Reading this, the question came, "What is any of life on this Earth, but a Sun Dance?" And that the dance itself might be a heightening of awareness, a calling back to attention of the need to make the dance beautiful, to live it as a dance, rather than let it turn to a goose-step or the stamp of a toddler's foot issuing demands. Not that it's mine to pretend to know anything of the Sun Dance itself, beyond asking questions. But I remember, too, our friend Kathryn saying to me, the first time we met, "I think all the gods really want from us is a little singing and dancing."
It is quite convicting, this line, "The stamp of a toddler's foot issuing demands" when you imagine a whole society of full-grown human people in this posture. Perhaps too painful to see it in ourselves, but likely quite visible to our nonhuman neighbors. Thank you for the reflection, Dougald.
Thank you for this deeply moving, highly engaging and widely relevant letter. I’m neither neighbour (unfortunately) nor stranger, just a committed long-distance reader, but your words and language-crafting fall right in the centre of my own practice. As I write a dissertation concerned with the reconnection to the land of a smaller area of classical music, I am constantly looking for new vocabulary, for words whose etymology can bring new insight rather than reinforce prejudice. Your example ("deserve to suffer") was salutary. (It made me think of the expression "just deserts", which I will now avoid.) I wish you well as you look after your precious sheep, especially while you put the flock together again.
Greetings Mark. I can feel your long-distance companionship. I had to look up the word salutary, and, of course, it brings health through discomfort. Thank you for the gift of a word.
When breaking down as sub and ferre, I think of the word suffer as a smaller part of the whole, carrying, bearing, or enduring in some way for all or part of the whole. When thinking of deserve, it's de: completely and servire: to serve, which is to serve completely. Thus, to me, to deserve to suffer means for one or part of the collective whole to carry, bear, or endure to completely serve all or part of the whole. It's a gift to be able to do so. Thank you for giving me something to think about in a whole new and loving way. 🕊️❤️🤲
I am re-reading Stephen Jenkinson's Die Wise right now, and so I've got modern society's all-out offensive on suffering in my mind's eye. Thank you for the note.
This is really beautiful and meaningful for me this morning, especially after writing a post about the practice and portal of grief. It feels connected - that as we abandon our willingness to suffer and to see that suffering as a contribution to the collective, we also abandon our capacity for grief. Thank you for the thoughtful reflection.
How would we know how to live gratefully without suffering and its attendant grief? There's something in here about who and what we describe as the source of our suffering, and the abandonment of a stance of obedience to the Earth.
Feeling relieved that someone else has been chewing on these words- suffer, and deserve. They’ve taken up residence in my own head for a while now and they keep popping up. In moments (hours lol) of self pity and petulance but also in moments of curiosity and empowering. I’ve been taught these last years that on my path, suffering cannot be bypassed before giving birth, and to suffer means to then deserve to give birth. Your exploration of the kelp roots of these words/concepts helps clear up this teaching for me, and I suspect, for everyone who reads this offering. In the suffering of being overtaken by spirits and forces in the dance and songs of healing, the way is opened for birth, but this isn’t martyrdom and saviorism, not good looks for humans! That’s where the sticky point of becoming a “cult” can take over. The suffering to deserve a birth then opens the path to great miracles and blessings that somehow benefit all life, not just my own. I’m taught that this is true wealth.
I know your flock in suffering to deserve is going to open a path for a birth in ways we can’t even fathom.
To suffer is to bear, and to bear is to birth. To have been born is to be on the receiving end of another's laborious suffering. To remember that is to live gratefully. To forget is to become a modern person. And there's no easy way out of that multi-generational forgetting. I can attest to the pain of that. Imagining a state of gratitude doesn't flip the switch on, rather invites one to see the everyday ingratitude underwriting modern life. I don't recommend it, necessarily.
Hi Adam, thank you for your thoughtful reply and for being open. I don’t know how much openness we can enjoy in times to come so I want to be really present when it shows up. What you say is true. “Be grateful” as a prescription, is not really doable. Before I was fully aware that I was a modern person, when someone would say that to me, I’d feel blank. What did that even mean? There was no context for it! My only context was a warped religious interpretation. Which I equated, physically, in my body, with more suffering. Be grateful meant suffer more! It really isn’t at all a path anyone would want to choose, or be prescribed. Seeing clearly the ingratitude underpinning all of modern life- heavy to bear this, especially alone. Been doing that a long minute, now. I can say though, I’ve had movement towards being in gratitude as a state, rather than a doing. But I can’t foresee a mass “awakening” to this, either.
Such a beautiful rendering of the natural cycles that include all manner of birth, suffering, sickness and death that touches each and every living thing. Thank you for sharing the deep dive into the etymology much as it brought pain, it also brings revelation.
Someone told me once that my work is to invite other modern people to join me in bearing witness to our requisite sense of entitlement. As you say, it can be painful and revelatory.
