STARHAWK & SPIRITUAL ACTIVISM: YOU CAN’T SIT BACK!
FIRE TO TRANSFORM YOUR LIFE
APOCALYPSE
HOW?
page 28
Mysteries Of
AfricAn ShAmAniSm
page 22
dOn OSCAr MirO-QuESAdA
inside tHe pacHakuti Mesa
page 42
$7.95 u.s. / $9.75 Canada
Pele’s Dance Hawaiian Ceremony and the Sustainability
Movement page 32
I s s u e 15
The whole world is
Speaking
Be still a moment. Listen with your heart. There are beings all around you. Don’t be afraid to hear them.
the ancestors the elders the living spirits of nature With their guidance, we’ll thrive. Together.
Listen deeply
Be in conversation with the world
Gina Kelly/gina@ginakelly.com
SACRED FIRE
Contents 15
4
MASTHEAD
4
FLARES FROM OUR READERS
5
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
Are You Experienced? EDITOR’S NOTE
Who Are the Spiritually Influential? 7
9
CONTRIBUTORS PAGE
10
FLINT & TINDER 8
TRENDS / Slow Motions
Slow Planet Not Doing Much Slow that Train Slow Thinker No Time! No Peace! 12
SACRED ACTIVISM
Drumming the World Together 13
COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS
Road Scholars 14
14
HEALING ARTS
Flowers of the Heart—Sufi master musician Ustad Nizami 15
SACRED FIRES
The Light of the Sabbath
9
COLUMNS 16
RECONNECTING WITH THE EARTH
The One I Did Not Smash BY AMARIS KETCHAM
16
18
OUT OF THE FRYING PAN
Apocalypse How? BY LARRY MESSERMAN 20
LOGS FOR THE FIRE
Even the Divine Ones Cannot Fathom This BY ROBERT TINDALL
2 / Issue 15
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: DINAH PHILLIPS; SONOMAVALLEY.COM; COURTESY CARL HONORÉ; LAWRENCE COLLINS; WESLEY SNG; SLOW FOOD ARCHIVES.
6
FEATURES
28
Opening the Third Eye
Mysteries of African Shamanism
RANDII OLIVER
BY GERAL BLANCHARD
Disarmed by the graciousness of a Shona shaman deep in the heart of Zimbabwe, a psychotherapist experiences the spider web that interweaves all spirits. page 22.
32
We Are Sacred As the Earth
40
The Grieving Cairn
BY MARILYN BERTA
BY JESSE WOLF HARDIN
How can we live skillfully with the natural world? And with each other? Sacred Fire interviews the irrepressible author and earth activist Starhawk.
What’s a troublemaker? A juvenile delinquent or an emotional burden asking to be left behind?
From Survival to Reverence
42
The Academic and the Adept A Mother’s Tale
BY STEPHEN P. HUYLER
BY BONNIE GLASS-COFFIN
Ceremony, ritual dance, traditional story and deep introspection awaken power brokers of the sustainability movement to malama, the Hawai’ian worldview where everything matters.
How can a heart that beats with suffering be transformed? An anthropologist finds her path of wisdom with Peruvian shaman Don Oscar Miro-Quesada.
SACRED FIRE / 3
Sacred Fire Fire To Transform Your Life
SACRED FIRE
Flares from Our Readers
Issue Number Fifteen
sacredfiremagazine.com
THANK YOU! To Dave Gregoire and and all who have shared their time, talent and financial support to bring life to Sacred Fire and, of course, Grandfather Fire.
Letters We encourage readers to share their reactions to Sacred Fire by sending emails to editor@sacredfiremagazine.com or letters to 10720 NW Lost Park Dr., Portland, OR 97229. We reserve the right to edit submissions for length and clarity. Submissions We accept queries and unsolicited submissions of writing and illustration. See sacredfiremagazine.com for guidelines. Email editorial inquiries to submissions@sacredfiremagazine.com and illustration inquiries to artsubmissions@sacredfiremagazine.com. Advertising Inquiries For an ad sales media kit, visit sacredfiremagazine.com/the magazine/advertising sales or email advertising@sacredfiremagazine.com. Change of Address or Other Subscription Inquiries Email subscriptions@ sacredfiremagazine.com and include both your old and new address. Please allow 6 weeks for address change to take effect. Subscriptions In the United States: Four issues: $28, in Canada, $38, all other countries, $48 (all amounts in USD). Subscribe online at sacredfiremagazine.com Single Copy Sales Bookstore sales in the United States: $7.95, Canada $9.95. Order single copies and back issues online at sacredfiremagazine.com, $10 includes shipping within the U.S. Distribution Services Sacred Fire is available to newsstands in the U.S. and Canada through Ubiquity, Armadillo, Kent News, New Leaf, One Source, Ingram, Source Interlink and Disticor Direct. Sacred Fire has an electronic licensing relationship with EBSCO Publishing. Postmaster Please send address changes to: P.O. Box 7284, Santa Cruz, CA 95061-7284. Reproduction No part of this periodical may be reproduced without the written consent of the publisher. Any requests to reprint material appearing in Sacred Fire magazine must be made in writing and sent to publisher@sacredfiremagazine.com. PUBLISHED BY SACRED FIRE FOUNDATION, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization that supports initiatives that honor and sustain traditional wisdom and indigenous spiritual approaches, because these ancestral lifeways foster global balance and healing. Through its educational and charitable activities, the Foundation supports the sources of ancestral wisdom and brings this wisdom to the world.
SACRED FIRE FOUNDATION sacredfirefoundation.org P.O. Box 11014 Marina Del Rey, CA 90925
Board of Trustees CHAIRMAN DAVID WILEY TRUSTEES ALAN KERNER, ARTEMIA FABRE EXEC. DIR. DEVELOPMENT WILL BERLINER EXEC. DIR. PARTNERS AND GRANTS SOFIA ARROYO EXEC. DIR. COMMUNICATION AND EDUCATION SHARON BROWN SECRETARY VICTORIA REEVES The opinions expressed by Sacred Fire contributors are not necessarily those of Sacred Fire magazine, the Sacred Fire Foundation, the Sacred Fire Community, and/or their respective staffs.
4 / Issue 15
YOU HELP ME REMEMBER
Hi, I really love your magazine. Every day I look forward to reading these words of wisdom from ancestors I never knew. I have Lakota mixed with Irish blood since the late 1700s when the Hiltons came to America to farm. It wasn’t discussed much, but a family member has traced our family tree and every woman, all our grandmothers, were natives fleeing the onslaught of our “founding fathers.” I am deeply humbled and thankful to have a trace of their blood, whether I ever learn anything of this tribe or not. All of the community is somewhat lost here, but in this great isolation, these printed words make me remember a past I can only feel at the core of my being. Thank you, Jessica Hilton Gainesville, Florida
Write to Sacred Fire
One curiosity about working on Sacred Fire is that we receive few letters in response to the articles we present. Either this means that we are speaking so clearly and well that nothing more needs to be said, or that our offerings are so pallid that they don’t inspire a response. Or perhaps you, dear reader, feel that you haven’t been invited to express your opinions in these pages. If the last is true, let me make this clear: we would love to hear what you think! Are you moved by what you read—either infuriated or inspired? Has a story led you on a new path? Have we missed something crucial or gotten something wrong? What’s your perspective? How is the fire burning in your heart? Please send your letters to editor@sacredfiremagazine.com Jonathan Merritt
Correction
In Nina Simon’s contributor’s note (Issue 14) we incorrectly listed her husband Kenny Ausubel as a founder of Odwalla. He was on Odwalla’s Board of Directors
Sacred Fire is printed with soy ink on paper stock containing 10% post-consumer waste. This paper was produced at a mill with ISO 14001 environmental management system certification using wood fiber responsibly procured under the two largest global chain-of-custody certification standards.
MACE FLEEGER
PUBLISHER SHARON BROWN EDITOR-IN-CHIEF JONATHAN MERRITT CREATIVE DIRECTOR MACE FLEEGER MANAGING EDITOR KATHY DANCING HEART MARKETING DIRECTOR ROBIN RAINBOW GATE CONTRIBUTING EDITORS CHRIS SCHLAKE, MARILYN BERTA SUBMISSIONS MANAGER STEPHEN MICHAEL SCOTT EDITORIAL ADMINISTRATOR JAN LEENHOUTS-MARTIN COPY EDITORS & PROOFREADERS LYSSA FASSETT, ZAN JARVIS PHOTO EDITOR ROBIN RAINBOW GATE SUBSCRIPTION MANAGER KATHY MCKEOUGH SUBSCRIPTION COORDINATOR MARILYN BERTA AD SALES MANAGER LYN FELLING ADVERTISING ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE ROBIN RAINBOW GATE I.T. & WEB MASTER DAN CERNESE
SACRED FIRE
Publisher’s Note
Are You Experienced? By Sharon Brown
ROBERT LEON
If you’re a regular reader of Sacred Fire, you may have noticed that we begin each issue with a opening message from Sacred Fire Foundation, the charitable and educational nonprofit that publishes this magazine. While the photos illustrating these pages change, the message remains the same: we remind people that every aspect of the world is alive and always speaking to us. We encourage people to listen deeply because when we do, we begin a conversation with the otherthan-human beings of this earth. To move from an intellectual, philosophical understanding that “all the world is alive” towards actually knowing this truth in one’s bones requires some effort. This effort may, or may not, be difficult, but universally it requires a certain vulnerability and openness that can only be had through experience. Experience is the thread that weaves the story tapestry of this issue of Sacred Fire. As this issue took shape, we found that almost every article recounted a personal experience of transformation and communion with the mysterious but real realm of spirit, what Geral Blanchard calls super natural in his “Opening the Third Eye” (page 22). For Blanchard, his journey to Zimbabwe and time spent with a water spirits healer of the ngoma tradition, allowed him to “enter the spider web symbolic of the interwoven connectedness of all the Earth’s people and animals” in a life and career-changing way. For Bonnie Glass Coffin (“The Academic and the Adept” page 42), participating in ceremonies led by Peruvian don Oscar Miro-Quesada
precipitated a powerful experience of forgiveness and redemption. By surrendering preconceptions and attachments to loss, she received a teaching in the nature of creation and rebirth that transformed her view of self and the world. Like Blanchard and Coffin, author Stephen Huyler discovered “a world of deep inter-relativity” when he experienced the ceremonies and ritual dances of native Hawai’i (“From Survival to Reverence,” page 32). For Robert Tindall (“Even the Divine Ones Cannot Fathom This,” page 20), it was experiencing Native American Church teepee and sweat lodge ceremonies that revealed a new perspective of compassion and loving-kindness. Are you hungry to deepen your own connection with the sacredness alive in the world? Here’s a unique way to experience connection with divine: join the staff of Sacred Fire. We’re on a mission to make “the sacred” central to daily life; by definition our work together is ground zero for personal spiritual growth and transformation. Our staff includes
people who walk a variety of paths including initiated shamans, healers, wisdom path apprentices, and unaffiliated heart-listeners who follow spirit in their own way. (We do all share a love of fire!) We’re seeking people who feel called to bring the wisdom of heart and the indigenous worldview of spirit to the modern world. We need writers, editors, artists and designers who are eager to connect with the story tellers, history keepers and medicine people of the world. Sacred Fire is more than traditional knowledge. We are a magazine of sacred fires, a force for heat and cultural transformation that shines a brilliant light on the joys— and dangers—of what it means to be alive today. We’re seeking contributors who want to offer a fresh outlook on modern culture through the lens of the truth of nature’s “original instructions”—that’s our unique (and very necessary) voice in the world. Transforming the dominant culture to re-establish good relations with the spirits of the natural world is fundamental to restoring environmental and social balance. But it’s no small task! We also need marketers, event organizers and social media experts to help us communicate our message broadly. We need project managers and administrative support to serve our expanding distribution. And we need advertisers and donors to fuel our financial engines so we can continue to grow. Wondering what possibilities the Sacred Fire experience might open in your life? Email me at sbrown@ sacredfirefoundation.org.
SACRED FIRE / 5
SACRED FIRE
Who Are the Spiritually Influential? By Jonathan Merritt
The other day I came across a link to the Watkins Review: “The 100 Most Spiritually Influential People Alive” (tinyurl.com/6jpslo9). The three main criteria for compiling the list were: the person is alive; she or he has made a unique spiritual contribution on a global scale; and he or she has been frequently googled. Googling, then, is a form of digital voting. It illustrates how often someone is sought out. I have to say that I was disheartened when I saw the list. It does include a few mostly Buddhist and Vedic masters who hold ancient traditions, some serious thinkers who call into question our fundamental relationships with the world, some poets and activists deeply engaged with the dance of life. But there are also many “spiritually influential people” who offer quick-fix solutions, feel-good palliatives and ego-stroking (and sometimes crushing) practices that pretend that we, as humans, are in control of our fates, that what happens to us primarily depends on our wills. In this thinking wealth is a choice, poverty is a choice and disease comes on mainly as a result of bad attitudes. This is one of the most destructive myths of our culture—that we, as individuals, control the world. It arises out of the mind’s desire to protect us from danger and guard against loss. When this necessary protectiveness exists in the context of community, especially when “community” includes the plants and animals, the soil and water upon which we depend, it considers the interrelationship of everything. It asks the fundamental question,
6 / Issue 15
“How do we sustain our lives?” But in a culture in which only human concerns matter, in which individual desires are more important than the needs of community, the mind becomes pernicious. It gives rise to exploitive technologies that lay waste to the world. It nurtures the belief that we can and should have whatever we want as soon as we want it without regard to the consequences. Yet the consequences are undeniable, from the depletion of soil to the fouling of air and water, from the destruction of the ocean systems to the extinction of species. When spiritual practice becomes engaged with this belief, when Spirit is seen as a kind of Santa Claus just waiting to give us what we want—a three-car garage, a limitless bank account, maybe a yacht—our relationships with the living world are utterly ignored. Chanting the mantra “more and more and more,” we forget the needs and concerns of other beings. We act as if the consequences will be magically corrected. And though the way in which we live is obviously unsustainable, this practice envisions no alternative to a path of infinite consumption. For us at Sacred Fire the path forward lies in listening to the
wisdom of indigenous elders, those who carry the traditions of living in relationship with the world. The traditional wisdom keepers continually remind us that there are beings and energies—like weather—that are absolutely uncontrollable. Our task is to make relationship with those beings, not to bend them to our will but rather to work with them in mutually beneficial ways. We want to help people open up to the interconnectedness of the world, to crack the human-centric perspective that forgets our utter dependence on the greater and lesser beings. It is not surprising to see that there are no traditional indigenous wisdom keepers on the “Spiritually Influential” list. For them to be influential under the terms of the survey, they need to be famous. And fame is inimical to this work. It is slow work, requiring courage, strength and persistence. It requires the capacity for listening and continually opening the heart. It requires the sacrifice of personal desires to sustain the needs of the community, including the concerns of the living world. It cannot be done in a glaring spotlight. And, in nurturing and maintaining those relationships with life itself, those wisdom keepers are truly spiritually influential. The sense is that if we listen to those wisdom keepers and take their words to heart and open our hearts to the world, the world will open its magnificence to us again. If we use our capacities to respect and protect all beings, the generosity of those beings will sustain us providing everything we need to live well. Cars, computers, commodities from distant lands, these may become things of the past. Life may be difficult. We may have to work very hard. But when we renew our relationships with life, our sense of separateness will dissolve. Our loneliness will dissipate. We will discover again the joys of living in community and our spiritual connection to the living world.
JENNIFER MEANS
Editor’s Note
SACRED FIRE
Contributors
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: ELIZABETH MOORAT; SARAH MCMILLAN; GINA KELLY; DAVID THIERMANN; KIVA ROSE; STEPHEN HUYLER.
The Academic and the Adept: A Mother’s Tale page 42
Opening the Third Eye: Mysteries of African Shamanism page 22
Bonnie Glass-Coffin, PhD, a professor of anthropology at Utah State University and an endorsed teacher of the Pachakuti Mesa Tradition, has studied with Peruvian curanderos since 1982. She began her apprenticeship with Don Oscar Miro-Quesada in 2005, after experiencing the transformative power of his teaching. The author of The Gift of Life: Female Spirituality and Healing in Northern Peru, she currently lives in Logan, Utah, with her two sons. She can be reached at bridgerland.ayllu@gmail.com
GERAL BLANCHARD has traveled to several continents to observe indigenous medicine people healing patients in traditional ways. He is a licensed counselor who provides training and counseling services that blend ancient and modern healing methods. Headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa, he provides individual addiction and trauma recovery intensives in the mountains of Montana. geralblanchard@yahoo.com
From Survival to Reverence page 32
The Grieving Cairn page 40
We Are Sacred as the Earth page 28
Frontispiece page 1
STEPHEN HUYLER, cultural anthropologist, author, photographer and filmmaker, has spent forty years conducting research in India. His books, documentary films and museum exhibitions explore little known facets of this major world culture. In 1996 he was curator of a groundbreaking exhibition on Hinduism at the Smithsonian entitled Puja. It ran for four years and generated a traveling show and book entitled Meeting God: Elements of Hindu Devotion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). centerforhealthsc.com
JESSE WOLF HARDIN is a founder of Animá, an intense, natureinformed lifeways, shamanic and healing practice centered in a river canyon sanctuary, an ancient place of power. There, he hosts wilderness retreats and teaches Animá’s online nature awareness and herbal medicine courses. AnimaCenter.org The author of seven books and over 1200 articles, his writing has been praised by Gary Snyder, Ralph Metzner and Terry Tempest Williams. He is also co-producer of the Traditions in Western Herbalism Conference that will be held Sept 15-18, 2011 TraditionsInWesternHerbalism.org.
