Call to Unite

I wanted to share one of the entries in The Call to Unite, edited by Tim Shriver and Tom Rosshirt. It is written by Sherri Mitchell who is an Indigenous rights activist and author.  This book is a collection of entries by people from all walks of life, religions, and ethnic backgrounds, writing on the changes brought about by the world-wide COVID-19 pandemic, and calling for connection and unity. As TD Jakes writes in his entry, “Pain Always Leaves a Gift, Insights for Personal Change”: “I think COVID-19–maybe it should have been called Correction-19–has brought some correction of our understanding of ourselves.”

The book is available for $3.18 on Amazon (0.00 for the audio). If you are looking for some mediative, inspiring reading to catalyze change, I would highly encourage you to take some time to read some or all of these beautiful words of wisdom, solace, and inspiration. Link to Amazon

The Web of Life by Sherri Mitchell

The human beings, the two-leggeds, had fallen out of alignment with the path of life. And because they had fallen out of alignment with the path of life, they’d lost their ability to understand the language of the animals. They’d lost their capacity to hear the tiny voices of the trees and the plants. And so they began behaving in ways that were destructive to the other species, and the other species were starting to talk about what they were going to do about the humans. 

    After living with the destructive ways of the humans for generations, the animals finally came together in council and decided that the only way to allow the human beings to recognize that they are connected to the rest of life is to give them illness so they can start to see how their destructive ways are causing harm.

    So the human beings began to get sick. They began to die from the illness that was given to them by the animals. After watching them suffer for a time, the trees and the plants came together again in council, this time feeling grief and compassion for the human beings, and decided that , if they could get a message to the human beings and if the human beings were capable of receiving the message, they would give the the medicine they needed to heal themselves. 

    So that message was formulated and was sent to the human beings by the wind bird, and the message was received in a dream by one of the elders in the human community. Upon waking , the elder went to the forest and humbly asked the trees and  the plants to help her. She asked the animals to forgive her. She asked Mother Earth to guide her. For days and days, she went back and and made offerings and humbly asked for help, and finally the trees and the plants began to speak to their grandmother. And they gave her the wisdom that she needed to heal her people. 

    The grandmother then carried the medicine back to the human beings, and they took the medicine and began to become well again. And the grandmother told them the story of the dream, and her experience of reconnecting with the natural world, and recognizing the place that humans hold in the larger scheme of creation. And the humans decided that they would go back and live in deeper relation with the natural world, that they would walk away from the life of distraction that kept them from hearing the words of the animals and the voice of the trees.

Please share this tale with your children and grandchildren and members of your community. I hope it inspires you to walk away from the “life of distraction” to connect with the natural world so that we can work together to repair and restore our shared Mother, Earth.