is healing. That’s the duality of man, the duality of spirit. A spiritual transformation is coming. Mother Earth is experiencing compounding change, and the industrial world’s tools of technology and market solutions will not be enough to build a sustainable future for our children. We’re being challenged to seek the wisdom within ourselves, through the light of the Great Spirit, to find the truth of our relationship to the sacredness and creative principle of our Mother Earth. And that’s the beauty of these discussions. SACRED FIRE MAGAZINE / 37
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Can the dreaded English essay become a catalyst for emotional connection?
By Kathy Dancing Heart
FOR ME, PLACE OF HEART is not a physical
place. Nor is it a romantic one. Rather, it’s an opening between people where they move together into a new space of understanding, achievement and possibility. It’s like climbing a final ridge, over the rim of a mesa, and standing before an entirely new landscape. My own experience of this place came as an eighth grade English teacher at the Birchwood School where my primary job was to
teach students to write an essay. I look down at a tide pool. There are purple ruffled algae whose names I don’t know and orange ribbons of algae, also unfamiliar. If I look closely I can see almost transparent tiny crabs whose sole goal is to be unseen. It’s a clear, sunny day in Bar Harbor, Maine, and I’m on the three-day science trip that always starts the eighth grade year. We’re at the Atlantic School of Oceanography where the
students measure beach slope, examine tide pools and dissect squid. I’m there as a chaperone, but I use the occasion to kick off the first essay of the year. I’ve given the students journals, and I insist on their sitting down several times a day to record their observations and feelings about their activities and experiences. These observations will be the notes from which they construct a personal essay. We’ve already talked extensively in
40 class about the need for details to make their essays interesting, but the excitement of the moment overwhelms all, and we usually return with pretty thin stuff. Birchwood is a private country day school (K through ninth grade). Its job is to prepare its students for the big-time secondary schools like Groton, Exeter, Phillips Andover and Deerfield. The families are ambitious and newly rich with sky-high expectations. They want the most prestigious schools, and they don’t want to wait till tenth grade to enter their children. Pride of early achievement and fear of lack of space make them push for entrance at the end of eighth grade. Developmentally, this is a tall order. The students themselves range from those burning with their parents’ ambition to others who experience me and the mediocre grades they receive as a constant, if temporary, source of irritation in the larger business of their thirteen-year-old lives. No one is prepared for the huge task awaiting them. Eighth grade is the year when educators expect students to start moving from simple narrative thinking to more complex, abstract thinking. As seventh graders they are still permitted to string ideas together in endless stories like “Thanksgiving at Grandma’s”: We got up, had pancakes for breakfast, piled into the car with the dog, drove three hours, and so on for the rest of the weekend. Now they are expected to formulate an abstract idea and develop it with supporting details, and it’s as challenging to them as climbing that mesa wall without hand or foot holds. It was my job to guide them along, to point out the holds—and supply my own hand where the holds failed. Every year I tried a new way to help them visualize the mind-boggling process. We brainstormed and webbed on huge sheets of newsprint. We covered walls with balloons and arrows. We pounded keyboards. We ended up with chaos and panic. Thesis statement? The idea of my essay? What idea? What’s an IDEA? Oh my God, I can’t do this! I’ve failed eighth grade! I’ll never get into Groton! YOU’RE keeping me from getting into Groton! Finally, I came up with the “recipe.” First paragraph: open with a general statement that narrows in a couple of sentences to the
thesis statement. Then write three (for preference) body paragraphs beginning with strong topic sentences that are supported with details. Conclude with a final paragraph . . . and so on. I tried to simplify it almost to filling in the blanks, but it was still the hardest thing they’d ever done. Their parents, too. And it was the hardest work I’d ever done. I spent the years hunched over skeletal pages clutching my green pen, trying to suggest next steps. Literally where to step next, to find those hand holds, foot holds. How to help my students create a path of thought: idea, development, conclusion. Mark is a handsome, slender teen, a natural leader and a kid for whom things always came easily. Now he stands before me, one foot hooked behind the other, his paper creased and rolled in his hand. He’s baffled and angry, but polite. “Ms. Gregg,” he says, looking me in the eye, “why don’t you like me?” My heart sags and my brain whirs. I say, “What do you mean? Of course I like you!” “Then why,” he replies, “do you give me Cs?” I’d already met his parents at Parents Night. His mother was in tears. I imagine she saw the whole beautiful future collapse like dominos. Sometimes the parents are angry with a kind of icy—or hot—aggressiveness. I tell them it’s a natural process; it takes time; their children
