Listen to the Land
Samhain is the gateway to the darkest three months of the year, in the physical world and the world of spirit. Between now and Winter Solstice, we notice and feel the days shorten and the nights lengthen. If we follow the rhythm of the seasons, we hunker down, stay warm, spend more time indoors. If we have the space in our lives, we let down, rest and dream more.
This Samhain, it’s difficult or impossible to let down and rest here in the US. Our country faces a stark choice: will we continue to grow toward a just and equitable future as a multiracial, multicultural democracy? Or will we descend into the cruelest form of fascism the world has ever seen? Our Constitution expresses ideals of freedom and justice that were new in the 1700s and difficult to realize even today. In contrast, before the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified in 1865, it also supported the most inhumane form of slavery in human history. BIPOC communities continue to experience the most terrible impacts of our founding commitment to white supremacy; all of us are affected to some extent. The tension between these two impulses—toward freedom for all and toward white domination over all—vibrates through our human bodies and the body politic. Campaign events this past week showed glaring contrasts between the Democratic and Republican stances.
Last week, my wife Martha and I took a few days’ break from the work we’ve been doing to encourage people to vote in the November 5 election and to make sure every vote gets counted. We traveled to Smokiam in Eastern Washington (renamed Soap Lake by white settlers, its current official name). Its mineral-rich waters have been a healing site for Salish tribes in the Columbia Basin over millenia, and European immigrants and descendants have bathed and swum there since the early 1900s. As we drove across the wide-open shrub-steppe landscape, as we kayaked the blue, sunlit waters of Lake Lenore under dark, intricately patterned, columnar basalt cliffs, my heart warmed and my mood lifted. I felt attuned to and grateful for the elementals: sun, wind, stones, water. I prayed for healing: for my still-recovering shoulder, for dear friends who are ill and injured, and for our country.
In the serene, rugged expanse of the Channeled Scablands, the concept of fascism, with its verbal and physical violence, seemed shockingly out of place. Politically, both Soap Lake and Grant County are conservative. A large majority of the county’s citizens might vote for Donald Trump in this election, as they did in 2020. To me, the land tells a different story, a story as old as the basalt columns. A story about how humans, the elements, the earth, and all creatures might live in harmony. A story of love, beauty, and inclusion. That is the story my heart holds as we go into the last few days before the most important election of our lifetimes, possibly the most important one in the history of global democratic movements.
It feels as if the earth is shifting under our feet; around Mt. Adams, a usually quiet volcano in Washington State, a number of small earthquakes have happened in the last two months. Each of us needs to find sure footing to continue acting for justice and democracy. I encourage you to find a wild place you love and go there; if you don’t have time or freedom to travel physically now, go there in your mind. Listen to the spirits that inhabit that place. Ask them for guidance and support. And of course, on Samhain, the time when the veil is thin between the physical world and the world of spirit, draw strength from your ancestors. They know about authoritarianism and freedom. They know how to hold you and all of us in this tumultuous time.