The humped-back flute player plays in tune with the deep rhythms of life. His melody drifts over the parched land and weaves in and out of the daily lives of the waiting ones.
The poor hear his song and in their sorrow and sadness and despite their hesitant hopes they plead for a good harvest or a healthy child.
The sick hear the melody as beautiful as the good earth is home, in tune with their hopes, lifting their anxious hearts; they pray for a good death or at least a painless one.
Kokopelli, himself broken, smiles at the people; he plays his flute and the music rises above the tiredness of the day as he leads them in the dance.
They rise from their beds and follow, slowly at first, step by faltering step, until they are one with the Great Spirit - the author and giver of the song.
But that was long ago in the before times. Now we live in a world without stories, a world full of science and knowledge of the ways of things. Now we embrace another poverty for we have lost the Great Spirit, the deepness of things, and because we can’t hear the song no one dances anywhere anymore.
Kokopelli, the humpbacked flute player, was originally a prehistoric deity among the Native American tribes of the south-western United States. His image has been found carved or painted many hundreds of times in desert rock art. Kokopelli was associated with both fertility and agriculture but in more recent times he has been adopted as a symbol of the southwestern United States as a whole. In New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah his image can be found almost everywhere.
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Manicured lawns
Manicured lawns surround immaculate houses, well-behaved trees sway gently in the breeze.
A pristine fountain sprays clear cool water and the laughing stream runs sparkling into the idyllic pond.
Four geese fly in a neat skein overhead as impeccably coloured flowers turn their obedient heads towards the sun.
Behind each newly painted door... inside each unsoiled spic-and-span home... perfect people live perfect lives
while outside this gated paradise real people live and move and have their being.
Recent studies have shown, of course, that the very problems people in gated communities are trying to escape from follow them behind the fences and guard houses. People who live in such expensive and sought after places have the same sins, weaknesses and peccadilloes as everyone else.
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Megachurch millionaires
I went to church the other day feeling the need as one does to pray. With twenty thousand other good people praising the Lord beneath that steeple I realised what a very heavy load
it was to keep that show on the road. Over five hundred paid workers shouldered the people's cares but only the church's pastors became millionaires.
In 2005 and 2006 I visited a number of US megachurches as part of some research I was doing into fundamentalist evangelical religion in America. Each one of these churches effectively starts a new denomination (they prefer the word ‘association’) of like-minded congregations. The same books can be found in all their bookshops – all carefully vetted, of course, for what they believe to be sound or true content. No doubts are permitted – only certainties – and a lot of money can be made by writing such stuff. !
Kokopelli’s dance