green thursday

even though i think it must have something to do with jesus, the title, for me, means plants. It means spring has returned and life is coursing through the world again. I always find it sort of strange that jesus should have been killed, or that the celebration (i know that is a weird word, but that is what they say in the churches), that the celebration of his death should be in the spring, so clearly when life has returned. Then, the celebration must actually be about the resurrection, the return to life. The new life reborn. The new life after releasing what has needed to pass away. We come through the winter time, grateful to have survived, to be alive, to return to the fields and gardens and forests to harvest plants and sow seeds, and smell the flowers blooming and watch the birds building nests and all of life bringing babies into the world.

Green thursday, for me, is about the tree of life, which yes, they did hang jesus on, but it is more about the tree than the person. Although, I think he was a fine person, or the stories of him anyway, teaching love and the refuge of peace, of kindness to one another. All of which we seem not to have learned. Which I tend to mourn this time of year. That the death of this one person is, firstly, the cause of millions of deaths in this world because stupid people have to fight over it. And second, that we continue to kill each other and this earth and all of the trees and starve each other and bomb each other and pollute absolutely every square inch of earth we can get our greedy hands on.

But green is life. Green is the return of what is living, of the possibility of love. Of the sun and the warmth and the planties in the garden. Green is the color of hope, which I have been told over and over again to abandon. Been told that hope just sets me up for disappointment, after hanging out with her younger sister expectation and her abusive parent, Greed. But Hope, I think, is actually the tiniest sliver of a promise that the human heart, and the spark of whatever is divine in all of life, can ignite the potential of all of us to go through the process of true maturation and forging in the fires of life's experience to burn up all that is raw material in our hearts in the fire of love. To let what needs to die, die, and make a space where the phoenix can rise up out of the ashes into new life.

"Our tools are better than we are. They grow better, faster than we do. They suffice to crack the atom, to command the tides. But they do not suffice for the oldest task in human history: to live on a piece of land without spoiling it." Aldo Leopold

Green Thursday, reminds me of Aldo Leopold's "green fire". He was out hunting, and shot and killed a wolf. "We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce, green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and I've known ever since; that there was something new to me in those eyes. Something known only to the wolf and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger itch. I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves meant a hunter's paradise. But after watching the green fire die, I sensed that neither wolf nor mountain agreed with such a view." A.L.

So maybe there we have the death of the christ. The death of the green fire, of the wild, of the indigenousness in all of us, of the genocide of people and cultures, and of the destruction of our land. Each day we watch the green fire die in our world, right in front of us. And our own heart dies slowly with it.

"We the pioneers have killed our wilderness. Some say we had to. Be that as it may, I am glad that i will never be young without wild country to be young in." A.L.

If I pray for anything, it is for us to see and remember and be awake to what is holy all around us. And to act from this realization in our own lives each day, in the particulars of life, and through these acts, be reborn, all of us dying on the tree of life, rather than killing Her. Sacrificing what is old and used and worn and what is beautiful and holy as an offering. Giving our whole lives to feed the holy, rather than trying to steal the green fire we see around us in what is left of the wilderness in the attempt to own it. When we try to control it, we kill it.

"We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect." A.L.

We have a great big Chestnut tree in the middle of our courtyard. Our neighbors have a dog called Wotan, and we are, after all, in germany. Bringing together wolves, offerings and sacrifices, poetry, and the holy, here is a bit of Norse, pre-christian mythology to balance the christian story of the next days...


