Day Four
Afternoon Recording Session
“Ready, Takoja?”
“Yes, Grandpa.”
After First Woman told me a small part of her story, she became very no-nonsense and marched through the instructions efficiently. She went back into the gray-walled structure and came back holding a nested set of metal bowls. They were of a deep, bronze color with thin rims of colored enamel, four bowls in all.
“Pretty, aren’t they?” She picked each one up and set them side by side on the slab of cottonwood. With a tiny cloth-ended mallet, she tapped each one and a beautiful sound rang out. “I am using these to illustrate this lesson for you. I told you earlier that this chamber of open potential in the brains of The Weavers was fragile, a container that must be filled. Actually, the inner chamber of the brain depends upon this nest of containers. This first, the smallest, is the mother and her womb. This next size is father and family. The third is the community, meaning everything from a neighborhood to the larger human community. The fourth bowl is the natural world and its many attending realms and worlds.” As she spoke of each bowl, she tapped its edge and when all four bowls were singing together, that single fine sound seemed to contain all the music and stories of all the people perfectly harmonized into one sound. “Do you hear it?”
I was transfixed by that rare sound and could only nod.
First Woman touched a fingertip on each bowl to still the sound. She laughed. “That sound will put you into meditation and prayer. In fact, that sound is meditation and prayer.”
She rapped each edge again with the mallet and let the sound sing out across the turquoise pool. I listened, feeling strangely moved and emotional. I never wanted it to stop ringing. This time she let the sound fade out naturally but, even after the ringing had stopped, I could still hear it in my ears.
“They are nested, Albert. This is so important to remember. Each container holds the next container.” She reached a hand toward the ground and a pretty silver pitcher was in her hand. First Woman nested the bowls together again, and poured the water into the center bowl. When it was filled it poured out into the next bowl, and when that was filled, it poured out into the next, and so on until the water flowed back out onto the earth itself. “Do you see, Albert? Life, or more precisely spirit, is such an overflowing thing that if we just let it flow naturally it will fill every container. It flows from one container to the next, from one generation to the next and on and on. It is unending, this flow. But the nest of bowls must be in order. Do you see?”
“Yes, I see.”
“Good. Then you see there is an order here that must be followed.”
“Yes.”
“Good.” She lifted the pitcher of water and put it in my hands. “This is the energy of life itself vibrating. It is creative, it fills and empties and contains us all. I have it in this pitcher but, in truth, it cannot be contained by anything and yet is con-tained by everything. Do you understand?”
I did understand, and nodded, feeling like a schoolboy sitting beside my pretty teacher with the pretty bowls. Later, this lesson would prove to be both the simplest lesson, and the most difficult. The energy that is life-mysterious, felt and yet not felt, seen and yet not seen, immeasurable.
”Albert, when you understand this natural order of things, it becomes easier to be a Watcher, easier to see when a person, or an institution, has gone out of order. And a child in order will become a Weaver, capable of using this special chamber in the brain in very different ways, but only with proper training. My instruction for training the young Weavers is quite simple really. The key is to understand that the Weavers weave-one idea into another, one thought into another, one bit of information with another, one person to another, one country to another. They are pattern-makers. They do not learn by absorbing information like wads of cotton absorbing liquid, but by weaving, integrating one thing with another. Our job, then, is to feed finer and finer threads and more colors onto their loom so that they can weave the vision. We could call them spider children but Weaver sounds better, don’t you think? Do you under-stand? We do not learn-we weave.”
First Woman stopped talking; to give me time to do my own weaving. I’m not sure what I had expected. I waited for more information and there was no more. She had finished the lesson with four bowls, and the instruction to allow the Weavers to weave. I couldn’t resist asking. “That’s it? That is all we need in order to enter the new time of gathering?”
First Woman shook her head. “Oh, Albert, you have no idea how difficult this simple lesson will be-for them to weave the new fabric out of the old? The challenges will be great as the Wind of a Thousand Years dies out. Earth will look like the aftermath of a great storm, and the people will cling to their old identities like life rafts. They will form false camps of belonging, fearful of separating or standing alone. They will reject the Weavers in a hundred different ways, calling them names, challenging their ideas, excluding them. Only those firmly planted in their families, whose center bowl can overflow into the other bowls, will be able to proceed. Old institutions of health and education will collapse, and we must pay careful attention to the families and the food supply. The only grace is that it is the right time, and more and more will weave their connections between this earthly realm and the other realms. Help will come from other places. But there will be many challenges. Come, walk to the waterfall with me, and then you must go.”
First Woman took my hand and together we followed the footpath to the edge of the twin falls. Neither of us spoke for many minutes. We walked, both lost in our own thoughts of spider children and weavers and the new world. Once she paused and said, “Albert, remember this. The strongest thread on the Weaver’s loom is always love . . . only love.”
I knew my time in this realm was nearly completed. We were standing at the foot of the waterfall and I saw large, fat goldfish the size of my hand in the clear stone plates that held the water. Panic rose in my throat, and in my middle. I didn’t want to leave this place. I was afraid to crawl back into that broken body in another time and place.
First Woman saw my panic. “And Albert, fear is the sharp blade that cuts the thread of the Weaver’s loom. Trust is the only thing that can mend the break. You must trust.”
We stood a moment staring into the falling waters. She said, “Now, it is time for you to cleanse yourself. Walk into the shallow pool beneath the falls and put your body beneath its spray.”
I started to object.
“No, Albert. All will be well. You must never cling to your belonging when it is time to separate. Go now into the falls.” She dropped my hand, and then handed me the smallest of the four bowls. “Hold this close to your chest while you cleanse.”
