GRANDMOTHER PA’RIS’HA AND THE AMERICAN DREAM OF COMMUNITY

Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha. Where should I begin to tell about my wonderful, beloved mentor and friend, Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha and the American Dream? There is indeed, so much to tell!

First, the stage needs to be set so I will tell you about how I met Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha. I hope this story will jostle something in your soul and even sound a bit familiar.  

THE BIG QUESTIONS

Spirituality has been the central focus of my life, especially since my college days. After a dramatic experience in those early years in which my heart began to burn with love, (a whole important story in itself) — I was hooked on acquiring a metaphysical understanding of the phenomena called “LOVE”. I dove into philosophy, religion and psychology studies—and opened myself to learning about LOVE —not to finding a “good job”.  I figured that if I got the big questions answered, my life would just naturally fall correctly into place.

Also, of course, I wanted to “fall in love” but I will hold that for another time.

My soul, my spirit, my mind (however you want to say it) also hungered to understand the “meaning and purpose of life!” I was so curious! I asked myself the really BIG questions! I wanted to know if there was really life after death! What did the great sages and the world’s religious traditions — East and West — and their texts say about life after death? What did psychologists say about people who had “Near Death Experiences?  What were the world’s current spiritual leaders saying about the meaning of life?

I “majored” in the study of Religion and received my BA diploma from a prestigious Ivy League college. It had a small religion department, but at least it had one.

These were the good old “hippie” days when lots of people—both young and old— were asking similar questions.   Many were taking a good look around and saw that the “rat race” was not the American Dream it was made out to be.  The young especially looked at our parents to see if they were happy.  So many were not!!! Lo and behold they were mired in a nine to five regime and stuck in a lifetime of toil to pay their houses off and for their kid's college. What had become of the American Dream?  Our parents were on a treadmill. Where was the world headed? (Surely it has not changed very much since then….and may be worse?!)

 

I grew up in Pennsylvania and had an aunt who lived in the Pacific Northwest. While in my early 20’s she took me to see a “homestead” on the beautiful coast of British Columbia. A Californian art professor had retired early and gone “back to the land.” He had taken his wife and family to a tiny little inlet, built a log cabin and planted a garden. They grew vegetables and canned them. They fished. The kids played in the delicious clean waters of their private little bay and learned to do everything their parents were doing to “live off the land.” That was their home-school.  No public school for them! And you could play your guitar and read books at night by the light of the fire, cozy and warm. Maybe you could actually use an electric light jerry-rigged to a car battery for power.

This was a revelation to me! OH!  You can make your way through life living on a small plot of land out in nature? You can be surrounded by fresh air and sunshine while you are living and working side by side with your beloved family??? You can take your boat out on the waters and fish and smoke the fish as you prepare for the coming winter?

HOLY HOMESTEAD!

THAT was the life for me!

Does this, pray tell, sound like something a Native American might know a bit about?  How about a woman such as Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha who was raised by her own Cherokee Grandmother in the hills of southern Appalachia?  Might she be well versed in the ways of walking a Beauty Path on the earth? Indeed!

If they teach about the 1960’s and early 1970’s in history classes these days, (and I have my doubts) you may know these were a time when the Environmental movement, Civil Rights movement, Women’s Liberation, and other good causes were shaking the nation, along with WAR, of course; the Viet Nam War. We had a great anti-war movement, but not so great that it did not prevent our troops from coming home broken and traumatized. And then we young people grew up and went back, for the most part, to our parents’ old ways.  Get a Job.  Buy a House. Go into debt. Sound familiar? Only it’s not just the parents who are in debt now…their children’s lives are plagued by college debt, etc. now too. And unemployment.

And in the meantime… our jobs were sent to China and it does not look so good for the “American Dream” ...unless you creatively reshape that dream somewhat!

At the age of about 26, I DID “fall in love” and a major factor in cementing my relationship with my Beloved was our common love of the earth and Mother Nature.

I told my Beloved about my visit to the British Columbian homestead. He was sold, lock, stock and barrel!

We scrimped and saved out money. He eventually quit his job as a high school teacher and I quit mine as a writer for a small newspaper outfit. Land was cheap in West Virginia and we were able to scrape together $13,000. In 1978, we were able to buy 54 acres of forested hillsides and a flat, cleared “hollow”. We lived our first six years there in a stone root cellar with a tin roof, 15’ X 15’. We lived without electricity (except a car battery) and pulled our water with a bucket from a cool, clean stone lined hand-dug well. We worked little jobs on and off to make ends meet and ate peanut butter and jelly as our mainstay (with homemade bread, of course.)

We had chickens and a garden and to our surprise we met quite a few “transplants” like ourselves. We had a little group of friends both “transplants” and locals who shared in our enthusiasm for going “back to the land.” And the local older folk were downright friendly and helpful and somewhat amused at this culture of hippie homesteaders. (Just to keep the record straight….my Beloved and I did not “do drugs”.)

Admittedly, we eventually became more traditional and designed and built a “dream house” with real electricity and many of the modern conveniences, though we always heated the house with wood. My Beloved went back to teaching and we raised two sons. I homeschooled for a while, then the boys went to public school where if nothing else, they learned the ways of the world. Their father, my Beloved, was a well-respected history and psychology teacher and coached the wrestling team. My family’s high school years were great, and often I went to the high school to substitute teach.

