Kami

In the forest behind your grandmother's house,
where moss grows thick on ancient stones
and water speaks in tongues older than cities,
you learn the first word for sacred:
kami.

But she calls it something else entirely—
the way morning light catches dewdrops
like prayers suspended between earth and sky,
each blade of grass a temple bell
ringing with presence.

---

I have forgotten how to listen.
In the concrete maze of our making,
where algorithms predict my hunger
and screens reflect my fractured attention,
the old voices grow thin as paper.

Yet here, in this pocket of wilderness
carved from the suburban sprawl,
a cardinal lands on my windowsill
and calls my name in a language
I remember in my bones.

---

They say the Lakota knew it as Wakan Tanka,
the Quechua as Sumak Kawsay,
the Aboriginal Australians as Tjukurpa—
different tongues wrapping around
the same ineffable truth:

We are not separate.
We never were.

The river that runs through downtown
carries the same minerals
that pulse through your bloodstream.
The oxygen you breathe this morning
was exhaled by the oak tree
your great-grandfather planted
before the war, before the forgetting.

---

In moments of chaos—
when the news cycle spins like a prayer wheel
loaded with fear,
when notifications pierce your sleep
like alarm bells in a burning city,
when the world tilts on its axis
and you forget which way is up—

return.

Return to the place where stones
hold stories older than your anxiety,
where water moves with purpose
you've forgotten how to trust,
where the wind carries messages
from every leaf it has touched.

---

She sits by the hospital window,
your mother, counting breaths
like meditation beads.
Outside, sparrows build their nest
in the eaves of the cancer ward,
oblivious to the weight
of prognosis and prayer.

Or maybe not oblivious.
Maybe they know something
about the democracy of suffering,
how pain and joy nest together
in the same tender spaces,
how life and death dance
the same eternal spiral.

---

You ask the ancient maple
what it knows about endurance.
Its rings speak of drought years
and abundant seasons,
ice storms that stripped its branches bare
and springs that brought new growth
from scars you cannot see.

It does not answer in words
but in the steady pulse
of sap rising, leaves breathing,
roots drinking deep
from the water table
of ancestral wisdom.

---

I am learning to pray again,
not to the god of my childhood
with his ledger of sins and virtues,
but to the god that lives
in the space between raindrop and soil,
in the moment when fern unfurls
its primordial spiral,
in the silence between
your heartbeat and mine.

---

The Shintō priests know this:
every mountain is a deity,
every river carries spirit,
every grain of rice holds
the concentrated essence
of sun and rain and human hands
working in partnership
with forces beyond naming.

But you don't need to go to Japan
to find kami.
It lives in the dandelion
pushing through sidewalk cracks,
in the way storm clouds gather
their electric arguments,
in the persistence of tides
that reshape coastlines
with the patience of love.

---

They taught us to conquer nature,
to subdue and multiply,
to extract and exploit
as if the earth were
a vending machine
dispensing resources
at the press of a button.

Now the machine is broken,
the climate speaks in catastrophe,
the oceans rise like indignation,
and we remember, too late,
that we were never the masters
but always the children.

---

In the garden behind my house,
where tomatoes grow wild
and mint spreads like gossip,
I offer my small gratitude:
for soil that forgives
my inexperienced hands,
for seeds that trust enough
to split open in darkness,
for the bee that stumbles
drunk with pollen
from flower to flower,
pollinating the future
without thought of reward.

---

You stand at the edge
of the Grand Canyon,
that wound in the earth's flesh
that reveals time itself
stratified in stone,
and understand finally
what the Hopi meant
when they said
we are the earth
dreaming of itself.

---

Listen:
The trees are praying with their leaves,
the stones are meditating
with the patience of mountains,
the water is singing
the same song it sang
before the first human
learned to speak.

We have never been separate
from this symphony.
We are the instruments
through which the earth
learns to know itself,
to love itself,
to grieve itself,
to heal itself.

---

In moments of chaos,
when the world seems
too much and not enough,
when hope feels
like a foreign language,
when the future hangs
by the thinnest thread—

return.

Return to your origins:
stardust and river water,
lightning and loam,
the same elements
that birth galaxies
and grow gardens.

Place your palm
against the bark
of the nearest tree.
Feel the slow circulation
of its ancient wisdom.
Remember that you too
are rooted in mystery,
reaching always
toward light.

---

She teaches me the word
for this belonging:
ubuntu—I am because we are.
The African grandmother
who never met the Japanese priest
who never spoke to the Lakota elder
who never sat with the Aboriginal songkeeper,
yet they all knew
the same secret:

We are nature
loving itself
through human hands,
seeing itself
through human eyes,
speaking itself
through human voices
raised in wonder
at the terrible, beautiful
miracle of being
alive, together,
on this blue marble
spinning through space.

---

In the end,
there is only gratitude.
Gratitude for the morning
that arrives despite everything.
Gratitude for the breath
that fills your lungs
without your permission.
Gratitude for the earth
that holds you up
even when you forget
to say thank you.

Kami.
Animism.
Sacred.
Home.

Whatever word you choose,
the truth remains:
You belong here.
You have always belonged here.
The earth recognizes you
as its own beloved child,
and in return,
it asks only
that you remember.