ently enough to develop them. I look him straight in the eye and tell him this. He thinks a moment, not knowing whether to be reassured or not. He tries again. This time it’s an essay on Macbeth. He’s tracing the shift in power from Lady Macbeth to Macbeth. He looks at ambition and what it does. He’s very nervous, but he’s written a small yet beautifully constructed and developed essay. I give him an A and a high five. He stands before me radiant with new belief, with pride. He understands it. He gets it! He wants to hug me. I want to hug him. This is that place, the place of heart, chock-full of thankfulness, of admiration and appreciation, of pride. Mark has climbed over the rim of the mesa, and together we stand there basking in the new view, in his accomplishment. In the middle of the year we always read Ann Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl. I asked my students to keep journals. This was an area for the girls in the class to shine, for they were far more reflective and interested in their feelings than were the boys. After each reading assignment I asked them to make their own journal entries. They would be entirely private: I wouldn’t read them. They could spin off from something Anne had written in her diary, or they could write about something that had happened to them during the day. At the end of the unit I asked them to choose one entry and develop it into an essay. It would be
HE UNDERSTANDS IT. He gets it! He wants to hug me. I WANT TO HUG HIM. will get it. But when? They don’t have time. I’m causing the ground to shake beneath their feet. Why should they trust me? I don’t attempt to explain to them that I’m holding a place of success for their child in my very heart. I crawl home at the end of the evening. And then it happens. Mark is a very smart boy. His problem has been that he has too many sophisticated and complicated ideas. He’s a real little philosopher, but he hasn’t been able to formulate his thoughts coher-
a practice piece for the dreaded personal essay on the secondary schools’ applications. Meghan is a serious young woman, eager to please but eager to hang with the kids who count as well. She gives me a timidly engaging smile as she hands in her essay. It’s about the chronic, abusive treatment her father lays on her mother. As the voices escalated downstairs, Meghan crept into her older sister Mary’s bed. They waited for the sound of slaps, breaking glasses, the fall of furniture.
41 Meghan huddled against Mary and cried. How did it end? How does that kind of thing end? It doesn’t. Mary comforted Meghan, tried to give her some impossible perspective. Meghan fell asleep. It was a beautifully crafted and written essay. I sat at my desk, stunned. It wasn’t the kind of thing you alert DYS to. I didn’t feel it was a cry for help. I asked her if she had shared it with her parents. “My mother,” she said. “She told me, ‘It’s perfect for the assignment. Go ahead. Write it, if you want to.’” I knew I’d been given a gift, an offering— as though she’d said: Well, I know it’s right for the assignment and I can write it. And write it she did, with strength and grace. She—an adolescent girl—had given her female teacher a huge gift of trust. This time I was the one helped to the place of heart. Thank you, I said. Paul is a small and outrageously bright boy, full of the old scratch, a kid after Mark Twain’s own heart. Round, freckled face, always on the move, hand up, mouth open, he spent a good deal of time in the assistant head’s office down the hall. He and I sized one another up pretty fast, and I have to say on my side it was love at first sight. During the Maine trip his notebook contained only a few rough sketches. No words. “Don’t worry, Ms. Gregg,” he assured me, “I’ve got it all up here.” His first essay was okay— thin on details—but he too vaulted to that mesa top in a personal essay. Like Meghan he chose a revealing subject, but, unlike Meghan, I’m sure he knew he had a good story. His is a home with two moms, and he wrote about the male babysitter they hired to give him male mentoring. Matt was there to throw a football with him, to ride bikes, to take him fishing—all those things guys want to do with guys. “Good, huh?” he said. “Yup,” I said. “I’d accept you at my school any day.” I also taught poetry—not only the reading of it, but the writing—and I learned it’s best to give very specific assignments. For adolescents poems pour from the heart—if they’re into poetry—with thunderous emotion and scanty substance. Yet the words on the page are set in stone. Nothing can be
changed, not a comma, not an adjective. So, one of the first assignments I always gave was to write a poem without adjectives. Paul stepped up to the plate. “Can’t be done,” he said. “Adjectives are poetry.” Everyone waited, adolescent-style, to see what would happen. I didn’t budge. Paul, of course, went home and wrote me a poem chock-full of adjectives. I gave it back to him with the adjectives crossed out and assigned him to find verbs to do their job. He stormed around the room and complained loudly in the hallways and then went home and completely transformed his poem. I no longer have it, but it could have begun something like this. FIRST DRAFT: The sullen clouds were purple in the west, and the trees stood still like frightened ghosts, waiting. Across the valley the fierce wind began to turn up the white undersides of leaves, and a thick curtain of rain advanced over the gray field. REVISION: Clouds bruised the western sky while the trees cowered like ghosts, waiting. Across the valley the wind was slashing the leaves into a froth, and the rain marched across the field like an army.