MARILYN BERTA has been a practitioner of the Healing Arts for thirty years. Her Wellness Practice at the Center for Health in Santa Cruz, CA includes Plant Spirit Medicine, Therapeutic Bodywork, Yoga as Medicine and Integrative Health Counseling. Working in the subscriptions department and doubling as a contributing editor, she is proud to be a staff member of Sacred Fire.
GINA KELLY is a photographer living in Minneapolis, Minnesota, though she has lived and worked in rural Kansas and Northern California as well. Whether working with black and white film or digital color, her favorite subjects are children and animals and other things both beautiful and extraordinary. Most who know her are tolerant and accepting of her ever-present camera, and for this she is very grateful. Her work can be seen at www.ginakelly.com
SACRED FIRE / 7
“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” LAO TZU
Slow Planet Aspiring to being “the global meeting place for all things Slow,” SlowPlanet (slowplanet.com) clarifies it’s take on that old-time rhythm: “Slow is not about doing everything at a snail’s pace; it’s about working, playing and living better by doing everything at the right speed.” Here, then, is a bustling (but well-syncopated) global commons arrayed with blogs, discussion forums, news stories and a marketplace. Bet you didn’t know you could get slow shaving cream. Norwegian organizational psychologist and management consultant Geir Berthelsen oversees the desk of the website along with the English slow advocate Carl Honoré. Berthelsen also presides over what he describes as the think-tank of the Slow Revolution. Called the World Institute of Slowness, its primary objective is “to advocate for and develop the slow philosophy.” With its digital video archive featuring Alan Watts on “Slow Living,” Krishnamurti on “Slow Advice,” Richard Feynman on “Slow Education” and Andy Goldsworthy on “Slow Art,” it’s a seminar circuit of Slow along with amusing tidbits. What exactly is a “deadline?” Surf the site and you’ll learn that it dates from the Civil War. Confederate captain Walter Bowie wrote, “On the inside of the stockade and twenty feet from it there is a dead-line established, over which no prisoner is allowed to go, day or night, under penalty of being shot.” No wonder we’re all a little stressed. theworldinstituteofslowness.com
TRENDS
Slow Motions
In an era addicted to speed, anxiety is at an all-time high. The antidote? Just go slow. Slow Movements around the globe.
8 / Issue 15
Slow Motions “An olive won’t ripen any quicker, however much you mess around with it.”
FIRST AMERICAN SLOW CITY, SONOMA, CA
TUSCAN PROVERB
OPPOSITE; ARILD DANIELSEN. THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM BOTTOM: LYNNETTE ROGERS; SONOMAVALLEY.COM; SLOW FOOD ARCHIVES.
Not Doing Much Lest the public begin to fret that these slowniks are just a bunch of elitist, high-minded killjoys, there is a Slow Movement for the rest of us—with a (sort of) think tank of its own. With over 4,000 members and a web site that sports a Slow Manifesto and tips on How to Slow Down there’s an organization that takes doing nothing seriously. Founded by “philoslowpher” Christopher Richards, the International Institute of Not Doing Much (IINDM) gained notoriety with its motto “Multitasking is a Moral Weakness.” Angry, informed letters came pouring in, accusing the Institute of a backhanded sexism—since women are allegedly wired for such complexity. IINDM responded to theses accusations, it reports, “with fierce resistance, RICHARDS and then lethargy.” Eventually the IINDM clarified that it was the enjoyment of multitasking that was “There are those morally reprehensible. who urge us to Readers moderately interspeed. We resist!” SLOW MANIFESTO (IINDM) ested in such topics can visit their website and glean practical wisdom from original treatises such as “Minimal Effort: An Aspiration of Mastery” and “Resistance is Futile: How Brenda, the Anti-muse, Can Distract.” It also includes demotivating stories and letters to the Institute. Viewers are eligible for membership, including the prestigious Order of Slow (OoS.) slowdownnow.org
SLOW FOOD
Slow That Train Thank Goddess for the Italians! In an era addicted to speed, Italy knows slow. Three of the pillars of the so-called Slow Movement are propped on Mediterranean soil. The Big Bang of Slow traces to 1986 when Italian food writer Carlo Petrini—told of McDonald’s plan to erect a second set of Golden Arches near the Spanish Steps of Rome—had a Big Mac attack the icon of fast food never expected. A staunch proponent of both small-scale production and the shameless enjoyment of good food and wine, Petrini opposed the American import and let all of his friends know. He was joined by colleagues from 15 countries and launched the international Slow Food Movement three years later. Today, over 100,000 members in 153 countries around the world champion the pleasures and politics of handcrafted local food—protesting globalization by savoring the local Chardonnay. slowfood.com
More than just a foodie fetish, however, the Slow buzz caught on fast in other sectors of Italian life. Inspired by Petrini’s direct challenge to factory frankenfood, mayors from four small nearby cities convened a gathering to resist “fast-lane homogenization.” They wanted to promote calmer and less polluted cityscapes by nurturing local cuisine and crafts and by re-establishing the traditional rhythms of community life. After agreeing to a set of principles to ensure an enhanced quality of life, they credentialed their municipalities as official “Slow Cities.” The Cittaslow movement was born. Cittaslow, acting as international accreditor, has certified over 140 cities around the world that comply with their 55-point platform for putting the brakes on urban living. Always quick on the slow down, Sonoma Valley in Northern California was the first area in the U.S. designated as Cittaslow. Nearby Sebastopol and Fairfax will soon follow suit. cittaslow.net Finally, with all that good food and wine, sidewalks flanked in thickening blossoms and the warm, salty breezes of the Adriatic flowing unsullied, someone had to be thinking about sex. That someone was Alberto Vitale, a Web marketing consultant based in Bra, Italy—the hometown of Slow Food. “If you look around the world, there is a growing desire to slow down,” he says. “The best place to start is in bed.” Vitale founded Italy’s official Slow Sex Movement and speaks to social clubs around the country on the virtues of “erotic deceleration.”
SACRED FIRE / 9
“I took a speed reading course. We read War and Peace. It’s about Russia.” WOODY ALLEN
Slow Thinker
HONORÉ
10 / Issue 15
When fast-tracking journalist Carl Honoré saw an ad for “One-Minute Bedtime Stories,” he first thought his prayers were being answered. That pesky nighttime ritual with his three-year-old son was swell, but it really ate away at his productivity. And then, the epiphany! In a flash he realized he was lost in a warped fantasy of efficiency, zipping swiftly through six or seven fairy tales, out the bedroom door and back to e-mails, bills, supper and the news in less than ten minutes. He had become a Time Scrooge, and his madness had followed him even into the sanctum of bedside storytime. His entire life, he realized, was an all-consuming raceagainst-the-clock. His rushaholic pace, however, was no personal anomaly. He saw, with senses tuned to tempo, the banality of the manic—the sheer absurdity of Speed Yoga in his hometown of London and of drive-thru funerals in the U.S.A. Compelled to confront this specter, he dove into the rise and fall of fast. The re-
sult was his international bestseller In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed (HarperCollins, 2004). Honoré’s book takes a thoughtful look at the history of haste—from the Western concept of “linear” time to the changing technology of clocks and the instrumental rationality of the Industrial Revolution. Along the way he charts the increasing counterinsurgency. People are exiting the fast lane in an amazing array of creative ways. Starting with Slow Food, Honoré discovers Slow Movements sweeping into urban design and planning, health and medicine, sex, parenting, work and leisure. His latest book Under Pressure: Rescuing Our Children from the Culture of HyperParenting (HarperCollins, 2009), brings Slow into the family. Witnessing our obsessions with giving kids the absolute “best” of everything (even if our 5-year-old needs a daily planner), it details as well the means to a more open-ended and balanced family life. carlhonore.com
Slow Motions No Time! No Peace!
OPPOSITE; CARL HONORÉ. THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM BOTTOM: CORRADO MARINELLI; ROLFE HORN; PAUL GIBBS.
The sense of “time poverty” is felt in every corner of the globe. Many observers concur with American physician Larry Dossey who claims that the real problem is not that we’re faced with another vanishing, nonrenewable resource. Instead, he says, we suffer from “time-sickness,” the obsessive belief “that time is getting away, that there isn’t enough of it, and that you must pedal faster and faster to keep up.” Call it a TTD, Temporal Thought Disorder. Around the world, however, groups are emerging to change our minds and heal our distorted perception of time.
USA The Long Now Foundation leads the way toward a new concept of time by setting the bar well beyond next quarter’s returns. Inspired to think beyond “faster/cheaper” towards “slower/better,” the group’s name comes from composer, producer and founding board member Brian Eno’s term for the cultural plasticity of the notion of “now.” To stretch that sense of “now” fellow board member Stewart Brand says, “Some sort of balancing corrective to [our] short-sightedness is needed, some mechanism or myth which encourages the long view and the taking of longterm responsibility.” The “Clock of the Long Now” is the Foundation’s initial “mechanism.” Its designers hope to change the way people think about time by embodying “deep time.” “It should be charismatic to visit,” says Brand, “interesting to think about, and famous enough to become iconic in the public discourse. Ideally, it would do for thinking about time what the photographs of Earth from space have done for thinking about the environment.” Slated for construction near Great Basin National Park in eastern Nevada, the titanic Timex hopes to be a 10,000-year timepiece requiring minimal intervention. The private organization is also involved in language preservation projects, and hosts a monthly series of lectures in San Francisco on long-termthinking—all available on podcast. longnow.org
“The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.” LILY TOMLIN
JAPAN The toll that hyperspeed takes on Japan’s citizens is now recognized in the language. The word “karoshi” means death by overwork. One case in particular has given thousands pause—quite literally. Valorized for his transcendent work ethic—known to log over 90 hours per week— high profile stockbroker Kanei Shuji worked even longer hours following a spike in public recognition during the stock market crash of 1989. About a year later he dropped dead of a heart attack—at the age of 26. To challenge the frenzied pace of Japanese life and chart a softer path, a small handful of students and workers formed “The Sloth Club.” Proclaiming that “slow is beautiful,” the group has grown exponentially, becoming the Slow face of environmentalism in Japan.
Founder and cultural anthropologist Keibo Oiwa recently tried to make sense of the nuclear crisis in his country, “This is a big lesson—for us to be humble, in front of a big, natural power; the power of nature.”
The Sloth Club, advocating a cultural shift from “more, faster, and tougher” to “less, slower, and non-violent,” sees in the actual 3-toed forest-dweller an exemplar for sustainable living. sloth.gr.jp/E-index.htm
WAGRAIN
AUSTRIA High in the Austrian Alps—not far from Slow’s ground zero—the Society for the Deceleration of Time gathers for an annual retreat in the sleepy little resort town of Wagrain. Animated by their embrace of “eigenzeit”—the sense that every living being, event, process or object has its own inherent pace—they publish scholarly papers and engage in light-hearted activism. In busy city centers they run pedestrian “speed traps” where stopwatch-timed, hasty walkers are “pulled over” and required to retrace their steps while steering a complicated tortoise marionette. Members say it’s a huge success, allowing them to broach the topic of speed in a low-key way. To date, none report being slugged or spat upon. members.aon.at/ro.neunteufel/decelera.htm
SACRED FIRE / 11
SACRED ACTIVISM
Drumming the World Together
Drumming is well known for its power to transform mere aggregates of people into something more cohesive and connected. Under the sway of rhythm, separate little islands of private experience give way to a kind of musical commons. Unity reigns, if only for the moment. Thanks to the drum, people can know their connections. They can experience being a part of a clan, a village, a people. Why not a planet? The World Drum Project has been answering that question since 2006. In northern Norway, Kyrre Gram Frank (White Cougar), a healer of Sami and Kven heritage, experienced a vision of a drum that was to be made and sent to travel from land to land, people to people, hand to hand. As it circulated around the world, it would be the center of diverse ceremonies to bind people together across borders, distance, race and religion in a shared reaffirmation of the spiritual connection between humans and the Earth. When later that day medicine man and drum maker Birger Mikkelsen was told of the vision, he immediately began work on the drum. Crafted in traditional Sami style, it is a hand-held instrument covered by a rich, soft reindeer hide and adorned with simple but sacred Sami images. Consecrated in a public ceremony in front of the Norwegian Parliament, the World Drum has been passing around the globe ever since. Held and played by diplomats and public officials, healers and elders, workers and children WORLDWIND TOUR: The World throughout Scandinavia, North AmeriDrum in Tuva, Arkansas and New Hampshire. ca, New Zealand, Ireland and the U.K., 12 / Issue 15
the Drum is hosted by local participants. They preside over public and private ceremonies of remembrance, gratitude and healing that transcend social status, political divisions and religious beliefs. Interested hosts simply contact the World Drum Project and agree to market the event and oversee getting the Drum to its next destination. After hosting the Drum in Eureka Springs, Arkasas, Oglala Lakota flute player John Two-Hawks was moved to reflect on its purpose. “The real message of the World Drum,” he says, “is that we are all the World Drum. The sacred heartbeat which sounds on the skin of this humble, powerful drum exists in the center of every being on the planet. It is in you, and it is in me. It is in every tree, every rock, every bird and every fish. The sacred heartbeat of the World Drum beats in us all, and it is up to each of us to stop long enough to quiet our minds so we can hear that still, small voice of the Spirit, which calls us back to the place of balance, respect, humility, honor, courage and wisdom.” With every new appearance of the World Drum, say its organizers, its heartbeat grows ever stronger. theworlddrum.com
COURTESY THE WORLDDRUM.COM
If a drum can turn individuals into a group, perhaps a World Drum can unite the globe.
The Común Tierra Project bus at Lake Atitlan, Guatemala, May 2011 making its two-year trip to Brazil
COMMUNITY
FROM TOP: RYAN LUCKEY; VANESSA BERENSTEIN; LETICIA RIGATTI.
Road Scholars With the world still blithely building eight-lane highways to hell it stands to reason that there must be at least a few examples of communities forging paths to a more promising future. But, like so much of contemporary life, these innovative developments in sustainability operate like silos—reaching impressive heights but acting largely in isolation. Inspired to open wide the doors to this accrued but hidden abundance, one intrepid couple, Leticia Rigatti and Ryan Luckey, founded the Común Tierra Project. Their goal is to distribute the surplus know-how gained in unknown places to a global public. Over the course of a two-year journey from Mexico to Brazil they are visiting a wide range of ecological projects to learn firsthand how everyday people are successfully regenerating Earth-connected living. Their mission is to conduct in-depth, experiential research into emerging models of sustainable living by immersing themselves as volunteers in eco-villages, farms and indigenous, spiritual and artistic communities,. Since hitting the road in May 2010, the couple will travel the length of Latin America the way few ever do. They cruise the continent in a motorhome outfitted with solar panels that generate their electrical energy needs. Recently, they converted the rig to run on propane— cutting their fuel bills and emissions in one move. After calculating their annual carbon footprint, they decided to plant 100 new trees— four times the recommended offset. And by composting all their organic wastes and using only biodegradable products, they’re “rolling green” the way the Merry Pranksters never did. “Sustainable living,” they say,
“is not simply a lifestyle choice, or even an ecological issue. While addressing our social and ecological challenges with practical solutions, we must also look into the psychological and spiritual roots of these challenges to collectively recreate a sustainable human culture from the ground up.”
With backgrounds in communications, music production, visual arts and writing, the dynamic Brazilian/American duo has created an online network for collecting and sharing unique ideas. It’s a kind of seed bank of foundational knowledge for designing and building sustainable communities. Blending video, audio, photos and text into a multimedia map of pioneering projects—in English, Spanish and Portuguese—their website invites viewers to follow their progress and ride shotgun along the way.
