COMMUNAL HEAT
HUMANITY BY 2012
FREE MARKET FREE FALL
FEELING LOST? SACREDFIREMAGAZINE.COM
AN ANTIDOTE TO HUMAN AMNESIA
JESSE WOLF HARDIN
ANIMÁ: WIND, BREATH, SPIRIT DIRECTIONS & THE OJIBWE MEDICINE WHEEL RECOVERING FROM TRAUMA
THE POET & THE THERAPIST
$7.95 U.S. / $9.75 CANADA
ISSUE 9
MARTÍN PRECHTEL SHAMANIC HEALING & SACRIFICAL BEAUTY
Looking for something sustainable?
In the earliest times, humans were uniquely
connected to the lands where we lived, the animals that fed us, the plants that nourished our children—we were all intimate partners in a circular dance of life. In those times, we heard the music of this dance and recognized it as the voice of divine, the sacred song of Creation. Each people had their own songs, given to them by the ancestors and spirits of their places. These songs were the original agreements, the original instructions about how to live in right relationship with each other and the earth. In today’s fast-forward world, we have forgotten how to hear this music. Symptoms of our collective amnesia are everywhere—economic turmoil, environmental crisis, political polarization, social injustice, and rising rates of physical, mental and emotional illness. We are profoundly disconnected from our communities, our families and our own hearts. What can be done to bring the world and her people back into balance? It is time for a great remembering. It is time for Sacred Fire.
Sacred Fire Foundation promotes personal, cultural and environmental healing by helping all people re-discover their innate and intimate connection to the living world.
© LAGUI | DREAMSTIME.COM
of living is a good place to start.
Sacred Fire Foundation
CLOCKWISE: © SEBCZ | DREAMSTIME.COM; © JONALDM | DREAMSTIME.COM; © AMILEVIN | DREAMSTIME.COM.
Be a Firestarter
In many indigenous and traditional communities, there are wisdom holders who remember how to be in right relationship with the world. These spiritual elders, healers and medicine people offer something both precious and practical to the global community: a worldview grounded in sustainability and co-existence.
Sacred Fire Foundation knows how important it is to bring this wisdom to the world, now. Our magazine, Sacred Fire is a modern voice of these ancient traditions. It’s an antidote to human amnesia, reminding people who we are, so we can find healing, create loving relationships and build sustainable communities that are rooted in awareness and reciprocity.
OUR MISSION:
Reviving “right relationship” between humanity and the living world. The essence of every healthy relationship is a natural cycle of exchange, and Sacred Fire Foundation knows the importance of supporting the source of ancestral wisdom. A 501(c)3 charitable organization, Sacred Fire Foundation develops partnerships and programs that provide in-kind, technical and financial aid for organizations that preserve and sustain traditional indigenous lifeways. Support the source of ancestral wisdom. Support bringing this wisdom to the world. Support Sacred Fire Foundation. www.sacredfirefoundation.org
Contents
On The Cover: Martín Prechtel was photographed by Inga Hendrickson at his home in New Mexico.
COLUMNS 16 | FireStarters
Putting Stock in Ancestral Spiritual Technology By Evelyn Arce-White and Cynthia Frisch
18 | Dreams of the Holy
DEPARTMENTS 5 | Editor’s Note
Awakening the Indigenous Heart in Everyone
6 | Publisher’s Note
Waking from Amnesia in New Mexico
7 | Flares from our Readers Apology + Spirituality: A Mask for Selfishness?
8 | Unintended
Consequences Fertilizing for Famine + Free Market Free Fall 9 | Reviving Right Relationship By 2012, A Mayan Priest’s Address + A Model Community + We’re All in This Together + Alaskan Gold
14 | Reviews
Changing the World: A Vision of Circleway + Horseboy
59 | Marketplace 2 / SACRED FIRE / Issue 9
The Essential Healing By Mary Lane
20 | Out of the Frying Pan Feeling Lost? By Larry Messerman
21 | Logs for the Fire Community is Messy By Chris Schlake
68 | Final Flicker
9
Holiness By Chrism
POETRY 50 | Stumbling
through Paradise By Marvyn Morrison
51 | You
By Hydeh Aubon
52 | Amazon Grace + Mockingbird By Art Campbell
57 | Kernal
By Eve Waters
PROVOCATIONS 15 | The Google Billionaire 41 | The Place of Initiation 58 | Tai Chi with the Albatross
FROM TOP: COURTESY PLAYINGFORCHANGE.COM; LEEUWTJE.
11
Light as the Holy, the Holy as Light By Barry Williams and Renatta Ritzman
19 | Divine Nourishment
Features
32
Beautiful Running For the Pueblo and Navaho running, not racing, keeps the sun and moon strong and everything alive. By Martín Prechtel
23 | Starting from Center—The Ojibwe Medicine Wheel To keep our internal fires burning, we walk the way of the ancestors, a path with no beginning and no end. By Lillian Pitawanakwat
RYAN HEFFERNAN
30 | Holistic Knowledge from
Perennial Wisdom Aboriginal traditional knowledge lives in stories shared around the fire. How can we access an oral tradition in an urban world? By Sharon Brown
36 | The Song of the House
of the World The modern quest for permanence and immortality creates profound disconnection, but if each being sings its sacred song, the fragmentation can be repaired. By Martín Prechtel
42 | Waking to Animá
The spirited winds of change and transformation are alive in the sanctuary called Animá. By Jesse Wolf Hardin
46 | In Service to the Deities
One poet, one psychotherapist, one dialog about trauma, healing and the extraordinary value of experience FICTION
54 | Cedar Tree Woman and the Grandmother Rock A story of journey and sacrifice and discovery, of the offered and the offering and the truest gift. By Esther White Duck Crawford
Issue 9 / SACRED FIRE / 3
Sacred OUR Fire CONTRIBUTERS
Hydeh Aubon was raised in the poetic culture of Iran. She began writing poetry when she was 13 years old and began to write English poetry in 1994. She moved to the United States about 18 years ago. Through life’s challenges, she learned that framing life into familiar terms limits a person’s experience. Life is vast, and cannot be framed. Hydeh’s poetry does not try to make any statements; her poems are but moments and feelings.
Lillian Pitawanakwat
Martín Prechtel
A master of eloquence and innovative language, Martín Prechtel is a leading thinker, writer and teacher whose work, both written and oral, hopes to promote the subtlety, irony and pre-modern vitality hidden in any living language. As a half-blood Native American with a Pueblo Indian upbringing, his life took him from New Mexico to the village of Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala. There he became a full village member of the Tzutujil Mayan population. He eventually served as a principal in the body of village leaders responsible for instructing the young people in the meanings of their ancient stories through the rituals of adult rites of passage. Once again residing in his native New Mexico, Martín teaches at his international school, Bolad’s Kitchen. Through story, music, ritual and writing, Martín helps people in many lands to retain their diversity while remembering their own sense of place in the daily sacred through the search for the Indigenous Soul. Martín Prechtel is the author of: Stealing Benefacio’s Roses; The Disobedience of the Daughter of the Sun: Ecstasy and Time; Long Life, Honey in the Heart; and Secrets of the Talking Jaguar. floweringmountain.com 4 / SACRED FIRE / Issue 9
born in Brooklyn, raised in Appalachia, and scholarshipped to Harvard and Georgetown Universities. Prior to earning two law degrees he was a road-maintenance worker, janitor, boxer, rugby player, and professional musician. He then became a trial lawyer for and against the government in Washington, D.C. For over forty years he has written, performed, and published poems, and won awards for a number of them.
author of five books, including My Name Is Chellis and I’m in Recovery from Western Civilization and the award-winning Off the Map: An Expedition Deep into Empire and the Global Economy. She also wrote a bilingual folk opera about immigration called De Un Lado Al Otro. She lives in Chimayó, New Mexico, where she works for traditional cultural preservation and environmental justice and has a private practice as a psychotherapist.
CHELLIS GLENDINNING
Jesús Sepúlveda, a poet from Chile, is the author of six books of poetry, including Hotel Marconi, translated into English by poet Paul Dresman and made into a film in Chile this year. His work has appeared in magazines and anthologies in more than a dozen countries, and he has performed poetry readings in Chile, US, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and Spain. He currently lives in Eugene, Oregon, with his compañera, Janine and their son, Indigo.
Esther White Duck Crawford is a Canadian Algonquin
who had grown distant from her family, heritage and spirituality. Her life changed dramatically when, during a hospital stay, a loving and familiar Grandmother, a group of her Ancestors and a Medicine man healed her and advised her to “Use your voice.” She has found that “our voice” is a path to reconnect with “who you are, and who you will become” as the Elders tell us all.
Jesse Wolf Hardin is a
teacher and founder of Animá natureinformed practice and author of nine books. He and his partners offer empowering online Medicine Woman and Shaman Path correspondence courses, plus wilderness retreats, vision quests and workshops at their Sanctuary. a wild river canyon and ancient place of power in the enchanted Southwest: Animá Learning & Retreat Center, Box 688, Reserve, NM 87830 animacenter.org
FROM LEFT: INGA HENDRICKSON; ANTON BRKIC’
MARTÍN PRECHTEL
also known as Thunderbird Eagle Woman, belongs to the Thunderbird Clan. She is Ojibwe and Potawatomi and is both a mother and a grandmother. The Potawatomi tribe, are called the firekeepers. Being a part of the fire-keepers, Lillian says she was given the task of nurturing the fires of the people with whom she comes into contact.
Art Campbell was
Chellis Glendinning is the
Sacred EDITOR’S Fire NOTE
Awakening the Indigenous Heart in Everyone
JENNIFER MEANS
JUST PAST DAWN A FEW DAYS
ago, I sat beside the fire and considered this matter—awakening the indigenous heart in everyone. One of the primary missions of Sacred Fire, it’s a complex issue, fraught with paradox. How can we—almost all of us of mixed ancestry and most living far from where we were born—begin to experience ourselves as indigenous, as native, naturally occurring and not introduced, as belonging to a particular place? How can we live in intimate relationship with the “beingness” of that place so that our hearts are awakened to the intricate interconnectedness of the world around us? My mind spun as garbage trucks moved up the street. I considered the impact of my life upon the land, my house and lawn cut into the forest, the consumption of energy needed to maintain my lifestyle—a typically American life with cars and electric lights, imported food, toilet paper, a dishwasher and garbage disposal, my computer, my TV. How could the land accept me? The fire burned enthusiastically and birds called from the cedars, maples and pines. I decided to stop thinking for a moment and to simply listen. Suddenly, all the birds—at least twenty species—began calling loudly, their voices raised in alarm. I looked up from the fire and saw that our cat, Milo, a strong young orange tabby, had caught a sparrow. I yelled and
distracted the cat, then chased him away as the sparrow flew to a pile of branches, then up into a pine. The birds went back to their normal routines as I sat back down. It was clear that the birds were saying, if I can translate it into human speech, “Hey! Wake up! Your cat has caught Joe!” The next morning, sitting again by the fire, contemplating the same idea, my mind whirling away, it came very clearly to me that it’s not about the idea. It’s about being present, about paying attention. My eyes fell on a large red pine across the yard. More than a year ago, we ran a hemp rope from the tree to hang a huge tarp to provide cover for a large gathering. We left the rope up because it made it easy to shelter our fire circle during inclement weather. Now, as I looked at the pine, the trunk looked red and enflamed below the rope and dusky grey above it. The tree was strangling. We had girdled the tree, using a come-along with a nylon strap to tighten the rope. The bark was swollen above and below the strap. It was too tight to work the spring, so I got my hunting knife and cut the strap free. The tree took a great gasp. A few hours later, the trunk looked normal again. This morning, a gentle, lightly overcast late spring morning, I sat by the fire and tried not to think. I sat for a long while listening. As my mind quieted
JONATHAN MERRITT
down, I noticed something remarkable. The singing of the birds was like an orchestra with one large crow conducting. The crow cawed two or three times and birds filled in with various intricate and simple songs. The crow called again and the birds responded. The crow flew across the yard and cawed from the large pine and the birds in that area began singing. And so it went—the crow flying back and forth, calling, and the birds singing. I was enveloped in a magnificent symphony of bird song. It came to me then that this is what makes the forest sing. Every bird must play its part. The forest depends on it, as well as on the songs and activities of all the animals, all the insects, the plants, bacteria and fungi. This singing makes the land thrive so that it can feed every living thing as they feed upon each other. And I recognized my part in this as I sing, tending my garden and caring for the trees, mak-
ing offerings to the land. As I sit in gratitude and wonder at the living spirit of this place, I recognize that the “beingness” that sings includes me, includes all of us who walk upon the land, wherever we live. Perhaps one key to awakening our indigenous hearts, to recognizing our places in the livingness of the world, is to quiet down, to let go of the chattering mind, to listen to the land as it sings to us and to recognize that we are an integral part of that song. I cannot hope to learn the original mystery and wisdom of this land, as it was given to the people the land brought forth, who, for thousands of years, gave their bones to the soil. But if I sit this way, if I can teach my children to listen and be grateful, then, perhaps, their children or their children’s children will truly understand the magnificence that we live in. —Jonathan Merritt Issue 9 / SACRED FIRE / 5
Sacred Fire An Antidote to Human Amnesia
Sacred PUBLISHER’S Fire NOTE
Issue Number Nine
sacredfiremagazine.com
PUBLISHER SHARON BROWN EDITOR-IN-CHIEF JONATHAN MERRITT CREATIVE DIRECTOR MACE FLEEGER CONTRIBUTING EDITORS CHRIS SCHLAKE, STEPHEN MICHAEL SCOTT, BILL SUTTON COPY EDITOR CHARLE LEAGUE SUBSCRIPTION SALES JILL JACOBS, KATHY AFTAB SUBSCRIPTION MANAGER ANDYE MURPHY ADVERTISING SALES LYN FELLING PUBLICITY KATHY DANCING HEART I.T. & WEB MASTER DAN CERNESE DIRECT SALES THERESA ARICO
ADVISORY BOARD KAREN ABERLE, JEFF BAKER, TUCKER FARLEY, LISA GOREN THANK YOU! ALEXANDER DAVID, INGA HENDRICKSON, RYAN HEFFERNAN, SANTA BARBARITA, AND THOSE WHO HAVE CONTRIBUTED THEIR TREASURE, YOUR PRECIOUS TIME AND UNIQUE TALENTS, AND, OF COURSE, GRANDFATHER FIRE.
Waking from Amnesia in New Mexico SHARON BROWN
Letters We encourage readers to share their reactions to Sacred Fire by sending emails to
PUBLISHED BY SACRED FIRE FOUNDATION Sacred Fire Foundation fosters personal, cultural and environmental healing through the preservation and propagation of traditional indigenous lifeways. A 501 (c) 3 charitable organization, the foundation seeks to revive “right relationship” between humanity and the natural world. The foundation seeks to support sources of ancestral wisdom through partnership and grants, and supports bringing ancestral wisdom to the world through publishing and events.
SACRED FIRE FOUNDATION sacredfirefoundation.org 71 N Main Street P.O. Box 270 Liberty, NY 12754
Board of Trustees CHAIRMAN DAVID WILEY BOARD MEMBERS ALAN KERNER, ARTEMIA FABRE TREASURER AND DIR. ADMINISTRATION NANCY EOS EXEC. DIR. DEVELOPMENT SHERRY MORGAN EXEC. DIR. PARTNERS AND GRANTS SOFIA ARROYO EXEC. DIR. COMMUNICATION AND EDUCATION SHARON BROWN SECRETARY VICTORIA REEVES BOOKEEPING DANA MARTIN 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 / SACRED FIRE / Issue 9
AS WE CAME TOGETHER TO REVIEW
the selections for this issue of Sacred Fire, we discovered a hidden trend. Many, we can even say most, of this issue’s articles are connected in some way with the land now called the American state of New Mexico. This had not been our initial intention. Instead, this issue (our ninth) grew organically from the soil of staff discussions about the role Sacred Fire plays in the world. At one point last summer, we realized that our purpose is to be an antidote to human amnesia, that “great forgetting” of how to live in balance with the natural energies of the world. Although the claim might be a bit provocative, we feel we can help reawaken the Indigenous heart in everyone. All of us, no matter the specifics of our cultural heritage. With modernity’s wealth of achievements and conveniences, there has come a great poverty of spirit. Now more than ever, it is important to literally feed our souls and the soul of the world. Knowing this, contributors Martín Prechtel, Jesse Wolf Hardin and Lillian Pitawanakwat share words of wisdom, resonant with the rituals that keep the earth alive. Expressing the Indigenous worldview through life action is the necessary next step. Articles in this issue feature Jennifer Wemigwans, Evelyn Arce-White, Chellis Glendenning and Jesus Sepulveda, all of whom work to empower , heal and give voice to those who have been oppressed and traumatized in their lives. Bringing forth these stories of embracing our true nature, of opening our hearts to our innate and intimate connection with the living world, was our intention with Issue Nine. But nothing is ever just one thing. We found that this issue had its own purpose. Apparently the lands and ancestors and spiritual beings of New Mexico desired to speak. Without giving away the surprise, I invite you to immerse yourself in the winds of this issue, feel the warmth of its Southwestern sun and hear the crackle of its fire. —Sharon Brown
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF SFC
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 bookstores and retailers in the U.S. and Canada through Ubiquity, Armadillo, Kent News, New Leaf, One Source, Ingram, Source Interlink and Disticor Direct 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.
Sacred FLARES Fire
Flares from Our Readers
Curiously, we didn’t receive any letters commenting on our last issue of Sacred Fire. However, we did receive the following letters poured from hearts of our readers. So, we open this space for you to smolder, flame, dance or roar and, as always, invite you to toss a stick or roll a log onto our fire. Please send your letters to editor@sacredfiremagazine.com. APOLOGY, DECEMBER 2008 After seeing a photography exhibit about how the Columbia River dams devastated Celilo Falls and the Native people of this land THESE ARE WORDS THAT I can barely speak because the weight of their deep truth holds them in me, where they course through my blood and lurk in the DNA of my cells. These are the legacy of my people. I am born to this guilt and shame. I perpetuate it by living in this land, by the gluttony of my consumption and the filth of my waste. I am sorry. I am stricken with the horror of what my people have done to you. I carry it with me like an unwanted child, like a contagious germ. I fear it and grieve it. It haunts me and cripples me. I know that nothing can begin to account for the unfathomable loss of your children and elders, nor your sacred fishing grounds and homelands, nor for your daughters, your young warrior sons and husbands, your lovers and wives and parents, your brothers and and sisters. Nor can it bring back the buffalo or the salmon, nor the ancient forests. Nor can it begin to bring any recourse to the legacy of murder and deceit, torture and rape, enslavement, terrorism, and thievery my people have wrought upon you. Still, I am sorry.
I am not looking for forgiveness, nor for you to befriend me. I only mean to give voice to what I know to be true, what my soul begs me to say. I only ask for the land to feel my tears, the wind to hear my cries, and the river to recognize the horror that fills me when I consider these acts. I only ask for those who can bear witness, to bear witness, for my ancestors to hear my cries and to feel the pain of this legacy that I have inherited from them. I know that this does not put an end to the injustices that are done to you. I know that the genocide of your people continues—at times blatantly and sometimes insidiously. I know that although I claim to have nothing to do with the people who do this to you, I, too, am guilty. I perpetuate these evils by living as I do, and being a part of this society, as I am. I am weak and fearful. I am a coward and a fake. I am nothing, without a tradition of my own. But in spite of all of this, I am sorry. On behalf of my ancestors, I am sorry. To the rivers, the mountains, and the rocks, I am sorry. To the animals, the salmon, the plants, the forests, I am sorry. To the sky, the earth, the oceans, I am sorry. To the Great Creator of all things—I am sorry. JENNIFER MEANS Portland, Oregon
SPIRITUALITY: A MASK FOR SELFISHNESS? I WAS BORN AND RAISED IN Scotland where I lived until the early 80’s. I then lived in London before moving to Taos ten years ago. It’s been a very interesting time in my life and living here has opened many doors of opportunity for me. I am blessed. I house and pet sit for a variety of reasons. It is a supplemental income for me. I love animals, and I feel I’m helping other people. I’ve had mostly great experiences doing this. But I had a disturbing recent encounter with people who lived in a multimillion dollar home that sat on many acres of land. These were people who described themselves as deeply spiritual and caring for all beings. After two hours of listening to their requirements and expectations, they informed me that they couldn’t afford to pay for house sitting services. It was one of those moments where I’d hoped I was having a bad dream and would wake up any minute in my bed. Needless to say, after the shock settled in, I decided not to enable them in their fantasy that it was ok to treat another human being in this way. I told them no. The following may well go over the heads of certain people, but nevertheless I feel that it needs to be said. The concept of being spiritual has become
somewhat warped and distasteful in the past few years. Many people who pontificate about caring for each other and the world—praying, manifesting, meditating for the betterment of humanity—are the ones living in the lap of luxury with huge multi-million dollar homes, state of the art electronics, designer ice cubes, and bad attitudes. Abundance is the right of all human beings. The laws of attraction do exist and are real. So why oh why are certain people allowed to live a blatant lie in the face of the very sources they claim to be living and learning by? Kindness to others, living from and by the heart, being non-judgmental, being generous and sharing of spirit, Teacher’s, Gurus, Enlightened Beings, whatever title they feel they need to attach to themselves, actually translates into the delusion of, “I am better than you, I am richer than you, I employ you (use you) because I can, and I am better than you.” It’s hypocrisy at it’s finest, it’s sickening, and it’s sad, for them. The very concept of soul searching, walking one’s life path graciously, being grateful, being happy, helping fellow human beings is not what they believe. The token gestures of prayer flags, Buddhas, books, incense, tells them they are getting it right and token gestures are exactly what these things are. Delusion, ignorance, and a lack of the very love that they boast about is their truth. Bless them in their ignorance for the truly spiritually evolved human being is more generous of heart, powerful, and beautiful than they can ever imagine in their designer ice cube minds. ELLIE BLAIR
Taos, New Mexico Issue 9 / SACRED FIRE / 7
PETROLEUM DOES MORE THAN CUT THE WHEAT.
Unintended Consequences FERTILIZING FOR FAMINE Recipe for global famine: increase the fertility of soil. Before 1907, before the German chemist Fritz Haber figured out how to synthesize “usable” nitrogen, the world’s agricultural production was limited by a natural law. Call it the “Law of Natural Nitrogen.” First, you need to know that all organic beings require a particular kind of nitrogen to live. While our atmosphere is about 80 percent nitrogen, it is not usable, but bound into pairs of non-reactive molecules. For as long as the world existed (until 1907), there were only two ways for these bonds to be broken, thus freeing the nitrogen to create amino acids and proteins, the building blocks of cellular life. Way One: soil bacteria living on the roots of leguminous plants (such as peas or alfalfa) can “fix” the nitrogen in the soil. Way Two: the electrical shock of lightning can break the bonds 8 / SACRED FIRE / Issue 9
in the air, “releasing a light rain of fertility,” according to Michael Pollan in his fascinating treatise, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. That’s it. All of “life as we know it” was limited by the amount of nitrogen “fixed” in the soil by a particular type of plant or released in the air by lightning. Thus, the “carrying capacity” of the world’s skin of organic life always had a natural limit. Enter Way Three: “unnatural” nitrogen synthesized by chemical means. By 1900, the world’s population had grown to 1.6 billion, doubling in the previous 150 years. Without some way to increase agricultural yields, this population growth would grind to a hungry halt. How ironic it is, that the actual push to synthesize nitrogen did not come from this need for soil fertility, but from the perceived need to develop a new process to manufacture German explosives in World War I, a “life or death” irony repeated in 1947 when the first U.S. fertilizer
plant opened in a converted munitions plant in Alabama. Ammonium nitrate fertilizer spread across the lands and agricultural yields grew exponentially. Our four-fold growth in population, in barely 100 years, has been the result. So, how does this abundance create famine? By creating a system that is entirely dependant upon artificial means. Without synthetic fertilizers, billions of people would never have been born. Now, to keep the 6.6 billion of us from starving, this artificial source of fertility can never be interrupted. What are the key ingredients needed for the energy-intensive chemical soup that synthesizes nitrogen? The fossil fuels: oil, coal and natural gas. Now, world oil production has peaked and many experts predict that it will fall precipitously.
