As I have been learning, the most effective way to learn in a ‘whole’ way is through experience and story. By ‘whole’ I mean body, heart, spirit and mind and through relating to ‘all as one’, a phrase I hear often from a very dear Indigenous ‘sister’ of mine.
Many years ago I had the privilege of sitting with an Elder who has since ‘passed on’. He told me how his people used to ‘call the dolphins in’. He told me about his relationship with the dolphins the morning after he had ‘sung’ in a public place, in his language for the first time in over 50 years. Experiencing him this way was truly awesome. This old man who was permanently curved over his stick, sitting or standing, used his voice to call out to all to connect and be in respectful relationship. He called us to honour the life of all living things on Earth. He gave so much in a matter of 20 minutes and yet he sat up for the rest of the night and yarned and yarned, energised and vital, continuing to give to the privileged few who could sit with him for hours on end.
When the next morning he was still powerful and clear and awake to so much more than we around him could know, he gave me a clear sense of his, and his people’s relationship with the dolphins.
As I sat at old Uncle’s feet, he leaned over and said very quietly,
‘I would not say this to everyone but these here dolphins they are my brothers… we are family and we help each other.’
As I am going back in time and feel and see what was happening then, I am so drawn to the eye of my uncle as he looked at me sideways, such that the one eye on my side of him, although circled in soft wrinkles, was wide and joyful and twinkling. As I see it now, it feels so like the eye of a dolphin when it caught mine in a wonderful and mind-shifting meeting; a meeting, which holds another story, one to share at another time.
As my Uncle told his story his eyes twinkled, as he looked at me to see whether I was ‘listening’ in a way that showed he could share more. Maybe this is what the dolphin was doing, looking to see if I could take in more?