But as the years went by, and my dearly Beloved spent much of his time at the school, I began to feel a discontent, a restlessness. Our dream had changed. We no longer worked side by side as we used to. My children made friends with kids their age and were often in town with them when not in school. (It was a long drive to the school and town.) I became the sole gardener and caretaker—the person that baked the bread and kept the home fires burning.

At the same time, during the years I WAS at home in the woods homeschooling, my spiritually questioning mind had led me to read books that gave various “takes” on Native American spirituality, or to say it another way—the “Medicine Path.”

Back in my college years, I had read a very popular book titled A Separate Reality, written by an anthropology graduate student named Carlos Castaneda. As Amazon summarizes: In 1961, a young anthropologist subjected himself to an extraordinary apprenticeship with Yaqui Indian spiritual leader don Juan Matus to bring back a fascinating glimpse of a Yaqui Indian's world of "non-ordinary reality" and the difficult and dangerous road a man must travel to become "a man of knowledge." Yet on the brink of that world, challenging to all that we believe, he drew back. Then in 1968, Carlos Castaneda returned to Mexico, to don Juan and his hallucinogenic drugs, and to a world of experience no man from our Western civilization had ever entered before.

During the years I was in West Virginia, Castaneda wrote many more books telling of his foray, his explorations and experiences into a “separate reality.”  I had had my own experiences with psychedelics in college and had determined that was not for me--even though I certainly learned things from those experiences. But I was intrigued by Castaneda’s tales. My appetite for Native American teachings and phenomena such as mystical visions was whetted.

Now and then, a friend would lend me a book or a series of books and the book, Medicine Woman, by Lynn Andrews, was one of these. She described her “apprenticeship” with a Cree Medicine Woman and I was intrigued. As I read each book in the series, I found myself shaking the book and exclaiming to the air: “I have to find a Medicine Woman”!

 

West Virginia is a beautiful state filled with hidden treasures and surprises.  About an hour from my home is—would you believe it—a Krishna community. Founded by young seekers during the hippie era, they had embraced the teachings of a Hindu holy man named A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada who taught in the U.S.  His followers were often seen (and heard) on big city streets or in airports chanting “Hare Krishna”. To quote the Wikipedia, this religious organization holds core beliefs that are based on Hindu scriptures, particularly the Bhagavad Gita, and the Bhag Purana, and the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition which has had adherents in India since the late 15th century and American and European devotees since the early 1900’s.

New Vrindaban, as the community is called, sports an awe-inspiring home built for Prabhupada, but he died before he was able to reside there. This “Palace of Gold” is open to the public for tours.  The campus has stunning rose gardens, a temple and a lake where 30-foot-tall statues of Krishna and his consort, Radha, stand (if they are still there) in a paradisiacal setting.

In the mid 1990’s, the community reached out to other spiritual traditions and teachers and presented several Interfaith conferences. These were delightful gatherings of all manner of spiritual oriented folks! I heard through the grapevine that a “real” medicine woman would be speaking at a coming conference. This is where I met my Beloved Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha!

It was love at first sight-or perhaps I should say—at first hearing. When Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha did her presentation, she sang what she calls her “Heart Song” which is in the Cherokee language. I was, as they say, “blown away”! I had found my Medicine Woman! I did not understand what she sang but it pierced my soul in an inexpressible way. Eventually I learned it was a song that called to the four directions and gatekeepers of the Cherokee Medicine Wheel.

I was in the front row of chairs during Grandmother’s presentation and I sat eager with anticipation, waiting for her to speak. And during her talk, she walked across the space in front of my seat and stopped right in front of me. She smiled and reached out and touched my cheek with her finger. Again, I was “blown away.”

I learned that day that Grandmother lived in Cleveland, Ohio, as did many of others in her Circle. I wondered when I would ever be able to see her again. I was “blown away” again—overjoyed to learn that they were building a retreat center and educational facility a few hours south of Cleveland, across the river from West Virginia, just about two hours from my home. OMG! I was thrilled! It was called Friendship Village. I subsequently spent many a day there, helping with building projects, learning ceremony, doing Vision Quests, and sitting up all hours of the night, captivated by Grandmother Pa'Ris'Ha's oral teachings; laughing and drumming and chanting and experiencing the ways of living in a small community, in a Circle of friends.

When I look back now at the beginning of my association with the Circle, I realize that one of my fondest wishes, my American Dream, was to live in a manner that put me close to the land. My dream came true, partially, in my time in West Virginia, until I was essentially left alone on my hillside while my husband and sons were drawn more and more into the mainstream of life, and I was left behind.

The lesson I have learned is that it is sustainable communities or Circles that we need here in America.  To be a truly strong society, we stand in need of living close to the land with love and respect. And we stand in need of Circles—of “intentional” communities with families and friends that are large enough and who share common productive activities that are viable enough to continue even while people come and go and seek their own destinies.

I owe so much to Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha for providing me with the extraordinary experience of living and working in a small community, Friendship Village, where people learned and worked together, sharing common goals. Not too large, not to small. Not a town. Not a city. Not a family farm--but a unique self-governing community of People who embraced common principles and ethics and shared a beautiful American Dream! I like to imagine that Friendship Village provides a kind of prototype for the future of America.

BDW