Bead by Bead: Exploring Time

Bead by bead, linked together with thread, the picture emerges.  It is my exploration of cyclical time.   It feels like a kind of map to me.

After reading, Jagged Worldviews Colliding by Leroy Little Bear, I learned that the Eurocentric idea of linear time which goes from point A to point B, “manifests itself in terms of a social organization that is hierarchical in terms of both structure and power. Socially it manifests itself in terms of bigger, higher, newer or faster being preferred over smaller, older, lower or slower.” 

Little Bear contrasts this with the Indigenous worldview in which everything is in constant motion and one has to look at the whole to see patterns.  For example, the cyclical nature of the seasons is an example of a cyclical sense of time.  “Constant motion, as manifested in cyclical or repetitive patterns, emphasizes process as opposed to product. It results in a concept of time that is dynamic but without motion.”

In an experiment with myself in decolonization, I tried to imagine being in cyclical time.  I got the idea of a tree divided into four quadrants to match the four seasons.  I sketched it on a piece of note paper and then started to bead the tree onto a piece of felt.  In the quadrant representing the east I beaded bright green spring foliage onto the tree.  In the south, I beaded rich green foliage of summer, in the west, the oranges, yellows and reds of an autumn maple tree.  And in the north, the bare branches covered in ice.  A red heart emerged in my mind in the trunk and a raven sitting in its branches. 

While I was beading the winter quadrant and it was wintery outside, I felt comforted by the fact that the spring quadrant was so close by.  Often in wintertime where I live, it feels as though winter will last forever.  Within the idea of linear time, it seems to stretch endlessly back into the past and well into the future.  But in my cyclical time map, winter was in proportion, so to speak.  All the seasons were available to me when I viewed them from within the circle.

I beaded the roots with various shades of purple like the roots of a cedar tree.  And within the roots appeared the white bones of the ancestors cradled within the earth.  New life and death were both present.  Then the sun and moon emerged in the sky showing the cycle of day and night.  These regular, cyclical events felt comforting as opposed to the fear of a linear view in which usually, only human events are time-lined.

As I picked up one bead at a time with my needle, I imagined working with individuals, atoms, pixels, one at a time.  Together, they created the whole picture.  Each one was important, playing its part in the whole.  All were important but none more so than the others.

With almost no training in beading, I place them as though I am painting.  With little planning, I move around the piece, beading various areas as they attract my attention.  My designs get me into beading dilemmas but I stretch the constraints of the medium.  I love the vibrant colours and how they work beside one another.  Some colours bring out the best in other colours but are totally uncomplimentary to others, just like people.  The thread represents the relationships between all the beads.  Each bead is beside other beads. The contrast is what makes things pop and diversity is what creates the beauty of the piece. 

In cyclical time, everything is about relationship.  We create relationships, we strengthen them by repetition, by remembering or we weaken them through neglect.  Spending time, contacting, honouring our relationships with other people, with the seasons, the land, the water, the air, fire, trees, animals or birds strengthens these relationships. 

Our time is marked by our relationships, like thread connecting one bead to another.  When it is broken down like that, it just seems so do-able, so possible.  I hug my partner, I kiss my children, I thank the water, I feed the birds, I listen to the trees, I write to my elected official, I sing to my friends, I receive my food as a gift, love as a gift, the rain as a gift.  There is nowhere to get to, there is no progress to strive for, there is no endless growth to stretch and suffer for.  The past and future are all available to inform the present where I understand my connection to everything else.  I think about how we got to this moment and what needs to be created for future generations. 

I know that I am only scratching the surface of this worldview as I experiment with it. Perhaps this is decolonizing my thinking.  Perhaps this is indigenizing my worldview. I don’t know for sure, but already it feels more sustainable for my well being and for the world. 

Leroy Little Bear (2000) Jagged Worldviews Colliding from Indigenous Voice and Vision by Marie Battiste. University of British  Columbia.

We Remember, We Rise Together

"Water is life.  Our Mother is the Earth.  We remember, we rise together."