Yes! Everyone was impressed. Paul was radiant, and the incident became known as the Great Adjective War. With élan the whole class slashed adjectives from their poems and sought out verbs. I had a class of poets! Paul continued to spend a good deal of time in the assistant head’s office. His teachers complained of his mouthiness. He lacked “impulse control,” they said. Yet English class, I felt, was all heart. He and I had created a place of achievement and pride, and we basked in it. The energy was huge, and sometimes it careened around the room. But there was always a twinkle in his eye. “See what I can do!” it said.
I’d met only one of Paul’s moms at Parents’ Night in the fall. I guessed, from her face, that she was his biological mom. I felt a reserve in her—not surprising if she constantly anticipated news of some outrageous behavior by Paul. I wondered who the other mom was. In June I called home—not entirely sure to whom I was speaking—to say I was awarding Paul the creative writing prize at the Awards Ceremony. Please come, but don’t tell him! It’s a very tedious afternoon with each teacher required to give a little windup before announcing the winner’s name, and the creative writing prize falls at the very end. The assistant head had plunked himself amid the eighth grade boys and later told me Paul was in a truly Tom Sawyer agony of fidgets. However, when I mentioned Adjective Wars, he bolted to attention. He knew it was his. Later I met his moms. They were radiant with such joyful pride and, I guess, gratitude that I had seen their son. They and Paul insisted we have our picture taken. It was another place of heart. Sadly, schools don’t have much heart— even a private school that prides itself on its nurturing environment. There’s competition, and rules straitjacketing behavior; there are overworked adults and fractious adolescents. But there are those moments of opening between teacher and student, of mutual recognition and admiration and acknowledgment that “I can do this!” “You can do this!” These are the moments of place of heart, and they are what teaching is fundamentally all about. We create and hold space for our students to move into, and if they’re ready and willing, they move into it. It’s a profound act of hard work, faith, trust and love. Lots of students don’t make it—or at least not on my watch: there is always the next year. Some students take the prize and march ahead with little acknowledgment. But others are able to pause a moment with a timid or brash smile. Those are the ones you remember, and who remember you. Who stay with you and carry you with them. It’s such a very small moment, but it’s a deep connection. It’s a beautiful place of heart. Kathy Dancing Heart is managing editor of Sacred Fire magazine and a former teacher.
B
on n, uni sio m e as m lif , P Co ne T ge d o I T ra an m R R ou on fro M E , C cti es N ve ne ori H A Lo on e st N AT C v O Fi Y J
42 / Issue 14
LOVE
M
any years ago, on a beach called Bean Hollow south of Half Moon Bay, on a cloudy windswept day, I lay on a blanket in the gravelly sand wrapped in the arms of a lovely young woman. We had been dating for six weeks. My wife had left me several months before, taking our toddler daughter and all the accumulated things. Devastated, I quit my job as a counselor for severely emotionally disturbed teenagers in a residential treatment center and hooked on as a construction laborer. I did not speak to women for three months except when courtesy required it. When I started to feel better, at the constant urging of my best friend, I called this lovely young woman. She had been through her own gauntlet, having recently booted her husband. She swore that her life plans would not be interrupted by the demands of a man and resolved to endure the many frustrations and minor thrills of the dating scene. I too had fantasies about bachelorhood. I couldn’t fall for the first woman I dated. But the connection between us was marvelous, rich in conversation and electric in touch. And though our relationship deepened as the weeks passed, we were careful about making plans beyond the next day or so. And we assiduously avoided any discussions of love. On the beach that day we kept warm with kisses and caresses, with breathless words while terns hopped across the sand and gulls wheeled and cried overhead. Waves crashed in their steady rhythm and sand crabs raced the foam. One by one, pelicans dove into the rolling water. It was late afternoon when the sun broke through the overcast, highlighting a bank of off-shore clouds, turning the grey waves translucent green, making the sand sparkle and the white bodies of the gulls and the black bodies of the crabs shine. The lovely young woman put her hand on my wet encroaching mouth and said, “Look! The clouds have become angels and Mother Mary is there! They’re watching us, laying their faces in their hands