My first thought was, "Couldn't someone else sign up for that job?" My second thought was, "I don't think I get to choose."
Seems to me we are exactly in service to those things we did not appear to choose...something about the web of humanity..."Hostility begins to exist when we think we can choose by whom we shall be nourished. If the web of humanity is in any sense one, we must be nourished by those of whom we most wholly dislike and disapprove." Charles Williams
Sending so much love to you in such a heartbreaking time. Thank you for sharing so deeply and honestly. The horror and the beauty wrapped up together leave me feeling broken open, raw and awe. Blessings to your ovine angels.
The horror and beauty of the time had helped me savor each precious breath. The winged singers have been serenading the flock from the adjacent hedgerows. Just heartbreakingly beautiful.
Kia ora Adam I am wondering if you have contacted any good animal homeopaths? Here in Aotearoa we have some excellent ones. Homepathics work to enable the immune system to generate its own healing. No need for a medical diagnoses. And I thank you for your deep exploration.
I do have some I can reach out to. Thanks for the nudge. It's been such an acute and sudden downturn that I've had also to remember to focus not just on symptom alleviation but also on the practice that have brought the flock such resounding health for years---particularly the grassland management work.
On my third reading, I am coming to understand the etymological meaning and your understanding of the phrase “deserve to suffer.”
Suffer. I recoil at the word. Most of my experience of suffering has been in the form of mental anguish. I resent it. I hate it and think “why me?” And, “my life would be so much better if I didn’t have to contend with mental anguish.”
I have that bundle of privileges that makes me feel *entitled* to a life without suffering. This is what I’ve been taught. The sheep probably do not resent their physical suffering so we, and your neighbors, will resent it for them. “Suffering is bad! We ‘deserve’ better!”
It’s hard to fathom how mental anguish/suffering benefits others (unless you find a way out), and yet — your essay opens a door.
(btw, suffering as “paying it forward” is what Catholicism is based on, yes?)
I would add to my reflection some thoughts about the experiences and suffering of African-Americans, but it’s getting late.
Although far from the farm and the experience of sheep living out their Sheep-ness, the notion of Suffering and its place within the diaspora of Life is such an *important* topic! I appreciate your offering that reminds me to consider this dynamic in new ways.
Reading this, the question came, "What is any of life on this Earth, but a Sun Dance?" And that the dance itself might be a heightening of awareness, a calling back to attention of the need to make the dance beautiful, to live it as a dance, rather than let it turn to a goose-step or the stamp of a toddler's foot issuing demands. Not that it's mine to pretend to know anything of the Sun Dance itself, beyond asking questions. But I remember, too, our friend Kathryn saying to me, the first time we met, "I think all the gods really want from us is a little singing and dancing."
It is quite convicting, this line, "The stamp of a toddler's foot issuing demands" when you imagine a whole society of full-grown human people in this posture. Perhaps too painful to see it in ourselves, but likely quite visible to our nonhuman neighbors. Thank you for the reflection, Dougald.
Thank you for this deeply moving, highly engaging and widely relevant letter. I’m neither neighbour (unfortunately) nor stranger, just a committed long-distance reader, but your words and language-crafting fall right in the centre of my own practice. As I write a dissertation concerned with the reconnection to the land of a smaller area of classical music, I am constantly looking for new vocabulary, for words whose etymology can bring new insight rather than reinforce prejudice. Your example ("deserve to suffer") was salutary. (It made me think of the expression "just deserts", which I will now avoid.) I wish you well as you look after your precious sheep, especially while you put the flock together again.
Greetings Mark. I can feel your long-distance companionship. I had to look up the word salutary, and, of course, it brings health through discomfort. Thank you for the gift of a word.
When breaking down as sub and ferre, I think of the word suffer as a smaller part of the whole, carrying, bearing, or enduring in some way for all or part of the whole. When thinking of deserve, it's de: completely and servire: to serve, which is to serve completely. Thus, to me, to deserve to suffer means for one or part of the collective whole to carry, bear, or endure to completely serve all or part of the whole. It's a gift to be able to do so. Thank you for giving me something to think about in a whole new and loving way. 🕊️❤️🤲
I am re-reading Stephen Jenkinson's Die Wise right now, and so I've got modern society's all-out offensive on suffering in my mind's eye. Thank you for the note.
This is really beautiful and meaningful for me this morning, especially after writing a post about the practice and portal of grief. It feels connected - that as we abandon our willingness to suffer and to see that suffering as a contribution to the collective, we also abandon our capacity for grief. Thank you for the thoughtful reflection.
How would we know how to live gratefully without suffering and its attendant grief? There's something in here about who and what we describe as the source of our suffering, and the abandonment of a stance of obedience to the Earth.
