Found by the Words
The Power of Staying Silent
Hello Readers,
I have an audio post this week. I’ve been trying to find words that do justice to the depth of suffering that is so loud on our planet right now it can’t be avoided, which is why I’ve stayed silent. I couldn’t find them.
Tonight, as you’ll hear in the audio below, the words found me. I share this story of Nanaue the Shark Man with compassion for the young woman I was who first heard it years ago in Waipi’o Valley. It was the first story I ever heard that was truly alive, told to me by people who had lived in the place of its genesis as long as humans had been in that valley.
That young woman I was almost didn’t make it out of the valley alive.
But this is not my story.
It’s our story.
The story of suffering.
I share it with gratitude and humility, and a prayer that we move with grace through everything we are being asked to feel right now as the suffering rises. Please don’t look away. Pain, in the form of ohia lehua, is the first medicine to sprout out of the new lava. Her roots break rock down so more plants can root and flower.
But first, we have to feel.
Listen to Nanaue the Shark Man:
In case you’re curious, these are the exact words my fingers fell on when I opened Piko:
Soften, I hear. The heart is the way in. Stay small and watchful by the calm sea until you can be it, and when you struggle have compassion—until you can be it, too.
Compassion for all—mothers and widows, chiefs and warriors, arrogant men, gossiping women, yearning daughters, and even the shark god who lost his son.
And even the shark.
Compassion for the killer who was made not born. Nanaue, entangled in nets flipping his tail toward the water, obeying the body's call, desperate to live like us all. Soften, begin small and watchful by the calm sea, the rough water will come soon enough. For now, place hand on heart and breathe, here in this place, this refuge.
There is a written version of Nanaue the Shark Man in my book, Piko: A Return to the Dreaming, along with the other stories I told in the 21-day ceremony, which is recounted in the book.
Piko is available through all online platforms, or can be ordered at your local bookstore. Here is a link to purchase the book on Bookshop, an online alternative to Amazon that shares profits with small bookstores.
“Without human mirrors, animals offered to show me who I was, and who I could become. Deer and dog, turtle and snake, honeybee and dragonfly, hawk and owl, seal and songbird. Eventually, my world expanded to another ocean where the mirrors were less opaque, more aquamarine than labradorite, and the reflections I saw looking back at me more unfamiliar: dolphin and whale, octopus and eel. Shark. After years of low light, often gray, I started to see in technicolor.”
—Jennifer Lighty, from Piko: A Return to the Dreaming
“Jennifer Lighty is the real thing and has done us a great service with Piko. A modern woman working intuitively to contact mythic ground. The language is fresh and imaginative, her intention five fathoms deep. I’m so glad she exists, and that she has trend some of her life’s work into a gift we can cradle in our hands and feel the benefit.”
—Martin Shaw, author of Bardskull
Kō aloha lā ea
Concentrate on love by way of the light
I love hearing from readers. Please leave a comment or send me a message if something I say moves something in you.