Mutual responsibilities

Many years ago I worked with a man who led a yearly gathering of people from all over North America. It typically attracted between 300 and 1 200 people. It was a traditional Native event meant to share knowledge and practices across what we would consider different fields (spiritual, cultural, health, arts) but to them it would all be just one, about becoming whole. Perhaps what eastern cultures refer to as Tao and Natives refer to as "Medicine".

The year I got involved with the organization of the event, I joined them a few weeks prior to help with preparations.

There were no planned speakers, no confirmations from the different elders who had come in the past, no registrations, no registration fees. The event unfolded in a field in the mountains without any services or infrastructure - no electricity, no running water, no bathrooms. People were expected to come equipped for wilderness camping, but we were to prepare the area in terms of basics: a communal kitchen, sweat lodges, Moon lodge, some access to water etc. As well, we had to prepare meeting areas for the talks and healing circles that would take place.

From my western world standpoint (which in this case seemed to predominate over my INFP approach), I immediately recognized that what was lacking was a flyer with all the relevant information (map, schedule, events, perhaps some explanations as to certain cultural ways) and promptly went to work on it. I was constantly frustrated by the lack of information that was available (how many copies should I make? Who will be speaking? When?) because there were no answers to the questions I had. It was the most ambiguous flyer I had ever made. At least the map was going to be helpful and some of the practices were spelled out - for example, one always travels around a circle clockwise - that would make it easier for newcomers and visitors to adjust to.

All the gathering/teaching spaces had been named and they were all listed on the map, something I was particularly proud of. It was a new contribution, vastly improving prior events.

When RedCloud, the convener, saw the flyer, the schedule, the map, he ripped out all the signs indicating the different gathering places and exchanged them - making the map obsolete. He was furious, but because of his loss of speech following a stroke, was not able to explain his anger. (Our ability to communicate with each other in spite of this would be another subject entirely).

It took a while before I got it, but when I did, it floored me: He wanted no schedules, no maps, no rules because that would cloud everyone's judgement in assessing where they should be and when. It his (Native) way, one remains open to the events, to signs, to omens, to synchronicities in order to hear that voice inside that says: here, now.

This was why there was no committment per se. One could not foresee - even though this event was a major event for most people across several Nations - whether or not one's personal responsibilities, resources, etc. would call us elsewhere. But there was trust that enough people would answer the call that would allow the event to take place meaningfully.

Our mutual responsibility was to be listening to that inner voice in order to show up where we were being called.

There was no menu planned, yet it was expected that the kitchen would feed everyone on the site two meals a day. That the elders would be taken care of for three meals a day. There were no fees, therefore no ressources, yet it was expected that everyone would contribute exactly what was needed for the event.

Over the twenty years that I attended this yearly event - and others of the same nature all over North America - the clash between the Native way and the western world was indescribable. Red Cloud (and others of his culture) trusted in an innate, subjective ability to know where you belonged, when. And it worked. There was always more food than we needed, a variety of very good healthy meals, people who showed up to cook them and wash dishes, elders who came from as far away as New Mexico, Alberta and the Northwest Territories - many with just enough money to put gas in the car for the way down, not back. They trusted the whole for what they needed to get back home. They trusted because they knew that their contributions were important enough and would be rewarded accordingly.

It was not a perfect way, there were many frustrations from the lack of planning that we all had to live with, Native and non-Native alike. But that ability to know grew with practice and the synchronicities multiplied (for us white folk - Natives already had this knowledge). The more we trusted this inner voice, the more we answered each others needs. We brought to the circle something that had popped up in the last year and lo and behold... someone had specifically come to the gathering just for such a thing.

This trust agility that we are seeking to understand, Roger and I, is related to this ability and others like it that has as a mainthrust the understanding of connectedness between all things, all beings. And the expectation that people respond to that experience of connectedness - when they have it.

It is one that I find quite indigeneous to my type, but that is seriously eroded by lack of mirrorring in the western culture I live in everyday. So I regularly put it aside because it is easier to just fold into the mainstream and do things according to a schedule.

How do you read this experience? How do you respond to it? I am curious....