This maybe an over share…so please ramble on past my words if they do not land true for you.
I was immensely lucky as a child to have a best friend who happened to live next door to where the legendary Cottingly fairies were spotted. So for many years of our childhood, we’d don our oversized wellies, pack our lovingly (toilet tissue) wrapped fairy offerings (usually pieces of Sylvanian family furniture )and with an apple each tucked proudly into our pockets, off into the wilderness we would trot fairy hunting. Hours passed playfully by following that little winding river, clambering over fences, wandering through chattering woods and although no fairies were ever actually spotted, the fat from that magic wildling time has continued to feed me through many a dark and starving night.
What I was lacking in the family home, the wild never failed to provide me. I couldn’t feel more passionately about the work you are doing Martin. Our imagination, our spirit and soul need access to a richness that is alive and breathing. There are no fairies to be found in Burger King.
P.s. We never saw any of our dolls furniture again.
Good fat indeed Katie, a lovely and intimate story. From a time when kids had apples in their pockets (I'm sure some still do). Yes, no fairies in Burger King as far as I am aware.
Loved your fairy story, sounds wonderful. Thanks for sharing.
As a child I had very little access to a magical wilderness. Magic for me existed in my grandparents house, a very ordinary terraced house in inner city Birmingham. That house with its small garden and outhouse was filled with fairies and hobgoblins, not as something seen but as something felt, something evoked in games and stories, something in the place itself, which evokes awe in me even now. This makes me wonder if faery - the wild - is something we carry in us and we can transplant, maybe even to Burger King …
Burger King was mythical to me when I was younger - because it was a treat to be had at birthdays only. I think it was probably like a church to me back then ;-)
This is a beautiful essay Martin and I will share it, thank you. It makes me think of something Emily Dickinson wrote: “The only Commandment I ever obeyed — 'Consider the Lilies.”
Inspired and truly grateful for your wholehearted encouragement that we be claimed by the wild. Not the passing capture of our attention for entertainment, but a deeper abduction of our imagination by something that would carry us off to its den and merge with us. And from this union, would bestow on us a little of that sense that has never truly abandoned us but has been dulled by the excesses of the flashing lights and strange clangour of modern life.
My thanks, Martin. The unweaving and inner disentangling work undertaken by those of us who've signed up for 'wholing' seems to be expedited by such ancestral reminders of the marriages of beast and man, land and heart. It was your Selkie reference that really struck a chord within me this morning... those tensions, that beauty, the weariness of the tug, and the yearning to live as one with the wild places. Your words offer (for me at least) such glowing breadcrumbs through the forest of my own living and exploring.
Nailed it again Martin - how to "withstand the shrapnel of the most grievous elements of modern life". How do we carry and communicate our experiences and what we have learned from our wild and spiritual journies back into the communities and life of 'the village'? In the 'Ten Ox-herding' pictures from the Buddhist tradition, numbers 8 and 9 cover enlightenment, the tenth is 'Entering the Marketplace with Helping Hands'. If we aren't able to step back into the 'village' and engage in a meaningful way with where people are at we are in danger of cycling round in repetitive and diminishing practices trying desperately to hold on to The Hidden Country of the Brendan Voyage. And the challenge never ends in my experience, though it changes form in any given moment. I love the way your work engages with this challenge Martin. Thank you.
I appreciate this glimpse into the Ten Ox-herding Buddhist tradition which I know zero about David, thank you. You also have the venerable name of my oldest and incredibly dear friend David Taylor (over in New Zealand) which opens my heart even more.
That was the perfect accompaniment to a coffee and a big bit of cake after a countryside ramble under the stars with barking foxes and the dawning sun with crying Kites, thank you for that Martin!
“…..final participation is the awe of childhood now curated consciously in the adult imagination, as a connective and meaning-making principle. You help create within this wider astonishment of being. And this circles around the terrain of the heart, which invokes the conscience I just mentioned, and that then provokes deliberate and loving ecological savvy.”
This rings. It is the possibility of this time, not to regress but to incorporate th marriage with wild with an understanding of why it is so important. Can’t be done without time spent curled up with the bear. Thank you, Martin.
"Yeshua as long anticipated messiah turns up in Jerusalem not on a chariot with burning wheels but on a donkey. That’s a kind of anti-Zeus move."
