Go

When a dear friend moves back to her hometown, a place where her roots run three generations before her. The yearning for home takes her to Iowa. But if you have known her enough, you know that there is another kind of yearning that drives her to most everything she does. It is the longing to return to one’s truer origins. This longing engenders a sense of homelessness. The two kinds of very human longing come together in my mind in the figure of the storyteller- a recent addition to Native American art from the south-western pueblos. The storyteller doll symbolizes continuity, the transmission of values and culture from one generation to next. I wish my friend fulfillment, at home in Iowa , and at home in her restlessness!

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Answer the call of your beginning,
Go.
Listen to the primeval chant.
Imbibe. Reverberate.
Go. 
Since you know the stories,
Narrate, tell them all. 
Enthrall.
Go.
Those stories that are hardly heard.
Ease them out. 
Tell them out loud.
Those that are excessively told,
Retell- to disrupt, to reimagine.
Go.
You know the light, and the shadows,
You know the sounds and the silence,
You know the seasons,
You know the peaks and the troughs.
And because you seek,
To embrace the past, 
And to open to the new- 
Gather them around,
Those that came later.
Soothe them, heal them.
Also chide them, and do praise them.
Whisper words of endearment,
Blowing kisses when words don’t suffice.
Be the healer. Be the leader.
A prophetess.
Be the mother. Be the storyteller. 
Through you, let the past
Meet the future. 
Go. 

(The storyteller doll featured in the picture above was handcrafted in the Jemez pueblo by Diane Lucero.)