We sang these words together this weekend at a fundraiser house concert.  My partner and I with some friends created an afternoon to celebrate our connection with water.  Our songs and poems create a river of images, memories, rhythms and magic.  We wanted our guests to travel with us from snowfields, to creeks, rivers, lakes, oceans, rain, aquifers and tears.

We were reminded that we are two thirds water ourselves and that water travels through us in serpentine patterns.  We learned that water has the chemical ability to hold memory.

photo: Jan McFarland

The day before the concert, my partner and I joined people in Midland who were drumming for water.  The work of Dr. Emoto, a Japanese researcher shows that water can change when people send clear intentions for it.  One woman told us that someone had sent some of the local spring water to Capetown, South Africa which is in dire need of rain.  Just after the Alliston Aquifer water reached Capetown, it started to rain.  Another woman related that she and others drummed every other week for two years when they heard that a dump was planned over an important aquifer.  Local people fought for years to end Dump Site 41 and eventually were successful.  The local people joined with Beausoleil First Nation waterwalkers to protect the water. 

Now they are faced with another threat to the same Alliston aquifer.  A quarry has been sold to a new aggregate company that plans to remove much of the hill that filters the rainwater to provide crystal clear drinking water to so many people.  Once again, the people are organizing to protect their water.  The provincial government has already given out permits to pump billions of litres of water to wash asphalt and gravel and for the removal of much of French’s hill.  The government seems to only see the land as a resource to be exploited.  The aggregate company is registered in Ireland which seems to mean that it has no accountability.

The local people are the ones who could lose their drinking water.  The members of the Beausoleil First Nation used to be the ones who lived on this land.  They were removed by the federal government onto smaller and smaller pieces of land through treaties that were never honoured.  The First Nation is still fighting to have the government honour their side of the treaty.  And yet, the members of the First Nation who only got potable water themselves a few years ago are willing to stand with the people who now live on their traditional territory.  They are willing to stand for the water, for the earth because that is what they do.

These fights cost money.  Corporations have deep pockets and hope to wear people down.  But the people who live in this area know the value of the water.  You can’t run a dairy farm with polluted water.  You can’t raise children on polluted water.  You can’t water your garden if the water has been drained by an aggregate company.

photo: Jan McFarland

In Canada, we are blessed with so much fresh water that we tend to take it for granted.  It is seen as a free resource to be used for profit making, to be used to keep the economy growing.  However, more and more people are starting to see that an economy that is continually growing is never satiated.  It gobbles up more and more of the land.  It demands things like pipelines with their risky cargo to threaten the health of the land and the sea.  Those who can get rich from these industries like the Alberta oilfields pressure the people who could lose their waterways and tourism industries in British Columbia.

When I heard an elder from Beausoliel First Nation speak about his community losing access to their traditional land to the colonizers I felt this loss.  When I heard the voices of the people who now live on this land who are being threatened by a multi-national aggregate company who can destroy their drinking water, I felt this same loss.  The colonizers are now being colonized.  People who value the land and the water as life are being challenged by people who value the land and water as sources of money that will disappear from the community.

Who will protect our water?  Someone asked that at the meeting.  Everyone in the room stood up.  And so, my partner and I decided to have a fundraising house concert in a small town to help raise money for the fight.  But we focused on helping people remember their connections with water.  We protect what we value.

And together we sang, “Water is life.  Our Mother is the Earth.  We remember, we rise together.”

Shaking off the Snow

Snow, snow, snow. We just passed Groundhog Day, the half way point in our winter.  It has been a reasonable winter but I am also caring for my ninety-year-old father.  Two infections have led to a decline in his cognitive abilities and I am picking up more of his tasks.  He lives in a very nice retirement residence close to my home and my brother lives only minutes away.  He has enjoyed good health most of his life and is financially fine. It could be so much worse.  And yet some days I find myself weighed down by the added responsibilities, errands, advocating and problem solving.  Sometimes it only takes one more phone call from a staff member at the residence for me to bottom out.

