Dreaming the World

We had a dusting of snow overnight. Now a breeze has picked up under brightly overcast skies. Looking out over the woods and field, I see no tracks. There were tracks in the front yard a couple of days ago. I wonder where everyone is.

Today is warmer than yesterday. The forecast is for a continuation of our up-and-down temperatures, with a couple of storms bringing snow changing to rain. After the weekend we are due to return to arctic cold.

I’ve been thinking about Ancestors. Not the humans who came before us but the myriad other beings who’s lives over millions of years made ours possible. In many Indigenous traditions these creatures’ (including plants and microbes) lives have created a dense network of stories over the face of the world, stories we also contain in our DNA and RNA.

It is important to acknowledge those ancient stories and the creatures who weave them. Australian Aboriginal tradition tells us that the travels and adventures of these beings are recorded in”song lines” that crisscross the landscape. Following those lines offers food, water, story, maps, and moral guidance. In the Brazilian Amazon and throughout North America there are traditions in which traces of the “First People” inhabit the landscape.

When we destroy species and ecosystems we effectively erase the ancient stories that might feed and guide us, and connect us to the Ancestors. When we destroy habitat we hack away at our own souls. There is a tendency now to blame our loneliness, aggression, and indifference on social media. I’m sure addiction to social media harms us, but I can’t help but thank that a deeper cause of our malaise might be our quickening destruction of our connections to the Ancestors and the living world.

In 2002 I was initiated into the shamanic world of the Amazonian Uru-e-wau-wau people. That tribe is now regarded as extinct, destroyed by the Brazilian government’s campaign of genocide against Amazonian peoples. Sadly, the government that was in power at the time of their demise is held in highest regard by our present president.

I wonder what happens to those interlacing networks of story and knowledge when the people who hold them are gone. Below is a post I wrote about Ipu shortly after his death. At the time I could not imagine the destruction and genocide that was to come. I still miss him.