Let's not forget that this was a calculated move on his part. As they were arriving he was like, "Hold up fellas...the prophecy says the Messiah arrives on a donkey. I can't just go walking in there. You better find me a donkey!" Once he got in there he trashed their temple. Besides, the donkey is no ambassador of the wild. Could there be a more domesticated animal?
I wonder if this fleshing out of the story doesn't make it a pretty good metaphor for the kind of Trojan-horsing-around that's so common these days....life coaches rebranding themselves as ReWilding Journey Guides, only to trot out some domesticated pop-psych on you once they've got you trapped in their $25,000 McYurt. Who's the ass in that scenario?
By the way, First Nations people here on Turtle Island still use bear grease. We got some in our fridge right now. It's one of those multi-purpose medicines...Muscles sore? Got a cut? Hair falling out? Smear some bear grease on it! Our friend that gave it to us scooped some into a little takeaway container that probably used to hold mayonnaise or BBQ sauce.
It's a good reminder to not over-spiritualize everything or to be too precious about it...which seems to be a trap that Westerners can fall into. That tendency toward preciousness, to me, seems a way to domesticate the furry, farting wild. Your presentation of these stories does strike me as a tad "precious" at times, ornamented with sincere and beautiful language.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of some beautiful language (I wouldn't be paying for these letters if I wasn't), but what about simply paying attention to your own dreams as a direct way to get in touch with wildness? What are the mythopoetic stories erupting from your unconscious?
Jung wrote: "The dream is a hidden door to the innermost recesses of the soul, opening into the cosmic night...All consciousness separates, but in dreams we put on the likeness of that more universal, truer, more eternal man dwelling in the darkness of the eternal night. There he is still whole, and the whole is in him, indistinguishable from nature and bare of all egohood." (CW 10)
Another one from Jung, sharing a conversation with Ochwiay Biano/Mountain Lake, the Pueblo chief:
ML: See how cruel the whites look. Their lips are thin, their noses sharp, their faces furrowed and distorted by folds. Their eyes have a staring expression; they are always seeking something. What are they seeking? The whites always want something; they are uneasy and restless. We do not know what they want. We do not understand them. We think that they are mad."
Jung: I asked him why he thought the whites were all mad.
ML: "They say that they think with their heads."
CJ: "Why, of course. What do you think with?"
ML: "We think here," he said, indicating his heart.
That one stopped Jung in his tracks.
OK, thanks for the brain tickle Martin...I'm off to give myself a bear fat and ash hair treatment.
It is hard to chew on those whole and perfect stories, bones of the past....
Here during lent I like to remember a card I got one easter : "Get off the cross. We need the wood." ah, to have our cake and eat it too..... such sentimental hoarders of the ancient treasures, we curators are..... and with good reason....
Still I remember walking with my ancient and beautiful friend Thomas Berry, through the Oak Trees along the shores of Lake Erie. "Go and get the water in a cup and bring it up from the lake," he said to me just before the baptism of my two sons. "This is NOT water as a SYMBOL of everlasting life," he said to me in a very strict tone. Water is NOT a symbol of everlasting life. It IS everlasting life."
What a wonderful thing to think about in my thinking head....Ever lasting life.... the energy that is here now coursing through my heart, and yours, and every other being, past present and future..... lol..... it helps to quiet my present concerns of our human behaviour, especially when the drama and the war drums are too intense.
Actually, the donkey is a fierce, spirited, willful animal, if you've ridden one, far more sure footed in wild mountainous terrain than a horse, with a deep wise mind of its own, stubborn as all hell if it doesn't want to do what you want it to. Donkeys are very closely related to their wild ancestors; I would wager they are actually less domesticated than the horse, certainly less bred. Not to nitpick, but I am, and I feel you are too.
Also, I'm not sure where your comment about domesticated pop-psychology and corrupt Rewilding Journey Guides is aimed, but I certainly don't think it in any way reflects the spirit of this piece of writing, nor any of Martin's work with people and story out on the land, as far as I've experienced it. Forgive me if I've misunderstood this part of your comment, but I can't quite work out how you've extrapolated it at all from this essay, which is easily as alive and beautifully written a piece on this old old story— written, it feels to me, with deep love and personal experience— as Gary Snyder's in his Practice of the Wild.