Visiting an organic garden in an intentional community called Teopantli Kalpulli, “sacred village” in Nahuatl, September 2010. LEFT: Ryan Luckey holding a tat soi from an organic garden in Tzajala, Chiapas ABOVE:
comuntierra.org
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How do you select music for your concerts? Before I do anything else, I make an ablution for me and my instruments. And I pray to my teacher and back through his teacher to the teacher before that and all the way back to God. Then my heart feels pure and everything’s connecting and everybody’s connected to God. I know and practice lots of different kinds of music every day. So when I get up in front of an audience, I read their faces like a book and see what kind of people they are, what their sicknesses are. So I play a particular scale. But it is based on the time of day also. If I play a morning scale in the evening, people will not be happy or may even feel sick. And there are other things. What is the weather? What are the circumstances? The majority of these people, what kind of thinking do they have? What are their personalities? When I look at all that, I can decide the compositions to play. Then I play and the audience’s hearts sing with me at that time. It makes a difference for them and for me and the other musicians. This music is for humans, but it is a message from the Divine. I am a tiny artist and my Lord, my God puts something there.
HEALING ARTS
Flowers of the Heart
Sufi master musician Ustad Nizami heals with melody. An interview with Zan Jarvis
Master Sufi musician Ustad Nizami calls on 600 years of musical history when he plays and sings the classical music of India on sitar, tablas, harmonium and other instruments. He is the 17th generation of a musical family line that started with a court musician who played for Moghul Emperor Akbar the Great. Nizami has played for presidents, kings and queens but says his music is for all human beings to share in the spirit of healing, love and peace. He will be conducting a workshop at the Blue Deer Center in the Catskill Mountains of New York in September with Sufi teacher and Plant Spirit Medicine practitioner Melissa Clare. 14 / Issue 15
What does it mean to you to play for God, to speak for God? If I am talking without greediness, if I am talking pure and with knowledge to everyone equally, I’m talking a God-given message that you make your peace in the world. You don’t kill. You don’t make enemies between humans. This is the main message of all religions. I don’t know of any religion in the world that doesn’t have that thought. You make peace and love and provide hospitality to poor people without food and medicine. If you are rich with knowledge, you provide knowledge. If you are rich with money, you provide money. If you are rich in food, you eat a little and provide food for other people. You know music? So you play good and nice music for humans.
Tell me about your individual healing sessions. Not too different from healing with an audience—I see what sickness they have, what kind of problem. Then I can play the right scale for them. If they need more, some people come to where I live. Sometimes they call on the cell phone and I play to them. It’s a little different to do that way, but people seem happy. I try to do as many as time allows. How did you learn to play healing music? I have seen it all my life. My father would play, my grandfather would play and people would be healed. Some people who are arrogant would give a challenge from their ego. But when the music would start, they would be healed completely, with tears in their eyes. Or sometimes it would be a child. I would see my grandfather make ablutions and tune his instrument. He would say, “Close your eyes and just feel while I play this music.” Then five minutes, thirty or forty minutes after that I saw the people were completely cured. Then my grandfather and father started teaching me the scales for healing. Now I have 44 years of my music life, my experiment. First my heart connects with my music and I feel cured. Then my audience feels cured. You are doing a workshop at the Blue Deer Center in September. Talk a little about what will go on there. People want to know about this healing music. People want to learn. This music is for humans. I teach them that if they sing a certain line, everyday they will feel different. I also describe Sufi poetry. I talk about the instrument, tempo, rhythm. It is like a medicine for humans that I teach. When people feel a headache, they say, “I need Ibuprofen. I need aspirin for my pain.” Well, I play a scale. Maybe Ibuprophen and aspirin have side effects, but my music has no side effects. It’s natural and organic. In our workshop, Melissa will lead meditations and practices and I will play a scale that goes with it. Maybe she will talk about the five kinds of magnetism, and I will play music that goes with each one.
For a complete listing of Ustad Nizami’s concerts and workshops, go to ustadnizami.com. For more information on the Blue Deer Center, go to bluedeer.org. Zan Jarvis is a Firekeeper-in-training in Fayetteville, Arkansas where she enjoys the hospitality of Mother Nature in America’s oldest mountains, the Ozarks.
LAWRENCE COLLINS
USTAD NIZAMI
RABBI PAULA MARCUS
SPIRITUAL FIRES
The Light of the Sabbath
DINAH PHILLIPS
Rabbi Paula Marcus was the cantor of Temple Beth El in Santa Cruz, California before she became ordained as one of its three rabbis. She continues to sing the cantorial part of the service. The cantor or the singer channels the vision. She leads the chanting of the prayers, the primal melody that connects and raises the spark of the congregation. This is an excerpt from a conversation with Marilyn Berta.
In Judaism, the woman is the tender of the Sabbath flame for the family. The lighting of the Sabbath candles is seen as a time of favor. Before the woman lights the match she is encouraged to open her heart, to ask for protection, comfort and love for herself and her family. This is an expanded moment of openness; in Hebrew it is called Et Ratzon, the gates are open. When I light the candles, I try to focus on what’s needed in that moment for my family and in the world. I set my intention in my heart before I light the match. When the flame is lit, I make three circles with my hands to bring the light into myself, place my hands over my eyes and say the blessing. When we light the candles, the flame is ascending, so our prayers are ascending. In some families the mother lights as many candles as there are children, each flame representing the soul of a child. After this ritual we do not ask for anything else during the Sabbath because it is a time of rest for us and for all of the Divine Energies. The end of the Sabbath is called Havdalah, separation, which also involves fire. We use spices, wine and a braided candle where the wicks are interwoven. If you’re in an observant home, you’ll light the candle from the flame of a pillar candle, a flame that’s burning all through the Sabbath without being extinguished. This practice represents the end of the Sabbath but also the bringing of the energy of the Sabbath into the week. We want to draw upon the blessings, the peace and the time of rest we have experienced and bring them forward into our week. When the Sabbath starts, we have separate can-
dles. By the end these candles are intertwined. So something changes. There is a transformation. This Havdalah ritual is done when we see the first three stars in the sky on Saturday evenings. You have to look up. You have to see where you are. And then you look into the eyes of the people you’re with, knowing that one of those present may be the one who is going to be responsible for bringing in the Messianic world, which is the time of perfect peace. That potential for bringing peace into the world is in each of us, and we see it reflected in each other’s eyes through the illumination of the Havdalah candle. SACRED FIRE / 15
COLUMNS RECONNECTING WITH THE EARTH
As I read the wind stilled, and I heard cockroaches swarming my compost pile outside, the rustling of their hard skeletons through my food waste. Between the quiet turning of pages I heard a closer scratching, a sound not unlike the breaking of a bleached and fragile eggshell. The immediate proximity of the sound diverted my gaze. On the opposite side of the room a cockroach had burrowed through Why war against roaches? One day they may inherit the earth. the wall, half of his body extruding. His front legs braced and pushed against the whitewash that lined the interior BY AMARIS KETCHAM of my adobe home. “Roach,” I exclaimed and cast a finger to the dark winSome instances must be considered stand-alone modow, “Be gone.” The roach flexed his antennae but did not retreat. He ments. Night settled with a slight chill. Albuquerque’s adobe had made such great progress tunneling through the combuildings still held heat like stone warmed by a doused fire. I pact sand, clay and straw wall, willed onward by the phersat upright in bed, reading by lamplight an article about a pluomone trace of others, following new and ancient trails. A spined front leg pressed the wall; he was pleading with me. tonium vault in southern New Mexico that would outlast our “Roach,” I said again, “you are not welcome here.” And I society. Scientists, historians and science fiction writers had again pointed outside to the dark night framed in the winassembled to determine a warning for the site, something dow. When the roach did not withdraw, I laid my article down and advanced. These roaches and I had been at war. that would convey meaning through five hundred generaIn other parts of my country—in the bluegrass fields, the tions of linguistic change, a symbol that could caution robotic alabaster cities and the amber waves of grain—these cockslaves or extraterrestrials or intelligent cockroaches. roaches were considered pests that lived with dirty citizens. I carried to New Mexico this disgust that the clean feel for the cockroach. The desert clime aided the roach, as the winters were often too mild to freeze them or force them back into hiding. And I lived in a poor neighborhood where cockroaches came up through the cracks in the sidewalks and where, once they successfully invaded a home, they could survive for almost two months on the glue on the back of a postal stamp. One Sunday I bombed them. I locked the doors and sealed the windows and released toxic chemical gasses. When I returned four hours later, I found no corpses on the carpeted battlefield. One defiant cockroach strolled along the ceiling. He made no errant steps but followed a straight path across the spackling. I imagined him triumphant, and I staged the next maneuver: boric acid. This chemical sounds dangerous—acid—but in reality, it’s about as dangerous as table salt to a large mammal. The tiny crystals are used to wash babies’ eyes, but my hope was that these same crystals would be eaten by the roaches and then shred the insects’ digestive systems. I poured out sixteen ounces of it, lined the baseboards, and waited. The roaches waded through the white powder, unfazed. A single roach would appear in the living room during daylight. I viewed this as a testament to their numbers. When one is backed by hundreds, one becomes braver. These brazen few I ushered into the next world with a swat of a shoe. I wrapped them in Kleenex shrouds and gave them inelegant burials in the toilet. They meandered through the living room, but they never crossed the kitchen floor because I left nothing in the kitchen for them to eat. But they weren’t in my house to eat anything. My Amaris Ketcham is house was just another part of their territory. And I wanted the house to myself. an honorary Kentucky Another day I decided to call in reinforcements. I phoned the exterminators. My house sat Colonel and the former behind another house, a mother-in-law’s quarters, which made it hard to find and impossible Managing Editor of Willow Springs. She contributes for pizza delivery. But when I returned home that evening, thousands of dead cockroaches covto thebarking.com ered my walkway. Their bodies glowed in the light of the setting sun. I felt like a victor—the flag and pictryp.com on a flung, the bugle trilled—as I edged along the fence to avoid stepping on the crackling mass of the weekly basis. 16 / Issue 15
SETH SCOTT
The One I Did Not Smash
OLIVER DODD
dead. Then I entered my house and saw no massacre. The exterminators had gassed the front house. The clean carpet brushed in vacuum lines was bare of roaches. There was only the faint trace of boric acid, remnant of my last tactical failure. No, my house was clean and sheltered cockroach refugees from the front house. I was still losing the war. And now, months later, I read of an imagined future where roaches—inheritors of our earth—might decipher human symbols on plutonium vaults. Now, one courageous roach greeted me with head and thorax sticking out of my wall. I approached in peace and with a mind to parlay. I knew this struggle would outlast us both. The roach strained against the wall, unable to free himself. He tilted his head in my direction, looking at me through his compound eye. Perhaps the horror of my kaleidoscopic figure prompted him to stiffen an antenna in my direction. The gesture seemed to say, “I am helpless; do not strike me. You have killed my kin without remorse, although we have done nothing more than trespass.” True, the cockroaches had a slim number of actual offenses. One might lose his footing while crossing my ceiling at night, and fall upon my bed to disturb my sleep, but really, who could blame him for a misstep in the dark while traveling upside-down? Their
only true fault was a matter of cultural perception. My upbringing had instilled a fervent dislike of these basic, ancient insects. I had been told that they spread disease and bacteria from the rotting food they consumed. But the fact was that I hadn’t caught even one common cold since cohabitating with them. I stood and studied the roach as I had never done when I performed their watery burial rites. Lodged in my stucco, he fought to free his hind legs. His brethren might labor in a similar manner in our radioactive vaults one day, wrestling through the symbol-scrawled walls. I decided to spare this roach. I would neither hurt nor help him. I left him to determine his own fate. I switched off the lamp and lay down. I could hear the cottonwoods make their chattering sounds, each relating a Homeric epic. I listened long, trying to discern part of a plot that takes a century to fully unfold. But unable to understand the language of the cottonwoods, I tempted sleep under their canopies that unfurled in the sodium city lights. Or, the sound could have been cockroaches gorging in the compost. Or, perhaps it was that one struggling cockroach, which I found next morning still stuck in the wall, crisp and dead. But for now I shed myself like cottonwoods in autumn. And in my mind I allowed those trees and those roaches to do the same. SACRED FIRE / 17
COLUMNS OUT OF THE FRYING PAN
Apocalypse How? The “End of the World” is certain—whether by cataclysm or collapse. Why build a bunker? BY LAWRENCE MESSERMAN
Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds. –J. Robert Oppenheimer Quoting the Bhagavad-Gita after witnessing the first nuclear explosion.
I want to die in my sleep like my grandfather... Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car. –Will Shriner
the local newspaper (which in true Central Oregon fashion has an on-going hunting and fishing column and has been known to advertise AK-47s for “sports shooters”) carries two items that catch my eye. The first is an obituary for José Argüelles, former art historian but better known as the father of the Harmonic Convergence of 1987. He was the first writer to popularize awareness of Mayan prophecy in books like The Mayan Factor: The Path Beyond Technology. The other item that catches my eye that morning is about the booming business in underground bunkers. Indeed, one of the companies making these bunkers figures that about 25% of its business is due to anxiety about 2012. End-of-the-world scenarios have certainly gained a foothold in the popular imagination and have even led to some wonderful business opportunities for those who have a certain kind of apocalyptic entrepreneurial spirit. This spirit includes the sixteen books (some 65 million sold) of the Left Behind series by authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, which vividly describe a Christian view of impending apocalypse. Now it may very well be that Argüelles distorted Mayan prophecy. One can’t help but wonder why he couldn’t stick around long enough to see if his predictions came true! And perhaps books about the Rapture will leave many of us feeling—well, left behind. But it is hard not to have at least a ON THE SAME DAY
little anxiety about the way the world is going when we read about global warming, diminishing top soil, depletion of drinkable water— not to mention massive social upheaval as well as recent disasters, such as March’s earthquake and tsunami in Japan or April’s clusters of tornadoes that swept the South. I might as well confirm your worst fears right here: The end is indeed coming! The bad news is that we all are going to die—no question about it. The good news is that this includes everyone. So we will be in good company (or bad, depending on your view of your fellow humans), and there is no need to worry about favoritism. Whether the end comes en masse on December 21, 2012 or via earthquake, tsunami, storms or just from some mundane cause such as sheer boredom, old age or choking on a chicken bone, we are all certainly in for this rather inconvenient turn of events. Given the general imbalance in our way of life, there is some justification for thinking that we will witness massive upheaval and loss in the years to come. So what to do? Can we build a bunker strong enough, stocking it with sufficient food, water and DVDs to tide us over until the apocalypse somehow blows over? If we begin panicking now, can we prepare ourselves sufficiently? There may be another way. Crazy Horse, the Lakota Sioux warrior who was one of the leaders at the Battle of Little Big Horn (more widely known as “Custer’s Last Stand”), rallied his men before battle by saying, “It is a good day to die.” This may seem macho, foolhardy, morbid or all of the above. But there is a kind of fierce joy in this statement. Whatever may come, whenever we are meant to die, it is good to live life to the fullest. This is the kind of warrior stance that is not about
I might as well confirm your worst fears right here: the end is indeed coming!
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violence so much as the courage to face our mortality—and every form of frailty which foreshadows it. Whether we are to live for only one more day or many years, whether we are to perish of every-day causes or in some kind of massive cataclysm, the prescription is the same: Life is precious. Honor its value. Live fully. Even if we concede that so-called Western Civilization is chugging merrily towards some kind of proverbial cliff, the bunker mentality may be precisely the wrong stance to adopt. Sure, some level of precaution is warranted. For example, if
Lawrence Messerman and his partner, Jessica De la O, are dancing on the edge and hosting a community fire together in Bend, OR. Larry is also a Huichol marakame, or initiated healer and ritual leader. He serves as one of the Executive Directors of the Sacred Fire Community.
Gathering around the fire is a powerful way to foster the kind of deep connections that sustain us in both good times and bad. As we sit by the fire, we begin to hear the deep wisdom of the world. Often we get a glimmer of challenges to come—whether they are mundane or of epic, apocalyptic proportions. We laugh, we cry and we share our stories. Ultimately, there is no better way to face death than to live life fully, gathering together to embrace the mystery of the amazing world in which we live. It is indeed a good day to die. Why not get together and celebrate?
DON O’BRIEN; ILLUSTRATION, MACE FLLEGER.
you live in an earthquake-prone area, it might be a good idea to give some thought to the possibility of The Big One. But no bunker is strong enough to stave off all of the possible calamities that can befall you. No amount of food and water stored away can guarantee your survival. Indeed, you might build a bunker or stock adequate provisions only to find that long before any disaster strikes, you end up going out one day to a nice restaurant with your family and choke to death on a chunk of meat. The gods seem to have this kind of odd sense of humor! The more we try to go it alone and insure our personal survival, the more we may cut ourselves off from the one thing that can help us most—building deep connections with each other and having a sense of community. This is not only more satisfying in the short term but is also the best insurance against any kind of calamity that may come your way in the future. We are social creatures, and we especially need each other in times of crisis.