Odin is the chief divinity of the Norse pantheon, the foremost of the Aesir. Odin is a son of Bor and Bestla. He is called Alfadir, Allfather, for he is indeed father of the gods. With Frigg he is the father of Balder, Hod, and Hermod. He fathered Thor on the goddess Jord; and the giantess Grid became the mother of Vidar.
Odin is a god of war and death, but also the god of poetry and wisdom. He hung for nine days, pierced by his own spear, on the world tree. Here he learned nine powerful songs, and eighteen runes. Odin can make the dead speak to question the wisest amongst them. His hall in Asgard is Valaskjalf ("shelf of the slain") where his throne Hlidskjalf is located.
From this throne he observes all that happens in the nine worlds.
The tidings are brought to him by his two raven Huginn and Muninn. He also resides in Valhalla, where the slain warriors are taken.
Odin's attributes are the spear Gungnir, which never misses its target, the ring Draupnir, from which every ninth night eight new rings appear, and his eight-footed steed Sleipnir. He is accompanied by the wolves Freki and Geri, to whom he gives his food for he himself consumes nothing but wine. Odin has only one eye, which blazes like the sun. His other eye he traded for a drink from the Well of Wisdom, and gained immense knowledge. On the day of the final battle, Odin will be killed by the wolf Fenrir.
He is also called Othinn, Wodan and Wotan. Some of the aliases he uses to travel icognito among mortals are Vak and Valtam. Wednesday is named after him (Wodan).
Amongst his gifts to us, his children, was the greatest of all: the gift of writing. To accomplish this Odin hung himself upside down upon the World Tree, [Tree of Life] the gigantic ash Yggdrasil (a compound meaning "terrible horse").
After nine days of fasting and agony, in which "he made of himself a sacrifice to himself", he "fell screaming" from the tree, having had revealed to him in a flash of insight the secret of the runes. Their initial manifestation took the form of eighteen powerful charms for protection, increase, success in battle and love-making, healing, and mastery over natural causes.
This story illustrates an important dynamic of the Northern pantheon, which did not allow for omnipotence - even Odin must pay his due. At Mimir's well, which lay deep under the roots of Yggdrasil, the World Tree, the god had earlier chosen to undergo an important forfeit. Odin paid with one eye for a single drink of the enchanted water. His mouthful granted him wisdom and fore-sight. It is due to this sacrifice that Odin's face is depicted with a straight line indicating an empty eye, or alternately, in a wide-brimmed hat pulled down low over the missing orb.
His quest for knowledge was never-ending. Upon his shoulders perched two ravens, Hugin ("Thought"), and Munin ("Memory"). These circled the Earth each day, seeing all, and then at night reported to Odin what they had learnt. He cherished them both, but particularly Munin, which seems to underscore the importance he placed on rune writing, record keeping, and honouring the heroic deeds of the past. There is another bird associated with Odin, the eagle. The god often transformed himself into this canny raptor, both to view the workings of the world and to intervene when an avian form was better suited to his ends.


(Thanks to crystalinks.com for the info on odin)

busy

someone said to me last night, after hearing what i have been up to these days, "you sound busy". To which I responded, "Yes, I am".

However, upon reflection, after a night's sleep, a beautiful long late breakfast with my wife, and working in the garden for an hour and a half, I would say, "I disagree, I am not busy, I am full. I am deeply in love with life. I feel the pulse of life and all of her moods coursing through me- love, anger, fear, passion, joy, compassion, curiosity, excitement, enthrallment and all of the others. All of them. And I want to do ever so many things because my love draws me to them! Singing, plant medicine, cooking, eating well, body work, working in the little shop I do, reading, praying, making beauty, working outside in the garden, growing plants especially vegetables and fruits, washing, spinning, dyeing wool, knitting, making fiber out of nettle and silk and cotton. walking outside in meadows and mountains and along streams and rivers, meeting with friends, going to concerts, plays, museums, visiting family. Practicing Tai Chi and Chi Gong and maybe Kung Fu. The list goes on and on. But I am not busy. I may be in perpetual motion, or even trying to do too many things. but I am not busy. I am full, totally completely in love and full with life and I want to experience it all. And I am afraid that I won't have enough time to do all the things I want to do and go and eat and play and dream and grow. How does a person choose? How does a person move forward into fullness, held, loved, caressed by life and brought into her potential, her power, her gifts that only she can, in her unique way, give?"

That is what I would say to the person now. I am not busy, I am in love.

April showers bring May flowers- and then I can look them up in my book.

The month of April has started and I have conveniently forgotten, or been too busy to, post on April 1st (April fools?)And then we were away and then working, and now there is today.

Today, I worked until 1pm and then gave a bodywork session and then took a nap (my most favorite pleasure on afternoons when I get home from work) and then I went out to shop. First, I bought two old german children's books for my god-nephew ("The Firetruck", and "Favorite Animal Stories") and a book on plant identification for me (What is Blooming There?) which is sorted by color of flower- white, red, blue, yellow and green/brown and then by number of petals- at most 4, 5, more than 5, and two identical sides. Then, I went to the mall (at least it is an outdoor mall) to buy small stickers to label my bottles of vinegars- egg shell, dandelion, and nettle, and oils- so far only wild leek, and tinctures-when I make them. I have been collecting wine bottles, juice bottles, jars, etc to make the mother tinctures and oils, etc. but I have only used little pieces of paper precariously resting on the lids. And I bought a spray bottle to water the plant babies (except tomatoes who hate having their leaves wet from anything other than rain. Tomatoes, by the way, which I cannot stop planting- we added two more varieties last weekend; German Stripe, which are green, and ones that we forgot what they were and only wrote "Tomatoes, red?" on the label (to which a friend said, when we told her, "that's like bananas, yellow")). Oh, and they were having a farmer's market outside of the mall and I bought two small dill plants and a roast chicken.