and cooing!” I looked and, although I did not see what she saw, I saw the beauty and brilliance around us, how the whole world seemed precious and alive. “Yes,” I said. “God writes this scene over and over and never gets tired of watching it.” It was an odd thing to say. I was mulling the thought that we might be players in a script written by divinity itself when she rolled on top of me. “I love you,” she said. Thrilled and frightened by this forbidden declaration, I wasn’t sure what to say. I gazed into her eyes, saw her thrill and fear. “There’s a booger in your nose,” I said, reaching up and picking it away. She blushed deeply and rolled off. I held her close while we shivered in the sunset. We were quiet as I let her words sing through me. The fear of falling in love fell away and my heart, which had been broken on a warm spring day, felt suddenly whole. In that moment I abandoned myself to that sweet lovely woman, to that love and whatever it might bring. SACRED FIRE MAGAZINE / 43
the rest of us to stay back no matter how the police responded. When he left, a quiet settled over the fire as a sense of foreboding swept through the people. I heard a few people whispering about leaving and I felt my own fear rise. My friend John signaled to me and to another friend Michael. Michael pulled out a small drum and began laying down a rhythm. I took out my trumpet, closed my eyes and began improvising in a minor key. As the notes and drum beats rose through the darkness, John shouted a poem that went something like this:
COURAGE
MANY YEARS BEFORE THAT, I went with a group of
friends to protest the construction of Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant on the central coast of California. This extremely expensive and dangerous plant was inexplicably set upon the San Andreas Fault, a fault that was responsible for large earthquakes from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Clearly, the potential for catastrophe was low on the scale of considerations when they planned the plant. We did, however, take solace in the fact that it was right next to San Clemente, the home of the disgraced President Nixon. After a six-hour drive, we pulled into a large field festooned with signs for the Abalone Alliance, the organizers of the protest. We joined the thousand people, mostly very young men and women, who had come to contend with the power of the California government, Pacific Gas & Electric and Bechtel. We talked excitedly, our voices thick with anger and indignation about the obvious stupidity, the carelessness and greed that was behind this plant. True believers, our faces shone with faith that our peaceful army could prevail. As night fell, campfires sprang up and we naturally gathered around the fires, passing loaves of bread and bags of nuts, bottles of water and sweet wine. In this communion our anger turned to laughter around the fire, as people told their stories and spoke their dreams, as guitarists strummed and we sang together songs of protest and love. Unprepared for the cold, I shivered beside the fire until a bearded man spread a blanket around my shoulders. I felt warm and full. I felt like I belonged. We were feeling pretty happy when a member of the Abalone Alliance came and laid out the plans for the next day, how we would approach the site, what we would do. He took the names of those who had received nonviolence training, the front liners who risked arrest. He instructed 44 / Issue 14
In the night of blue fires, As the moon casts her cold eye On the hills and valleys, On the people gathered in the field, While the ocean beats her drums And the wind plays among the sleeping flowers, I call to my father, “Papa, what are we to do?” And a voice rises from the ground, A voice full of grit, saying, “Stand in this time and place, Stand with these people, Stand in this land And raise your voices high. For the rough blue hand of authority, The shouting voice of power, The growling belly of greed, Not even the black feet of death Can withstand the hearts of the people When they raise their hands To the wind and ocean and flowers And call out to everything that lives.” And so, my people, Children of the stripped forest, Of the broken ground and soiled wind, Children of the mysterious night, Stand with me in the presence of our lives, Stand with me and sing Even as the engines roar And the blades lay low the high grasses And the dust fills our mouths and throats. WHEN HE WAS DONE and the drum trailed off and my last
note fell, I opened my eyes. After a moment of silence, a great cheer rose through the gathered crowd. The fire was burning brightly. Someone handed John a full bottle of wine. He took a deep slug and passed it to me and I passed it along to Michael. A lithe woman kissed me while another hugged me from behind. There was laughter and chatter everywhere. The heart of the people had been restored.
