Image: hdqwalls.com
Words inspired by these transformative times and the poetry of Joy Harjo
I've been feeling a bit untethered the past few months, sensing and feeling the slow dissolution of familiar practices, tools and ways of being that have previously sustained me. It’s been disorienting and unsettling at times, especially when I actively resist this molting. And yet, whether I’m ready or not, a shift is occurring on the grandest of scales…a shedding, so to say, of Who We Are as a collective, a people.
I know that when I grow and expand capacity into new terrain, “what was” will dissolve into the embrace of “what is”. And while I’ve traversed this terrain before, I often resist yielding to the vulnerability required…to surrender all maps with their familiar reference points, destinations and paths home. And yet, this surrender is required if I am to discover something new.
We are not returning.
We cannot.
In this liminal space
an imperfect map will have to do.
That map, for me, is my biology. As I continue my studies on trauma and learn to patiently tend the oscillating waves of my physiology, I can track each impulse toward stability and security, followed by the natural shift toward growth, transformation, and change. I have more capacity to lean into the imperfections, and wait - as best as I can - to receive what is here now…and now…and now…each conversation with the outside world a return to my senses, my gut, my breath...each somatic shift toward ease an opportunity to orient to subtle pleasure…each new awareness marking a point on this map that is emerging. For something, indeed, is slowly coming to light through intentional use of perception and movement, poetry and dreams, solitude and synchrony, mutuality and communal care.
Step by step, my biology - in tune with the greater biology of the Earth - is finding its way through the dark. Of course I still slip and fall into holes of habit and conditioning. And lose faith when familiar tools and resources no longer illuminate the path. But within this new landscape of learning I am coming to see the support that is always arising within my physiology; to understand this ecosystem of intricate parts - within and without - all working together to organize, harmonize, and integrate.
Change may be the only constant, but it’s worth remembering my body knows the way. Our bodies know the way. And as Joy Harjo says:
Crucial to finding the way is this: there is no beginning or end.
You must make your own map.
So listen for the songs.
Be curious about the unknown.
Follow the impulse of your body.
Orient to the subtle pleasures that are already here…all around you…as you awaken your senses to the vivid colors of the trees, the warmth of the sun on your skin, the sound of silence within each snowfall.
Together we will find our way.
With ease, love Teresa
Thanks to Joy Harjo, continued studies in trauma work , and the wisdom of my own body for this inspiration!
A Map to the Next World
for Desiray Kierra Chee
In the last days of the fourth world I wished to make a map for
those who would climb through the hole in the sky.
My only tools were the desires of humans as they emerged
from the killing fields, from the bedrooms and the kitchens.
For the soul is a wanderer with many hands and feet.
The map must be of sand and can’t be read by ordinary light. It
must carry fire to the next tribal town, for renewal of spirit.
In the legend are instructions on the language of the land, how it
was we forgot to acknowledge the gift, as if we were not in it or of it.
Take note of the proliferation of supermarkets and malls, the
altars of money. They best describe the detour from grace.
Keep track of the errors of our forgetfulness; the fog steals our
children while we sleep.
Flowers of rage spring up in the depression. Monsters are born
there of nuclear anger.
Trees of ashes wave good-bye to good-bye and the map appears to
disappear.
We no longer know the names of the birds here, how to speak to
them by their personal names.
Once we knew everything in this lush promise.
What I am telling you is real and is printed in a warning on the
map. Our forgetfulness stalks us, walks the earth behind us, leav-
ing a trail of paper diapers, needles, and wasted blood.
An imperfect map will have to do, little one.
The place of entry is the sea of your mother’s blood, your father’s
small death as he longs to know himself in another.
There is no exit.
The map can be interpreted through the wall of the intestine—a
spiral on the road of knowledge.
You will travel through the membrane of death, smell cooking
from the encampment where our relatives make a feast of fresh
deer meat and corn soup, in the Milky Way.
They have never left us; we abandoned them for science.
And when you take your next breath as we enter the fifth world
there will be no X, no guidebook with words you can carry.
You will have to navigate by your mother’s voice, renew the song
she is singing.
Fresh courage glimmers from planets.
And lights the map printed with the blood of history, a map you
will have to know by your intention, by the language of suns.
When you emerge note the tracks of the monster slayers where they
entered the cities of artificial light and killed what was killing us.
You will see red cliffs. They are the heart, contain the ladder.
A white deer will greet you when the last human climbs from the
destruction.
Remember the hole of shame marking the act of abandoning our
tribal grounds.
We were never perfect.
Yet, the journey we make together is perfect on this earth who was
once a star and made the same mistakes as humans.
We might make them again, she said.
Crucial to finding the way is this: there is no beginning or end.
You must make your own map.