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COLUMNS
Even the Divine Ones Cannot Fathom This Cultivating Maitri (loving kindness) by modeling parenting in the Native American Church BY ROBERT TINDALL
if this current generation of children is any different than those that came before, but I certainly know as a middle-aged practitioner of traditional medicine, the coming of our first child Maitreya was a far greater event than my arrival was for my parents in the 1960s. During my daughter’s first months our house seemed to be swimming in divine pheromones, and I joked that if we were in India, we’d be carrying my daughter about on an altar, offering incense, and singing to her throughout the day. All joking aside, our spiritual practice did quickly change as we became aware of how important the task was that we had been given: to not pass on the mechanical ways of being that caused such suffering in our families and our culture at large to our newly-arrived child. It came as a real delight, therefore, Robert Tindall is a writer, when I realized the good folks in the Naclassical guitarist and inveterate traveler whose tive American Church seriously loved work explores the crosstheir children. During my first teepee, in ing of frontiers into other cultures and states of conthe early morning hours, bleary eyed from sciousness. His new book, intense dreams and the long vigil at the Awakening our Indigenous sacred fire, I beheld a handful of big guys, Mind: Homer, Tolkien, and the Shamanic Roots of accompanied by a water drum, vigorously Western Literature, will be chanting: “Daddy loves his little one. She’s released in spring, 2012. He his morning star. Daddy loves his little one. lives with his family in San Francisco and occasionMay she live in joy with every day...” ally leads journeys into the Newly come into fatherhood myself, I Amazon rainforest. His blog was thoroughly charmed. Our own child is Roamingthemind.com. I DON’T KNOW
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had come into the world accompanied by the icaros (medicine songs) I had learned from my own maestro in the Amazonian tradition of medicine work, but precious little of my experience with shamanic song had been addressed to children and with such a strong communal embrace. To discover that the Native American Church sings many songs to bless “all the children of the world” during their ceremonies was satisfying indeed. There are unsuspected depths within these indigenous ways, and I soon found I had only glimpsed the surface of the Native Americans’ love for their little ones. In another ceremony I sat listening to a traditional tale told by a member of the Diné, or Navajo tribe, who had come to colead the work. He spoke of the sacred dimension in children, reminiscent of Christ’s teaching that children already live in the Kingdom of Heaven, and we must become as one of them to enter therein. Here’s the story, as I recall it: After the creation of human beings the gods realized they had to make a special dispensation for this new race of beings who appeared too helpless and maladapted to their environment to survive. As they sat in council weighing the matter, a little human baby played in the far corner of the hogan. Absorbed in their deliberations, they didn’t notice that a beam of light had entered through the door and traversed the length of the hogan to strike the wall just above the baby. Fascinated, the child reached up and, taking hold of the light beam, pulled himself up, leaning upon it with wobbly legs. Then a second beam cut through the interior, striking the wall just above the first. Seeing this, the baby threw his blanket over the first beam and clambered up it to reach it. Pulling himself on top of the second beam, he sat there gurgling contentedly. At that moment the divine ones looked up from their council and beheld the child balancing upon the light beams. Astonished and wide-eyed, they pointed at him and whispered among themselves, “Look at that child! How did he just do that?” “Those were the divine ones,” the storyteller concluded, “and even THEY couldn’t understand the wonderful capacity that little children have!” The truly miraculous power of children hit home at the conclusion of another practice within the church: the sweat lodge. It felt like a night of open-heart surgery for all within the darkened cavern. As the water poured with prayers for healing and guidance upon the red-hot stones, the steam and heat began sloughing off layers of anger and shame in each of us. My own tears came as I recalled my daughter’s bouts of anguish, her cries emerging from depths that felt impossible for
SUSANA BUSTOS
LOGS FOR THE FIRE
BRICE RICHARD
Children are magical around the world. Here a Burmese girl wears the traditional makeup called Thanaka.
me to reach and made me realize the primal rawness of this human inheritance. My hand, swollen and bandaged the evening of the sweat lodge, was still recovering from a fracture caused when I punched a wall in response to my daughter’s heart-rending cries a month earlier—an action I confessed to in the lodge as I finally started to come to terms with my selfdestructive actions. At the ceremony’s conclusion, I crawled out into the cool night air. Enveloped by the night, I made my way to the water hose, doused myself and drank deeply. I then rested, still in prayer, in front of the fire where the stones still radiated their force among the coals. Here I asked my daughter Maitreya’s forgiveness for all my shortcomings as a father, aware of how through fear I had grown callous, repeating the old saw, “We all survived these things and came out okay...” Then I understood the divine nature of my daughter, her effortless perfection unsurpassed even by the holy ones. I felt my face relax and open as I gazed into the sky, and a deep, ineluctable joy emerged. “If it is impossible to get impatient with my daughter,” I asked, “how can I get angry with my wife, whom I love as well?” All the complications of adult communication rolled over me—all the implicit and explicit demands and concessions of married life. Yet did not my wife share the same fundamental nature as my daughter? Do we not all equally share in the marvelous abundance of Maitreya, the one-thus-come? In fact, don’t all beings share in it? I asked the night sky. My anguish dissolved, and I found myself ranging with wild exuberance through the Buddhist practice of extending compassion to all beings, charging into the most distressed regions of my memory and discovering that there, too, lo and behold, Maitreya’s nature remained true! Fear is like a magician’s deception, the ancient texts tell us, for the nature of the cosmos is as pure as my daughter’s nature. What had been a laborious struggle before—to extend unlimited compassion—became as unfettered as an eagle’s soaring. I was freed by my daughter’s unsurpassable grace. I reflected with delicious irony on my child’s nickname—Maitri, or “loving kindness” in Sanskrit—which is the very act I had just been practicing. “All beings by nature are Maitreya,” I murmured like a mantra. It had taken my nine-month-old daughter to finally
open my eyes to what the sages had been trying to teach me for decades. We’ve had centuries of obscuring our children’s divine nature: the Augustinian Catholic doctrine of Original Sin, the privileging of language and reason over direct, primitive apprehension, the Freudian theory of polymorphous perversity in children, and the list goes on. Clearly, it struck me that it is time to start listening to our indigenous elders, to correct our distorted views and to start working with their medicines to restore clarity. This new generation offers us a seed, a giving forth of a “fresh shoot so fair.” This article originally appeared in a slightly different form on Reality Sandwich (realitysandwich.com).
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BY GER A L BLANCHARD
OPENING THE
An American psychotherapist abandons skepticism when a Shona water spirits initiation irrevocably alters his life path.
THIRD
EYE
mysteries of african shamanism
22 / Issue 15
P H O T O G R A P H BY MOLLY STURDEVANT
SACRED FIRE / 23
Sitting in the entry to a thatched hut with Mandaza Kandemwa, an African Shona healer, I was riveted to every word he spoke. Wearing a lion’s cape he looked regal, and his very proper Queen’s English added poignancy to his words. He said that gentle peace and a devotion to serve humanity are essential to the heart of a shaman; that a calm presence is a quiet force for healing and, in consoling others, the shaman also is consoled. With characteristic humility, Mandaza emphasized the role of ancestral spirits, midzimu, who guide the work of a shaman. He spoke of his youthful resistance to the spirit world despite repeated signs that came to him in dreams. Now a healer of the water spirits tradition, he explained that water spirits are carriers of peace. “We must be watchful for them,” he said, “and open to their appearance however they may come to us.” Suddenly, as if the moment was infused with the presence of divinity, two white doves flew into the entryway. One landed on Mandaza’s head, the other on his shoulder. Then, one of the doves fluttered over to me and landed on my head, as if imparting some divine blessing or a consecration. In 24 / Issue 15
the company of Mandaza it seemed like an ordinary occurrence. Mystery—the unknown and ineffable— can encourage unusual, even incredible experiences to arise. The numinous nature of traditional African rituals and ceremonies can facilitate the unfolding of amazingly rich events. What may appear to be a supernatural experience to most Western observers may more accurately be regarded as a super natural occurrence in the indigenous world. The word supernatural implies an irrational conception of causation. But what may appear miraculous to the rationally oriented can be quite commonplace to a shaman, an event that is infused with nature’s great balancing energy. The shaman’s perception of the healing powers of nature opens the door for the dramatic realignment of matter to a degree that may seem unimaginable and impossible, yet is demonstrably real. Mystery of this kind suggests that invisible and immeasurable spiritual forces may be at work. Mystery defies explanation but often is the portent of boundless healing to come. Whereas Western medical
and psychological practices must always be documented, explained, proven—or disproven—submitted to strict research procedures and restricted by limitations, shamanic medicine intuitively transports patients to new vistas where absolutely anything is possible and mystery is allowed to stand unchallenged. Shamans activate the patient’s inner healer that resides within each of us. The shaman’s task is to remove obstacles to healing, which all too often in our culture is a rigidly scientific mindset. Neither science nor ancient medicine knows the limitations of our body/mind’s self-correcting and journeying abilities. In fact, there may not be any. Not knowing, or what Buddhists refer to as the beginner’s mind, can be a powerful and magnificent healer. In 2005 I traveled with three other adven-
turers to the politically corrupt and impoverished nation of Zimbabwe. Our hope was to meet many shamans, but especially Mandaza Kandemwa, and learn about traditional healing practices. As a conventionally trained psychotherapist of 35 years, I always felt my work stopped far short of resembling a sacred service. I wanted to respond to people in a way that reflected more of my treasured values, such as generosity, compassion and service. Each member of our group had their own very strong personal interest in learning about shamanism. We weren’t just stereotypical Canadian and American tourists; all of us held reverent attitudes toward indigenous people who employed sacred healing methods. The harrowing van ride across Zimbabwe was marked by several ominous interruptions. Traveling by night we were often the only vehicle on the road. Our approaching headlights suggested to locals that we were either military personnel under the control of long-time dictator Robert Mugabe or tourists who were likely to have money with them. For years the average citizen has not been able to afford gasoline. If someone had petrol for travel purposes, they must have money aplenty. As we traveled, small campfires aside the
GERAL BLANCHARD
road would signal possible danger ahead. When we approached the flickering light, men wearing phony orange police vests would step onto the roadway and block our movement. They brandished weapons, and it was not clear if we were encountering soldiers or individuals posing as law enforcement officials who were hoping to extort money from us. Our guide and interpreter was a South African shaman of the Venda tribe. We repeatedly deferred to him when it came to determining the authenticity of the people standing before us and the dangers they represented. He would instinctively assess the situation as we approached the armed “officials” and either cajole them with his winning smile and humor or sternly rebuke them, much like a father lecturing an errant child. Sometimes he would ebb and flow from laughter to a completely uncompromising demeanor, gauging which technique would serve us best. He would also invoke his status as an elder shaman to appeal to the best values of the highwayman’s culture. Our guide eventually delivered us, exhausted but safe, to the home of Mandaza. There we were greeted by our host’s engaging smile and exuberant embraces. As a child of nine or ten Mandaza wandered from village to village, looking for the educational opportunities that he craved and any home that would shelter him. No matter what farm school he approached, people always offered him a bed and meals in exchange for field labor. From the example of his many hosts, Mandaza absorbed the virtues of generosity and graciousness, and that was how he greeted us. He moved outside his modest home and gave us the family beds while he slept on the ground with his wife Simakuhle. Mandaza Augustine Kandemwa is a water spirits healer (nyganga) of the ngoma tradition, a Bantu language group that is united around the sacredness of water. This healing style approaches illness from the understanding that each ailment of body or soul is uniquely shaded by their ancestry. Anthropologists refer to the water spirits tradition as a cult of affliction. In this tradition an initiate must learn how to enter
LEFT—THE SHONA FEMALE SHAMAN WHO ACCOMPANIED THE AUTHOR INTO THE POND DURING HIS INITIATION. BELOW—MANDAZA MIXING MEDICINE FOR THE AUTHOR’S INITIATION.
I felt the woman’s hand touching me in the cloudy water, and my entire body began convulsing. and navigate the spirit world and become a mediator with humans and their ancestors, even animal ancestors. In Mandaza’s case his father’s ancestral line and family totem is the lion. Most of Mandaza’s healing work is done in close proximity to water, sometimes under the spray of the magnificent Victoria Falls. He calls upon a community of spirits, the midzimu, who represent the oldest layer of the ancestral world. The midzimu are said to be the spirits closest to God, and God is regarded as a verb, reflecting the movement of Spirit in people. Beyond healing the presenting malady, one of Mandaza’s goals is to help the patient approach Spirit more hospitably so they may ultimately fashion a life of greater service to humanity. When Mandaza’s work with a patient concludes, it is abruptly punctuated by taking a bundle of leaves soaked in water and medicine and, with a sharp snap, splashing water on their face. Beside Mandaza’s home is a thatched hut
with the imposing head of a stuffed lion, its frozen gaze greeting all those who enter. Working with patients inside the hut, Mandaza wears his leopard and lion capes, symbols of the animal spirits that share their power with him. When Mandaza becomes trance-possessed by the spirits, he most frequently experiences shumba (the lion) roaring within him and may shape-shift, behaving like the lion. Behind the Kandemwa living quarters is a third structure, a very stark, concrete, one-room building with a small window that provides just enough dim light to witness the healings conducted inside during inclement weather. Outside its door is a small pond where healing rituals are conducted, as well as initiations into the water spirits healing tradition. The first night at Mandaza’s home found me sitting with him on a log under a bright, starlit African night. The nearby city of Bulawayo was dark as electricity was only sporadically available to ordinary SACRED FIRE / 25
Then, referring to me as a sea lion, he invited me to exit the pool and sit on the cool ground to warm myself. citizens. As we sat together Mandaza explained that a rural Shona shaman had arrived earlier that day, learning from a dream that visitors from afar were coming to his home. She walked many miles to greet us and to be with us. Being quite tired after her trek and content to meet us at daybreak, she immediately went to sleep on the ground nearby. Mandaza invited me to freely inquire into his culture’s healing ways. While I realized the fulfillment of a dream was before me, I was so exhausted I said little. It was enough to simply share space with this gentle man. The next morning I was summoned to the concrete healing chamber where an eerie sight greeted me. There, lying on the hard floor, was the visiting shaman, her eyes rolled back. She was hissing, growling, snarling and writhing about. Were it not for Mandaza’s ever-present and reassuring smile I would have been very frightened. He explained that she had 26 / Issue 15
momentarily shape-shifted into a leopard. I soon witnessed the shaman return to a more familiar human form, and she began talking to Mandaza in their native tongue which he interpreted. The shaman somehow knew things about me that I had not shared with anyone else. Through Mandaza she inquired about a silver ring missing from the second finger of my right hand. Typically, I wore a silver elk tooth ring on that finger, but planning for the trip to Africa I decided to leave all jewelry at home. The shaman feared it had been lost in my travels as she had never “seen” me without it. Next, she informed Mandaza that I had fathered one child and that my son lived many miles away. Too far, in fact, making him very sad; he needed my presence more often. That was all true. She further inquired into why I had chosen to have only one child, appearing to sense that I long desired a daughter as well. How was it that this mysterious Shona woman was able to
divine detailed information about me? Before I could ask that question, I was led outside. Mandaza said it was time for me to develop my “third eye.” I understood it to mean an additional way of seeing and experiencing the world. He sat on the ground and began preparing muti (medicine) for me. He asked me to open one hand and filled it with what he described as termite dung. Seeing the obvious look of revulsion on my face, Mandaza chose not to tell me what he was placing into my other hand. I was instructed to consume the muti. It seemed like forever before I choked it all down; it was as if I was eating dirt. Mandaza waited patiently until it all disappeared, carefully watching that none of it “accidentally” spilled to the ground. He stirred up a frothy mixture that was placed in dollops on my shoulders and chest. Next a floral mixture was poured over my entire body. To help me enter the dream world and open my third eye, I was encouraged to snort a black, tobaccolike substance up my nose. My instinctive trust for this man was so great that I went along with it all, which stood in dramatic contrast to my normal, questioning and skeptical nature. My university training had always emphasized critical thinking, relying on research and analysis before acting and an emphasis on scientific rigor. An intuitive side, however, had been awakening for several years. And in the company of Mandaza I felt now was the time to surrender to the process and let personal experience be my teacher. I was led to the rear of the compound where a water spirits ceremony was about to be performed. I agreed to participate in an initiation rite that would help forge my unique healing path and discover an authentic life of service to the world. Mandaza instructed me to change into hiking shorts and submerge myself in the pond. The visiting female shaman approached and stood next to me. I must admit I didn’t feel comfortable having her there, as she created uneasy emotions in me. Nervous apprehension, distrust and the feeling I lacked safety ran through me. Almost instantly I had to decide if I would approach
CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: GERAL BLANCHARD; COURTESY GERAL BLANCHARD; GERAL BLANCHARD.
