Mokopuna, are you listening?
I have been schooled by a talking bone.
Let’s call it intuition.
After my jawbone spoke and my confidence grew, the brokeness healed.
Surgery and treatment was such a deep dive. Waiting under life’s surface, holding my breath. Watching. Hoping.
Then rising back up to break the surface of dark water. Gasping awake, not wanting to go back to sleep.
Feeling an old memory, or maybe a new name?
Recalling how the cormorant feels, and knowing what to do. Shaking sorrow from wings, paddling quietly. Then, re-webbing with creation in wildfull alighting. All around the BoneSongs are whispering, We Are All Connected. Again.
Flying across the river’s face to settle on a tree above water’s edge, resting, reflecting. Life streaming in estuarine threads, silver stories flowing into ocean.
And JawBone asks, if one creature can heal, how much more does a forest, a river or an ocean hold?
Regeneration waits under the surface, holding its breath. Watching. Hoping.
So I turn in to my Self, following JawBone’s whisper: We Are All Connected. Again.
Mokopuna. Are you listening? To forest song.
Walking — unwinding yourself in a course of web studies — trailing in spider’s silk and mycelium thread to find your way home. Letting go of paved lessons — unevenness underfoot, webbing small worlds with wild kin.
Waking to forest dawn, you become bilingual.
In birdsong. Which songbird, your call. Becoming fluent takes a lifetime. Maybe more. There are worse things to do with your day than follow the calling to scribble winged words on the walls.
You go out on a limb, transcribing nests of small mystery to find yourself in translation.
You bring stories to the trail.
Beside a campfire, you tell them. And then turning, one by one, the myths begin to re-tell you, over and over, until finally you understand. Unearthing fragments of severed-self, the stories will find you in their meaning.
When it comes to myth, this is the beginning.
You binge drink mythology beneath the domed sky, constellating into deep time.
Later, you stagger back to your tent, sleep deep and wake late, only vaguely repentant. You lurch out of bed, finding crumpled notes stuffed in your pockets — quenching your thirst.
Then sinking back in your nest — lined with downy pages of poetry. Your new story begins to ferment, as you sleep safe, little chick, under a canopy of leaves, wrapped in fierce but tender words, scribbled across blankets of pages.
Later, around the hearth, JawBone has a lesson — how to brew hope.
Soothing the feverish daze, she sings your deep sorrow. As you gently unearth the roots to tendermost secrets, learning what re-connects you.
To begin, you can barely brew enough hope for one. But now you have more. And you coax the despair to take a small sip. While you wait, calm and still, wrapped in the nest of your nourishing darkness.
JawBone is kind, but she is no easy teacher.
She pushes you to the edge with her questions and you are afraid you will fall. You don’t have the answers.
She says, ‘As the verdant ship of your life is carved up, poisoned and scorched, do you turn?
‘Do you leap to her defense? Do you find your voice, rise up for her healing? Do you transplant your life, give your marrow and bone, reconnecting your severed self in service of the Earth?’
Do you believe we are all connected, Mokopuna?
Do I? I may have lost my mind. Not everyone takes their bones so literally.
But what more can I do? I have laid bare the facts of my small story: it makes a skeleton.
And JawBone has whispered her bone truth.
And now — the myth — keeps re-telling you Mokopuna, over and over, until finally we both understand.
Long ago, Te Ra, the Sun moved too quickly across the sky.
As the future faded under the sun’s piercing glare; some people denied it, others believed there was nothing they could do. But Maui had a plan.
Gathering his four brothers, he said, “Come with me and we will capture the Sun. We will make it move more slowly.”
The brothers hesitated. ‘That is impossible,’ one mumbled, ‘We are mere specks in the face of the Sun.’ They were afraid Te Ra would burn them up.
But the brothers watched as Maui sliced through the flax. They listened as he told them how to plait strong ropes to snare the Sun where it rises. And so, as the courage of their ancestors rose up through their limbs spiraling into their bones, they plunged on into story.
Walking through darkness into the forest, they crossed through the grassland, ropes draped over their shoulders. Then as the plants gave way to shriveled sticks and the birds fell silent, they traced their pencil-thin lifelines across the wasteland.
Arriving at the giant pit where the mighty Sun rises, Maui and his brothers built a wall of earth and sheltered behind it. Then he told his brothers to wait until he gave them a sign to throw out the ropes. “Once you snare the Sun, you must not let it go.”
As the blazing giant rose from the chasm, Maui hissed at his brothers to wait.
As the red hot eyes of the Sun God glared from the pit, they crouched shoulder to shoulder.
Breathing in, Maui could feel the time unfolding. Holding everyone in his breath, they unfurled together in an instant of stillness. Curling through the universe, they spiraled through pages of great turning.
Maui shouted for his brothers to cast out their snares.
The ropes coiled and tangled through Te Ra’s fiery hair and the brothers held tight as they tethered the mighty Sun.
Who dares to look into the eyes of this all-consuming Sun?
Are you listening, Mokopuna?
Knowing there is no chance for flight. Only fight.
Will you turn in to your Self?
A billion stabs of darkness rain down as Te Ra clenches his white-hot teeth.
You are almost devoured in the hungering abyss.
In an instant, you recoil back into life, invoking the powers carved deep in your bones.
You must take this leap.
Springing forward into regeneration, holding a new story in your hand.
You strike.
Again and again as the blaze rages. “You will kill Te Ra!’ it screams.
“No, I will not kill you,” you reply, “but I will make you move more slowly.”
Mokopuna, crouching to leap. May you carve your deep peace across the face of the Sun.
