Page 82 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue2

Dreaming Another Language: She Will Not Kill

Deena Metzger

It is raining. I am listening to rain on the roof and skylights. A rain I have not heard in four years. This is not the

heavy rain that is still predicted. This is the “light rain” – it intensifies now, as I write these words. It precedes,

we hope, the” heavy rain” that could reach down to the very tips of the deepest roots of the tallest trees to

restore the aquifer and the future. I am writing in rhythm with the rain, and it is setting up a path of

communication between us. Between the rain and myself after such a long time. A communication in another

language.

I have been speaking to, praying for the rain, this rain, for almost four years. Praying as I watched the land parch,

watched the animals of the wild desperately seek food and water, watched even as the drought tolerant purple

sage withered and browned. There are animals in these mountains who have never seen rain. We keep a large

pail of water filled for mountain lion, bobcat, coyote and deer – they all have to learn to drink together, and so

live together in the feral orchard.

We put down bales of alfalfa in the driest winters for the deer and other non-­‐predators. But the animals have to

be safe there — we can’t lay a trap for prey, or an opportunity for the predators. And so it is.

For more than four years, I have been listening for a Literature of Restoration. Simultaneously, I have been

listening for a dialogue with the elementals. I began by praying that the rain would come. But I knew we do not

deserve it. So then I prayed for the rain. On behalf of the rain and the other elementals. Such prayers require

another language.

Indigenous peoples sing to the elementals, the ancestors, the spirits. For most peoples and religions, songs and

prayer are one. In many indigenous languages, prayer and honoring the spirits are embedded in, intrinsic to,

each word of the language. To recreate such prayer and honoring is intrinsic to the Language of Restoration.

Beauty is also an essential element of The Language and The Literature of Restoration, but it does not exist if its

other face, Truth, is not present. Beauty and Truth become Integrity, and Integrity requires Responsibility.

What we say, and how we live and act, must be one. The Literature of Restoration demands this.