On this last day before the day the dominant culture calls Thanksgiving, precious little green remains upon the land despite a mercury that passed the sixty-degree mark. The earth itself is mostly brown now, or, more accurately, a pale gold: the color of dried grass and decayed leaves and low winter light.
It is a time for the earth to rest, and for us to follow suit. Night falls soon now, and Father Sun with it, and in the longer dark the whole world sleeps.
And still, at the center of all things, life grows.
In our way, the old stories are often stories of emergence: of ascent, as is common among the peoples of this region, a coming up out of the earth and out of the waters, a birth fully formed; among others, of descent, midwifed by the clouds into being from the heavens themselves. There are stories of the vortex, of sacred centers, of cosmologies that envision life as a hoop.
Because always, always, we come back to all that is, that was, that will be: at the center of all things.
Such a centered worldview is one that is naturally grounded, naturally balanced . . . and one for which we should be, must be, are thankful. And it’s one that finds expression in today’s featured work, a piece wrought in molten silver around a stone that looks like a map of our world. From its description in the Buckles Gallery here on the site:
The Center of All Things Concha Belt Buckle
In our own small plane of existence, from our own human perspective, our world is the center of all things. Indigenous cultures affirm this reality in our origin stories, in how we understand Turtle Island beneath the skies, amidst the winds, above the point of emergence. Wings pays tribute to this vision, one lived daily among his own people, in this complex concha belt buckle, a flowering shell-shaped disc of heavy sterling silver that blossoms into traditional symbols of the world as we know it. Celestial patterns, rising sun and setting moon and the light that flows between them, edge the scalloped buckle in concentric rings. Its repoussé center, lightly domed by hand, is chased in a loop of hundreds of individual arrow stamps tracking the motion of the spiraling winds. Ancient kiva steps symbols lead inward to the very center, heart and womb alike, where rests a large oval cabochon of emerald green turquoise with a golden brown matrix that looks for all the world like a map of Turtle Island. On the reverse, only Wings’s hallmark appears, in the embrace of another spiritual center: the Morning Star Lodge, a place of healing and medicine, guidance and power. The buckle stretches 3.75 inches across by 3-1/8 inches high; the stone is 1-3/16 inches across by 7/8″ high (dimensions approximate). Reverse shown below.
Sterling silver; Colorado Evans Mine turquoise
$1,800 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This is the medicine of being, one that flows through the old stories, giving them breath and life, animating them with spirit, birthing them into this world, full and real. It is one of the gifts of our way of life, this means of knowing, of being, of linking our selves and spirits with all that has gone before us, and all that will come after too.
It is an object of gratitude, too, both the existence of the stories and the making of them into something real. They, as much as food and fire, sustain us through the long dark nights of winter, because through them we know, as surely as we know that after the winter moons pass, the green returns again, so, too, does being renew itself, again and again and again. We find immortality not merely in our children, but in our connection to the ancestors, an infinite hoop of being that springs, like the world itself, from the center of all things.
The medicine of being is a great gift indeed, and for it we are grateful, not only this day, not only tomorrow, but every day.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2017; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
