I am sitting here at my electric-piano desk listening to finches sing in a junior oak tree. The sun peeks above the horizon line, venturing into an October sky that to me is nearly unbearably clear. I wish for clouds, for rain. Winter is coming and with it, here in California, but not only California, some of the heaviest precipitation we've seen. These rains will flood, unmake, destroy, seep deep into the soil and clear away what’s been, making space for what will be. I crave the rain, and, like many of us, know our climate, like our culture, has become too extreme. We are in need of rebalancing.
So I sit here, legs twisted together, hips tight, thinking. Each and every day I return to this electric piano desk, drink tea made with leaves I’ve grown, dried, and blended. Each day, I look out onto the land, filling my eyes with what I want to see–growth, greenery, trees. Every day, I write. But it’s been weeks since I’ve returned to writing this story, weeks that, in response to the confusing and sometimes cruel reality many of us are enduring, I've been co-creating emails, experiences, and posts, breathing life into the Living Museum of Herbal Wisdom, a place where we remember, again, that we are capable of healing, and that healing is, in fact, great pleasure, great fun, and well-worth doing. To some of us, this last bit sounds callous, weird, impossible even. We have tried and tried and we are still suffering.
And yet, fundamentally, we all know we need this healing. We all know there’s something wrong, unbalanced, dis-eased, too extreme about our current way of being. Some of the richest people on earth are building bunkers and vying to get to outer space. Here in the U.S, in California, we face the daily travails of escalating gas prices, pressure to work, to earn enough, and the accompanying physical, emotional, and spiritual unease. We wonder how we are going to afford to live and support our families, especially with social safety nets dismantled daily: Medical, Medicare, equity programs dismissed and defunded. There are wars, overt, in Iran, in Europe, and many more, covert. Meanwhile, A.I. is threatening jobs we once thought solid, and whatever illusions we had about Trump are fading. Some of us knew who he was, and tried to warn others. Some of us saw a man who looked rich and powerful and we believed his promises. I too have confused money and power with competence. Getting sober, and staying sober over the last eight months, and doing daily yoga with a teacher who reminds me to tend to reality, and reading bell hook’s all about love in community, and learning that love requires honesty has helped me understand with the difference, and often the distance, between what I want to believe, and what is real.
Here in the U.S., but not only the U.S, we often have a hard time with reality, and with honesty. It is too painful. Too real. We’ve taken our “values,” our time, attention, and money and pointed them towards escape. We plan trips. We go to the movies. We shop. We play games. We fantasize. We idolize a man who tells us we’ll fly to Mars, where, of course, there are no birds, no trees, no rainbows, no air we can breathe. When none of that works, we take drugs because they are plentiful, recommended by professionals, and let’s be honest–a relief. We are coping. We are avoiding. We are hoarding. Our consumerist culture, I think, has made us forget we can create, well, everything. Including a far more exciting, nourishing, and beautiful reality.
Because, here’s a real possibility: what if the solution to our collective malaise is right under our feet? What if restoring common ground, restoring our literal earth, our soil is all we really need to re-create, recover, restore the abundance, healing, and harmony that leads to literal heaven on earth?
Let those who want to go, go to Mars.
Let those of us who want to create heaven on earth, create heaven on earth.
And let us return to the wise ones, the heroes, the ones who know the land best to remember what that means.
Joseph Campbell, the great twentieth-century mythologist who popularized an understanding of the hero’s journey said, “When I deal with myths from all parts of the world, I find the American Indian tales and narratives to be very rich, very well developed.”
Phyllis D. Light, author of Southern Folk Medicine, tells us a Cherokee story about “how people got medicine.”
In the short version, man had overrun the Earth, polluting air and waters and destroying the land, rendering it incapable of producing healthy food or life. Mankind was selfishly killing the plants and animals for personal gain, disregarding the welfare of all who lived upon the Earth. The animals held council to determine what might be done to resolve the problem, to stop the damage to the Earth before it was rendered unfit for all life. After many days of meeting, the bears decided they would take care of the problem by killing mankind.