FREE MARKET FREE FALL The law of unintended consequences is a foundation of the Western free-market economy, codified by Adam Smith in 1776 in his seminal text, The Wealth of Nations. Likening unintended consequences to an “invisible hand” that guides economic cycles, Smith maintained that personal ambition actually serves the common good. Smith explained that each individual, seeking only personal gain, would capitalize available resources and technical innovation toward expansion and efficiency, and would never take a risk that might threaten personal economic survival. The consequence of this self interest, mediated by competition, was better and cheaper meat, beer
and bread—a rising tide for all. Quoth Mr. Smith: “He intends only his own gain… led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.” Topline: Since the time of the American Revolution, our economic system has been founded on a lack of intention. But if intention plays no part in the shaping of our economic policy, what are the forces that guide it? During the stock market crash of October, 2008, Vikas Bajaj of the New York Times gave a simple description when he wrote: “In normal times, it (the economy) runs on a healthy mix of fear and greed.” As opposed to an unhealthy mix of fear and greed? Or perhaps an unexpected mix of fear and greed led to the banking industry meltdown. In the modern economic worldview, it had been taken as gospel that the enlightened self-interest of owners and managers of financial institutions would lead them to maintain a sufficient buffer against insolvency by actively monitoring their firms’ capital and risk positions. Surprise. Alan Greenspan, former chairman of The Federal Reserve, testified that the economic crisis put him in a “state of shocked disbelief.” Under questioning he conceded that he had made a “mistake” in believing that banks, operating in their own self-interest, would do what was necessary to protect their shareholders and institutions. Apparently trusting greed to be the root source of altruism is, as Greenspan called it, “a flaw in the model ... that defines how the world works.”
STEVE McSWEENY. OPPOSITE: LEEUWTJE.
Sacred HOT FLASHES Fire
Reviving Right Relationship BY 2012: A MAYAN PRIEST’S ADDRESS On May 18 – 19, 2009, the United Nation’s Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) held its eighth session, including representatives of the UN member nations and leaders from a wide variety of the world’s indigenous populations. Founded in 2002, the UNPFII was the culmination of decades of work to raise the profile of indigenous issues within the international community. A major milestone for the UNPFII was accomplished on September 13, 2007, when the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by an overwhelming majority of 143 votes in favor, with only four negative votes (United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia) and eleven abstentions. Canada has since voted to ratify the Declaration. The following is derived from the official press release from Relief Web (reliefweb.int) of a presentation by Mr. Nicolas Lucas Ticum, a Mayan priest from Guatemala, to this year’s conference.
“December 21, 2012, marks the beginning of the 13th B’Aqtun Maya,” Mr. Nicolas Lucas Ticum told the UNPFII. “The B’Aqtun is equivalent to 5,200 years. According to Mayan wisdom, the 13th B’Aqtun will mean a change for humanity. It will be a new era in which respect for the self and for others will be valued, as will be love, solidarity and brotherhood. “It is important to think about the future of the human race and Mother Earth. Mother Earth is alive. She is the mother of all beings that coexist on the planet. All elements of the universe are alive and very closely connected. Human beings are integral to Mother Earth, and their mission is to ensure balance, unity, harmony and complementariness. “‘Earth does not belong to human beings. Human beings belong to the Earth.’ In 1885, Chief Seattle said that what hap-
pened to the Earth would happen as well to its children. However, the utilitarian and economic philosophical concepts reflected in polices, programs and plans of many Western countries has meant that human beings are losing their true sense of what it means to be human. “Humans are now involved in a gradual process in which the quality of life of most people on Earth is declining, owing to a dogmatic, rationalist, egoistic and exclusivist approach. Our irrational trade system has caused the decline of biodiversity and genetic heritage. Now, life on Earth is threatened by environmental
AS WE APPROACH 2012, THE MAYAN WORLDVIEW IS REACHING A GLOBAL AUDIENCE
degradation, climate change, and the loss of biological, cultural and linguistic diversity.” Mr. Ticum called on governments, universities, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and large corporations that have controlled international economics and politics to chart a new course in support of vegetable, mineral, animal, human and cosmic life. “It’s urgent that universities and scientific research centers recognize the spiritual dimensions of human beings, the connection and interconnectedness of all the elements of the universe.”
According to Mr. Ticum, the sustainable development that indigenous people have been promoting for centuries “that has provided a good life and well-being for humans, and respect” for all forms of life. must be recognized. For their own survival, the First World organizations must embrace a system of scientific, judicial, political, economic, social, cultural, linguistic and religious pluralism so that all can enjoy a life of dignity, well-being and respect. Mr. Ticum called on the UN Commission on Sustainable Development to review
We Shall Remain This groundbreaking PBS mini-series affirms Native experience as an integral part of
American history. In five 90-minute documentaries spanning 300 years, viewers witness pivotal moments in U.S. history from a Native American perspective. Representing an unprecedented collaboration between Native and non-Native filmmakers, advisors, scholars, and activists, We Shall Remain chronicles Native peoples’ inspired resistance to expulsion from their lands and extinction of their cultures. Watch full episodes, plus short films produced by the ReelNative project, online at pbs.org/wgbh/amex/weshallremain. Issue 9 / SACRED FIRE / 9
Sacred HOT FLASHES Fire REVIVING RIGHT RELATIONSHIP and adapt concepts originating from the age-old experience of indigenous people in regard to the environment and natural resources. “Altogether,” he told the Forum, “the human race needs to revitalize wisdom, knowledge and efforts to take care of Mother Earth, insuring biological and cultural diversity, genetic heritage, ecosystems and the right to selfdetermination. We need to build alliances, coalitions and strategies to promote sustainable development at all levels of life, which would respect animal, mineral, human and cosmic life, and ensure the future of mankind.” The Kyoto Protocol, Mr. Ticum noted, is in line with indigenous peoples’ vision of the balance necessary for life. He pointed out that the Protocol will be reviewed in 2012, the same year as the 13th B’Aqtun of the Mayan people. “The challenges are huge because all of humanity must act together,” Mr. Ticum declared. “The transition of the 13th B’Aqtun will require a spiritual strength that humanity has so far wasted. Humanity will suffer consequences if everyone does not act together. “So let us all walk together towards the new B’Aqtun. On this path, we need to support life, balance and harmony for all human beings and the rest of the beings in the universe.”
Genesis Farm Founded by the Dominican Sisters of Caldwell, NJ,
this 226-acre farm is a “Learning Center for Reinhabiting the Earth.” Inspired especially by the “geologian,” Thomas Berry and his New Cosmology, Genesis Farm reveres the Earth as a primary revelation of the divine and seeks to “evoke the rich spiritual insights that are already within the hearts of all people.” Find out about their Community Supported Garden, Earth Literacy programs, and the local Foodshed Alliance. genesisfarm.org
For more information about the UNPII and the Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples see: un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii
& the Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples: iwgia.org/ sw248.asp — Bill Sutton
A MODEL COMMUNITY After a mass bender of consumerist individualism, community living is making a comeback. The Fellowship for Intentional Communities (FIC) identifies nearly 1,600 cooperative living projects in the U.S. alone, ranging from small urban housing co-ops to larger rural eco-villages. But, because not all communities are on the list, the FIC estimates that actual shared-resource and intentional communities in North America number in the thousands. When you also consider the “thousands more (people) residing in traditional monastic enclaves or service groups, tens of thousands living in Hutterite
Global Spirit Pioneers of non-commercial free-speech television,
LinkTV presents the first “internal travel” series. Through an artful blend of compelling interviews and spectacular documentary footage, each Global Spirit episode focuses on a universal theme like Forgiveness, Oneness, Ecstasy or Creativity. To see Native elders teach about indigenous values and practices that promote heightened consciousness, spiritual harmony and a life in balance with nature, watch Earth Wisdom: For a World in Crisis online. linktv.org/globalspirit 10 / SACRED FIRE / Issue 9
colonies, and millions of indigenous Americans living communally,” observes FIC editor Dan Questenberry, suddenly cooperative living doesn’t look quite so marginal anymore. One longstanding and successful intentional community is the Findhorn Ecovillage. Located on 30 acres in the countryside of northeast Scotland, Findhorn is a thriving holistic education and sustainable living center that houses and employs several hundred residents and maintains active involvement in the wider community. Findhorn’s inauspicious origin is traced to 1962, when three hotel workers in the town of Forres suddenly lost their jobs. Broke and unemployed, the couple and single woman, along with the couple’s three young boys, moved to a nearby trailer park and, out of necessity, attempted to grow their own food in what was notoriously dry and barren soil. Before long, one of the three discovered a surprising but keen ability to engage with the spirits of the young plants— and to enlist their participation. Soon their “cooperative” garden was a blooming cornucopia of vegetables, herbs, and flowers that generated equal amounts of public interest. Inspired by the founders’ vision of intimate, reciprocal connection with the land—and the huge success of their agriculture—others began
to join them in exploring villagestyle, sustainable community. This commitment to cocreation with nature continues through today as one of Findhorn’s guiding principles. Closely related is the principle of “deep inner listening” and the willingness to act on what is discerned. Non-sectarian and non-doctrinal in its orientation, Findhorn describes itself as a spiritual community “that practices the timeless and essential values common to all the world’s major religious paths.” Various forms of meditation are integrated into daily living, with members aiming for attunement to the inner wisdom within themselves, each other and the task at hand. These practices are seen as intimately connected with the principle of service to the world. Through a range of public programs, Findhorn residents recognize the interdependence of all life, embrace life-long, experiential learning and, following Ghandi, strive to “be the change” they wish to see. They remind a forgetful, skeptical and even cynical world that community living renews all of our most important relationships and restores us to an ancient and enduring lifestyle of reciprocity, balance and harmony. —Chris Schlake
OPPOSITE: COURTESY OF GENESIS FARM. FROM TOP: PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE IFIP; COURTESY PLAYINGFORCHANGE.COM.
WE’RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER “What I seek at IFIP gatherings is the sharing of ideas, support, and feeling at a heart-level that we’re all in this together,” commented Susan Balbas, executive director of the Tierra Madre Fund. Susan was one of over 150 people who gathered at the Hotel Santa Fe for the 7th Annual International Funders of Indigenous People (IFIP) conference in April, 2009. Established in 1999, IFIP is an affinity group for charitable foundations that support Indigenous organizations and peoples around the world. IFIP serves both the grantmaking community (typically an urban constituency, including foundations, corporate funds and individual donors) and the grant-seeking community (typically global and rural, including Indigenous peoples, communities and organizations). With more than 370 million people in over 90 countries, Indigenous people constitute more than 5% of the world’s population. While they suffer some of the worst socio-economic conditions on the planet, they also serve as both stewards and emissaries for the earth’s last wild and natural places. Indeed, it is precisely the connection of Indigenous peoples to the land—a connection at once spiritual, cultural, and economic—that distinguishes them from the rest of humanity. As industrialized economies scramble for resources and the world’s cultures disappear into consumerist assimilation, the lands and traditional lifeways of Indigenous peoples face a global and definitive assault. Today, more than ever, those working to build a more equitable and
sustainable future must turn attention and support to those peoples who have been colonized, compromised and marginalized by a worldview that seeks to dominate, rather than honor, humanity’s original relationship with the natural world. IFIP’s three-day conference kept a clear focus: to facilitate dialogue and opportunities for connection among members. Grantmakers and foundation representatives attended sessions with native and aboriginal peoples from across the U.S., Mexico, Nunavut and Canada, the Philippines, Russia’s Altai Republic, Norway, Australia, Mozambique, and Central and South America. Sessions on the growing impacts of climate change on Native lifeways; on the importance FROM TOP: IFIP Director Evelyn Arce-White with Isabel Ortega Ventura, President of Indigenous Parliament of Americas. LEFT: Clarence Bekker performs live in New Orleans, Louisianna. OPPOSITE: Good groceries from New Jersey’s
Genesis Farm.
Playing for Change Moved by a conviction that music can break down barriers and overcome distances between people, Playing for Change documents virtual and real-time collaborations between musicians (both known and unknown) to create incredible renditions of both popular titles (“Stand By Me,” “One Love”) and local traditional songs. Inspired performances from the Himalayas, African villages, and American Indian reservations blend with the streets and subways of New Orleans, Dublin, and Tel Aviv. Watch online at playingforchange.com.
Issue 9 / SACRED FIRE / 11
Sacred HOT FLASHES Fire REVIVING RIGHT RELATIONSHIP
An Email From Anank Nunink Nukai One of the most powerful sessions at the IFIP’s annual conference was given by Anank Nunink Nukai, a Shuar of the Sacred Waterfalls Uwishin (traditional healer). He spoke forcefully for the need of his Amazonian people to maintain their autonomy. When Anank speaks to a large group, his spirit helpers tell him to use a loud, powerful voice so that negative energies will be kept at bay. We reprint below an email he sent to the IFIP membership after the conference —Eds
Greetings my Sisters and Brothers, It was a great honor to share the wisdom of my ancestors with all of you. While sharing our knowledge we were weaving the wisdom from our different cultures with honor and respect. This noble cause is to give hope to future generations whose cultural identities are deteriorating. May we discover and learn from the nectar of our ancestors from whom we all originated. Let us make a human bridge in the world to protect our Goddess Nunkui (our Universe) that is being destroyed without consideration. We hope to live for centuries in a healthy environment. Let us unite our voices and call to the spirits of our ancestors so that they may feed our minds. Wearing a smile and holding our hearts in our hands, we need to reconstruct Alexandra David (Mohawk/ Cree), from their offices on the Akwesasne Mohawk Indian Reservation, a Native community that straddles the U.S.-Canadian border in northern New York State. In addition to the annual conference, IFIP also brings Indigenous issues to 200 to 300 donors at major conferences every year. FROM TOP: Anank Nunink Nukai
speaks at the IFIP In Santa Fe, New Mexico. LEFT: Dancer at the Beyond Sustainability gathering.
Beyond Sustainability The great dilemma of our time is how
to live, knowing that all humans, other species, and habitats are bound together in a single community of life that is threatened by the growing human disconnection from the natural world. The Beyond Sustainability gathering invites traditional wisdom keepers and other leaders to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park to build on a platform of reverence and to re-imagine how to inhabit the Earth. beyondsustainability.org 12 / SACRED FIRE / Issue 9
this generation that is in darkness, because tomorrow it will be too late. Evelyn, in the center with constructive ideology, created wings for us all to fly together in the human space and universal survival. I am very thankful for the advice, attention and hospitality that I received from the people of IFIP. Once again I would like to say thank you to those I met at this amazing IFIP conference. Through my ancestors I ask Arutam (Holy Spirit) that our noble causes will always be protected. The Sacred Plant, Natem, from the Shuar culture sings to the four winds: PEACE, LOVE, UNDERSTANDING, and RESPECT. Makete (Thank you), Your brother from the jungle, Anank Nunink Nunkai
IFIP serves as a clearinghouse of information through their website and members forum, a biannual newsletter and monthly e-newsletters (The Sharing Circle and The Sharing Network), and several publications, including the popular Indigenous Peoples Funding and Resource Guide, available on the website in both Spanish and English.
“IFIP brings a unique perspective to the philanthropic world — from the ground, looking up,” notes Evelyn. “From our viewpoint, we see that a foundation of understanding needs first to be built so that Indigenous communities can thrive—not just barely survive.” Apparently the organization is meeting with success. In 2000, the Foundation Center reported that U.S. foundations granted only $2 million for international Indigenous causes. By 2005, the amount had increased to $10 million and, in 2007, it had grown to over $40 million. A steady improvement, but miniscule compared to the $45.6 billion granted in 2008 by U.S. foundations. IFIP also advises funders on effective funding for Indigenous initiatives. Check out their website, internationalfunders.org, for more info. —Eds
FROM TOP: PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE IFIP; COURTESY OF BEYONDSUSTAINABILITY.ORG. OPPOSITE: COURTESY OF GWICH’IN STEERING COMMITTEE
of preserving and securing access to ancestral lands, clean waters and traditional food supplies; and on the need for cultural sovereignty and self-determination were presented with passion and an often frustrated awareness of what’s at stake if the industrial world does not take notice. “One of the goals of IFIP is to foster a cross-disciplinary understanding of Indigenous people and the holistic contexts in which they live and work,” comments Evelyn Arce, executive director. “Throughout the years, we have seen more interest from donors to not only support more Indigenous projects, but also wanting more information to do grantmaking in a more respectful and culturally appropriate manner.” In keeping with this trend, one conference workshop explored how grantmaking organizations can enhance relationship building. Participants emphasized deep listening and were encouraged to reflect on the differences between “gifting,” “granting,” and “investing.” One grantmaking participant commented about the importance of “listening to the Indigenous need, which may or may not conform to our expectations.” The event was produced by the tiny but highly efficient IFIP staff, comprised soley of Executive Director Evelyn Arce-White (Chibcha) and Office Manager
Sarah James protects the caribou in D.C. with Chief Linklater and Bishop MacDonald.
Miner’s Canary Indigenous people, living closest to nature, feel
the effects of climate change first. The Miner’s Canary: First Peoples on Climate Change delivers a potent message to the climate treaty negotiators meeting in Copenhagen in December 2009. Produced by A World of Possibilities and featuring leaders like Sarah James and Tom Goldtooth, this audio program presents the indigenous response to climate change—adaptation and endurance—as models of wisdom and ingenuity for the rest of the world. Listen online at aworldofpossibilities.com/details.cfm?id=360.
ALASKAN GOLD Sarah James, a Gwich’in Indian, grew up in the lands surrounding Artic Village, Alaska, in a 40-cabin village north of the Arctic Circle. The Gwich’in were nomadic Caribou People who now live in communities strategically located along the migration route of the Porcupine River Caribou Herd. Some of her earliest memories are of traveling the boreal forests with her parents in the 1950s where her father would hunt. Sarah heard little English spoken until she was 13, when the Bureau of Indian Affairs sent her to an Indian boarding school in Oregon. She graduated from high school in 1967 at age 21 and worked for two years in San Francisco before returning to her home. In the decades since, Sarah has become an outspoken defender of her land and the traditional Gwich’in ways. She travels widely, speaking out for the need to protect her peoples’ life source, the Porcupine River Caribou. As chairperson of the Gwich’in Steering Committee, she has been most visible in her defense of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the caribou calving and nursing grounds coveted by the energy industry for its oil and gas reserves.
“I’m not a leader. I’m not an activist,” she says. “I just have a responsibility, like any of the Indian people. It’s my way of life, the Gwich’in way of life.” In their creation story, the Gwich’in were made from a heart shared with caribou, so each would always know what the other is doing. The coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge is the calving and nursery of the caribou herd, the Iizhik Gwats’an Gwandaii Goodlit—The Sacred Place Where Life Begins. “When people hear this story, they don’t need to think we shared a physical heart with the caribou,” says Sarah. “It’s how the caribou are being protected, it goes both ways. We are how they are being protected. It’s not physical. This is not New Age stuff, it’s just the way things are. “I see a lot of times with people (who admire Native American ways), it’s just a lot of magic. It’s looking for ‘signs,’ looking for ‘light,’ seeing some kind of vision. We’re not about all that, we’re just trying to live with nature. Live with
the natural world. It has to be explainable. Creator thought of everything, so it works.” Sarah strives to keep the traditional ways alive because it is a very practical matter, simple common sense. When connected to the land and when proud of their heritage, her people can “get by on very little and still have a darn good life.” But too often, the pressure of forced cultural disruption and the enticements of “modern life” break that connection. Native people lose their self-esteem and identity and suffer the consequences: high rates of drug abuse, alcoholism and suicide. It’s a crisis that Sarah has seen repeated among native peoples around the world. Today, Alaskan Natives represent approximately 16 percent of the state’s total residents, most of whom live in urban areas. But in over 200 rural villages, the percentage of native peoples is much higher. Many have retained their customs, language, hunting and fishing practices, and ways of living since “the creation times.” Alaska’s Native people live in eleven distinct cultures, speaking 20 different languages. Most commonly, they are organized based on five cultural and geographic regions: Athabascan (interior Alaska and western Canada), Yup’ik and Cup’ik (southwestern Alaska), Tlingit, Haida, Eyak and Tsimshian (southeastern Alaska to the Pacific Northwest), Inupiaq
and Siberian Yupik (Northern Arctic Alaska) and the Aleut and Alutiiq (Gulf of Alaska to the Aleutian Islands). Despite their cultural differences, Alaska Native cultures share similar traditional values that frame the way of life today. Sarah shares these here, for people of all nations: Show Respect to Others—Each person has as special gift. Share What You Have—Giving makes your richer. Know Who You Are—You are a reflection of your family. Accept What Life Brings—You cannot control many things. Have Patience—Some things cannot be rushed. Live Carefully—What you do will come back to you. Take Care of Others—You cannot live without them. Honor Your Elders—They show you the way in life. For more information about Sarah’s work and the necessity of protecting the Gwich’in way of life and the Porcupine Caribou Herd, visit gwichinsteeringcommittee.org. —Eds
Communities Directory For both veteran and novice community builders, one of the best-known
and most useful resources is the Communities Directory: A Comprehensive Guide to Intentional Communities and Cooperative Living. Filled with informative articles, charts, maps and listings of well over a thousand communities, it’s a gateway to today’s diverse choices in cooperative living. Published by the Fellowship for Intentional Communities, the directory is an essential reference tool for those interested in finding, joining, and starting community. ic.org Issue 9 / SACRED FIRE / 13
Sacred HOT FLASHES Fire
Burning Books
This online book and similar inspiring works are available at www.circleway.org. —WILLIAM HOFFORD
Changing the World: A Vision of a Circle Way Village
The Horse Boy A Father’s Quest to Heal His Son
A Way to Freedom, Peace, Happiness, and a Truly Human Society BY MANITONQUAT
BY RUPERT ISAACSON Little, Brown and Co, New York City, NY, USA 2009
We’re only too familiar with the serious ills our current world cannot much longer endure, but the question keeps arising for many: “What can I do now?” One answer to that is, “Start co-creating a healthy clan/village/ tribe-based society. Now.” Changing the World by Manitonquat (Medicine Story) is powerful medicine for these dark times, not only in the breadth and depth of its vision but also for its practicality. Like Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia, it is an imaginary visit by an outsider to an ideal society—in this case a “Circle Way Village”—in the year 2012. During the visit, the outsider learns about the society’s background, culture, and the ways people live. Manitonquat, a Wampanoag of southeastern Massachusetts, is the creator and long-time facilitator of a prison recidivism-reduction program—one of the most successful and least-costly ones ever run in New England. He also has over forty years experience with intentional communities around the world. Manitonquat entertains a noble vision: a world at peace, with plenty of plenty, joy, and harmony to go around. To get there, we must take on more direct roles in our individual and collective destiny, in our
This recently published book chronicles the unconventional healing odyssey of Rowan Isaacson as told by his father Rupert. Rupert Issacson—an Englishman who spent much of his youth in Africa—and his American wife, Kristin Neff, are initially overjoyed with Rowan’s arrival in 2002. But Rowan begins showing signs of developmental disability. Neff is a graduate level psychology student at the time, and, when Rowan is two-and-a-half, she realizes that he suffers from autism. Rowan quickly withdraws into a world of his own—not making eye contact, not using words, and falling into sudden, ferocious tantrums. The book does an excellent job conveying the anguish that parents feel in coping with an autistic child. As Isaacson notes, the strain leads many marriages to end in divorce. Nor is there any proven treatment regimen for this terribly debilitating condition. Rupert notices that Rowan seems calmer as he wanders around the family’s rural Texas property. Then, one horrifying day, Isaacson watches his son run to a neighbor’s corral, slip through the fence, and throw
14 / SACRED FIRE / Issue 9
MANITONQUAT
personal and cultural evolution. A Circle Way Village offers such roles and beautiful, healing ways to live with each other, Nature, and ourselves. Circle Way is based on several basic principles that are deeply rooted in ancestral tribal ways: > Spiritual rootedness—connecting to Nature-as-Divinity, and acknowledging and respecting the various religions and beliefs inhabitants hold > Social cohesion—recognizing each inhabitant as part of an egalitarian clan with a place at regularly held social gatherings > Economic sustainability— holding land trusts and being as self-sufficient as possible > Political sustainability—incorporating consensus decision making to facilitate egalitarian self-government > Joyful living—experiencing and enjoying life as a community. It’s time to start co-creating society from the bottom up. “I don’t have the answer to the world’s problems… but we do… We need to take back control of our lives, our lives, our society, our Earth. Together there is nothing we cannot do!” —Manitonquat
himself at the feet of the dominant mare. Isaacson, an accomplished horseman, knows that one false move from his erratic son could cause the horse to trample him. But remarkably, the horse exhibits submissive behavior toward Rowan. It’s as though Rowan and the horse understand one another. And with this, Isaacson hits upon the idea of taking his son riding with this horse. These regular riding excursions are the only times that Rowan seems like a normal boy. In the past, Isaacson had done advocacy work for and written about the Kalahari Bushmen of Botswana. This gave him some knowledge of traditional medicine and he begins to seek help from traditional healers. Indeed, Rowan improves temporarily when he receives attention from a gathering of shamans in Southern California. Given Rowan’s special connection to horses, Isaacson hits upon the unlikely idea of taking him to be healed by the original “horse people.” And thus begins their journey to Mongolia. The descriptions of Mongolia—the wildness of the land and its people—are among the best passages in this book. Rowan’s journey is an interesting reminder of what traditional medicine can do when allopathic medicine has little to offer. It’s a great story—two hooves up! The trip that Isaacson, his wife, and son make to Mongolia is also captured on film, and is available as a documentary at horseboymovie.com. —LARRY MESSERMAN
Google Billionaire THE
When billionaire Google Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt gave the commencement address at the University of Pennsylvania on May 18, 2009, the bulk of his speech was, as expected, about the vast changes that technology had wrought since he was a student.
