The Land fed us, once.
Our grandmothers and grandfathers knew this... they knew where the bounty they enjoyed around their hearths and tables came from. They knew and they gave thanks. From secret, sacred places they gave thanks. From public dance grounds, ball grounds and council houses they gave thanks. They went to water in the powerful, sacred rivers to be purified then they prayed and gave thanks to the Great Spirit who made everything around them, to Grandmother Sun who warmed them and made things grow and her brother the Moon who watched over them at night. They gave thanks to the Spirits of the Four Directions who watched over all aspects of their world, from game and fish to weather and crops, from war and peace to birth and death.
They gave thanks.
My Cherokee Grandmothers, in the shadow of their beloved mountains, followed the stories their Grandmothers told of Selu, the first woman, and learned to work the soil, nurturing their gardens and fields so that the Three Sisters would grow and bear fruit to feed themselves, their men and their children. They loved this land. They poured that love into their gardens as if it was water. They respected the land as they respected the Great Spirit. As one should respect a benevolent but impartial authority. Act right, and it will provide you with all that you need. Disrespect, and you will starve. They taught their daughters this love and respect to insure them against future disaster. Our Grandfathers, in the footsteps of Kanati, hunted the peoples of the four-legged and winged tribes to bring meat to their fires. Though they sought to kill them, they respected these tribes as much as they did the One who created them and sought forgiveness for what they needed to do. Any less and there would've been no game. This respect, and the prayers and ceremony that went with it they passed to their sons. Those who were here before us would look on their fields and their game-filled forests and say, "Look what Creator has given us!" and give thanks for all they received. Creator heard them. The Animal Spirits of the Upper World who controlled the game and the element Spirits of this Middle World heard them. The earth itself heard them and in payment for this gratitude each would provide again and again and thus would the cycle of life continue. This was good.
And then came Greed.
The People were generous. They would give to their last that their relatives and neighbors would not be hungry or cold. They did so without thought of the future for the knew that as they gave to others, so others would give to them in their need. That was the way of things. But those who came next carried with them a sickness. Diseases, yes, but also something far more sinister. Greed. Greed and the obsessive desire to own everything. To gather more and more, much more than a man could ever use and never to share with their neighbor, and only grudgingly with family, for fear of losing any part of what they had in the name of some shadowy future catastrophe. And their Greed brought with it an even deeper evil; the spiteful spirit of Envy. Once that took hold, no longer was it enough to have more and more things, no... now one had to have that which belonged to others for fear of being less than they were. Most of all it was the land of others that was coveted and with Greed's fire in their bellies and Envy's pervasive whisper in their ears, they set out to take it. They drove off some and killed those who would not leave. The Invaders then set about remaking their captured land in a manner more fitting themselves. Hollow and overworked. They did not care for, and in truth feared and hated, the Spirits who remained and the ceremonies meant to gain their favor. They instead prayed strange prayers to a foreign God of a distant land whose Book had taught them to strive for domination and to bend the "wild" world to their will. They hunted or trapped or ran off the animal tribes who once fed the people and replaced them with their stinking, destructive livestock. They cleared the forests by the thousands of acres and forced the newly bare Land to grow far more than it could support, again and again until it was barren; an ancient Grandmother long past her ability to produce new life. Even then, this new people would look on their farms and later their towns and cities and say "This is mine! Look what I have done with it (but stay away)!" and gave gratitude to only themselves and to their foreign God. This, as we've seen, was not so good.
A wise man said that force, no matter how subtly disguised, breeds resistance.
The Land is resisting.
Though it is not always apparent to us because the Earth does things in her own time, she is resisting and always has been. She is resisting these Invaders who do not respect her and so the world they've built on her back cannot long be sustained. It is a false world, one held together by concepts and theories and meaningless words. Of lying, weak-hearted men and spiteful, vindictive women. Even their children are destructive, hateful creatures who believe in nothing, respect only material possessions and could barely survive outside an electronic world where every want and need is provided by those who would profit from their greed. Look around, the people of this nation are trying their dead level best to tear their own house apart. This country is rooted in nothing because the Land has rejected it. It has no sense of itself or it's place in the Universe and that lack will drive it to suicide.
Is it too late?
In many respects, yes. A hard truth, to be sure, but in all likelihood the current course cannot be changed. It's destination will be painful. Painful, but not necessarily final. The Old Ones teach that all of Creation is a circle, not a straight line. It does not begin here and end completely over there, but constantly begins again. The old becoming new becoming old. It may be that the metaphorical train will derail but those who survive will still have their feet and by walking on start the cycle anew. I believe that we will be those survivors. We, the grandchildren of those who once made these mountains ring, the grandchildren of the many first nations from across this land, even those like me... disillusioned grandchildren of the Invaders with only a thin tie, if any, to the blood of these hills. Sadly, many if not all of us have become products of this age and were never taught what our Grandparents knew, we have only a vague notion that the earth, not the farmers or grocers, once fed The People. But blood will remember. Blood will always remember and we are learning. There are many today who are looking. Looking out of curiosity alone, so they think, but even that shows that people are again learning to listen. Learning to listen to the quiet voices of the world around them. The trees, the birds, the winds that are the voice and breath of the Great Spirit. The old ways are returning and the spirits are again listening. They listen for the pulse of the drum, the stomp of dancing feet. They listen again for the voices raised in song and the hearts opened in silent prayer.
Let them hear us.
Let them hear us that they may once again speak to The People. That the plants and the trees who first gave us the medicines we've forgotten, will give to us again the knowledge we need to stay well. That the animal spirits of the Upper World will again send their people to live in this world in abundance and give of themselves what we need to feed ourselves. That Grandmother Sun, Brother Moon and all the spirits of this world will again know that those they watch over and help love and respect them. That Creator will see that we have not forsaken the gifts and the love that were so freely given. That this Land that we live on, that receives our newborns and embraces our dead, will again feed her people.
The Land fed us once...
She may again.
It falls to us to listen and learn and do what is right.
No comments:
Post a Comment