It is said that this time on Earth (heart, a little mixed up) is about community.
Yesterday coming back to town from a day away I noticed smoke over part of the mountain range and what looked like smog hanging over the municipality, which is gratefully a site nor quality of air I ever experience where I live.
Arriving at my village at night I saw a bright orange fire aflame high up. It was an awesome sight for it’s power, potential and beauty. It reminded me of a live volcano, dripping lava, as flames travelled towards ground. Walking home I noticed the acrid smoke thick in the air and in my lungs. Although we are always breathing the same air together, the change in the quality of the smoke filled air brought to my attention the notion that that night, we would all be breathing the same fire infused air, together. Pat Humphries’ song “Swimming to the other side” came to me, and it is with me today as well. She sings,
“We are living ‘neath the great Big Dipper
We are washed by the very same rain
We are swimming in the stream together
Some in power and some in pain
We can worship this ground we walk on
Cherishing the beings that we live beside
Loving spirits will live forever
We’re all swimming to the other side.”
The feeling of community continues particularly noticeable today. A heavy, stinging blanket of burnt brush clung to the
Helicopter Leaving
silence throughout much of the day. The men were up in the mountains clearing brush and the women and children were below, keeping home life going. Many of the children wore face masks. In the late afternoon, a helicopter came and began bringing buckets of water that seemed as large as thimbles but in fact held 3,00 litres each, one by one, back and forth. It seemed such a tiny and grand gesture and I felt moved, as group efforts always move me.
In the evening the mayor announced over the town megaphone that four men were still up there. Later I heard that they were back on the ground and that they could not have been from our village, as the men of our town know their way in the mountains.
La Ventana (The Window)
One young man shared that he had gone up around 8 in the morning and came down around 5. He said about 40 men were up there working, and that later other men arrived from their villages on the other side of the mountain to assist as well. I asked him what it was like. “Hot and sad. There were a lot of dead animals up there.” My friend told me that because the fire had reached the brush on the paths, they had to climb the steep rocks where there were no paths, and that they went even higher than (and behind) “la ventana” a special rock feature that some say is a portal. On the way, they encountered an ancient square structure of dark stone, which is not the stone of that area. It seemed to him like a pyramid either begun or deteriorated, and that people would have had to carry the huge rocks up there. They also encountered symbolic carvings in the mountain’s stone walls. It’s amazing to think about people living or visiting those rock places so high up, hundreds and thousands of years ago. Surely there was great significance and importance in that relationship.
In the evening I went to the iglesia with a friend (church, community hub) to ask the women, who were stationed about with their large pots and baskets of tortillas, if they needed anything. We were told they were short 1 garafon (large container) of water and 8-10 dozen tortillas. We went to a tienda and stood around the comal reheating yesterday’s tortillas for the men. As we were leaving, another town woman came in to donate a pail of soaked corn. The tienda owner shouted to us that this had arrived and that they would grind it into masa and make tortillas from it which we could pick up in 45 minutes. In the end we delivered the water and 10 dozen scalding hot tortillas, blue and white, each of us holding a handle of the bag as we handed it with love and purpose to the church care-taker’s wife.
As the sky darkened, it was possible once again to see the status of the flames. The winds and dry leaves and sticks had carried the fire far and wide, towards other neighboring towns. This exhibition of nature is giving the community some drama, pulling everyone together in concern and action.
My yard is a dog’s playpen: old shoes, bones, rope.
When Chandla knows we are going walking she gets excited and likes to grab a bone and bring it along. LIke a toddler, within yards of the gate, the bone is dropped as our movement brings other scents and sights that must be followed.
My normal reaction is to discourage her to bring the toy with, because it will just be dropped, forgotten, and ultimately picked up by some other dog and then, my story goes, she’ll be bored tomorrow because she doesn’t have the object to chew on.
I’m encouraging “holding onto” and “possessiveness” with the belief that “tomorrow there will be none.”