He spoke of the virtues of virtual communities and how access to information, made available on the Web through the good will of people world-wide, was the antidote to oppression.
He extolled the amazing potentials of technological progress and wondered at a world where everything is remembered and kept forever.
And then he said something interesting.
He asked how people, in the onslaught of information, would ever come to know the things they really care about. He said, “I hate to say it, but you’re going to have to turn off your computer. You’re actually going to have to turn off your phone and discover all that is human around us… Nothing beats holding the hand of your grandchild as he walks his first step.”
Could it be that the avatar of instant information had come to see that the virtual world is not as interesting as the real?
Even then, as he urged the graduates to step away from the virtual world and make human connections, one could hear the business majors mutter, “Sure. That’s easy for him. He’s already made his billions.”
Issue 9 / SACRED FIRE / 15
Sacred FIRESTARTERS Fire ::Columbian shaman
Don Luciano Mutumbajoy
In 2005, the Foundation Center reported that US foundations gave $3.8 billion for international projects; only 0.003 percent supported indigenous-related projects. This trend must change, for, as the earth faces crises from indiscriminate and often abusive use of resources, some indigenous peoples who have sustained a deep connection with the natural world have the potential to play a critical role in our efforts to protect the planet. The Colombian shaman, Don Luciano Mutumbajoy, articulated this reality so clearly in a session at the 2001 Environmental Grantmakers Association Retreat: “While we have a great deal to learn from you about technology in terms of saving the earth, what you need to learn from us is the spiritual technology of saving the earth.”
SPIRITUAL TECHNOLOGY
Putting Stock in Ancestral Spiritual Technology When we fuel the flames of indigenous knowledge, we bring balance back to the world. BY EVELYN ARCE-WHITE AND CYNTHIA FRISCH 16 / SACRED FIRE / Issue 9
From the Heart of the World—The Elder Brothers’ Warning, a documentary about the Kogi tribe, a little-known indigenous community in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Colombia who consider themselves caretakers of the earth. In one scene, the Kogi mamas, or shamans, say that they can see the end of the world coming, and that they, the elder brothers, need to get a message to us, the younger brothers, to do something to change. From an intimacy with their isolated and extraordinarily diverse region, they had been able to read the entire unraveling of the earth’s ecosystems caused by global warming. Their deep concern led them to communicate with the outside world through that film and, when their message wasn’t heeded, to travel to Washington, DC and New York in 2006 for events sponsored by the InterAmerican Development Bank and the United Nations Development Programme. Kogi representatives continued to reinforce their message at the 2008 UN Climate Change Conference in Poznan, Poland: We are concerned about the path of destruction being invented by the scientific orientation and so we ask of the present governments: If the second
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE AMAZON CONSERVATION TEAM
IN 1990, BBC REPORTER ALAN EREIRA FILMED
tsunami or third hole appears in the sky, do your scientific advisors have the knowledge to avert this catastrophe? Is it that you understand fully...the secrets of the land? Do you control the winds? Do you know the power of the waters? Be respectful of what you do not know and what you cannot dominate with your rational formulations. These Indigenous leaders give just a few examples of ancient wisdom that lives in these cultures, giving us a glimpse of the “spiritual technology” that holds important keys to all of our survival. Clearly, the paradigm for how we have lived up until now cannot work forever. We need examples—not necessarily of returning to total simplicity or living in a hut—but of how to live in a reciprocal relationship with the earth. This insight is very sophisticated, very current, and very practical—and therefore, very worthy for environmental grantmakers to explore further as part of the broader vision of grantmaking for the environmental movement. FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF LIFE
WHAT IS THIS KNOWLEDGE THAT SOME IN-
digenous peoples hold that can benefit the rest of humanity? Perhaps the word “consciousness” might best express it. For some indigenous people, particularly those more isolated from modern culture, traditional knowledge is still a part of their cosmology or world view. It is a way of being, a state of being, and in some ways, a state of grace. In the Q’ero tradition of the Andes, for example, one of the fundamental guiding principles is Ayni, best translated as reciprocity and respect. It implies “the conscious and willing acknowledgement of the interconnection between humans and the natural world,” as Dr. James Williams writes in The Andean Codex: Adventures and Initiations Among the Peruvian Shamans. Ayni often takes the form of ritual offerings to the earth and to all of nature, to return something for all that has been given to sustain their lives. In this way, life is a constant process of receiving and giving back in appreciation and gratitude. Historically, in traditional cultures like the Q’ero and many others, there is the general understanding that humans, plants, and animals share a common spirit-life, and that the earth is a living, breathing organ-
ism. In Western culture, it is similar to the Gaia principle. However, the difference between holding the concept and living it fully from moment to moment can mean the difference between environmental degradation and sustainability. For some Indigenous peoples, these are fundamental principles of life, and ultimately, of survival. How we translate these principles to modern culture has yet to be defined, although offsetting one’s carbon footprint is a beginning point for a Western translation of Ayni. In traditional indigenous communities, however, these principles are so deeply ingrained that these cultures often react to the impacts of climate change in very creative ways, drawing on traditional knowledge and other technologies for adaptation strategies that could help society at large to cope with today’s earth challenges. In Bangladesh, for example, villagers are creating floating vegetable gardens to protect their livelihoods from flooding. In Guyana, tribal people are moving from their savannah homes to forest areas during droughts and have started planting cassava, their main staple crop, on moist floodplains which are normally too wet for other crops. In North America, some Indigenous groups are focusing on wind and solar power on tribal lands as the key resource for energy, replacing fossil fuel-derived energy and limiting greenhouse gas emissions. PRESERVING, COMMUNICATING, AND SOLICITING EARTH WISDOM
THE INDIGENOUS COSMOLOGY HAS THE PO-
tential to penetrate our way of thinking if we are exposed to and interface with this consciousness in a variety of ways. Addressing the preservation of this knowledge is clearly an important first step. As expressed by Dr. Mark Plotkin of the Amazon Conservation Team, an NGO that protects the rainforest
and the ancient wisdom of its medicine men and women: “The most endangered species of the Amazon is the shaman.” Shamans are the community’s healers and spiritual leaders, and the loss of a shaman is tantamount to losing a library. The work of his organization and that of the Ringing Rocks Foundation, which conserves indigenous healing practices and cultural traditions through various initiatives worldwide, recognizes the importance of protecting this knowledge for the benefit of all before it is gone forever. A second critical strategy is the communication and integration of traditional knowledge in ways that mainstream individuals, communities, and corporations can grasp. The Pachamama Alliance, an NGO preserving rainforests by empowering indigenous people as well as fostering a new global vision of sustainability, provides a rare example of this effort by incorporating indigenous principles into their innovative multimedia environmental symposium, “Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream,” which has been presented to diverse audiences around the world. A third strategy involves ensuring that indigenous peoples who embody this traditional knowledge are at the table at key global environmental conferences and summits. Recognizing their emergence as important voices in defining a sustainable future and funding their ability to participate in key events can enable us to begin to integrate their sustainable cosmology into our own. The integration of ancient wisdom that can lead to a shift in consciousness is a subtle process, one that is not easily defined. Funding indigenous projects in all of the key areas is just one way to forward our environmental agenda. With creative approaches and partnering with Indigenous leaders, no doubt more can be discovered to better understand and integrate the “spiritual technology” of preserving the earth.
Evelyn Arce-White, (Chibca-American), is the Executive Director for International Funders
for Indigenous Peoples (IFIP). Ms. Arce holds a Masters Degree from Cornell University and lives in the outskirts of Akwesasne (the Mohawk Territory) with her two children. Cynthia Frisch, founder and president of Gaia Global Consulting, which focuses on indigenous initiatives, is dedicated to bringing indigenous and sacred knowledge of the earth into mainstream culture as a public speaker, seminar leader, writer, and eco-business consultant.
Issue 9 / SACRED FIRE / 17
Sacred DREAMS Fire OF THE HOLY
BARRY WILLIAMS AND RENATTA RITZMAN
Light as the Holy, the Holy as Light In the yearning and union of light and dark, all life flourishes. FROM THE MOST INTENSELY RELIGIOUS
experience, to the most theoretical physics, light is the great constant of the universe and of all of life. Long, long ago, begins the Maori origin myth, Ranganui, the Sky Father, loved Papatuanuku, the Earth Mother, so much he held her so close he shut out the light of the Sun. Their seven children, the gods of the Oceans, Winds and Storms, Foods, War and Forests lived in the darkness of this procreative embrace. Once, Ranganui shifted slightly letting in a small ray of light, revealing that there was a world beyond this darkness. The small ray created a longing in the children for light so that they and their children could live and flourish. “Let us push our parents apart to let in the light,” said Tane Mahuta, god of the Forests, and with great effort he succeeded, separating the earth and its oceans from the sky, ushering in the longed for world of light into the perpetual night. This origin myth of an Ocean people—the Polynesian Maori—wonderfully describes the deep longing of the gods and of humans for light to enter into and quicken life from the darkness. Common to all cultures’ 18 / SACRED FIRE / Issue 9
religions, light is the great image of life, growth, consciousness, renewal, knowledge, understanding, the active principle, the numinous, gods, love, all pervasiveness, universality, illumination, the constant of the universe, birth, origin, the seed place of dreams, spirit, promise, life force and healing: everything we would mean by the Divine or the Holy. Light initiates life and is life; light attends and symbolizes the Divine and is itself the Divine. Light is wave and particle, the mystery and the incarnation, the visible and the invisible, the opposite of darkness and partner in creation. The indigenous world is permeated by Divine Force, as the earth is permeated by light. The central mystery of Western religion is the infusion of matter with spirit, or light. All these are imponderable thoughts. Myth, story and dreams embody the mysteries that the human mind struggles to put into thought form and understand. As myths are a culture’s great stories of the Divine, dreams that contain mythic aspects come through the individual, offering an invitation from time to time to step into the Divine
world or pattern and be taught its meaning. A young woman dreams she sees a man dressed in white standing in the rain on the porch looking in through her sliding glass door. She opens the door to invite him in, and asks him who he is. “I am the Messenger of God,” he explains, “and you can ask me any question you wish.” She thinks briefly and asks, ”You know when you’re out surfing, sitting on the water waiting, and a wave rises up behind you, and the light shines through it just right, just in the right way? Is that light God?” “Yes,” says the messenger, “that light is God.” We can safely say that this dream and the Messenger of God are one and the same, come as an act of revelation of a mystery, sent by the Holy, so that the human world can imagine the unimaginable and ever so slightly unravel a secret. Like the Maori gods longing for the light to penetrate into darkness to bring life, the religious nature of the human psyche, or soul, longs for connection with the Divine so that life will contain understanding, consciousness, meaning and wholeness. We long to know that light will come, can come, wants to come to us, and that, as this dream shows,
MARVYN MORRISON
BY BARRY WILLIAMS AND RENATTA RITZMAN
there is a volitional aspect to the light that shines just so through the upwelling wave to let the dreamer know the Holy is present. There is a very big thought here, that the dream, with the aid of the myth, helps us to think: that the light, as the celestial Sky God, separated from Earth and Ocean and Nature, yearns for the dark depths of matter. As the light descends, the Ocean wells up in her own yearning to meet the light, thus completing the union of opposites that has everywhere and always been seen as the image and presence of the Divine. In the act of penetrating matter, light becomes “visible” and material, and in the act of receiving light, Darkness becomes conscious and infused with spirit, and thus quickens with life. Each completes the other, gives the other life in a constant and perpetual union of light and nature, spirit and matter, whose dynamic is the longing and love for the other in nature, that was created by the separation of the primordial parents, allowing light to penetrate and life to flourish. While the dreamer clearly is a surfer, the dream shows that it is the attraction to, and the call of the Sacred, not the thrills of riding waves, that puts her in the way of this remarkable encounter with the rising Ocean and the penetrating light from above. Putting herself in this sacred space of the manifestation of the Divine, however innocently, shows that this is her spiritual path. The dream comes as a message and the messenger comes as the dream to tell the dreamer the great story of how the Holy manifests. He also comes to tell the dreamer her own story of her longing for light and love in her life, and the success of the ritual she has of putting herself in the way of it through the innocent activity of surfing. The dream confirms to her that what she has experienced is in fact the spiritual dynamic of nature, a dynamic that is infused with eros, spirit, longing, union and love. In this way, the dream is a healing dream, since it suggests that the dreamer is now ready to bring these enormous considerations into the personal life so that she might flourish. Jungian analyst Barry Williams, Renata Ritzman and their son, Raef are shamans (marakames) in the Huichol tradition. Together they offer healing retreats in New Mexico, Northern Canada and on Grandmother Ocean in New Zealand.
Sacred DIVINE Fire NOURISHMENT
The Essential Healing Healthy cooking is more than a chore, it’s an act of gratitude and love. BY MARY LANE I WAS BORN WITH A GAPING WOUND THAT
would not heal. A prenatal injury put me into a body cast at the age of four months. No one touched, held, or fed me. For a month I lay motionless, trapped in a cast from my neck to my ankles in a sterile hospital. My only sustenance dripped through a tube inserted into my small ankle. As a result I became passionate about nourishment. I had a twin sister who died when Mother was four months pregnant. We were bonded spiritually, energetically and physically. I began this life with the deep wound of being separated from my mother and sister. My search for that deep connection and nourishment from both the physical and spirit world formed the foundation of my journey. My bond with my mother was painfully never regained. My bond with my sister was never quite severed. I learned to walk in both worlds, looking for connection and nourishment that penetrated beyond the wounding. One world without the other was intolerable. I discovered that my journey was teaching me how to weave the two worlds together. My mother and sister opened doorways to both realities that allowed me to experience a much bigger picture. Eventually and slowly over time I noticed that my painful problem transformed into a solution and a gift. Shortly after my Mother died, she came to me and we had that moment of recognition and honoring that we both longed for since my birth. She told me her job was done—she was passing the baton to THE Mother. “Turn to her,” she said. “You will find the nourishment you have been seeking.” I turned to nature and the Earth as my Mother. My life went down a trail that has
merged the physical and spiritual world. There was no looking back. The longer I went down this trail the more I saw reflections of my true self through the eyes of nature. Slowly over time it strengthened my awareness of myself. I realized I was woven into the very fabric of this awesome being, our Mother Earth, through the food, water, and air that flowed and traveled through my body. She showed me how incredibly loved and honored I am, just because I exist. She continues to teach me about myself—and how to honor who I am. Through the denigration of the feminine principle we have lost our connection with ourselves as reflected through nature, causing a split between our spirit and body. It has caused a lack of respect for our physical existence and Earth experience. As we come around to realizing that we need to respect and care for the Earth if we are to survive as a species it is important to embrace the fact that this cannot be separate from healing, caring for, and respecting ourselves. We must heal this within before it will reverberate out into a collective healing that will impact how we live on this planet. Our Mother Earth brings love to us through the form of food and sensual experiences. Without this we could not have a human journey. Without a human journey our soul can not grow and evolve. Eating is a sacred act. Something living dies. We take it into our bodies. And it becomes us as we become it. It doesn’t matter if it is plant or animal. It doesn’t matter if we have hunted, gathered or bought it in the supermarket. To treat the act of cooking and eating as a chore is a denigration of the love we receive Issue 9 / SACRED FIRE / 19
RECIPE
Sacred OUT OF THE Fire FRYING PAN
berries & herbs •Pick wild berries, or get them from
your local farmer’s market. If you have fragrant herbs such as Rose Geranium, Lemon Verbena, Lemon Balm, Mint, or Lavender, make an infusion by picking one type of leaves, rinsing them thoroughly and add to water. The quantity of water depends on how many berries you have, approximately ¼ cup liquid to 1 ½ cups berries.
•Use plenty of leaves for flavoring. Add raw sugar, honey, or agave to your taste and simmer these leaves in the sweetened water for about 20 minutes.
•Strain out the leaves and continue
to simmer until liquid has slightly thickened. When the infusion has cooled to luke-warm, pour it over your bowl of berries and let cool. Delicious! Add these herbed berries to ice cream, crepes, shortcake, yogurt, smoothies, the list is endless. Enjoy!
from our Mother, and from the plants and animals. Eating is one of the most basic acts of honoring one’s life. It is a necessary step toward self love and wholeness. When we nourish ourselves with gratitude according to the deep wisdom of nature we are returning this love and respect by honoring our lives as sacred and interconnected with all there is. It brings our connection with the divine into our daily life as a practice and act of love. This simple practice reverberates out into the world. It supports the shift of the collective unconscious from fear, guilt and shame about our lives to love and respect of life and oneself. Obviously, this simple act of feeding ourselves has no small effect on our lives, our collective unconsciousness and the world. Within the same act of feeding our bodies we can either destroy the health of our bodies, the Earth and our spirit, or we can open to a consciousness that unites the physical and spirit world, restoring balance and health to an interconnected tapestry of life that flows through and affects every living thing. It’s our choice. Choose wisely. 20 / SACRED FIRE / Issue 9
Feeling Lost? When technology is keeping you in the dark, it’s time to step outside and come home. BY LARRY MESSERMAN
Home is where the heart is. Pliny the Elder, 1st Century CE
Reading the newspaper recently, I discovered that the “next new thing” being touted by the purveyors of digital technology is a range of applications related to mapping. New technologies will allow you to “see around” buildings and other obstructions—as well as help you locate friends or prompt you with reviews of businesses as you move across the vast corporate landscape. Of course companies are already planning to use the technology to figure out where you are and pitch geographically relevant advertising targeted to your particular tastes in Minority Report style. And no doubt Homeland Security will (or already does) use such technology to tell exactly where everyone is at any given moment. The irony is that in an age of GPS technology, we are a very lost people. So many of us feel a deep yearning for “home,” and yet even the best minds at Google seem unable to help us. For contrary to what the technologists would have us believe, finding our place in the world is a much more subtle proposition than plotting coordinates on a grid in “real-time.” To get a feel for the difference, consider the contrast between mapping in real-time and mapping in Aboriginal dream-time. I am an outsider to that 40,000 year-old culture, but my sense is that the Aboriginal version of GPS has much more to do with relationship. Yes, there is an awareness of specific geological features such as rocks, watering holes, etc. But an Aboriginal song line seems primarily to be about relating to these features—not as inert landscape—but as living beings who have been connected with the people since the time of the ancestors. Moving through the
world is not just about the straightest line between point A and point B. Rather, it is about acknowledging and celebrating a tapestry of relationships which includes the land, the ancient ones who animate it, the ancestors, and the people—such that the journey becomes a time-honored ritual. Even the forefathers (women didn’t seem to figure in at the time!) of our dominant intellectual tradition had a long-standing appreciation for the importance of place and rootedness. Pliny the Elder’s quote shows that even the Romans—who ironically through their conquests displaced people from their homelands on a scale never seen before—knew something about ‘being home.’ Home is where the heart is. Or home is where the hearth is: the place where one keeps the fire that protects, heats, and otherwise nourishes family. Not coincidentally, the energy of heart is fire, and it is an energy which expresses itself through connection. ‘Home’ is thus the place where I feel most connected, and this web of connections includes my ties to family, to the land, and to the ancestors who came before me. This traditional sense of home has increasingly been displaced by a kind of caricature— straight out of the pages of Architectural Digest or the latest Home Depot catalogue. To experience the contradictions of modern life, you need only roll out of bed and look around you: At the dawn of the 21st Century, the typical home in the developed world is a marvel of luxury and comfort. Although the particulars vary across countries and economic strata, the typical home in the western, industrialized world has indoor plumbing, heating (often central), and a range of electronic diversions from television to computers. In the U.S., part of the so-called American Dream has long been to own a home of one’s own. And at least until the latest economic downturn, the dream kept “super-sizing.” Average home size nearly doubled between 1950 and 1970 in the U.S., and it has increased in size another 50% since then. Today, the typical American family of four to five people occupies a home of 2,500 to 3,000 square feet. As our homes get larger and filled with more
ILLUSTRATION BY MACE FLEEGER
electronic distractions, we seem to have even less reason to go outside and connect with the world. It seems remarkable and even quaint now, but in the era B.C. (Before Computers), a neighborhood was actually a place where people interacted: Children meeting up with friends and playing, adults chatting over coffee, teenagers awkwardly “checking each other out.” Whether in poor, densely populated urban areas, or in smaller towns and suburbs, the real action was on the streets. Nowadays a neighborhood is more likely a marketing fiction, a name adopted by developers to give an otherwise colorless gated community a suggestion of an identity. Meanwhile everyone has retreated behind the gates and locked doors to be seduced by the far more captivating flicker of fluorescent screens. We send e-mails across the globe, we “Twitter” our friends and loved ones about the most inane and fleeting minutiae of our lives. But we are often too
busy to talk to our neighbors; indeed we may hardly notice them. At the end of The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy utters the mantra “There is no place like home!” That and a few clicks of the ruby slippers is enough to get her back to Kansas—back to the heartland. It all seems pretty simple in the end. Of course, ruby slippers are not easy to come by (indeed, it takes a most unfortunate “real estate malfunction” at the beginning of the story), and you get the sense that Dorothy needed all of the challenges and adventures to get to this place of simple truth. Similarly for us: “There is no place like home.” However seductive it is to imagine you can go anywhere anytime via wireless or the internet, it means you are always someplace else. Instead, turn off the smartphone. Power down the computer. Go outside. Breathe. Notice who and what is around you. Say ‘hello’ to a neighbor. Greet the sun, the clouds, and the wind. Give thanks. Now you are home.
