THE SOIL REMEMBERS 2

In the hands of the Magician, a simple twig becomes a magic wand that contains the force of all the elements: Trees, Rivers, Birds and Stones.1

All the world’s places and peoples of wisdom have been shattered by wars waged against them by colonizers who cannot remember what drove them to destroy their own lands first, or their intactness before that. The soil of the homes they left remembers the time before the time of intactness.

In South and East Africa, the Makore trees grow tall and straight, with long, smooth trunks over 100 meters high. People call them ‘elephant trees’ because only the elephants eat their fruit, only the elephants can break open the pods, and only then can the trees reproduce. In the trunks of the trees is the memory of the shattered seedpods. The elephants know this. The trees know it. The I Ching says, “The door of the Dark Animal Goddess is called the Root of Heaven and Earth…He who has found this mother understands he is a child. When he understands he is her child and clings to her, he will be without danger when the body dies.” The Makore seedpods know that the elephant is their mother. They cling to her as they receive the blows that crack them open to make new life.

It occurs to me that Liberia may be a seedpod that has been cracked open, about to sprout peace that could grow tall and straight with roots reaching deep, and myriad beings celebrating beneath the surface of the soil, with branches called to life by the birds and the snakes that have come to repopulate Eden. Liberia may not realize that the war might be its elephant mother, and slavery an empty husk discarded and drifting down, down through the moist air, silently down to the fragrant, blood-soaked soil to decompose so it can nourish the new that has been awaited for so long. Neither we, nor Liberia may ever comprehend how, yet this impossible destruction could replenish West Africa to become a forest of Shaman’s wands, enough for the whole world. Let’s not dare to kid ourselves: we are all cracked open by this violence against ourselves and we are hoping that hope will sprout and take root, as we dig into the past with our long, low tusks like Liberia’s forest elephants. The I Ching says that the Ghost River emerges from the Earth Altar to change the face of the world. It says that first there must be grieving, then there will be delight. Is this true?

What are the questions here? Are they the same for Liberians as they are for Americans as for Vietnamese? The same for Germans as for Israelis as for Palestinians? Whose questions are whose? Where is the line? Are these questions of who we are, of who History has made us, or of who we believe ourselves to be and what we believe to be possible? What is literally true about longing and sacrifice and war and circumstances? About fate and matters of degree? Justification and killing? Is what is true in Liberia also true in California and vice versa? What makes something that is true in the experience in one place not true in another? Why does ice water make a cough worse in Mexico City and soothe a cough in Los Angeles?

Has the Liberian boy’s mother learned to speak of her son in a way that makes sense? And does she believe it? Is it enough for her that the village believes he saved them all from war? Or could it be literally true? Some of us remember Cindy Sheehan, whose son, Casey, was killed in Iraq. In protest, she camped outside President George W. Bush’s Texas ranch. If her action helped end the war in Iraq, will her son’s death have been worthwhile? Would he know that his sacrifice was accepted, that it did what a sacrifice is intended to do?

If I speak about my son, will I put him in danger? Is he protected if I am silent?

1 Tarot of the Four Elements: Tribal Folklore, Earth Mythology and Human Magic, by Isha Lerner and Amy Ericksen