FAR LEFT—MANDAZA WEARING HIS LEOPARD CAPE CONNECTING HIM TO HIS ANIMAL SPIRIT. ABOVE— THE AUTHOR IN MANDAZA’S HUT BLESSED BY THE WHITE DOVE. BELOW—RAMALIBA, THE PARTY’S VENDA GUIDE AND INTERPRETER
uncertainty and, literally, “take the plunge.” I said nothing, but upon noting an approving look from Mandaza, I immediately entered the water. She followed me. As soon as I submerged myself, I felt the woman’s hand touching me in the cloudy water, and my entire body began convulsing. It was like a cold shiver that a person commonly feels after emerging from warm water and stepping into a cool breeze. I couldn’t hold my breath so I quickly surfaced. “Is this a spirit possession?” I asked myself. When I felt the cool winter air blowing over me, I was warmed, and the shaking immediately subsided. Everything was in reverse. I looked for Mandaza and was greeted by one of his reassuring smiles as he motioned for me to submerge myself again. The same scenario repeated itself four times. Then, referring to me as a sea lion, he invited me to exit the pool and sit on the cool ground to warm myself. I closed my eyes to reflect on what had transpired so far. At once I noticed images of African animals coming into focus. I always saw them in side profile with just one eye visible. Every hair of each animal came into sharp focus and then would fade away. Immediately another animal would visit me, first hazy and then extremely crisp, clear and colorful. Bewildering as this was, it further surprised me to see what appeared to be very subtle smiles on some of the animal’s faces. My logical mind told me that animals don’t actually smile, but a slight simper was repeatedly evident. Testing my contact with reality, I opened my eyes. There I was, near Mandaza, surrounded by my traveling companions, alert to time and place. With my training in psychology this awareness comforted me. I said to myself, “I’ve got to check this out again.” So I closed my eyes once more, only to have the slide show resume, animals coming into focus as if to greet me, and then fading away to allow another visitor to come forward. Before the experience had completely subsided, I was led away to a sweat lodge ceremony, Shona-style. There we were joined by another visitor, a shaman who
sat on his haunches, having shape-shifted into the form and demeanor of a lion. He sat to my immediate left. A common bowl filled with a mysterious liquid was passed around counterclockwise and each person inside the lodge took a sip from it. When the bowl came to the lion, he took a large gulp, turned to me, and spat the fluid on my face. I glanced around in the darkness for any hint from Mandaza as to what was happening. No response. The lion took another gulp and spewed it onto me. The fluid ran down my face and onto my chest. Somehow I knew better than to object or to wipe it away. As with the other mysterious experiences of that morning, there never seemed to be adequate time to reflect on what had just happened and discern the meaning of it. We were always moving from one ritual to another with only minimal conversation. I was left to wonder if perhaps I was hallucinating when the animals appeared to me, if my convulsions were indicative of a shamanic-like conversion experience, if the shaman’s expectorant was a sign of disrespect. After the whirlwind day of rituals had passed, one of the shamans had a dream that an ill man in Swaziland needed our immediate help. Indigenous African healers believe dreams are to be acted on with immediacy. So we jumped into our van and headed out of the country to find the elderly man of the dream, though we had no address. Mysteriously we found him with little difficulty, and, as it turned out, he was waiting for us. He immediately consumed the medicine one of the shamans had prepared en route. His recovery from a lung problem was evident within two days. More questions arose, but I chose to sit quietly with the experiences. Only after the passage of many months, and additional personal experiences in the company of other shamans, was I able to formulate personal conclusions. I had, in fact, discovered my third eye. Muti helped me discover this new way of seeing. It opened me up to a parallel reality and taught me I could go there on my own. But it would no longer be a necessary
aid, should I desire to cross that threshold again. The convulsions, I concluded, were positive signs of a deep conversion experience unfolding. And the spitting; it was a prayerful blessing, delivered in the traditional Shona manner. As I prepared this article I went back to journal notes from that time period. I found a forgotten passage: “As humans in this spirit world, our task, with the help of ritual, is to enter the spider web symbolic of the interwoven connectedness of all the Earth’s people and animals. Together, the more creatures we include, the stronger the healing network of humanity becomes.” After weeks in Africa and meeting many shamans of different traditions, I returned to the counseling agency I directed in Wyoming. However, I was dramatically transformed by all that my senses, including my third eye, had absorbed. Spiritual matters now loomed larger than before, and the substantial profits from the counseling agency seemed so unimportant, almost obscene. While I hesitate to use the word enlightened to describe my reaction to this and other shamanic explorations, at minimum I was awakened to a deeper purpose and meaning for my life. I don’t feel a need to explain—either to myself or anyone else—how these events effected my transformation. As a psychotherapist that would have been my normal inclination before traveling to Africa. Today I simply want to live the mystery and allow my heart to be enriched by awe and appreciation. In 2008 I closed the doors of the agency and moved to another state where I am supported in conducting a healing practice that is more influenced by mystery, spirit, intuition and the sacred. There will be no turning back. The rewards of following an indigenously influenced path have left me feeling as though I no longer work in the counseling profession, attempting to cure disorders. Now I facilitate healing in a “ministry” driven first and foremost by love, an agape form of love that serves everyone with compassion, while seeking nothing in return. It is in giving that I receive, bountifully. SACRED FIRE / 27
WE ARE
SACRED AS THE EARTH
Environmentalism, Spirituality, Community & Commitment
By Marilyn Berta
An interview with author, eco-feminist & earth activist Starhawk.
The web of Starhawk’s life is woven with integrity and passionate
PHOTOS OPPOSITE PAGE Top: Starhawk singing at a spiral dance she conducted at the Harmony Festival in Santa Rosa, California, June 14, 2009 Lower Left: Starhawk relaxing during a workshop at the Wild Women Expeditions Camp, June, 2007 near Sudbury Ontario, Canada Lower Right: The dome with students was part of the Earth Activist Training Workshop run by Starhawk in Sonoma County, California, 2004.
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commitment: she is an author, teacher, environmental activist, permaculture designer, pagan and witch. Her life-long activism springs from an alternative vision of power—not the power of domination, but the creative and cooperative power within each of us to live in interdependence with the natural world, to see ourselves as much a part of nature as “an old growth redwood, a mosquito or a wildflower.” Starhawk is the author of eleven books, including The Spiral Dance, The Fifth Sacred Thing, Webs of Power and, most recently, an award-winning children’s book The Last Wild Witch (Mother Tongue Ink Publishing, 2009). She has also written numerous essays, articles and communiqués from the front lines of Earth-centered activism. We met at PantheaCon: the Ancient Ways Festival in San Jose, California where Starhawk was an honored speaker. As we find a table in the bustling hotel cafe amidst witches in velvet capes, masked hooded priests and pagan revelers, we agree that a hill top or a meadow might be more fitting for this yearly Pagan gathering. I can’t help but notice that Starhawk and I, dressed in jeans and sweaters, look a bit ordinary. But Starhawk is anything but ordinary.
SACRED FIRE / 29
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: SOFREE ROOTS; KEN GENETTI; SOFREE ROOTS.
MB | You have been an activist since high school, and I wonder what has kept your fire burning all these years? STARHAWK | My activism is very much tied to my spirituality, my belief that the Earth is sacred and that we’re part of the Earth. If you see the Earth as alive, as a living being that we’re all part of, you can’t just sit back and watch idiots destroy her. If you see human beings as embodiments of the sacred, as embodiments of the divine, you can’t sit back and let people be oppressed, hurt or made to suffer. You try to do something to change those conditions. Activism can be draining, tiring and hard, but when it comes from a spiritual base it gives you something deeper to fall back on when you need a sense of hope, a sense of renewal or sense of faith. You have firm ground underneath your feet that you can stand on and a community of other people who share the same values, so you can support one another, help one another; those are the kinds of things that keep my fire burning. The title of your blog “Dirt Worship” speaks to the melding of spirituality and environmentalism. Why is it important for us to bring spiritual practice to environmentalism? Are recycling, catching rain and bicycling not enough? To me, the guiding principles of environmentalism or permaculture, which is ecological design, are the same as my guiding spiritual principles: that everything is interconnected, that everything is alive and communicating and that if we honor all of that, if we listen to what the natural world is telling us, if we observe what is being shown to us, then we have the power to work in harmony with nature instead of against nature. We have tremendously powerful allies that we can call upon in the natural world. They’re often the simplest and humblest of beings, things like bacteria, fungi and worms. But they’re very, very powerful. They can break down toxins, create new forms of life, create fertility; they can create healing and health. They can also create disease and damage if they’re disrespected. 30 / Issue 15
In The Earth Path you write about humans as part of the natural world, not separate from and above nature, or worse than and dangerous to nature. How do these ideas of better than or less than keep us from living skillfully with the natural world? Modern culture has a worldview that human beings are very separate from nature. Either we’re above nature and we have the divine right to try to dominate and control, exploit and use it. Or, we have the environmentalists who have the idea that we’re a blight on the planet, that nature would be better off without us. So the logical corollary to environmentalism is the best thing you can do for the world is die. That’s not a very hopeful philosophy! It’s also not an attitude you can organize or motivate people around. Ultimately, I believe it to be as false as the other view. Either one of those perspectives is going to keep us split and separate and not very effective at working with nature. We’re not separate from nature; we’re part of nature, and if we’re messing nature up, it’s because we’re not being very skillful at what we’re doing or at understanding why we’re here. Many people live their lives so separate from nature that it’s become merely a concept that is very foreign, very scary to them. I teach organic gardening and permaculture with at-risk youth in public housing in San Francisco, and every day we’re in the garden I’ll say something like, “Today we’re going to pick some lettuce to eat,” and a kid will say, “We ain’t gonna eat some shit that grows in the dirt!” I don’t know whether to laugh or cry! There’s such a deep disconnect to understanding where our food comes from, where life comes from. It’s taken me weeks and weeks to encourage them to put their hands in the soil without gloves, to feel the earth. Human beings actually have a role to play in the natural world that we need to fulfill. We have awareness and the ability to use tools, to do amazing things that the earth really needs us to do, to clean up the mess we’ve made and
restore the balance. The Earth will survive without us one way or another no matter how badly we mess up. Ultimately the bacteria will sort it all out. But I don’t particularly want the world to go back to it’s bacterial roots and have to start all over. I believe that the earth is calling to us and that we are here to serve the planet as a whole by our ability to appreciate, to give gratitude and praise, to become ecstatic with wonder for the earth. In your books you teach that the earth is always speaking to us, and to connect with her is to connect with the deepest parts of ourselves. How can we begin the process of deepening our own personal connections with the natural world? In The Earth Path I talk about developing a spiritual practice that’s based on taking time to be in the natural world. That might be just as simple as stepping outside into your backyard or stopping while you’re waiting for the bus and actually observing the trees. To be there, to open your eyes, open your ears, look around you, listen and observe what’s going on in the physical world. When you get to the point where you can actually observe what’s going on, without getting caught up in your own story or inner dialogue, this can open up your understanding on deeper and more subtle levels where the natural world will speak to you. Can you name one simple action that we can take today to begin living a life that fosters the spiritual and ecological health of our people and our planet? I don’t know if there is just one simple action. I’d say foremost is developing your own spiritual connection to the Earth, taking some time every day is a good place to start. Also start to connect with other people to figure out how you can support one another, how you can share resources and be active. This is a tremendously exciting moment in time! We need to be able and willing to take action together if we’re going to make some changes in the
TEEN WORKER WITH STARHAWK AT THE ADAM ROGERS COMMUNITY GARDEN THINKS THIS CALLA LILY WOULD MAKE A GOOD CUP. SAN FRANCISCO, APRIL 2011
I’ll say,“Today
we’re going to pick some lettuce to eat,”& a kid
will say,“We
STARHAWK
larger systems that have such an immense impact on the Earth. You’ve been living communally for a long time. While I imagine it is empowering, doesn’t it provide its own set of challenges? Absolutely! Back in the ‘80s we were doing a lot of direct action around nuclear power, nuclear weapons, and military intervention. We’d have these intense bonding experiences organizing, facing the cops and being in jail. We’d wonder why we felt so closely connected in jail, but that feeling was not carrying over into the rest of our lives. So a number of us began to live communally. It can be difficult living collectively with the complexity of interrelationships. Think back to when you were a teenager bringing your date home for your parents’ approval, and then imagine doing that for the rest of your life with five housemates! In our house we have gone to focusing on tolerance and affection rather than trying to perfect every interrelationship according to our highest political values. We’ve learned to settle for being just who we are. After a certain point in life, once you’re past 40 or 50, if you expect you are going to perfect somebody else’s character, you probably haven’t learned very much. I also live on forty acres in Sonoma, my
refuge from communal living! I have a little cabin in the woods in an area where a lot of people “went back to the land” in the ’70s and ‘80s. Many of the households started as communes and rapidly devolved. Most people will tell you that when they tried to live communally it didn’t work. But when they made their own separate parcels and connected together as a looser kind of community, they felt a lot more balance come into their lives. We work cooperatively to live in harmony with the earth and teach permaculture design courses. We also organize around local issues and personal events in people’s lives. One of our neighbors is growing into senility, and we have gotten together to say, “What are we going to do for this person? We can’t leave her in a situation that’s dangerous for her. She doesn’t have any family; we need to step in.” When one of my neighbor’s daughters got married, she asked to have the ceremony on the land. The neighbors tended the meadow and planted flowers in the spring so she would be able to have flowers for her summer wedding. In the kind of community where relationships are founded on that kind of support, even though there may be looser ties, we still know we’re in it together. You can have those kinds of relationships with people that you couldn’t, for a moment,
ain’t gonna eat some shit that grows in the dirt!” live with. And when you are living with someone, their politics or their shining worth as a deeply compassionate spirit might not matter nearly as much as the level of cleanliness they keep on a day-today basis! What’s on the horizon for you? My friend Donna Read and I have just completed a documentary, Permaculture: The Growing Edge, which has interviews with wonderful people and stories of how they’re successfully putting their values to work. It’s very hopeful and very beautiful. We made this film because so many groups begin with wonderful intentions and then get stalled, become involved in conflicts that they can’t resolve. We believe that clear ideas about power, structure and process might help groups avoid this pitfall. By the fall I will be working on making my book The Fifth Sacred Thing into a film. It will be a tremendous project! For continuing inspiration see Starhawk’s website starhawk.org and her blog, “Dirt Worship” starhawksblog.org.
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SACRED FIRE / 33
PH
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to Pe th e i m le’s nt ov c er em ald -r e e el nt ra at f , l iv ac ea ity e d of a ch ers ev al in er le th yt ng e hi e— su ng e st m ain BY . PH S br a OT TE ac bil O V G E RA N e m ity PH H BY UY al CH LE am R R
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le
Ca l
a,
FR O M TO S UR RE V VE IV A RE L N CE
Dancers from the Hilo based Halau o Kekuhi
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CHRISTOPHER McLEOD
MALAMA
met in the freezing rain outside Reception at 5:20 a.m. that first morning in the darkness, rubbing the sleep from our eyes, zipping up windbreakers, attempting to stay warm. When about twenty five of us had assembled, we formed a long straggling line, determined to walk in meditative silence to the crater’s edge. Most of us had just met one another the night before when we arrived here in the Kilauea Military Camp close to the caldera, or volcanic crater, of one of the largest active volcanoes on earth. Sixty-four people had come from all the corners of North America and some from the South Seas to form the Beyond Sustainability Initiative, a serious endeavor to move beyond the stumbling blocks that confront the global sustainability movement. After our introductory session we had been invited by our native Hawai’ian hosts to join them the next morning for sunrise prayers overlooking the smoke of Pele’s fires. Following a short night’s jetlagged sleep, only the diehards made it. Most of us were woefully unprepared for the cold, wet, windy weather at this camp four thousand feet above sea level. After all, we were spending a week in Hawai’i! How cold could it be? In the overcast dusk we each stopped briefly to warm our hands and faces in the blowing hot sulfuric vapors rising from one of the many volcanic steam pits. When we reached the caldera edge, we shivered staring out to the horizon, waiting for the sun to appear above the nearby ridge. Slowly the crater, three miles across, began to lighten. We began our meditation in quiet, each person present to his or her own spirituality. But soon Luana Palapala Busby-Neff, a Hawai’ian wise woman who is also a professional in cross-cultural dialogue, pulled an enormous conch from her bag. Explaining that this shell had been passed down through her family for generations, she handed it to Dr. Avegalio Failautusi Tusi, a Samoan spiritual leader and Executive Director of the Pacific Asian Management Institute, who passed it on to his son, Talavu, a tall, tattooed nineteen-year-old. As Talavu blew the conch, Luana led the rest of us in singing invocations to the Volcanic Fire Goddess Pele, to the spirits of the four directions and to the rising sun. Through the beating rain and howling wind, Luana’s strong voice intoned: E ala e kahiki ku Awaken you lands beyond the eastern horizons! E ala e kahiki moe Awaken you lands beyond the western horizons! E ala eke ‘apapa nu ‘u Awaken you Leaders! E ala e ke ‘apapa lani Awaken you of Noble births! Eia ka ho ‘ala nou e ka lani la e This is a wake up call to you! O na ‘ala ‘apapae e ku lalani ala I luna For the long clouds signal a momentous occasion! E ala ‘oe Awaken!
