July-August 2014
“These mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them
reverently...”
–Brother John
So I climb down from
the mountain and check the news. Not surprisingly, once again another US and
European bomb fueled religious war disguised as politics racks the so-called
“Holy Land”. Not a coincidence, I suspect, that this theme has been on my mind
a lot this summer. Sometimes, most times, while in the midst of these High
Sierra mountain temples it is quite easy to ponder religion/spirituality/the
Great Spirit/Mother Earth/God/science... whatever you choose to call the
attempt to understand the Great Mystery is fine – I’m not concerned with labels
or semantics. As with most so-called controversial subjects, rather than shying
away from chatting about them I tend to just dive in headfirst and try to stir
it up (always with a laugh and a smile, of course.) After reverently sauntering
amongst these divine mountains and forests for a few years I’ve come to the
conclusion that the root of most if not all of our modern dilemmas is simply this:
the separation of Man/Woman from Earth (alas that this has been violently re-enforced
by all the so-called ‘great’ religions). It is this arrogant notion that we are
superior to and not a part of Mother Earth and all of her beings, particularly
each other. Our connection is gone. Our spirit is lost. So perhaps the root of
the crisis we face in this mad modern world is not political, nor economic, nor
social, but… spiritual – something that some Indigenous folks have been saying
for centuries.
