The seasons slip past unannounced and in this age of climate change, weather patterns appear to be shuffled like a sloppy deck of cards.  Without being the weatherman, I can venture this prediction: As humans we’re influenced and susceptible to which way the wind blows.  And with climate shifts taking place around the planet, people are beginning to pay closer attention to what else is being stirred in our atmosphere?  I predict we’re coming again to the time of “elders and oldsters,” and a renewed beginning for the telling of stories.  

The really good stories are held by elders.  On the other hand, oldsters have lots of stories they always seem to want to share.  What’s the difference?  Oldsters are adding up numbers of years.  Elders are elders at any age.  Oldsters appear to know who they are, whether they are fifty years or older.  Their endless stories make them known to us.  An elder isn’t predetermined by number of days. They come into their eldership at their own pace, and sometimes it makes for confusing the two.  It does require paying close attention to how we learn to listen.  And especially how we begin to tell the story we tell ourselves.  Climate change doesn’t have to provoke crisis.  Learning to listen gives us the opportunity to discern new ideas.  Everyone has ideas.  It’s in how they are shared that makes for their value.

Coming into the last seasons of their lives, aged men and women will themselves to shuffle outside in the early hours. They are the sum total of all the stories they’ve heard and all they’ve experienced.  They choose to release these into the hands of whoever it may be that will receive this blessing. “Those who listen and learn, carry life for all the People.”

In today’s space travel and exploration, people claim ownership by virtue of their domineering intellect.  “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” This bold statement is an example of an unclear thought because the People haven’t been included in the sharing of ideas.  Now the results are polluting the once clear skies with dangerous junk and debris.  Is this progress? I once saw a U.S. Government sign in front of a Navajo Indian Boarding School, which proclaimed: Tradition, is the enemy of progress. The Dine People were the very ones who could have been consulted because of their vast oral treasure of the night sky.  Maybe they still have stories to share? 

Stories within tribal oral cultures come from a living word.  Stories are life, when there is someone who listens.  The living word is the beginning of relationship to each other and to all creation.  This is why we tribal people hold our songs and stories dear to us. This is why we care for our elders. The stories and songs they hold, tell us who we are and what we believe.  They provide direction for our faith.  The stories and songs are simple because they teach so much.  Our life as a people is simple because we know so much.  Great reverence for our Creator has given us knowledge. Knowing is a great responsibility and requires developed patience to become wisdom.

Growing up at Gwi-sh’tee, my mother’s village of Paguate on the Laguna Pueblo Rez, I have many fond memories of my Nun-nah and Ba-bah, my Grampa and Gramma.

My Nun-nah, wasn’t an old, wise Indian.  Sorry Grampa, it’s the truth.  He was really a wise, young Indian!  Always jovial and filled with tenacious love for life.  What astounds me most when I think of him is that I’m now in this life numbers of years longer than he experienced.  In our state’s largest city of Albuquerque, Grampa died when a bus hit him as he stepped off a curb.  Who would have ever thought, that man who teased and joked with me, comparing our looks, agility and sense of living accomplishment, could be gone so quickly?  How is it that his spirit fills me with such richness for me having had the opportunities to live with him and gramma?   

As an oral tribal man, Nun-nah must be looked at as one of the last of his kind on my mother’s side of my familial lineage.  This makes for another example of orality.  He wasn’t my mother’s father. He was the husband of my mother’s eldest sister and one of their daughter’s became my Godmother, when as an infant, I was baptized in our Catholic church.  That act made him “grampa” to me. Although my Godmother was really a cousin by blood, she was as a mother to me as I grew up, and I always considered her mother and therefore her parents were my grandparents. The influence is profound, even to this day.

My Grampa was one of the first of his kind.  He could read.  Yeah, a Rez generation that learned to read and he was one who liked reading.  He read almost anything in print that he came across.  At sheep camp, knowing how to read helped him in his sheep raising business.  He had a little pocket notebook where he’d enter important information related to his work.  It wasn’t until years later that I was again surprised when I remembered how masterful his ability to do math was in our spoken language. He was quick, computer-like and beautiful to listen to as he orally computed addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.  Oh, if I could have paid closer attention!  Maybe Eienstien and I would have had more in common than just our love for the Universe!

My favorite remembrance of his reading, was his penchant for comic books!  His favorite was Roy Rogers and especially Roy’s horse, Trigger.  I believe Nun-nah, fancied himself the Indian version of Roy.  After all, he also rode a horse, could rope with the best of them and although couldn’t play a guitar, he had a voice when he played my little pueblo drum and sang his own Indian songs for me.  He liked to say, “I even have my own Dale Evans!” As I grinned from ear to ear, as he’d motion toward my Ba-bah and she’d giggle and respond, “You’re old grampa, he’s no cowboy!  He’s just all Indian!” And we’d all laugh.