Sacred LOGS FOR Fire THE FIRE
Community is Messy Living together brings more than we bargained for. BY CHRIS SCHLAKE
Trust in Allah, but tie your camel first. the Prophet Mohammed IF I CAN KEEP THE MORE BREEZY CONNOTA-
tions from wafting in on clouds of incense, I’m tempted to call it a spiritual journey. Mountain climbing is another good analogy, except that most people think of the glorious peak experience and not the 10,000 steps prior that suck your lungs out your mouth and boil your thighs. Maybe, too, it’s a bit like leaving the country to marry your cousin from an unknown village and then going into business with ten of her aunts and uncles. None of them, of course, speak much English. Despite the many challenges of communication, coordination, and sheer stamina, I feel very fortunate to be building a rural intentional community in western Colorado. Though the redwood forests of California have been home for over twelve years, long ago the Rocky Mountains sank its roots into my heart. And after two brief but convincing stints of cooperative living, I know from experience that the rat race isn’t the only game in town. For me the dream was conceived in my early twenties, during some blessed moment of lucidity between the mosh pits and blues clubs of Chicago. As a curious, combat-booted young punk, alienated by the widening sea of suburbia, I traced the musical and intellectual roots of my admired “hardcore scene” to “hippiedom” and “the Beats” and there discovered unexpected riches of music, literature, and spiritual philosophy. Among my finds was a vision of a way of life compellingly at odds with the one Issue 9 / SACRED FIRE / 21
Sacred LOGS FOR Fire THE FIRE celebrated in my conservative, middle-class family—the much-ballyhooed commune. But by the time Reaganomics gained currency, the commune had lost even comic cache in the mainstream media. It virtually disappeared from view—keeping most of us in the dark about alternatives to the status quo. With intentional communities surviving and in some cases even thriving on the margins, today a wide range of media is taking a second look. No longer recycling tired clichés of the hippie love-shack, even such perennial apologists for me-first materialism like Forbes and The Wall Street Journal have recently featured contemporary approaches to community living. As these and many other sources report, while everyone who lives cooperatively might favor a different aspect of its appeal, there are broad areas of overlap that draw diverse folks to a unified vision. Central to most experiences of community is the opportunity to transcend the paradigm of heroic, go-it-alone individualism—with dividends to our savings and psyches alike. Through the time-tested practice of simple sharing—from cars to washing machines, child care to cucumbers, living spaces to
a vulnerable and even dying Mother Planet. If the rest of the world matched America’s appetite for resources, we would annually consume the full productive capacity of the planet—plus an additional three to four Earths. Until we learn to plunder parallel universes, the quest for sustainability is both a spiritual one to save our souls and a rational one to protect our hides. By recycling or reusing everything—from garbage, food scraps, water, and even those resources shuttled out of sight (and out of mind) into septic systems—we can drive down a lot of our demands. Coupled with a range of alternative energy options, rainwater catchment systems, natural building materials, green architecture, and locallyharvested everything from strawberries to straw-bales, a way of life begins to coalesce that aligns with the real carrying capacities of both our hearts and the planet. While community living isn’t for everyone (at least yet), to those friendly observers sometimes moved to call us “pioneers,” I always insist that the impulse to break out of a co-opted American Dream doesn’t make us unique. Rooted not in some special capacity, orientation, or obsession, the longing for
WE SEEM TO HAVE CREATED A WAY OF LIFE DISTINGUISHED BY ITS INHOSPITALITY AND EVEN HOSTILITY TO OUR ENDURING NATURE. laughter—we cut our expenses and lighten the load of the daily grind. When I last lived in community, there were ten adults who bought food together in bulk and ate shared dinners. If you do the math, you’ll see that I cooked dinner three times a month— and came back from work or play the other 27 days to a home-cooked, often home-harvested meal. That’s the kind of economy of scale I love. This payback on sharing, though, obviously extends well beyond our pocketbooks and calendars. Alongside the economic impetus is the determination to lighten our assault on 22 / SACRED FIRE / Issue 9
a vital, resilient intimacy with people and place is a basic human instinct. Having spent almost our entire career as homo sapiens in small, tight-knit bands of intimates, cooperative living is simply an expression of our planetary heritage. As a species, community is who we are. In a remarkable feat of cultural engineering, however, we seem to have created a way of life distinguished largely by its inhospitality and even hostility to our enduring nature. With eons of momentum behind us, we arrive at the human experience fully expecting to belong—to each other and to an animate earth.
Instead, we’re told to shop, shut up, and keep to ourselves. From another view, the mainstream vision of devotion to gadgets, melting of diversity, emotional repression, and inflated self-interest promises little more than a cultural and personal train wreck. In terms of the basics— meaning and connection— consumer society just can’t produce. Without a steady cultivation of meaning and connection—our roots in reality—we manufacture all manner of fantasy camps that we gradually mistake for home. Sooner or later, we grow at least a little bit mad. Community living, by contrast, gives you the chance to not go mad. In ways that conventional living can’t or won’t allow, community living provides opportunities for genuine contact, for real and cooperative encounters with the joyful, grievous, befuddling human condition. Unlike so many of our other fellowships and clubs, intentional community goes beyond polite society and becomes a robust and supportive container for everything from our most raw and unruly emotions to our quirky (and maybe annoying) little pet philosophies. Though we may have pleasant affiliations with or even deep commitments to a wide variety of social groups, nothing quite says “community” like 40 acres, a mule, and a full agenda devoted to the annual output of excrement from fifteen of your closest associates. In my group, in fact, the manifold uses and abuses of “humanure” has lately enjoyed a prominence in our discussions that sometimes makes me long for the simple pleasures of a mindless flush. Ultimately, though, from the too-long planning meetings, to the longer-than-planned work projects, to the unplanned celebrations at the end of the day, community creates the conditions for our lives to unfold as if by plan—surprising all of us along the way. Contributing editor Chris Schlake currently lives near Guerneville, CA, with his wife Paige and their dog Lila. Within the next year, they plan to join the seven other co-founders of the Mesa Life Project and live on 80 acres of beautiful high desert outside Mesa, Colorado.
By Lillian Pitawanakwat
Photographs by Marvyn Morrison
Welcome to this sacred knowledge that’s been gifted to us, to all the two-legged that walk on Mother Earth. These teachings that are being shared are sacred teachings. From tribe to tribe, the details may differ but the basic teachings are the same. They have been followed and shared for many, many years. So we honour the ancestors, the ones that have walked before us, because they’re the ones that sat in circles many times before, and prayed that their children and their grandchildren would follow in their path. When we honour the ancestors, we honour ourselves. The Four Cardinal points on the Medicine Wheel are the Four Sacred Directions, represented among the Ojibwe by the colours yellow, red, black and white. Blue represents Father Sky in the upper realm, Green represents Mother Earth below, and purple represents the self, that spirit that journeys in this physical world, at the centre of the wheel. There are Seven Sacred Directions in all. The Seven Stages of Life are also found on this Medicine Wheel. They begin in the east and move across to the west. The Seven Stages of Life are: the Good Life, the Fast Life, the Stages of Truth, Planning and Doing, and the Elder Life. The Seven Grandfather Teachings are also located on this Medicine Wheel. They begin in the northern section and move down through the wheel. These gifts are the teachings of honesty, humility, courage, wisdom, respect, generosity, and love. The teachings of the Medicine Wheel are vast. There are seven teachings within each direction of the Ojibwe wheel and all these have sub-teachings to them—such as where all the medicines like sweet grass came from and what they mean. The Four Directions of the Medicine Wheel remind us of many things, such as the need for balance in the world and the balance we must strive for every day within ourselves. The Four Direction teachings go clockwise, beginning in the East. But before we travel around the Wheel, let’s look at the Center.
the
CENTER EACH OF US CARRIES A FIRE WITHIN. Whether it’s through the knowledge we have, or through our experiences and associations, we are responsible for maintaining that fire. And so as a child, when my mother and father would say, at the end of the day, “My daughter, how is your fire burning?” It would make me think of what I’d gone through that day—if I’d been offensive to anyone, or if they had offended me. I would reflect on that because it has a lot to do with nurturing the fire within. And so we were taught at a very early age to let go of any distractions of the day by making peace within ourselves, so that we can nurture and maintain our fire. We have many teachings on the value of nurturance. When I was 24 / SACRED FIRE / Issue 9
a child my father told us about the Rose Story. He said the Creator asked the flower people, “Who among you will bring a reminder to the two-legged about the essence of life?” The buttercup answered, “I will, Creator, I will.” And the Creator said, “No, you can’t, because you’re too bright.” All of the flowers offered their help. At the very end the rose said, “Let me remind them with my essence, so that in times of sadness, and in times of joy, they will remember how to be kind to themselves.” So the Creator, the Master Gardener, took a seed of the rose and planted it in Mother Earth. The winds tilled the soil and the warm rains gave it water until a very small sprout came through the ground. Day after day it grew. The stem sprouted little thorns that were very, very sharp. After the thorns came the little leaves. As time went on, a little bud formed. After much care this little bud bloomed into a full rose. And so life is like a rose. The thorns are our life’s journey; without them we would lack the hard won teachings that we need to in order to grow. Life’s experiences make us who we are. And like the rose, we too decay and die many times in a life time only to come back to fruition again and again, after reflection, meditation, awareness, acceptance and surrender. My father told us the rose is both life and its gifts. So when I am making my own Medicine Wheel, I put the rose here in the centre as a reminder of my own life’s journey and its gifts. For this, I say “meegwetch” (thank you).
the East
WAABINONG THE EAST IS WHERE WE COME FROM. It represents the springtime, and the spring of life. It is where we begin our journey as human beings coming from the spirit world into the physical world. This is Mother in here, the one that brings life. We are born when, as a spirit, we ask the Creator to go on this physical journey. The Creator grants us this request with four gifts: the gifts of picking our mother and father, so that they will help us come to an agreement, a balance within ourselves, and the gifts of picking and choosing how we are going to be born and how we are going to die. And so in the spirit world, we find our spirit mother and our spirit father, and we ask them, “Will you be my vehicle to go to this physical world?” When they agree, Creator brings them together. A spirit is then born at the physical level, and is carried by the woman for nine months until the water breaks. We then enter into the physical world. Our journey begins here, when Creator breathes the spirit of life into us. And the spirit is the one that motivates all that life in this great circle. We are a spirit on a physical journey, until our last breath. Life is a gift. To honour that gift we have been given tobacco.
above: Spring in the shores of Caribou Lake. page 23: Sunrise over Temagami Lake, the home of the Teme-Augama Anishinabai for over 6,000 years.
All life is spirit. It is the wind, the earth, the fire, the water, all of those things that are alive with energy and movement. When we talk about life, we are talking about spirit, and so we give thanks every day to those things that we cannot exist without, because we need them on our journey. That is why we begin our day with the act of thanksgiving, by taking a little bit of tobacco and gently placing it in a clean place outside: in a garden, at the base of a tree, or on the shore of a lake; a place where Mother Nature is unencumbered. When we do this we are giving thanks. We are humbling ourselves to creation and being grateful for the breath of life once more. Boozhoo Creator, Thank you for giving me the breath of life. Thank you for the world, for the life-giving Earth and for Grandfather Fire that warms me when I am cold. Thank you for the birds and the crawlers, the swimmers and the trees. Thank you for the cycles of time: the fall, the winter, the spring and summer. For all these things affect my being with their gift of Creation. And so, we correlate Spirit with all that is called Nature, because it is life itself. When we follow natural law, it never lets us down, because natural law was the only law that existed before man put himself on the road to progress. We have the gift of tobacco here in the eastern direction because it reminds us to be grateful for all life—grateful in the way of be-
ing humble, in knowing that we will always require guidance and protection, and cannot exist without the gifts of the natural world around us. There are many teachings that come from this eastern direction. I have shared a small part of these with you, but in doing so I have accepted tobacco to honor the request to share these teachings. I’ve been told ever since I was a young girl by my parents that when we hold our tobacco in hand, when we ask the Creator for what we need, all our intentions are answered. Not the way that we want them sometimes, but the way the Creator wants them. And so I honor this tobacco as I prepare myself to go on this journey with you.
the South
ZHAAWANONG
HERE IN THE SOUTHERN DIRECTION of the Medicine Wheel, everything is thriving. The trees have come awake, producing their leaves. Life itself is awake and dancing, because the summer stage is here, a time of continued nurturance for all of Creation, when everything is new and growing fast. Youth resides here in this direction. Youth are in the quandary stage—not old enough to be an adult but no longer a child, when they are either searching for what they have left behind in their child stage, or losing that essence that is present within them, because of a lack of nurturance. Issue 9 / SACRED FIRE / 25
The youth is searching for something and never finding it, searching for something that they used to have. “Who am I? Where do I come from?” As youths, we look to remember our humble beginnings as the child; we search for that. The southern direction reminds us to look after our spirits. When you are in balance within yourself, spirit will warn you of danger, will tell you, “No, don’t go there. Go this way instead.” So no matter what happens, when you listen to that spirit, to that intuition, it never deceives you. It’s always right, because that’s your guide. When that is disrupted, kids grow up without any direction, without any spirit nurturance. And they grow up to be teenagers, and they’re into all kinds of dangers and distractions. Why? It’s because there’s no spirit foundation. Their spirits have not been nurtured. And their youth, their wandering stage, becomes very distant. They have a long way to go before they catch up with themselves again and the truth about who they are. As a youth, I have to find people to help me in that time of continued growth, so I hook up with like-
minded people to give me that nurturance that I think I need. And when our elders come in and say: “We have something for you. This is a gift I have for you. Take a look at it. See what you think of it”— they’re not saying, “I want you to follow these teachings.” No. The elders are inviting the youth. As an elder, I invite the youth to be a part of my journey. And with that invitation, most of the time, they join me, just to hear out what has life, what has meaning, what has purpose. And their lives begin to change. They begin to take accountability, to form a life style. They’re planning now to be a better parent, to have a career, all of that. That becomes their truth. And so, looking at this life’s journey, how it used to be, and how it is today, where do we find the balance? We need to go back to our humble beginnings. We need to make contact with our ancestors, and say, “Please, have pity on me; pray that I will find my journey.” And so the youth reminds us to be mindful in our struggles, to remember our humble beginnings as the child, and to nurture the youth themselves, who are searching, because they are still growing and in need of our guidance and protection. That is why summer is the time of continued nurturance, where we learn to cultivate our spirits. The gift of cedar was given to help us in this direction. The Cedar Grandmother was asked by Creator, “Will you walk with these two-leggeds? Will you provide them with your medicine when they are hurting and when they are ill?” Our Grandmother agreed. And so to this day we honour that cedar tree, because she is the Grandmother who comes to us free of charge to administer that medicine when we ingest her and drink of her sacred teas. And so we are reminded that spirit lives inside of us, and that to nurture spirit means we must be mindful of it, lest it should run away. Grandmother Cedar helps us. With her medicine she takes from us all those things that we don’t need on our journey. Once we’re ready to give them up, she takes them from us and makes us anew. That is why cedar is considered a cleansing medicine for body and soul.
Five Nations from the Four Directions
This teaching from Ojibwe elder Lillian Pitawanakwat comes from fourdirectionsteaching.com, an interactive website that celebrates Indigenous oral traditions and honors the process of listening with intent. The site, which also features the wisdom of Tom Porter (Mohawk), Mary Lee (Cree), Stephen Augustine (Mi’kmaq) and Dr. Reg Crowshoe and Geoff Crow Eagle (Blackfoot), provides curriculum support so teachers of grades 1 to 12 can supplement the vast richness of knowledge and cultural philosophy presented. Teachings include the origin of human life on earth; the changing of the seasons; the cardinal directions; the life cycle from birth through death; and values to live by for a healthy lifestyle.
26 / SACRED FIRE / Issue 9
ILLUSTRATION COURTESY OF FOURDIRECTIONSTEACHING.COM
left: Cedar growing in 2.8 billion year old rock beside Lake Temagami. right: Fall in the White Bear (Wabi M’kwa) Forest, one of the few remaining forests of old-growth pine
the West
EPANGISHMOK THE WESTERN DIRECTION IS THE ADULT STAGE, the berry stage. It is here that the growth from summer has come to ripen. It is the time of harvest, and so, for much of creation, the physical journey is over, and that life crosses back into the spirit world. The sun setting in the west signifies the death of a day. And so we die many deaths in a lifetime. And just as an old thought or feeling dies, and a new one emerges, we die many deaths in a single day. So there is constant change within us. We dance around that western doorway many times in a day to honour the death spirit. As we move through adulthood, death and loss become more and more visible. In the light of death, it is important that we accept that constant change is here with us. The west also represents the heart, the evaluator of what’s going on in my life. As adults, we need to be in touch with this evaluator, because it helps us to see the cycle of life, to appreciate and enjoy the fruits of life, and to accept aging and change, making peace with our lives and deaths. We are given the responsibility to nurture our hearts, so that we may be in balance, and see the Medicine Wheel for what it is. And so to help us we have been gifted the medicine of sage. When we smudge ourselves, burn the sage and bring the smoke over our bodies, we are given the gift of clearing our minds and hearts, so that we may prepare well for the rest of our journey. The Strawberry Teaching comes to mind here in the west, because
it teaches forgiveness and peace. The Strawberry is shaped like a heart, and strawberries are known to our people as heart berries. We were taught stories like these from a very early age. A long time ago, there was a family that chose to no longer live in their village because of community feuding and ill will. This young family took their two little boys and said, “Let us go back into the forest, and we’ll let the trees nurture our children. We’ll let the birds sing songs to remind them of their own songs. And we’ll let the animals become their friends.” And so they packed up their little boys and went deep into the forest. The father offered his tobacco, and asked the tree nation to give him a home. He was granted that gift and so he cut down the trees. He made a home for his family and they moved in. The boys grew tall and strong, and yet, year after year, they continued to play fight and wrestle. Finally, when they were in their teens, their mother said to them, “It’s time for you to give up your childish ways.” And they said, “Okay mom, we won’t wrestle anymore.” But as soon as they were out of earshot from their mother, they said, “Let’s go deeper into the forest and we’ll build a wrestling ring for ourselves, so we can go out there any time we feel like it.” And so they did. They cleared some land and went there secretly, without their mother’s knowledge. And then one fateful day the time came when the boys were wrestling and the older brother knocked his younger brother to the ground, where he hit his head on a rock and died instantly. The oldest brother was beside himself. He said, “Please, please wake up… Mom and Dad are going to kill me. Please, please answer me.” Issue 9 / SACRED FIRE / 27
left: Sunset in the traditional lands of the Wabi M’kwa Family. right: Dragons sleeping in winter.
self for his brother’s death, and no more did he blame his brother for not answering him. He no more blamed his parents for their strict upbringing. And most of all, he no more blamed the Creator for taking his brother’s life. He was free. After all of these long years, he was finally free. And so, here in the western direction, we have learned something about death and about the power of change and healing, and that finding peace doesn’t necessarily come from the head—it comes from the heart. Death can be a place of freedom: freedom to go on, freedom to be. It’s very important to remember that, because only then can we go on to enjoy the northern direction after we have given careful consideration to these teachings in the west. The only answer was silence. He cried and begged his brother: “Please, please.” Finally, after a couple of hours, a voice told him, “Bury your brother.” And so he dug into the ground and put his brother there. He covered him up and ran home. Out of breath, he ran to his parents, “Mom, Dad, I’ve lost my brother in the forest. I can’t find him.” And so the parents went out with him and they looked. They couldn’t find him anywhere. The father said, “I will go into the community, and seek out our relatives to come and help us form a search party so we can find him.” So they searched for ten days, and ten nights, and then they went into mourning after they couldn’t find their son. But every day the brother would go to his little brother’s grave, and he would say, “Please, please tell me that you’re okay! Please!” And he would cry as he walked away, because he had no answer. And years went by. He carried this sadness into his manhood because only he knew where his brother’s body lay. After many years and visits to his grave, the elder brother saw a tiny plant. He watched it grow into a little strawberry vine on top of his brother’s grave. Each day he watched the leaves grow and the berries come into fruition. White heart-shaped berries appeared first. Then, over days, they transformed into big red delicious berries, luscious and sweet. As he contemplated them, a voice from inside him said, “Take a berry and eat it.” So he picked a berry and he put it in his mouth. As he ate it, he became aware, for the first time in his life, that he could taste the sweetness of life again. No more did he blame him28 / SACRED FIRE / Issue 9
the North
KIIWEDINONG NOW IT’S TIME TO SLOW DOWN from the business of birth and death, the continuum of death and rebirth. Here, in the Northern direction, is the rest period. Some call it the remembrance period, because after death, you rest, and you contemplate what has happened. But rest is also used here to be mindful of the physical body, to remember to care for and nurture our physical bodies. When they are tired, rest them, just as in the winter the Earth rests from her labours. When they are hungry, feed them. And know what you are ingesting, what is good food for the body. This is a time of reflection on being a child, a youth and an adult. And so it is here that we honor our Elders. This is where they reside, along with the pipe carriers and the lodge keepers, because their ceremonies provide us with teachings of the whole Medicine Wheel, in all the directions. They also help us make peace through embracing all those aspects of ourselves—the child, the youth, and the adult—so that we may be able to feel and experience the fullness of self. This is a place of wisdom. And so it is here during the winter months that the elders share their stories and teachings. In honour of this storytelling time, I too will share a story. Years ago, we were prohibited from visiting Dreamer’s Rock. It
is a sacred place in our territory where our people would go for vision quests. In 1968, that ban was lifted and we were able to go back and do our ceremonies. At this time I became involved with the community because I believed in the value of our teachings and ceremonies. But I had to first regain that fire. I will never forget it. In the first sweat lodge ceremony, the elder told us that the spirits that came into the lodge were hungry. He said, “I asked them what they needed and they said, “Bakademe – zhamzhenung (We are hungry; feed us).” Something inside of me stirred. I remembered as a child, my grandmother used to say, “We will feed them, those that went ahead, our grandmothers, our grandfathers, all our relations.” She would then prepare food and burn it on the stove, until the smoke from it permeated the whole house. It was like the essence of their lives filled our home and reminded us of how they contributed to our life’s journey. And that was a good feeling. I knew then, deep inside—Spirit spoke to me—I knew what I had to do. And so I went back home and called every household I knew. I said, “We’re having a celebration. Can you donate some food?” “Yes! Yes! Yes!”—everyone agreed. People were awakening to something that they knew existed before. So we prepared the spirit plate. Every spoonful of food that was donated was put on that plate. And it was a heaping plate because there was so much food. We took that plate along with our tobacco to the fire and prayed: “Please hear us,” we said. “Grandfathers,
grandmothers, ancestors, all our relations: please hear us. We are here now, have pity on us. We had forgotten to feed you. You have lived a long time without food, and now we are here to honour you. Please come and feast with us.” As we put the food down, I could actually see those spirit hands grasping for that food because they were starving. It was at that moment that I began to cry because I could feel my reconnection to this circle. And so as I share this story with you, I am sharing how I became reconnected with my ancestors. It is through them that we learn the sacred teachings that they carried. I cherish this story because it is not only about an awakening inside of me, but an awakening of a community that came together to celebrate a way of being and spiritual nourishment. We still go back to our original teachings, because that’s where our food for life comes from, to nurture that spirit that is forever searching in life’s journey. And so I am grateful to all of my teachers and all of life’s teachings. This is what we learn from the four stages of the Medicine Wheel: that all of life’s cycle is beautiful—the sadness and the joy, life and death—and that they are all one. And there is life in death, death in life, and that beauty itself resides within the balance of the whole circle. And so now we have come full circle, and I give thanks. To the Eastern Doorway I say Meegwetch, to the Southern doorway, I say Meegwetch, to the Western Doorway, Meegwetch, and to the Northern doorway, Meegwetch. Issue 9 / SACRED FIRE / 29
By Sharon Brown
Teaching the traditional stories in a non-traditional way
importance of things.
