UNTAMED.
The pink flowers on the magnolia tree and the red blossoms on the cherry tree have fallen. The church yard at the corner is all green. And, the young pigeon who lost his or her toes last spring is still appearing on my windowsill early in the morning for food. Distractions abound on the news and the reality of climate disaster, which seems should be front and center, if our lives are to continue, is reported like a footnote. Ancient ruins throwing back the date of great cities occur regularly, and everything we were taught about Neanderthals is being disproved. Our dream of a blunt grunting society is being replaced by a realization of ancient kindness, skeletons emerging surrounded by fossils of flowers. We are the ones who appear primitive unable to resist war and rudeness. Why am I writing? I am calling for a radical revolution of imagination.
A seventh century Tibetan story relates how at a time of unbearable drought a monk traveled from village to village in order to bear witness. He came to the poorest of all places and was offered a bowl of rice. The last rice that anyone had was shared to gift him with a meal. He wanted to refuse, but to do so would not accept their generosity. Moved to the core of his bones, the heart of his being, he looked up and saw a picture of a white cow painted on the clay wall. Filled with immense gratitude he milked the cow and fed the entire village.
While we whittle away at what vestiges remain of once wild place, as we eliminate cultures, languages , a sensory sense of connection, and genuine imagination, we forget the self-existing replenishing force of wilderness. Where do we find it? What still might survive of earth’s abundance becomes more difficult to access in a world of wars, economic injustice, climate change and unstoppable greed. Hope I suggest is not in returning to what we consider “normal.” Hope a state of mind that emerges with a recognition that we are a part of the natural world. It is not hope for something, but hope as an open heart with possibility to live in the world as it is.
As a storyteller, wilderness can first be revived closer to home: within us and the nature of mind itself, unhinged from self-preoccupation. The very nature of storytelling is relationship .. with other, and with the ever-arising creativity of being itself. The voice of the storyteller reaches the listener and causes a bubbling up of image and memory, sensory experience, and the unexpected uncovering of abiding presence known through reciprocity in this special occurence.
In the early 1900’s after living for 10 years among Inuit people, an Inuit woman described to Peter Freuchen the source of sacred song,
“The spirits were to be summoned with fresh words; worn out songs could never be used when men and women danced and sang ….Darkness and stillness were to reign in the festival house. In deep silence they sat…. It was this stillness we call qarrtsiluni, which means that one waits for something to burst…. They believed that the songs are born in this stillness. then they take shape in the mind and rise up like bubbles from the depths of the sea, bubbles that seek the air to burst into the light.”
Hearing these words, I visualize, and feel, the words rising from a great stillness, from the bottom of the ocean of my being, but sense of the bubbling up of inspiration – an image of water moving through.. a longing to reconnect fills me .. and I delight to be drawn out of self preoccupation into engagement. Between myself and listeners to the story, or readers when the words are fresh, is the restitution of a wild place, untamed, and alive that we remember. And then we can imagine or re imagine ourselves as part of the world, not as the main part or the powerful domineering part.
The untamed, the wild, is not a threat of disorder. It is a natural response, complex, beyond understanding, and not in our control or capacity to change. All of our attempts to destroy in order to gain success, lead to deeper and deeper damage to the very things we dream of achieving.
When we are able to participate, to listen, to respond with awareness of interdependence, change and loss, (and it is not an easy ability given our disassociation from being as the resource) we find wells of regenerative energy, insight and humor. Intuition to grow roots and flower, regardless.