One time, after I hadn’t been with them for a while, I learned from their son, my cousin, that my Nun-nah’s dream had come true.  When I asked him which dream?  He told me, my grampa went to town to meet Roy and Trigger.  “What?” was all I could say!  “Yeah, he went to the Rodeo.  He walked right into the ring where Roy Rogers was riding around.  He walked right up to him just like they were old friends. You know?  Like they were pardners!  Patted Trigger and everything. Even got his autograph on one of his comic books!”  My cousin and I just grinned at each other.  That was just like my Nun-nah. He was in his own comic book story!  A month or two later, he bought a Palomino horse, that fit him.  When that little Indian rode that beautiful golden horse, he was a smaller version of Roy and Trigger. 

After the days of his passing and his funeral, I came upon his old weather-worn, leather bat-wing chaps, hanging from a rafter nail in the little stone and mud storage space at gramma’s village house.  I asked my Godmother, if I could have them.  She said, “Sure",  then added smiling, “What are you trying to do, look like Roy Rogers!”

In the measured order of Earth and the delicate balance of all life, the Juniper tree is considered an Elder within the realm of trees, shrubs and other branching plants.  Juniper is understood to hold a “leadership” role, like a Chief among the trees. 

Juniper and Piñon live in relationship to each other and act as nurse trees for one another’s seedlings growing beneath their mature trees.  

Be a man.  Be a woman.  Be brave. These simple words are a constant admonishment among and within the tribal heritage I come from.  

It’s a bright clear summer morning, no haze, sun already hot and pumping the solar well.  Water flows to thirsty plants.  “Be a man.” I hear the words and I remember.  Be a man. Be brave. Even in this drought, a big rain will come.  The aquifer will refill.  This is why water catchment on the land is important, always building and making diversions and ways to slow runoff when there appears to be no water.  It will come, a flood of water.  

Here, on the “listening ground,” I can easily hear the simple words coming to me.  They help me remember, right here where I am, this is the listening ground, this being that I am.  It’s a real place, an inward space that has outward influence, for good or bad. It’s a place on the earth.  Not the center of the earth necessarily, just a particular spot.  A place you find yourself in the moment and in that place you can now feel deeply.  You are humbled to know the feeling of this place and you are filled with thanksgiving.  Gratitude for being the being you find in that very place, on that spot. 

Be a man, a woman, be brave. This isn’t just a woeful plea or a superstitious utterance.  It’s a verbal connection to what I call: Tribal American Orality. This orality is carried and spoken through stories.  Everyone is a teller of stories and storytellers evolve and become consecrated individuals and then through learning to listen, they are the story-listeners. 

At first tribal people appear closely knit because they’re tribal family; kinsmen.  Over time one can discover, it’s more than blood that weaves them together.  Sometimes it shows up as the appearance of being quiet or just not having anything to say.  Or it could look like simple reluctance to divulge what they seem to know. These are all clues for learning to slow down, quit making assumptions and asking so many questions.  Right there is the first question.  “How will I learn anything, if I don’t ask?” 

Impossible?  Listen closely to the stories, they connect to all time past, present, and future.  They help us see and become our magnificence.  Be brave, be a man.  Alive in stories is the spoken word as it is experienced over and over, again and again.  Stories are alive when the living being makes a link to all that has ever been through their ability to collect all the stories they have been given through all the lives of humans to whom they have paid attention and taken in all that living words can give.  Stories aren’t collections of information like some huge library. They are alive and collected over time within the hearts of anyone who has a moment to share them.  The story-listener is drawn to stories much like honeybees are drawn to pollen.  They are both alive to discover a vibrant, rich source that nourishes and sustains them in a natural balance and all harmonious action.  Their lives thrive in their activity. 

My activity, because, “I’m the man who walked away from the Rez,” is finding my way home.  Finding home isn’t hard.  Home is who I carry within.  Difficulties arise when I appear drunk in my spirit, with exuberant enthusiasm at being part of something so divinely ordered and then self-appointed authorities stop me and question my citizenship, my identity and my credentials.

The simplicity of being God’s child on earth can be easily overlooked and dismissed by people living a fast paced techno-electronic directed existence.  What’s hard to comprehend is simple walking on the land.  Walking across and over land without a predetermined destination in mind. How hard is that?  Very hard, for the major world populations influenced by the attractive projected appearance of western society enjoying and partaking in all the delights being offered.  Giving expression to the dilemma of a crumbling social order in America, is really what the “walk-on-earth” is about.  Not much changes for the humans still able to listen and who follow the prompting of their want to be human.