Tuesday, November 23, 2004
Walk in Beauty
Death fascinates us as a society. The more removed we are from it the more fascinating it becomes. Violence and war seldom visit our doorsteps. On one terrible day terror stalked our nation. We shared that horror. It was too real. It intruded into our living rooms and lives, imprinting itself on our collective psyche.
A month earlier we’d traveled to New York with a group of Native Americans to celebrate International Indigenous People’s Day at the United Nations. Our group had artwork displayed in the lobby. Chief Arvol Looking Horse and Chief Jake Swamp and other dignitaries would lead part of the day’s ceremonies. We’d traveled a long way before the city’s familiar skyline came into view.
“Look at that. Those are the Twin Towers,” I said uninterested travel-weary kids. “You may never have another chance to see them.”
I made them look at the towers. Some of them lived far from New York and might not be here again for years. A month and two days later the towers fell.
We had relatives living in the city. It almost felt selfish to worry about our relatives in the face of such horror. Theirs were the faces we longed to see among the survivors, dreaded we might not. It was long into the evening before we heard they were safe. Then we wept.
As a nation we were urged to normalize our lives. Forget fear. Ignore grief. Go to the mall. Buy something, you’ll feel better and save the economy. It’s your civic duty. Outrage and anguish was muted by cash registers. Show patriotism by shopping at Sears and Penny’s. It was obscene. It wasn’t normal. It was collective dissociation.
Outrage still resurfaces impotently across the country as bluster in bars, violence behind closed doors, and a notwar waged in a desert.
What happened to Q’s original child is a similar symptom of society’s persistent flirtation with death. A less harmful expression is our national obsession with shows like CSI. Humans long to know death intimately, to solve the greatest mystery of life: why live at all if we must die?
The more removed we are from death the more explicitly we express it in our art, words, actions. Movie villains no longer die gracefully off screen, they melt in excruciating detail. People know all about human anatomy thanks to movie magic. The goal is not to heal, or to draw accurately. Its morbid curiosity. Ours is a necrophiliac society. Check it out, only the most extreme behaviors actually involve mutilation or abuse of a corpse. Among the wider range of symptoms is a fascination with death.
“Hey man, that’s killer!” “If you don’t quit that I’m gonna kill you.” “You got a death wish or what?”
Death takes us discreetly in sterile hospital rooms surrounded by machines. We’d be far less violent as a society if we washed our own dead, cut our hair in grief and wailed our pain to the elements.
Our father made sure we understood death by killing kittens while we watched. Chickens were far more dramatic, running in circles around the chopping block spurting blood from severed necks while their heads crowed silently from the ground, eyes blinking.
Occasionally we were forced to act out death, confined in small coffin-like spaces. Sometimes spiders were dumped over our naked body before the lid was closed.
There are few responses to this that leave you sane. Not being mentally present is effective. It worked for us as long as we avoided small-enclosed spaces.
Before we knew what Stonebaby and Die-die spared us we feared spiders. The tiniest spider loomed large in our sight. A single strand of spider web could stop us cold.
Spiders are honored creatures in many Native American stories. Spider spun the web of time, created the tapestry of the universe. We couldn’t help it; we shuddered every time we saw an eight-legged. Even understanding how our fear originated didn’t purge it.
We finally made our peace with spiders during a healing sweat. There are always spiders in sweat lodges. They love the nooks and crannies of sapling and bark. Imagine your worst fear teeming everywhere in your church. It was make peace with spiders or never sweat again.
Soon afterward we made peace with them we had a dream of an immense spider standing guard over our bed. She expanded to cover our entire house. Millions of normal sized spiders filled the floor all around our bed. I woke up, amazed I wasn’t screaming in fear.
The dream’s vision continued even though I was now awake. Eyvonne woke too and listened as I described the unfolding vision. As Spider grew larger she changed from rich blacks and browns to white. With Spider among my spirit protectors we are no longer the least bit afraid of her smaller embodiments.
“So how big is your spider?” Eyvonne asked.
“Bigger than the house,” I said. “She protects you too.”
“So now we have to walk everywhere because your spider won’t fit in the car?” she joked.
Suddenly we were hysterical at 2:30 a.m. Laughter is good any time. It’s life. It puts death in perspective.
My job as system protector is easier now. Did you know spiders have eight eyes? Who better to watch over you?
Spider spins the threads of our life and weaves our strands into the universe. Spider teaches: Elan Kumankwah; Mitakuye Oysain; We are all related.