THERE WAS NO VISIBLE SUNRISE that morning. Luana
commented that, according to Hawai’ian tradition, everything has meaning. We should consider the portent of this wet, cloudy morning. Cold and soaked, yet deeply moved by the majesty of the ceremony, we began our fifteen-minute hike back to breakfast. Our first day had begun. WE HAD BEEN INVITED from our many different regions
and professions to congregate and form the Beyond Sustainability Initiative. We were businessmen, financiers, educators, philanthropists, activists, environmentalists, NGO representatives, artists, filmmakers, dancers and musicians. Among us were a number of internationallyrecognized leaders of organizations dedicated to global sustainability. All of us were invited for our devotion to this subject. The meeting place had also been thoughtfully chosen. The crater, part of the 330,000-acre Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, is truly Earth in constant rebirth. The park staff works in conscious symbiosis with indigenous Hawai’ians, honoring the sacredness of this land and the native rituals conducted to preserve it. Ten days before we arrived, a convocation of Hawai’ian elders had met to discuss how they would conduct our meetings and what native truths they would be allowed to share with us. Led by Luana, eight remarkable Hawai’ian wise women, the Hi’iaka Wahine, had volunteered to guide us into a deeper understanding of the rich complexity of the Hawai’ian worldview and its applicability to our urgent questions. These women were native healers, educators, NGO leaders, artists and dancers, each chosen for the depth of her knowledge and consummate teaching skills. They were joined by two intentionally unconventional facilitators, Chris Corrigan and Tim Merry. Their goal was to break through our privileged, western linear mindsets and to open us to a world of deep inter-relativity. They would teach us malama, the Hawai’ian concept of interdependence in which every aspect of existence—matter and spirit, thought, action and reaction—is directly connected. In malama nothing is isolated. We are each integral and responsible members of the whole family of creation. It was not an easy process. We had been told before we arrived that we were there to help “create a community of leadership on a platform of reverence.” But what did this mean? We had been asked to contemplate the concern that, in order to be truly effective, the sustainability movement needed an entirely new language—a profoundly innovative way of re-envisioning and expressing itself. One of the preparatory statements said, “All of those participating in the Beyond Sustainability Initiative are deeply embedded in powerful systems, and many SACRED FIRE / 35
have channels and connections to the underlying architecture of power in its many forms. Now is the time to put those resources to work, to help hospice the old systems so that they may die gracefully, midwife the new and steward the nascent so that we can accelerate the emergence of a set of values that restores right relationship to the earth and each other.” All profound concepts, but how could we, in a few days, make the changes to ourselves necessary to engender this revolution in thought and action? I, like the other participants in this “think tank,” have been conscientious in my attempts to restructure my life to be appropriately “green” and to live in harmony with nature and society. And yet I have been aware that my actions seem too little, too late. Even though I have spent decades on my own spiritual quest and each day meditate in nature, I recognize that with the best of intentions I am unable to bridge the enormous gap between my need to live in the contemporary world and my wish to rectify the damage I perpetuate in order to do so. That first morning we began with a deep exploration of the power of language. Hawai’ian educators Ramsey Taum and Gregory Chun taught us about kaona, the multiple meanings of Hawai’ian words. For example: “As Hawai’ians, we are all connected in the breath, the Ha—the vapor of the whale, the mist of the mountains, the exhalation of Pele herself. And we are Aina: our islands, our rocks, our mountains, our taro, our sand, the wings of our birds and the laughter of our children. And within it all is the letter i, the creative force that propels everything.” Each vowel is itself an element: A is fire, E, wind and air, I is water, O, earth, and U is spirit, the source. From these initial building blocks the alchemy of the Hawai’ian language acknowledges sacred relationships in their most elemental form. Hawai’i is a unique model for sustainability. A group of islands in the center of our globe’s largest ocean, all of its resources are held within its boundaries. Its peoples are conscious of the need to protect and share them appropriately. The concept of malama—by caring for you, I care for me—is the foundation of their culture. One’s mana, personal power, is derived solely from one’s relationship with others. The key question in every situation is: “Has everyone been fed? Did you have enough?” Not excess, but enough. If we as a planet could learn to always ask those questions and be truly sensitive to the answers, many of our problems would be solved. Similar to the way in which Pele created the islands by bursting Her flaming power from the ocean’s floor, so our teachers were impelling us to explode our own preconceptions and try to completely refashion our awareness—not as isolated individuals, each govern36 / Issue 15
ing his or her own direction, but rather with the recognition that our entire earth is an island. In order to continue to exist, they taught, we must accept at the deepest level the perfect symbiosis of everything. Nothing is without its purpose or value. Every aspect of our globe/island must be honored and cared for. Just as a small island must carefully monitor its resources, our entire earth must recognize that all are fully dependent upon the health and welfare of even the smallest of our constituents. We were encouraged to contemplate just how we might be able to spread this awareness. One of our leaders commented, “Studies show that one does not need to convince a majority of people before a shift happens in a society. If a powerful idea becomes embedded into 5 percent of the population—early adopters—and is then accepted by 20 percent of the population, that idea will spread throughout the entire society.” Malama, as practiced by the ancient Hawai’ians, is the key. That evening Luana drew on the belief in Kanaloa, the Octopus Deity, each of her legs symbolizing one of the eight directions. She encompasses the islands in their entirety: the whole ancient Hawai’ian world. Kanaloa is viewed as that power that demands awareness and responsibility to the whole, as opposed to the attitude that one can choose to act solely for one’s own purpose. Luana challenged us, Owai o’e? “Who are you?” And she helped us to comprehend the Hawai’ian belief that even our presence at this gathering had been spiritually ordained. She encouraged us to listen to our Kahea, our call, and ended by stating, “We all have the power of Ho’okupa, our gifts. In order to truly absorb what we Hawai’ians are offering you, while you are here you must let go of time and constraints... Allow yourself to just be present and absorb what you experience.” MY PRAYERS FOR CLEAR WEATHER the following morning were not an-
swered. Again rain tore into us as we walked in the predawn dark to the crater’s edge. The day before, many of us had bought disposable slickers and hats at the camp store. But as the wind whipped the light fabric off our bodies, this new clothing rapidly proved to be more distraction than help. Our morning invocations were joined again by the pure strong song of the conch. But while on the day before we had grumbled to one another about our cold, wet misery, on this day we were far more attentive to the dance of the wind and Pele’s smoke as it blended with the swirling clouds, to the preciousness of the water and the subtle gradations of color as the filtered light filled the enormous cradle of newborn earth before us. Pele was beginning to show us Her nature. Or rather, those of us not previously attuned to Her potent character were now opening to receive Her. Some of us were so seared by that direct, new vision that it has taken us months to readjust our psyches. Reminded of my experiences of Shakti (Kali) in India, I was forced into the recognition that the Divine Feminine demands absolute, unwavering accountability. We returned humbled to our camp. After breakfast, we were sent outdoors and asked to contemplate just who we were and what our relationship to our environment was. For two hours we were not to meet or talk to anyone. Some found isolated places along the rim to sit quietly, practice yoga or meditate. Others walked the rim trail or one of the interior paths by the steam vents. I chose a trail down into the caldera through a remarkably beautiful rainforest filled with flowering trees. Since childhood I have had a long and personal relationship with trees, and my discovery of these magnificent Hawai’ian ones nourished a deep longing within me. My own decades
A rainbow arcs above the caldera. Right: Hawaiian wise women, Hi’iaka Wahine, stand at the crater’s edge.
of work in India and the United States have taught me that by listening deeply I can become aware of the active voices of trees (and other forms of nature) as guides to help us heal our endangered Earth. During this walk the sun finally broke through the clouds, dappling the forest with its bright light. Upon our return we were divided into two equal groups and given hands-on lessons in indigenous ecology. One group spent a few hours in the forest weeding out invasive Asian ginger plants, kahili. The rest of us were bussed several miles up the hot, sunny mountain to a dry, scrub-covered hillside. There we gathered seedpods from the thorny mamane bushes and trees that grew in abundance on this protected land. Mamane wood has a practical use in traditional building and tool making and a ritual use to ward off evil. Its yellow flowers produce an astringent medicine, and its seeds are the only source of food for the Palila bird—a Hawai’ian honeycreeper that is seriously endangered because of the deforestation of the mamane in other island regions. Part of our instruction, essential to the gathering, was to acknowledge and thank each plant prior to picking its seeds. We filled several gunny sacks with mamane seedpods that would be sprouted in the park’s greenhouses and then planted to replace the kahili and other invasive plants. As an avid gardener I am aware of my relationship to the plants of my garden—and yet it is too easy to discount and forget to honor that personal commitment in the midst of my daily tasks. These actions anchored my feet in the land and flooded my heart and mind with the recognition of my interconnectedness with nature. For many of us, whose professions keep us locked in our heads, the physicality of these actions helped to break down our habitual thought processes and to begin to retrain our minds to regard our environment much more personally. We were being taught that the native custom of grateful response to every element of life is the very fundament of global sustainability. Back down at the camp, the Hi’iaka Wahine taught us to make leis of large flat tea leaves and gave us traditional Hawai’ian sarongs to wrap around our waists or torsos. Adorned with our newly fashioned leis, we were driven to a flat promon-
MALAMA
FROM LEFT: SPEPHEN P. HUYLER; CHRISTOPHER McLEOD.
WE ALL HAVE THE POWER OF HO’OKUPA, OUR GIFTS. tory above the caldera where we picked our way gingerly across the rough lava rocks in order to avoid slicing open our shoes. There, Halau o Kekuhi, a troupe of eleven dancers and three musicians, all dressed in traditional clothing composed of tapa cloth and bedecked with leis made from od lehua (Pele’s favorite fire flower) gathered from the forest, joined us. We witnessed a ceremony rarely seen by outsiders. Barefoot on the lava, accompanied by drums and voice, these artists danced, their feet, arms and bodies expressing powerful, raw, almost violent energy, accompanied by invocations and prayers devoted to Pele. Their movements were directly aligned to Pele’s chthonic fire, that seminal strength that had thrust up the land from the sea to provide nourishment for all that lives there. It was a riveting experience. I felt grabbed by my heart. My head pounded with the challenge it represented to actively step out of my own habitual reticence. And, as if in answer to the continuing dances, a large, perfect rainbow grew up from Pele’s volcanic cone and arched directly over us. When the music and the dances stopped, each member of the troupe knelt on the cliff’s edge alone, removed her or his lei and offered it into the wind. One by one, the leis blew out over the caldera. The rainbow SACRED FIRE / 37
MALAMA
Beyond Sustainability Retreat Organizers Luana Busby-Neff, leader of Hi’iaka Wahine, Wilford Welch, co-founder of Quest for Global Healing and Susan O’Conner, co-founder of Ala Kukui Retreat Center. Right: Talavu Tusi dancing a traditional Samoan dance
his tall, strong body tattooed in native Samaon designs, he ran off across the sharp lava stones and yelled an invocation to the Gods. Reversing his direction, he ran past us, his yell piercing the iridescent sky. His ritual was not explained to us. It was enough to witness it. Discussing it afterwards, several spoke about how we each felt that we had simultaneously undergone our own initiations. Talavu’s unselfconscious willingness to strip himself bare and rush out bravely with a shriek to meet the Divine was as powerful an experience as I have ever had. How can I hide behind my own pretensions when faced with this bold declaration of manhood? That third day was pure magic. In the morning we were taken to a forested hillside on the other side of the caldera. Sitting in a ring in thick grass on the sunlit forest floor, we were joined by Dr. Taupouri Tangoro, a Kumu Hula (hula master), and his Unukupukupu Dance Troupe. Dr. Tangoro is the department chair of Hawai’ian Life Styles and Humanities at Hawai’i Community College. He placed his mat upon the ground and his ancient drum in front of him. The rhythm of Dr. Tangoro’s drum was a solid, ancient heartbeat. We joined in a chant to the Mother, and as the dance began, we were called to enter into the dream of all ancestors. The troupe danced a series of energetic sacred ceremonies dedicated to Pele and other deities that engender and protect these islands. It was not a “performance” because the dancers were obviously more focused on the sanctity of their rituals than on any desire to entertain us. The dancers were agile, acrobatic and precise, filling the air around us with the crackling energy of their devotion. When the rituals ended, Dr. Tangoro explained that as the dancers enter the world of Hula, they are released into their own dreams. Their dancing brings them into a communal space where the wind is the spirit force that animates the land and the currents of the ocean. They are Haku, in spirit possession. Their dances, Aiha’a, and their chanting take them far beyond earthly limits. Dr. Tangoro was one of the two or three finest speakers I have ever heard. He
continued its vibrant arch. In silence Luana and the Hi’iaka Wahine led us about a hundred yards along the edge, requested that we climb over the guard rails and similarly offer our own leis to Pele. Each of us approached the volcano alone, knelt and offered our leis. Each of us felt and expressed our direct connection to the earth’s divinity as our leis drifted in the wind. And throughout it all, the rainbow remained—only fading into the mists when the last of us had finished. The process took almost two hours. How could any of us speak after that? That evening instead of the usual chatter of dinnertime conversations, most of us were quiet, deeply affected by the experience we had been given. THE SKIES WERE CLEAR the next morning. Our quiet
walk to the caldera’s edge was soberly upbeat. While we sang to the rising sun, Pele’s power was vibrantly palpable. During our ceremony, with no prior warning, we heard Dr. Tusi quietly tell Talavu, his son: “Now is your chance. Everything is aligned for your initiation. It is your choice, but it may never align like this again.” Talavu nodded and, behind our backs, stripped off all of his clothes in the cold morning air. Totally naked, 38 / Issue 15
SPEPHEN P. HUYLER
EACH OF US APPROACHED THE VOLCANO ALONE, KNELT AND OFFERED OUR LEIS.
