The Dream Catcher and the Calabash

A July Dhome Reflection

Mzee Evan. Aliongea juu ya mambo muhimu.

Last night I attended a community Dhome (gathering) a tradition among the Giriama tribe in the village where we live. It was a time to hear about all that has been built: farms, houses, trust, friendship … and to mourn the loss of some community members and celebrate the birth of new ones. We discussed the way forward: the Mweria to come. And we reflected on the past.

And we sang, played, danced and ate.

It was good.
Great.
Healing.
Joyful.

Que Guay!
Divertido.
The Mix!

Tons of kids came and also lent us their voices and energy.

Practically speaking, of course, we have challenges that came up:

Snakes are a problem.
So is access to building materials, security, housing, and the cost of labor.. and more.

….all with some collective resolution in the direction of solutions.

What I dreamed last night after the gathering stuck with me.

I dreamed of a dream catcher with three fealthers, made by my community, was placed over a calabash (a bowl) holding our commitments. It felt significant. I remembered a story and similar feeling.

20+ Years ago, I had the honor to sit with some elders at Pine Ridge Reservation in the U.S. while working with Engineers Without Borders. There, I learned a story told by Lakota elder Wallace Black Elk and retold by Acorn:

An old Lakota leader climbed a high mountain and had a vision.
In that vision, Iktomi, the trickster and wisdom teacher, appeared in the form of a spider.
Iktomi spoke to the elder about the circle of life .. how people move through stages: childhood, adulthood, old age … and how life can be pulled in many directions.
While speaking, Iktomi took the elder’s willow hoop, which had feathers, beads, and offerings on it, and began to spin a web.

“See this web?” Iktomi said.

“It is and represents the web of life. You can use it to help each other, or you can choose the wrong path. The web will catch your good ideas, while the bad will pass through and be lost.”

When Iktomi finished the web, he handed it back to the elder and told him to use it to help his people make good decisions and live in harmony with the Great Spirit.

This story met my dream in the night.

A dream catcher.
Three feathers.
Over a calabash.
Holding our commitments.

It felt like a filter … for dreams to turn into intentions, and for those to become commitments, and perhaps the way we weave and pool them together into a commons. . . .

After years of doing this work, deepening into this community, growing alongside it and in it, there is a letting go into the web of my neighbors. Letting us together filter out the bad and leave us with good.

I see the efforts of the women especially in the community, their joy to harvest the crops planted by their neighbors and to live in houses built by all of us.

There is a sense of security, of safety, of care there.

And I can see, in a few more years, it will be as if the Mweria never left.

Healing the wound.

Thanking the ancestors of the ancestors.
Down to the soil.

.

… so, I carry this image forward:
The dream catcher with three feathers, woven from the lives, tears, work, and joys of many.

Held above the calabash … to remind us of the magic we are already living.