Poet Warrior

by Joy Harjo

I was hungry for ritual. Ritual creates belonging. We are all in a ritual marked by sunrise, daylight, sunset, night, and moon phases. We also move within the ritual of the changing of seasons, either fall, winter, spring, and summer, or dry and rainy seasons. Our cultural practices are arranged according to these earth rituals. We all need rituals of becoming, in which we are given instructions that define our relationship with becoming, with our relatives, those sharing the whole world around us. This is how it was meant to be, for those coming up, at all stages of our becoming in this life. In these times, however, of degradation of our physical, mental, and spiritual sources of nourishment, we are losing ourselves and our children. Until we understand and act as if we are the earth, then each of us will experience the pain of separation from sacred knowledge, from ourselves.