Remember the Declaration of Interdependence?

The first half of the year is almost gone. Tomorrow we begin the second half of 2022. Speaking for myself, I can but hope the second half of this year has fewer, but more pleasant, surprises than we’ve enjoyed in the first six months. But, I’m not counting on it.

I can’t bring myself to simply walk away from the trials, tribulations and turmoil that’s going on. That would feel like painting the deck chairs on the Titanic before we rearranged them. Neither can I find a satisfactory avenue of response. The Democrats seem to be entirely too ineffectual to put much hope in. The environmental organizations I support have yet to put together a common front or umbrella organization. Once, about thirty years ago, there was an Earth Summit that incorporated parts of the Declaration of Interdependence into an Earth Charter.

Years ago, I participated as a member of the Minnesota Design Team in a visit to a community in southeast Minnesota. One of the more useful concepts I picked up during that process was the idea of aligned vision.

Minnesota Design Team “Directions"

These days I know the Democrats could stand to create a unified direction rather than an imposed one. In fact, I believe the entire country needs a unified direction instead of the No Direction condition we’re in. From what I read, the United Nations is trying to help create a unified direction for most of the countries on Earth. That’s one of the reasons we have the Sustainable Development Goals. One or two countries alone are not going to be able to address climate breakdown or loss of biodiversity or exceeding the capacity of several of Earth’s systems.

The planet Earth will continue without US earthlings. The converse is far from true. Is it too embarrassing to admit that and act on it? Are our world leaders engaged in a huge game of chicken?

A Map to the Next World

By Joy Harjo

for Desiray Kierra Chee

In the last days of the fourth world I wished to make a map for

those who would climb through the hole in the sky.

My only tools were the desires of humans as they emerged

from the killing fields, from the bedrooms and the kitchens.

For the soul is a wanderer with many hands and feet.

The map must be of sand and can’t be read by ordinary light. It

must carry fire to the next tribal town, for renewal of spirit.

In the legend are instructions on the language of the land, how it

was we forgot to acknowledge the gift, as if we were not in it or of it.

Take note of the proliferation of supermarkets and malls, the

altars of money. They best describe the detour from grace.

Keep track of the errors of our forgetfulness; the fog steals our

children while we sleep.

Flowers of rage spring up in the depression. Monsters are born

there of nuclear anger.

Trees of ashes wave good-bye to good-bye and the map appears to

disappear.

We no longer know the names of the birds here, how to speak to

them by their personal names.

Once we knew everything in this lush promise.

What I am telling you is real and is printed in a warning on the

map. Our forgetfulness stalks us, walks the earth behind us, leav-

ing a trail of paper diapers, needles, and wasted blood.

An imperfect map will have to do, little one.

The place of entry is the sea of your mother’s blood, your father’s

small death as he longs to know himself in another.

There is no exit.

The map can be interpreted through the wall of the intestine—a

spiral on the road of knowledge.

You will travel through the membrane of death, smell cooking

from the encampment where our relatives make a feast of fresh

deer meat and corn soup, in the Milky Way.

They have never left us; we abandoned them for science.

And when you take your next breath as we enter the fifth world

there will be no X, no guidebook with words you can carry.

You will have to navigate by your mother’s voice, renew the song

she is singing.

Fresh courage glimmers from planets.

And lights the map printed with the blood of history, a map you

will have to know by your intention, by the language of suns.

When you emerge note the tracks of the monster slayers where they

entered the cities of artificial light and killed what was killing us.

You will see red cliffs. They are the heart, contain the ladder.

A white deer will greet you when the last human climbs from the

destruction.

Remember the hole of shame marking the act of abandoning our

tribal grounds.

We were never perfect.

Yet, the journey we make together is perfect on this earth who was

once a star and made the same mistakes as humans.

We might make them again, she said.

Crucial to finding the way is this: there is no beginning or end.

You must make your own map.

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