Page 210 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue #3 - December 2015

to show gratitude, or to notify the Spirits of our heartfelt commitment to live in active

alliance with the natural or unseen world. I find it odd that this field of creative

expression is seldom spoken of in artistic or spiritual circles.

Sometimes Nature responds in tangible ways (though the desire for a response cannot

be what motivates us). In Liberia, when we were told that elephants were a sign that

peace was coming, we offered mounds of favorite elephant foods in the forest

surrounding certain villages: corn, squash, bananas, and rice. Two months later, real

forest elephants came to the villages where these offerings had been made. In one, the

entire village turned out to tell us that since the appearance of the elephants, no

poisonous insects or snakes had troubled them. In response, the elders went to the

outskirts of the village, stood in the forest and read aloud to the elephants from the

Koran. In that same village, a widow came upon a massive bull elephant in her meager

garden. His trunk was wrapped around a cassava vine, ready to pull it up. In spite of the

danger posed by standing face to face with a hungry, wild elephant, the widow stood her

ground and spoke to him out loud: “I am a lady, and I have no husband to provide for me

and my children. We are hungry. Please, be sorry for us and leave us at least one

cassava to eat.” The elephant gently removed his trunk from the vine and ambled away.

In 2004, shortly after the end of the Liberian civil war, after a huge community Mourning

Feast that had suggested itself in dreams, a small circle of diviners informed us that

more offerings were required. After fifteen years of war and neglect, the Spirits were

hungry. The diviners gathered rice flour, eggs, kola nuts, and shells and we went with

them to the banks of the Lofa River, and then into the forest. Laughing and singing, the

offerings were lavishly shared. In the forest, the ceremony began at a huge termite