I wrote the following when I
first read of President Correa’s decision to end the Yasuní-ITT Initiative and
to open up the Yasuní for oil exploration and drilling. In my upset I attempted to write
something of significance based on my experience visiting the area, however in
my attempt to write from a place of struggle and fight, I struggled and fought
to write it. The following is what came naturally, it became about the Mother…
Breathe in. Take a very deep
breath in through your nose until your lungs are completely full, and then
exhale until your lungs are completely empty. Envision this:
You are visiting the Yasuní
National Park in Ecuador, full of its life, greenery, smells, humidity. You are
on a boat heading up river. It doesn’t necessarily matter where you are going,
but you are there on the boat feeling the wind hit your face, the water from
the speed of the boat splashing your clothes, and you feel all at once a very
intimate reunion with the Earth.
It has been so long since you’ve been with her in her majesty such that
exists here in this moment and place.
You’ve experienced this before in your dreams but every time you were
reminded that it was just a dream.
Here, your reality is daunting.
This majesty literally brings you to your knees and stops your breath as
you are completely humbled by her beauty and total power over you. Though her power, you realize, is not
one of selfishness or greed – she seeks not to dominate you. For those who wish to truly see her
will experience the breath of life. This
breath she breathes into you rages past your lungs and falls deep down into the
seat of your soul where a distinct, long forgotten part of your biology awakens
to the knowing that you are not separate from her. That this is not something
to fear. You’ve wanted this,
dreamed of this, for so long, and here she offers your deepest desires to you.
You need only to open your heart in order to see. You do this. Un-suppressible tears fall down your face.
In all of her majesty you suddenly
feel a wave of guilt. “What have we done to you?” You ask yourself. Though she
seeks not to wrong you. She feels
only compassion as you too have been at the mercy of the same forces seeking
her captivity – Greed, Control, Domination – all children born of Fear. She knows they sought to conquer her
because they were confused by her powers, fearing their own powerlessness if
hers were made to roam free – making her human children blind. Driven by this fear, you have sought to
control all that is truly free, to predict the unpredictable, never seeing the
magic born of these mysteries. You
have tried, but to little avail, for she is alive and so contains the powers of
transformation, healing, and growth – and as her child, so do you. She seeks only to remind you of this
and to invite you back home.
At this she plants in your heart a
seed of hope and reminds you that she will never leave you. She cannot ever
leave you, for you are one in the same, bound up by the same chemistry.
We must find a new source of
power. One we know never dies. Allow the possibility of solution to ring louder than the problems at hand; the politics don't represent the humanity; Our sickness is the denial of our interconnectedness. We must allow our wild hearts to grow.
In
dedication to the Mother spirit of the Yasuní Rainforest and to her children
who live there.