As a Canadian Ojibwe, she recognizes the necessity of maintaining traditional knowledge so that life can thrive for all people. As a front-line community worker, she recognizes the importance of helping displaced, disenfranchised First Nations people find selfrespect. As a remedial educator, she recognizes the need for relevant course materials that offer intrinsic value to aboriginal peoples. As a producer and creator of modern storytelling, she recognizes the power of the current era’s tools of communication. Recognizing these things, Jennifer Wemigwans dreamed a vision that became the inspiring, deeply-rooted, and beautifully executed website, FourDirectionsTeachings.com. 30 / SACRED FIRE / Issue 9
Jennifer graduated from York University’s
MFA program in 2001. While in school she spent ten years working in adult literacy in Toronto, where she tutored the disenfranchised and homeless in transitional homes, women’s shelters, and reading centers. A high percentage of her students were aboriginal people, but there was little reading material that featured content grounded in “TK,” traditional knowledge. The lack of educational materials relevant to the indigenous worldview was not only a problem in adult literacy; Jennifer found that throughout the Canadian educational system aboriginal course material consisted of “young people being introduced to historical knowledge of a dead culture.” The result, particularly for urban peoples far removed from their ancestral homelands, has been a deep cultural disconnection, a lack of self-identity, and an
ILLUSTRATION COURTESY OF FOURDIRECTIONSTEACHING.COM
J
ennifer Wemigwans recognizes the
attendant sense of shame and intimidation. “They don’t have a good feeling about what it means to be Native,” she says. But while reading materials relevant to aboriginal peoples was missing, every resource center had an Internet-connected computer. A vision began to take shape. “Four Directions Teachings was conceived to fill a gap in terms of looking at Indigenous knowledge respectfully,” she says. “Traditional knowledge has history, meaning and relevance in today’s world.” Jennifer returned to school for an MFA in film and video so she could create materials from an Indigenous perspective. She then founded Invert Media to turn conventional media on its head, using it to counteract the negative impressions created by typical consumer entertainment fare and thus to empower First Nations peoples. She spent five years knocking on doors, going to conferences, seeking funding and trying to get Four Directions Teachings off the ground. But finding funding proved difficult because people didn’t want to “fund religion.” “Funders said my idea sounded too spiritual. I would tell them it might have a spiritual aspect, but the work is not an institution, it is not a religion. I had to write my proposals to educate people first. I had to teach ‘what is TK.’ That is a worldview based on holistic knowledge rooted in perennial wisdom.” Jennifer removed the word “spiritual” from her proposals, and instead used “holistic” as a cosmological way of viewing the world, and eventually received a $400,000 Canadian Heritage grant. And the work began. First, she contacted elders at the forefront of their First Nations communities who knew the complex issues surrounding the protection of TK, and put together an advisory committee to assist her in her approach. “For example, I am not Mohawk. I needed to know, how do I open that door? I am Ojibwe, but I am still a stranger” to elders from other nations, she says. With its one-to-one referrals, the advisory committee developed trust and created a community of people invested in seeing the project succeed. “It was very inclusive. Synergies and amazing things happened. It was informed by spirit from the beginning.” Almost immediately, the elders understood that they were at the vanguard of something very new, something that would enable them to reach their own peoples, dispersed into big cities and across the continent. “Some of
them commented how phenomenal it was that their own grandkids were out there” on the Internet, says Jennifer, “And why can’t they find us there?” Each elder made their own decisions about what stories and teachings to share. “I wasn’t going to create a theme,” says Jennifer. “I said, ‘What do you feel comfortable sharing and exposing to the universe? This will be on the Internet, it could reach Mars. If a story is too sacred or personal, we won’t go there.’” Jennifer and Doug Anderson, her content writer and project director, documented each elder’s stories on videotape so they could transcribe each speaker accurately. Taking the transcriptions, “the writer would pray and meditate on the content, and figure out how to approach it.” Story scripts would be drafted in keeping with the voice and rhythm of the speaker, and final drafts were sent to each elder for review, revision and final blessing. The final production included colorful animation, sound effects, music, and the voices
FourDirectionsTeachings.com launched online in Fall 2007. “It was so moving emotionally,” she says. “Young men, so disconnected, would go on the site. And then we’d sit in circle and talk about it, and they would feel so empowered. They’d say, ‘I’m a Cree, and yes, these are the values I had, but I didn’t know how to say it.’ It made me cry.” Many urban Natives “feel too oppressed, ashamed or angry to go to a real-life elder,” she says. “But when they can go to a site, by themselves, explore and learn, they get prepared to take that next step. Yes, there is a small group of Natives who grew up with traditional teachings, and those can confidently walk into a circle and learn. But those who grow up isolated, not exposed to the community, have nothing to go by. This site is like a bridge to them.” Jennifer credits the site with relieving the “ethno-stress” of both aboriginal and nonaboriginal peoples. In one example, from the “ton of emails” she’s received, Jennifer cites a woman who wrote “I’m a white
“I SAID, ‘WHAT DO YOU FEEL COMFORTABLE SHARING AND EXPOSING TO THE UNIVERSE? ...IF A STORY IS TOO SACRED OR PERSONAL, WE WON’T GO THERE.’” of professional indigenous actors. “Many of the elders wouldn’t be comfortable with all that’s required for being in a sound studio, and many have thick accents and would be hard for people to understand,” she says, describing the reasoning behind the choice to have actors represent the voices of the elders themselves. Jennifer is asked whether these modern storytelling techniques might harm the material. Could having such detailed illustration damage the purpose of the listener’s active imagination and its role in the oral tradition? “I would take out the word ‘imagination,’ and say ‘from the heart,’” she says. “The heart must listen with intent. As we state in the site introduction, this is just a small surface. We always say this is only a sampling. We want to encourage youth and those finding themselves disconnected to seek their elders out in their community. Listening from the heart in person is really far more connected.”
woman, and I love this site because I can learn without intruding.” Since its launch, the site has received close to 100,000 visitors with 20,000 hits from the USA. It is being broadly used by schools and by Canadian government agencies such as parole boards for sensitivity training, children’s aides for social workers, and universities to train teacher applicants. Jennifer would like to expand the site, to include teachings from peoples beyond the original five nations featured. But “we run into barriers. Funders say, ‘You’ve done this already, you want to do more?’ The irony is frustrating, because the government turns us down, but they are using the program!” Jennifer Wemigwans lives in Toronto where she is working on her Ph.D. in media and education studies. For more information, contact: info@invertmedia.com
Issue 9 / SACRED FIRE / 31
Photograph by Ryan Heffernan
by MartĂn Prechtel
Indigenous souls that would only be calmed by running, and running well and beautifully. The school sports coaches, like most of the modern world who, as representatives of that neurotic, competitive-need-to-dominate culture trait that characterizes most large civilizations, always felt like life failures unless they could conquer someone else, or win something causing someone else to lose, and lived in a constant tangle of nervous frustration. The source of their consternation was rooted to the unshakable fact that, even though most of these Indian boys over thirteen had running times superior to those of the adult Olympics worldwide, they could not be made to compete. They just wanted to run, and run at home over the wild, unpopulated land. Like a lot of teachers in other departments, these tall non-Indian jocks became so infuriated about how they could never get the Pueblos or Navajos in those times to compete in any tournaments, that before the inevitable tendering of their resignations, they usually transformed into bitter listless maniac whiners who labeled the Indians as “unconfident, overly shy or ashamed,” or, as most of us heard over and over again: “Indians are an unmotivated race lacking the go-getter gene,” i.e., competitive “ambition.” The coaches couldn’t believe the reality that all the young people, like their ancestors forever, just loved running not racing. This didn’t mean they didn’t run hard and fast, because they did. But they didn’t do so to beat a peer, but because hard and fast was part of the deliciousness. Though their short distance times were very good, where the natural peoples of this state of New Mexico excelled was in long distance running. The young men would run 10,000 meters, or ten miles, or four miles or twenty-six miles—whatever distance was designated as a ‘race’—sometimes even stopping off somewhere to chat or check something out, always in a group, joking as they ran and still coming in well under international times, that is if the coaches could have convinced them to cross an assigned finish line, instead of just running off to smoke in one of their favorite haunts before they wandered in from whatever direction the earth beneath their feet felt the most exhilarating. The other problem for civilization’s sports teachers and their need to win was the fact that, though all the Indian boys ran good and hard, they never ran alone, only as a group. Any relatives or friends they happened upon along the way, no matter how much of a slower pace they might have had to assume to let their older friends keep up, they always urged them to run along with them anyway for the grandness of the togetherness. This meant if one in their group straggled, they would wait or run in circles not to lose momentum until the slower fellow caught up. This was definitely not conducive to an Olympic record, but a normal score
the deep love we all had for running. For all the young Indian people, both girls and boys, running was as great a characteristic of the Indigenous life of Pueblo, Navajo, and Apache people still living in their original beloved homelands of the arid highlands of New Mexico as was their sense of comic joy, or the generous ceremonial house-to-house feasting throughout their villages, for which they are still famous. Like all of the public schools in the United States that Native and Spanish speaking children of our area were forced to attend, there were always kids in the sixth grade old enough to drop out of high school, for it was they who were the first generation of minors in their family lines to be enforced by federal law to begin school attendance, no matter what their age. They were definitely not slow, or any more incorrigible than the rest of us lively pups. It was just that school had been an imposed irrelevancy to the reality of their already adultish life they led inside “their” own natural Native territory. They, of course, felt no compelling responsibility to attend an invader’s academy that had so little to teach them about what they already knew and nothing of what they would need to live regarding village planting, hunting, courting, and their constant obligatory communal ceremonial participation upon which old time Pueblo life has always relied. The casual special appearances and unauthorized disappearances to and from the classroom by these beautiful, rowdy older teenagers ran pretty much according to how they rated the entertainment value of a chosen few of the teachers whose method of instruction appealed to them. They could never be threatened with being expelled for they would have loved nothing better. But one thing no student ever missed at the school, unless impeded by village ceremonial obligation, was a scheduled foot race of any length. To be truthful, they could have given a flea’s fart for racing. They didn’t come to race; what they loved was running; running across their rolling wild sacred homeland, sometimes enormous distances, just for the deliciousness of running. Like the wild multicolored It has been ten years since MARTÍN PRECHTEL published Secrets of the Talking Jaguar, his horses, antelopes, jackrabbits and swallows they first book, which recounted his life as an apprentice and shaman in the Mayan village of Sanflushed up or that coursed along with them, they tiago Atitlan and established him as a clear, lyrical voice for the Indigenous soul. Sacred Fire too were made of elegant motion and just had to is pleased to present “Beautiful Running,” an excerpt from his newest work, Keeping the do it. In the same way breezes can’t help but sweep Seeds Alive (due to publish later this year), as well as “The Song of the House of the World,” the earth, they had to run. It was a delicious anexcerpted from Secrets of the Talking Jaguar, along with a selection of his paintings. cient inborn itch that paced in the hearts of their
Issue 9 / SACRED FIRE / 33
for the generosity of the Indigenous soul. Even a couple of generations later, when so much of the cultural intactness of those times had been successfully undermined and thoroughly indoctrinated with the syndrome of modernity’s contradictory insistence on an unquestionable superiority while suffering eternally from the “never being good enough” that fuels civilization’s bullet train away from its own indigenous intactness, and after being successfully shamed into becoming as anxious as any Anglo about achievement, certain generations of young Indian men and women—who’d been finally coerced into the nervous pride of home-and-away track meets, warm-ups, sweat suits, shorts, numbers, running shoes, trophies, victory dinners at Burger King and, God help us all, to recognize a finish line—would often, even then, stand jogging just before the finish line, after running several miles ahead of everyone, if one of their relatives was a participant in the same race and needed more time to catch up so together they could cross the line. Even after so much cultural assimilation it still felt awful to do otherwise! But the best long distance running I ever saw at that school happened when the heroes of my youth, a group of boys, famous runners all of them, about sixteen years old, several already married, but all of them still in the sixth grade, agreed to run in their first competitive long distance races. One of our more sneaky and desperately determined coaches secretly marked the finish line with chalk about 200 yards beyond where, by official track standards, it actually lay in order to get them running hard across the invisible real line without lagging for the slower ones. But he was outwitted yet again. This had been a 10,000 meter race on the reservation against teams from many other places. When the five boys came leisurely striding in side by side at least a mile and a half ahead of all the visiting runners, and while casually sharing their third disqualifying Camel cigarette as they sailed along, they not only technically won a world record that would have still held today if it had been accepted on the basis of time alone, but then, after unknowingly having crossed the secret finish line together, in order to avoid what they thought was the marked finish line, these copper bodied human birds took a collective left and just kept running and coursing the remaining five and a half miles through the beautiful high piled boulder desert hills and sandy ar-
royos in blossom with the wild parsley and four-petaled yellow mustards of spring, back to their home village to disappear utterly from the white man’s world, their school, and its program of achievements, running straight into the initiation kivas where they began their antique lives cloistered again as Pueblo Indians for the rest of their adult lives. Living and running were holy things you were supposed to get good at, not things to use to conquer, win and get attention for. Running was not meant for taking, but for giving gifts to the Holy in Nature. Running was an offering, a feeding of life. This sometimes humorous but always devastating cultural collision 34 / SACRED FIRE / Issue 9
between the need to conquer titles, capture images, exploit opportunities, and outperform the competition, against the need to feed, maintain life, and give gifts was never more acutely visible to me than it was during ceremonial Pueblo Indian footraces. These are ritual cross-country races between people born for the powerful gods and goddesses of summer deities and people born for the winter deities that were run by young men, men newly initiated who, of course, ran in groups as the champions of the distinct, natural, lifemaking gods they served. A lot of people always gathered to watch and pray for the well being of the runners and themselves. In some less traditional not so strict places, both non-Indians and friends from other tribes were invited and fully welcomed to watch. Though this welcome was never the case in my area, there was no ban on us visiting other more open villages. One time, while visiting with some friends who had a relative married into a less guarded pueblo village up the river, a little outside the Pueblo we gathered with all their female relatives, sisters and sweethearts, with supporters of each side to encourage them on. After the fifteen of the Moon side of summer got a strong take off running against the forty or so of the winter Sun, the visiting non-Indians shouted and continued cheering in that adamant well practiced way as they always did during all their own competitive events as they watched the painted boys disappear into the wild. But this was Indian running and therefore cross-country and would be long distances and therefore most of it out of sight. So as soon as the young runners hit the rings of grama and clumps of buffalo grass, the chollas, the sabinas, crags and cliffs of the uncultivated area and were out of ear shot and into the dustwhipping spring wind, the villagers in the supporting crowd walked briskly back to their extended family homes to get on with the traditional feast, leaving the still cheering tourists alone and baffled as to what had just happened. Some of the good hearted “white people” made their way with the rest of us to houses where feasts had been prepared, invited there by the parents and godparents of the runners. When the old people were asked by the outsiders what happened to the runners, they were courteously informed that…“they were probably running” and would the visitors “please sit down and eat” with them. Such feasting was not only an honor accorded visitors and one that was expected in the house of the family of the runners and one that comes with an obligation to accept whether or not one is hungry, it was a way for the non-running population to magically give strength to the runners. It was a kind of ritual cheering. Feasting beautifully was part of the running, a custom that still lives on in every Pueblo to this day. When further interrogated as to where the finish line was, the people usually said, “Wherever they stop running, I guess.” Maybe eventually a more compassionate and patient younger person would tell the visitors the truth. “There is no finish line, they’re just running.” “How do they know who wins? How do they know when to stop running? Why do they run at all?” If someone actually broke the rules of tribal secrecy and told them that the Sun and the Moon and other beings that move in time and give
us life are kept strong by the boys who run, and because the Sun annually runs his own race and helps the animals to thrive by doing so, and that the Sun tires, and when he tires the world and all animal beings begin to flag, and die, and without the animals we would die, and the running of the boys helps the Sun to keep moving and strong and the visible world strong, and that the Moon runs even harder but in a different pulse and, by doing so, keeps all the waters flowing, the plants growing and maturing, without which we and everything else, especially the animals, die, and, because for both the Sun and the Moon in the sky there are no finish lines; they must keep moving or the world dies, for if there were a finish line the universe would cease, so the beauty and strength of the boys’ running helped lift again these gods back into their eternal continuum so the world wouldn’t die, and, though in some ways the boys did compete to outdo the other side in beauty, strength and dedication, there was no finish line, just an excellent running traditionally carried on for as long as it took until the Sun and Moon had caught their breath enough to catch up and race again in their steady tread themselves, all done so the world itself would win. The friendly explainer would be met by a menagerie of Anglo reactions ranging anywhere from silent indifference to sneers of contempt to a stirring admiration by those who could still feel the terrible heartbreak of the enormous distance they had drifted from the more sophisticated spiritual depth of a natural life. Civilization’s spiritual arrogance forces its constituents to unquestioningly race, to ambitiously outdo their neighbors instead of together competing to feed the exploited Nature that feeds them, never feeding the Holy in Nature the beauty of their running and feasting. The running of these young people was a grand thing and they, just like all the different weathers and every natural phenomenon, animal, plant, river, ocean, air, earth, every natural thing who each ran their own races to keep their diverse particles of the magnificence of the whole world alive by the beauty of their natural motion, they, like the running boys, would come in to the feast of life when it was time for them to come. For when the race had subsided each boy returned to his family home and, together, we ate the food the beauty of his running had kept alive. Everything in Nature ran according to its own nature; the running of grass was its growing, the running of rivers their flowing, granite compressed and crumbled, birds flew. Everything did what it needed to do without leaving any other part of the universe behind. The world’s Holy things raced not to win, but to cause the entire surging diverse motion of the living world from grinding to a halt, which is why there is no end to that race; no finish line. That would be oblivion to all. For the Indigenous soul of all people who can still remember how to be real cultures, life is a race to be elegantly run, not a race to be competitively won. It cannot be won; it is the gift of beautiful motion that must be maintained. Because human life has been given the gift of our elegant motion—whether we limp, roll, crawl, stroll or fly—it is an obligation to engender that elegance of motion in our daily lives in service of maintaining life by moving and living as beautifully as we can. All else has, to me, the familiar taste of that domineering warlike harshness that daily tries to cover its tracks; to camouflage the deep ruts of some old, sick, grinding, ungainly flight away from our original Indigenous human souls, in an attempt to competitively and avariciously place a claim on a place where there are no problems—whether it be Heaven or a “New Democracy”—never mind if it is “won” and taken from someone who is already there. Having become such a people, unconscious of how this war mind inundates our every movement and daily choice of words, we have become
our own ogre-ish worldwide problem. This is a problem that we cannot continue to attempt to competitively outrun by more and more effectively designed technological approaches that pretend to speed us away from the specter of our own reality because, of course, it runs competitively right alongside us. By developing even more effective and entertaining methods of escape that only burn up the earth, the air, animals, plants and the deeper substance of what it should mean to be a human, by competing to get ahead, we have created a brakeless competition that has a very definite and imminent “finish” line. Living in and on a sphere we, cannot really outrun ourselves anyway. Therefore, I say the entire devastating and hideous state of the world and its constant wounding and wrecking of the wild, beautiful, natural, viable and small—only to keep alive an untenable cultural proceedence—is truly a spiritual sickness, one that will not be cured by the efficient use of the same thinking that maintains the sickness. Nor can this overly expensive, highly funded illness be symptomatically kept at bay any longer simply by yet more political, environmental, or social programs. We must, as individuals and communities, take the time necessary to learn how to indigenously remember what a sane, original existence for a viable people might look like. Though there are marvelous things and amazing people doing them, both seen and unseen, it cannot resemble in any way the general trend of what is going on now. To begin remembering our Indigenous belonging on the Earth back to life, we cannot go back and “competitively” try to resurrect superficially what we can no longer remember. Rather, we, as individuals, must metabolize and digest the grief of the recognition of our present lost directions and its cultural failure. Out of the valuable decay of the resulting spiritual compost we must organically grow a way of being that lets us learn to stay put without outrunning our strange past, somehow learning to love living small, unarmed, brave, and beautiful. By trying to feed the Holy in Nature the fruit of beauty from the tree of memory of our Indigenous souls, grown in the composted failures of our past need to conquer, watered by the tears of our failed culture’s grief, we might become ancestors worth descending from and possibly, maybe even, grow a place of hope for a time beyond our own. Any of us born into the competitive warlike underpinnings of modern life have our heads invaded by the echoes of the scared urgings of civilization’s-hard-faced-coach screaming, “You’re nothing! You’re nothing! You’ve got to win to be something! Outrun your nothingness! Run! Win! Be someone! Outrun the next guy! Outstrip the debts of our cultural past!” But deeper and wider, inside the vast wilderness of the territory of our forgotten Indigenous souls, a place not understood and regarded as nothing by the “Coach,” there courses along in its own special way a valuable beautiful runner whose gorgeous able motion keeps the Sun and Moon rolling, our hearts beating, the lizards grinning, milk in the udders of mother whales dredging the soggy sand of krilly oceans, the world jumping, living, dreaming, flying, whose rhythmic friendship of feet on natural earth, does not run to get ahead, to get free from the world, but to come home again, to feast with the rest of our hearts and souls. Eventually, even the coach must straggle in, for even he must be fed, and of course, there is always an empty chair for him at the table. Dedicated to the Mothers of Life, June 2009 All Blessings, Martín Prechtel Issue 9 / SACRED FIRE / 35
Painting by Martín Prechtel, © copyright 2002
text & paintings
By Martín Prechtel
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ALL PAINTINGS PHOTOGRAPHED BY ERIC SWANSON
that the way one individual goes, so goes a society of individuals. From that I realized that if I could be given life in an antipathetic setting, then possibly a whole culture could find its heart the same way. Perhaps the principles involved in some shamanism might be the cause for survival of the collective human spirit in the modern and postmodern era. I firsthand saw how the vision of an original but adaptable shamanism might help us through the self-devastation of culture caused by the immense spiritual fine levied against us humans by life for all the forgetful, unconscious wounding of nature and the wonderful naturalness of humans. Ironically, many Tzutujil shamans must have understood all of this before the great cultural and spiritual demolition that crashed down upon us in the late twentieth century. We knew, too, that the whole world was spiritually endangered. Shamans knew this because we were shown during our training and initiation how the world is actually one big body. The world is also a sacred building called The House of the World and our own individual bodies are made like it and are also called The House of the World. Inside the other world of our bodies, everything that can be found in the outer world also exists. When the spirits see us, they see a beautiful house, a temple. When we see them, we see the world. A shaman sees both. To the shaman, all the places, animals, weather, plants, and things outside in the world are also inside of you as your twin, and together everything makes an immense four-dimensional series of concentric cubes: the layers that stretch outside and inside simultaneously to create The House of the World, or World Body. This structure is made by the Builders, certain Owners or Gods with their original sounds and words. These sounds and words become tangible meaning, made to live as they are spoken. Each God word builds the House of the World by echoing off the other words. These spirit world soundings, when made all at once, form the spiritual song of the world. This combined sound, when it gets here to this world, becomes vibrant and tangible, and grows the world in the form that we see and are. This song is the nervous system of the Universe. When an individual falls ill, something in his World House-Earth Body is being attacked, gnawed away, eroded, shed, burnt, dismembered, or is beginning to fade away for neglect. The shaman assesses the destruction and, after dealing with the cause, begins to rebuild the World House of that person’s body by remembering all its parts back to life—by making it echo off the Original Flowering Earth, what shamans call the creations, the Big Earth House Temple. He does this by speaking or singing out a sacred map, following a natural order of holy words and magical sounds, in a rhythmic roll call. This is a miniature, or echo child, of the Original Big Sounds used by the Owners, the Gods, to make the entire World Body we live in. This map of holy sounds re-creates the concentric cubes of sacred places on the Earth that correspond to all the connecting planes in our bodies. Using the secret names of actual mountains, springs,