Feeling relieved that someone else has been chewing on these words- suffer, and deserve. They’ve taken up residence in my own head for a while now and they keep popping up. In moments (hours lol) of self pity and petulance but also in moments of curiosity and empowering. I’ve been taught these last years that on my path, suffering cannot be bypassed before giving birth, and to suffer means to then deserve to give birth. Your exploration of the kelp roots of these words/concepts helps clear up this teaching for me, and I suspect, for everyone who reads this offering. In the suffering of being overtaken by spirits and forces in the dance and songs of healing, the way is opened for birth, but this isn’t martyrdom and saviorism, not good looks for humans! That’s where the sticky point of becoming a “cult” can take over. The suffering to deserve a birth then opens the path to great miracles and blessings that somehow benefit all life, not just my own. I’m taught that this is true wealth.
I know your flock in suffering to deserve is going to open a path for a birth in ways we can’t even fathom.
To suffer is to bear, and to bear is to birth. To have been born is to be on the receiving end of another's laborious suffering. To remember that is to live gratefully. To forget is to become a modern person. And there's no easy way out of that multi-generational forgetting. I can attest to the pain of that. Imagining a state of gratitude doesn't flip the switch on, rather invites one to see the everyday ingratitude underwriting modern life. I don't recommend it, necessarily.
Hi Adam, thank you for your thoughtful reply and for being open. I don’t know how much openness we can enjoy in times to come so I want to be really present when it shows up. What you say is true. “Be grateful” as a prescription, is not really doable. Before I was fully aware that I was a modern person, when someone would say that to me, I’d feel blank. What did that even mean? There was no context for it! My only context was a warped religious interpretation. Which I equated, physically, in my body, with more suffering. Be grateful meant suffer more! It really isn’t at all a path anyone would want to choose, or be prescribed. Seeing clearly the ingratitude underpinning all of modern life- heavy to bear this, especially alone. Been doing that a long minute, now. I can say though, I’ve had movement towards being in gratitude as a state, rather than a doing. But I can’t foresee a mass “awakening” to this, either.
Adam,
Earlier you wrote of "Anna suffering the indignity of gratitude," a phrase that landed large for me. I wanted to share what came of it: https://open.substack.com/pub/yinjourney/p/gratitude-and-dignity?r=196fk&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
I am feeling your sorrow as your herd diminishes and then hopefully rebuilds.....thank you for sharing that experience.
Thank you for sending along these musing, Lisa. I am glad to know that the phrases are out there sparking other fires to gather around.
Such a beautiful rendering of the natural cycles that include all manner of birth, suffering, sickness and death that touches each and every living thing. Thank you for sharing the deep dive into the etymology much as it brought pain, it also brings revelation.
Someone told me once that my work is to invite other modern people to join me in bearing witness to our requisite sense of entitlement. As you say, it can be painful and revelatory.
My first thought was, "Couldn't someone else sign up for that job?" My second thought was, "I don't think I get to choose."
Seems to me we are exactly in service to those things we did not appear to choose...something about the web of humanity..."Hostility begins to exist when we think we can choose by whom we shall be nourished. If the web of humanity is in any sense one, we must be nourished by those of whom we most wholly dislike and disapprove." Charles Williams
Sending so much love to you in such a heartbreaking time. Thank you for sharing so deeply and honestly. The horror and the beauty wrapped up together leave me feeling broken open, raw and awe. Blessings to your ovine angels.
The horror and beauty of the time had helped me savor each precious breath. The winged singers have been serenading the flock from the adjacent hedgerows. Just heartbreakingly beautiful.
Kia ora Adam I am wondering if you have contacted any good animal homeopaths? Here in Aotearoa we have some excellent ones. Homepathics work to enable the immune system to generate its own healing. No need for a medical diagnoses. And I thank you for your deep exploration.
I do have some I can reach out to. Thanks for the nudge. It's been such an acute and sudden downturn that I've had also to remember to focus not just on symptom alleviation but also on the practice that have brought the flock such resounding health for years---particularly the grassland management work.
On my third reading, I am coming to understand the etymological meaning and your understanding of the phrase “deserve to suffer.”
Suffer. I recoil at the word. Most of my experience of suffering has been in the form of mental anguish. I resent it. I hate it and think “why me?” And, “my life would be so much better if I didn’t have to contend with mental anguish.”
I have that bundle of privileges that makes me feel *entitled* to a life without suffering. This is what I’ve been taught. The sheep probably do not resent their physical suffering so we, and your neighbors, will resent it for them. “Suffering is bad! We ‘deserve’ better!”
It’s hard to fathom how mental anguish/suffering benefits others (unless you find a way out), and yet — your essay opens a door.
(btw, suffering as “paying it forward” is what Catholicism is based on, yes?)
I would add to my reflection some thoughts about the experiences and suffering of African-Americans, but it’s getting late.
Although far from the farm and the experience of sheep living out their Sheep-ness, the notion of Suffering and its place within the diaspora of Life is such an *important* topic! I appreciate your offering that reminds me to consider this dynamic in new ways.
Thank you for your writing.