PASSION
MANY YEARS LATER, Jennifer, the sweet woman who
had seen the vision in the clouds, was a couple weeks overdue when her water broke. We had planned a home-birth but, after twenty-four hours of labor, we went to the hospital and there our infant daughter drowned. Taken from the womb by an emergency cesarean section, she had no heartbeat or breath. After ten minutes, the doctor in charge of the resuscitation looked at me and shook his head. I fell on my knees beside the gurney where Jennifer was being sewn back together. We began crying out, “Maya, Maya, please don’t leave! God, please give us Maya!” We prayed with all our hearts, begging for mercy, begging for grace. Just then, one of the technicians shouted, “I’ve got a pulse!” The nurses and doctors redoubled their efforts and, in a few minutes, they had her stabilized and ready to go to the Neo-natal Intensive Care Unit. “Go,” Jennifer said. “Go and be with Maya.” The NICU was large and brightly lit with row upon row of babies. They were arranged with those in the best condition nearest the door and the worst in the far corner close to the doctors’ office. Most were severely premature, tiny beings with heads no larger than walnuts. Maya, my ten pound girl, was in the last position, red and swollen, her eyes tightly shut, surrounded by an array of monitors with IV needles threaded into each arm and leg and a tube protruding from her chest, draining her right lung which had collapsed during the resuscitation. I stood over her speechless, unable to make sense of what had happened. After a moment, I was ushered into the office where I was introduced to the doctor who was charged with Maya’s care. I asked her, “How long do you think Maya will be in here? Two weeks?” She said, “Mr. Merritt, your daughter has suffered a grave injury to her brain. All her systems are in failure and she’s on full life support. If she ever gets out of here, it will be at least six months.” Dumbfounded, I wandered back to Maya’s bed where nurses worked steadily over her. I tried to find a few words of encouragement for her, feeling futile. After a while I went to find my wife. Jennifer was lying in her hospital bed weeping. “How is she? How is our daughter?” she asked. “It’s not good,” I said and told her what the doctor had told me and what I had seen. I sat on the bed and held her, utterly desolate. When we were done weeping, I wheeled her to the NICU. When Jennifer saw Maya, she said, “How beautiful you are, Maya, my sweet precious girl.” We cooed to her
and sang little songs. We tenderly stroked her head and belly and legs. So it went for a couple days—the doctors’ reports grim, our families and friends bringing flowers and gifts, relating dreams they had, offering prayers for Maya’s survival. But for every dream, every hopeful sign, the doctor countered with the empirical evidence of Maya’s dire condition. On the third morning, the doctor laid out the case with charts and graphs. She said, “The window of opportunity is closing. Your daughter’s body is getting stronger and probably she will be able to breathe on her own. But her brain is dead. She will never be able to walk or talk or see or hear or eat. Her life will be nothing but pain. The time to take her off life-support is now. Why would you trap her spirit in this broken body?” It was a good question, one that we had been considering, though the thought of letting her go threw us into a morass of grief and fear. We were talking over what to do when Jann, our midwife, came in. She had hired a shaman to journey to the underworld to see if she could contact Maya. The shaman, Je’aime, who was trained in a Siberian shamanic lineage, told her, “Usually, when I go into the underworld to look for a child who has been injured or lost, I have to search everywhere—in caves, under rocks, behind trees. But when I went to look for Maya, she appeared immediately as this amazing transformative being. She changed moment by moment from a new-born to a young girl to a mature woman to an old crone and back to a newborn. I recognized her as a goddess. She was across a body of water and she would not let me approach. I thanked her for appearing to me and asked her what was going on. “She said, ‘I have very important work to do in this lifetime and I don’t know whether these are the right parents for me, whether they will be able to give me what I need.’ “I asked, ‘What do you need from them, Maya?’ “Maya said, ‘I need to see whether they will be willing to do whatever it takes to help me. I need to see their passion.’” I didn’t know anything about shamanism and I didn’t know how anyone could travel to the underworld or contact spirits, but these words rang absolutely true. We had to give up our fear. We had to let the passion of our hearts guide us to help this precious being. We stopped feeling sorry for ourselves and got to work, doing everything we could think of, sacrificing sleep and self-consciousness, giving it all up for her. On the thirteenth day, we took Maya home.
