Mysticism and Spirituality Circle

Dear friends,

I have just returned from a profound experience in the Middle East during which we heard the stones speak of ancient cultures and sacred events. On my way back home, I read an excerpt from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book “Braiding Sweetgrass” called “Learning the Grammar of Animacy.”

Today, I wanted to share with all of you this idea of recognizing and hearing the vibrancy and life force in everything that surrounds us. Kimmerer notes that in the language of the Western world, we emphasize nouns and objects, thus allowing ourselves to separate, objectify, exploit, and use up nearly everything we encounter.

However, in her native language and in most indigenous language, the emphasis is on verbs. For instance the word for Bay in her language actually translates as ‘being a Bay.’

So the way our indigenous people here in the Northwest might refer to the Salish Sea on which we all depend is ‘being the Sea.’

Why does this matter? Because, by recognizing that these entities that surround us are not dead objects, but living energetics we can no longer use them without knowing that we are exploiting a living being.

Kimmerer says it best:

“A bay is a noun only if water is dead. When bay is a noun, it is defined by humans, trapped between its shores and contained by the word. But the verb wiikwegamaa – to be a bay – releases the water from bondage and lets it live. “To be a bay” holds the wonder that, for this moment, the living water has decided to shelter itself between these shores, conversing with cedar roots and a flock of baby mergansers. Because it could do otherwise – become a stream or an ocean or a waterfall, and there are verbs for that too. To be a hill, to be a sandy beach, to be a Saturday, all are possible verbs in a world where everything is alive.
“… in Potawatomi and most other indigenous languages, we use the same words to address the living world as we use for our family. Because they are our family.”*

As we walk in the forest or wild areas, this concept is easier to feel and hear but we can also find this aliveness and hear the voice of the living energies in the urban environments if we take the time and allow ourselves to sink into the deep awareness of our living world. I offer you all the encouragement to try listening to your world in this way, and report back in the comments how it has affected your perception of the world.

Kimmerer notes that when you find yourself in that place of remembering that we are not separate, you suddenly know that you are never alone. All around you are living teachers ready and willing to share their wisdom. What a sweet and beautiful thing to remember!

I end this post with this beautiful paragraph from the beginning of the Kimmerer piece that demonstrates this way of hearing life:

“I come here to listen, to nestle in the curve of the roots in a soft hollow of pine needles, to lean my bones against the column of white pine, to turn off the voice in my head until I can hear voices outside it: the shh of wind in needles, water trickling over rock, nuthatch tapping, chipmunks digging, beechnut falling, mosquito in my ear, and something more – something that is not me, for which we have not language, the wordless being of others in which we are never alone. After the drumbeat of my mother’s heart, this was my first language.”*

*Robin Wall Kimmerer, “Learning the Grammar of Animacy,” Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 2013)

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, from the other side of the planet I offer this beautiful poetry from Saint Mary Oliver via Panhala:

 Leaves and Blossoms Along the Way 

If you’re John Muir you want trees to live among. If you’re Emily, a garden will do.

Try to find the right place for yourself.

If you can’t find it, at least dream of it.

When one is alone and lonely, the body gladly lingers in the wind or the rain, or splashes into the cold river, or pushes through the ice-crusted snow.

Anything that touches.

God, or the gods, are invisible, quite understandable. But holiness is visible, entirely.

Some words will never leave God’s mouth, no matter how hard you listen.

In all the works of Beethoven, you will not find a single lie.

All important ideas must include the trees, the mountains, and the rivers.

To understand many things you must reach out of your own condition.

For how many years did I wander slowly through the forest.

What wonder and glory I would have missed had I ever been in a hurry!

Beauty can both shout and whisper, and still it explains nothing.

The point is, you’re you, and that’s for keeps.

~ Mary Oliver ~

(Felicity)

 Earth Song 

Listen to things more often than beings.
Hear the voice of the fire, hear the voice of the water,
Listen in the wind to the sighing of the bush:
This is the ancestors breathing. 
Those who are dead are never gone;
The dead are not down in the earth:
They are in the trembling of the trees,
In the groaning of the woods,
In the water that runs, in the water that sleeps,
They are in the hut, they are in the crowd.
Those who are dead are not ever gone;
They are in the woman’s breast, they are in the wailing of a child,
They are in the burning log and in the moaning rock.
They are in the weeping grasses, in the forest and the home.
Listen to things more often than beings.
Hear the voice of fire, hear the voice of water.
Listen in the wind to the sighing of the bush. 
This is the ancestors breathing.   

(Traditional from Senegal, translator unknown)

Friends, there may be a gap in these blog postings until mid-April as I’ll be traveling.

 The Real Work 

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work, 

and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey. 

The mind that is not baffled is not employed. 
The impeded stream is the one that sings.  

~ Wendell Berry ~ 

(Collected Poems)

What actions are most excellent? 

To gladden the heart of a human being. 
To feed the hungry. 
To help the afflicted. 
To lighten the sorrow of the sorrowful. 
To remove the wrongs of the injured. 
That person is the most beloved of God 
who does the most good to God’s creatures. 

~  Muhammad ~ 

 Wildpeace 

Not the peace of a cease-fire 
not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb, 
but rather 
as in the heart when the excitement is over 
and you can talk only about a great weariness. 
I know that I know how to kill, that makes me an adult. 
And my son plays with a toy gun that knows 
how to open and close its eyes and say Mama. 
A peace 
without the big noise of beating swords into ploughshares,
without words, without 
the thud of the heavy rubber stamp: let it be 
light, floating, like lazy white foam. 
A little rest for the wounds – who speaks of healing? 
(And the howl of the orphans is passed from one generation 
to the next, as in a relay race: 
the baton never falls.) 

Let it come 
like wildflowers, 
suddenly, because the field 
must have it: wildpeace. 

~ Yehuda Amichai ~ 

(The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai, translated by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell)