Pachamama Pondering, 2022
A poem written by Ellie Stock, reflecting on recent events and connecting the recent mass shooting at Central Visual and Performing Arts HS with other pandemic violence plaguing Earth and all that is in it. Pachamama is a figure in Native American spirituality, analogous to Mother Earth.
PACHAMAMA PONDERING,
2022
One more time the alarm
shrieks!
(Ironically, paralleling
folks’
being attracted to
Halloween week’s
scary, shriek-filled
haunted houses and horror flicks,
and faux death skeleton
and ghost yard décor,
while, simultaneously, shying
away from engaging
with life’s real scary
issues)
Another mass school
shooting!
This time, it happened
(well, it doesn’t “just happen”)
in Central Visual
Performing Arts HS,
St. Louis, MO (still
dealing with implications
from Michael Brown’s
death, Post WW II radiation waste
contaminating Jana
Elementary School and other places,
and having one of the
highest murder rates in the U.S.):
3 dead: a 16-year-old
girl,
an early November 1 All
Saints Day teacher,
dying while protecting
her students, and
an isolated 19-year-old
shooter, a former graduate,
plagued by mental health
issues,
7 others injured,
more casualties,
certainly, except for the quick police response,
mostly young life,
facing the unexpected
real horror of: “YOU are going to die!”
by long gun—acquired via
lax state regulation,
maximum capacity
cartridge,
600 rounds of
ammunition—
now a long crimson line
of school terrorism
stretching from here to
Uvalde, Parkland,
Sandy Hook, etc., etc.
etc. to Columbine.
The next evening, I look
around
the intermingling,
interracial Vigil crowd,
gathered under moonlit
shadows, outside the school
a place of learning,
growing, enjoying the arts,
a place of discovering,
developing and deploying
the gifts of young
talent,
now a crime scene of
bullet holes and shells,
shattered walls and
windows and scattered belongings
abandoned as panicked,
shrieking students quickly ran for safety,
barricading doors and
jumping out windows,
now mostly calmly quiet
with an occasional sob or wail
or car revving by,
honking in solidarity,
black, yellow and white
balloons reaching skyward,
tethered to lit candled
hands,
flames flickering in the
wind,
cascades of wax tears,
dropping to the asphalt
covering PACHAMAMA
as she also weeps.
PACHAMAMA pondering . .
.
Preachers and others
invoke the name of Jesus,
(or whatever other name
or tradition may be present)
praying for comfort,
healing, peace, justice,
words of accountability
for the litany of gun
violence in this nation,
for impotent politicians
and a public
that choose guns and
death over safety and life,
for the sickness of this
society—enough, already! —
words spoken about being
community and
supporting one another,
interspersed songs,
lamenting—How long, O Lord? —
words lifting up the
name of each person killed and injured,
and words of deep
gratitude for
those who heroically
rushed to the scene to stop the shooter,
sad and angry words of
hurt, broken, and traumatized souls,
mothers grieving from
the depths, echoing PACHAMAMA’S
lament
for this Pandemic of
Empire and Colonialism:
violence and racism,
nationalism, autocracy,
aggression, and greed
that fabricate lies and
threaten to destroy
the fabric of families,
communities and nations:
Mother Emanuel AME, Tree
of Life
El Paso, Las Vegas, and
Boulder,
Iraq, Afghanistan,
Yemen, Syria,
Somalia, Sudan, Ukraine,
Russia, etc., etc., etc.—
their predecessors and
successors.
PACHAMAMA pondering . .
.
The loudspeaker bleeps
off and on,
muffling some words,
making others unintelligible,
yet one does not have to
hear them to know what is being said.
Candles melt down as
balloons perk up,
earnestly alert for the
signal to be launched heavenward
where some hope their
loved ones are waiting.
And, finally, in a
cathartic expression of memory and hope—Lift Off!—
a cluster of sparkling
dirigibles, airborne, gently separating,
filling the sky and
fulfilling their mission, dancing with stars,
temporarily escaping the
bonds and suffering and pain.
PACHAMAMA pondering . .
.
Humanity’s violence
spills beyond itself—
seeping into the land,
water, air—
destroying ecological
systems and irreplaceable Beings while
fossil fuel and other
invasive mining
contaminate, infect,
poison, and suffocate,
heating the planet,
melting glaciers,
causing erratic storms,
drought, and fires
and increasing the
wealth-poverty divide,
conflict and warfare.
Climate refugees flee
homelands for an uncertain future,
carbon dioxide, nitrous
oxide, methane gas erupt,
food and supply chains
are disrupted and disrupt,
shortages abound as
fields become barren
and mighty rivers run
dry—
another Pandemic of
devastation
PACHAMAMA pondering . .
.
But wait, there’s more .
. .
COVID and other deadly
diseases
continue to evolve and
mutate,
killing millions, many
in their prime,
rooting where protocols
are not honored,
where vaccinations are
neither
welcomed nor equitably
distributed,
a Pandemic tide of
germs, surging and ebbing,
perhaps waiting for a
more opportune time
to discretely emerge and
merge with a populace
that defends
individualistic freedom over vigilance,
the Common Good and the
well-being and freedom of All.
PACHAMAMA pondering . .
.
The next night, the
Scene segues
from the school grounds
to a Town Hall Meeting
on gun violence and
schools and bullying,
hosted by a U.S.
Representative, where
more words are intoned
and gods invoked
in a citizen-filled
room—
school administrators,
teachers, preachers,
politicos, students,
first responders,
parents (including the
mother of the girl killed),
feeling powerless,
trapped in a cycle of
unrelenting violence
and unraveling of
civilization,
looking for answers, for
wise and bold leadership.
A panel of speakers
portends business as usual
until a young lady on
the dais, a senior at CVPA,
rises to her
feet. Incredibly poised,
she passionately and
prophetically reads her Truth to Power,
a letter of proclamation
to the Representative,
and demands that
something be done: Control the guns!
Stop the
killing! Enough is enough!
No more excuses! No more thoughts and prayers and vigils!
No more political
posturing and editorials,
postmortem speeches, and
funeral
eulogies!
No more Cross and Stars
of David memorials,
stuffed animals, votive
candles, and balloons.
DO SOMETHING to create
SAFE SCHOOLS and
SAFE NEIGHBORHOODS with
equitable resources,
SAFE COMMUNITIES and A
SAFE NATION!
DO
SOMETHING! NOW!
And a child shall lead
them . . .
PACHAMAMA pondering . .
.
And, finally, to close
the gone-overtime,
anxiety-fraught meeting,
more words are spoken
and then,
a Word Benedictory:
we are all connected and
are all called,
for such a time as this,
to live into our
connectedness and inter-relationship,
words of gratitude for
those who came and who care,
who show up day after
day, year after year,
who have a vision of
working together,
who overcome paralyzing
fear, despair, and powerlessness,
who bridge polarizing
politics
and passionately and
compassionately
pour heart, mind, soul,
and strength into creating
resilient communities
and a world of
equity and justice for
all our relatives—
animal, vegetable, and
mineral,
who carry within and
elicit from others
the unfolding adventure
of
an ever-wondrous
Creation Way of Possibility,
Hope beyond hope and
Love unconditioning,
Truth consistent with
Earth’s Truth,
Peace, Wholeness,
Shalom,
turning swords into
plowshares,
instruments of death
into tools cultivating Life.
As the crowd exits and
trickles into the night,
into separate domains
and spheres of influence,
many
wonder: just mere words,
their urgency and agency
eventually fading and fizzling
or real change this
time?
PACHAMAMA pondering . .
.
ejhs
10/29/2022
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