off in my hand. On the scree slopes, steep chutes of sharp irregular gravel, ankle deep, I slid back half a step with every step I took. On small ledges where hardy weeds clung tenaciously to the thin soil, I’d rest and drink a little water and look at the incredible panorama unfolding before me. Gray Ptarmigan Ridge with its dense skirt of quaking aspen stood on my right. Far below the great lodge was alive with ant-like activity. Lakes like bright sapphire jewels strung together by Swiftcurrent River led down the valley. In the distance the plains unfolded multicolored and flat, shimmering with heat and dust. To my right an ancient glacier sat upon Mt. Gould and waterfalls leapt off its 3000 foot rock face. At its base, Lake Josephine was set in the velvet of the pine green forest. Around two in the afternoon, I could see the top of Grinnell Point. But the only access led to a ledge where the walls swept up around me and over my head. I backtracked three times, but couldn’t find another way up. So I sat, ate my lunch in awe of the magnificence around me. It’s difficult to express my intense joy in that moment. Even though I failed to reach my goal, I felt exhilarated, at once light and full. The wind sang around me and I began singing, mimicking the wind. My heart was singing and I felt a deep connection, a sense of richness and beauty that I can only describe as love for the mountain spirit that cupped me on the ledge. I started laughing and laughed until I was completely empty. Then I sat in the paradox of my emptiness and my fullness until shadows fell across the ledge. I started back down the cliff, gingerly feeling for foot holds, occasionally jumping to a ledge or schussing through scree. I took a few slides, but over the summer I had become adept at rolling on my back and controlling the slide with my feet, grasping for branches or solid rock. I had descended pretty far when I encountered a vertical wall. As I stretched for a foothold, the rock I was hanging onto pulled free. I looked with amazement at the square rock in my hand as I fell, bounced, then tumbled into a steep scree slope. My right leg was twisted behind my back and there was nothing I could grab at to slow my descent. As I slid I could see that the slope ended in a cliff and I thought that, at best, I’d break my leg in the fall. Then I’d be stuck out where the grizzlies roam at night, too far from the nearest trail for my calls to be heard. And at worst, well…. I shot off the cliff and fell maybe twelve feet, my fall broken by a thick web of huckleberry and the soft earth beneath them. After I felt my body and found myself whole, I lay there in the moist soft earth, in the warmth of the late summer day. As my heartbeat slowed down, I watched the white puffball clouds drift in the pure blue sky, picked fat purple huckleberries one by one and thanked the spirit of the mountain for the sweet huckleberries, for the blue sky with white clouds and the sun shining on my life.
CONNECTION MANY YEARS BEFORE, I worked as a bellhop at Many
Glacier Hotel beside Swiftcurrent Lake in Glacier National Park, Montana. Grinnell Point stood 1500 feet above the lake. Herds of mountain goats leapt up its nearly sheer face and from time to time a bighorn ram posed at its top. Golden eagles would swoop low over the lake, make a wide pass, catch a thermal and, without beating a wing, drift up the rock wall. From the day I arrived I wanted to climb the Point. Every day I studied its contours, watching the light and shadow play across its face. Often I hiked past Grinnell on my evening walks. After carrying suitcases all day, I would feel completely refreshed after a few minutes on the trail. I liked to imagine that the spirit of the Point infused my spirit with energy and joy. Week after week, my comrades and I explored the magnificent trails. We covered most of the park in long quick marches, usually hiking twenty to twenty-five miles on our one day off. But no one wanted to climb the Point. And so, the summer passed. As my date of departure neared, I knew I had to get up Grinnell Point. Due to the danger of hiking alone, there was a strict rule that hotel staff had to sign out at the desk, naming destinations and hiking partners. Not wanting to be stopped, I ignored the rule, packed a light lunch and a water bottle and set off a little past eight a.m. A broad patch of huckleberry bushes nestled at the base of the Point. They had ripened in the previous weeks and, nearly every evening, we gathered buckets of juicy huckleberries. While we picked we always laughed nervously at those branches stained with huckleberry juice, a sign of the grizzlies that came down after dusk to feed. We imagined the grizzlies’ luxury and pleasure, lying on their backs in the soft dirt, grabbing a heavily-laden branch and scraping the sweet berries into their mouths. I picked a few berries, stuffed my mouth full and bit down, flooding my throat with juice as I made my way through the patch. I started my ascent, following some goats that leapt from rock to rock. It was slow going and the goats quickly left me behind, but I kept climbing, foothold to handhold, sometimes exploiting a crevice or ledge. The rock in those mountains is sedimentary, gray, hard and brittle. It tended to crumble under my foot or break 46 / Issue 14
COMMUNION MANY YEARS LATER, Maya was three-years old. While
she walked and talked and was a joyful laughing being, she had some physical difficulties and some obvious developmental delays. In our desire to help her, we took a trip to visit a shaman. The shaman, who was initiated into an indigenous healing tradition from Mexico, sat with the three of us. After a while he said, “Maya is a magnificent being, a goddess, really. There’s nothing that she needs from me at this time. But you two can use some help so that you can help her achieve her purpose in this life.” For the next five days he treated Jennifer and me, brushing us with his feathers, saying little. I can’t say that I felt much happening. It just seemed strange. But the shaman saw something in us and, during the course of the treatments, invited us to join him on pilgrimage. Separately, we would visit certain sacred mountains to see if the mountains called us to a path of spiritual healing. I always had a strong sense of the divine, of the world alive around me, but there was no real sense of how to connect to that livingness. I studied sacred poetry along with Christian, Vedic and Buddhist scripture. I prayed, meditated and chanted, visualized and affirmed. I joined process groups and experimented with psycho-active substances. In typical New Age fashion I thought that I could construct a viable personal religion by picking things out of the various spiritual traditions, making some things up on my own. By the time I reached forty, this quest had diminished into a kind of vague yearning. I was working a job I hated, trying to keep my demons at bay through constant use of marijuana and alcohol. I thought that any day I might have a heart attack. To say the least, I was skeptical of the shaman’s invitation. I had forgotten my experience on Grinnell Point. It didn’t make sense that I could be called by a mountain. I didn’t want to fast in preparation. I didn’t want to go. I was afraid of losing control of my life. When Jennifer returned radiant and joyful from her pilgrimage—about which she said nothing—she encouraged, or, rather, insisted that I give it a try. “Look at your life,” she said. “I mean, really, what have you got to lose?” It was hard to argue and, grudgingly, I agreed.