Finally, while I agree that tracking our own dreams is valuable work, our own personal dreams are never going to be the Mabinogion. Which is why I believe we need a bit of both— personal dream work, sure, but also mythcarriers helping us back in, those of us who've culturally lost the old way of story, to the big myths that only a whole culture and the Earth together, can birth.
In your love of donkeys Sylvia you remind me of my dear old teacher Robert Bly in his last and very fantastic book of poetry, 'Talking into the Ear of a Donkey'. In it he's sad but the donkeys says:
“Oh, never mind
About all that,” the donkey
Says. “Just take hold of my mane, so you
Can lift your lips closer to my hairy ears.”
As a reviewer states:
'This humble beast of burden—neither Pegasus nor Sleipnir, not even Rocinante—is the creative vehicle that has carried Bly all this time.'
This is just wonderful.... the steady, soft-eared donkey as a creative vehicle for one such as Bly. There's a toughness to them too, perennial and unflagging. And those long ears really are so wonderful to murmur into :)
Sylvia, those were my stream-of-consciousness thoughts after reading Martin's latest. I offer them just as I would if we were all sitting around a campfire. Take them or leave them. It sounds like you're interpreting an attack or criticism where there is none...at least not from me ;-)
I appreciate your reflections on the Trojan Horse idea...perhaps that's exactly what Martin's doing with us. Beautiful and ornamented language to lure us into a false familiarity with the wild, which might otherwise feel too scary and frightening for our domesticated constitutions. Then, once we've settled in for a nice story, the hard truths are delivered up.
As for over spiritualizing, is that even possible? Maybe my understanding of the word spirit is off, but since everything we come into contact with is ultimately a mystery at it's core, beholding every encounter with a "spiritual" touch may be exactly what we've been missing. As for the bear fat, your friend that gifted it to you seems to recognizes the "preciousness" (which I take to mean "of value, not to be wasted or treated carelessly") of things as not only did they have the bear fat to share, they also had the little takeaway container at the ready to reuse : )
You couldn't be more correct in pointing us to our own dreams to bring us into contact with "wildness," and I have noticed that since I started allowing stories, myths, and tales back into my life (which unfortunately for me has only just been in the last couple months) I am starting to dream more, or at least remember them again.
Thank you so much for sharing the conversation between Jung and Ochwiay Biano, what a profound truth for us to remember, for without thinking with heart, we are most certainly lost. Their conversation reminded me of something a Hawaiian elder said to me about twenty years ago, he said, "You know them haoles* they always going fast, go, go go. You know where they going? I tell you where they going, they going nowhere." (*haole is a non Native, usually white person.)
I hope your bear fat and ash treatment turns out. Blessings on this day of the Sun, Heather
Hi Heather, yes, the word "spiritual" can be confusing. I vibe with James Hillman's distinctions between "soul" and "spirit", immanent vs. transcendent, imagination vs. intellect, vale vs. peak, etc. The modern age and especially the New Age have been very spirit-oriented and it's left us high and dry.
But maybe a better word for what I meant in this context is "over-romanticization." Take the example of Jesus on the donkey for instance. That image taken out of context, Jesus riding in on a donkey, could be romanticized to depict him as an anti-Zeus figure...but really, the whole story shows him to be deceptive and manipulative.
These stories, like the one about him cursing the fig tree for not bearing any fruit, illustrate his fallible humanity. He could be deceptive, reactionary, petty and self-righteous as well as being a revolutionary god-man. I appreciate a holistic view of these figures, which is why my ears perked up when Martin referred to him as a thin-skinned messiah (or something along those lines).
Hope you're enjoying this Sun day as well...thanks for the church parking lot chat :-)
I'm learning so much from your (and others) comments. This venue is so beautiful with Martin's writings setting off so many different threads of thoughts for us to contemplate and share with one another... a church parking lot chat indeed :)
wow, I loved this bit of roughing up this morning. My friend Camille who is just about to join this discussion from NL, is in the midst of publishing her book Precious Little...... a novel written around her time at the People's Inquiry in the 1992 house fire in David Inlet, Labrador. Lots of bears there.