In the Dine creation story Spider Woman uses her saliva mixed with red, yellow, black and white clay to create humans. She attaches a thread of her web to each person, a gift of creative wisdom. But most forgot her gift. Three times Spider Woman destroyed the world with great floods. Only those who remembered her gift survived to climb through Mother Earth’s womb into the next world.
The Seneca believe Spider created writing. And she gifted the Lakota with dream catchers to melt away nightmares and negativity as morning sun dries dew from a spider web. The Anishnabe (Chippewa) say Spider Woman wove silken dream catchers over each baby's cradleboard. When the Anishnabe people were scattered by settlers Spider Woman had to travel long distances to find them all. To ease her burden the women made of dream catchers of willow and sinew.
We’ve come a long way in the last ten years. We are weaving our own life now brighter threads among the dark and faded ones. We are clipping frayed ends and mending tears in the light of a new day.
Although remembering brought understanding which enabled our healing there will always be triggers to our pain. No time machine exists to erase the past. Healing isn’t about forgetting. It isn’t really even about forgiving although without that step you get stuck in survivorship.
Healing is about being strong enough to know pain and keep moving forward. It’s helping Spider Woman weave the dream catchers.
I believe now what Eyvonne says: “Nothing happens without a reason.”
We endured sexual, physical and emotional abuse in childhood that conditioned us to accept rape, emotional abuse and domestic violence as normal in adulthood. We survived. It’s up to us to make our life meaningful. It’s up to us to walk in beauty.
We treasure the essence of our life.
Last night as the sunset’s golden light glistened off strands of spider web strung between ferns as far as we could see into the woods. They wafted with the breeze glowing, almost on fire. You couldn’t take one step without encountering a silken strand.
“Deities. If we’d seen that before we’d never have set foot in the woods again,” I said.
“And now?” Eyvonne asked.
“Beautiful,” I whispered.
Prayersong
You are confusing
What is important
With what is not.
Look around you.
You are confusing
Starvation with
Something it is not.
Look around you.
Are you hungry?
Do your children cry?
Around you is there beauty?
Open your eyes,
You have confused
Starvation with plenty.
You have created beauty
Walk in it.
Open your eyes,
See plenty,
See beauty
Walk in it.
Harvest what you need
Leave some to grow
Give some back
Open your eyes
Look around you.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot
A month earlier we’d traveled to New York with a group of Native Americans to celebrate International Indigenous People’s Day at the United Nations. Our group had artwork displayed in the lobby. Chief Arvol Looking Horse and Chief Jake Swamp and other dignitaries would lead part of the day’s ceremonies. We’d traveled a long way before the city’s familiar skyline came into view.
“Look at that. Those are the Twin Towers,” I said uninterested travel-weary kids. “You may never have another chance to see them.”
I made them look at the towers. Some of them lived far from New York and might not be here again for years. A month and two days later the towers fell.
We had relatives living in the city. It almost felt selfish to worry about our relatives in the face of such horror. Theirs were the faces we longed to see among the survivors, dreaded we might not. It was long into the evening before we heard they were safe. Then we wept.
As a nation we were urged to normalize our lives. Forget fear. Ignore grief. Go to the mall. Buy something, you’ll feel better and save the economy. It’s your civic duty. Outrage and anguish was muted by cash registers. Show patriotism by shopping at Sears and Penny’s. It was obscene. It wasn’t normal. It was collective dissociation.
Outrage still resurfaces impotently across the country as bluster in bars, violence behind closed doors, and a notwar waged in a desert.
What happened to Q’s original child is a similar symptom of society’s persistent flirtation with death. A less harmful expression is our national obsession with shows like CSI. Humans long to know death intimately, to solve the greatest mystery of life: why live at all if we must die?
The more removed we are from death the more explicitly we express it in our art, words, actions. Movie villains no longer die gracefully off screen, they melt in excruciating detail. People know all about human anatomy thanks to movie magic. The goal is not to heal, or to draw accurately. Its morbid curiosity. Ours is a necrophiliac society. Check it out, only the most extreme behaviors actually involve mutilation or abuse of a corpse. Among the wider range of symptoms is a fascination with death.
“Hey man, that’s killer!” “If you don’t quit that I’m gonna kill you.” “You got a death wish or what?”
Death takes us discreetly in sterile hospital rooms surrounded by machines. We’d be far less violent as a society if we washed our own dead, cut our hair in grief and wailed our pain to the elements.