When I arrived at the pilgrimage camp, I felt angry about the fasting. I felt uncomfortable among the group of strangers, as welcoming and open as they were. And, of course, I carried a load of cynicism and skepticism. But I settled into the rhythm of the camp as we made food together and split wood. We sat around the fire and told jokes. The shaman spoke of the livingness of the world not as some vague fantasy but as lived experience. The pilgrims told stories of being in relationship with the plants and animals, the wind and rain, with the earth itself. With great devotion they crafted offerings to the sacred being of that place and consecrated those offerings. They made a prayer for the benefit of all beings. They gave voice to something I had always known, something I had almost forgotten. I felt something in me shift. I felt my heart opening. The third morning we rose before dawn. In silence, fasting without food or water, we began our ascent. As we climbed through the forest of redwood, oak and madrone, along a flowing stream, and through a long bramble of manzanita, I felt the wind alive around me and the blessed sun shining down. I heard the songbirds flitting between branches and watched the ravens cavorting above us, calling in their rough voices. I felt every living thing welcoming us, encouraging us as we climbed. When we reached the sacred cairn, I waited as one by one the pilgrims made their offerings and prayers. When, at last, it was my turn, I descended into the cave and placed my meager visitor’s offerings beside the precious gifts of the pilgrims. I felt something utterly unnamable rising around me. I felt a presence deeper and richer and fuller than anything I had ever experienced. I felt it embracing me, calling my name. And I knew that it knew me more deeply than I knew myself, that it was welcoming me. Tears flowed down my face and a great shudder went through me as some vast darkness released from my spirit. As I descended from the cave, my heart, which had been dull in my chest a few days before, was beating loud. I found the world sparkling around me but my feet were steady and solid on the ground. There was a long road ahead, but I knew, at last, that I had found my path.
poem What the Old One is Thinking Geneen Marie Haugen
1 Einstein unfurled formulas into the night—strung them like prayer flags, humble questions, articulate bows of invitation, offerings to the cosmic mystery. “I want to know,” he once said, “what the old one is thinking.” 2 One night when the spangled heavens wobbled and dropped so close that comets nearly fell into my outstretched hands, I felt an intelligence, a sensing presence – not a soft animal or taloned bird – but something immense, unseen, perhaps unseeable, curious, welcoming, reaching toward me – I was not afraid in that great darkness. I see you, I almost said even though I saw nothing but the yo-yoing stars, the silhouettes of trees, the curve of land falling in waves toward the ocean. And yet, I was enveloped in some thing strangely familiar, as if present all my life, ordinary and unrecognized—like speckled birds we one day notice nesting in a meadow we have cut a thousand times, unknowing—and now electrified by my attention, by my curiosity and reciprocal pleasure. 48 / Issue 14
Yes, I said, not knowing to whom —everything hinged on that out-breath – and I began a halting conversation in a language I don’t know how to speak, began a clumsy dance, not knowing who twirls me, lets go and vanishes, spins off faraway, who returns sometimes, always laughing—and I laugh too, as if I hear the joke told when the universe howled itself into being. 3 I do not have Einstein’s starry mind, primed to probe physics and relativity, tracking a secret patterned language for evidence of the old one’s thinking. This morning, I study the meadow, follow a trail of faint prints and glyphs, hints and shaggy suggestions of what the old one might think or dream: perhaps these bison and osprey, these dancing sandhill cranes, these plump buds of cottonwood, this granite heaved from the deep Earth, this river racing with snowmelt, this land greening beneath rain. This. This.
Geneen Marie Haugen is a writer, wilderness wanderer, scholar and guide to the mysteries of nature and psyche. Her work has appeared in many anthologies and journals.
