Praising Land Part II: Time, death of a year, secrets and another view of hands

"If you have secrets, tell them your way. Give them your own spin. Or get comfortable with surprises. And really, that’s a great idea anyway. Most of human trouble is compounded by trying to keep our lives too small, so small they don’t fit us as we grow. Why not embrace whatever comes?" - Satori

Lono, in his big, loud and blustery form is having his way up from the Muliwai and across the highway, that asphalt pavement that is as significant as moving bits of old messages, a curled and worn postcard tacked to a wall. The wind blows, a hand moves the old message from one place to another. Why not throw out the old message caught in the swift current of air. It's still dark, not yet commuter traffic time. I am alone with time and secrets and the possibility that my life has become too small, once again.

The veil is thin today, whether you believe in Halloween or recognize that our life on Earth in human form connects with the net of ancestors stretching across time, flexible and moveable as ocean current, the Dead are having their way with us.

Recently Pete and I took ourselves on a morning ride to Edmonds, a place not far from Whidbey once the ferry has traversed the channel between the Clinton shore and the Mukilteo landing. Pete and I have lived in Mukilteo at different times and lived very different lives when we were there. We were partnered with different people then, and I was a mother raising a son. 

If, as some believe, time doubles back on itself, I believe this is what is happening for us. In our individual journeys independent of our life together the events and the choices we have made uncover a reality that surprises me. That morning ride to Edmonds ended with a spontaneous decision to drive down a road I'd not been on for many years. Picnic Point. Not far from the gulch where I lived and raised my son, Picnic Point at the water's edge is reached by walking over a bridge that I experienced as 'new' but in a conversation with my son a week after that bridge-crossing he remembers the bridge was there at least during the years when he was in high school. 

Where was I?

To double back on time, while we crossed the Salish Sea on that very foggy Autumn morning, I watched a man in the car ahead of us. In fact, the car would unload first when we reached Mukilteo. What I watched, I didn't want to believe. From the passenger side window I saw the man toss something under his car. No! That couldn't be. A cigarette butt? My eyes are old but with my glasses I see pretty well. Still, I had to be sure. I pulled the small binoculars from its case and focused on the piece of something under the car. Now I had a decision to make. What to do about what I saw. Who cares? Is that something to speak up about?

I said nothing to Pete about what I'd seen and what I was deciding. Instead I pulled my lavender plaid shawl around me and got out of the car. I needed to breathe some fresh air. Cold and foggy Salish Sea air will do something to your sense of place. Though it is not native to me, I have known this place for a very long time. One of the crew men was just going into quarters for a break when we caught each other's eye. "Wow, this is one foggy morning," I began. A conversation began between us, no more than a couple or five minutes but it was a connection. This man is at his work, and his work allows me and all these passengers to safely cross a major body of water.

The fog, the air and the conversation fed me the next right thing to do.

The man in the car at the head of the ferry was now cradling his young child. I stood next to him and watched. He acknowledged me, perhaps he nodded or spoke. I said, "I was wondering why it is you threw your cigarette under the car?"

The young father said sheepishly, "I didn't have anywhere else to put it."

"But," I continued without raising my voice, "now someone else will have to clean up after you." 

"I'll pick it up."

I nodded, pulled my shawl tighter and walked back to the car.

Time has passed since our ferry ride in the morning fog and walk across a bridge where I was somewhere else while my son was growing up. Was I being busy working in Seattle doing important business for a big corporation, earning dollars and health insurance benefits for my family? Important at the time yet now perhaps no more important than moving old paper tacked to walls from one place to another. 

I wrote about the activity of many hands at work cleaning up this place where we live. (We moved here one year ago today.) In that piece of writing I noted and praised the accomplishments and had pictures to show the proof of it. But yesterday, two days after all the cutting and clearing was done I was stopped, literally, in my tracks as I watched the Little Birds-- Chickadees, Finches, and Tits fluttering and fussing at the middle grounds they have enjoyed as feeding places. There was so little to feed on. We, the People, in our rush of energy to accomplish something in one day had left nothing for the Little Birds who live here every day.