After shopping, I took the subway one stop from home and then got out and walked through a field full of trees, nettle, wildflowers, grasses, along the Urselbach- our little brook that runs through the town. I sat in the field, looking up flowers, and after identifying  herbs like Weisse Traubennessel, and Grosse Klette/Burdock, I walked home to practice Tai Chi.

On the food front, I am now working on the idea of an alkalizing diet/elimination diet, neither of which the foodie part of me wants to do, but which I think the Rosacea on my face is not so subtly telling me I need to. Rosacea is an hereditary skin disease with no known "cause" that can be mild to severe and is characterized by small veins appearing close to the surface of the face, pimples and/or pustules, and skin the texture of, oh, fine to middle grain sandpaper. I always thought I just had pimples that never went away, but apparently, I have Rosacea, which is, according to some, like a red warning light for the pancreas and liver. An alkaline diet can help both care for the internal organs as well as heal the skin. Apparently chocolate, sugar, red wine, cheeses, and certain fruits make Rosacea flare up. Then there is the Rosacea Diet, which is even more severe than the Atkins Diet- no sugar, no carbs,etc. based on the concept that sugar is the cause of Rosacea flare ups (Pancreas).Then, there is the concept of the Elimination Diet to determine food allergies, which can also cause flare ups, in which a person eats almost nothing for a month,  or at least none of the known allergens- wheat, gluten, fish, peanuts, soy, citrus fruits, strawberries, dairy products, sugar, honey, black tea, alcohol, etc. and then reintroducing things one at a time, three times a day for three days before moving on to the next food. Brutal, but possibly what I need to undertake. We'll see. But it only seems to be getting worse, my skin, especially eating the diet of bread, cheese, sausage, wine, and beer that I have been.

But don't get too worried, I'm still interested in eating well and deliciously and don't plan on being boring. So, tonight, when I came home, I ate corn tortillas (huge carbon footprint, they are flown over from mexico!) filled with roasted chicken, a salad of fennel, carrot, rucola, endive, and red lettuce, and sheep quark with wild leeks cut up in it. yum. Oh, and a glass of white wine.

fairy presents and a recipe

I got the most beautiful sweet fairy package in the mail from Susun Weed (and staff) with stickers on the outside that say "make tea not war" and little trillium stickers that say thank you! and Congratulations! on them. And I get to order books and cds as part of my course. I get to pick the cds and four of the books and then 4 books come with it. And I got the coursebook for the ABC of herbalism, which is structured as, of course, the abc's. And I received in the mail the herbal chart to hang on my wall from herbmentor.com that has common herbs, their actions, latin and family names, parts used and preparations best employed (poultice, tincture, tea, salve, etc). And we went this morning and harvested fresh nettles! I brought a basket I wove as an offering and we sang them a song as we harvested them. We'll eat them tonight on pizza- i am going to make a sourdough rye crust to rise while i work today. And then I want to make the nettle beer. But I don't think we have enough for that, I read on one of the recipes that we need 10 pounds! (here are some links to recipes for nettle beer- celtic recipes, selfsufficientish, the green chronicle ) So, Friday when we go back to Grosskrotzenburg I'll harvest more of them and dandelion leaves and or flowers. It was so beautiful to be in the forest, I have to find where I can get to some around here on foot, or at least not too far away on the train. I think these two plants, Nettle (Urtica Dioica) and Dandelion (Taraxacum Officianale)- through wild crafting leaves, flowers, seeds or roots, making medicines, wine, beer, yarn from the fibers, drying, cooking, etc. will keep me busy for the year. The other plants I want to study I will purchase and then I can add another plant or two next year to my wildcrafting repertoire. We start the ABC course with Aloe, so I need to find an aloe plant to buy.