Realizing the beliefs I was projecting onto and really trying to teach my dog, I decided to play with an experiment. I saw that Chandla is not concerned about the future. She is not thinking nor worried about not having a bone tomorrow. She is fine in this moment. So I decided to take her lead and try out this spiritual experiment: Suppose, just suppose I am not worried about her losing her bone and not having one tomorrow and her being bored. Suppose I just let her drop her bone on the road and see what happens tomorrow. This is the great question of how to shift from my mind being in charge to following some other flow, which I am told is Goodness. I want to trust this other thing. I want to see what it means to let go of thinking and attempting to control life and trying to figure out the best way to make the things happen that I want to happen. So I let Chandla drop the bone. By the way, this was not just a regular bone that I brought from the butcher. This is a deep orange, hollow, excellent chewing bone that somehow appeared in my yard. I really don’t want to lose this bone.
I breathe through the fear that there won’t be “more” tomorrow. Of not knowing what will happen, what horrible thing might happen by me not preserving her bone. The next day in my yard I see….the fresh skeleton of a horse leg, complete with hoof! I don’t know how it got there, if Chandla found it or some other creature brought it. But the experiment proved powerful: An even bigger, better bone replaced the other stupendous bone. Prosperity, goodness and cause for Trusting abound.
The teaching doesn’t end here. Throughout the day, Chandla and Leonita took peaceful turns with the bone, working at it contentedly for hours. Late in the afternoon some dogs ran by, returning with their masters from another day in the fields. Suddenly there was a cacophony of barking as one of the dogs darted into our yard, grabbed the leg and ran out. Leonita, being still a puppy barked but didn’t do anything. Where was Chandla? The bone should be protected! They were going to lose their bone! I returned minutes later and somehow the bone had returned! Satisfied I went back inside. I returned awhile later and the bone was gone again! By now I was getting comfortable with the ebb and flow of the bone’s coming and going and so wasn’t worried. The bone had movement. It would move. No condition of it’s presence or absence was permanent. The bone remained in our yard that night and the next day the upper bone had been separated from the lower one. Today a partial hoof remains, the rest of the leg well digested. I feel content now. It’s okay to let the bones go. There are more bones, and there will come more bones.
I recently had a slow day. I’ve been running around so busily lately, and my meditation practice is helping me to be able to see what my mind does. On this slow day, I didn’t strive to get things done, to accomplish, to move ahead. I didn’t hurry. I took my time with each small task and consciously let the action be its own reason or value.
I realized how I am all the time rushing, trying to get enough done to be adequate for That-which-gave-me-life and is surely watching me live. On this day, I saw that in rushing to the Divine I am actually moving further from It. When I slowed all the way down and didn’t have goals or stories about what “doing enough” is and would get me, I felt closer to the experience I want, and actually on the track where Divine hangs out.
What a strange and ironic realization. If being in conscious, living, loving relationship with the Divine is my main goal, then what does this say for how I operate habitually?
Does it mean I should stop doing all those activities? My hunch is that it is more about how I do, not what I do. What would it look like to do the same actions, but with an attitude of “there’s nothing more important than what is in front of me right now”?
I recently acquired an abandoned puppy with a bad case of mange. She was so traumatized by being left that she trembled and couldn’t look at me. Her eyes were hazy, her ribs poked out, she had lost a lot of hair and she had oozing sores with blood and pus. The vet I took her to gave a prognosis and treatment plan that was so long, doubtful and toxic that I rejected it. In the end, I decided that what could help her heal through all this (If she chose to make it through) was love and nutritious food. Period.
Recently, a friend visiting me had a painful, shocking experience and fainted on my grass. I ran out and shook her awake. She was terrified and in shock. My other friend and I sat with her, stroking, rubbing, touching her gently. Eventually she came back and we walked her inside. Later she said that the touch was the best and only thing that could have helped her then.
It struck me: Is life, living, caring as simple as love, nourishing food and touch?
