chapter six - graceful overwhelm

sent by the sweetgrass

"it was an architecture of relationships, of connections that i yearned to understand. i wanted to see the shimmering threads that hold it all together. and i wanted to know why we love the world."
- robin wall kimmerer

much like its title song, this chapter has two equally valid names. one is given above: "graceful overwhelm". this indicates the meeting of light and dark, masculine and feminine, earth and heaven, up and down, high and low and is symbolised by ardhanarishwar. to experience these words as significant of the same essential reality is to be lost in the cosmic miracle: shiva and shakti meet; source and creation are one and the same and simultaneously remain wonderfully different.

all i can say is, "thank you".

its other name is "making peace". to meet experience as it is, is to assume responsibility. recognising that what i essentially am and what the world essentially is are one and the same, is not a passive affair. it is an ongoing act of re-cognition, re-imagining, re-membering of the total event in which one is enfolded. by the unique expression of our gift we must, like frodo, bring ourselves to the very edge of mount doom in order to return that which seems to be separate. just like frodo, we will inevitably fail, but it is in knowing clearly where the journey leads and still embracing every moment of it whole-heartedly that we radiate eternal life. of this archetypal journey, robin wall kimmerer writes:

"in the seminal onondaga story of the peacemaker, a figure appeared across the water of onondaga lake during a time of war, a beautiful youth in a white stone canoe. the stone canoe signifies the weight of the message with which he was entrusted, the great law of peace. most people of the warring nations turned him away; few would listen. but as the peacemaker grew to old age, one by one the leaders finally heard the message of peace and set aside their war clubs. on the shore of onondaga lake, the peacemaker gathered together all fifty of the reconciled chiefs. to signify the peace, they cast their weapons into a great hole, on top of which the peacemaker planted an enormous white pine."

the peacemaker appears with haiwatha, just as shiva and shakti are shown in union as ardhanarishwar. it is she who binds the five white pine arrows and makes a bundle which cannot be broken. only in union - one with another - can we participate in the creation of that which is beyond our own understanding, whether it be peace or life (there being no essential difference between the two).

"time is not a river running inexorably to the sea, but the sea itself - its tides that appear and disappear, the fog that rises to become rain in a different river. all things that were will come again [...] in circular time, these stories are both history and prophecy, stories for a time yet to come. if time is a turning circle, there is a place where history and prophecy converge."

chapter seven