And here is what I made for lunch today, it's a keeper:

Apple Endive salad

Slice the following thinly
3 endive (in german they are chicoree, which we call endive, the little, smooth, slightly fuzzy white/yellow heads of expensive salad green)
3 small potatoes, cooked
1 apple

leaves of green salad,torn into bite size pieces
100g of old gouda, grated
dressing: salt, pepper, smoked salt, olive oil, lemon juice, tarragon vinegar

Toss it all together and eat. serves two. Unfortunately again we ate it too fast to take a picture. I usually remeber only at about the last mouth full.

I'll try to remember to take a picture of the nettle pizza tonight before we eat it!

Sharing Recipes and Seeds

I planted more tomatoes today- Japanese Truffle and Black and Red Zebra. We got the seeds at the garden fair at the botanical garden in frankfurt. And I also planted biodynamic grown sugar pea seeds in pots, because our whole garden needs to be in pots this year. Window boxes and pots outside in the courtyard. I am looking forward to figuring out how to grow peas around a window, or squashes, for example, hanging in net bags around our window...i'll need to dig out my permaculture books and look at the suggestions for planting lots of things in very little space. Vertical potato beds in barrels and so forth. Oh, and the other tomatoes I started are up and growing their first two true leaves and the chile negro has finally sprouted! The jalapeno and grapes are still keeping their heads buried, but I have confidence that something will happen.

It has been so warm here recently, although I am enjoying the sun (SUN!!!) immensely, I am also more than a little worried that it is so warm so soon and that the apple trees and other fruit trees might begin their blooming way before the last frost, thereby risking the fruit crop this year. But that doesn't mean I didn't pack or first picnic today and meet nic after work to eat egg salad on light rye sourdough with herb de provence mustard and a spinach salad. I did, and we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly, laying the in the sunshine afterwards with our shoes and socks off, wiggling our toes in their new found freedom. The air always feels so luscious on my toes when they get to be in it again outside after the winter.

I have been experimenting with flan making lately, which I think I now have down. It only took 10 tries, I think. Not only did I have to figure out the ingredients- goat milk maybe 2 cups, eggs three medium, sugar maybe 1/4 cup, cinnamon 1 tsp and vanilla, or chai spices steeped in the milk first. And of course the right process and order of steps, but I had to learn my whole oven, which still seems to be way way hotter than every other oven I have ever worked with. Although doing this all in another system of measure is of course difficult because it is hard to compare. But the recipe I had said that it should bake at a relatively high temperature, I think 325 F for 50 minutes! In my oven that means 150 centigrade for 25 minutes.  Anyway, the recipe, sort of: First, start the caramel on the stove (sugar and water) in the dish you want to make your flan in, turn on the oven with the big glass pyrex dish in it already and get the water boiling in the cooker. Then, in another pot, heat the milk on medium with the sugar, vanilla, and cinnamon in it (unless making chai spiced flan, then you actually have to do this step first so the spices have long enough to give their flavor. Next, beat the eggs in another bowl. When the water is boiled in the cooker and the milk is warm but not boiling over, pour the milk into the eggs while mixing continuously with a whisk. Pour the whole thing now into the warm caramel, very gently, so that you don't end up with a hole in the caramel. Place the flan into the pyrex dish and then pour the boiling water into the pyrex dish so that 2/3 of the flan pan is submerged (now you have made your bain marie). Now, wait and let it cook. But it should not be too hot, your oven or your flan will puff and turn cakey. It should also not bake too long because either it will turn cakey, or the top layer will become hard and rubbery.

But yesterday, or maybe the day before, I had some apples at hand that needed eating, actually, cooking. and i thought, oh my gosh, tarte tatin and flan all together in the same pan! So I made my pastry- two parts flour to 1 part butter, pinch or two of salt and cold water and put it in the fridge while I caramelized the apples in butter and sugar and then made the flan filling and got the oven and so forth ready as above. Then, i poured the flan over the apples, covered it with the pastry and baked it. I got all confused and forgot I could actually lay the dough into the pan and used a pie tin instead so it would all be the same level, which did not fit quite right into the bigger pan i tried to use rather than my pyrex, and so the water did not even touch the pie plate, and i had no idea how long to bake it given the crust. But still, it was AMAZING! and of course, I have to make it again. No picture, sorry, we ate it too fast. but when I get it really right, then I'll have to take one and post it.