Yesterday was Don Horacio and his son Horacio’s birthday celebration. He invited me to the mass at the church at 1. At 1:45 as I arrived at his house, a a small procession of family members was leaving the gate. I enjoyed seeing I was in perfect time - not an easy place for me to drop into, when I’m oriented towards punctuality. Don Horacio and Horacio were carrying a low table with two long handles extending out towards the front and back. The table was covered in a white cloth punctuated by several large bright embroidered flowers. A statue of Mary Magdalena was secured onto the table and over her head was an arc of seven pink balloons and the family name. I joined the silent procession and we walked slowly up to the church, different men taking turns carrying the Magdalena. We arrived before the pastor named Horacio and once the statue had been placed in the church, Don Horacio came and sat with me on a metal bench in front of the doorway to chat.
Soon Horacio the pastor arrived in plain clothes, carrying a large, stuffed plastic shopping bag. Soon he appeared in his white robe with embroidered trim. He asked us to all move back, way back along the path leading into the church. When we’d gone far enough back he told us it was enough. Then he explained why he wanted us where we were. Horacio told us that we are Pilgrims, and that every time, all the time in our lives, as we approach the church or anything, we do so as pilgrims, and that the walk of a Pilgrim is a difficult one. He wanted to bring our consciousness to this as we approached the church together, walking slowly, singing a song inviting the Magdelena to come join us.
The mass was long and interesting, as always when it is pastor Horacio’s service. He spoke of the difference between city and village life and how those brought up in a village are closer to divinity through community involvement and regular contact with nature. At the end he asked Don Horacio if he wanted to say anything and the elder conceded. He spoke of his political work for indigenous rights and of his recent research which culminated in a huge vinyl sign being made and hung on the church wall the day of the village’s annual celebration of its patron saint, Mary Magdelena, July 22. I had seen this sign and read its long text with awe and pride that I live in this village and that there is such an awareness and expansive view of the Magdalena’s significance in the world and to this place. Here is a rough translation of Don Horacio’s text:
This shrine (currently the iglesia) was dedicated to Mary Magdalene in the XV1 century, who was a friend and disciple of Jesus. Although the evangelists make few references to her, other sources shorten data about her life and work. As always, there exists various versions about historical fact. Documents from the first century reveal much about her family and the value she has for the spiritual lineage in the world.
Just as Jesus was descended from the house of David of the tribe of Judah, Maria was a descendant of the royal Hasmonean family. She was born in Magdala, the place of the tower from which one could view and monitor the herd. Maria understood the message of Jesus, followed him to his death and was the first to see him resurrected.
The day when she is revered, July 22, is not a casual day, because astrologically, the sun enters the sign of Leo, so it is the special day of light, the lordship of royalty. Nor is it a coincidence that this temple has been consecrated to Mary Magdalene as well as “Place of the amáte trees.” Amatlán can be interpreted as the Place of the original mother … the root of love, as well as the creative mother, which means the primitive form of the universe … and even before creation, so much wisdom existed, as the womb from which emerges transcendent light.
Amatlán may be like this, the Place of the cosmic mother, wise, watchful, tower, the Magdalena manifest in woman, goodness, fertility, Easter, spring, nobility, just like Ce Topilzin-Acatl Quetzalcoatl represented the real lineage of the Toltecs.
“I am the light of the world follows me will never walk in darkness” said Jesus. (Jn 8, 2) Jesus put emphasis on the light and has always been sought by all men.
The light is kind, shines at dawn and allows us to work at night, illumines us with joy at celebrations, the light reaches everyone, poor and rich, the light of truth triumphs over the dark forces. Because of that, s/he who follows the light of Jesus, may acquire the ability to order their existence attributing things and concerns where they belong. With the light, one triumphs over the darkness that one carries within oneself. If we are filled with light, this floods every corner of our existence, making us luminous and full of joy and peace.