Grease... bear grease, coconut grease, auto grease..... all of it is precious when ya needs it...... I could use a bit of hair treatment myself! lol
You touch something deep within - this question I ask about the legacy of 'wildness' within my 'tribe' - a desire to reach back to flowing hair and uplifted arms, to wonder and celebration as a part of daily - or at least monthly - life - to a knowledge that was not read but felt. I seek, but I feel my 'bear' is imposed... is placed by my own hands by my side.... when a part of me wants to be grasped back (or forward) toward something I just know is there but is buried so deeply under what you rightly point out as 'no memory that the bear ever existed.' Yet here we are speaking of it... thank you Martin.
I’m bewitched by the richness and nimbleness of your word crafting. TG you are younger than me and likely will be around to spell cast and spellbind those who care to be for a good long while. I yearn to ‘become totemized’. Thanks to you, I believe the difference between wilderness and the wild and that the wild is yet among us here,there, everywhere. Well past time for reconsecration.
Nourishment and balm. Bless and thank you. I have a heavy head and full heart each time I encounter this story. And, again, you frame the distance we walk from the story to the lived in language that brings tears, a deep sense of presence and, ultimately, something that galvanises the spirit and calls me onwards!
"We push away the shiny beads and useless trinkets and say enough." This line brings up much shame for me as well as firm resolve. I know many like myself have fallen prey to the marketplace, and in the process lost touch with the REAL. These writings of yours Martin are the encouragement I've needed, and I feel grateful to have found your still small voice (well, not literally, but I'm sure you get what I mean) in the cacophony. Grateful, grateful, grateful.
This maybe an over share…so please ramble on past my words if they do not land true for you.
I was immensely lucky as a child to have a best friend who happened to live next door to where the legendary Cottingly fairies were spotted. So for many years of our childhood, we’d don our oversized wellies, pack our lovingly (toilet tissue) wrapped fairy offerings (usually pieces of Sylvanian family furniture )and with an apple each tucked proudly into our pockets, off into the wilderness we would trot fairy hunting. Hours passed playfully by following that little winding river, clambering over fences, wandering through chattering woods and although no fairies were ever actually spotted, the fat from that magic wildling time has continued to feed me through many a dark and starving night.
What I was lacking in the family home, the wild never failed to provide me. I couldn’t feel more passionately about the work you are doing Martin. Our imagination, our spirit and soul need access to a richness that is alive and breathing. There are no fairies to be found in Burger King.
P.s. We never saw any of our dolls furniture again.
Good fat indeed Katie, a lovely and intimate story. From a time when kids had apples in their pockets (I'm sure some still do). Yes, no fairies in Burger King as far as I am aware.
Hi Katie,
Loved your fairy story, sounds wonderful. Thanks for sharing.
As a child I had very little access to a magical wilderness. Magic for me existed in my grandparents house, a very ordinary terraced house in inner city Birmingham. That house with its small garden and outhouse was filled with fairies and hobgoblins, not as something seen but as something felt, something evoked in games and stories, something in the place itself, which evokes awe in me even now. This makes me wonder if faery - the wild - is something we carry in us and we can transplant, maybe even to Burger King …
Lynn
Good point Lynn, maybe it's how we behold things not just see them. I did like the spicy bean burger back when I was a very broke teenager (!)
Beautifully put Lynn and thank you for sharing your own wonder with me x🌟 I wholeheartedly agree with you x💕
Thank you both Katie and Lynn for the protein rich tales! I
Burger King was mythical to me when I was younger - because it was a treat to be had at birthdays only. I think it was probably like a church to me back then ;-)
beautiful, thank you for sharing this Katie x
This is a beautiful essay Martin and I will share it, thank you. It makes me think of something Emily Dickinson wrote: “The only Commandment I ever obeyed — 'Consider the Lilies.”
Inspired and truly grateful for your wholehearted encouragement that we be claimed by the wild. Not the passing capture of our attention for entertainment, but a deeper abduction of our imagination by something that would carry us off to its den and merge with us. And from this union, would bestow on us a little of that sense that has never truly abandoned us but has been dulled by the excesses of the flashing lights and strange clangour of modern life.
Many thanks to our parish druid...
