Bird Droppings Jun 2, 2011
Time do we need it?

I started yesterday with a crazy idea of comparing learning to barn building and as I continued my train of thought I recalled a couple of articles along the way in my readings.

“Small communities, with their distinctive character where life is stable and intensely human are disappearing. Some have vanished from the face of the earth; others are dying slowly, but have undergone change as they have come into contact with an expanding machine civilization. The merging of diverse peoples into a common mass has produced tension among members of the minorities and the majority alike.” Dr. John A. Hostetler, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Sociology at Temple University, from his book Amish Society

Dr. Hostetler is an Amishman turned college professor and in the opening paragraph of his book is addressing the Amish culture but equally this applies to vanishing cultures of indigenous people’s world wide as civilization encroaches. I am working on several projects as I get to my computer during my grand daughters naps at my computer. When she is a wake I waste no time on frivolous things such as writing and reading. We talk a six month old and a sixty two year old about all that has been and will be. Time as you get older is both precious and inconsequential.

“I still can’t see any reason to count all the sand on the beach – why bother? Or minutes, either. Could I possible add one more minute to my life by counting them?” Fernando Payaguaje, Secoya healer and holy man, translated from Secoya by Nathan Horowitz

As I go back to my question from yesterday from Alfie Kohn, what is a well educated person, I come to a man who in his life was the receptacle for thousands of years of Amazonian history and wisdom and yet neither read nor wrote a word in his life in any language. I was reading an article on Amazonian indigenous peoples when I found this quote. Payaguaje was the last of his kind, and sadly no one wanted to learn his secrets. When he was gone thousands of years of wisdom, from the jungle would be going away with him. Miguel Cabodevilla and Nathan Horawitz were attempting to glean at least pieces of his vast knowledge before he passed on. They recorded his visions of what was to be and of what was. While erudite in three languages Secoya, Quichua and Spanish, Payaguaje was illiterate in all three refusing to learn gringo writing and reading preferring the wisdom of the jungle and the father to son passing of wisdom he had learned from his father and grandfather.
He was once involved in a discussion of having someone tell him about time as if he needed to know about watches. He mentioned how his grandson had a fine watch and came to him telling him the time. The old man turned to his grandson and said I have no use, the jungle tells me when it is time. A bird called and he turned to his grandson and said one hour of your time and it will be dark that was the birds call before going to roost for the night. In exactly one hour all was quiet and darkness fell upon the camp. The grandson listened more intently from then on but still was engulfed by the modern world. I went out very early this morning around two thirty to take our dog out and all about me were sounds. Numerous whippoorwills were calling in the distance and bullfrogs croaking at a nearby pond a cacophony of sounds and yet all seemed in place and correct. Only the intermittent coyote howl seemed out of place. Only two hours later the morning was silent and it was almost as if none of that nightly orchestra had ever been played.
Going back to my barn building comparison and today’s look at an ancient medicine man that is near deaths door talking trying to salvage his wisdom with educated men, this is not about primitive versus modern it is about wisdom. It is about our history and who we really are. I have been involved with Foxfire teachings for nearly fifty years and an avid fan since my first book in 1972. I have helped teach courses at Piedmont College in the Foxfire Approach to teaching. How can we truly move on in life if we do not know where we came from and why? An aspect of Foxfire is going back in the community using pieces of and bits of whom and why we are. In eleven years now for me back in public education I have had not one student who can name a great grandfather. How sad is it that an illiterate man in the jungle can go back sixteen generations or more.
Before he passed on Parguaje knew sixteen generations of ancestors and he neither reads nor writes. This was crucial to him it is as crucial as eating or drinking knowing who we are. Time was of less import as where we want to count each second now and forget everyone in the past. I was watching the TV show Psyche, a rerun of an old show with my wife and several times a Ford ad came on where the father was dropped off after a weekend with his kids and he thanks his ex-wife for letting him go and we wonder why our children can not remember. Maybe they do not want too, it hurts to bad. As I look back at my thoughts yesterday is this why we are content to only teach and not be concerned with learning. Please keep all in harms way on your mind and in your heart.
namaste
bird