BEYOND SUSTAINABILITY wove stories, emotions, wisdoms and insights together with consummate skill, and we were The Beyond Sustainability interdependence and internature of reality—from which Initiative supports the emerrelatedness is central—is these leaders work. spellbound. Only by rare invitation is anyone algence of a new generation vital to reminding us of ways To begin this work the lowed to participate in this private inner place with the capacity to envision of being with the Earth and Beyond Sustainability Initiaof Hula knowledge, and we were humbled and and introduce new, sustainwith each other. Using this tive organized a gathering in changed by witnessing these sacred journeys. able systems. The Initiative wisdom, the Initiative seeks Hawaii, June 21 – 25, 2010, calls for reimagining our to create a world-wide comof sixty carefully chosen When we returned from the forest, we were relationship with the Earth, munity based on traditional invitees who brought a rich joined by one of the great Hawai’ian elders, reimagining what prosperity values of respect, equality, diversity of experiences Pualani Kanaka’ole Kanahele, lovingly referred can look like while not debalance and harmonious and perspectives. With the to by the others as “Auntie Pua.” Her eyes constroying that which is needed relationships. It also seeks intention of creating “a to support future generato identify and support community of leadership, tain the fiery strength of Pele tempered by her tions. It is seeking fresh influential leaders who can on a platform of reverence,” obvious love and pride for the Hawai’ian people. thinking and concrete actions lead the work of effecting they explored the values and Dr. Kanahele is also a Kumu Hula and Director to bring this about as rapidly transformative change in the practices that have led us to of Hawai’ian Traditional Knowledge Research as possible. world. Finally, the Initiative this point and the changes with the Hawai’i Community College. She Fundamental to this shift intends to build a platform of called for to lead us to susin values and behaviors is the reverence—a deep humility tainability and beyond. heads a team of cultural researchers who are recognition that the wisdom for the power of the natural reestablishing an archaic system of knowledge of indigenous elders—for world and a profound recogFor more information go to that includes Papahulilani (those of the heaven, whom the concept of nition of the interdependent BeyondSustainability.org. sky), Papahulihonua (those of the earth) and Papahänaumoku (those who are born). Like our other Hawai’ian hosts the Hi’iaka Wahine, Auntie Pua was clearly the need to find ways to share our experience and to there to challenge our privileged complacency. She helped us question our un- create the means for others to similarly experience this witting complicity in continuing to damage our world through our own uncon- profound worldview. For centuries and millennia, these scious habits of misusing our resources and neglecting to honor our personal native wisdoms have been effective in indigenous culconnection to all that surrounds us. In that morning’s conversations she helped tures throughout the world. We understood far more root out our continuing hesitancies and resculpt our insights. Building upon our deeply the importance of fully involving native leaders previous days’ experiences, Auntie Pua brought us deeper into the practicable to find solutions. And we realized that those of us who sustainability of the Hawai’ian worldview. She challenged us to take these issues represent the dominant, privileged culture need to find back to our own individual communities and to begin at the root cause: our daily ways to rebuild trust with those many native cultures interactions with others and with each element of our surroundings. As Auntie that we and our ancestors have exploited. So how could we reinterpret these messages to bePua said, change must begin at home. gin to change the global scene? We had learned that it all comes back to the simple message of reverence. OUR LAST EVENING was a traditional Hawai’ian luau, where we shed our roles as teacher and students and revealed our playful sides. Our vulnerability with one The answer begins in immediate action. As in malama, another expressed itself in yet another form: some of us told stories; others per- each of us must try to be conscious of our daily interacformed music; some even danced. Sunrise on our final morning was again clear tions with all that is around us. If we train our minds and vibrant. Although our links to Pele were open, our emotions were dampened. to acknowledge our interrelationship to everything in our lives—animate and inanimate, natural and manuWe were only too aware that our communion was coming to a close. In our morning-long, wrap-up session, we evaluated our days together and the factured—we will be sustainable. I need to keep reinsights we had gained. We non-Hawai’ians had been introduced to a profound minding myself that everything I come in contact with and effective worldview that, if broadly disseminated, could change the manifes- has identity, meaning and spirit: my dwelling, my furtation of the sustainability movement. Those of us who work with tribal peoples nishings, each member of my family and indeed each in other regions remarked that the traditions of native cultures around the earth person I meet, every animal, bird, fish and insect, the are similar to the Hawai’ian values and worldviews. Auntie Pua stated emphati- sky, the wind, the clouds and the rain, and the tools cally that we would miss the point if we simply echoed the realities of Hawai’ian that make my trade, that furnish me with livelihood. It tradition or canonized what we had experienced there. We needed to bring these must begin here and now. I can start right here by being grateful to my desk and the computer and keyboard insights home. Growth and change happen first in local communities. In this final session we were each charged to carry these stories to our own upon which I write these words. communities and organizations and to spread the awareness by finding common threads within our own cultures. We were empowered by a new, deep re- The Beyond Sustainability Gathering was the third in the “Quest alization that this native paradigm, if embedded broadly within the conscious- for Global Healing” gatherings that have been organized around ness of humankind, could truly change the future of our planet. We recognized the world since 2004. BeyondSustainability.org. SACRED FIRE / 39
The Grieving Cairn
by Jesse Wolf Hardin
You will find something more in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from a master. ST. BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX
T
The last kid put his personal rock with the others’, fitting it carefully into its place in the pile they called a “cairn.” Then he stepped back to wipe the sweat off his brow. It was important that they had each selected their own stone, and then carried it themselves the long distance uphill. The kids’ long-haired counselor smiled at the feat, knowing how tempted they were to think him a kook and drop out of the twoweek program, to head back down to Taos and party until the next time they got in trouble. And frankly, there was plenty of reason for them to bail out, from the difficult hikes to the kinds of truths they were made to face. But then there was something cool about the crazy things their counselor had them do, about being listened to for the 40 / Issue 15
first time in their lives, that caused most of them to stick it out. The counselor understood what his kids felt. The youngsters weren’t “apathetic”— as so often portrayed by the media and officialdom—they were simply pissed off and paralyzed. There was no excuse for some of the rotten things they’d been busted for, but any major changes in their lives would first require an understanding why they did what they did. The bad drugs and wild lifestyles, all the cheap and dangerous highs were just their way of pushing to make their lives seem more real and significant, just a push to experience more and feel more. They saw life as a flexible membrane and were determined to stretch it as far as it would go. He had finally got what he wanted so badly: his own “Disenfranchised-Youth
Franchise.” He would go back to his treasured mountain cabin after each session, wondering how the kids were doing since he saw them last and practicing the new dances they always insisted he learn (even if it meant breaking his glasses from doing break-dance spins on his head). He didn’t care what the kids’ interests were so long as they applied themselves at something, anything. What he’d say he hoped for them was to distinguish themselves at whatever “tripped their trigger.” He loved these unhappy crews, felt the need to protect them from their addiction to being victims. Children and flies are some of the few creatures that will rush back to the exact spot where the swatter struck. In a sense these young men and women had each packed their own weighty “rock” long before working their way through the con-
fusion of broken homes, boring schools and finally detention. They’d packed it all the way to the start of this oddball wilderness program—to this, their best chance to come to know and respect their selves. And first-ever permission to grieve. Only by opening to their pain, he knew, could they trust their bliss. And only by honoring what had been lost, could they appreciate the blessings that remained or the blessings still to come. For the cairn exercise the kids were instructed to focus on some wondrous element of their past: some special person, place or living thing that made their childhood meaningful—something that had since been disgraced, defiled, stolen or destroyed. For some this meant the family they never had. Or some “Enchanted Forest” that may have been no bigger than a single undeveloped lot that they watched covered over with asphalt for a new highway. For another, it meant the tiny, run-off creek with the polliwogs in it that nonetheless appeared to the boy as big and mysterious, as complete as an entire wild river ecosystem and that was later channeled into culverts and sewers. A special old apple tree in the backyard that held not only fruit in its branching grasp, but fruitful wisdom, cut down while the children were at school because some idiot gardener told dad it had “bugs.” One stone was placed for the crazy old lady with the twenty-seven Siamese cats, found frozen to death when the city turned off her gas over an unpaid bill. Another stone represented a failed teen romance and, true to form, insisted on rolling to the bottom time and again. The cairn had grown over the course of the years, and in time featured a rock for nearly every threatened paradise, every nearby rural community turned into another Aspen for the rich. Not a few had ached for what they thought of as the “Wild West,” a place where eccentrics were valued and promises kept, a place more free than the imagination itself. Wild mustangs and
thundering bison, chased by eagle-feathered braves, cowboys and outlaws who stood up for what they believed in, even if it was wrong. And it seemed like everybody’s kids hurt over the loss of freedom and privacy, the absence of opportunities for adventure and purpose. The bigger the pile got, the more vanished loves and dreams, critters and playgrounds it came to stand up for. Here was a monument to that which was no more. The boy they called “Frog” left one for the amphibians no longer heard singing from ponds poisoned by acid rain. “Charity” came forward with a rock alarmingly shaped like
STEVE WHITE
THE BIGGER THE PILE GOT, THE MORE VANISHED LOVES AND DREAMS, CRITTERS AND PLAYGROUNDS IT STOOD FOR. the body of a baby, placing it in the conical pile for “the child I’ll never be again.” They all looked at each other, the toughest playground bully or cafeteria arsonist swinging around to take the trail back, hurrying on rather than letting their buddies see the tears welling up in their eyes. Soon every kid but one had added his grieving stone to the rest. Finally “Punky,” the smallest of the bunch, came huffing out of the thick brush. In his arms, covering much of his face, was a boulder at least half his own weight. They watched as a tiny hero, the champion of some unknown cause, completed what appeared to be the impossible. Dropping the monster stone high upon the cairn berm, Punky fell to one knee, gasping for air. “So whatcha’ grievin’?,” Dagger asked. But the sage counselor already knew. He could sense the little fellow’s grief over
the mother that passed away, the father who didn’t try hard enough to understand him. And more than that, he could feel the way the kid suffered over the uniformity of shopping malls, the disappearance of cowboys and the urbanization of Indians. Gone, the likes of Chief Joseph and Billy The Kid. Gone, the grizzly bears and grizzly fighters, the code of the West... and all the rest. “Everything,” Punky answered, trailing off to a whisper. “Every-damn-thing.” The shaggy headed counselor smiled to himself, thinking how tomorrow was as good a time as any to start up the equally important “Gratitude Cairn.” There was, after all, no shortage of rocks and no shortage of hills still to climb... no shortage of blessings to notice and gifts to savor... people and places to thank and awakened lives to wholly celebrate. SACRED FIRE / 41
JONI STONE
DON OSCAR WITH CONDOR AND EAGLE FEATHER BUNDLE, AT THE CENTER GATHERING, ASHEVILLE, NC, 2011
42 / Issue 15
An anthropologist’s heart cracks open with the Mother’s pain and joy in the Pachakuti Mesa with Don Oscar Miro-Quesada. By Bonnie Glass-Coffin
... be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace ... Desiderata, Max Ehrmann, c1920
SACRED FIRE / 43
If only, if only, if only, if only, if only, if only, if only, if only, if only, if only, if only, if only... 44 / Issue 15
This was my mantra, the drumbeat of suffer-
ing and loss that I brought to the weekend gathering high in the Big Horn Mountains of northeastern Wyoming. My wounding was caused by miscarriages. After eight of these, experienced between the ages of 30 and 41, I became like a tumbleweed rolling across the sage-brush prairie. I preferred to be battered by the whims of a desert wind than to endure the pain of one more evisceration of an uprooted soul. Even though I eventually had two children, the pain of so much suffering and loss had caused me to hold back my love from them. By the time I came to know Don Oscar Miro-Quesada, a shamanic practitioner from Lima, Peru and the gathering’s leader, I was completely hardened to myself and, therefore, incapable of reaching out to others with softness or compassion. We met in 2005 when Don Oscar invited me, as an academic expert on the traditions that he brought to the United States, to give a talk at an international gathering on the shores of Lake Michigan. By then, Don Oscar had trained thousands of apprentices in weekend intensive apprenticeships built around the theme of pachakuti or “time of great turning.” He had also founded a nonprofit organization, The Heart of the Healer (THOTH) Foundation, to provide an outlet for service in the world founded on the principles of sacred community and earth-honoring ceremony. I had spent years studying with female healers on the north coast of Peru for my doctorate in anthropology at UCLA. My dissertation on the role of gender in Peruvian healing traditions had been turned into a book that had become required read-
ing for Don Oscar’s apprentices. I was intrigued by the invitation to speak, and I was transfixed by the sense of sacred community among those I met. After that first weekend on the shores of Lake Michigan, I decided to spend my sabbatical year studying how Don Oscar’s teachings were transforming the lives of those who studied with him. For, where Don Oscar had found himself through his apprenticeships in northern Peru, I had floundered miserably. While he became an adept, I was an academic expert. I could never really plunge in to the mystery of connection with other beings because of the state of my own heart. And so, in September, 2006, I found myself in circle with Don Oscar at a weekend commemoration of the fifth anniversary of 9/11. We were gathered to make a pilgrimage to the Big Horn Medicine Wheel with elders from many Indian nations. Our stated goal was to revitalize the role of ceremony as a means of protecting this particular sacred site high in the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming. But it was also to offer prayers for healing ourselves, one another, our Mother Earth and our universe from the misunderstandings, destructive rivalries and warfare that rip relations and nations apart. By gathering in sacred community, we came together to honor the mysteries of regeneration and, as Don Oscar described it, to “walk ancient trails in honor of the ancestors, of all our relations, and our future generations within the great hoop of life.” On this weekend, we were gathered with elders from all across the Americas to break bread together in service to a new
Earth. We were coming together to live the prophesy of the Eagle and the Condor. This was the time of the taripaypacha, the “time of reencounter, the time for the coming together after the separation,” after many years of isolation. As Don Oscar explained, we were all members of the Rainbow Earth Mother tribe: a kaleidoscope of peoples who, in spite of different cultures, different challenges, different experiences and life walks, all shared a common foundation rooted in the soil of our Mother Earth. On this weekend we were coming together to claim our inheritance as those Shining Ones who, through our love and our ceremony at this ancient sacred site, would set a template for co-creating a future based in love rather than in fear.
FROM TOP: DAVE HAYES; NICOLE GARNEAU.
In 1969 Don Oscar Miro-Quesada met his
first teacher, Don Celso Rojas Palomino, with some surfer buddies who had heard that healers cured their clients with the psychoactive San Pedro cactus. He was a troubled youth, who had, nonetheless, been drawn to spiritual matters. While he came to Don Celso’s home on a lark, by the end of the first session he felt the call to apprentice to this master. Don Celso taught him the mesa healing traditions of his homeland. The Peruvian mesa, a kind of altar, can be best understood as a microcosm and a mirror for all that is. It embodies and focuses the powers of the natural world into a relationship that is honored, harmonized and transformed into a balanced whole by the loving intention of the shamanic master. Over several years of this work, Don Oscar’s wounds healed. He remembered his place in the Great Cosmic Web of Life. Shortly before his death in 1982, Don Celso lamented to his student that the ancient ways of the Peruvian mesa were being lost. Peruvians were looking to the north for direction on how to think and how to live. Peruvian youths yearned to trade tradition for the conveniences of the modern world. Don Celso saw that only when Northerners became interested in living again in sacred relationship with the natural world would his own people recognize
the value of these ways. He told Don Oscar that the survival for Peruvian shamanism depended on teaching those of the north the ways of “right action, born of compassionate spiritual wisdom which unites.” Don Celso advised Don Oscar to carry the wisdom of his homeland to North America and to pass it on through ceremony and as an oral tradition to “those who have ears to hear.” By the time Don Celso died, Don Oscar had moved to the United States, studying and later teaching transpersonal psychology. During the summers he returned to Peru where he apprenticed with his second teacher Don Benito Corihuaman Vargas in the highlands near Cusco. After Don Benito passed in 1986, Don Oscar realized that it was time to open the mesa to his psychology students and clients in the United States. In 1986 he blended the wisdom traditions of the northern coast and the southern highlands of his homeland into something new, the Pachakuti Mesa. The Pachakuti Mesa is configured to bring forth all the creative powers of the Universe: right action, compassionate love, a re-membering of Spirit in all things, en-
lightened wisdom and sacred union with one’s highest self. Each direction of the mesa is associated with one of these key virtues for enlightened living. When Don Oscar brings apprentices together in the mesa circle, he carefully selects who will sit in which direction throughout the weekend. In this earth-honoring ceremony the participants become the mesa. The feeling states that are awakened in the participants through this positioning are very specific. When sitting in the West, emotions tend to flow very freely; when in the North, there is a mirroring of Spirit and a powerful reflection of this knowing onto the human plane. The Northwest is the point of convergence where all the powers of the
RIGHT: DON OSCAR MIRO-QUESADA’S PACHAKUTI MESA CEREMONIAL HEALING ALTAR BELOW: A CEREMONY AT CHICAGO’S GRANT PARK, 2009.
SACRED FIRE / 45
On this weekend almost a hundred people
were seated around the central ceremonial space. We were of many backgrounds and heritages, yet we were united in our intent to heal and be healed. During our first council process, where each participant spoke his or her heart and intention for the weekend, more than one expressed concern over whether such a rainbow of colors could come together to make pilgrimage to a sacred site associated with Native and First Nations peoples. Don Oscar reminded us that everyone present has a birthright to indigenous traditions. All of our ancestors—beyond having been victims or destroyers as they reached across the divide between self and other—all have been indigenous to the planet. As the talking stick went around the room, representatives of North and South, East and West became one heart as stories were shared of the flights towards Spirit that were embodied in legends of Eagle and Condor and Owl. We had now come together in a united prayer for peace. As the talking stick circled the room on that Friday evening, peoples of all races and colors shared a common vision and plea: the traumas we have inflicted on our Mother Earth are the same as the wounds of loss and disconnection that we have inflicted upon each other. Our suffering, and particularly the suffering of women, is also our Earth Mother’s pain. As the talking continued, people spoke again and again about how this was the right moment to heal. We affirmed that it was the time to rebuild relations of caring between all polarities. We affirmed that it was the hour for letting go of pain, for accepting, for forgiving and being forgiven. Don Oscar had placed me in one of the twenty-eight chairs representing the spokes of the Medicine Wheel. I was seated in the Northwest where all the energies harnessed through the work of the weekend come rushing into the sacred ground. 46 / Issue 15
When my turn came, I admitted with downcast eyes that I was an anthropologist. I expressed my guilt at being part of a profession that has often contributed to dehumanization in the name of science. I was an interloper, unable to connect or to be authentic because of the pain my people had caused. I felt separate, lonely and unloved because of my own guilt, my own pain. My losses, my sadness, my disconnection had cast a film of caution over all my attempts to reconnect. Late that evening, as I left the sacred circle, I felt more alone than ever—separated from that great circle of belonging. The tears of suffering and the weight of self-
blame swirled around me as I trudged back to my cabin. I knew that, somehow, I had to let go of the pain, to share it finally with one who would completely understand. I opened the back door of the cabin and looked to the Southwest. The moon was straight ahead and shone softly through the early morning mist. I knelt down before a pine tree, pressing my forehead against the hard packed earth. It felt warm and solid, a stabilizing force beneath my trembling mind. Soon, I began to cry into the heart of our Mother, “Take away this pain, You, who also knows the losses of a thousand generations. Share with me the key to forgiveness so that I can find my footing once again.”
THE HEART OF THE HEALER FOUNDATION The Heart of the Healer Foundation (THOTH) is based upon the Pachakuti Mesa Tradition of cross-cultural shamanism born of the ancestral wisdom and indigenous healing arts of Peru. THOTH founder Don Oscar Miro-Quesada brought this inherently adaptive, earth-honoring path to North America in 1986 after extended apprenticeships with renowned Kamasqa and Paqokuna elders, Don Celso Rojas Palomino of Salas, Peru and don Benito Corihuaman Vargas of Wasau, DON OSCAR
Peru. Used for both personal and planetary transformation, the Pachakuti Mesa is extraordinarily effective in contemporary society, while remaining faithful to the deep roots of its native lineage. The mission of The Heart of the Healer Foundation is “to preserve indigenous cultures and restore our Earth.” The foundation works to protect and revitalize indigenous cultural traditions and knowledge by also protecting their ancestral sacred lands. To bridge the gap between indigenous cultures and the modern world, THOTH fosters the emergence of a planetary family living in sacred relationship with our Earth. As part of its Rainforest Sanctuary Initiative, THOTH’s
two rainforest preserves (las Piedras and Sipapu) are being developed into ceremonial and education centers to provide unique opportunities for personal growth and exposure to the deep wisdom of Earth-centered cultures. In alliance with leading-edge Earth stewardship organizations, THOTH offers innovative and pragmatic strategies for rainforest preservation, restoration and sustainable use. This work strengthens earth-honoring cultures and positively impacts the socioeconomic viability of indigenous communities. THOTH has also developed a training program in the timetested healing arts of Peru. For further information please go to heartofthehealer.org.
