Feed Back
When I used to work in Liberia, in the months after the civil war there had just ended, we learned that in traditional Liberian communities, elephants are considered a sign of peace. So we went with a small group of diviners and made offerings of all the elephants' favorite foods: rice flour, pumpkins, bananas and honey. A few weeks later, we received a phone call with the news that the elephants had come, in person, to all the villages where the offerings had been made. The village communities responded in various ways: The elders in a Muslim village went into the forest and read certain passages aloud from the Koran, knowing that the elephants and other animals were listening. In another village, the elders from tribes that had fought each other during the war gathered at the grave of the village founder. That day, they wept together, recalling how their forefathers had been friends. In a third village, an herbalist dreamed that a sacrifice was needed on behalf of the United States, and the offering of a goat was made, fulfilling the mandate of the dream and providing a meal for the community.
In those years, we traveled regularly to a border town in the northwest. On our first trip, we met a little boy about ten years old who had run away from home because he was being abused by the woman who had been entrusted with his care. He was desperate to be reunited with his father, who was in a refugee camp some miles away. We decided to do what we could to help him. But he looked so frail and exhausted, the first thing, we thought, was to offer him a meal. When we asked him what he wanted to eat, he looked up at us and said quietly, My heart does not call for food. How, then, to feed a sorrowful heart overflowing with unbearable truth?
My friend, Susan Eirich, Executive Director of the wildlife rehabilitation center Earthfire Institute, asks in their current newsletter, What if the Earth is Lonely For Us? She's right, of course. In this season of sugary over-indulgence, it's our turn to feed Her.
And so I think of the different kinds of offerings we humans might make to the bountiful Earth and many images come to mind: Dreams of food on overflowing platters, placed at a mountaintop just so, and seeds carefully planted underwater. Baskets woven of fresh herbs or strands of seaweed and filled with flowers and honey. Fresh eggs carefully placed in a stream. Small carvings. Fine fabrics. Poems and stories, prayers and songs.
The losses of these times weigh heavily. From the decimation of the natural world to the decimation of democracy, we struggle to respond. There is already more grief than we can metabolize, and seemingly more to come. But as Martín Prechtel reminds us, grief is praise. And so, I wonder now what might happen if we truly grieve our global losses, but with a modern twist that meets the moment in the form of lavish praise for what remains. Eloquent accompaniment. Declarations of devotion. A feather of love placed ever so gently on the scale that weighs the reckless soul of humanity.
As I listen to the waves tonight, I remember the Scottish story of the Blue Men of the Minch, waiting to reach with their bony fingers to claim a boatful of hapless sailors. But before they do, the sailors are given a chance to save themselves. The Blue Men toss out a line and the sailors must follow suit, with just the right words, the right cadence, and a matching rhyme. If they succeed, they are spared and allowed to continue their journey.
This is the moment we are in: an opportunity to remind Earth and ourselves of how much love we feel, how grateful we are, for this miraculous world. Since Earth is lonely for us, and we ourselves are Earth, how can we feed the heart of the world, and, with it, our own?