On the weekends, my partner wisely insists that we ski in the forest.  He knows that is where life comes back to me.  Although my body feels worn out, I know he is right and off we go.  I know in my mind that the exercise will give me endorphins, the feel good chemicals we make that are in the same family as morphine.  I know in my mind that exercise will get more oxygen into my brain so I can think more clearly.  I know in my mind that exercise is good for my health.  And so my mind agrees.  Yes, let’s go skiing.

What I always forget (but my partner does not) is that when I get into the forest, I am surrounded by friends and wise teachers.  I greet the trees and I start to pay attention with another part of myself.  The snow has weighed the branches down and many now rest at my shoulder level.  I feel my burdened physical self resonate with the laden branches.  Still not able to let my own burden go, I raise my ski pole and pull a branch lower.  Then I release it and it springs up shaking off the powdery snow.  I repeat this over and over until I can feel the spring in my own body.  The trees are showing me how to shake off the burden so that I don’t snap like a dead branch under the weight.

And then I take a deep breath and with the exhale, I feel the heaviness slide off of me into the Earth.  And my body feels the spring of release.

Now I start to pay attention to the roots under my feet.  I think about the roots of dying trees and how new roots will take their place.  I reflect on the neural pathways that I am shutting down as my father ages.  The pathways in which he is bright and in charge of what he wants and how he will get it, have to be let go of.  Those neural pathways will wither away in my brain.  New pathways are being created in which I have to look out for his needs and help him get what he wants.  I picture these as tiny roots spreading through the forest floor. 

My father has gone from a man who doesn’t like to be touched, to a man who needs to have his nails cut, his hair cut, help with dressing and getting out of a car.  These are new pathways between us.  When you think about the brain, grieving is the letting go of familiar pathways and replacing them with new ones.  We let the old pathways go, one at a time which is why grieving takes so long.  We build new pathways one at a time which is why it takes some time for new things to feel familiar or normal.  The forest shows me this as I imagine the forest floor in its ever changing patterns.

And then the ski trail brings us back to the main building.  I have oxygen and endorphins in my brain, I have shed my emotional baggage and I have a new way of seeing this journey that I am taking with my father.  No drugs, no substances, no shopping, just the endless snow and the forest and my partner who cares for me.  They say the simplest solutions are the best.  Yup.  I agree.

Gift Economy Opens Hearts and Doors

This week I want to share with you two people’s visions of how our economy needs to change.  

Author and speaker, Charles Eisenstein says in this video that the money system has built into it debt and growth  But we are ending the limits of growth so the current money system works less and less well.

Eisenstein points out that we didn’t earn air, birth, the sun, or the Earth.  Therefore life is a gift.  And gifts generate gratitude. In a gift economy, if you have more than you need, you gift it to somebody else.  Gifts create communities.  Watch this video and see how he explains this shift in thinking.

I checked out Eisenstein's website and I found a podcast interview where he speaks with Nipun Mehta who founded Service Space in 1999 to help non-profit organizations with technical help.  Service Space has expanded over the years to provide an umbrella platform for everyday people who want to be of service.  On their website, they write, “ Above all, we believe in the inherent generosity of others and aim to ignite that spirit of service.  Through our small, collective acts, we hope to transform ourselves and our world.”

In the interview, Mehta defines “capital” as a form of wealth that creates more wealth.  He wants to broaden the idea of capital beyond that of money.  He feels we can create a lot of value with the resource of service because it is regenerative.  In other words, we are rewarded just by doing it.  And with that resource we have the capacity to relieve a lot of suffering.

Nipun Mehta is big on the idea of transformation.  He feels that the act of service changes the giver, thereby creating transformation.  The giver falls into a deeper interconnectedness which quietens the mind.  Therefore, acts of kindness don’t just change the world on the outside, but also on the inside. 

On his website, I found a TEDtalk where he describes Designing for Generosity.  He is a very animated and inspiring speaker who clearly walks his talk.  Check it out here:

 I will leave the closing words to the13^th century Persian poet Rumi:

“Spirit is so mixed with the visible world that

giver, gift and beneficiary are one thing.”