Which reminds me, my boss at the restaurant said that we don't give out recipes, because if the customer thinks that it tasted good, we want them to come back and eat it here, with us. no matter if they were here from really far away for a seminar and won't be around again, if ever for me to make whatever it was I made that they liked. And I thought, how sad, I have always, always given out my recipes- heck, I just gave you all my flan and my tarte tatin/flan recipe- because the point is, let's all eat good food, we deserve to eat food that is delicious and that inspires us to be more alive and more in love. And, food should be eaten together and cooked together and for one another. And, recipes, even if you share them, never, ever taste the same when someone else makes them, even if they use the same recipe, because the hands, heart, soil, ingredients, and ovens of every person are so different. And Listening to Susun Weed about why she uses Simples, that is infusions of just one herb, as medicine, is that they are expressly NOT proprietary blends. They are easy to find, grow, or buy, and easy to duplicate, so that the power of healing oneself and one's family is in every one, not just in some doctor or specialist. The simple also allows us to notice what effect the herb is having and whether it is helping or not. It is a practice of, as Starhawk says, power with, not power over. I mean, when it really comes down to it, is one bowl of chick pea curry really going to make or break the bank? No, but sharing a recipe and giving a person the gift of the story of where that recipe comes from, and how they got it, and passing it on through making it, to others, and maybe sharing the recipe further on. That means something, carries truth and realness in it. It is a handmade thing that can be shared. Like seeds, growing them and giving them away, or trading them, or selling them, so that everyone can grow a fabulous delicious Japanese truffle tomato, if they can gather some earth and a container to grow them in. The whole GMO seed/monsanto/genetic ownership thing has now come to Germany, by the way, regarding where bees collect pollen and who owns the plants, and in the case of big business, who owns the seeds or the patent on the seeds that the bees visit. Can you imagine anything more stupid? But that is a whole other blog post.

Up next in the recipe adventure: Nettle Beer and Sourdough Rye Zwiebelkuchen. Recipes and stories to follow.

Herbal classes

So I have taken my first three weeks of botany class and learned about Kingdom, class, monocots and dicots, and how to begin to identify plants by the flowers- regular or irregular- looking at petal number, color, shape of the leaf, and how the veins run. I've made nettle infusions to drink every day. I've washed my hair with nettle infusion. I've dunked my nails in horsetail infusion every other day and warm olive oil between. I've bought kilograms of Nettle, Dandelion, Oatstraw, and Echinacea. I've collected dandelion leaves and made my first medicinal vinegar which, as Susun Weed says, has to be topped off the first few days because the fairies come along and try it. I've made egg shell vinegar for the calcium and watched the vinegar foam. I've had the beginnings of impatience and the beginnings of understanding. I have been reading my books and studying my first three herbs- Horsetail, Nettle, and Dandelion. Check out this website to see amazing paintings from 1885 of plants of Germany and Switzerland by Otto Wilhelm Thomee. The Nettle below is from his collection. I have learned some and forgotten some. I have had amazing soul dreams and have heard my body tell me exactly what it wants to eat or drink- for example, buckwheat, fresh orange juice, parsley, rye bread. And today I signed up for the ABC's of Herbalism with Susun Weed. They'll send me my books and then I can begin.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I am finally doing what I have been wanting to do since I was a child and been afraid to do. I am not really sure why I have been afraid, but I was. So I never really talked about it and never took seriously the idea of studying herbs, but now it seems all very normal and about time and I can go into the apothecary here and just buy an herb. Or int he spice shop. Or in the tea shop. Or in my little health food store that i work in. Please check out the Berglandkraueter folks. They have the most beautiful herbs. And they are not too far from here in north Hessen. Hooray!

My uncle, who is my benefactor for this course, has given me the chance to realize this life long yearning. It is quite a thing to be able to do something that one has been secretly longing for since one's childhood. I would play dress up with my friends and then part of whatever adventure we were on thereafter always involved someone becoming ill, or enchanted and needing a magic potion of some sort to be cured. We would gather things in the garden and then troop up to my mother's medicine cabinet in her bathroom and use all sorts of lotions to make it gooey and wet. For some reason, this was a very important part of it. And we always traveled to our magical land on the swing hanging from the maple tree in the back yard. One had to stand up on the swing, however, and go two at a time on it. When I was playing alone, then I made someone up to be with me.

So that is my update on herbal learning and medicine making.