Free Webinar This October and November, Sacred Fire
Foundation’s Ancient Wisdom Rising presents live conversations with THOTH founder Don Oscar Miro-Quesada and other keepers of the wisdom traditions of South America. For information, visit ancientwisdomrising.com
NICOLE GARNEAU
unseen world are channeled. Don Oscar, the shamanic master of this living mesa, balances and transforms these energies throughout the ceremony.
JENNIFER SCHOFIELD
I knelt down before a pine tree, pressing my forehead against the hard packed earth. As I knelt and sobbed, a great weight was suddenly lifted. Pure love pulsed from the ground and coursed through my body, warming every fiber of my being. I raised my eyes, and through my tears I saw the moon smiling down on me. I heard a small voice that washed me in a new knowing. What the Mother revealed to me that night was this: “For every drop of blood that is shed in this life, the way is opened for rebirth. And it is only through surrender to that loss that new creation can become embodied.” Right then, the cadence of the drumbeat that had haunted me for so long began to change, and my heart began to sing to a new rhythm. “If only, if only, if only” began to ring in my ears as “Only if, only if, only if.” The next day we gathered on the shores of the Little Tongue River. All the native elders were invited to share their stories. On a boulder between high cliffs and the rushing mountain stream, I listened to the elders speak. After a time one of them asked to hear the heartbeat of our Mother, and those who had brought drums began to play. Just like the night before I touched my forehead to the ground and offered myself to She-Who-Sustains without holding back. Enfolded into a consciousness that was born of true compassion, I was soon sobbing, unburdening all the pain of my own loss as well as Hers. My loss was Hers, and Hers was mine completely. As I knelt, I realized that the Earth’s barrenness results from that same pain. With every tree and blade of grass cut down before its time, with every species shot or poisoned to extinction, with every native person stripped of life in the name of conflicting ideologies or national agendas, our Mother has cried out and withdrawn her council. Over time She has isolated Herself from her children and withdrawn into Her turtle shell to avoid more pain. I understood we both needed to forgive and to feel forgiven in or-
der to achieve redemption. On that sunny Saturday afternoon the Mother touched my brow and healed my scars. And when I rose, I voiced Her story of remembrance in order to heal Her pain. As I rose to tell my story, which was the story of our Mother, I was filled with a new sense of joy, impassioned possibility and love. Later that afternoon together with every other pilgrim on this journey, I washed my body in a spring-fed pond, cleansing and reconnecting with my birthright as a daughter, mother, sister and wife who can both give love and receive the love of others. As I sank beneath the water, all bitterness, judgment and regret was left behind. It was an act of contrition and communion: a baptism of acceptance and of tolerance where I was received again to life. Since that weekend, I have continued deepening in my apprenticeship with Don Oscar. With every ceremony I have opened more completely to the message of forgiveness and acceptance that was born in me then. I have celebrated my coming together with this tribe of rainbow children, drinking deeply of the gratitude that washes over me every time I step upon the Mother. I know now that Her suffering and mine are interwoven. I find myself filled with the love that is born of a compassion for our shared suffering. As a result of that knowing, I feel a part of rather than apart from the Mother and all living beings. The regret and self-loathing of “If only, if only, if only” has finally changed into a cadence of compassion and gratitude for what we share as we walk together through the wilderness of our becoming. “Only if, only if, only if” is the mantra that carries me on my journey. This deep communion with the Mother has allowed me to act more gently and with more compassion, grieving with rather than for all who have suffered. I have begun to put down new roots and to reach across
THE AUTHOR, AT THE VOLUNTEER PARK CONSERVATORY IN SEATTLE, WA
the illusion of our separateness to embrace all others, especially my children. This knowing has transformed my interactions with my boys in subtle ways. I was never a bad mother. I was a mother who was unwilling to share my own vulnerabilities and needs. I chose to put up a good front rather than to risk showing my woundedness in front of them. Now, because I am able to share my feelings, I can listen to their insecurities and hurts, to simply be with them rather than do on their behalf. Since I am more forgiving of my own perceived failings, they trust me, now, to not judge. As Don Oscar puts it, I find myself moving “from the service of helping to the service of being . . . from doctoring to [simply] loving.” I know my boys as a gift both from and to the Earth, born of the suffering that prepared the planet for their beauty. The tears I shed with them now are the tears of connection rather than separation. They are tears of gratitude for the shared humanity that is our birthright. This, for me, is the message of the taripaypacha. This is the message of the Pachakuti Mesa that Don Oscar Miro-Quesada has embodied. This is the message of healing that I carry forward thanks to the magic of the mesa and the majesty of the Mother. My losses have led me to a path of wisdom. They have made me an instrument for awakening compassion in the world. As I beat my drum in ceremony to honor all Creation, I hear the cadence of hope and experience that unites: “Only if, only if, only if…” SACRED FIRE / 47
LIFE RESOURCES EVENTS
COMMUNITY FIRES AR | FAYETTEVILLE COMMUNITY FIRE Share the warmth of your heart at our fire circle. Bring friends and family. Young and old. We enjoy having a variety of people from all over the earth. Saturday closest to the Full Moon. Zan Jarvis 479-443-9065 CA | SANTA MONICA SACRED FIRE COMMUNITY You have an open invitation to our Sacred Fire Community Circle. Mark your calendar for the first Friday of every month, rain or shine. We’ll sit around the fire in community as our ancestors did. Alan Kerner 310-452.0658 kerners@aol.com MA | BROOKFIELD SACRED FIRE COMMUNITY Fire moves you to a different place. The Brookfield Sacred Fire Community Circle invites you to join us to share the warmth at our monthly community fires. Tim Simon & Gwen Broz 508-867-9810 timgwen@charter.net MA | PEPPERELL SACRED FIRE COMMUNITY The Pepperell Sacred Fire Community Circle invites you to join us at our monthly fires. Come share a song, a joke and your open heart. Third Saturday of every month. Kateri McCue 978-877-7367 Kateri.McCue@gmail.com OR | BEND SACRED FIRE COMMUNITY Find yourself in Central Oregon with a hint of chill in the air? Join us around the fire! The Sacred Fire Community Circle of Bend meets on the banks of the Deschutes River. First Saturday of every month. Jessica de la O & Larry Messerman 541-306-6448 bendfires@gmail.com WA | OLYMPIA SACRED FIRE COMMUNITY The Sacred Fire Community Circle in Olympia Washington invites you to join us at our monthly fires. Come be with the fire and each other. The second Saturday of every month. Peter & Sharon Brown 360-943-9373 P2B53@yahoo.com RETREATS & WORKSHOPS WOMEN’S POETRY & HEALING WRITING RETREAT Will help you find your words to heal. Safe group environment. Using spiritual works from many traditions. September 16 – 18, 2011. $245, $80 room/board. Mount St. Mary’s Abbey - Wrentham, MA USA Dianna Vagianos 203-913-5548 diannavagianos@gmail.com
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PUBLICATIONS
FREE eBOOK Magical Sampler is a delightful smorgasbord of Bob Makransky’s best writings on Mayan Shamanism, Relationships, Self-Transformation, Self-Healing, White Witchcraft, Paganism Astrology, humorous short stories and cartoons. Enjoy! www.smashwords.com/books/view/24450 Bob Makransky bmakransky@yahoo.com HEARD AROUND THE FIRE Teachings of Grandfather Fire. Feed the fire in their hearts with a gift that keeps on giving. Now available in leather for $59.95, and in original paperback for $16.95. Order online. SacredFirePress.com
SERVICES
COUNSELING & GUIDANCE EXPLORING THE PHENOMENON OF PRAYER My gift is in helping others connect powerfully with the divine through prayer and from there to pray effectively. I offer workshops, personal coaching and companion prayers. Sherry Morgan 860-656-6817 (USA) 250-483-5273 (Canada) sherry.morgan@primus.ca
PLANT SPIRIT MEDICINE, LMT, CPES, STUDENT MIDWIFE Experience the profound healing of the plant people. Offering Plant Spirit Medicine, massage, and placenta encapsulation in Salt Lake City, UT USA. Kathy Reid 970-623-1297 www.plantspiritmedicine-ut-co.blogspot.com www.PlacentaBenefits.info/KathyReid PROFESSIONAL FENG SHUI By phone or in person. Every aspect of our lives is connected to our homes. I can help you work with your home to bring lasting harmony, prosperity and personal growth. Megan Montero 831-420-1074 megan@windandwaterblessings.com windandwaterblessings.com INDIVIDUAL DISTANCE TRAINING IN QUICKBOOKS Specializing in small business owners with heart. Receive private one on one training via secure internet web site with a gently compassionate teacher. It is time to update your bookkeeping! Kelly Tiedemann 978-223-8051 Kt.bookkeeping@gmail.com www.KTBookkeeping.net
SHAMANIC ASTROLOGY “As above, so below.” The planets and stars speak to us. They offer guidance about our life purpose, relationship intent, initiatory opportunities and how to live life in alignment. I offer astrological readings and counselling. Yuma, AZ USA. SkyFox 928-210-5092 foxxita@gmail.com HEALTH & WELLNESS PLANT SPIRIT MEDICINE & INTEGRATIVE BODYWORK Connect with the sacred healing of the natural world. Experience the harmony and balance of Plant Spirit Medicine and the nourishment of therapeutic bodywork. Santa Cruz, CA USA Marilyn Berta 831-427-2987 brightspirit@cruzio.com centerforhealthsc.com
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Enemies of Learning Recapture your joy in life and the love of learning through an experiential exploration of your relationship with the mind. Compassionate personal guidance provided by course facilitator Dan Sprinkles.
The Huichol Indians have lived for countless generations in remote hamlets, high in
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—testimonial
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the Sierra Madre Mountains of western Mexico. Their artwork is alive with their experience of the Divine. The Huichol Art Project (HAP) actively supports the Huichols by creating markets in this country for their sacred artwork, to help them maintain their traditions and to strengthen sources of income that help them stay connected to their hamlets.
The Huichol Art Project has a large stock of Huichol Art, including yarn paintings of Cristobol Gonzalez. If you would like to purchase art or receive more information, please contact Marsha Tuttle the HAP Director at huicholart8@gmail.com or (919) 618-2298.
SACRED FIRE / 49
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Wake Up Laughing, Wise Up Loving
What will she teach you?
with Swami Beyondananda and Steve Bhaerman
Find out why Marianne Williamson
has called Steve Bhaerman aka Swami Beyondananda “The Mark Twain
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Give of yourself to the indigenous Q'ero people through humanitarian service, and you will change. From September 13–23 join the HeartWalk Foundation to work with Q'ero children in service. Visit Peru's Sacred Valley, Cuzco, and Hueco Uno. Visit the Inca sites of Machu Picchu, Pisac and Ollantaytambo. Learn from the Q'ero paqo (shaman) in a healing ceremony. Help build a relationship between north (eagle) and south (condor) with an open heart and a deeper awareness of an ancient culture. For more information about our shared journey visit www.heartwalkfoundation.org or contact penelope@heartwalkfoundation.org or call 435-619-0797
THE MESA LIFE PROJECT A residential community guided by heart and the wisdom of the land.
Come Alive! Off the grid. Natural Building. Centered in the spirit of fire. Beauty Abounds. MLP is now accepting applicants. Email us: apply@mesalifeproject.org
www.mesalifeproject.org SACRED FIRE / 51
Ancient Ways:
Indigenous Healing Innovations for the 21st Century By Geral Blanchard Blanchard deftly combines traditional indigenous wisdom with contemporary research and challenges all of us to reconsider our conception of psychological healing
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“Quite possibly the best guidebook ever crafted on the art of grieving… a brilliant and poetic handbook for becoming fully human, more exquisitely alive, and more able to contribute to cultural change.” Bill Plotkin, author Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World In Entering the Healing Ground, Francis Weller offers a new vision of grief and sorrow. He reveals the hidden vitality in grief, uncovered when the heart welcomes the sorrows of our life and those of the world. Through story, poetry and insightful reflections, Francis offers a meditation on the healing power of grief. Available from WisdomBridge Press, 707-568-5803 or at fweller@earthlink.net. Book: $14.95 Audio Book: $23.95
52 / Issue 15
Available on CD and in Spanish - “Alma Verde” At bookstores or through the Blue Deer Center Info@bluedeer.org or 845-586-3225 • $14
ligmincha sacred fire June 2011:ligmincha BD mar_07
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Ligmincha Institute at Serenity Ridge, Nelson County, Va. ANNUAL FALL RETREAT
October 5-9, 2011
Connecting With the Living Universe THE HEALING POWER OF THE FIVE NATURAL ELEMENTS With Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche Cultivating a healthy balance of the five elements of earth, water, fire, air, and space is fundamental to our physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being — and to the health of our planet. Please join us for a special opportunity for healing and revitalizing through practices of the ancient Bön Buddhist tradition of Tibet.
TENZIN WANGYAL RINPOCHE is the founder and spiritual director of Ligmincha Institute and teaches worldwide. He is the author of Healing With Form, Energy and Light; Tibetan Sound Healing; and Awakening the Sacred Body (Hay House, 2011).
FREE LIVE WEBCAST
Oct. 12, 2011: 7-8:30 p.m. ET
Unleashing Your Creativity Whether your creative goals are related to the arts or to your job, relationships, or spirituality, this free public talk can help you clear your obstacles and open the flow of creative expression. Broadcast live via Internet from Unity Church in Charlottesville,Va.
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SACRED FIRE / 53
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SACRED FIRE / 55
final flicker My tears, since I’ve known pain, must have fallen on your shoulders. In the heart of eternal loneliness, in the midst of fear, in the labyrinth of finding “the way,” I’ve come to know that there is no answer and this has to be a beautiful mystery.
Beautiful Mystery BY HYDEH AUBON
Everything changes, everything has changed, everything will change. I’ve felt you in different seasons of my life: the happy beginning of spring, the majestic color and shapes of what I could see and what I could only imagine. The giving summer, the poetic autumn and the quiet winter. How could I ever trap you in an image or a notion? You, the mystery in the vein of life the vein of being. How could I assume any shape for you when my limitless spirit runs wild and has none?
Hydeh Aubon was raised in the poetic culture of Iran and began writing poetry when she was 13. She began writing poetry in English in 1994. She now lives in the United States. Through life’s challenges she has learned that framing life into familiar terms limits a person’s experience. Life is too vast. Hydeh’s poetry does not try to make any statements; her poems are but moments and feelings.
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Come to Bioneers to nourish body, heart, mind and spirit, connect and celebrate community, and ignite your vision. October 14-16, 2011 San Rafael, California Explore the sophisticated sciences, arts and sustainable lifeways that Indigenous First Nations Peoples bring to the Indigenous Forum and Traditional Knowledge Intensive.
Natalia Greene
Ilarion Merculieff
Carlos Nakai
Melissa Nelson
Nina Simons
Gloria Steinem
Luisa Teish
Mary Evelyn Tucker
www.bioneers.org
SACRED FIRE / 3
River of Ancient Wisdom
RETREAT. DISCOVER. HEAL. IN THE CATSKILLS.
Join us in 2011 for these upcoming programs: July 2 – 9
August 19 – 21
Plant Spirit Medicine Training Course
Introduction to Plant Spirit Medicine
SM
with Carla Leftwich & Safia Johnson
with Eliot Cowan & Alison Gayek
elIOt cOWAN
september 2 – 4
July 23 – 28
Healing Camp: Traditional Huichol Shamanic Healing with Eliot Cowan
also offered october 2-7
SM
Medicine Wheel as Lifeway with Joan Henry & Jon Delson september 23 – 25
Healing with Music in the Sufi Tradition
with Ustad Ghulam Farid Nizami & Melissa Clare
July 29 – 31
Journey to the Heart of the Land with Scott Sheerin
premA sHeerIN
OctOber 14 – 16
Grief Camp
with Prema Sheerin & Scott Sheerin OctOber 21 – 23
BLUE DEER
CENTER
mAlIDOmA sOmé
Ancestral Healing Fire Ritual with Malidoma Patrice Somé
Blue Deer Center www.bluedeer.org
• •
Margaretville, New York (845) 586–3225 JOAN HeNry
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