On Purview & Permission

Did we sing our hymns to the trees offering our hands in service for passage?
Did we leave our weapons at the threshold; our swords, our stinging words, our angry hearts?
Did we place our heads on the stones, asking for permission,
and were we patient with their reply?
Did we bow and ask for the land’s consent?
Were our shoes removed, connecting our roots with the soft grass, the rocky ground?
By what divine right, have you, have we, to walk this land?

I saw so many walking into the temple of Danu, a sacred space, a church of the Earth.
They did not stop. They did not ask. They took all and wondered why the Earth gave less and less.
They made no offering. They did not seek consent.
They did not seek relationship.
They did not understand that it was she who might soothe their fear.

They did not seek consent.

When I asked the trees for guidance, they shared that to live in partnership is to seek consent.
We may
ask.
To live with honor is to respect the desire of the Earth. Sometimes she seeks to grow wildly, unencumbered.
Sometimes, to go fallow.
Sometimes, to lay still for a thousand years.
Even the deer follow the trodden paths, honor the ways, walk lightly, chew slowly, offer beauty.
Their hooves seeking permission with every step.

When I sit with stone in hand, earth below me, eyes closed and listen,
I feel the sacredness of every place. Some in shadow, lost to memory, quiet echo.
Inside the dusty corner store all trash and concrete, I feel the Earth below. The old seeds, the deep waters.
I ask the unseen for permission. Sometimes it answers. Sometimes.
I know in my heart, not every cause is mine to fight, mine to hold, mine to lead.
Not every song is mine to sing.
And so I surrender.
Yet there are some under my purview. Some that I was built for, born for, ordained for.

And so you, dear human cousin.
Born to this world confused, controlled, and condemned.
What is yours, in truth and care; what is yours to undertake?
The crocodile and the armadillo know their place and walk and swim and eat with honor.
They don’t take from the panther. They don’t take from the eel.
The salmon swims upriver beating its body until it finds the pools that will hold its children.
It offers itself to the bear, to the pine.
It offers itself and its memory as a mighty ancestor to its unknown kin.
With honor.

This place, this sacred Earth, borrowed, beaten, and forgotten
is yours.
Yours to tend. Yours to protect. Yours to heal and honor. Yours to cherish and resurrect.
I pray you ask; wherever you walk, whatever you take,
however you connect, whatever you
destroy;

Did you seek consent?

Listen.

Closely.

—

There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.

(Wendell Berry)