I was ashamed for not speaking for them. 

Where was I?

Last Saturday, the day before the many hands and many people showed up on the Prairie Front to help clean and tidy the land for winter, Prescott the President of the Council of Trustees for the South Whidbey Tilth was invited to a celebration event on the land of the Tulalip Tribes. The event was called "Raising Hands." 

RAISING HANDS

Raising Hands is an annual event hosted by The Tulalip Tribes Tulalip Cares to honor recipient charities in different community impact categories. At Tulalip it is traditional to raise our hands to applaud and give thanks to those who have given to us. We raise our hands to the numerous organizations in our region that contribute to our communities.

Prescott was invited to a celebration of generosity, and ceremony because the "Tilth" was a recipient of grant money from The Tulalip Tribes Tulalip Cares to support "Grow Whidbey -- A collaborative aprenticeship program in community food production and garden-based education."

The event and the experience was surprising. I found out about the event just minutes before Prescott was about to leave. "Do you have anything you'd like to send to Tulalip?" she asked. I wasn't sure what she meant. I learned that she and Cary Peterson were headed to an event on Tulalip land. "A semi-formal" event that she was very nervous about.

After hearing what was about to happen, I answered in stunned awareness. This was a ceremony of thanksgiving. I wasn't prepared with an offering of gratitude on our end. I answered, "No." Prescott said, "I'll bring your spirit."

When I had time to let the conversation between us seep into some clearer space of knowing. I slid into Tradition, and assembled a humble and homemade "think on your feet and feel from the heart" bundle of value.

I pulled out a lidded paper bowl and filled it with dried Red Hibiscus petals, the form of sacred blessing plant I use for marking ceremony or journey of importance and laid four golden leaves of Gingko to represent the Four Directions from an Ancient species of tree that grows in the Food Forest here on the Prairie Front. It was our offering of appreciation, "Take this along with the story of its contents to the ceremony."

On the day of the Winter Cleanup Party on the Prairie Front while people were gathered for lunch and chatting, Prescott showed me the gifts, information stories she received at the "Raising Hands" celebration. The cedar carved necklance of Killer Whale, or Orca, was carved by Tulalip artist Tony Hatch. The story behind the art is picture above. She wasn't sure what to do with the gift and said she would ask her elder, that would be me I guessed.

Whew. I asked if she would leave the gifts with me so I could look more closely at the generosity. I have done that.

Time has doubled-back on me as I reflect on what has happened to bring me here, to this Halloween morning and this place at the keyboard. What story is needing to be strung together? I began this post, as I so often do with Satori Harris's unfolding view of time.

Harris continues, "We start to string our anecdotes into a larger theme and the meaning emerges. It particularly emerges when we express it, get it out there. If you can tell someone your story, you’re more likely to put it in context for yourself. If you don’t want to tell your story, write it down. The result is similar.

What was only known in the dark was quiet. As we bring it up it is amplified by Jupiter’s greater meaning..."

The anecdotes string together ... We took a ferry ride one foggy Autumn morning. A young man tosses his spent cigarette butt under his car. A flippant act is witnessed. An old woman questions the young father on his choice, and the ferry ride continued...

Long ago when I first arrived to live on the high banks of Mukilteo, before I was a mother, and when I was a newly married girl-woman, a man named Kona hired me to work as a teacher of very young children on The Tulalip Tribal Lands. He fed me my first work.

Now nearly fifty years later, time has doubled back upon me like the gut that coils within me digesting each thought, belief, action and food stuff to give me occasions to recognize that at this age and in this space I must know what is honorable and what is necessary. Who is speaking for whom? What values retain their meaning over time? What is the Honorable Harvest, and what ceremonies do I practice, and what ceremonies do I share with people who have either never experienced truly sustainable practices nor thought to conduct themselves with Raising Hands?