After the mass, we processed back to his home where we feasted on barbacoa de res, rice, beans, salsa, tortillas and tequila. I
The entrance to the iglesia on fiesta day
imagine Leonardo arrived in the evening and played his romantic ranchero songs on his guitar, but I left early as I had to get up early today for another ceremony, the raising of the cross for Don Felipe, a friend who was murdered one night in his tienda, exactly a year ago.
Nine days ago I had arrived at 7 in the evening to participate in the first of nine nights of saying the rosary for him. I wasn’t able to come the other 8 nights but it felt important to be there for the raising of the cross and to suppor Sofia, Felipes wife for it.
Every night of the rosary the people of the community who arrived brought candles and flowers which were lit and placed accordingly in large erns borrowed from the church. I watched as Verna unrolled a piece of parchment on the floor, smoothing the wrinkles. I didn’t know then what this was for.
This morning, when I arrived at 8, a black metal cross about one meter long had been laid over the parchment. Over the iron bars had been laid white flower petals. Maria, another neighbor and the woman charged with conducting ceremony for the village, led the prayer today, which lasted several hours and included a call and response prayer in addition to the rosary. It was lovely, poetic, simple, and surprisingly, didn’t strike me as very Catholic!
At the end, Noberto, Verna’s husband passed the veladoras (large votive candles in glasses) to me and I passed them to the rest of the participants. We held our candles and prayed for Felipe’s safe departure from pergatory and safe arrival with G-d. The cross was slowly raised to standing. Verna on one side and Noberto opposite her, each held an arm of the cross and gently brushed petals from it onto the parchment on top of which it had laid. When the cross was free of flowers, they leaned it against the heavy erns of flowers and began a process of sweeping and cleaning: the closing of this nine day ritual. While Maria rose from the dirty pillow she’d been given to kneel on, the floor in front of the altar was scraped of wax drippings and swept with a specially made small broom. The flower petals were pushed into a heap in the middle of the parchment and then lifted and poured into a cardboard box that had been covered in purple tissue paper for the occasion. All the love, good wishes, devotion and positive energy that had been collected by the flowers the previous 9 days, were now in the box and would be taken to the cemetery after the mass, along with the metal cross which would replace the temporary wooden one. Then we lined up and one by one approached the cross, held by Noberto and Verna and kissed it, then blessed it with the copal smoke emanating from the popoxcamal.
After this I had to leave for an appointment. When I returned several hours later, the group had reconvened at Sofia’s house and were feasting. A two man group was entertaining the guests with romantic ranchero songs Felipe would have loved, singing in harmony while one played an electric keyboard set to sound like an accordian. I used to dance with Felipe and really wanted to dance with someone to honor this aspect of the man. He loved to drink sometimes, and dance. I told Sofia I needed someone to dance with and first she suggested their son, Felipe, but he didn’t want to. Sofia recommended Felipes older brother, Juan, and we set to dancing…the first ones on the dance floor! We danced and twirled one another and it was so joyful and spirited and full of emotion. The song was about how there was no more potatoes, no more beans, no more vegetables from the harvest…but the harvest of women never ran out!! Then something about “I don’t want coco rallada”…grated coconut…which I suspect is a saying for something, but no one I asked knew for what. After the long dance, Juan and I talked of Felipe and my eyes grew wet as I recalled my friend and dancing buddy. We remembered and honored Filepe together through that dance, and it was a good healing, a letting go.
I used to see the people of my village as Catholic, not indigenous. Even Don Horacio who wrote the text about Mary Magdelena as the divine feminine, wanted to go to church and have a mass on his birthday. What I saw and felt through these two ceremonies is that there is an indigenous knowing that is being demonstrated through these motions. It is the knowing and continuing of actions in order, done in a specific way, in relation to the world, the spirits, gods, nature. It is beautiful, a way to navigate through our life cycles and so very alive.
