The Sacred Space Of The Shared Heart

“When people come to me because of a sudden illness,” the shaman was telling me as he painstakingly mended a crack in a highly-prized ceremonial gourd, “the first thing I do is ask them, ‘Who recently asked for your help that you refused?’ “

The midday sun blistered the rocky soil of the patio. We sat in the shade of a thatched roof affixed to the wall of the adobe house, looking out over the red rock river. A horse whinnied into the wind from the high ground above the rancho. A burro answered from somewhere across the narrow valley. Time, such as it was, moved very slowly deep in the Copper Canyon of Mexico, where the Tarahumara still lived as they have for millennia.

The shaman dipped the gourd in a bucket of water and held it aloft. Not a drop leaked from the mended crack. He could have fashioned a new gourd in a tenth the time it’d taken him to repair the old one.

“My duty isn’t just to heal individuals,” he explained, taking a sip from the gourd and handing it to me, “but to heal the community.” Sipping the cool spring water, I looked over the rim of the gourd at my adopted father and realized he spoke with the absolute confidence of someone who had been trained since childhood in the art of holding a community together.

It was a small village far-removed from the twentieth century. No electricity or telephones, let alone a hospital or medical doctor. There, on the outskirts of civilization, there was no one to turn to in an emergency if not your neighbor: the individual could not hope to survive without the goodwill of the community—nor could the community hope to survive without the goodwill of each individual.

Far-removed from twentieth century civilization, yes. But the most civilized people I was ever to meet.  Read Article

By William Horden