Story Info
Story Info
Jay Stearns
Sharpsburg, Maryland, USA
2012
Type of Wounded Place
Story & Experience
Grave markers on the Antietam Battlefield and at Gettysburg tell of the brevity of life…soldiers often dead at 18, 19 20 years of age. Lives snuffed out…ended, and left with the unspoken request to Earth, “Here—you take all this mess, this remnant of life and testimony to destruction. Take it. Hide it. Do what you can with it. They are no more!”
Dead and named on a gravestone is tragedy enough. In addition, there are rows upon rows of small gravestones at Antietam which hold only a number. These stones tell of “remains” that rest below. These stones bear no name. These soldiers are just a number.
“What can I say?” I ask. “What can I do?” All I hear is silence; her only response is, “Nothing. Nothing. There is nothing you can do. It has been done.”
Then a memory comes to me…memory of a remarkable statement I had once heard about forgiveness: “Forgiveness requires that I give up all hope that the past will ever be different.”
Wow! The capacity for whatever doing I may hold within, that doing is not about rewriting this history. Is my work more about forgiveness? This is all quite confusing. You know what came to me in the midst of this inner conversation? A medicine wheel. A Medicine Wheel. Huh? Where do I go with that?
Well, part of the preparation for my first Vision Quest in northern Ontario was to spend a whole day learning and working with the medicine wheel… the four directions, the earth, the Beyond. So beginning to trust what I do not understand, I have been giving shape to a medicine wheel on our Maryland Eastern Shore property. That is becoming a story in itself. The discovery and then the placement of rocks. Conversation with Earth through her weeds, as they persist in laying claim to the same ground “I am making sacred”…as if it were not already so, including the weeds. After all, they were there long before I was!
Nights spent gazing upon the North Star and determining the placement of North on the Wheel; then following its leadership to the other directions. It is still very much a work in progress. And even more, it is a work in Mystery. The only real awareness I have is that I am hearing a call from Earth Herself. “Come. Be here with me. Join me in conversation. Speak out loud with me. Listen as I speak in my ways with you.”
Grave markers on the Antietam Battlefield and at Gettysburg tell of the brevity of life…soldiers often dead at 18, 19 20 years of age. Lives snuffed out…ended, and left with the unspoken request to Earth, “Here—you take all this mess, this remnant of life and testimony to destruction. Take it. Hide it. Do what you can with it. They are no more!”
Dead and named on a gravestone is tragedy enough. In addition, there are rows upon rows of small gravestones at Antietam which hold only a number. These stones tell of “remains” that rest below. These stones bear no name. These soldiers are just a number.
“What can I say?” I ask. “What can I do?” All I hear is silence; her only response is, “Nothing. Nothing. There is nothing you can do. It has been done.”
Then a memory comes to me…memory of a remarkable statement I had once heard about forgiveness: “Forgiveness requires that I give up all hope that the past will ever be different.”
Wow! The capacity for whatever doing I may hold within, that doing is not about rewriting this history. Is my work more about forgiveness? This is all quite confusing. You know what came to me in the midst of this inner conversation? A medicine wheel. A Medicine Wheel. Huh? Where do I go with that?
Well, part of the preparation for my first Vision Quest in northern Ontario was to spend a whole day learning and working with the medicine wheel… the four directions, the earth, the Beyond. So beginning to trust what I do not understand, I have been giving shape to a medicine wheel on our Maryland Eastern Shore property. That is becoming a story in itself. The discovery and then the placement of rocks. Conversation with Earth through her weeds, as they persist in laying claim to the same ground “I am making sacred”…as if it were not already so, including the weeds. After all, they were there long before I was!
Nights spent gazing upon the North Star and determining the placement of North on the Wheel; then following its leadership to the other directions. It is still very much a work in progress. And even more, it is a work in Mystery. The only real awareness I have is that I am hearing a call from Earth Herself. “Come. Be here with me. Join me in conversation. Speak out loud with me. Listen as I speak in my ways with you.”
Sharpsburg, Maryland, USA
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