Our father made sure we understood death by killing kittens while we watched. Chickens were far more dramatic, running in circles around the chopping block spurting blood from severed necks while their heads crowed silently from the ground, eyes blinking.
Occasionally we were forced to act out death, confined in small coffin-like spaces. Sometimes spiders were dumped over our naked body before the lid was closed.
There are few responses to this that leave you sane. Not being mentally present is effective. It worked for us as long as we avoided small-enclosed spaces.
Before we knew what Stonebaby and Die-die spared us we feared spiders. The tiniest spider loomed large in our sight. A single strand of spider web could stop us cold.
Spiders are honored creatures in many Native American stories. Spider spun the web of time, created the tapestry of the universe. We couldn’t help it; we shuddered every time we saw an eight-legged. Even understanding how our fear originated didn’t purge it.
We finally made our peace with spiders during a healing sweat. There are always spiders in sweat lodges. They love the nooks and crannies of sapling and bark. Imagine your worst fear teeming everywhere in your church. It was make peace with spiders or never sweat again.
Soon afterward we made peace with them we had a dream of an immense spider standing guard over our bed. She expanded to cover our entire house. Millions of normal sized spiders filled the floor all around our bed. I woke up, amazed I wasn’t screaming in fear.
The dream’s vision continued even though I was now awake. Eyvonne woke too and listened as I described the unfolding vision. As Spider grew larger she changed from rich blacks and browns to white. With Spider among my spirit protectors we are no longer the least bit afraid of her smaller embodiments.
“So how big is your spider?” Eyvonne asked.
“Bigger than the house,” I said. “She protects you too.”
“So now we have to walk everywhere because your spider won’t fit in the car?” she joked.
Suddenly we were hysterical at 2:30 a.m. Laughter is good any time. It’s life. It puts death in perspective.
My job as system protector is easier now. Did you know spiders have eight eyes? Who better to watch over you?
Spider spins the threads of our life and weaves our strands into the universe. Spider teaches: Elan Kumankwah; Mitakuye Oysain; We are all related.
In the Dine creation story Spider Woman uses her saliva mixed with red, yellow, black and white clay to create humans. She attaches a thread of her web to each person, a gift of creative wisdom. But most forgot her gift. Three times Spider Woman destroyed the world with great floods. Only those who remembered her gift survived to climb through Mother Earth’s womb into the next world.
The Seneca believe Spider created writing. And she gifted the Lakota with dream catchers to melt away nightmares and negativity as morning sun dries dew from a spider web. The Anishnabe (Chippewa) say Spider Woman wove silken dream catchers over each baby's cradleboard. When the Anishnabe people were scattered by settlers Spider Woman had to travel long distances to find them all. To ease her burden the women made of dream catchers of willow and sinew.
We’ve come a long way in the last ten years. We are weaving our own life now brighter threads among the dark and faded ones. We are clipping frayed ends and mending tears in the light of a new day.
Although remembering brought understanding which enabled our healing there will always be triggers to our pain. No time machine exists to erase the past. Healing isn’t about forgetting. It isn’t really even about forgiving although without that step you get stuck in survivorship.
Healing is about being strong enough to know pain and keep moving forward. It’s helping Spider Woman weave the dream catchers.
I believe now what Eyvonne says: “Nothing happens without a reason.”
We endured sexual, physical and emotional abuse in childhood that conditioned us to accept rape, emotional abuse and domestic violence as normal in adulthood. We survived. It’s up to us to make our life meaningful. It’s up to us to walk in beauty.
We treasure the essence of our life.
Last night as the sunset’s golden light glistened off strands of spider web strung between ferns as far as we could see into the woods. They wafted with the breeze glowing, almost on fire. You couldn’t take one step without encountering a silken strand.
“Deities. If we’d seen that before we’d never have set foot in the woods again,” I said.
“And now?” Eyvonne asked.
“Beautiful,” I whispered.
Prayersong
You are confusing
What is important
With what is not.
Look around you.
You are confusing
Starvation with
Something it is not.
Look around you.
Are you hungry?
Do your children cry?
Around you is there beauty?
Open your eyes,
You have confused
Starvation with plenty.
You have created beauty
Walk in it.
Open your eyes,
See plenty,
See beauty
Walk in it.
Harvest what you need
Leave some to grow
Give some back
Open your eyes
Look around you.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot