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TURBULENT TIMES INSPIRE US TO CONNECT WITH NATURE’S WISDOM
Learn from eight elders whose traditional ways of healing, ceremony, story, gratitude, sacred song and prophesy will change your relationship with the world. Deepen your connection with our Earth... and our future. 3 D AY S & 3 N I G H T S | T H U R M AY 1 9 - S U N M AY 2 2 F T W O R D E N S TAT E PA R K | P O R T T O W N S E N D , WA J OY F U L E X P R E S S I O N S | M U S I C • D R U M M I N G • F I L M S R E G I S T E R E A R LY | S P A C E I S L I M I T E D D E TA I L S | W W W. A N C I E N T W I S D O M R I S I N G . C O M
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A WORLD ALIVE WITH SPIRIT
Keeper of the Rituals Sobonfu Some (Dagara)
Kawan Sangaa Woody Morrison (Haida)
Tsaurirrikame Eliot Cowan (Huichol)
Grandmother Sara Smith (Mohawk)
OmeAkaEhekatl Erick Gonzalez (Mayan)
Vedamurti Shri Vivek (Hindu)
Whaea Raina Ferris (Maori)
Squi Qui Ray Williams (Swinomish)
Wake Up Laughing, Wise Up Loving with Swami Beyondananda and Steve Bhaerman
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Heart-opening comedy, mind-expanding wit. Is it comedy disguised as wisdom, or wisdom disguised as comedy? You decide! To find out how to bring his two-man one-man show to your city or group, contact Fast Lane International at 757-497-2669 or visit the Swami online at www.wakeuplaughing.com
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final flicker are transforming all those wounds into physical diseases. And the environment is being damaged by all kinds of stuff, chemical stuff and bombs and Endangered trees of the Amazon carry ancient stories things like that. for us and messages for the whole universe. That’s horrible. Those things are horrible. But they are happening. Grandmother Maria Alice Campos-Freire, a member of the International Those ancient trees, you can’t believe Council of the 13 Indigenous Grandmothers, gave a talk in Portland, Oregon on how old they are, the stories that they November 23, 2010. The talk, sponsored by the Earth & Spirit Council/Natural carry. It’s not only for us that are here Way, took place before a full audience of avid listeners. It was lovely to listen on this planet. But they spread their to her words and to watch how she speaks so eloquently with her gestures messages out into the universe. And they and facial expressions. The following is an excerpt from her talk, slightly edited also catch information from the cosmic for the sake of clarity on the page. —JONATHAN MERRITT planes and they bring this down for us through their seeds, their flowers, their fruits. So they are being destroyed. YOU KNOW I LIVE IN THE AMAZON RAINFOREST that is now under And when I look at that—two days after, a new forest a big destruction. It’s the biggest primary forest that’s left on grows spontaneously. That’s a big teaching for us. We can see the planet. That’s very significant. that nature has this capacity to recover from any destruction. You can find beings over there that have witnessed so That’s the message of life. Life is like this. You cannot many things: trees that have been there thousands of years. kill life. You cannot kill the spirit. The spirit is eternal. The And they are under destruction because of corporations, memory is eternal. We just need to search, and we will find it. money. Native people are being displaced. The same story I’m not inventing that. It’s for everybody to see. Like the that everybody knows, that happened here and over there sun rising every day, that truth is there. Life is eternal and and over there. Now it is happening in the Amazon. has this capacity for recovering from any kind of destruction. But still you can find the forest. The traditional medicines So that’s the teaching we need to learn and embody and are there. They can heal all those terrible diseases that were stop with our diseases. We can do that. We are able. We have created by imbalance. This imbalance is in people because that intelligence. Human beings that are able to destroy—we they lost their memories, their connection to their purpose. can just turn and do the opposite, create nets of peace and People don’t know what they are doing on Earth. And they love and construction. Excerpt © Earth & Spirit Council, 2010.
You Cannot Kill Life
is a Madrinha (Godmother) of the Santo Daime Church in Mapia, Brazil. A healer with Amazonian plant medicine, she is the founder of Centro Medicina da Floresta (Forest Medicine Center) where she advocates for the preservation of indigenous rain forest heritage and educates youth in the preservation of nature and sustainable living. For further information on Grandmother Maria Alice and the work of the International Council of the 13 Indigenous Grandmothers, go to www. grandmotherscouncil.org or visit the Center for Sacred Studies, www.sacredstudies.org.
Maria Alice Campos-Freire
58 / Issue 14
A beautifully produced DVD of the talk, which also includes an interview with Grandmother Maria Alice, is available from The Earth & Spirit Council. To learn about their work and to buy this DVD visit www.earthandspirit.org.
MARISOL VILLANUEVA/GRANDMOTHERSCOUNCIL.ORG
GRANDMOTHER MARIA ALICE CAMPOS-FREIRE
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