caves, rivers, valleys, villages, ancestral wanderings, and the names of God families and their kingdoms for each of these places, the shaman remakes our spirit bodies in sound forms. If done right, our bodies then begin to echo and resound with the Original Earth from where all life takes its form. This is called remembering the Earth, and it makes us get well. At the center of this renewed House of the Body is a person’s twin souls of heart and gall bladder, where the moon and the fire sit respectively. The body is made around them, as they are the tenants of this house whose lease agreement with God is to die when it gets old. The heart, or moon, is the female and the gall bladder is the fire or the Old Grandpa; together they tie us together with stories, dreams and rhythms. As with the big ball of string that I formed as a little boy, the shaman winds a world of sacred God words and stories around our intangible spirits, giving them a house and a shape at the same time. This returns us home, making us visible in a new body or house, keeping us from fading away. This process is called “The fruit returns,” or “Your face comes back,” meaning that you have been healed. The secret of village togetherness and happiness had always been the generosity of its people, but the secret to that generosity was village inefficiency and decay. The House of the World, like our village huts and our human bodies, no matter how magnificent, is not built to last very long. Because of this, all life must be regularly renewed. To do this, the villagers come together once a year at least, to work on putting back together somebody’s hut, talking, laughing, feasting, and helping wherever they can in a gradual, graceful way. This way each family’s place in the village is re-established and remembered. If a house is built too well, so efficiently that it is permanent and refuses to fall apart, then people have no reason to come together. Though the house stays together, the people fall apart, and nothing gets renewed. Smart people might be able to invent excuses to get together, but this is too abstract and hollow, and such contrivance insults the soul. People have a genuine need to make things with their ingenuity and with their hands. This coming together to gather water by hand, to do communal tasks gracefully—tasks that a machine could do in an instant anonymously—or to repair rickety houses ensures the very smiley togetherness so missing in the pre-planned, alienated lives of modern civilization. When a Tzutujil says he needs to be healed, he asks the shaman to chumij, or replaster, him. When we begin to fade, the shaman plasters us with remembrance so that we can shine again. Ironically, the great amount of unnatural violence, senseless killing, and mechanized warfare that we see these days signals an extreme fear in the face of natural death and decay. These difficult conditions come about when a people are not truly at home. Unable to re-create The House of the World as our shamans do, subscribers to modernity jettison all ideas of ritual life and the feeding of spirits. Instead they look for permanent solutions, such as nuclear bombs, war, concentration camps, laws, and ideals that must be then upheld and defended. All of this activity is a search for increased security to protect an uninitiated people from what they perceive as a hostile universe. Far removed from the humble familiarity of being at home, in a village, such people have forgotten their own natures and how to use these natures to speak a village back into life. Not satisfied or confident that life can be renewed, unwilling and afraid to grow old, to gradually become magnificent, treelike elders, or die into cultural humus, the modern man or woman demands the
Painting by Martín Prechtel, © copyright 2002
permanence of steel cities and immortality. So sure they will never be remembered for having lived, such individuals struggle to stay permanently youthful, like cornered cats, frozen in the anxious void of modern communities. Generosity of soul and tangible effort in the face of the constant pressure of decay are what give people purpose, fertile imaginations, vitality, a feeling of usefulness, and self-worth. When decay is “cured” instead of communally addressed, a culture becomes decadent. Then generosity becomes an advertising ploy or a dirty word. Violence is close behind when people won’t come together to remake each others’ houses. Somewhere during the course of my initiation as a shaman, I came across a startling and troubling realization that every human being alive today, modern or tribal, primal or over-domesticated, has a soul that is original, natural, and, above all, indigenous in one way or another. And like all indigenous peoples today, that indigenous soul of the modern person has either been banished to some far reaches of the dream world or is under direct attack by the modern mind. Since the human body is the world, every individual in the world, regardless of background or race, has an indigenous soul struggling to survive in an increasingly hostile environment created by that individual’s mind, which subscribes to the morés of the machine age. Because of this, a modern person’s body has become a battleground between the rationalist mind and the native soul. As a shaman, I saw
this as the cause of a great deal of spiritual and physical illness. Over the last two or three centuries, a heartless culture-crushing mentality has incremented its progress on the earth, devouring all peoples, nature, imagination, and spiritual knowledge. Like a big mechanized slug, it has left behind a flat, homogenized streak of civilization wherever it passed. Every human on this earth—African, Asian, European, Islanders, or from the Americas—has ancestors who at some point in their history had their stories, rituals, ingenuity, language, and lifeways taken away, enslaved, banned, exploited, twisted, or destroyed by this force. Now what is indigenous, natural, subtle, hard to explain, generous, gradual, and village-oriented in each of us is being banished into the ghettos of our hearts, or hidden away from view onto reservations inside the spiritual landscape of the Earth Body. In shamanic terms, our minds are being taught to believe that whatever we can think is actually the center of a person’s life, just like a conquering modern culture which thinks with the mind, not with the ancestral soul. Meanwhile, our natural souls, which are like Bushmen or rare waterbirds, know that our minds and our souls should be working together to maintain or replaster the crumbling hut of life. Instead, our indigenous souls are being utterly overlooked and pushed aside in the bustle of the minds’ competitive activity, until our true beings feel just like a tribesman in a big, trafficky city: unwelcomed, lost, and homeless. We Tzutujil shamans don’t believe the primitive notion that huIssue 9 / SACRED FIRE / 39
Painting by Martín Prechtel, © copyright 2002
man spirit resides in the brain or even in the mind, or that it is even human, for that matter. And memories, especially the most ancient, natural kind, definitely don’t live in the head, but reside all over the place. Therefore, because this beautiful, dejected spirit is not given a home in a person’s life anymore, the homeless soul has become a fugitive in the World House of our bodies, trying to hide somewhere so that our minds won’t find it. It flees and hides because if our modern minds treat our personal indigenousness as viciously as the modern culture treats all the natural people of the world, then our personal spirits fear being discovered by their oppressors—our own thinking. Though the modern world can appear somewhat soulless and its people numbed and asleep, I discovered that deep in the World House of their bodies live resourceful, intelligent, soulful refugees who, like myself, waited and wondered when they would ever be welcomed back home again. When I divine the Earth Bodies of many people of today, their worlds look like a post-war country, bombed out, dry, flowerless, and tired. The flat devastation wreaked upon these people’s Earth Body needs renewing. Their World House needs reassembling, replastering; it has to be remembered back to life, so that the faraway native souls, their natural indigenous beings, can return to their homes. Maybe this is why Chiviliu sent me away, to sing and speak these people’s lives back together. After all, he said that the destruction was coming from them. Our world was being killed by people whose naturalness had been disenfranchised long ago. The violence they leveled upon us came from their soulless minds and angry, homeless souls, looking for permanence through violent business growth, killing, forgetting, and mocking everything that reminded them of their inadequacies. For there to be a world at all, every indigenous, original, natural thing must start singing its song, dancing its dance, moving and breathing, each according to its own nature, saying its name, manifesting simultaneously its secret spiritual signature. Every Gypsy must be singing her an40 / SACRED FIRE / Issue 9
cient tune, every Bushman, Croat, Arab, Jew, Chukchee, Hmong, Papuan, Celt, Yoruba, Saxon, Cree, Guarani, Sami, Inuit, Kazaki, Tahitian, Balinese, Han, Ainu, jaguar, honey creeper, anteater, shrike, beetle, butterfly, oak, birch, ceiba, baobab, dog, mosquito, shark, coral, lightning, tornado, mist, mountain, deer, desert, and so on forever, each must be making its magic sound. When any of these stops singing for being killed or destroyed, a piece of the World’s House is lost. This in a village is the equivalent of losing a family. When this happens in the village, it’s a call for all the people to come together to find or renew the family’s lost tribe—or to grieve their gaping loss. Our grief, when deeply expressed communally, as it is in a village, sends the lost sound like an echo back to its home. This puts some mud back into the void left in the World House. If done passionately, grief strengthens the World House, because the creative substance of our songs is perceived by the spirits as canoes to take the dead home. Our tears are jade beads to adorn the Face of Life, the Earth Fruit. Shamans say the Village Heart can grow a brand-new World House if it is well-dressed in the layered clothing of each indigenous soul’s magic sound, ancestral songs, and indigenous ingenuity. The wrecked landscape of our World House could sprout a renewed world, but a new language has to be found. We can’t make the old world come alive again, but from its old seeds, the next layer could sprout. This new language would have to grow from the indigenous hearts we all have hidden. It shouldn’t be a language of oneness, not one language, not a computer tongue of homogenization, but a diverse, beautiful, badly made thing whose flimsiness and inefficiency force people to sing together to keep it well-spoken and sung into life over and over again, so that nobody forgets to remember. We need to find gorgeous, unsellable ritual words to reanimate, remeasure, rebuild, and replaster the ruined, depressed flatness left by the hollow failure of this mechanized, orphaned culture. For this, we need all peoples: our poets, our shamans, our dreamers, our youth, our elders, our women, our men, our ancestors, and our real old memories from before we were people. We live in a kind of dark age, craftily lit with synthetic light, so that no one can tell how dark it has really gotten. But our exiled spirits can tell. Deep in our bones resides an ancient, singing couple who just won’t give up making their beautiful, wild noise. The world won’t end if we can find them. Excerpted from “Epilogue: In the Flimsy Hut of the World,” from Secrets of the Talking Jaguar by Martín Prechtel, copyright © 1998 by Martín Prechtel. Used by permission of the author and Jeremy P. Tarcher, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
The Place of Initiation A WESTERN MAN, born in an American city, was called to a path of traditional healing. Although he had no knowledge of the people of this path before his calling, his heart compelled him. He spent many years learning from the elders, serving the sacred places of the tradition. Over time and with great sacrifice, he was initiated as a healer. He was granted the gift of listening, of being a portal for Divine’s healing. A man came to him for help with Lyme disease, which he had contracted as a child while playing in a particular place. The healer journeyed to the limitless realm where he asked the gods who guided his work how the man might be helped. In his dreaming the healer found that he needed to go to the place where the man had been stricken, to contact the spirit there. As he prepared to visit the place, the healer thought the man’s illness might be due to the spirit’s anger over the desecration of the land and the destruction of its plants, animals and people. He could find no guide to teach him the proper method of approach. He went with fear at what he might encounter. In the place the man had described, the healer found a playground and ball fields surrounding a small hill. On top of the hill, large rocks enclosed a level area perfect for ritual ceremony. There he sat and dreamed. In his dreaming, the healer saw that this was a site for the initiation of youth into manhood. The spirit of the place was a spirit of initiation. He saw that the park was less the work of the people who had taken the land, than it was the spirit of the land expressing its nature. Indeed, the spirit had manifested the ball fields and playground since sports are the closest thing to initiatory rites in American culture. He saw that the spirit of initiation gives each person what he needs to bring forth his gifts. So, for the man the disease was not a punishment for straying into a forbidden place, but rather the gift he needed to bring his gifts into the world. The man could not accept this medicine, since he believed that his disease was a curse on his life. He discontinued his work with the healer and went away to continue his suffering. —Jonathan Merritt
Issue 9 / SACRED FIRE / 41
Sacred Fire
Unintended Consequences THIS IS THE SLUG This is the caption about the image sitting right here to my direct right. There is plenty of space to say what is needed.
Whitney’s Camera A place where most every-
thing trundled sideways and pulled us through. A fairytale set in three parts. BY RUCKUS SAMSON IN WAYNE WANG’S FIRST FEATURE, “Chan Is Missing” (1982), two taxi drivers go looking for an absent friend in San Francisco’s Chinatown. As they piece together contradictory testimonials from those who knew the missing man, what emerges is almost a composite sketch of Asian-American identity. But the film, which still feels fresh and insightful after all these years, is a mystery without a solution. Its conclusion, unencumbered by the foggy rhetoric of identity politics, is that identity is hard to pin down, up for grabs, something you make up as you go. The director Wayne Wang has two new movies, one of which, “The Princess of Nebraska,” will be distributed online. The point applies equally to this versatile director’s unpredictable career. For more than 25 years Mr. Wang, now 59, has reinvented himself time and again with apparent ease, zigzagging between America and THE LIGHT, THE small CLIFFS,movies, THE BEND Asia, big and safe bets and wild IN THE RIVER, THE WINDS OF THE ANIMÁ CENTERand IN NEW MEXICO risks, insider outsider status. “The indus42 / SACRED FIRE / Issue 9
try can really box you in, so you try to break the patterns,” he said over lunch in Manhattan in July. “Chan Is Missing” and Mr. Wang’s second film, “Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart” (1985) established him as a central figure in two nascent movements: ’80s indie cinema and the Asian-American film scene. But he was eager to prove himself in the Hollywood idiom and followed up with the mainstream murder mystery “Slamdance” (1987). After his commercial breakthrough with “The Joy Luck Club” (1993), based on the Amy Tan best seller about two generations of Chinese women, he wanted to avoid being typecast as a China specialist or a director of weepies, and he collaborated with Paul Auster on “Smoke” (1995), a small, quiet drama set in a Brooklyn tobacco shop. Speak Pearly IN RECENT YEARS MR. WANG has seemed
content to play the role of studio journeyman,
turning out smoothly anonymous movies like “Maid in Manhattan” (2002), a Jennifer Lopez fable of upward mobility; “Because of Winn-Dixie” (2005), a dog-centric family flick; and “Last Holiday” (2006), a Queen Latifah vehicle adapted from a 1950s Ealing comedy. That phase of his career, he admits, went on longer than “It was hard to “Aplanned: working religion get off the treadmill.” Course-correcting yet might be one that binds again, Mr. Wang nowtogether returns to his first printhe many ciples, even as he tries out somethat new affect tricks, rhythms with two of his mostus intimate films, “A by creatingThoutechsand Years of Good Prayers”rituals— and “The Prinniques— that cess of Nebraska,” both based stories by the attempt to on synchronize Chinese-born author Li (like Mr. Wang, theYiyun three dances, the a Bay Area resident). “I felt I should go back to personal, the cultural, something smaller, more personal, somethingIf and the cosmic. about the Chinese-American community,” he the technique works, said. “Walking around now, you theChinatown reward is a new feel how the community has changed, which dimension of rhythm has to do withand the new immigrants and how time — the sacred.” —Mickey Hart China has changed.” In “A Thousand Years,”
BY JESSE WOLF HARDIN
JESSE WOLF HARDIN
in the canyons of the Southwest. To some it seems like an adversary and to others a friend... the breath of Earth, the wind. It blows most of the year, from a gentle and delightful breeze to furious gusts that threaten to down the weaker trees, lift the roof of our cabin, and bring even the most arrogant of us to our knees. Most often it is a soft nuzzling, just enough movement of air to let us know it’s there. There can be midmorning moments of absolute stillness, but even they seem somehow taut in anticipation of when the winds might begin again. It is the wind that blows caves into the tufa and limestone where no water can reach, that carries the scent of the unwary hunter to the flared nostrils of the deer, and that grabs the attention of even the most distracted—reminding them of the world as it is right now, right here. Wind that dries and cracks the ground, and wind that brings the rain. If a sapling is strong, it’s not so much from the tensile of its fibers as the periodic testing of the wind. Wind that tugs at our clothes like a teasing lover, or whips the sand into our eyes. Wind that at least temporarily blows the clutter of words from our burdened, racing minds. Even the most educated and sophisticated of us walk down this river canyon changed, refined not reduced, simplified into beings that hunger and love, that sense cold and heat, that notice the wind’s passage and sing without provocation. Into curious primates, kindred creatures to those furry and feathered ones that share with us this home. To even the most jaded and predisposed, all the canyon seems energized, alive and inspirited. Spirit in the myriad plants and animals, vibrating within volcanic rocks, glowing in the light of a setting sun. Spirit in taste and scent, struggle and fun. Spirit in the life giving river, and in the giddy intercourse of evolving life forms. Spirit in those small and plain things our society so often scorns. Spirit tracing its own movements, in graceful designs in weed lashed sand. Spirit empowering every helpful hand. Spirit in our daughter’s hopeful face. Spirit in the hearts and deeds of them who serve love, truth and place. Spirit singing out from pink and gold cliffs, in the voices of those russet ritualists who came before. And
spirit emboldening young cottonwoods and willows to do the “impossible”—extending determined roots into what is an always shifting shore. Spirit that seems to writhe like a river within, spirit as indomitable wind. Throughout history most cultures and religions have made some reference to wind as a manifestation of or metaphor for spirit. To the Greeks, Anima meant both “courage,” and wind or breath. In the Taoist tradition of Tibet and Nepal, passing through nature and life fully present, conscious and compassionate is called “lung-gom,” the way of the wind. The original meaning of the word “spirit” was “breath: a clear volume of energy that one can best feel when it moves, alerts, prods or pushes, seduces or agitates.” One way to think of spirituality then is as an act of tireless respiration, rhythmically and reciprocally taking in and giving back in equal willing measure. Students and seekers come to this canyon from all over, each riding astride the currents of their own personal winds of change. Whether they have a language for it or not, most people come here for more than to just spend time at a wild and beautiful retreat center. They come to get in deeper touch with that place within themselves that is still just as beautiful and alive, free and untamed, passionate and purposeful, to visit what usually proves to be a vast, uncharted and hope-filled savannah within. They are often at a crossroads in their lives looking for the necessary signs to help them decide, or on the edge of some precipice from which they must either fall or fly. Their journey begins not with the booking of a flight to New Mexico, the long drive from Albuquerque in a rented vehicle, or even the mile and a half walk to the refuge from where all cautious cars park. It begins with an awareness they cannot suppress, insights they’re unable to ignore, distraction and dishonor we can no longer tolerate and sometimes a calling that just won’t let us be. It is furthered with our grounding in authentic self, service and place. It involves conscious mystical connecIssue 9 / SACRED FIRE / 43
tion, interdependence and interpenetration; expanding empathy and heightened sensation; contact and contracts with the inspirited land, its creatures and plants, energies, entities and insistent inspiriteurs. Whatever one calls it, there would seem to be a dynamic power that courses through this planet and its wind-filled atmosphere—a vibrational unity, an underlying if in some respects incomprehensible pattern, an entity or energy of inclusion that animates, inspires, enlightens and fuels the best of what it means to be human “kind.” It is this sense of lasting integral beingness that we cleave to, whether envisioned as a male God or Yahweh, a female Goddess or Mother Earth, or a formless force for balance or good—and whether recognized by Christian or Jew, Buddhist or Pagan, reformed urban cynic, or man and woman of the woods. Awakening to the experience of being and belonging can be both transformative and blissful, a state of self-realization and intense mindfulness known in the East as “satori,” “samadhi” or “enlightenment.” But one of the things that nature and this canyon seem to make clear is that such states are not so much about transcending matter or flesh, as re-immersion in the depth and breadth of embodied reality—as experienced right here, right now. Deep seeing, deep tasting and smelling, deeply dreaming. Touching the universe through the world that is not “ours” but “us.” A world again and again made sacred through devotion, hands-on care, ceremony and prayer. The natives who maintained this bend in the river as a ceremonial site, no doubt consecrated their actions by pledging them to a greater good. By setting set aside a special time and place for ceremony, they invested both with even greater import than they might otherwise have enjoyed. Severance with ordinary reality served as the jumping off point for the priests or “medicine men,” triggered by feats of silence or purposeful fasts, spurred by long vigils or successive nights without sleep, propelled through ecstatic dance or chant. The deeper levels of reconnection were encouraged with the burning of sage or cedar smudge, with the presence of precious natural objects, or by our going outside to a place conducive to a special spiritual or magical purpose. Like their Zuni and Pueblo descendants, they may have worn totemic masks that obfuscated the mundane persona and spoke for the will and needs of other life forms. It is as true in therapy as in indigenous shamanic practice—to metamorphose into a new, more complete being there must always be a breaking with the habits of old, a shedding of the stiff and brittle exterior the way a snake sheds its skin. For this task many cultures have formalized the burying or burning of those items that represent previous constrictive ways of being, and the untying of knots that stand for our rigid innate resistance. They cleanse themselves of the echoes of earlier behavior and the negative vibrations that cling like persistent memories with a sweltering sweat lodge, or by washing with pure water from mountain rains or a consecrated spring or well. We enter into ritual relationship with the leaving of offerings, the gifting of tears, the attention paid to vested objects or a place of power, with the building and tending of an altar made up of those natural objects that have come to us with obvious or implied significance. With sacrifice, service and celebration. 44 / SACRED FIRE / Issue 9
The nature based spirituality of primal peoples tended for obvious and practical reasons to include a reverence for life, diversity and that quality we call wildness. This sensibility and intrinsic, organic ethos can still be found in a child, saddened by the sight of a butterfly bounced off a windshield onto the shoulder of some numbered road, and in an old woman finding reason to go on living in the slow opening of a windowbox flower. It’s voiced in the sermon-scream of falcons feeding on pigeons in downtown New York City, in the spontaneous living prayers of outlaw dandelions erupting in the cracks of every aging sidewalk, in a liturgy recorded in the spiraling reggae of the DNA helix and the twisting samba-line of ants ascending a gnarled cottonwood. It’s only commandments are “written in stone” in the many “rocks of ages,” a testament in limestone, granite and quartz, a demonstration of and demand for authenticity and substance, a demand on our hearts and souls with the substantial weight of commitment to place. And today, as in those long ago yesterdays, the rocks still seem to say, “Be real. Be here. Be beautiful... like this! Bear and express life’s suffering and challenge. Embody wholly your purpose, your gifts, your bliss.” We, even more than the early human tribes, can benefit from ceremonies that are vested with intent and focus, with empathetic engagement and glorious celebration. We are made richer and more complete with the ritual commemoration of birth, of first menstrual blood, first lover, harvest and feast, the success of every battle with the tyrants of ego, the removal of obstructions from within or without, the opportunity for forgiveness, the giving of important gifts, the acceptance of instruction or completion of assignment, the grieving over the death of friends and family and of entire other species, the marriage to each other and to the land. Our early ancestors believed and acted as if the world would end if ever they failed to properly carry out their rituals on time. And in essence it was true, for these ceremonies grounded the people in right relationship with the Earth, without which understanding, reciprocity and deference the people could not long survive. A people divorced from the ways of Nature risk perishing as a result of this estrangement, and then, for them at least, the world would have indeed come to an end. The first body of evidence indicating human ritual activity dates back to the proto-neolithic. Caves in Germany, Switzerland and Franconia
KIVA ROSE
feature the skulls and bones of giant cave bears stacked in a way that suggests they served as altars to the spirits of the great bruins. Another cave at Shanidar in the mountains of northern Persia hosted a chamber full of Neanderthal skeletons, the first indication of a system of care for the deceased. One large fellow was laid in a bed of flowers, their story of honoring retold in the ancient pollens still present in the soil. Even more amazing, further analysis indicated that the flowers were all from species known to have specific medicinal uses in the pharmacy of subsequent inhabitants! From that moment on if not before, ritual became a sharing of reverential responsibility. In time these came to include the protection of the land, the honoring of the other life forms, the giving of thanks and the celebration of existence in ceremony and ritual. These ancestral exchanges were synchronized with the ritual passage of the seasons, entrained with the movements of the sun, moon and stars, the arrival or departure of the plants and animals they sustained themselves on, the arrival of their children and their coming into manhood and womanhood, the elevation to elders and the passage of the aged into the cauldron of the afterlife. Their rituals were performed in the ideal environment for each, next to a cascading waterfall, on birthing grounds and burial grounds, in a cluster of boulders that align with the rising of the sun on the Equinox, in a grove of quaking aspen or beneath a certain ancient oak, in the spot where battles were raged or miracles witnessed, ground made hallowed by the spilling of blood or the ritual devotions of earlier peoples. That the Earth is alive, inspirited and even sentient, is one of the most ancient and universal of spiritual understandings. This “perennial philosophy” recognizes an interconnective fabric of consciousness in all things, and often associates the fecundasy and restorative powers of the planet with a “Mother Earth,” whose ritual image may be archetypal mother figures found in caves and digs throughout the Eurasian continent. The well known “Willendorf Goddess” or “Venus of Willendorf” was carved from bone some 32,000 years ago, and was long held to be the oldest verifiable human artifact. Similar sculpted images date back to the Cro-Magnon Aurignacian peoples, if not the Neanderthals and before. One made of quartzite was recently discovered in a 400,000-year-old deposit near the ancient city of Tan-Tan in Morocco, alongside stone tools attributed to Homo erectus. And a female figurine recently unearthed in the Golan Heights has been carbon dated at between 232,000 and 800,000 years old! This latter “Acheulian Goddess” with her milk laden breasts and venerated vulva, predates the so called Willendorf by an astounding quarter million years! This sets the date for the beginnings of human culture and what may be the earliest recognition or honoring of a “Sacred Mother” or divine feminine back to the Paleolithic, and thus the very roots of definably human experience. Depending on the tongue she is Mother Earth, Cybele, Mami Aruru, Nu Kwa or Terra. She is known as Assaya in Yoruba, Kunapipi to the Aborigine, the Hindu say Prithivi—and to the indigenous people of Peru she is Pachamama, from whose body we sprout and grow like limbs or appendages. To all cultures in touch with the natural world, any attempt or tendency towards separation would deny humanity the blood and nourishment of the Earth, and thereby insure our doom. It’s believed that our environmental crisis is a direct result of our neglecting or ignoring our connection and duties to her. To quote Homer, she is “the eldest of all and mother of all the Gods,” the lap and cauldron we tumble back into when we die, the flesh and the prayer from which we arise. It is in fact from the ancient Greeks that we get her name “Gaia,” (lately pronounced so as to rhyme with “maya”). In their version she is created
OUR WORLD’S CURRENT ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS IS A DIRECT RESULT OF OUR NEGLECTING OR IGNORING OUR CONNECTION AND DUTIES TO GAIA, TO MOTHER EARTH.
