Listening to Spirit
Bill Sydor
After being back [from the Caretaker class],
I’ve been contemplating, "How much of what I learned in the Caretaker class have
I been able to put to use?" My initial response was one of great uncertainty:
"What did I really learn? Yes, we did practice maintaining animal trails, providing
feeding areas, making animal shelters, working with erosion problems, and selective
pruning to promote the growth of cedars, but is there more to the class that is less
tangible and not easily described?" As I reflect back over the weeks since the class,
I remember that in my earlier Philosophy class Tom had said that there were two
simultaneous classes, one at the physical level, and another at the spiritual level. Some
of what we learn is subtle and perhaps easily overlooked. Only now am I able to appreciate
some of the changes in myself and the way I view the world.
While "talking to the trees" in the
Pine Barrens, I had the sense that I need to spend more time outdoors learning to listen
to the messages of spirit: "How can I hear Nature ‘speak’ if I am inside
and don’t go outdoors?" Thus I have tried to spend more time outside each
morning and each evening.
How does one tell when one’s
"caretaking" actions are motivated by spirit or by cultural conditioning? Am I
really listening to spirit or am I simply being a compulsive homeowner who wants a tidy
and neat yard? While "aimlessly" wandering one evening beneath the tulip poplar,
which I now sense as the spirit center of the area, I "felt" an answer. To
start, all I need to do is listen, just take time to listen. In our busy world, the
"taking time" may be the most challenging part. If I am being compulsive and
trying, rushed and hurried, then "I do not have time to listen", and thus,
consequently, am not acting from spirit. Here, spirit is acting gently, taking her time
(as I write these words I sense a whisper that "spirit" is not to be forced into
a box or category – spirit is not always gentle, and, when appropriate, will act in
rapid and powerful ways…). Now on my refrigerator is a reminder: "Start by
listening, simply listening".
There was a bush which I had allowed to grow
without knowing what it was. It has kept growing and growing. Then, one day while passing
by, I had the impression that it is an alien weed species and should be removed. I paused
and stopped: "Is this spirit ‘speaking’?" Taking time, a prayer with
tobacco and chocolate, I do not want to kill this bush if it belongs, yet I do wish to
follow the voice if it is spirit. Then, with growing confidence from the silence, yes, I
knew, the bush should be removed. I found a little hatchet and started to work at cutting
it down. As I worked, I felt I was learning another lesson: a hatchet is not the best tool
for caretaking. The stumps were not cut clean, but were left rough and ragged. "A saw
would be a better tool". How do we learn to be caretakers? An answer seemed to form:
We need to practice, observe what we do, and learn from our mistakes as well as our
successes. We are now in a school different from the one of experts, where each of us must
learn how to learn in new ways, and learn from our actions. This is not to say we cannot
and do not learn from others, but that we each need to fully understand our own personal
responsibility in each of the individual actions we take.
What is it worth to see the stars in the
sky at night? Often I under-value some of life’s very real pleasures. One evening
last week I was out in the yard and I looked up into the sky and saw Orion looking down,
bright and clear from his position up in the heavens. What would it be like to have never
seen stars in the sky? Last fall I had a shocking revelation: there are people who have
never seen a starry night. I was at a gathering of friends outside Roanoke. We had just
started a fire with a bow drill and were listening to the song of the adjacent stream. In
the group was an exchange student from Japan, from Tokyo to be precise. America was
turning out to be very different from what she had been expecting. She had heard of New
York and the other large cities and was expecting the major differences to be language and
culture, but here she was out in the "middle of nowhere", being treated to the
wonder of a star-studded sky.
Since there are people who really know nothing
of the natural world from their own experience, only from what they’ve read in books,
seen on TV, the movies, or more recently the computer, no wonder there is such a lack of
understanding of, and appreciation for, the natural world. Why would anyone care to save
the environment if they have never been out in nature, if they do not know the source of
their food, water, air, and living spirit? Now I better understand the urgency in
Tom’s messages of sharing what we know and have learned about the spirit of nature.
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