There is a tenderness growing in me towards the living world. Last time, I wrote about my initiation with the deathdance of a moth. Truly that experience softened me to the insect world for which I’ve had a certain resistance. At night, the world changes. The plants give us oxygen and the insects come out. At my indoor-outdoor house, every night is different. One night when it was very hot it seemed a certain tiny biting insect was born and in abundance. Almost invisible, they nipped at my skin, like sand flies. When I tried to brush them off, the ones I killed left red smears on the pages of my book and skin. Another night, when there was rain, came a flurry of long thin winged insects into my office where there was light. They landed on everything and then congregated in the corner. Within the hour they had died and loose wings covered the floor. In the morning I swept them together and out the door.
Last night I had three frogs. Sweet little things the size of my thumbnail. One of them had this funny way of jumping which I tried to capture with my video camera but was unsuccessful, as every time he jumped he left the viewfinder frame. This one little frog, every time he/she jumped she did a 360 degree turn. It couldn’t jump straight, poor thing! I thought it must be dizzy with so much spinning. He would make his jump and when all legs were spread in mid-air he appeared spastic and then turned at least a full circle before landing. My heart went out to this little creature who didn’t jump straight. He/she seemed abnormal in a sense, and his strange way endeared him to me, the same as twisted trees do. Then I always remember and think…and so am I, distorted and twisted, and also lovable.
I loved having the frogs in my open air living room. I followed them around for a long time. I thought to release them to the moist ground as they do need water to survive and didn’t. In the morning I found one of the frogs dried and dead and I felt so sad. I’m crying as I write this. The sweet frog is gone and I am feeling and in relationship with the wonder and pain of the cycle of life. Things come, things go, and I am part of it. Like dance partners we meet, have a few turns together and then move on to the next. The temporariness of life touches me right through my pores and I choose to let it. Do I touch it, too? We will all pass. Me, the frogs, the twisted trees. My friends and companions here on the camino of Life. So can I love who I see? Can I embrace and release my daily encounters, each so varied? Meet, greet, learn, breathe, give thanks, bid farewell. Every moment. Every day. This excruciating, ecstatic world.
I just moved and now I live in an inside-outside house. It is a step closer to how many Mexican villagers live, with their outdoor kitchens and open areas for gathering. I have doors that shut off rooms with mosquito netting on the windows, and I have a huge “outdoor” area that is open to wind, rain, dust and the insect world. I was glad that my past living situation was easily closed off from the outside, as the whine of mosquitoes and other flying night creatures causes me to tense up. Still, I always felt I was missing something as well: a connection to the natural world. So now I can’t avoid intersecting with what comes alive in the nigh, t as every closed door opens to the open air. The first weeks in my new home I felt nervous about this. My breathing became restricted as I thought about the fact that I had no choice but to live among insects. Daily I see moths and tiny butterflies that died in my halls or bathroom in the night. Beetles crawl or die in the night as well. I sweep them up or drop them out the window, resigned. Last night, though, we had a visitor that shook me out of my resistance and held me captivated with awe.
I was standing at the bathroom sink when a heavy-bodied moth the size of my palm flew in, banging one wall then the other in pinball like fashion. Chandla (my dog) came in and watched it with me, deciding whether to try to catch it.
We stood and followed the rapid-fire, haphazard and fretful path of this huge insect with it’s, sharp and intricate black and white design. My inner voice said that it was the moth’s death dance. Then it just stopped on the back of the sink and lay completely still. I blew on it. No response. I lifted my heavy dog’s paws up to the front edge of the sink so she could see what had become of her potential “toy”. I said, “Look Chandla. It’s dead. That was its death dance. Isn’t nature amazing?” Looking in Chandla’s eyes as I spoke to her about what we had just shared, I saw and said, “and you’re part of it!” Then I saw and said to myself, “And I’m part of it too.”
The moth whose final moments we were a part of
Last night’s experience initiated me into a different realm of relationship with the insect world, which when compared with us in numbers, reveals our utter powerlessness. It is good, and so with calm now, I enter into the mysteries, dance and relationships that I will have in my home, at the intersection of my human world with the other-wordly mysteriousness and order of the insect nation.
Some days I can feel the energy is bouncing, chaotic, and that it is not a day where doing what I had planned is what’s on the Universe’s agenda for me.