My thanks, Martin. The unweaving and inner disentangling work undertaken by those of us who've signed up for 'wholing' seems to be expedited by such ancestral reminders of the marriages of beast and man, land and heart. It was your Selkie reference that really struck a chord within me this morning... those tensions, that beauty, the weariness of the tug, and the yearning to live as one with the wild places. Your words offer (for me at least) such glowing breadcrumbs through the forest of my own living and exploring.
Thanks for my Sunday bread Martin. Your letter today invoked the following.
He Has His Ears
He left his paw print
in my belly,
wrapped in blubber,
slithy slime,
smooth
and warm.
The stench of
bear’s breath
reeks my tears
revealing years
of yearning.
Comfort calls
when then
I see my
baby’s ears
and all the years
fall by the by.
For joy of joys
the wild’s still
in him.
PS The tears came with the line ‘Dance with an animal not a pelt’
Thank you Theresa, and mixing an earthy jubilation with the word blubber - that's something I haven't seen before.
Man, these words are medicine.
Nailed it again Martin - how to "withstand the shrapnel of the most grievous elements of modern life". How do we carry and communicate our experiences and what we have learned from our wild and spiritual journies back into the communities and life of 'the village'? In the 'Ten Ox-herding' pictures from the Buddhist tradition, numbers 8 and 9 cover enlightenment, the tenth is 'Entering the Marketplace with Helping Hands'. If we aren't able to step back into the 'village' and engage in a meaningful way with where people are at we are in danger of cycling round in repetitive and diminishing practices trying desperately to hold on to The Hidden Country of the Brendan Voyage. And the challenge never ends in my experience, though it changes form in any given moment. I love the way your work engages with this challenge Martin. Thank you.
I appreciate this glimpse into the Ten Ox-herding Buddhist tradition which I know zero about David, thank you. You also have the venerable name of my oldest and incredibly dear friend David Taylor (over in New Zealand) which opens my heart even more.
That was the perfect accompaniment to a coffee and a big bit of cake after a countryside ramble under the stars with barking foxes and the dawning sun with crying Kites, thank you for that Martin!
“…..final participation is the awe of childhood now curated consciously in the adult imagination, as a connective and meaning-making principle. You help create within this wider astonishment of being. And this circles around the terrain of the heart, which invokes the conscience I just mentioned, and that then provokes deliberate and loving ecological savvy.”
This rings. It is the possibility of this time, not to regress but to incorporate th marriage with wild with an understanding of why it is so important. Can’t be done without time spent curled up with the bear. Thank you, Martin.
"Yeshua as long anticipated messiah turns up in Jerusalem not on a chariot with burning wheels but on a donkey. That’s a kind of anti-Zeus move."
Let's not forget that this was a calculated move on his part. As they were arriving he was like, "Hold up fellas...the prophecy says the Messiah arrives on a donkey. I can't just go walking in there. You better find me a donkey!" Once he got in there he trashed their temple. Besides, the donkey is no ambassador of the wild. Could there be a more domesticated animal?
I wonder if this fleshing out of the story doesn't make it a pretty good metaphor for the kind of Trojan-horsing-around that's so common these days....life coaches rebranding themselves as ReWilding Journey Guides, only to trot out some domesticated pop-psych on you once they've got you trapped in their $25,000 McYurt. Who's the ass in that scenario?
By the way, First Nations people here on Turtle Island still use bear grease. We got some in our fridge right now. It's one of those multi-purpose medicines...Muscles sore? Got a cut? Hair falling out? Smear some bear grease on it! Our friend that gave it to us scooped some into a little takeaway container that probably used to hold mayonnaise or BBQ sauce.
It's a good reminder to not over-spiritualize everything or to be too precious about it...which seems to be a trap that Westerners can fall into. That tendency toward preciousness, to me, seems a way to domesticate the furry, farting wild. Your presentation of these stories does strike me as a tad "precious" at times, ornamented with sincere and beautiful language.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of some beautiful language (I wouldn't be paying for these letters if I wasn't), but what about simply paying attention to your own dreams as a direct way to get in touch with wildness? What are the mythopoetic stories erupting from your unconscious?
