community
is a basic human need
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to learn the way the forest breathes watch the deer disappear among the trees
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Jennifer Lighty points out in her most recent post, Finding Mythic Ground, “modern life is a paradox,” a paradox that seems to consume every direction it travels.
As I deepen my own psychic roots and human heart into the natural world, it’s ancient teachings, and a more wholesome understanding of the people who lived here before us, I find myself sometimes completely silenced by the imposed cultural world(view) we have planted here throughout these lands, these sacred sites, the ancestral waters and thriving ecosystems; this deeply alive web of diversity that has sustained many, many generations of people for thousands of years; a web alive as much in the spiritual sense as in the physical sense: a spiritually alive landscape of interconnected dependency and intrinsic beauty.
From an article I’ve been reading lately about the Kogi people of Northern Colombia:
In basically every detail of life the Kogi should ideally heed and look after an incredibly rich web of relations with all components and forces of the Sierra Nevada, a cosmic weave also navigated by the I’kʉ. A person is a node of living threads (shi) held together through necessary behaviours, rites, living patterns, responsibilities and even appropriate thoughts. This is guided by very elaborate sets of knowledge, teachings and stories called shibʉlama, which roughly translates as “threads of truth and energy”. Along these threads, the Great Mother, the origin of all things, conceived the world in her thought, called Aluna, and wove the world together, giving birth to it. Everything was then organized through learning processes of her sons and daughters, the Spiritual Fathers and Mothers (Kalguasha).
The paradox of modernity is not just baffling in its sheer physical obtrusion upon the natural world, but also in the consuming mentality that enlivens its inhabitants. The quick-fix, hot and heavy, immediacy of it all creates a seductive illusion that what we are doing is at all sustainable or enriching, or worst of all, that the modern way of life is all there is.
Our options are seemingly limitless: travel to Indonesia for a five-day workshop, source “superfoods” from Peru, India and Bhutan, vacation in a premium forested get-away with all inclusive spa treatments and world class cuisine, drive across watersheds and mountain ranges in a few hours. But what, really, is the cost of these ventures and services? Whose forest, whose mountain, whose homeland is being ravaged as a result? How many elk were slaughtered on highway I-70 when it was first built?
As the saying goes, “You can’t see the forest for the trees.”
A dear friend of the community is leaving for over year to pursue a lucrative opportunity in the fine art of stained glass. At her going-away feast, I offered her a gift from the Kogi people of Northern Colombia, which opened our conversation to deeper ways of knowing and understanding.
“Animism” she told me, “isn’t an -ism. It isn’t an idea or a belief, it’s actually the way things are.”
Animism, according to Wikipedia, is “the belief that objects, places, and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence. Animism perceives all things— animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems, human handiwork, and in some cases words—as being animated, having agency and free will.”
To the Kogi’s, thoughts and imagination are also alive, having agency and influence across time and space.
Animism is considered a belief system of indigenous or earth-based peoples across the planet. It is considered to some as “primitive”, idealist, woo-woo or unscientific. Not realistic, inessential. But the more I live here, with next-to-nothing on the side of a mountain through all seasons, daily immersed in the living being of this landscape, the more I see the reality of animism. Not only the reality of it, but the usefulness of its understanding as a cultural foundation for humanity.
If we want to live here, on earth, we have to change.
We have to cultivate cultural baskets that hold Life as sacred, as it is, in truth. Cultural revivance around the Sacred opportunity to live, at home, on a living green planet, as a weave in the cosmic dream of life. We have to re-establish right relation between humanity and the living earth.
This is not a woo-woo idea, but actually a practical, urgent and necessary step towards survival as a species on earth.
For me, it looks like giving back whenever and wherever possible. It doesn’t have to be extraordinary, although extraordinary measures are needed, but it can be as simple as walking to your nearest river, acknowledging its sovereign aliveness, and bringing it a gift, like flowers or chocolate, or a song of gratitude for the millions of ways water enriches your life. Let her know you know. And listen. Take a moment to stop consuming the millions of superficial prizes modernity offers you, and be with the water, the wind, the falling leaves. Show your appreciation with physical gifts.
I like to use the analogy of paying rent. We pay rent to our landlords for a place to live, we pay the bills to the electric and propane companies for the comforts of home, we pay the coffee shop for a nice place to sip coffee and converse with friends. But when was the last time we acknowledged the enormous and unavoidable indebtedness we are in towards Earth herself?
To breathe? To clothe ourselves? To exist?
Modernity is savvy in its ability to cover up that basic indebtedness. So long as I can travel and have AC and eat mangoes from Peru, why would I even consider the living Earth as essential to my basic existence? As long as I have social media and video games, bills to pay and grocery stores to peruse, why would I take a moment to acknowledge that the mountain is responsible for the water the feeds the fruits and veggies I like to eat? Why would I notice how a migration of butterflies affects the ocean? Why would I care about the health of the headwaters of the Colorado River?
We are always in community. Our neighbors, sovereign and unique, include the woodpecker and dragonfly, the spruce, alder and aspen, and like our human neighbors, they like to be acknowledged by us. They like gifts and visitations, like any of us do. They have stories to share. Gifts to give. Remembrances to ignite.
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Thank you for reading this edition of Wild Leaf. I write between moments of mothering and maintaining the million things that need tending in this way of life. We live outside, mostly. We carry water and chop wood. It is not an easy way of life, but the threads of my being are woven into the threads of this land, and for that I am very very grateful.
Leave a comment if you feel inspired. Share with your friends.
Enjoy this gift of a day.
This is so beautiful I'm on the edge of tears. That photo of the Mongolian shaman.....I had a psychedelically enhanced experience many years ago looking at an old photo like this. I don't know if the man was a shaman, but I do know he was from Papua New Guinea. The conversation we had did not take place in words, but for a while I could see through his eyes and understand what it was like to live in an animist world. I also understood that a camera really can take a piece of someone's soul, as so many native peoples believed when they first came in contact with them. Maybe they still do. Yet, I'm glad for these photos, because they help keep the memory alive of what it's like to live in a whole world. Your experience living on the mountain reminds me so much of the years I lived on Block Island year round. I had no knowledge of animism or mythopoetics. I just spent all my time outdoors and the creatures of the land and sea showed me they were alive because I showed up in my ignorance and innocence over and over. I'm so glad to have you as a sister in this world, Leah.
Beautiful writing & thoughts. I love the notion of cultivating cultural baskets…