The Sage

An old woman stands at the doorway of her small hut. She is known in these parts as the Sage. This is one who carries the heavy wisdom of her people as her mother did and as her mother’s mother did before her. A long line of wise women ancestors have gifted her a legacy that is both honorable and challenging: a deep trove of knowledge that she ever seeks to channel and employ for the betterment of her people. Long hair flows over her shoulders in a silver river as she gazes out at the snowy street scene in front of her. Her face is furrowed with pain and her eyes are brimming with unshed tears as she watches the people – her people – chase after their careless pursuits full of laughter and fun on a fine and mild winter’s day.

How she longs to join them! How she longs to throw her head back and laugh gaily with the joy of life and youth! How she wishes that she did not see, did not know all that she sees and knows: that she too could be free to indulge in their merriments. Instead her heart contracts in pain and sorrow; grief and anguish consume her thoughts, her days, her nights. There is never a moment of relief from the burden of knowing all that she knows and its weight upon her increases day by day.

For she knows that trouble is coming. Dark and disturbing visions in the night have terrorized her with the horrors that are coming upon her people. The truth of the coming sorrows is an ache in her bones, a lump in her throat, a constant knot of pain in her belly. It remains with her and gnaws its misery into her heart and mind day and night, giving her no rest and no refuge from its all-consuming despair.

So many times she has tried to relieve her torments by sharing the painful truths of what she knows, but all ears are now deaf to the words of the Sage. She first shared her knowledge of the coming trials with the elders of the Tribe, but they laughed at her in merciless scorn. They have all forgotten their duty of stewardship to their people, their lands and the ancient wisdom she tries to share. What does a woman know? You have been smoking too long on your pipe. These foolish dreams of yours are just a bit of upset digestion. There is no truth of substance to them. You are a dotty old woman whose usefulness has passed. Go home and bake bread for the children. Be helpful to your people instead of wasting our time with your nonsense.

She sees and knows with deep pain that the elders have sold the land and future of her people for a few coins and false promises of comfort and ease. The lure of near profit is always too great for weak men who have no care for the legacy they leave to their progeny. They borrow trouble against the future of their children and their children’s children so that each generation is burdened to be born under an even greater weight of subjugation. They enslave their own children to a life of ease, stealing self-reliance from them and leaving them fit only to be cared for by the not-so-benign government of Papa Tribe. She stamps her foot in frustration. How her people have been weakened and ruined by the coming of this idea of Papa Tribe!

Papa Tribe will give you your food. Papa Tribe will house you. Papa Tribe will clothe you. Papa Tribe will educate you and your children. You have no need that cannot be met by Papa Tribe.

But yes! You do have a need, her heart wails in shrill and silent protest: You all have the need to find your voice and your place; to reconnect to the Earth and to the Great Spirit: to lift up the Tribe! Please, my children, you need to live and not just exist to serve hollow pleasures!

The Sage chases away the enraging and grieving memories of her failed challenges to the elders with a shake of her long silver mane and fixes her gaze on the faces of the people passing in the street before her, seeking comfort in a friendly and familiar face. But while all the faces are the known members of her Tribe, none of them are friendly to her anymore.

She fixes her eyes on Tiyana: a lithe and beautiful young woman with long, dark hair and metallic copper eyes bundled into her neat fur coat… and the heart of the Sage contracts in grief again. She remembers Tiyana as an innocent child with a tender heart who loved every animal she met and always sought to make everyone feel loved and included. In days long past she would come to have tea with the Sage and chat happily of her plans and her dreams to care for animals and the children she hoped to have. Now she spends all of her Papa Tribe coins on feathers, capes and cloaks and her plans and dreams are all about what new things she will purchase next. She wants no children now. She has no time any longer for tea with old ladies. Her love and connections to community have faded, dulled and weakened - just like so many others - and the Sage knows and feels the bitter truth that the Tribe is weakened as a result. Fewer and fewer children are born each spring now and she grieves the losses of love and growth for the Tribe.

Her eyes move next to Tomas, a strong and handsome young man who was once a constantly laughing and mischievous little boy with spiky black hair and melted chocolate eyes. Tomas was always so joyful and full of fun, but now he has become unfriendly and belligerent: his considerable strength and energy seethes in careless idleness instead of being fully spent in enriching occupation. He indulges in harsh and foolish play with other young men wasting their Papa Tribe coins on drinks and games and toys. Where once he looked up to the Sage with eyes full of love and wonder, now he looks down his nose at her in contempt when he passes her on the street. He believes what the elders have told him about her: that she is no one to be minded or respected any longer; she is now just a relic of a best-forgotten past. No one wants wisdom anymore. Wisdom costs comfort, self-discipline and self-denial. These are things her Tribe no longer values or seeks out. But how can a tree continue to grow strong, upwards and outwards, when it is no longer connected to its roots? The Tribe has forgotten the root of wisdom from which it is sprung, and so she knows it is destined to be cut down.

And as she ponders this matter of broken roots, her eyes are drawn to yet another dearly familiar face. Here is Warne, a pale and thin man approaching middling age who had inherited his mother’s delicate health. He had spent many hours as a young man learning the ancient wisdom of growing, harvesting and mixing herbal medicines as the Sage taught him to use the treasures of the earth to heal his body. But he has now rejected those healing methods as outdated and prefers instead to purchase his medicines at the chemist's shop. The modern chemist potions are the newest and best way now. No one wants to learn the ancient healing wisdom any longer. But we are from the earth; part of the earth; healed by our connection to the earth; and we return to the earth, the Sage considers to herself. If we live out of harmony with our Mother Earth, she will vomit us all out of her mouth! The Sage mourns yet another lost connection as she reflects upon how Warne now pretends at not seeing her when they pass by each other in the street. So many losses!

The Sage bows her head as the grief quietly and powerfully overtakes her for a moment and her tears spill freely into the freshly fallen snow. Wracking pain shudders through her in silent sobs as she weeps for the loss of love of her community and her people to their growing selfishness and indolence. She weeps for the young ones who are raised with such disconnected thoughtlessness and she weeps for the inevitable pain of the coming future. No one passing by notices her tears. No one stops to offer comfort. The Sage grieves and cries alone. Long minutes pass before she is able to compose herself.

The momentary relieving of her grief spent, the Sage wipes her face with the edge of her scarf and straightens her spine, squares her shoulders, lifts her chin and gathers her resolve. Despite knowing their contempt for her and her message, she is still compelled by her deep and abiding love for her people to tell it to them again. And again. And again. She will tell them everyday. She will continue to carry the burden and she will continue to bear the contempt and the loneliness as she tells them the hard truths born of wisdom again and again and again. As long as she breath in her body, she will speak to her Tribe. She will tell them what she knows. She will never, never stop.

The Sage takes a deep breath as she steps down from the sheltered porch of her hut and into the swirling snow of the street.