Last night I prepared the meal pictured above. I steamed a pot of Quinoa along with grated Ginger root and diagonally-sliced carrots. Pete gathered fresh Nettle that grow in the garden patch of Raspberries. I had picked several bright faced Dandelion blossoms. Each time I picked the Dandelion I asked permission, and thanked them. I remembered to practice some of the rules for an Honorable Harvest, in my gathering. From our local grocery store I bought a tin of anchovies small salty and oily fish; and a packet of dried Nori sea vegetable to wrap the dinner in a tasty crunchy bundle.

What is the Honorable Harvest? Robin Wall Kimmerer writes in her book Braiding Sweetgrass, "The guidelines for the Honorable Harvest are not written down, or even consistently spoken of as a whole--they are reinforced in small acts of daily life. But if you were to list them, they might look something like this:

"Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you may take care of them.
Introduce yourself. Be accountable as the one who comes asking for life.
Ask permission before taking. Abide by the answer.
Never take the first. Never take the last.
Take only what you need.
Take only that which is given.
Never take more than half. Leave some for others.
Harvest in a way that minimizes harm.
Use it respectfully. Never waste what you have taken.
Share.
Give thanks for what you have been given.
Give a gift, in reciprocity for what you have taken.
Sustain the ones who sustain you and the earth will last forever."

Where am I?

The question brings me to the dream that woke me from sleep just before midnight of this Hallow's Eve. In the dream I am at work. I'm moving old post cards and bits of paper tacked on the wall from one place to another. Even as I do it, I wonder where I am, and why I do it.

The phone rings. It's my Ma. 

"When are you coming home?" she asks.

I look at the clock, it's a few minutes before 1:00. I say, "I'll be just a few more minutes and then I'll be there." After I hang up I realize I work until 2:00 and ask myself  "How important is it this work I'm doing?"

I see myself wiping off a toilet seat and lid. Surface work. Not really cleaning, just making it look like work. 

I wake with a disturbing reality. Soon Pete wakes up and we engage in one of our long and entwining conversations that dizzy me, me who can weave a tale as long as Scheherazade. Before the early morning ramble has ended, that dream and its potential meaning has me recognizing, again, how I was often too busy with my 'important work' and never did make it home before my Ma passed waiting for my visit. 

It may be time for me to recognize who the Killer Whales are in my life if I expect to be one to others. In my daily life, the small acts make for the whole. Who has fed me when I was starving?

Where am I? 

I am hopeful and humored inspite of the mistakes I keep making, and humbled when I see where and why I leave my wholeness along the long way. Are my hands busy doing seemingly important work, or are they raised giving thanks for what I have been given and not wasting those gifts? 

When I climb the wall between language and culture and remember older, more rooted in long standing answers, I come up with different meanings. Like Kuleana. My youngest first-cousin on my mother's Amona-side of the family, Koa, feeds me with a view of the Hawaiian value kuleana, or life-time of responsibility. I asked him if he thought about being the youngest of the Old ones now. He told me he's always felt like that. His kuleana. "I'm tired already," he joked. Daily carrying of the life-time burden is that, daily carrying. 

I wish that I was there on O'ahu with my family, available and present for the ho'olewa, the ceremony of remembering the long life of my Uncle Billy, Koa's father and my mother's youngest brother, who recently passed at the age of ninety-six. I even allow myself to believe I could travel on a plane, stay in "surprising" settings; enjoy the company of family and the islands I so dearly miss and love without any guaranteed safety. Could I allow for this? 

Tricky business this asking and answering of questions. Riddles and riddlers is there room for old questions and different answers?

Oh look, time is doubling back on us again. Opportunity to ask the same questions differently. Opportunity to have different answers.

Where are we, you, me, our family, our community in the daily practices of Honorable Harvest, and kuleana?