Medicine Wheels, Elephants and Rocking Chairs – Verse 1

Up on the mountain this morning. Other folks were in church.  Yeah, you know.  I got mine.

Sometimes Spirituality seems like it’s this big elephant. We’re all trying to share our piece of it, the part we know. When people get shouldered out of the way by someone claiming to have a truer version there’s an injustice done. The elephant only gets bigger.
This story about how we treat each other keeps getting mixed up in the telling. Everybody wants to be one up on the story that’s being revealed by the tribe. Everybody wants to control the message. It’s like there’s this desire to stop the suffering of unknowing, and we turn that desire into something holy or magical.
What we ought to do is just keep on listening through that suffering. Let it infuse us and inform us to be brave, to keep on sharing what we each have found. There is no person’s voice that can lead me to the land of spirit, I know. There is no one eyed savior in this land of the blind. That myth of personal power cheats us of the spirit stories that could be handed down to us through the simple dedication to retelling.

Keep listening to each other.
To each tell their own is all we have.
To each tell their own is all we have.
Over and over.
Everything else is a lie.

So, when the elephant traveled from Bali to Squamish I was busy trying to get laid.

Wait, I know that doesn’t give you any sense of a specific time. It was 2014 or so and I was coming to the end of my former life, I was unsuccessfully trying to live with my near broken back and worsening metabolism. Age and obesity are motherfuckers. I was putting techie pieces of water together at work during the day and nodding to the feather I brought from the reservation every time I passed it at home.
With every circle of the day I trudged and every nod I made to my relatives I was traveling into the past, pulling it into me without even realizing what might happen. Age and memories are motherfuckers.

The Medicine Man told me I’d find three men, they’re going to come into this story too. Don’t let me forget, but for now I’ve got to rest. Go find some other stories now. Amuse yourselves by getting smarter than me. Won’t be hard. Just don’t forget about me here in this rocking chair, I think I want to watch me some Walking Dead tonight.

Get these elephants off my mind. Got to rest.

Git now.  No whining though, of course if you’re brave your going to fall.