What humans have done, or, how we got in this mess in the first place, or, why I try every day to feed the holy even if i am not very good at it

It is so awful, what has happened in Japan to the people and the land through the tragedy of the earthquake and tsunami. Millions of peoples lives completely torn apart. And I also have to say I see the stupidity of having 54 nuclear power plants on an island that is the only country in the world that has ever had atom bombs dropped on it and knows already what that is like. Folks here in Germany are protesting the government's decision to extend the life of the nuclear power plants here from 2012 to 2030. I am so grateful that people are trying to learn from what has happened in Japan to the "safest" nuclear power plants in the world.

This was written by a man named Martin Prechtel, who knows very well and very beautifully how to feed the holy, and who says it far better than I ever could, for all of us and what a blessing that is because while we forget every day, he practices remembering to feed, as he says, what feeds us. His inspiration is why I have named my blog "Feeding the Holy" and why I strive to live a life made by hand, or through my hands and heart, every day.

Please do not read the following as a "they deserved it" kind of reason. Open up into the bigger story of the human family and see the pattern of why things like this are happening right now, and traumatic catastrophes- earthquakes, tsunamis, etc.- seem to be happening more and more all over the world. We as a human family have to own what we have done to this earth through our ignorance and the life of comfort we all want. And we have to remember what and who gives us life.

"The Tzutujil never assumed the sun would shine again the following day or that they wouldn't disappear and another life form take their place. They did, however, know that if they were to continue on the Earth, the losses that they as humans caused to Nature and their own natures were voids that dangerously undermined the very matrix of the universe of which they were a part and which gave them life.

The villagers knew that what defined a person as a complete human was our ability to fill those hollow places with sacrifices equivalent to the chunks we pried from the surrounding nature to feed our children...

The sacrifice that made humans useful to the world were the sacrifices of offerings made with what only humans had, namely the products of their magnificent opposable thumbs and the songlike eloquence of their human speech, upon which the Gods who also magically made tangible life with their speech were fed and made drunk and ecstatic. The ecstasy of Nature and the Gods was the fertile tree-filled exuberance of the land.

The land was made to live when fed on the inebriating quality of human eloquence and the beauty of their creations when they were spent only on the Gods as deified nature of the life-giving universe.

This meant giving the best that humans could create to the Unseen powers behind the natural world that sustained us, which also meant leaving certain canyons unexplored, some mountains left unclimbed, certain buildings to decay, fat to burn away, handmade weavings to unravel, carvings to melt, flower arrangements to wilt, songs, dances, and esoteric understandings expressed in elevated language that floated off, none of which was to be given later to humans, but only to the universe, to be consumed as we consumed it. Otherwise, humans would end up as the sacrifices.

To the Tzutujil this was not a philosophical notion or an esoteric daydream, but a pragmatic and scientific fact: that if humans did not consciously create and sacrifice a percentage of the very best their human artifice could make in sincere, elegant, ritual fashion, then generous Nature already plundered, wounded, and in grief from our agricultural sucking, recreational raking and mining of her bones would be forced, in order to survive, to magically inspire such forgetful humans into inventing what might seem to them as some rational project, but which in the end would cause a quota of human suffering and death equivalent to what Nature routinely experiences at our hands.

The old Tzutujil knew that Nature would always come to collect for what humans refused to deliberately give and that was some kind of a blessing, for if the Earth were to continue to suckle us it had to stay alive.

Humans cause wars and revolutions, ethnic cleansings and epidemics by forgetting what gave them life. That forgetfulness caused the voids that forced Nature to invent weapons of mass destruction, pesticides, nuclear waste, and a myriad other things of which humans in their conceit thought they were in control.

The only things that humans had in their control were their abilities to bless and give gifts. All else was rape and war.

So when a war, an epidemic or mass depression rolled in on the village, the villagers knew that the Gods of deified Nature, Time, Sound, and Earth had been forced to engineer the conditions for another lottery of human sacrifice to close the gap caused by human conceit and amnesia somewhere in the world.

That's why the stories of remembrance like The Toe Bone and the Tooth were kept so special, because the stories were the memories of the people and it was the remembrance in the stories that kept people awake enough to remember to fill the voids long enough to keep the world alive and to remind them that they shouldn't take more than they could pay for.

Every child, old lady, ancient man, working and middle-aged man and woman knew that our human bodies were the Earth and that whatever happened on or in the surrounding Earth, good or bad, ended up being played out in our bones, blood, flesh, and feelings. When the Earth was blessed, we lived, flourished, and died and fed the next generation with our passing. When the Earth was riddled, mined, or warred upon, our bodies were made sick, our subtle understandings stunned, depression became a norm and spiritual amnesia a way of life."