Because bears walk upon two legs and make use of their paws like hands, it was decided they would fashion a bow and arrow to kill mankind. One old bear volunteered his life for the making of the bow, offering his guts for the string.
Another bear offered to deliver the fatal blow. When the time came to kill mankind, the bear found his paws did not function the same as hands, and he could not pull the bowstrings. In disgrace, he reported to the council and offered to cut off his paws to better pull the bow. But the leader of the council opposed the action, saying that to maim oneself to better kill would make the bear no better than mankind.
In despair, the animals held another council to discuss how best to rid the land of mankind.
After many days of meeting, the smallest animals came forward. These animals were so tiny they couldn't be seen.
"We'll take care of the humans," they said. These tiny animals invaded mankind through their food and water, through the air and sky. This caused mankind great pain and affliction. A great cry went up upon the land. It was the cry of mankind suffering and dying. This cry went on for many days until finally the plants could stand it no longer.
Out of pity for mankind, the plants, the Green People, came forward.
“We take pity on you," they said. "For each affliction, we will provide a remedy. From this day forward, for each disease, a plant will step forward to provide a cure.”
Whatever illnesses we have, the land, the Green People, the plants, too are suffering. Our bodies are the land. The land, our body. The land’s gifts, plants especially, are our source of nourishment and healing. The better our common ground, our soil, our foundation, the richer our nature, the better the Green People, each with their cure.
Few would disagree that we need these cures. We also need heroes, and the understanding to not only recognize, but to become heroes. After studying thousands of myths across cultures, Joseph Campbell found that the end of the hero's journey is not what most people are led to believe. "It is not” he said, “to identify oneself with any of the figures or powers experienced…The ultimate aim of the quest must be neither release nor ecstasy for oneself, but the wisdom and the power to serve others."
At the end of the blockbuster book, Broadway play, and movie series Wicked, we see animals, stripped of their voices and status, leaving the land of Oz. We see the heroine, the green witch Elphaba, intent on restoring balance and harmony while the animals she loves move underground. This may be where we are at, but it doesn’t need to be where we are going.
Nature, however depleted, tells us the same story, and everywhere, it is the same story. Season after season, there are cycles that happen just like this: first, there is stillness, then quickening, all leading to growth, blossoming, fruiting, maturity, release, softening, stillness, then quickening. It’s a message of life, death, life spoken in so many languages, it's impossible to miss: it is spoken in butterfly, moon, tree, and in all the sun itself, which sets each day, and after a long dark night, lights the horizon. No matter where we are in the cycle, change is not only possible–it is inevitable.
A week ago, I joined Precita Eyes Muralists in SF's Mission district and carefully glued small, hand-carved pieces of glass into an intricate mosaic of grass, sky, native plants, caterpillar, and butterfly, all made by, for, and in strong community. On Saturday, at the museum's garden here in Sonoma, on land only recently wanting care, I watched two orange monarch butterflies dip and swing around a long, green passionflower vine. A yellow and black swallowtail joined and landed on the brightest of pink dahlias. A day later, on land heroically tended into being a veritable Shangri-La, among herbalists, land-restorers, and healers, I watched a caterpillar drop into his green and gold chrysalis.
It is, I find, relatively easy to restore the land: all we need are hands, good dirt, plants, and time. Always, and especially now, there is unbelievable beauty forming inside the most humble, and magical, among us. All of us, everywhere, are capable of the change, the wisdom, the service we seek, and need. Our common ground is right below us. Many of our greatest allies, the Green People, are closer than we think.
Morning is now nearly noon, the day fully illuminated. It’s time to leave the electric piano desk, and give the Green People a well-earned drink. Very soon, the rains will come, and with them, relief to those, heroic and invisible, who pour water when the land is dry, who create the balance, the heaven on earth that is not only possible, but already, through us, emerging.