Today was like that. My landlord’s son arrived with a huge machine operated by a man with ear phones around 9. He’s going to build a little house in the space where our chicken house was. The machine was like a bulldozer with a powerful jackhammer that pounded broke and moved the ancient rocks that had been stacked into low walls that created a corral. Now the corral is a cemetery of severed rocks but it took all day to complete the task. We who live here all decided this was not a place to be today so we all left together in the morning. I returned several hours later thinking I could work inside with windows closed. I brought my dog Chandla inside with me. She immediately slept but I could tell after five minutes that working around this sound that one could hear resounding in the mountains up on the main road, would get to my nerves in about five minutes, so Chandla and I went walking. It was like a forced holiday. I was not being permitted to work so I let the weight of that slide away. As there was no agenda nor time constraint I let Chandla lead the way. She always knows where to go. We have a favorite place only several minutes away where we like to wander and she headed in that direction. There were cows grazing around the spring pool where I used to collect water and where I surely got my amoebas over a year ago. I stood still and let Chandla sniff. I didn’t feel like lying on those rocks somehow so I headed towards the first set of spring fed pools I ever swam in in my village, where water still runs and trickles making hollow babbling creek sounds. Here water flows down water-made tunnels in the lava rocks and it is a marvel to me how smooth, formed and ancient the relationship between these rocks and this mountain water is. I easily found a smooth spot inches from where the water trickled down to the next pool. My body fit perfectly in the gentle dips and curves in these rocks and their gentle, sun-warmed, quiet support was just what today’s aching lower back and hips craved. I put my sombrero over my face and alternated between dozing and peering at leaves and sky through the little holes that make the weave of my hat. Chandla alternated between lying on her own smooth rock and sniffing and drinking.
The cows were coming by and Chandla, who has shepherd in her got ready to move them along. I shh’d gently, telling her it was okay, to let them be. She came back to me and sat quietly. Sometime later, behind me, in the pool upriver from me, I heard splashing. Chandla sat ready to chase the horses from there. I told her to let them be and we both sat watching as a group of 5 or so horses immersed themselves in the pool. Some stood and drank, one kicked at the water with his hoof which created splashes that wet his back, and one horse lowered itself until he was completely covered in water, and leapt out several minutes later, back glistening and cool.
We stayed here for several hours, I imagine. The sun moved through the large leaves on the tree above me and the light changed to winter afternoon gold. Lying so near the gurgling water I could not hear the racket of the machine at my house.
Sitting and watching the horses felt like a tremendous honor. I was seeing horses in the wild as they act naturally. This is not a vision I have had before in my life. I realized that the horse’s naturalness is what I want for me. I want to be the natural me that I am confident exists somewhere within me. This is part of why I live where I do.
What is richness? Living five minutes from ancient mountain fed pools where I can bathe, walk, or rest. Having time and freedom to walk along rivers, through the mountains everyday. I live very simply on relatively little, yet I have these freedoms, this time, and a body that allows me to move and enjoy it all. If this is not wealth, I wonder, what is?
I was looking at a piece of land that my landlord owns for possible purchase.
At that moment I felt I would like to buy it. “What’s the next step?” I asked him. “First, ” he said, “Thank you.” He paused. “The next thing….Think about it.”
I've always been attracted to simple living. This includes walking or riding a bike instead of driving, bringing my own home-cooked lunch to work, making instead of buying gifts, buying practically all my clothes at the thrift store, and no doubt countless other ways in which I "do things different" and don't realize. Continue reading...
power, potential and beauty. It reminded me of a live volcano, dripping lava, as flames travelled towards ground. Walking home I noticed the acrid smoke thick in the air and in my lungs. Although we are always breathing the same air together, the change in the quality of the smoke filled air brought to my attention the notion that that night, we would all be breathing the same fire infused air, together. Pat Humphries’ song “Swimming to the other side” came to me, and it is with me today as well. She sings,