from light and love out of the encompassing chaos. Her first born was Ouranos, the heavens. Fertilized by the energies of Eros, she bears the many forms that spirit takes as well as the continents and oceans, the animals and plants... and us. Our complex human physiology begins with a single fertilized zygote cell ecstatically splitting into two, and then diversifying to fill all the roles of a functioning organic system. And just as the cells of our bodies are related, organized and cooperative, so do all living and so-called “nonliving” things in nature work together harmoniously for the manifestation, health, balance, diversity and fulfillment of the entire planet. Many times throughout history and in many different languages the medicine people, priests and priestesses, healers and visionaries have felt the need to speak about the necessity of honoring the Earth as ourselves, and the consequences of doing any less. They spoke to their people and in another way they speak to us now, explaining how we are relatives, organs and extensions of that vital whole that some now call Gaia—Gaia carrying in her bosom every potential, Gaia seeding the universe with the urge to live and the reverence for life. And we too may find in this ancient mother symbol not only the place of our birth but a cause for caring, a reason for acting, and a source of hope. Issue 9 / SACRED FIRE / 45
CHELLIS GLENDINNING & JESÚS SEPÚLVEDA TALK ACROSS CONTINENTS
Poet Jesús Sepúlveda and psychotherapist Chellis Glendinning sat down to talk. Well, sat down at keyboards on their respective continents: Sepúlveda in his native Chile, Glendinning from New Mexico, USA. Sepúlveda is known for his essay, The Garden of Peculiarities, published in Spanish and translated into English, French, Portuguese, and Italian. He is also the author of Hotel Marconi, Place of Origin, Pax Americana, Escrivania, and Correo negro. Glendinning is the author of six books, including My Name Is Chellis and I’m in Recovery from Western Civilization and Off the Map: An Expedition Deep into Empire and the Global Economy, and the bilingual folk opera De Un Lado Al Otro. The following conversation took place in the summer of 2008. JESÚS: Che, in your writing, why do you use
personal experience to explore ideas about the world? CHELLIS: You know how every indigenous peo-
ple has a sense of its place as the center of the world? Well, I think each person does too. And each person is the center of the world. Every46 / SACRED FIRE / Issue 9
one sees and feels and experiences and knows in a unique way. Everyone is both an isolated organism and at the same time the totality of creation. I value individual experience as reembodiment in the face of mass systems, as a bringing back of power and vitality to living beings. All my writing is about linking the per-
sonal with the political, the individual with the collective, the minute with the unfathomable. I launched my efforts during the feminist movement in the 1970s. The basic tenet behind our power was “The Personal Is Political”—and it’s a marvelously potent concept. In spiritual reality each of us is the world, and in the political realm as well, every social predicament affects and defines us. No experience or feeling or thought, then, is without connection to something greater. JESÚS: The emergence of different re-
alities, in the context of the uniform life of mass society, interests me a lot. I think we are defined and controlled by the process of socialization, inscribing in us an identity as well as a sensorial perception of the
JESÚS SEPÚLVEDA
sensual experience. CHELLIS: I know about shamanism in part because I have a client in my psychotherapy practice who is undergoing the strenuous training required to become a healer in a Latin American tradition; I’ve had the rare opportunity to walk alongside her through the process. JESÚS: My personal training started as a
FROM LEFT: ALEJANDRO LÓPEZ; MANCHE MAQUEHUE.
CHELLIS GLENDINNING
world, which must be homogenous to all individuals if the modern machine is to function. Everybody must play a role to be part of the gears. Either you play this role willingly or the role is imposed. But the consequence is the same: you become a standardized subject who has to accept the industrial illness that this society produces in your body as well as in your mind and spirit. Then you have anxiety, rootlessness, depression, anger, frustration, emptiness—alienation—as a result of the disconnection from personal experience. And by this I mean, direct experience—not the one filtered through cultural consumption. In civilization we are not connected with the cosmos, nature, community, or our-
selves. Instead we are separated and isolated so that we can endure being just a commercial unit that functions, consumes, and produces. But against this one-dimensional aspect of reality emerges the perception of multidimensional realities embedded in indigenous culture. It has to do with life here and now on the Earth and under the cosmos. This multi-versal dimension, which is inhabited by spirits and other invisible forms, is generally part of the daily reality of nonmodern peoples. The extrapolation of this sense into modern life is a political act. But it is also, as you know, a way toward healing. And shamanic practices can be crucial if an individual wants to cross the threshold of modern life into a more natural, direct, and
psychonaut, before I understood the sacred aspect of shamanism. I grew up in the metropolis of Santiago in a poor neighborhood under a military regime. I still remember the tremendous emotional impact that the first sweat lodge I attended had on me. I cried and felt a lightening of the burdens of my past: sadness, rancor, toxic thoughts. It unblocked what had petrified in me since I was a child. Later on, I started studying the topic more seriously, so I could teach it in a university setting in Oregon, USA, and Valdivia, Chile. But really, I changed my way of perceiving reality as a whole through experiencing the shamanic ritual of ayahuasca. Of course, civilization does not value experience as valid knowledge because its priorities are put on written and abstract conceptualizations. That creates an epistemological conflict between the PositivistRationalist world and the magical-shamanic perception of the universe, and it’s the reason I think it’s important to include personal experience in your writing. Experience is magical always. It keeps the sense of the amazing fresh. It nurtures life because the body is, in fact, the instrument of spells. Without experience, writing would become another entertainment or distraction.
I’ve lived my life in social change movements. Civil rights, anti-war/peace, feminist, ecology, human potential, indigenous rights, anti-nuclear, natural foods, holistic healing, anti-EMF/microwave, Chicano land rights, immigrant rights, anti-globalization. Each makes its own analysis of how the dominant society has failed. By the early-1990s, I’d been in about eight or nine movements and I had eight or nine distinct analyses. I finally grasped that civilization itself is dysfunctional. I was also meeting a great number of Native people. Two in particular—Larry Emerson of the Navajo and Jeannette Armstrong of the Okanagan—taught me about what we might call the “sociology” of indigenous life ways. I felt an urgent surge of desire to throw off the CHELLIS:
Issue 9 / SACRED FIRE / 47
limitations and heal the wounds perpetrated by empire: that’s how I thought up the notion of “Recovery from Western Civilization.” For me, the process of recovery began in a simple way: I walked out the door. I spent time in the natural world—nothing dramatic or complicated. I simply met the world with observation and intuition. I had by then lived in the desert badlands of New Mexico for four years. One August day I heard a bird’s call in the sky. Without forethought I heard myself say: “It’s too early for that bird to fly through here.
feelings of terror, but not know why. These disconnected fragments are like little dogs yapping at one’s heels, trying to re-form the whole experience so that they can, at long last, pass to where they belong: memory. You have flashbacks; you suffer from trauma-generated thinking disorders; you feel disempowered; you project; you act hyper-vigilant, reactive, obsessed, the works. The task is to round up the disparate elements—the narrative, the feeling, the sensual—and place them in the original experience. And then the emotional chaos loses its
erations: Paraguay and Guatemala in 1954; Brazil in 1964; Bolivia in 1971; Chile and Uruguay in 1973; Argentina in 1976. I can’t imagine how the Iraqi population will deal with the trauma deposited in their unconsciousness by the Desert Storm and the final battle. Or how the prisoners of Guantánamo will go ahead with life if someday they are released. I see trauma in the faces of people whenever I walk in the neighborhood where my parents live. Jorje Lagos Nilsson is a writer, journalist, and publisher in Chile. He es-
These disconnected fragments are like little dogs yapping at one’s heels, trying to re-form the whole experience so that they...can pass to where they belong: memory. That means it’ll snow three weeks early.” Then my rational mind caught me. “What?! How on earth did I know at what precise date that bird flew here? I had never paid attention to such a detail. I didn’t even know what kind of bird it was. And how on earth did I know that its early flight would mean an early winter?” A good answer might be found in the phrase “on earth.” I mean—embodied, infused with all the struggles and glories of being alive, part of this irreplaceable miracle. Come October, snow fell three weeks early. JESÚS: Being aware of the call of the birds
is a recovery from the original trauma. The healing power of reconnection is beyond rational understanding. But how can a society or a social group recover from the traumas provoked by civilization? How can the colonized recover from colonialism? How can survivors of torture overcome the pain? CHELLIS: A trauma is an event that is so over-
whelming it cannot be experienced. The senses, mind, and heart simply cannot take it in or invite it into normal memory. Instead, the various aspects of the experience lose their integrity and become like lost and rootless fragments in the psyche. The event may be known, but the feelings are driven into repression. The place where the trauma occurred may be conscious, but not the actual event. One may be overwhelmed by 48 / SACRED FIRE / Issue 9
tumultuous charge. One can then live in the present—really feel the touch of another, be spontaneous, hear the call of birds. It’s a travesty of history that so many people on the planet today have endured war, physical abuse, psychological violence, torture, terror, witness abuse, etc. It’s a further travesty that the global “culture” formulated by mega-economic and technological systems operates like a traumatized personality itself—with all the familiar fragmentation, hyper-vigilance, reactivity, projection, and thinking disorders of traumatic stress. It’s insistent on this. And, like some very damaged people, it’s insistent on perpetrating more trauma through more war, more oppression, more exploitation. Yet, curiously, the process of healing from this travesty may not be unlike what Larry Emerson describes as the way a shaman-intraining shatters, re-assembles, and, by the miracle of retrieval of the whole, gains the capacity to make visitation into realms that can be enlightening and healing. JESÚS: Yeah, I remember my hands sweat-
ing when crossing any checkpoint or even airport controls. Trauma is a kind of paranoia that accompanies you for a long time. And it’s unconscious. I still break down whenever I read news about the disappeared in Chile. And it has been so long. The coups d’etat instigated by the CIA in Latin American have traumatized gen-
caped by jumping over the wall of the Mexican embassy, while his wife and daughters made it to Mexico days later, not knowing if he was alive or not. Meanwhile, his nephews and niece—who were children at the time— were walking around the city with no direction or home, until someone took them to the Australian and Swedish embassies. They grew up in exile trying to make contact with their uncle. Their mother, Gloria Esther Lagos Nilsson, disappeared months after the coup in a torture center called Villa Grimaldi. She was three months pregnant. Families, couples, neighborhoods, entire countries are traumatized by the political machine. As Chilean poet Juan Luis Martínez said: “The nation-state is the only one that is allowed to sacrifice its children in the name of the political father.” And this is also true for the “Fourth World”—as Ward Churchill puts it—in the sense that indigenous peoples were sacrificed in the name of progress and civilization. However, when trauma becomes conscious, and you are aware of what has happened to you, the pain can be released, opening the possibilities for healing. Art can be crucial for healing. I started to write poetry at the age of 12 as a healing therapy, but also as a liberation process. Years ago I wrote a poem called “The Drum,” which was an exorcism of the pain I was dragging around from childhood. It’s a
long poem divided into seven stanzas. The second stanza says: Every morning mom turns the corner Dad works in the back The drill and the emery make me nervous The hair dryer and the floor polisher I like to huddle up under the blankets as if it were winter Now dad is sick There are helicopters and a curfew
Jesús, your young poem is so telling. I am speechless… My own experience is a mirror image: being tortured and raped by my own father. We’ve got the same experience but opposite, north and south, inside and out. I’m reminded of Frantz Fanon’s insight that whereas in the colony the violence takes place in public and so resides in consciousness, within the empire the violence is perpetrated secretly and so resides in repression. I am left wondering about parallels between healing from trauma and the challenge of re-assembly at the base of shamanistic training—as if to go on, all of us traumatized creatures must in some sense become like shamans. CHELLIS:
JESÚS: We must all become like shamans if
we want to survive the effects of industrial life. We all have shamanic capacities to connect with nature. We can all heal ourselves, and by doing this, we heal others. When I arrived in the US 13 years ago, I became a roommate of Manche Maquehue, a Mapuche friend who was on parole and on his personal path of recovery from ethnic discrimination, political persecution, and years in jail. During that time Manche was healing himself, but he also helped me to start healing myself. He introduced me to sacred common sense and to being more connected with my dreams and intuitions. He invited me to Native American ceremonies and told me stories that now make sense. He has now recovered and accepted his call to be a shaman in Brazil where he travels all over South America taking care of people. In contrast, disconnected people who perpetuate alienated physical and mental corrals are oblivious and disempowered. The last time (and I mean the last time) I visited a zoo, I saw a guy throwing a plastic bottle at a bear to wake him up so he could see the poor bear spacing out neurotically in his cage. I have seen people
throw dirty diapers through bus windows onto the freeway with no consciousness of their environment. The list could keep going on and on. In the city people perceive reality through screens: TV, soap operas, giant screens on the streets and in the metro. These are unhealthy behaviors of oblivious and sad people with no means or imagination to live a different life. Their senses are blocked. Their intuition has been numbed. Their connection with other living beings is almost non-existent. They are individualistic, pragmatic, self-centered, unhappy, neurotic, depressed, empty, stressed, anxious, and perfectly functional within the system. This is madness. In this world there is no consciousness of the movement of the cosmos, the ancestral memory of our body, the wisdom of the earth. The shaman can hear the message of the planet. That is the main difference between the sick modern existence and the magical shamanic life. The shaman can heal with plants because s/he hears what the plants have to say. The shaman knows when it is time to close the loop because s/he lives in cycles instead of being patterned by the dead-line of “progress.” The shaman perceives the direction of the wind, the energy that trees have, the moon cycles, the health of the soil, the language of animals, the aperture of dimensional portals—or electromagnetic fields. The shaman is in contact with the world of presences and apparitions who function as allies in the process of unveiling the illusions of the modern world. Connection is crucial because without it, we forget we are all interwoven. The clearest example is if we cut all the trees, which are living organisms, the soil dries, there is drought, erosion, loss of the watershed and habitat for other species, etc., and life becomes unsustainable—which means humans can no longer survive either. There is a consequence of what we do, how we live, what we eat and drink, the way we interact, what we say and think, and how we resonate. Shamans and earth peoples are more aware of this, and act accordingly. You know about this interdependence very well. Your essay on cell phone towers Hear Tell: Invisibility, Invasiveness, and the Cell Phone [2002] explains very clearly how those waves and Wi-Fi zones are screwing up our bodies and minds. In this context,
and in relation to climate change and global warming, I wonder how we can protect our communities and save the seeds for the next crop?
You speak waterfalls of truth. The spirit is our wellspring, still. The task is to remember. To re-member. But how? The question has been asked for millennia, ever since the first split of oppression. It’s a conundrum—for so many before us have given their lives to addressing this same predicament of power—and yet we still have the same problems. I am reminded of a book by Andrew Schmookler, The Parable of the Tribes. He says that as long as one group uses the force of violence against another, a predictable dynamic with predictable contradictions comes to be. The unfurling of traumatic stress in both oppressor and oppressed, for instance. The dilemma between reform, revolution, disobedience, or secession is another. I just heard another horror about the state of the planet. Unprecedented dust is stirred up on the plains of Mongolia due to overgrazing so more goats can produce more wool for the cashmere of a new line of clothes at Wal-Mart. The dust blows into Beijing where it becomes wrapped in layers upon layers of coal residues, petroleum, oxides, and chemicals from China’s burgeoning coal-fired plants, industries, and automobiles. People breathe the stuff and drop dead. People eat the meats and vegetables hanging in the markets—also covered in toxic dust—and drop dead. The lethal particles then blow across land and ocean to affect every living being in their global path. The Personal Is Political—eh? We Are All One? I wish I could propose a strategy that would save us, Jesús. Strategies encouraging local organic food sovereignty are right-on, of course. There will be no more food brought in from elsewhere—and besides, such strategies return us to our propensity to human-scale experience as guide, sustenance, and power. But I feel strongly that it is time now to ride the bucking bronco of the ancient prophesies. And if there is anything to dedicate ourselves to beyond healing our wounds and community building, it is to make sure that creation has a few beings who consciously stand in right relation to her. Which, to my mind, is a strategy of human-scale experience—with an emphasis on caring, listening, working hard, and staying in service to the deities. CHELLIS:
Issue 9 / SACRED FIRE / 49
Sacred POETRY Fire
Stumbling Through Paradise by Marvyn Morrison
Lightning Woman took me on a journey It started with faltering footsteps She said I was staggering and stumbling as if drunk Mang Kweewag, the Loon Woman came for me but turned me back I was not ready As I turned from the gateway to the deep water The bears came All black Except one One White Bear Out of Creation she came to give me the power of love and nurturing And then I walked straight Back to the shore they led me Protecting me Healing me Beneath the shimmering surface the Loon Woman waited This time I was ready and she sent my guide My guide, my dodem: the Loon Down into the waters we swam Out of Was-kig-ga-maw-sing Into Te-mee-ay-gaming To the deepest of the deep waters As I dove for the calming stillness I lost my head The racing mind was separated from the heart And headless, I started the long journey to restore my soul Wabi M’kwa the white bear helped me walk Mang the loon got me to the water From the waters to the north she came An elemental whirlwind of love and compassion Bringing back to me that part of my heart of hearts that she had not needed in her new place beyond the stars She kept it safe and nurtured it until this moment when I was ready to take it back And it came as a large and radiant diamond Born of carbon — that fundamental life essence And my head was back
Marvyn Morrison is a Teme-Augama Anishinabai (of the Deep Water People). He has left his career in engineering to return to his roots in Temagami and pursue his passion for writing and photography. 50 / SACRED FIRE / Issue 9
She poured that crystal purity into my gaping mouth and I swallowed it down To my heart Head to Heart The healing journey And I know that I am ready to fly free as she had wished And I know that she is flying free And I know that our love will always be But from this day forward I will journey free In this newfound separate togetherness
If anyone has seen you and I’m sure they have, if anyone has heard you, and I’m sure they have,
You
by Hydeh Aubon
then they’d also know that the notion of you is so ethereal, so changeable, so paradox and so unknown
You merged from behind a raspberry bush.
that they cannot trap you in man-made notions.