Jung wrote: "The dream is a hidden door to the innermost recesses of the soul, opening into the cosmic night...All consciousness separates, but in dreams we put on the likeness of that more universal, truer, more eternal man dwelling in the darkness of the eternal night. There he is still whole, and the whole is in him, indistinguishable from nature and bare of all egohood." (CW 10)
Another one from Jung, sharing a conversation with Ochwiay Biano/Mountain Lake, the Pueblo chief:
ML: See how cruel the whites look. Their lips are thin, their noses sharp, their faces furrowed and distorted by folds. Their eyes have a staring expression; they are always seeking something. What are they seeking? The whites always want something; they are uneasy and restless. We do not know what they want. We do not understand them. We think that they are mad."
Jung: I asked him why he thought the whites were all mad.
ML: "They say that they think with their heads."
CJ: "Why, of course. What do you think with?"
ML: "We think here," he said, indicating his heart.
That one stopped Jung in his tracks.
OK, thanks for the brain tickle Martin...I'm off to give myself a bear fat and ash hair treatment.
Blessings from T'sou-ke territory (bear country)
Brian
Yes, precious is just the right word to describe my relationship to the old stories.
It is hard to chew on those whole and perfect stories, bones of the past....
Here during lent I like to remember a card I got one easter : "Get off the cross. We need the wood." ah, to have our cake and eat it too..... such sentimental hoarders of the ancient treasures, we curators are..... and with good reason....
Still I remember walking with my ancient and beautiful friend Thomas Berry, through the Oak Trees along the shores of Lake Erie. "Go and get the water in a cup and bring it up from the lake," he said to me just before the baptism of my two sons. "This is NOT water as a SYMBOL of everlasting life," he said to me in a very strict tone. Water is NOT a symbol of everlasting life. It IS everlasting life."
What a wonderful thing to think about in my thinking head....Ever lasting life.... the energy that is here now coursing through my heart, and yours, and every other being, past present and future..... lol..... it helps to quiet my present concerns of our human behaviour, especially when the drama and the war drums are too intense.
Actually, the donkey is a fierce, spirited, willful animal, if you've ridden one, far more sure footed in wild mountainous terrain than a horse, with a deep wise mind of its own, stubborn as all hell if it doesn't want to do what you want it to. Donkeys are very closely related to their wild ancestors; I would wager they are actually less domesticated than the horse, certainly less bred. Not to nitpick, but I am, and I feel you are too.
Also, I'm not sure where your comment about domesticated pop-psychology and corrupt Rewilding Journey Guides is aimed, but I certainly don't think it in any way reflects the spirit of this piece of writing, nor any of Martin's work with people and story out on the land, as far as I've experienced it. Forgive me if I've misunderstood this part of your comment, but I can't quite work out how you've extrapolated it at all from this essay, which is easily as alive and beautifully written a piece on this old old story— written, it feels to me, with deep love and personal experience— as Gary Snyder's in his Practice of the Wild.
Finally, while I agree that tracking our own dreams is valuable work, our own personal dreams are never going to be the Mabinogion. Which is why I believe we need a bit of both— personal dream work, sure, but also mythcarriers helping us back in, those of us who've culturally lost the old way of story, to the big myths that only a whole culture and the Earth together, can birth.
In your love of donkeys Sylvia you remind me of my dear old teacher Robert Bly in his last and very fantastic book of poetry, 'Talking into the Ear of a Donkey'. In it he's sad but the donkeys says:
“Oh, never mind
About all that,” the donkey
Says. “Just take hold of my mane, so you
Can lift your lips closer to my hairy ears.”
As a reviewer states:
'This humble beast of burden—neither Pegasus nor Sleipnir, not even Rocinante—is the creative vehicle that has carried Bly all this time.'
This is just wonderful.... the steady, soft-eared donkey as a creative vehicle for one such as Bly. There's a toughness to them too, perennial and unflagging. And those long ears really are so wonderful to murmur into :)
I like that term, "mythcarriers."
Sylvia, those were my stream-of-consciousness thoughts after reading Martin's latest. I offer them just as I would if we were all sitting around a campfire. Take them or leave them. It sounds like you're interpreting an attack or criticism where there is none...at least not from me ;-)
I appreciate your reflections on the Trojan Horse idea...perhaps that's exactly what Martin's doing with us. Beautiful and ornamented language to lure us into a false familiarity with the wild, which might otherwise feel too scary and frightening for our domesticated constitutions. Then, once we've settled in for a nice story, the hard truths are delivered up.