The twin streams of water flowing over the ledge were no more than ten yards away, but it was difficult to force my feet to walk those ten yards. I knew. I must have known. I wondered if it was possible that the tears I’d wept earlier had merged with the waters above and I would now be showering in my own tears.
I walked into the shallow waters and then plunged beneath the falls, clutching the bowl against my chest. An explosion of water crashed over my head and shoulders and, in the next instant, I was blinking my eyes open in the disgustingly dirty and broken body of the Albert who had slid from his horse. It was a cruel awakening.
“Some hot tea, please, Jilly.”
“Yes, Grandfather.”
Albert’s Notes
Jilly hurried off to fix the tea while I fought my lungs for that first deep breath all over again. She was back in just minutes pressing the cup into my trembling hands and murmuring, “Drink, Grandpa. It will restore you.”
I gasped. “Ah, Jilly. You have no idea how difficult it was to leave that realm and return to this one.” But I couldn’t stay. It wasn’t yet time for me to stay there.” I gulped the tea and felt its heat burn through my body. It did restore me and I breathed more easily. “
I better get back to Jilly and finish this story. She worries about me.
“Is your little machine still on?
“Yes, Grandfather.”
“Good. I feel better. Where was I? Oh yes. It was like being born again, but into a broken, dehydrated, god-awful body. As you young people like to say, it was gross.”
“Oh, Grandfather.”
“See, I’m fine now, my humor returns. Let me just get the poor boy home, and then we will call it a night.”
As far as I could tell, there were no broken bones. My slide from the horse had been caused by the blindness, the bleeding red rain in my eyes. I was, however, dehydrated, disoriented, and weak with hunger. Unconscious and unaware, I had lain beneath that grove for two full days. Had I been in full sun, I would have died. I tried to whistle for old George, but my lips were so parched and swollen I couldn’t make a sound. George, I am convinced, had his own lessons and arrangements with the higher realms because just minutes after I regained consciousness, he came galloping up. I think First Woman must have sent him to get me. My duffle bag was still on his back and I used the stirrups to yank myself upright and get to the water in my pack. I don’t need to tell you in detail how filthy I was. I drank half the canteen of water and then threw it right up again. I think it was the smell that made me sick. I smelled that bad.
My mind was fogged over, and my eyes were bleary-but not blind. I was relieved to be able to see, but had no immediate recall of what had happened while I was unconscious. I was just damn glad to be alive, even in this disgusting body. My recollection of getting back up on George, and making my way back home is pretty sketchy but somehow I managed it. Or George did.
When I rode up to that poor old cabin, it looked like a palace. I heard my mother scream from inside the house and soon she and my sisters flew out of the door, off the stoop and began kissing me, and crying, and half carrying me into the kitchen. They asked no questions, just kept kissing and crying. I stayed awake long enough to strip to the bone and scrub and scrub, and scrub. If I hadn’t already been a red man, I would have been after that scrubbing.
For the first days after my return I had lost all memories from those two days. That space in my brain was simply closed off to me. My body healed, and my mother and sisters began to relax again. They must have sensed a change in me, but they asked no questions.
The only thing that felt different at first was that my anger was gone. The demon living inside my body had left. You can’t imagine what a relief it was to no longer have that raw, red energy control my days and nights. I was not like one of those sinners who suddenly find the lord. I still liked a cold beer, but I didn’t need a case of it to kill the demon any longer.
Something inside of me was different, but I didn’t know what or why. I figured it was because I had lucked out and cheated death. I should have been dead after my foolish drunken ride off to rescue my father.
Mother was struggling to provide for the family so I took a job on a ranch near Martin and began working long, hot days fixing fence, tossing hay, and running cattle. The work felt good, maybe for the first time. It stripped my body of all the bad influences I had dumped on it for so long. I got stronger, and clearer, and healthier with each passing week. I took most of my wages and handed them to my mother without saying a word. Sometimes I’d catch her staring at me as if she was wondering what had happened to change her struggling boy into a man. But still, she didn’t ask, just thanked me.
I spent time with my sisters, Shawna and Silvie, and was shocked to see them becoming young women. It was as if I had not seen them-really seen them-since our father died, as if I had been living in a dark fog. In August, I turned twenty-one and marked the moment not by getting blind drunk, but wondering why I no longer wanted to get blind drunk. I shot a few games of pool in Vetal, had a couple of beers, and went back to the ranch.
And then I met Sarah. And I remembered.
“Jilly, I want to stop here for the night. I need to consider how much more to tell.
“Yes, Grandfather. But you know I want to hear the rest.”
“I know, dear. And you will. You will.
Albert’s Notes
Jilly and I barbecued a couple of steaks and baked potatoes to celebrate the end of the telling of my two-day journey. She finished her transcription an hour ago and went to bed. I am restless, staring out the window, an eye on the world like the moon above. I’m not sure how much of my life I need to put into this story. In some ways, it feels finished right now, and yet in other ways the experience goes on and on and will continue to go on and on even when I am gone from this place.
When I quiet my mind and sit a moment in my spirit, I realize that I want to leave my reporting of the visit to the other realms as it is. A lot of interpreting and meaning-making will just drain the energy off the basic lessons I was given. It will weaken them. Better to let them stand and let others do their own meaning-making, their own weaving.
In many decades of study, reading, tracing the world’s great philosophies, I have found nothing as clear or truthful as the simple lessons taught to me over those two days. I look out at the world from these old eyes, and I see the aftermath of the storm.
The Wind of a Thousand Years is a breeze now, but the clean-up is a big job. At the same time, I see the opening of the new spiral of gathering and belonging, a world of individuals seeking spirit and right place, seeking true identity and roots, finding creation. They are the Weavers, and some of them, like Jilly, are coming of age now. Beneath the tattered gray blanket, a tremendous energy builds. We are remembering to remember.