On a fragrant summer evening. You were a dot of light and I chose to see you golden.
No, you cannot be defined and no, your whispers have a different tune for different souls.
You have been my travel-mate since I’ve opened my eyes to life. You’ve traveled with me through mysteries I could never understand and it was not your job to explain anything; ever. Sometimes you travel from flower to flower and sometimes I lose sight of you.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY MACE FLEEGER
You become a colorful kite vanishing into the endless sky, a shooting star landing where I cannot reach you.
Believe me, I am trying to accept that I’ll never know you, never understand you. Sometimes you become a pouring of Jasmine petals as a blessing for a lone traveler who pauses to sigh. Maybe that is a blessing and maybe it is a blessing that I have made peace with not knowing you and sometimes, achingly, loving you.
You too sleep, maybe at the peak of the Himalayas, maybe on the wings of a tiny bird or maybe on the wavelets of a calm mysterious beautiful river. What you whisper in my ear cannot become a book what you breathe into my being cannot become a religion. Issue 9 / SACRED FIRE / 51
Sacred POETRY Fire
Amazon Grace by Art Campbell
What’s it mean to the motorist who rounds the block and greets our squawking corps of Amazons, sagging a telephone wire? What’s it mean to reel his car crank his window, yell at strangers Did you see them? Thirty parrots— right up there! What’s it mean to speed back with his gawking spouse... See? They weren’t a fantasy!... find us cooing eerie curlicues, slurring human sounds? What’s it mean to those who dream of missing clawed companions, backyard cages hatching seeds through open doors of hope?
ILLUSTRATIONS BY MACE FLEEGER
What’s it mean to crush rain forests, ship our chartreuse squadrons here to wheel above their asphalt streets in search of misted jungles, going, going, going... gone?
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Mockingbird by Art Campbell
He slices me from sleep with roller-ball sonatas, vaults from vane to chimney flinging rapiers of sound to pin his kingdom’s fringe, then squats and sings his scissors at the moon. He trills words of birds he’s never heard, lyrics learned by ancestors, sewn inside his brain. Close-beaked colleagues crouch on ragged branches, mutter that it’s midnight, not a foggy dawn. But he still unspools his notes of warning, mocking death, his rivals, human dreams. Historian of squandered species, shaman of lost ballads, he knows one day we’ll come to him and ask What was the bluebird’s song?
Issue 9 / SACRED FIRE / 53
Sacred FICTION Fire
By Esther White Duck Crawford
Grandmother had kept a treasured white deer hide package that she had made and cherished for many years. It was kept in a sacred place that only she had access to. She filled it with only her finest possessions. Of course, Grandmother’s possessions did not make sense to us as children since they included things like tobacco, shells, corn, stones and leaves. Grandmother seemed to know many secret things and we children would find her chuckling over her Grandmother secrets at the oddest times. Many times as I was growing up, Grandmother would pull the beautiful white deer hide package down from her sacred space and while hold54 / SACRED FIRE / Issue 9
ing it close to her heart, she would say, “This bundle will be offered to the Great Spirit in a very special way at a very special time. This bundle is a gift for the Spirits and always has been.” To me, this was one of Grandmother’s beautiful mysteries. When I was an adult, one morning Grandmother came for me. “Cedar Woman, make a bundle of your own. We will take our bundles to the desert to a place that only the old ones knew. There, we will both make our offerings.” Grandmother waited quietly with a strength of mind and purpose that I knew I was not to trifle with. Now it was time to follow. I did not have time to make an impressive bundle. I gathered my simple offerings and with a prayer to the Creator, I followed Grandmother and we began to
walk into the desert. As we began our journey, I wondered at Grandmother’s strength. She was old. I was much younger. Our provisions were on our backs. Yet, she walked with the same determination and strength as a much younger woman. We hunched over in the wind as the dry desert air blew our hair. Sand flicked at and pricked our faces. Bent over as I was, with the burden on my back, I could see tumbleweed dancing along our path as the winds blew it across the desert. Cactus plants stood like warriors as we walked toward the hills, toward a stone canyon that had walls on three sides. I followed my Grandmother to this place knowing that my mind was too busy and my mouth too quick to speak. I had learned that if I did not listen patiently in the stillness of our time together, the lessons Grand-
mother wished to teach me about Spirit would be hampered. At least, I consoled myself, I have learned that much wisdom. We covered our nose and mouths to keep the desert sand from swirling around our faces and hair. Our scarves and shawls blew behind us as we walked. All I could really see was my Grandmother’s back as she walked in a determined manner with the wind, the tumbleweeds, sand and cactus as companions. I followed silently. It was a long time walking, but only a short trail. We walked all day. As the desert sun waned and, finally, as night approached, we reached our destination. Three massive stone walls soared toward the sky and formed the entrance into the canyon. This was a sacred, and honored place. Issue 9 / SACRED FIRE / 55
The walls of the rock looked down on us as if three great gods were watching us with all of their ancient wisdom. No expression on their faces. But I could feel the thoughts echoing throughout the canyon. There was so much intelligence and life behind that lack of expression. As we entered this peninsula of stone, the wind stopped blowing as if it had finished its work. Our escorts of tumbleweed were gone. All was still. I was awed by the strength and power of the rock canyon. I knew instinctively that many of my people had come here to pray before the
Rock Walls. The Three-Sided Rock Canyon came from Mother Earth. The Rock People are a deep part of Mother Earth’s body. The Rock People were Guardians of the Canyon where my people had lived and died. Now, the Rock People guarded their spirits as holy men guard the entrance to a shrine. It was in this place that Mother Earth would hold, guide and protect us as Spirit spoke. Grandmother dropped the pack from her back and motioned for me to follow. I dropped my pack. Then she pulled out her sacred deer hide bundle. I pulled my meager bundle out, fearing that it was not as sacred as the bundle she had prayed for and guarded so carefully for many years. Grandmother motioned for me to follow her to the mouth of the threewalled canyon. We tilted our heads up, gazing in silence at the red stone wall beings. They stood there looking down at us, watching us intently. Their Stone faces were rough and craggy like the wrinkled sun-worn faces of the very old Grandfathers, fierce warrior eyes that had seen eons of time and many battles. Rain, sun, dryness, flood, death, life—wisdom etched in every crevice of the rock faces. They looked down and watched Grandmother and I without comment or expression. Ancient wisdom that knows all and sees all. And is all. Grandmother approached and, making her prayers, she carefully and softly placed her precious bundle at the foot of the Rock People spirits. They looked down at her slight, frail body as she offered her beloved bundle. She asked the Rock People to bless this offering and take it to the Creator as a humble gift. Grandmother gave as an offering to Mother Earth, Father Sun, the Creator, the precious bundle she had cherished for so long. She asked the Great Spirits in the Rock to take her offering. When she was finished, Grandmother motioned for me to step forward. I approached quietly. I was in awe of these mighty rock beings. There was power here I had not felt in any other place. This was sacred land. I stood before the Rock People and offered them my new bundle. It had not been prayed over for years as my Grandmother’s had been. It was not decorated as beautifully as Grandmother’s. It was through my own neglect and thoughtlessness that I had not made a more elaborate offering. I was ashamed. It was an ugly package. But, I explained, inside my bundle were my dreams, my hopes, my spirit, my body. I offered these gifts to the Creator to be used as the Creator saw fit. I asked that my people and the people of other nations be blessed with these gifts. I gave up my dreams for the dreams of Spirit. I gave my hopes for the hopes of Spirit. I gave up my Spirit to Spirit. My 56 / SACRED FIRE / Issue 9
frail mind and body were an inadequate gift to give to Tunkashila, but I offered them. These were humble gifts indeed. These were not money, homes, cars, jewels, and fine things. These things were simple, meager and, in the judgment of many people, not worth much. I had nothing else to give. A tear glistened in my eyes and rolled down my cheeks, as I expressed from my heart how sorrowful I felt at not being a great scholar or singer, or educator. I was not a great athlete, or orator. I was not accomplished at anything. I really had nothing to give. Just what I had placed in the simple bundle. I was ashamed. I felt empty. I had nothing else. I truly had nothing else. I kept placing this bundle in front of me. I placed it on the ground before the Rock Spirits, over and over again, as I repeated that I gave my heart, my spirit, my hopes, my dreams, my body, my soul to the Creator. I waited with my head bent low, eyes closed, with tears rolling down my cheeks. I began to feel a sense of remorse. There was that familiar feeling of not being good enough. I was not attractive enough. I was not the beautiful one. I was not the one who glistened in a crowd of people like a nugget of gold in water. I had made many mistakes. I had done many things to be ashamed of. I had hurt people callously. I had hurt my family in many ways. I feared that I was not good enough for the Creator. But, at that point, I determined that what I had been or who I was now did not matter. No matter how inconsequential or unimportant or ugly or fearful I felt, I would give the bundle of myself: my hopes, my dreams, my body, my spirit, my soul to the Creator. Time passed. I did not move. There was silence all around. Moments turned to hours. I stayed. Negative thoughts assailed me with their voices. You are unworthy. You are a fool. Leave now. You are a creature of low repute. You are a crazy one to come all this way to stand here in front of a rock wall. Can’t you see you are a crazy one? Your Grandmother deceives you. She is deluded. Take your bundle and run home. Go away. You are full of sin and errors. You must leave this sacred place. Go now. You don’t deserve to be here. I stayed in front of the Rock Wall people. I clung only to my determination. My will was the instrument that kept me standing. I had made a promise to the Creator, my Grandmother and myself. This time...this time...I would keep it, no matter what the consequences. I would stay. I would do whatever the Great Spirit decided that I should do. I became aware of my grandmother nudging my back with the tip of her wooden walking stick. The poking became more insistent. I slowly looked up to the left. There, coming into the canyon, was a large brown bear. He was walking slowly. He sniffed the ground in front of him to the left and then to the right. His huge paws seem to pound like thunder on the sandy soil each time he took a step. He panted and heaved his body about as he walked toward me, rutting in the manner of all bears. As he walked closer, he began to turn toward me. He looked at my face as he walked in my direction. Grandmother stayed far behind me. This was not her test. He walked closer and closer. His snout came nose to nose with my face. I could feel the breath on my face and smell his heavy coarse fur. The Bear roared. His roar went through my body. I felt the earth move
under my feet with a deep tremor. “You are small. You are pitiful. You are not worthy to give this bundle to the Creator. Who do you think you are? I am huge and powerful. Run and hide. This bundle you give is not powerful. There is nothing beautiful here. I will kill you now. There is no power in you or your bundle. Do you dare to defy my power by placing this bundle before the Rock Spirits?” His mind was keen and dangerous. He was sizing up my body, my mind and my spirit. He was like a razor poised to slice my soul. I shook my head. It didn’t matter whether I lived or died. I would give the bundle of myself to the Great Spirit. Power didn’t matter. I had to give this offering. I had given my word. There was no choice. The errors and weakness of the past faded behind me as I focused and placed my bundle before the Rock Spirits that guarded the Canyon. I gave what I had to give. I closed my eyes. I was ready to die. Seconds passed. I stood still. When, to my surprise, with my eyes closed I could still see the Bear looking deeply into my eyes. There were dancing northern lights in his eyes. I could see the Night sky filled with stars behind the Northern lights. I could see the pinks, blues, purples and greens dancing, and shifting in the deep depths of his night sky eyes. As I looked at the lights in his eyes, he roared with his huge head tilted back to the sky. His loud voice shook the canyon walls, echoing throughout the still night. The Bear raised himself up to his full and dangerous height and stood back on his two hind legs. He stood high above me. I could see the stars in the black night sky behind his head as he looked down. I looked up at him and I prepared to meet my death. It did not matter any longer. I had given the Creator my word. I had fulfilled the request that my Grandmother had made of me. I knew that if this is what the Spirits decreed, I would die with integrity. I had made many mistakes and had many faults. I had many gifts that I had not given, many selfish fears that had kept me from protecting others less strong than I. No matter how insignificant I would give myself to the Great Spirit. I gave thanks to the Creator and stood tall as I looked up at this fearsome predator. The Bear seemed to be satisfied with what he saw in my eyes. I stood still and waited. The Creator would guide me, no matter how meager my gift, no matter how foolish I felt. These did not matter. What mattered was following the Creator’s path. I bowed my head and waited. Suddenly a golden warm globe-shaped light appeared in the air. The Bear Spirit grasped this orb in his two front paws. As I stood there in front of him, the Bear Spirit reached down and placed the golden globe into my bundle. He stood back up on two legs, looked down at me and disappeared. My mind began to wake up and absorb what happened. As my body began to turn around, Grandmother poked me in the back again with her wooden walking stick. In this way, she reminded me to remain in the Spirit world. Stay in the stillness. I returned my attention to the Rock Spirit wall. As I said prayers and thanked the Creator for the visit from the Bear, I was absorbed in a mist. The mist filled the canyon. Into the canyon danced a Flute, a Light and the Bear. They danced together. Then words appeared on the canyon walls. Magical words etched in golden light that my human mind could not understand. The words burned and glowed as if they were an eternal message for all souls to see, absorb and understand. These were words without words. Words of the soul. The Flute danced with the Light as the words wrote themselves in light. I watched in silence and in awe. Joy filled my heart. Joy flowed all
around me. The Bear stood high on two legs again. He looked down and changed into a Medicine Man. His smile conveyed a warmth and love that kissed my heart. Then, as quickly as he changed into a Medicine Man, he disappeared into the mist as the Bear. I could sense my Grandmother’s love. Power and wisdom flowed from her to me, from my backbone to my head. Then my backbone became a cedar tree. I was no longer Cedar Woman. I became Cedar Tree Woman. I danced with the Light, the Flute, and the Bear high in the air in front of the golden words of Spirit. There was Light all around. A fire had been built while we danced. The Flute, the Light, the Bear, and me, Cedar Tree Woman, danced around the fire’s edge in a circle. Grandmother was on the edge of the circle. The fire’s warm golden light reflected on her leathery old skin. She watched with deep joy, deep happiness, love and contentment. The words without words were etched in her heart. The song of the Flute had lightened her soul. The strength of the Bear had soothed her pain. Her eyes glowed warm with peace, warmth and a sacred clear light that only comes from Spirit. Grandmother was at peace, at one with her soul within her body, as if she had been well fed with the fullness only Spirit can give. The flames of the fire reflected from her eyes to mine. ”Grandmother,” I said, “what was in your white deerskin bundle that you gave to the Spirit wall?” “Oh, my child” she said as she stroked the side of my face with her wrinkled, leathery palm, “Inside my bundle was a precious sacred thing indeed. It was a golden thing. It was the most beautiful spiritual thing I had to offer. I held this thing in my heart and prayed for it for many years. And loved it for many years. Inside my bundle, beloved one, I had placed you.”
Kernal
by Eve Waters
Peach devoured there is only this hard stone now cradled in a moment of wonder. It is so dense yet came not quite from nothing only some mysterious code unfathomable, true held once in bark and trunk and branch, potential unfolding through bud, blossom, fruit and beyond that originating who knows where?
Eve Waters is a member of the UK Sacred Fire Community and aims to bring a sense of connection through her writing Issue 9 / SACRED FIRE / 57
Tai Chi Among the Albatross When I lived in Kauai, I would sometimes go to a place called Crater Hill. There, the remaining wall of the first caldera that emerged in the chain of volcanoes that eventually became the Hawaiian Islands rises about eight hundred feet above the sea. Crater Hill is a bird sanctuary. Large populations of frigate birds, grey-black sea birds with long powerful wings and terrible prehistoric voices, tropicbirds, beautiful white birds with long delicate tail feathers, and albatross, who look and sound like giant gulls and are the gentlest of birds, nest in the cliff and along its flank. One morning I went there to do some Tai Chi on a flat place overlooking the sea, a spot where the albatross nest. Just before dawn, thirty or forty albatross, with wingspans as wide as nine feet, flew up around me.
58 / SACRED FIRE / Issue 9
And from the cliff a multitude of frigate birds and tropicbirds flew up. They hovered silently for several minutes as the sky brightened from purple to red to yellow. When the first finger of the sun reached up from the sea, all of them began calling. It was a great cacophony of song that continued until the sun emerged fully—a bright red ball from the womb of the sea. And then they all came down. Albatross, who are great flyers but cannot alight gracefully, tumbled across the ground and crashed into bushes around me. Unruffled, they shook their wings and walked back to their nests. Some gathered near me as I did Tai Chi. Ten feet away, a dozen albatross chatted, making plans for the day.
Humanity is at a crossroads... What will you choose?
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Issue 9 / SACRED FIRE / 59
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Issue 9 / SACRED FIRE / 61
For or the first time in North America, a two-year year training program with visionary Bradford Keeney Ph.D., one of the world’s foremost experts and practitioners of Shamanism, Shamanism is taking place. This two-year year, six weekend certificate
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program is a rare opportunity to work closely with Bradford and to learn humanity’s oldest way of transforming the human body, mind, heart and soul –‘Shaking Shaking Medicine.’ Medicine The aim of this work is to bring students into relationship with the creative guidance of spirit through the tools and techniques Bradford has developed through decades of
training with traditional healers, heale shamans and Medicine people of the world.
ted to individuals who work ns; therapists and o take their work with clients tists and individuals who found and personal ed.
62 / SACRED FIRE / Issue 9
Harmony...
it’s what you need Buy this NEW CD by Scott Sheerin & other products online at the Sacred Fire Community Store
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Sacred Fire Community Fire Circles Fire circles are at the heart of the Sacred Fire Community. They offer a space for people of all paths and traditions to come together in community around the fire and be touched by its transformative energy as they share their hearts and lives. Fire Circles are offered in North America, Australia, and Europe. For a full listing, visit www.sacredfirecommunity.org
Are you longing for a sense of community? A place to share your heart with others in a sacred space where you can feel safe and heard? We welcome you to join us at our monthly ďŹ re!
Community Fire Circle of Boiceville, NY Claire Franck at cfranckpsm@hvc.rr.com 845-657-2929 The The
Groton Westford
Massachusetts Massachusetts
ďŹ re circle invites you you invites to join join us us at at our our to monthly ďŹ res. ďŹ res. Come Come monthly share a a song, song, share a joke joke and and your your open open a heart. heart.
&OR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT 2AY 3TROUBLE AT 2AY 3TROUBLE GMAIL COM
THE FIRE CIRCLE OF SANTA MONICA INVITES YOU TO FIND WARMTH AND CONNECTION AROUND OUR MONTHLY FIRES.
Contact us: Alan Kerner Santa Monica, California kerners@aol.com 310-452-0658
Come Home to Your Heart THE COMMUNITY FIRE CIRCLE The Community Fire Circle CRUZ, C ALIFORNIA IN SANTA
in Olympia, Washington invites you to join us at our monthly fires.
invites you to join us at our monthly fires. Come be with the fire,
the ocean, and each other.
Come be with the fire
Forand more information, each other. contact:
For more imformation, Peter and Sharon Brown 831-252-5530 contact: p2b48@yahoo.com Peter and Sharon Brown 831-252-5530 p2b48@yahoo.com
THE BROOKFIELD MASSACHUSETTS FIRE CIRCLE invites you to join us to share the warmth at our monthly community fires. Contact us: Tim Simon and Gwen Broz at timgwen@charter.net or 508-867-9810 for dates and times of upcoming fire circles.
“Fire moves you to a different place�
Fire Circles CCommunity OMMUNITY F IRE C IRCLES of OF ENNESSEE, G EORGIA TTennessee, Georgia OUTH CCarolina AROLINA & SSouth and invite invite you you
Come,Join Join Us Us Come Aroundthe the Fire! Fire! Around •stir ancient connections with the natural world ancient connections with • stir •share our hearts and lives the natural world •deepen our spiritual connections • share our hearts and lives For more information, please contact: • deepen our spiritual connections Susan Skinner, Summertown Tennessee 931-964-2452 sueskin@bellsouth.net For more information, please contact: Steve Skinner, Summertown, Tennessee 931-964-2452 stvskin@bellsouth.net Sherry Boatright, Carrolton, Georgia 770-854-5551 sherryboat@bellsouth.net Sherry Boatright, Carrollton, Georgia 770-854-5551 sherryboat@bellsouth.net. Annie Annie King, King, Florence, Florence, South SouthCarolina Carolina 843-665-1340 annieking@sc.rr.com 843-665-1340 annieking@sc.rr.com Issue 9 / SACRED FIRE / 63
Sacred FINAL Fire FLICKER
Holiness BY CHRISM
Is to be the truth of who you are. No matter the culture or the society or the expectations that collect around you. The truth of your person is behind your eyes and behind your heart. It is seen in the actions you take and the decisions you make. It is seen in the eyes of your enemy and those of your loved ones. Your compassion, your humor, your respect, and the freedom you give to yourself and others in the experience of personal truth is the mirror of your soul. By snow and soil and air and fire we walk inside the crucible of our love. We are tested and teased and honored. We are loved and loathed. We come through these tests to a place of crossing. From a precipice of our development as organic beings, we look out across a chasm. And it is an endless gaping chasm. A dark void of unknown potential. And, as we have come through all of the previous tests and experiences and learning, here we stand at the brink of our existence, wondering if this is the end. And we discover that yes, this is the end. Here we await the guidance that comes as a crumbling of the earth beneath our feet and we cry out as we fall into that void of silent and ignorant rebirth. Innocent of our further horizons we land and we come to the realization that.... We are still here. In the body it is still us as we were but now we are different as well. We have ended and begun a new. We have a new neural system. We have new skills and we have expanded upon the original temple of our divine expression. We have lit the flame and it flows within us like water and freezes like a burning ice.
Chrism is another person like you, a consciousness clothed in flesh. Using a set of protocols entitled “the Safeties” he guides students in a loving and safe manner through the Kundalini process.
We are rocked from within with hurricanes and twisting winds that torque us as they please. But we have learned to surrender and we fly with these transient breaths of air and we begin to understand that we are indeed holy. That we are as all creation is and that is holy. Just as we are a template for the breath of God to grow new beings, we are in that station of grace upon grace—life upon and within life. We are one and we are many and we are one and we are many and.... We are inside of this divine expression. We taste it and savor it and bless it and love it and we are grateful for every hardship and pain and love and experience that has brought us to this rare place. Rejoice in the crumbling of your reality. It too is many and one and many and one. It, too, is being molded for a divine expression through you! So embrace your changes and your evolving state of grace and know that this is real! This is happening! Right now in you! May the blessings of God upon all creation reflect in the person you are and that you are becoming!
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Lei’ohu Ryder August 13-15, 2009
A Time To Grieve, A Time To Grow with Malidoma Somé
Tasnim Hermila Fernanadez of the Sufi Order International October 9-11, 2009
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