Regrounding in Earth Wisdom

“How has all your traveling affected you?” Vanda asked in our coaching meeting this Monday afternoon. She was aware of how extensively I’ve been moving around this year, just back from Asia, in Europe much of the Fall, and now heading to the East coast.

The question stopped me a bit. It must be affecting me, I thought, but do I know how? I’ve come to trust the first things that arise when asked a question, and to simply let the answer come rather than trying to force it or “craft” it. Immediately I thought about how aware I’ve become of the dense, evolving network of globalized organizations and processes that carry me here and there—how interconnected Singapore and Hong Kong and San Francisco and Copenhagen and yes even Moscow have become for me.

As these urban ganglia are communicating and trading and aware of each other, increasingly The Grove is helping people communicate across boundaries using visual language and universal facilitation practices.

Yet the living global network is like a fishnet with an ocean of indigenous life flowing in and around, and the net is fragile. Current collapse of trade and confidence fuels the flames of nationalism, isolation and orthodoxy. I suspect it’s not so much the truly indigenous that are challenged the most, but the people who have uprooted and moved toward the promise of the new global prosperity in urban and manufacturing centers. Dreamers thwarted can turn angry. Scared people can contract in their spirits and selves, and become closed. Obama rides the wave of hope and belief in a possible global community of thriving trade and cooperation, but that wave grew before our current collapse, and will it be there for the change he is already bringing as promised?

Vanda’s question has lingered, especially as I find myself back in the air. I realize that one consequence of flying so much is feeling unmoored a bit. My instinct is to find balance and grounding. Back from Singapore I spent several days connecting with Susan, my beloved life partner of 42 years, and with my Mother of 93 on her birthday, and all my brothers and their wives, who came to celebrate together in Sacramento where Mom lives. On Sunday I fixed light switches in my studio and hall closet. Monday I met with our team at The Grove and carefully examined our finances and workflow. And in the evening gathered with my Medicine Circle friends in Second Life to sit by a virtual fire and reflect on our work with the Earth Wisdom being brought forward by our brother Firehawk Hulin and his partner Pele Rouge.

While it may seem that meeting virtually isn’t really “grounding,” this circle, which meets once a week Monday evenings, has become ground for many of us. We know each other in real life. We share deeply. We share about our real lives. It is what the Hindus would call “sanga” and what Presbyterians would call “church.” It is a true community of mutual, spiritual support, and has the psychic impact of touching ground.

On my flight today I brought a new book by Firehawk and Pele’s teachers, WindEagle and Rainbow Hawk called Heartseeds. My medicine sister Michelle Paradis, also a student at Ehama (where Firehawk and Pele apprenticed for 10 years) sent it to me. As I read the book high in the air I thought about Vanda’s question and realized that one of the impacts of traveling is actually feeling the Earth as a whole system in my body, not just my mind. I’m feeling its many weather patterns, and seeing its oceans. I’m experiencing the heat of the near equator and the cold of the NorthEast, and reading the papers in these places at a scan level, sensing the concerns of its people.

There is no question that the Earth is experiencing massive shifts right now, and it is reflected in the plants, animals, and humans that live here. This isn’t the first time, but it’s our time. Weather patterns seem to be disrupted everywhere I go. It’s abnormally dry in the Sierra and California – by 50%. That means fires and drought this summer. It’s been unseasonably cold in Europe. Torrential rains are flooding other areas.

Heartseeds is about Earth Wisdom—teachings that trace back to the Toltecs and have been flowing up and through North American native tribes to our time. This tradition is called the Teachings of the Delicate Lodge, and are held in nested mandalas called Medicine Wheels, with the different directions and mid-points and central areas all carrying distinctions, understandings, and by association, the stories of these people.

The book begins with the stories of the Medicine Singer Chiefs, holders of the stories and carriers of the wisdom that helps humans find direction. Among their stories is the role of animals in teaching humans how to live on the earth, and how to listen, and pay attention, and be balanced. Grandmother Olin tells the story.

“Many many bundles of years ago it was told the animal people gathered in council. It all happened because of Raven and Owl. You see, Raven had been on a long journey to the Great Sun and had brought back the gift of fire. The story tells us that he got too close, and that is why he turned black. Anyway when he returned he brought a message, which he told to Owl. The message from the Great Sun was that animals must teach the new beings, called humans, how to live in the world, or they might accidentally destroy it due to their tendency to become self absorbed in their own importance.”

I couldn’t help but think of the towers of Hong Kong and Singapore, and yes San Francisco and New York, monuments to our self-importance. They don’t honor their environment but seem to flaunt it, sticking up and above like needles pointing to space, almost wanting to take off. I personally thrill at their site, but feel their coldness, and remember how amazing it was to see the buzzing, abundant life of the Filipino housekeepers gathered in downtown Hong Kong on Sunday by contrast.

I’m not in judgment about what I’m seeing, but deeply curious about where it’s all heading, and whether or not we have lost our ability to sense and feel and learn from our own Mother Earth and her wisdom, and the wisdom of the animals, and the plants.

This Christmas my brother James lovingly scanned and “tuned up” about 300 slides my father had taken over the first 14 years of our life, covering our time in Two Rock, California (just outside Petaluma to the north of San Francisco), and Bishop—due East from San Francisco on the east side of the Sierra Nevada mountains— a rugged paradise preserved from development by Los Angeles, which came north to get the water (and the land) in the 1930s.

I have slides like this one of Mt. Humphrey, Mt. Basin and Mt. Tom on my computer desktop, changing every 5 minutes,
and the impact has been to put me in intimate touch with my own roots and memories which are deeply embedded in the natural world, in the rural, mountain west, and in community. The faces and the land speak to me at a heart level. When I wonder why I’ve been in cities and traveling across geography and organizational sector ever since I suspect it’s out of simple curiosity, cultivated in the near isolation of Bishop.

But it may be more. Sometimes I feel that bridging these worlds is my calling, the reason I’m here. And sharing my stories, and my questions in the service of seeing things whole is my real work.

I look at the little map of who is reading this blog. The dots are all over the world. Are we connected? Are you people I know and have trained and/or just met virtually? I wonder if there is another kind of network building, in addition to the one devoted to material trade and commerce, power, and wealth—dedicated instead to awakening and deepening the human experience of being one living Earth. That is my fantasy and hope. That is the change I would gladly die serving.