As for over spiritualizing, is that even possible? Maybe my understanding of the word spirit is off, but since everything we come into contact with is ultimately a mystery at it's core, beholding every encounter with a "spiritual" touch may be exactly what we've been missing. As for the bear fat, your friend that gifted it to you seems to recognizes the "preciousness" (which I take to mean "of value, not to be wasted or treated carelessly") of things as not only did they have the bear fat to share, they also had the little takeaway container at the ready to reuse : )
You couldn't be more correct in pointing us to our own dreams to bring us into contact with "wildness," and I have noticed that since I started allowing stories, myths, and tales back into my life (which unfortunately for me has only just been in the last couple months) I am starting to dream more, or at least remember them again.
Thank you so much for sharing the conversation between Jung and Ochwiay Biano, what a profound truth for us to remember, for without thinking with heart, we are most certainly lost. Their conversation reminded me of something a Hawaiian elder said to me about twenty years ago, he said, "You know them haoles* they always going fast, go, go go. You know where they going? I tell you where they going, they going nowhere." (*haole is a non Native, usually white person.)
I hope your bear fat and ash treatment turns out. Blessings on this day of the Sun, Heather
Hi Heather, yes, the word "spiritual" can be confusing. I vibe with James Hillman's distinctions between "soul" and "spirit", immanent vs. transcendent, imagination vs. intellect, vale vs. peak, etc. The modern age and especially the New Age have been very spirit-oriented and it's left us high and dry.
But maybe a better word for what I meant in this context is "over-romanticization." Take the example of Jesus on the donkey for instance. That image taken out of context, Jesus riding in on a donkey, could be romanticized to depict him as an anti-Zeus figure...but really, the whole story shows him to be deceptive and manipulative.
These stories, like the one about him cursing the fig tree for not bearing any fruit, illustrate his fallible humanity. He could be deceptive, reactionary, petty and self-righteous as well as being a revolutionary god-man. I appreciate a holistic view of these figures, which is why my ears perked up when Martin referred to him as a thin-skinned messiah (or something along those lines).
Hope you're enjoying this Sun day as well...thanks for the church parking lot chat :-)
I'm learning so much from your (and others) comments. This venue is so beautiful with Martin's writings setting off so many different threads of thoughts for us to contemplate and share with one another... a church parking lot chat indeed :)
wow, I loved this bit of roughing up this morning. My friend Camille who is just about to join this discussion from NL, is in the midst of publishing her book Precious Little...... a novel written around her time at the People's Inquiry in the 1992 house fire in David Inlet, Labrador. Lots of bears there.
Grease... bear grease, coconut grease, auto grease..... all of it is precious when ya needs it...... I could use a bit of hair treatment myself! lol
You touch something deep within - this question I ask about the legacy of 'wildness' within my 'tribe' - a desire to reach back to flowing hair and uplifted arms, to wonder and celebration as a part of daily - or at least monthly - life - to a knowledge that was not read but felt. I seek, but I feel my 'bear' is imposed... is placed by my own hands by my side.... when a part of me wants to be grasped back (or forward) toward something I just know is there but is buried so deeply under what you rightly point out as 'no memory that the bear ever existed.' Yet here we are speaking of it... thank you Martin.
I’m bewitched by the richness and nimbleness of your word crafting. TG you are younger than me and likely will be around to spell cast and spellbind those who care to be for a good long while. I yearn to ‘become totemized’. Thanks to you, I believe the difference between wilderness and the wild and that the wild is yet among us here,there, everywhere. Well past time for reconsecration.
.
Nourishment and balm. Bless and thank you. I have a heavy head and full heart each time I encounter this story. And, again, you frame the distance we walk from the story to the lived in language that brings tears, a deep sense of presence and, ultimately, something that galvanises the spirit and calls me onwards!
Beautiful thoughts to ponder at the start of this day. Thank you!
"We push away the shiny beads and useless trinkets and say enough." This line brings up much shame for me as well as firm resolve. I know many like myself have fallen prey to the marketplace, and in the process lost touch with the REAL. These writings of yours Martin are the encouragement I've needed, and I feel grateful to have found your still small voice (well, not literally, but I'm sure you get what I mean) in the cacophony. Grateful, grateful, grateful.
This story has a special place in my heart.
Your illustration is beautiful.