Song: The Way Knows the Way
Artist: Lyndsey Scott
Singer: Lisa G. Littlebird
In Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People, Tiya Miles writes that Harriet Tubmans’ sources of strength and information came from both ecology, her belief in the integrity and value of relationships among all natural beings, and spirituality, her belief in God and unseen realms.
After enduring a traumatic head injury at the age of twelve or thirteen, she began to experience piercing headaches, narcolepsy, epileptic seizures, visions, and recurring dreams. Before escaping slavery, she would dream of flying as a bird over the landscape of fields, rivers, towns, and mountains and as she was about to reach a great wall or river, she would begin to fall from the sky. Just then, “…there would be ladies all dressed in white over there, and they would put out their arms and pull me across.”1
The natural world played a big role in her dreams, and her dreams affirmed her spiritual guidance in finding The Way to freedom. According to scholar, creative organizer, and cultural worker Loren S. Cahill, “Harriet Tubman’s dreams gave birth to freedom maps,”2 similar to the dreams that assisted birthing the revolutions led by Wangari Maathi and Leymah Gbowee.
Harriet Tubman’s bold enduring acts sparked by the alchemy of spirituality and mysticism, deep ecology, and dreams continue to inspire other acts of liberation, such as the Combahee River Collective, an organization of Black feminists named after a military operation in which Tubman was a key leader in freeing over seven hundred enslaved.
It seems Harriet Tubman’s deep connection to nature and spiritual devotion were vital supplements to trusting and feeling her dreams to show The Way, without being plagued by the obsession of extracting meaning, an obsession rooted in modernity-mindset that is disconnected from the natural world and is devoid of spirit, which can result in a hollow transactional pursuit rather than a relational one.
You don’t have to know the way
the way knows the way
You don’t have to plan the way
Trust the way, feel your way
The way knows
The way knows
The way knows the way
May our dreams and community dreamwork aid us in
hospicing our need to know and plan,
and regenerating our sensing, feeling, and trusting.
Night Flyer by Tiya Miles, p. 109
Loren S. Cahill, “BlackGirl Geography: A (Re)Mapping Guide towards Harriet Tubman and Beyond,” Girlhood Studies 12, no. 3 (Winter 2019), 47-62, 50.