A God’s Nativity

You are a member of a small tribe of migrating humans who have recently found a place to call home. It is a large area that encompasses several different types of environment.

There is a mountain in the near distance that rises over the plains and draws weather systems to it.

There is a dense jungle, teeming with dangerous life and concealing a large, nourishing river.

The river flows to the sea. You know this because your tribe branched off from a seaside community and followed the river until it lead you to this place of abundance.

You sit at the community altar every night to remember those who died on the long journey.

The storms arise, often without warning, and they flood the plains, washing the unwary into the river or striking them down with thunderous, authoritative lightening. Tornadoes take animals, people and houses into the sky, never to be seen again.

  These new environmental variables are not only frightening, they are a threat to your tribe’s way of living because planting, harvesting and hunting cycles are all different from what you are used to on the coast. So to gain mastery of your new environment (and also your fear), your tribe has started to categorize the different qualities of each ecological influence, as well as their effects AND those other ecological influences that they interact with. But the only frame of reference that anyone really has (regardless of what time they live in) is their own experience, so those ecological relationships are spoken of as though they were human relationships.

For instance, you see that the storms are drawn to the mountain, so you say that the storm and the mountain are lovers. That the thunder is the sound of their lovemaking.

You see that the storms come and go and are always just a little bit different. So it is said in your tribe that the storm is a fickle lover who comes to the mountain when she pleases and that the violence of the storm is the violence of her passion.

So you look to see what fuels the passion of the storm and see that the storm comes to the mountain from across the jungle. You see the jungle releasing steam in the morning that forms the clouds that rain tomorrow. So you say that the storm is the daughter of the jungle.

The jungle, itself, is harsh and darkly silent until it erupts into sound and deadly fury, but in it’s heart lies the serene and nourishing river. And the mists that rise over the river join with the mist of the jungle trees. She is, to you, the mother river (daughter of the sea) that joins with the jungle father to give birth to a daughter. Their daughter is the spirit of the storms who marries the king of the mountain.

Over time your tribe comes to see that the ferocity of the storm’s passion, her fire, is fanned by the winds that blow up from the valley where you know the sea lies. Your source. The place that people are swept to when the storm washes them into the river. Source of life. Place of death.

The Mother of All.

These relationships and patterns of interaction create the setting for an ecological soap-opera. Stories that are told and retold through generations. Not just to fill the time, or to teach children fear (ahem, “respect”). But to fill the gaps of understanding and to teach the children, not only the patterns of the local ecosystem, but also the patterns of the local social life. The community altar holds representations of these natural forces and their current interactions are played out in miniature by the symbols representing them.

 

The tribe leader, the king, the one who guided everyone along the course of the river, everyone’s grandfather, has a monumental personality. His attitude is unchanging and he is ever present. Whatever is going on in the village, wherever you are or whatever you are doing, his face pops up over everyone’s shoulders as he gets interested in what’s going on. He is involved in EVERYTHING, even the things you thought he wouldn’t get involved in. He is always there, and the women are drawn to him. They make children together and life spreads out at his feet.

His personality is so like the personality of the mountain from the stories. When the tribe enacts the stories, he plays the mountain, and everyone knows why. His name is Pago. He is a child of the mountain.

Your best friend is the king’s own son. A sneaky little trouble maker. He never payed attention when the elders were speaking and would disappear for days at a time, before coming home with a satchel full of fresh-killed game. He cares little for the social intrigues of your peers, but can relate the intimacies of the local hyena tribe and their interactions with the vulture tribe. He is not a child of the domestic village. He is a child of the wild plains.

You love him because he goes beyond what is known and expected and acceptable, and he returns with things that are nourishing and enriching and broadens your horizons.

His name is Keenan.

While he is away, you go to the community altar to remember his parents and grandparents. To remember his relationship to the tribe and his place in it. To remember that the tribe would not be the tribe that it is without him. To hope for his safe return.

So it happens that on one of these many outings, he stays away. Your friend does not return to the tribe.

Everyone knows that he has been taken by the tiger or the lion or the crocodile or the storm or has perhaps chosen to stay in the wild, for he was a child of the plains to begin with.

But you continually return to the community altar to remember him. To think of his place in the tribe. To remind everyone of his importance.

And as his face fades from your memory, to remind yourself.

His family brings his things to the community circle to be burned or buried because he no longer needs them. Recognizing his most precious trinkets, you snatch them from their predestined doom. You return once again to the community altar, where you have continually returned to remember your friend Keenan. You knew him as a child of the plains.

You wish to remember him as such.

You place his beloved trinkets on the community altar in the area dedicated to the plains.

You sing the song that he loved.

You run to the kitchen and return with his favorite fruit.

You say the poem that spoke his soul.

You remember your friend. You continue to touch the space left from his passing. Your remember him on his birthday. When the ancestors that passed before are recalled, you call out his name. When people speak of the plains, you remind them of Keenan’s role as tribal ambassador to that realm.

His life is so important, so formative to your own, that your children see his importance. They recognize his value, not only to you and themselves by proxy, but they begin to see how his life influenced the tribe at large. Through the stories you tell of him, they come to see how intimately connected he was to the environment of the plains and how his own personality reflected the personality of life on the plains.

When they go hunting in the plains they yell out, “Guide my arrows”. Largely as a jest, but secretly just in case he’s still listening from the tall grass. Or maybe his breath is now the breeze across the plains.

Your great grandchildren will know him as such. The spirit of the plains that guides the honest hunter’s arrow. The spirit of the plains, who is named Keenan. The son of Pago the Mountain King.

This is how people become gods. This is how we know each other AND our history. This is how we fight the forgetting.