Sunday, October 11, 2015

Olive

"O olive tree, blessed be the Earth that nourishes you
and blessed be the water you drink from the clouds
and thrice blessed he who sent you
for the poor man's lamp and the saint's candle-light."
~Folk song from Crete




I was taught, by a very brilliant man, that there are 2 ways in which we humans actually know something. By far the most common form of knowledge that we posses as a species he called "knowledge with a lowercase k". I know, (small k), so many things. I know that time is not linear.  I know that we as  humans are destroying the only home we have ever known. I know that we are all connected by cause and effect. That we have spent our entire existence making choices that have caused waves of sorrow and rage to come crashing down upon our own heads and the heads of everyone else, even those yet to be born. I know that we need to live in the moment. I know that we should treat everyone with kindness. I know that, in the end, we are all the same: Made up of the same star stuff; Constantly exchanging particles and ideas. I know that the world, as it exists right now - school shootings and mountain top removing - is but a mirror image of ourselves. Knowing something with a big K, however, is something else entirely. 

Most of the time, I live my life as if the Crystal writing this is the only form of myself that exists. I forget that the old women by the sea, the one with grandchildren and wrinkled hands is also the little pig-tailed girl burying her dad in the sand. I drive my car and consume my goods. I forget the next generation. I know that the innumerable hurts that have been bestowed upon me have turned inside out and been carried away on the wind. We are distracted, cruel and unaware, I know that you are me and I am you. 

If you can recognize them for who they are, teachers intersect your path. They hold up the mirror. They push you off course. They shake your foundation. They pick you up off your feet and fly you up above everything where, for but a brief moment, you can see it all. Knowledge. 

The olive tree has been one of my greatest teachers. 

It was the gift of wisdom from the goddess Athena to the mortals below. In times of war, couriers were sent with olive branches in their hand as a symbol of peace. On the 23rd of September, when the light and dark are in perfect symmetry, the Celts celebrate the olive as a symbol of balance. It's oil healed the sick and brought light into the darkness. And it was a dove carrying an olive branch that brought hope where it had been forgotten.

On the day that he was born, March 31st, I remember watching the blizzard rage on as I was wheeled into the operating room. I was a frightened 16 year old girl whose soul resembled a battlefield strewn about with the injured and dead. She had slapped me and called me a whore. You said that it wasn't a good time. She was a shell of the women you remember, the one who said that she loved the feeling of the waves pulling the sand from beneath her feet because it made her feel like she was weightless. The one who encouraged me to be creative and used markers to draw all over my arms and legs. I was also a shell. Becoming that way seems to be directly correlated with living in that house. I lost count of the saplings in the forest. I couldn't remember that feeling of weightlessness. And then he came into the world, all 6 pounds 7 ounces of him, and he brought the sun with him.